Mar 15

Today’s News 15th March 2023

  • Italy Blames Russia For Surge In Migration, Accuses Wagner Group Of "Hybrid Warfare"
    Italy Blames Russia For Surge In Migration, Accuses Wagner Group Of “Hybrid Warfare”

    Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

    Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto accused the Russian mercenary Wagner Group of facilitating the increase in migration reported this year from Africa to Europe…

    Russian mercenaries are responsible for a surge in illegal immigration into Europe and are engaging in “hybrid warfare” against countries supporting Ukraine in the ongoing conflict, Italy’s Defense Minister Guido Crosetto has claimed.

    Speaking on Monday, the Italian minister claimed the Russian Wagner Group, which operates in several African countries and holds considerable political influence, has been facilitating an increase in illegal immigration across the Mediterranean into Italy.

    “I think it is now safe to say that the exponential increase in the migratory phenomenon departing from African shores is also, to a not insignificant extent, part of a clear strategy of hybrid warfare that the Wagner division is implementing, using its considerable weight in some African countries,” Crosetto said.

    Italy’s Defense Minister Guido Crosetto. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

    “Just as the EU, NATO, and the West have realized that cyberattacks were part of the global confrontation that the war in Ukraine opened up, they should now understand that the southern European front is also becoming more dangerous every day,” he added.

    However, Italy has long dealt with mass migration from Africa and Middle Eastern countries, and the minister presented no evidence that Wagner was behind any operation to increase migration to Europe. Europe, however, has faced a migrant crisis partially facilitated by Russia and Belarus in countries like Poland and Baltic nations over the last couple of years.

    Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told Italian news agency ANSA that many migrants are now originating from areas “controlled by the Wagner group.”

    Europe’s border agency, Frontex, reported that in the first two months of 2023, the top countries of origin were Ivory Coast, Guinea, and Pakistan — all countries where Wagner has no presence.

    The accusation is firmly denied by the mercenary group whose leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said via the Telegram messaging app: “We have no idea what is happening with regard to the migrant crisis, but we are not dealing with it,” before calling Crosetto a “mudak,” a Russian derogatory term akin to “idiot” or “moron.”

    As Remix News reported on Monday, migrant crossings across the Mediterranean have more than doubled in the first two months of 2023, with Frontex data revealing a total of 11,951 crossings detected in January and February, up 118 percent over the same period last year.

    Italian government figures revealed more than 20,000 people have now reached Italy so far this year, suggesting a significant increase in the past two weeks in migrant activity.

    The surge in immigration prompted the Italian government last week to announce tougher new laws on people smugglers, who could now see themselves jailed for up to 30 years for facilitating illegal immigration into Italy.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/15/2023 – 02:00

  • The Urbanity Of Evil: 20 Years After The US Invasion Of Iraq
    The Urbanity Of Evil: 20 Years After The US Invasion Of Iraq

    Authored by Norman Solomon via Common Dreams,

    Vast quantities of lies from top U.S. government officials led up to the Iraq invasion. Now, marking its 20th anniversary, the same media outlets that eagerly boosted those lies are offering retrospectives. Don’t expect them to shed light on the most difficult truths, including their own complicity in pushing for war.

    What propelled the United States to start the war on Iraq in March 2003 were dynamics of media and politics that are still very much with us today. Soon after 9/11, one of the rhetorical whips brandished by President George W. Bush was an unequivocal assertion while speaking to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 20, 2001: “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Thrown down, that gauntlet received adulation and scant criticism in the United States. Mainstream media and members of Congress were almost all enthralled with a Manichean worldview that has evolved and persisted.

    AFP via Getty Images

    Our current era is filled with echoes of such oratory from the current president. A few months before fist-bumping Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman—who’s been in charge of a tyrannical regime making war on Yemen, causing several hundred thousand deaths since 2015 with U.S. government help—Joe Biden mounted a pulpit of supreme virtue during his 2022 State of the Union address.

    Biden proclaimed “an unwavering resolve that freedom will always triumph over tyranny.” And he added that “in the battle between democracy and autocracies, democracies are rising to the moment.” Of course, there was no mention of his support for Saudi autocracy and war.

    In that State of the Union speech, Biden devoted much emphasis to condemning Russia’s war on Ukraine, as he has many times since. Biden’s presidential hypocrisies do not in any way justify the horrors that Russian forces are inflicting in Ukraine. Nor does that war justify the deadly hypocrisies that pervade U.S. foreign policy.

    This week, don’t hold your breath for media retrospectives about the Iraq invasion to include basic facts about the key roles of Biden and the man who is now secretary of state, Antony Blinken. When they each denounce Russia while solemnly insisting that it is absolutely unacceptable for one country to invade another, the Orwellian efforts are brazen and shameless.

    Last month, speaking to the UN Security Council, Blinken invoked “the principles and rules that make all countries safer and more secure”—such as “no seizing land by force” and “no wars of aggression.” But Biden and Blinken were crucial accessories to the massive war of aggression that was the invasion of Iraq. On the very rare occasions when Biden has been put on the spot for how he helped make the invasion politically possible, his response has been to dissemble and tell outright lies.

    “Biden has a long history of inaccurate claims” regarding Iraq, scholar Stephen Zunes pointed out four years ago. “For example, in the lead-up to the critical Senate vote authorizing the invasion, Biden used his role as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to insist that Iraq somehow reconstituted a vast arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, a nuclear weapons program and sophisticated delivery systems that had long since been eliminated.” The false claim of supposed weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was the main pretext for the invasion.

    That falsehood was challenged in real time, many months before the invasion, by numerous experts. But then-Senator Biden, wielding the gavel of the Foreign Relations Committee, excluded them all from two days of high-impact sham hearings in mid-summer 2002.

    And who was the chief of staff of the committee at that time? The current secretary of state, Antony Blinken.

    We’re apt to put Biden and Blinken in a completely different category than someone like Tariq Aziz, who was Iraq’s deputy prime minister under despot Saddam Hussein. But, thinking back to the three meetings with Aziz that I attended in Baghdad during the months before the invasion, I have some doubts.

    Aziz wore nicely tailored business suits. Speaking excellent English in measured tones and well-crafted sentences, he had an erudite air with no lack of politesse as he greeted our four-member delegation (which I had organized with colleagues at the Institute for Public Accuracy). Our group included Congressman Nick Rahall of West Virginia, former South Dakota senator James Abourezk and Conscience International president James Jennings. As it turned out, the meeting occurred six months before the invasion.

    At the time of that meeting in mid-September 2002, Aziz was able to concisely sum up a reality that few U.S. media outlets were acknowledging. “It’s doomed if you do, doomed if you don’t,” Aziz said, referring to the Iraqi government’s choice of whether to let UN weapons inspectors back into the country.

    After meetings with Aziz and other Iraqi officials, I told the Washington Post: “If it was strictly a matter of the inspections and they felt there was a light at the end of the tunnel, this would be a totally fixable problem.” But it was far from being strictly a matter of the inspections. The Bush administration was determined to make war on Iraq.

    A couple of days after the Aziz meeting, Iraq’s regime—which was accurately stating that it had no weapons of mass destruction—announced that it would allow UN inspectors back into the country. (They had been withdrawn four years earlier for their safety on the eve of an anticipated U.S. bombing attack that took place for four days.) But compliance with the United Nations was to no avail. The U.S. government leaders wanted to launch an invasion of Iraq, no matter what.

    During two later meetings with Aziz, in December 2002 and January 2003, I was repeatedly struck by his capacity to seem cultured and refined. While the main spokesperson for a vicious dictator, he exuded sophistication. I thought of the words “the urbanity of evil.”

    Bush’s “shock and awe” over Baghdad, file image.

    A well-informed source told me that Saddam Hussein maintained some kind of leverage over Aziz by keeping his son in jeopardy of imprisonment or worse, lest Aziz become a defector. Whether or not that was the case, Deputy Prime Minister Aziz remained loyal to the end. As someone in Jean Renoir’s film The Rules of the Game says, “The awful thing about life is this: Everybody has their reasons.”

    Tariq Aziz had good reasons to fear for his life—and the lives of loved ones—if he ran afoul of Saddam. In contrast, many politicians and officials in Washington have gone along with murderous policies when dissenting might cost them only re-election, prestige, money or power.

    I last saw Aziz in January 2003, while accompanying a former UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq to meet with him. Talking to the two of us in his Baghdad office, Aziz seemed to know an invasion was virtually certain. It began two months later. The Pentagon was pleased to brand its horrific air attacks on the city “shock and awe.”

    On July 1, 2004, appearing before an Iraqi judge in a courtroom located on a U.S. military base near Baghdad airport, Aziz said: “What I want to know is, are these charges personal? Is it Tariq Aziz carrying out these killings? If I am a member of a government that makes the mistake of killing someone, then there can’t justifiably be an accusation against me personally. Where there is a crime committed by the leadership, the moral responsibility rests there, and there shouldn’t be a personal case just because somebody belongs to the leadership.” And, Aziz went on to say, “I never killed anybody, by the acts of my own hand.”

    The invasion that Joe Biden helped to inflict on Iraq resulted in a war that directly killed several hundred thousand civilians. If he were ever really called to account for his role, Biden’s words might resemble those of Tariq Aziz.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/14/2023 – 23:50

  • China Calls AUKUS Sub Deal "Pure Deception" As It Means Australia Going Nuclear
    China Calls AUKUS Sub Deal “Pure Deception” As It Means Australia Going Nuclear

    China has blasted the new AUKUS nuclear submarine deal announced by President Joe Biden in San Diego on Monday alongside Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Biden sought to stress that the agreement to transfer nuclear submarine technology to Australia is not “a challenge to anybody” and that “These boats will not have any nuclear weapons of any kind of them,” according to his remarks at an outdoor ceremony at Naval Base Point Loma.

    But Beijing disagrees, as on Tuesday the foreign ministry blasted the US and its allies for their “Cold War mentality” which puts the region on a “dangerous path” that will “only motivate an arms race”. Spokesperson Wang Wenbin additionally said that nuclear subs for Australia’s military will “damage the international nuclear nonproliferation regime, and harm regional stability and peace.” 

    “The latest joint statement issued by the U.S., U.K., and Australia shows that the three countries have gone further down the wrong and dangerous path for their own geopolitical self-interest, completely ignoring the concerns of the international community,” Wang said at a daily briefing.

    This isn’t the first time that China has made the charge that in Canberra procuring nuclear-powered subs it is violating its own ‘nuclear weapons free’ policy. Wang reiterated China’s long-running assertion that it poses “serious risk of nuclear proliferation and violating the object and purpose of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.”

    “The three countries claim that they will abide by the highest nuclear non-proliferation standards, which is pure deception,” Wang said, charging they’ve been engaged in “coercing” the International Atomic Energy Agency into bestowing endorsement.

    Meanwhile, China certainly took notice when Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles commented on the super expensive AUKUS deal Tuesday (Australia forecasts it will spend up to $245 billion on the project by 2055). He had delivered—

    …”one of the most ominous warnings” relating to the reasons behind a heavily expensive AUKUS deal, says Sky News host Laura Jayes.

    “It answered the why – why we are spending so much on these nuclear-powered submarines?” Ms Jayes said.

    Defence Minister Richard Marles has stated in a media conference on Tuesday, “the biggest conventional military build-up … seen since the end of the second world war” is happening in our region.

    “That is all about China – not mentioned by word, but ‘the biggest conventional military build-up’ – well it cannot be about anyone else,” she said.

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    Also fueling Beijing’s anger are recent reports that the US Navy is planning a full-service submarine hub in Australia which can be a major base overseeing all submarine deployments in the Asia Pacific.

    Defense News reported last week, “The U.S. Navy envisions a submarine hub in Australia from which the service can oversee the entire range of undersea activities in the Asia-Pacific region, from boat production to repairs to missions, service Secretary Carlos del Toro said last month.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/14/2023 – 23:30

  • Investors Expecting Fed To Accept Entrenched Inflation
    Investors Expecting Fed To Accept Entrenched Inflation

    By Nour Al Ali, Bloomberg markets live reporter and analyst

    Breakevens and inflation swaps show market inflation expectations still above the Fed’s 2% target…

    … which coupled with money-market expectations of a Fed rate-cut as soon as the summer…

    …  is a sign that investors expect the Fed to potentially accept that inflation may remain higher than its target and far more entrenched in the economy as financial stability remains a concern.

    For much of the current tightening cycle, the market has been at odds with the Fed as it prioritized its fight to tame inflation. When Chair Jerome Powell testified in Congress last week, the market listened and sent yields soaring, interpreting his initial appearance as a strong sign of the Fed’s hawkishness. He said that policymakers were prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes if needed, adding that nothing about recent data suggested that the Fed has tightened too much.

    The next day, Powell softened his tone, stressing that no decision had been made on the pace of rate hikes, and that policymakers were looking to be guided by the wave of upcoming data. Jobs, which showed a tight labor market, along with CPI and PPI data, which would give clarity on price pressures. Since then, the SVB meltdown led to significant repricing across global assets and investor expectations of the Fed’s rate-hike path.

    Treasuries, particularly at the short-end, have given back some of the gains they’ve seen during the market mayhem. The yield on short-end USTs was up close to 30 basis points on the session, climbing past 4.3% after today’s inline data. It remains to be seen what the next few data prints hold, and how it will inform both the market and the Fed ahead of its decision this month.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/14/2023 – 23:10

  • DeSantis Issues Most Blistering Takedown Yet Of US Role In Ukraine "Territorial Dispute"
    DeSantis Issues Most Blistering Takedown Yet Of US Role In Ukraine “Territorial Dispute”

    At a moment Western officials and even some mainstream media are beginning to express doubt over Ukraine’s ability to push Russian forces back, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who will likely enter the race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, has issued his sharpest criticisms yet of America’s role in the Ukraine war, calling it fundamentally a “territorial dispute” which the US should stay out of.

    The statements came as part of his response to a questionnaire issued to possible 2024 presidential candidates by Fox News’s Tucker Carlson. The questionnaire asked whether protecting Ukraine should be part of US “vital national interests”. DeSantis ripped Biden’s policy as a virtual “blank check” which serves to erode US interests and “distracts” from what should be more pressing priorities.

    He stressed that the United States government “cannot prioritize intervention in an escalating foreign war over the defense of our own homeland” – which also echoes the scathing critiques of a small cadre of GOP Congressional members like Matt Gaetz, Thomas Massie, and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

    Via Reuters

    “While the U.S. has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them,” DeSantis said. Likely the reference is to the civil war which predates the Feb.24, 2022 Russian invasion by many years: the conflict in Donbas which went back to 2014 and by many estimates took over 14,000 lives on both sides. 

    “The Biden administration’s virtual ‘blank check’ funding of this conflict for ‘as long as it takes,’ without any defined objectives or accountability, distracts from our country’s most pressing challenges,” he added.

    Crucially, he also used the questionnaire as an opportunity to point out that the Biden White House’s irresponsible escalation of involvement in supporting Kiev has ultimately pushed Moscow into “a de facto alliance” with China.

    “Because China has not and will not abide by the embargo, Russia has increased its foreign revenues while China benefits from cheaper fuel. Coupled with his intentional depletion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and support for the Left’s Green New Deal, Biden has further empowered Russia’s energy-dominated economy and Putin’s war machine at Americans’ expense,” the Florida governor said. 

    And on the question of F-16s, which is currently being pushed by some Congressional hawks and reportedly being mulled over by the administration…

    DeSantis said F-16s and long-range missiles should be “off the table” because the moves could risk “drawing the United States into the conflict and drawing us closer to a hot war between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.”

    The Florida Republican further went after what he called the US policy of “regime change” in Russia which he said is “no doubt popular among the DC foreign policy interventionists”.

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    Despite Biden officially rejecting that he has a policy of regime change, DeSantis emphasized that the current trajectory tends in that direction, leaving no good options as things escalate in Ukraine. He said that any attempt to remove Putin from power “would greatly increase the stakes of the conflict, making the use of nuclear weapons more likely.”

    “Such a policy would neither stop the death and destruction of the war, nor produce a pro-American, Madisonian constitutionalist in the Kremlin. History indicates that Putin’s successor, in this hypothetical, would likely be even more ruthless,” he wrote. “The costs to achieve such a dubious outcome could become astronomical.”

    Given that Donald Trump is running, and some polls have put their popularity and support among Republican voters very close, it will be interesting to see if Trump matches or surpasses DeSantis’ emphasis on non-interventionism in the “territorial dispute” in Ukraine. Certainly Trump has already been out front in being vocal against Biden’s policies in Ukraine. All of this at the very least means the debate within the GOP is likely to slide more and more against a policy of escalating American involvement, despite the hawks still by and large exercising most influence at the moment.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/14/2023 – 22:50

  • Death Of A Myth
    Death Of A Myth

    Authored by George D. O’Neill Jr via TheAmericanConservative.com,

    Americans need to wake up to the realities of a post-unipolar world before it’s too late…

    As we witness the collapse of various mainstream narratives, especially those surrounding the U.S./NATO war with Russia in Ukraine, Americans should begin to reassess their understanding of U.S. national leadership. Most American citizens have no notion of the great disparity between what their government does overseas and the stories they hear from its mouthpieces. As a result, Americans unwittingly support all sorts of foreign operations with little or no understanding of what is actually going on. For years, they have been misled by a non-stop propaganda campaign that is only now beginning to crumble.

    We are experiencing the death throes of the United States’ unipolar hegemony over large parts of world. Until citizens begin to realize the magnitude of their government’s policy deceptions, it will become increasingly difficult to understand the United States’ changing global position and adjust to the effects of the growing negative perception of our country held by many people around the world.

    Since World War II, and particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States was the dominant and unrivaled world power. Instead of being a peacekeeper and honest “world’s policeman,” the U.S. has increasingly been a destabilizing bully. Many leaders worldwide have been reluctant to speak up about the increasingly destructive nature of U.S. foreign policy for fear of being punished. But as U.S. stature and power declines, large parts of the world have been seeking arrangements to protect themselves from U.S. predation.

    Most Americans do not understand why such realignments are occurring, thanks to a constant stream of propaganda about America being the “most generous,” the “exceptional nation,” a “nation that sets aside its interests for the benefit of the world,” an “important source of good” around the globe as the “protector of the rules based order,” always shouldering the heavy responsibility to protect the international system and weak nations from bad actors, ad nauseam. According to a number of sources, U.S.-caused wars have been directly responsible for the deaths of more than 10 million people since World War II. The neoconservatives will scoff at these facts and their sources, but most of the rest of the world believes this to be true.

    Most Americans cannot accept these observations because they contradict the narrative given them by the omnipresent state propaganda machine. While the ever growing list of American misdeeds abroad has for years been largely unchallenged at home, it has become increasingly obvious to many across the globe. Americans should take note. For example, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has just published an overview of what they see as U.S. misbehavior. The U.S. establishment and well-meaning patriots may dismiss the Chinese observations, but they ring true to many who live outside of the neoconservative propaganda bubble.

    Contrary to establishment mythology, the U.S. is famous for breaking its promises, violating treaties, and abandoning agreements. The list is long: the U.S.’s 1990 promise not to move NATO east into former Warsaw Convention countries, the abrogation of the ABM, INF, Open Skies, START treaties, the JCPOA, the  agreement with Libya, and others. The U.S. has also repeatedly flouted international law by invading countries that do not bow to U.S. hegemony.

    There are a number of U.S. agencies that covertly fund NGO election interference operations. Most Americans have no idea that the Cold War–era National Endowment for Democracy was created to influence elections in countries around the world, and has interfered in many. (The National Endowment for Democracy was spending money in Russia until the Russians expelled them.) Then there are the famous “Color Revolutions” sponsored by various U.S. agencies. Some estimate the U.S. has interfered in as many as fifty countries.

    The days of pretending to ignore this destructive behavior are drawing to a close. We are entering a period in which the populations of many countries may decide that being subject to American hegemony is not in their interests. Increasing numbers of countries have joined and formed alternative alliances outside U.S. influence. SCO, BRICS+, OPEC+, and others have experienced growing membership as countries that believe their interests are better protected by these non-U.S. affiliated alliances sign on.

    The fallout of the tragic and unnecessary Ukraine war has accelerated this movement to seek other cooperative associations. As America’s European allies are learning, there can be huge political and economic costs to being associated with the U.S. The populations of Europe have watched their own economies suffer and paid dearly for energy because of the ten rounds of self-destructive sanctions imposed on Russia.

    The purveyor and protector of the “rules-based order” decided that Germany should not import cheap Russian natural gas. America’s president and a senior State Department official threatened to cut off the pipeline supplying Russian natural gas if Russia did not bow to Washington’s wishes. Coincidentally, the Nord Stream gas pipelines were blown up not long after. The U.S. Secretary of State said the sabotage was an “opportunity,” and the assistant secretary of State appeared to be satisfied. The neoconservatives lauding this act of terrorism against an ally of the U.S. may believe pretending Washington was not responsible will reassure America and Europe, but the rest of the world believes otherwise.

    Many will ignore or diminish the consequences of a possible U.S. role in the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines. But this addition to the list of callous acts believed abroad to be perpetrated by the U.S. further would undermine the narrative of America as the “generous nation,” “leader of the free world,” “protector of the rules-based order.” For years, these contradictions were skillfully finessed and ignored by a compliant press and complicit institutions that profited from these deceptions. But as the U.S. appears less powerful, the rest of the world is beginning to take notice and are moving to seek other protective friendships.

    Less than two years ago, the “most powerful military in the history of man” was chased out of Afghanistan by a group of ragtag militants armed with small arms and mounted on donkeys, bicycles, and motor scooters. The Taliban now has $80 billion worth of U.S. military equipment our leaders left behind. The excuses may have been convincing to the Washington elites and were sold strenuously by regime-aligned media outlets. The rest of the world knows better. The old post-Vietnam collapse tropes, claiming “we would have won if only we were really allowed to fight,” ring hollow after twenty years, hundreds of thousands killed and made homeless, and several trillion dollars spent on that disaster.

    Contrary to the many assertions that the Russians would collapse from the shock and awe of the “sanctions from Hell,” the ruble has not turned into rubble as Joe Biden predicted. The U.S. and its NATO clients are running out of ammunition and arms to send to Ukraine, which is being bled white at their behest. It appears that Russia will steadily grind down the Ukrainian military. All of this is reminiscent of World War I. The proto-neoconservatives sold that war as a quick engagement that would be over by Christmas 1914. Four years later, 20 million were dead and many more were wounded or displaced; subsequently most of the European Christian monarchies collapsed, Russia descended into communism’s seventy-year nightmare, and the “War to End all Wars” to make the world “safe for democracy” set the stage for the even more horrific World War II.

    A century later, we are sleepwalking into World War III. Americans should ignore the state-sponsored propaganda (eerily similar to that which led up to WWI), wake up, look at what their leaders have wrought, and do all they can to end support for this cruel war before we face a Great War–like conflagration or worse.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/14/2023 – 22:30

  • CDC, FDA Respond To Florida Surgeon General's COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Alert
    CDC, FDA Respond To Florida Surgeon General’s COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Alert

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

    U.S. health authorities have responded to the warning from Florida’s surgeon general about a spike in reports of adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination.

    Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaks in Washington on June 16, 2022. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

    Drs. Rochelle Walensky and Robert Califf claimed in the response that Dr. Joseph Ladapo, the surgeon general, was misleading the public by focusing on the increase in adverse events reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

    “The claim that the increase of VAERS reports of life-threatening conditions reported from Florida and elsewhere represents an increase of risk caused by the COVID-19 vaccines is incorrect, misleading, and could be harmful to the American public,” Walensky and Califf said in the missive.

    Walensky heads the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Califf heads of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The CDC and FDA co-manage VAERS, which accepts reports from anybody but which is primarily used by healthcare workers.

    The COVID-19 vaccines were given emergency authorization in late 2020. Under the emergency authorizations, vaccine companies and healthcare workers are required to report certain adverse events through VAERS, “so more reports should be expected,” Walensky and Califf said.

    “Most reports do not represent adverse events caused by the vaccine and instead represent a preexisting condition that preceded vaccination or an underlying medical condition that precipitated the event,” they said.

    They did not cite any studies or other research to support the claim.

    While anyone can lodge reports with the system, authorities request medical records and other documentation in an effort to verify reports of certain events. Out of 1,826 reports of heart inflammation after Pfizer or Moderna vaccination in adults through May 26, 2022, for instance, the CDC verified 72 percent.

    The CDC also identified hundreds of safety signals for the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines through analyzing VAERS data in 2022, according to records obtained by The Epoch Times. A safety signal is a possible sign of a side effect. Only a handful of adverse events are definitely caused by the vaccines, according to the CDC, including myocarditis, or heart inflammation, and severe allergic shock.

    Ladapo said in February that in Florida, the number of reports to VAERS after the COVID-19 vaccines were authorized spiked by 1,700 percent, while the increase in vaccine administration rose by just 400 percent.

    “We have never seen this type of response following previous mass vaccination efforts pushed by the federal government,” Ladapo said in a letter to Walensky and Califf.

    “These findings are unlikely to be related to changes in reporting given their magnitude, and more likely reflect a pattern of increased risk from mRNA COVID-19 vaccines,” he added, calling for “unbiased research … to better understand these vaccines’ short- and long-term effects.” The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines both use messenger RNA (mRNA) technology.

    Florida officials pointed to a study that found in the original clinical trials that the vaccinated were more at risk of serious adverse events, as well as other papers that found an increased risk of adverse events after COVID-19 vaccination.

    Florida currently recommends against COVID-19 vaccination for young, healthy males who have been shown to be at the highest risk of myocarditis. Vaccinating the population “doesn’t make any sense” from a risk-benefit standpoint, Ladapo, appointed by Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, told The Epoch Times. The heart inflammation causes serious problems and can even lead to death in some cases.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/14/2023 – 21:50

  • Car Dealerships Hit With Profitability Squeeze As Auto Industry Cracks
    Car Dealerships Hit With Profitability Squeeze As Auto Industry Cracks

    Auto dealerships are encountering a major problem where auction (wholesale) prices are increasing while real book values stagnate, squeezing profitability. 

    To make sense of this, auto-guru CarDealershipGuy expanded on our tweet, pointing out that Manheim wholesale auto prices are re-accelerating while other indexes tracking prices were flat. 

    Here’s what was revealed in the conversation as per the auto expert:

    Manheim is tracking auctions. Dealers ARE paying more for cars. A LOT more. But the issue dealers are running into is SELLING those cars.

     JD Power – one of the industry’s main sources of Vehicle Book Values that auto lenders rely on to value collateral – hasn’t materially adjusted upwards. 

    This has left dealers high-and-dry and without a profitable outlet for all the inventory they just acquired for OVER book value. 

    And that is leading to lots of dealers selling cars to consumers at a front-end LOSS (meaning, lose money on actual cars) while hoping to make it up on the back-end (with value-added products like warranties). 

    Speaking for myself, our vehicle purchase price has slightly RISEN but our ASP (average sale price) has barely budged. 

    Separately, CarDealershipGuy went even more in-depth about underwater auto dealerships in a recent blog post:

    Cars are appreciating again and this presents problems for both dealerships and consumers. Here’s why:

    Ask any dealer and they will tell you that appreciating wholesale prices is a phenomenon we haven’t seen since the craziness of 2021. There hasn’t been a tax season where we’ve seen wholesale prices for mainstream, bread-and-butter cars at $3K above the “book value.” [Book values are current wholesale and retail market price estimates provided by various publishers, such as NADA, Kelly Blue Book, Black Book, JD Power, and other companies]

    Look at this example from a recent sale at an auction:

    A 2016 Honda Civic LX with 68K miles was listed with an auction value of $15,800 and sold for $16,100. The JD Power book value is listed at only $12,925 for clean and $12,050 for average conditions. This is a 7-year-old Honda Civic we are talking about. See what’s wrong here? While wholesale prices have been increasing for 3 months, book values haven’t caught up yet!

    This is just one example, but as other dealers can attest, it is an increasingly common occurrence.

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

    So what are the consequences?

    Dealers struggle to make a profit, and thus, sell a car: There’s no “water” (industry term for profit or ‘spread’) in the deal from the get-go. Lagging book values certainly hurts dealer margins, but there’s another issue:

    Inaccurate book values hinder dealerships’ ability to secure financing for consumers because lenders use book values to underwrite loans(!)

    Even if a lender is willing to accept the 120% loan-to-value ratio, it would still require a large down payment of ~$5K to secure a loan. Faced with increased delinquencies, lenders want to take less risk and charge dealers more for each loan, further squeezing dealer margins.

    Consumers in the prime credit segment don’t need to worry, but those in subprime and deep subprime should expect it to become increasingly difficult to get into cars.

    He presented an outlook similar to ours about the turmoil ahead:

    We are in for a bumpy ride: the outlook for subprime shoppers is bleak, and dealers are facing additional headwinds from higher wholesale prices, lack of inventory, and inaccurate book values.

    Aside from the issue of auto dealerships experiencing losses from selling vehicles, subprime borrowers are also having difficulties meeting their monthly payments that exceed $1,000.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/14/2023 – 21:30

  • The Fed Can't Give Up The Inflation Fight Yet
    The Fed Can’t Give Up The Inflation Fight Yet

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

    Many people in Washington hoped for much better inflation numbers in February. Below zero would have released tears of joy following this rough weekend of bank failures and the first signs of financial instability in these three years of nonstop terrible. Alas, that did not happen. The report came in at a 0.4 percent increase for the month and 6 percent for the year, or three times the Fed’s target.

    Drilling down, there are some really terrible hot spots. Food at home, energy services, and transportation all registered double-digit increases on an annualized basis. You know this intuitively by looking at your utility and grocery bills. Shopping used to be a pleasure. Now it is nothing but pain. We look at those steaks, eggs, and even veggies and think twice and three times. We stand at the cash register with dread. The bill comes and we shake our heads with sadness at what we are going through.

    Remember the days when we would shop with smiles on our faces, see and greet friends, and leave with a spring in our step? Those days are gone, replaced with grumbling, sadness, and deep annoyance all around. Every aisle is filled with crabby people who have a sense that they are getting pillaged. We are alarmed not only at high prices but also the magically shrinking packages.

    “Good time to be on a diet,” everyone thinks. The diet called “one meal a day” (OMAD) starts looking very attractive. And truly Americans of all classes would do well to examine their eating habits. But one might like to do that under less financial duress.

    It’s fair to observe that inflation is not getting worse at the same pace it was last year. But a declining rate of worsening is not anything to cheer about. The Fed must still deal with a depreciation rate of the dollar in terms of goods and services that it cannot tolerate. Already, the dollar has lost 17 cents of value in two years. Something has to change.

    Informed opinion over the weekend hoped that the Fed would stop the wild war on inflation with fewer rate increases over the coming months. My own read on Jerome Powell is that he is in no mood to do that. He made up his mind two years ago that he was wrong to accommodate Congress’s spending mania for a virus and reversed course.

    He further knew that his rate increases would naturally devalue the portfolios of major banks that had stored its cash excess in fixed-rate government securities and other mortgage-backed products. They had plenty of time to sell those at a discount. So far as he is concerned, the balance-sheet problems of Silicon Valley Bank are not his problems. They are a matter for the risk-management team to solve.

    It appears too that there is a real difference of opinion between the Fed and the Biden administration at this point. Over the week, the Biden administration via the Treasury and the deposit insurers went out on a limb to guarantee the deposits of failing banks—an absurd and dangerous promise that cannot be applied across the board. Powell didn’t make that decision but neither is he in a position to stop it. That’s for regulators to decide and he is not among them. His job is to land the economy away from inflationary excesses come hell or high water. Unless someone gets to him, my bet is for the rate increases to continue.

    There are two theories concerning why last week’s bank failures have not led to a broader contagion. One credits the Biden administration’s policy of universal deposit insurance. But it is more likely the case that these particular failures were not systemic but rather trace to poor management by the banks themselves. It would be nice to know. All the Biden administration had to do was let them fail and watch the results. Alas, that didn’t happen.

    A major factor in why the Biden administration did the wrong thing owed to major players in industry and banking screaming that something had to happen. In a panic and watching financial opinion turn ever more south on a Sunday, the regulators jumped in to promise something that is simply impossible: universal guarantees. This was a huge error.

    Another error was putting President Biden on stage to promise the American people that the banking system is sound. It’s like these people truly believe that they still have credibility. They do not. Viewers listen to them and naturally assume that the opposite is true. Free advice: never trot that geezer out to assure anyone in a crisis. He has zero credibility and his every word does damage to any message they want to deliver.

    As a result of this mess, we now have two de facto monetary policies operating at cross purposes. We have the regulators captured by the Biden administration pushing looser money and credit, and indeed promising more floods to fix any problems that emerge in the future. On the other hand, we have Powell and the Fed sticking to their guns on tighter money to restrain the effects of excesses of 2020 and 2021.

    This morning’s CPI numbers make the point that the Fed still has a lot of work to do. In addition, it is actually difficult to discern long-run and underlying trends from month to month numbers. After all, last summer we saw one month (July) when inflation actually registered as flat. Last month’s numbers seemed to indicate a re-acceleration, despite what the headlines said.

    Remember that these numbers are always in the past. What is going on now? We are certainly seeing the rate at which food is going up beginning to relax a bit. February was certainly terrible but March is less so. On the other hand, have you seen gas prices lately? For the year, we are up by 40 cents a gallon. It does not look good. And we can fully anticipate that renewed demand with spring and summer coming is going to put more upward pressure on gas prices.

    Overall over three years, there is no room for optimism about the price at the pump. This became obvious to me yesterday when the discount, members-only station had a line around several blocks. People are willing to wait 45 minutes just to save a few bucks on gas. That’s when you know that matters are becoming more intense.

    The Fed has more than enough evidence on its side to continue the tightening campaign. This will put more pressure on heavily leveraged companies because the costs of servicing their debt are rising ever more and eating into their capacity to retain huge labor costs. For a sign, have a look at Meta/Facebook which just announced another huge round of layoffs. This indicates some hardcore balance-sheet pressure.

    We are nowhere near done with this. The right side of the yield curve will continue to offload capital to the left and that means growing layoffs in information technology and professional services even as retail and hospitality are facing real shortages. The Fed’s determination to arrest the inflation problem means that this shift will continue.

    As for the woke banks, they will all likely bite the dust before this is over. And herein we find the silver lining in all this upheaval. We are getting back to the realities of finance about which markets have been in denial for many years.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/14/2023 – 21:10

  • New Wuhan Scandal: US Agencies Double-Paid Virus Research Costs
    New Wuhan Scandal: US Agencies Double-Paid Virus Research Costs

    The US government may have made tens of millions of dollars in duplicate payments for virus research at the Wuhan Institute for Virology, according to a review of government records by a former federal investigator, CBS News reports. 

    “What I’ve found so far is evidence that points to double billing, potential theft of government funds. It is concerning, especially since it involves dangerous pathogens and risky research,” said Diane Cutler, whose services were engaged by Kansas Republican Senator Roger Marshall. 

    Cutler has more than 20 years of experience investigating healthcare fraud and white-collar crime, an her conclusions spring from her review of over 50,000 documents relating to US grants that financed coronavirus research in China. 

    The Wuhan Institute of Virology (Roman Pilipey/EPA via The Guardian)

    The apparent double-payments, made via the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and US Agency for International Development (USAID), related to a variety of claimed costs, including salaries, travel, medical supplies and equipment.  

    Anonymous sources told CBS the damage may amount to tens of millions of dollars. Marshall has turned over Cutler’s findings to USAID and the agency’s internal watchdog, which has launched an investigation of its own. It could take six months or more. 

    On Feb. 28, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the bureau had long ago concluded the Covid-19 pandemic was most likely the result of a leak from a Chinese lab. Days earlier, it was reported that the Department of Energy had — in 2020 — reached its own determination that a lab leak was most likely. 

    This month, former NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci was accused of prompting a cadre of scientists to publish a paper disproving the lab-leak theory — just days after scientists warned Fauci, in February 2020, that Covid-19 may have indeed leaked from a lab.  

    Two authors of that same paper — who initially expressed concerns over a lab-leak but then changed their tune — went on to receive millions in NIH grants under Fauci.

    Fauci earned at least $480,654 a year in his NIH-NIAID role, making him the highest-paid employee in the federal government. Now, the increasingly disgraced graduate of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts is raking in a pension estimated at $414,000 — more than the US presidential salary.   

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/14/2023 – 20:50

  • Trump Publishing Private Letters From High-Profile Figures Including Kim Jong Un, Hillary Clinton, Oprah
    Trump Publishing Private Letters From High-Profile Figures Including Kim Jong Un, Hillary Clinton, Oprah

    Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Former President Donald Trump is set to release 150 private letters sent to him from an array of high-profile political figures and celebrities including former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, and Oprah Winfrey.

    Former President Donald Trump arrives to address the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., on March 4, 2023. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

    The letters will be published in Trump’s new book, titled “Letters to Trump,” which will be released on April 25, according to the book’s publisher, Winning Team Publishing.

    The publisher describes it as “a colorful photo book” that captures the “incredible, and oftentimes private correspondence, between President Donald J. Trump and some of the biggest names in history throughout the past 40 years.”

    “From President Richard Nixon to Princess Diana, and from Hillary Clinton, to Chairman Kim Jong Un, no book offers a glimpse into history quite like Letters to Trump,” the publisher stated on its official website.

    Axios reported that the book also includes letters from Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Mario Cuomo, Arnold Palmer, Jay Leno, Liza Minnelli, Regis Philbin, and more.

    Among them is a letter from television host Winfrey dating back to 2000 in which she says: “Too bad we’re not running for office. What a team!” according to the report.

    Trump on ‘Cunning’ Kim Jong Un

    Every letter published within the book has been personally handpicked by Trump and is accompanied by his original commentary as well as transcripts when handwriting is not completely clear, according to the publisher.

    The latest book marks the second official book to be released by the 45th president of the United States with Winning Team after the release of “Our Journey Together“—his first book since leaving office—in December 2021.

    Trump is the co-founder of Winning Team Publishing and his first book, which featured captioned photographs of his time in the White House, made $20 million in sales in the first two months, according to Axios.

    Speaking of the new book in a phone call with reporters from the Daily Mail and other publications on March 9, Trump explained, “We had lots of great letters from lots of great people and not so great people, to be honest with you.”

    “But they’re very famous people. And probably there’s never been such diversity as this in terms of people where the letters come from and who they come from,” Trump said.

    During the phone call, the former president also spoke of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whose correspondence with Trump is featured in the new book, describing him as “very smart, very cunning, very streetwise.”

    “We spoke a lot, actually, we spoke a lot and I think we had really, you know, a great relationship,” Trump said of the North Korean leader. “But I thought Kim Jong Un is a very, very interesting guy, and we had a good relationship. And I think he’s not a happy person right now with respect to the Biden administration.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/14/2023 – 20:30

  • Uber, Lyft Shift Into Gear As California Court Rules Gig Workers Are Contractors
    Uber, Lyft Shift Into Gear As California Court Rules Gig Workers Are Contractors

    Shares of Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. traded higher today following the decision of a California appeals court to uphold the law that categorizes gig workers as independent contractors rather than employees. 

    The 132-page decision, released on Monday evening, struck down a lower-court ruling that found Proposition 22, the state measure that lets companies classify workers as independent contractors, violated California’s constitution.

    This means the so-called gig economy business model is preserved for now. 

    Gig economy companies spent a whopping $200 million convincing drivers that Prop. 22 would provide them with more flexibility and some benefits. 

    “Across the state, drivers and couriers have said they are happy with Prop. 22, which affords them new benefits while preserving the unique flexibility of app-based work,” Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer, told Bloomberg.

    “We’re pleased that the court respected the will of the people, and that Prop. 22 will remain in force,” West said. 

    Uber and Lyft shares were both up over 5% in the pre-market after the three-judge panel of the state appeals court ruled in favor of the companies, but LYFT gave back most of those gains as the day wore on with UBER outperforming. 

    According to Jefferies analysts, Lyft, DoorDash, and Uber have managed to evade a potential impact of $20 million to $170 million on their 2024 core earnings.

    “The ruling clears the path for Uber’s continued stock outperformance,” Jefferies analyst John Colantuoni wrote.

    The analysts anticipate that the decision will likely face a challenge in the California Supreme Court.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/14/2023 – 20:10

  • Taibbi: In FBI Case, The First Amendment Takes Another Bizarre Hit
    Taibbi: In FBI Case, The First Amendment Takes Another Bizarre Hit

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via Racket News,

    Racket readers may recall that in November, shortly before the Twitter Files began, I ran an interview with Steve Friend, a onetime FBI agent who lost his career after blowing the whistle on the Bureau.

    Friend refused to participate in a bureaucratic scheme to put local agents across the country in charge of J6 cases that were really being run out of the Washington office, a plan that made one Washington-based case look like a national map full of domestic terror cases popping up everywhere. He also objected to heavy-handed tactics like the use of S.W.A.T. teams for a suspect communicating voluntarily through an attorney, and the questioning of people in connection with J6 in cases where the state had little to no evidence. From that story:

    Friend didn’t think the interview was warranted, and worried the feds showing up at someone’s door without cause “might do more harm than good” in a part of the country where government was unpopular already. He sucked it up and did the “knock and talk” anyway.

    “I said, ‘Hey, were you at the Capitol?’” Friend recalls. “And he said, ‘No, that was my son’s funeral that day. I wasn’t there.’”

    He shakes his head. “It hit me like a ton of bricks. I thought, I can’t believe I just made this guy relive that. And for what? Even if he’d admitted to being there, if he said, ‘I was there, I don’t wanna talk about it,’ I couldn’t even charge that.”

    But even though Friend had reservations about some of the cases, his main concern was procedural — that by playing bureaucratic games with who was running these investigations, and putting locals nominally in charge of cases where they were really in supporting roles, they put all of the court cases in jeopardy. “A lot of these guys are bad dudes, and they should go to jail,” he said, about the Oath Keepers. But if “we didn’t follow our rules… we set ourselves up to get crushed at trial,” adding, “I want to win.”

    A little over a week ago, the same Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government that organized the Twitter Files hearings privately heard testimony from Steve and two other FBI whistleblowers. The Democratic Party response to Steve and his colleagues was eerily similar to tactics pulled out against myself and Mike Shellenberger:

    — Mike and I were not real journalists, they said, but “so-called journalists.” Steve and his fellow agents “are not, in fact, whistleblowers,” according to the minority report, and “do not meet the definition of a whistle-blower,” according to the New York Times.

    — I was told by Florida’s Debbie Wasserman-Schultz that “being a Republican witness certainly casts a cloud over your objectivity”; Democratic Party sources told the Times that Steve and fellow agents Garret O’Boyle and George Hill “have engaged in partisan conduct that calls into question their credibility”;

    — Democratic questioners in our case asked us about our opinions on Russian interference, and one said openly that failing to agree with them on that issue disqualified us from the “nuanced convo”; Steve, George, and Garrett were repeatedly quizzed about their attitudes toward various right-wing movements, suggesting that their opinions about these matters made them ineligible to offer procedural complaints. Friend, for instance, was asked about statements by “Three Percenters”:

    Q: (Quoting from flyer) “Remember this, it comes straight from our Declaration of Independence, that whenever any form ofgovernment becomes destructive, it is the right and duty of the people to alter or abolish it. That is why you are here. For massive change to occurmassive action must be taken. Patriots, we are the lifeblood of this great nation, and it’s time we prove that.” Do you have an opinion about this statement?

    Friend: It seems like First Amendment-protected activity.

    — Michael and I were repeatedly quizzed about money we may have made during the Twitter Files period, with Wasserman-Schultz going so far as to harangue my about my Twitter followers tripling and to ask us if we were paid for our testimony; Committee Democrats accused Friend of having “profited, and is profiting, from making his allegations about the FBI public”;

    — Congressman Colin Allred told me to “take off my tinfoil hat”; the three FBI agents were accused of “conspiratorial social media posts,” as the Times put it.

    — Allred also blasted me for criticizing the “national security agencies” and told me to go home and “grapple” with the reality that the “very rights you think they’re trying to undermine, they may be trying to protect”; Friend and his fellow agents were accused of aiding in a “vendetta against the FBI”;

    — Shellenberger and I were accused of being stooges of Elon Musk; Friend and the agents, agents of Kash Patel.

    But the most outrageous portion of the Democratic Party’s report came in a section claiming that, because the agents were not really whistleblowers, and therefore really just expressing their opinion, they were not covered. “No law,” they wrote, “protects witnesses who speak to congress under these circumstances.”

    The Whistleblower Protection Act specifically and the First Amendment generally come to mind, but not to this Committee office.

    The style of the new anti-speech Democrat is clear: define all government critics as lacking standing to criticize, impugn their prior opinions and associations, imply that all their beliefs are conspiracy theory, define their lack of faith in the FBI’s judgment as treasonous, and declare their motivation to be financial. Lastly, when they invoke common constitutional rights, make a note that their activities exist in an uncovered carve-out.

    This is the playbook, and we all better get used to it.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/14/2023 – 19:50

  • DeSantis Admin Yanks Hyatt Miami Liquor License For Hosting "Drag Queen Christmas" With Kids Present
    DeSantis Admin Yanks Hyatt Miami Liquor License For Hosting “Drag Queen Christmas” With Kids Present

    Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ administration is revoking the Hyatt Regency Miami’s alcohol license after it hosted “A Drag Queen Christmas” with children present in the audience.

    In a 17-page complaint filed Tuesday by the state’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation, the state claims that the Hyatt’s James L. Knight Center violated several laws, including a prohibition of “lascivious exhibition” in front of people younger than 16, according to Florida’s Voice.

    According to the complaint the “acts of simulated sexual activity, and lewd, vulgar, and indecent displays” included:

    • Performers forcibly penetrating or rubbing exposed prosthetic female breasts against faces of audience members

    • Intentionally exposing performers’ prosthetic female breasts and genitalia to the audience

    • Intentionally exposing performers’ buttocks to the audience

    • Simulating masturbation through performers’ digitally penetrating prosthetic female genital

    • Graphic depictions of childbirth and/or abortion

    DeSantis supported the move.

    “Sexually explicit content is not appropriate to display to children and doing so violates Florida law,” his press secretary Bryan Griffin told Insider. “Governor DeSantis stands up for the innocence of children in the classroom and throughout Florida.”

    Hyatt Regency Miami will be allowed to continue selling alcoholic beverages until the department makes a final decision, and it has 21 days to request a hearing, according to department spokeswoman Beth Pannell in a statement to Insider.

    Regulators had warned the facility to change how it marketed the show before it went live, according to a copy of the letter included in the complaint. The letter accused the marketers of putting on a performance that constitutes “public nuisances, lewd activity, and disorderly conduct” when minors are present.

    The impetus of the letter was a screenshot where tickets were being sold that read “all ages welcome.” The department warned the venue not to admit minors or otherwise face penalties, including an alcohol license revocal. -Insider

    Last year DeSantis signed a bill into law prohibiting schools from including gender and sexual orientation from being taught in classrooms up to the third grade. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/14/2023 – 19:30

  • There's No Such Thing As 'Healthy Obesity'
    There’s No Such Thing As ‘Healthy Obesity’

    Authored by Ross Pomeroy via RealClear Wire,

    Conventional wisdom, along with boatloads of scientific evidence, point to obesity being universally unhealthy, leading to diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and many more problems. But in recent years, that conventional wisdom has been challenged by a “U.”

    The obesity paradox

    That “U” appeared on graphs charting the link between body-mass index — a common but imperfect gauge of whether or not someone’s weight is healthy, calculated simply by dividing their mass by the square of their body height in meters — and their risk of death. Numerous epidemiological studies have found that people in the “overweight” category (BMI 25-30) surprisingly have the lowest mortality risk, while those categorized as “obese” (30-35) have little or no increased risk over the “healthy” (18.5-25). At the extreme ends of the BMI spectrum, both the “underweight” (less than 18.5) and the extremely obese (35+) have a greatly increased risk of death. Furthermore, numerous studies also have suggested that obesity might lower the risk of death for older people and patients with various chronic diseases.

    Considering what we know about the health pitfalls of increased body fat, one would expect a mostly straight line of rising mortality risk as one goes from a BMI of healthy to obese. That’s why the “U-shaped” mortality curve has been dubbed the “obesity paradox.”

    But in recent years, that paradox, and the studies that created it, have come under fire. Critics chiefly contend that BMI is a flawed way to determine whether someone has obesity. That’s because it does not measure the composition of one’s body mass — that is, how much is fat and how much is muscle. Nor does BMI measure where fat is located, which can make a big difference. Visceral fat jammed among internal organs is much worse than subcutaneous fat stored just beneath the skin. For example, an extremely fit and muscular individual could easily make it into the obese BMI category. At the same time, a “skinny” individual with a lot of body fat nestled dangerously around their mid-section could be categorized as “healthy.”

    Why has BMI been so frequently used in epidemiological studies? Because it’s convenient, readily calculated based on self report. On the other hand, measuring body fat requires subjects to take a trip to a lab or to conduct the measurement on themselves, which can be quite difficult for a layperson to do accurately.

    Replace BMI with body fat

    In a review article published in 2020, researchers from Sapienza University in Italy noted that excess body fat should be used to measure obesity instead of BMI.

    When a team of researchers adjusted BMI to take muscle mass into account back in 2018, then associated this corrected measure with mortality risk, they found that the “U” mostly transformed into a straight line. Extremely obese individuals went from having only a marginally increased risk of death compared to healthy individuals to about a 70% increased risk.

    More recently, Ryan Masters, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Colorado, tried to resolve the obesity paradox by taking more confounding variables into account. He examined nearly 40 years of data from almost 18,000 subjects, and he not only considered subjects’ distribution of body fat, he also tallied the amount of time that they spent at a high or low BMI.

    “I would argue that we have been artificially inflating the mortality risk in the low-BMI category by including those who had been high BMI and had just lost weight recently,” he explained in a statement. “The health and mortality consequences of high BMI are not like a light switch,” he added. “There’s an expanding body of work suggesting that the consequences are duration-dependent.”

    Obesity paradox debunked

    After accounting for the potential biases in the data, Masters found that obesity boosts one’s risk of death by as much as 91%, vastly more than previous studies suggested. The U-shaped curve disappeared, and the paradox along with it. He further estimated that about 1 in 6 U.S. deaths are related to excess weight.

    “Paradoxes should be met with skepticism,” a pair of public health experts wrote in a 2017 op-ed in the International Journal of Obesity. “Counterintuitive results should be discussed with colleagues and collaborators with different areas of expertise. The only ‘paradox’ we can see here is why researchers continue to claim to have evidence of a paradox without careful consideration of potential methodological explanations.”

    This article was first published at Big Think.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/14/2023 – 19:10

  • Putin: "Complete Nonsense" That Anyone Other Than State Actor Behind Pipeline Explosions
    Putin: “Complete Nonsense” That Anyone Other Than State Actor Behind Pipeline Explosions

    “I am certain that this is complete nonsense,” President Vladimir Putin said in fresh statements to Russian media on Tuesday, making rare detailed remarks concerning the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines. He was referencing the latest narrative out of the West which claims a mysterious “pro-Ukrainian group” was behind the pipeline bombings.

    Last Tuesday The New York Times published a story making the claim, and quickly an avalanche of follow-up stories have appeared across Western media asserting a similar narrative. Putin says that these stories are intended to run cover in order to hide a “state” actor. He stressed that only specialists backed by a government which possesses “certain technologies” could be capable of such a complex, deep underwater operation.

    Illustrative, EPA via Shutterstock

    Putin’s full statement given while on a visit to an aircraft plant in Russia’s Buryatia republic region is as follows, per state media translation: “I’m sure this is complete nonsense. An explosion of this kind – of such power, at such depth, can only be carried out by specialists, and supported by the entire power of a state, possessing certain technologies.”

    The Western media narrative of a rogue “pro-Ukrainian” unit being behind the sabotage op began emerging almost a month after Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published his bombshell report which said President Biden ordered the attack on the natural gas pipelines. It detailed the CIA’s role in conjunction with an elite US Navy deep sea diving team as well, and with the help of Norwegian intelligence.

    Putin in his new remarks also pointed the finger at the United States, but stopped short of a direct accusation. According to a translated summary of his words in Sputnik: 

    He also suggested that one should probably consider who would be interested in the destruction of Nord Stream, noting that, theoretically, the United States could have been one such entity as such act of sabotage would help them cut the flow of Russian gas to the European market so that the US could supply greater amount of its own, much more expensive liquefied natural gas there.

    The Russian president added that, while repairing the damaged Nord Stream pipelines would be no mean feat, it probably could be done, though such undertaking would require time, money and new technologies.

    The Russian leader also weighed on on the possibility of a repair and the question of future operability:

    He noted, however, that the Nord Stream project would have a future only if Russia’s European partners were to remember about their own national interest, as it would seem that, currently, they are doing whatever it is they are told “from across the ocean.”

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

    Following Hersh’s report, US officials and establishment media sought to portray the famed reporter as a ‘conspiracy theorist’ who is far past the prime of his career. This despite Hersh’s track record of blockbuster investigative journalism and his breaking major stories spanning decades speaking. It remains that he’s among the most celebrated journalists in American history who was proven right time and again. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/14/2023 – 18:50

  • A Mismatch Of Short And Long-Term Interest
    A Mismatch Of Short And Long-Term Interest

    Authored by Kane McGukin via The Mesh Point,

    The relationship between Silicon Valley Bank, our attention spans, and our money.

    Investing requires the ability to manage funds such that you are able to cover both your short-term needs and your long-term wants + needs. The tricky part is there’s no one perfect way to do it.

    The case of Silicon Valley Bank and its failure/takeover is a great example of what happens when there is a mismatch between your short and long interests; you go bust!

    • What’s the real issue at hand?

    • What’s the root cause?

    • What’s the signal in all the noise of why and how it happens?

    To me, the Silvergate unwind, Silicon Valley, and Signature Bank takeovers this past week and weekend are a microcosm of what’s wrong with society at the moment. It’s a signal that something is off.

    It’s a warning sign that there is a greater need to pay attention. To seek the facts and not take the easy route. Pursue depth over quickness. Long-form over short and sweet.

    It’s a tell-tale sign that what’s really wrong is a lack of truth throughout the entire system. There’s a need for proof of reserves.

    Societally we suffer the same fate as Silicon Valley. There’s a mismatch between our interests. We’re watching a heavy pursuit of short-term pleasures (Tiktok) over our long-term interest (productivity) while seeking the easiest way to get things as instant as possible. There’s entirely too much focus on the short term without any real thought as to the ramifications of our decisions over the long run.

    That’s the portfolio mistake that SIVB made. That’s the life mistake it appears most are making. If you invest in bonds with low yields for immediate gratification and ignore that when rates rise you won’t be able to satisfy investor demands. Then deposits leave. If you invest in instant gratification because it feels good, you won’t be able to fund the future you *expect* to have if things *unexpectedly* change.

    The case of SIVB is a great example. One we’ve seen many times over. In an integrated world, money moves fast. So, if your interest is out of line and focused too far in the near term or too far in the long term, then you very likely won’t be ready for the challenges that are sure to arise.

    Especially, if you don’t have a plan.

    *  *  *

    Subscribe to the Bombthrower mailing list to get these posts as they come out, and follow Kane McGukin via his Substack and Twitter.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/14/2023 – 18:30

  • Treasury To Give Biden Family 'Suspicious Activity' Banking Reports To GOP Investigators
    Treasury To Give Biden Family ‘Suspicious Activity’ Banking Reports To GOP Investigators

    The Treasury Department is finally complying with a request to release suspicious activity reports (SARs) generated in connection with the Biden family and their associates’ business transactions.

    US banks have filed over 150 SARs from Hunter and President Joe Biden’s brother, James, which included “large” amounts of money tagged for further review by the Treasury. According to a 2020 report, SARs “often contain evidence of potential criminal activities, such as money laundering and fraud.”

    In December, the Treasury denied Congressional investigators access to the SARs.

    “Most Americans have never heard the term ‘Suspicious Activity Reports.’ These are actual reports that financial institutions file with the Treasury Department when they see suspicious activity,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan told Epoch TV’s Joshua Phillip in an interview for the “Newsmakers” program at the time.

    “Typically, it’s money laundering type of activity, so most Americans don’t get these. Or if they do, there is a good reason for it. But there are 150 of them on Hunter Biden and Jim Biden, the President’s brother, and that to me is a big concern,” Jordan said.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsHouse Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) demanded the records from the Treasury on January 11, however the Treasury denied the request – citing “improper disclosure” of relevant information which could hinder the Biden administration’s ability to “conduct of law enforcement, intelligence, and national security activities,” Breitbart reports.

    The Treasury’s compliance comes after the committee’s probe has so far met resistance from Hunter Biden and from some of his associates, such as Serbian politician Vuk Jeremić and Hunter’s art dealer.

    While the probe has met resistance, the committee has found a few key individuals willing to comply. The Biden family’s former top financial lieutenant Eric Schwerin is expected to “soon” provide requested documents to the committee. Schwerin, who shared bank accounts with Joe Biden and was dubbed the family’s “moneyman,” was also the president of Rosemont Seneca Partners, a fund created by Hunter Biden and several​ associates that spawned business deals in Russia, Ukraine, China, and Romania.

    In addition, Joe Biden’s former executive assistant Kathy Chung is scheduled on April 4 to sit for a requested transcribed interview with the committee’s investigation into the Biden family business and Joe Biden’s classified document scandal. Chung was hired as Joe Biden’s assistant when he was vice president after a recommendation from Hunter Biden. Chung appears in numerous email threads on Hunter’s “laptop from hell.” -Breitbart

    “It’s As Bad As We Thought”

    On Sunday, Comer told Fox News‘ Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” that money from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) flowed to the Biden family.

    “It’s as bad as we thought… Since we’ve last spoken we have bank records in hand.  We have individuals who are working with our committee,” said Comer.

    “In the last two weeks we’ve met with either these individuals personally or with their attorneys.  And that would be four individuals who had ties in with the Biden family in their various schemes around the world. So now we have in hand documents  We have in hand documents in hand that show just how the Biden family was getting money from the Chinese Communist Party.“

    Watch:

    Suspicious activities indeed…

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/14/2023 – 18:10

  • Why Not Let Banks Fail?
    Why Not Let Banks Fail?

    Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

    Imagine that for the last 100 years, the federal government’s policy was to bail out every business that was in danger of going under. The policy would consist of shoveling large amounts of subsidies into the business in order to help it remain in business. If, however, the business failed anyway, the federal government would pay a large sum of money to the owners of the business as well as to the business’s employees to enable them to transition to other lines of work.

    Now, for a true-blue socialist, this would sound like a tremendously fine idea.

    It would conjure up images of Medicare for All, the socialist healthcare system by which the federal government would provide or guarantee healthcare services for everyone — for “free.”

    In actuality, however, it would be an enormously bad idea, which I think everyone, except true-blue socialists, would instinctively realize. 

    After all, where would the federal government get all that money to cover all the businesses that fail on a regular basis. Yep. Taxation! The feds would have to be taxing the American people — big time — to keep up with providing subsidies to all those failing businesses. It would’t be long before Americans found themselves paying income taxes totaling maybe 90 percent or more of their incomes to provide all the money to fund this giant socialist scheme.

    Moreover, all that free money would encourage all sorts of inefficient businesses. Everybody would be opening up businesses knowing that if they failed, the government would be there to bail them out. Obviously, that would only exacerbate the taxation problem.

    The United States now has an economic system in which there is massive governmental intervention, both with respect to large welfare-state programs (e.g., Social Security and Medicare) and economic regulation. Nonetheless, there is still an instinctive commitment to the principles of a genuine free-market economy — that is, one in which economic enterprise is free of government control and intervention — one in which people are free to keep everything they earn, do what they want with their own money, and freely enter into economic transactions with others. That was America’s founding economic system. 

    Everyone knows that in a free market, there are no guarantees of success. Life entails risk. Some people take the road of high risk. Other try to play it perfectly safe. Most people live their lives somewhere in between.

    Many people invest money in the stock market. When they do so, they are buying stock in a particular company. They know that the value of that stock can go up and it can go down. They also know that the company could even go under, which could entail a total loss of their investment.

    When that happens, the government doesn’t bail out the investor, even if the investor has lost his entire life’s savings. Moreover, no one cries out for the government to do so. It has become part of our economic culture that people invest their money at their own risk. If people don’t want to risk losing their money in the stock market, they should stay out of the stock market. 

    Obviously, this no-bail-out policy should cause people to be cautious about which companies to invest in. Since the government isn’t going to bail out investor, it behooves people to do research on companies or to rely on trusted financial advisors who have done their homework on companies. This leads to a more enlightened citizenry and more efficient businesses.

    Why not treat banks the same way?

    If people put their money in a bank that fails, why should they be treated any differently from people who invest their money in a company that fails? If they choose the wrong bank, why should taxpayers be forced to cover their bad or wrong decision? Why not simply let the bank go under, just as we let companies go under? 

    In a genuine free market, people would be much more careful about which banks to put their money into. Like with the purchase of stocks, they would be more likely to do research on banks or rely on trusted financial advisors who do that for a living.

    People who wished to take bigger risks for a higher return would select banks that were riskier than others. People who wished to play it safe would select more secure banks with a lower return. 

    Under the bank system in which we live today, the government “insures” deposits in excess of $250,000. Yet, the government doesn’t always follow this policy. As we see with Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, the government sometimes covers all the deposits — including those that exceed $250,000 — in the event of a bank failure. Moreover, oftentimes the failed bank is simply absorbed into the banking system rather than simply permitted to go out of existence.

    Obviously, this system doesn’t encourage due diligence on the part of depositors.

    Why should anyone research the financial condition of a bank when the government is going to cover deposits if the bank goes under? Why should anyone worry about buying stock in a bank if the government is going to bail out the bank if it fails? 

    Over time, the entire banking system inevitably becomes weaker and more unstable. At first, individual banks fail, which the government is able to cover. Ultimately, however, this type of system inevitably leads in the direction of an industry-wide banking collapse, one that the government lacks the money to cover, unless it taxes the citizenry an enormously large percentage of their income. 

    That’s, in fact, why the government continues raising the amount of its deposit “insurance” and why it continues to bail out depositors and banks that fail. The government wants to assure depositors that everything is “okay” with its socialist banking system, when, in fact, everything is not “okay” with its socialist banking system.

    Among the biggest mistakes America has ever made was to socialize the banking system. We should get government out of the banking business and restore our heritage of free markets to this sector of the economy. Separating banking and the state is the key to a strong and viable banking system. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/14/2023 – 17:50

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Mar 14

Today’s News 14th March 2023

  • 10,000 Dutch Farmers Protest Govt's Crippling Nitrogen Emissions Target In The Hague
    10,000 Dutch Farmers Protest Govt’s Crippling Nitrogen Emissions Target In The Hague

    Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

    Protesters claim the Dutch government is lying about the extent of the emissions problem in order to grab privately owned land…

    Thousands of Dutch farmers protested on Saturday against the government’s policies to reduce nitrogen emissions, warning they will put farms out of business and affect food production.

    Hundreds of tractors from across the Netherlands could be seen driving to the event in The Hague ahead of regional elections this week, and more than 10,000 farmers were in attendance, according to the Reuters news agency.

    Protesters accused the Dutch government of forcing farmers off of privately owned land in order to appease Brussels, and carried banners reading “No farmers, no food” and “There is no nitrogen ‘problem.’”

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    “We are fighting against a corrupt and unjust government,” Eva Vlaardingerbroek, a prominent campaigner in defense of the farmers, told attendees. She spoke of a government that “drives our farmers from their land” and which has “turned on its own population.”

    “For centuries, our farmers have produced food for millions of people worldwide. And instead of what those liars in The Hague claim, they have done so in a responsible and sustainable way.”

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    “But our cabinet doesn’t care about nature. They have simply created a lie to steal our farmers’ land,” she added.

    Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s administration has vowed to take radical action to meet its ambitious target of halving the country’s nitrogen emissions by 2030, and has identified the country’s large agriculture sector as being the main culprit due to its large livestock count and use of fertilizers.

    Last year, the government announced plans to reduce livestock numbers by a third, while farmers have also been told their land could be subject to compulsory buyouts.

    Agricultural workers have staged several demonstrations against the government policy, blocking motorways and supermarket distribution centers in mass protests last year.

    “These reductions are so severe that those rural communities will be totally devastated economically,” said Sander van Diepen, a spokesperson for the Dutch agricultural and horticultural association, LTO Nederland, in June last year.

    Henk Staghouwer, the former Dutch agriculture minister appointed to see through the plans by Mark Rutte, resigned in September last year after a tumultuous summer fraught with mass demonstrations, admitting that upon reflection he was not “the right person to oversee the tasks in front of me.”

    Regional elections for the Dutch Senate are scheduled to take place on March 15.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/14/2023 – 02:00

  • Mike Wilson Flips Back To Bearish, Says "Sell Any Bounces Until We Make New Bear Market Lows"
    Mike Wilson Flips Back To Bearish, Says “Sell Any Bounces Until We Make New Bear Market Lows”

    A lot has changed since last Monday; in fact pretty much everything was flipped on its head after the two sudden, shocking bank failures over the past 72 hours – events which offered a sideways excuse to those who were bullishly biased – if only for tactical reasons – heading into last week, even though stocks dumped well before the small bank contagion, courtesy of Powell’s Congressional testimony which came out blisteringly hot.

    One such “tactical” bull was Morgan Stanley’s Mike Wilson who after 9 consecutive weeks of beating the bearish drum took a stab at turning bullish, telling the bank’s clients that “one will have to take their own view” of what the fundamentals and technicals suggest (after calling for a sharp drop in stocks for nearly three months which never materialized) and adding that “we could see further upside if the US dollar and interest rates continue their fall from Friday with next resistance for the S&P 500 at 4150 under such conditions.”

    Well, we got both a weaker dollar and lower rates – and in spades – in the past few days, but of course there was a catalyst – namely catastrophic contagion in the regional banking sector after SIVB and SBNY both collapsed, sending shockwaves across the market.

    In any case, after the recent shocking events, Wilson has quickly purged his brief flirtation with “tactical” bullishness, and since he no longer expects stocks to rise (which some sarcastically said was the catalyst why stocks dumped) is once again a die hard member of the “doom and gloom” camp – curiously even as the Fed hiking cycle now seems to lie in ruins with the 2Y absolutely clobbered in the past 3 days at the fastest pace since 1987’s Black Monday.

    In his latest Weekly Warm-up note, the Morgan Stanley strategist writes that “with the unwind of a major bank (SVB) last week and now another (SBNY) over the weekend, it’s clear that the impacts of the Fed’s policy tightening are being felt.” And while the Fed’s intervention to backstop all uninsured deposits at these troubled institutions should help to prevent any further bank runs according to Wilson, he thinks “it does little to change the bigger picture of slowing growth that is already upon us” which of course is ironic because now – more than ever – the Fed is that much closer to capitulating on its hawkishness, and the moment it does so will send stocks limit up.

    For Wilson, however, that is not something to lose sleep over, and he writes that “the cost of deposits has been on the rise for months and the events of last week are likely to put further upward pressure on those costs. Furthermore, Senior Loan Officer Surveys on lending standards have tightened considerably over the past 6 months and should only tighten further.”

    As a result, he expects an “Equity Risk Premium Re-rating… As we have noted for months, we believe the rally from October was always just another bear market rally that would ultimately fade. The end of bear markets are typically punctuated by an event that accelerates the market’s pricing of the true downside in earnings.”

    He then once again makes the claim that his view on earnings is still “very much out of consensus” even though in reality there is nothing that is more consensus than an earnings recession, for Wilson however that is not the case and he believes that it will get “properly priced via the Equity Risk Premium which has remained well below fair value. If such a period of adjustment has begun, one should expect at least a 200bps rise in the ERP from the recent lows of 150bps.”

    This, again, as has been the case for the past 3 months, is the basis for his bearish bias, and he writes that “such a rise [in the ERP] would take the NTM P/E to 13-15x depending on how Treasury yields (and the Fed) react to this growth scare. That equates to significant downside from current levels.”

    Digging a little deeper into his latest note, Wilson explains what – in his view – the collapse of the two banks means for markets:

    First, we would remind readers that Fed policy works with long and variable lags.

    Second, the pace of Fed tightening over the past year is unprecedented when one considers that the Fed has been engaged in aggressive quantitative tightening while raising the Fed Funds Rate by almost 500bps.

    Third, the focus on “market based” measures of Financial Conditions may have lulled both investors and the Fed itself into thinking policy tightening had not yet gone far enough even though more traditional measures like the yield curve have been flashing warnings for the past 6+months. In fact, since mid October of last year, the market based financial conditions measures actually loosened considerably until the upward surprise on January payrolls was released. Since then, financial conditions have tightened again as equities and other risk markets sold off. However, at no point during this time did the trusty yield curve flinch. Instead, it has steadily inverted further, closing last week near its lowest point of the cycle at -120bps.

    Wilson next points out one of the key catalysts behind the bank failures, namely that for the longest time banks failed to pass through higher rates to depositors (especially giant banks like JPM), however that changed recently and the small banks were the first to get whacked, to wit:

    Over the past year, bank funding costs have not kept pace with the higher Fed Funds Rate allowing banks to create credit at profitable NIMs. In short, most banks have been paying well below market rates because depositors have been slow to realize they can get a much better rate elsewhere. But, that has changed more recently with depositors deciding to pull their money from traditional banks and putting it into higher yielding securities like money markets, T-Bills and the like. We expect that trend to continue unless banks decide to raise the rate they pay depositors. That means lower profits and likely lower loan supply.

    Said deposit flight coupled with the fact that loan standards have been tightening sharply tightening as per the latest SLOOS report, makes Wilson believe that tightening “is likely to become even more prevalent given last week’s events and that poses headwinds for money supply, and consequently, economic and earnings growth.” In other words, the MS strategist believes that “it’s now harder to hold the view that growth will prove to be ok in the face of the fastest Fed tightening cycle in modern times. Secondarily, the margin deterioration we have been discussing for months is still getting worse. Any top line short fall will only exacerbate this negative operating leverage dynamic, in our view.”

    Wilson’s bottom line is that Fed policy works with long and variable lags: “many of the key variables used by the Fed and investors to judge whether Fed policy changes are having their desired effect are backward looking–i.e., employment and inflation metrics. Forward looking survey data are often much better at telling us what to expect rather than what is currently happening. On that score, the picture is pessimistic about where growth is likely headed, especially for earnings. Rather than a random or idiosyncratic shock, we view last week’s events as just one more supporting factor for our negative earnings growth outlook–i.e. it only exacerbates key headwinds like credit/money supply growth. In short, Fed policy is starting to bite, and it’s unlikely to reverse even if the Fed were to pause its rate hikes or quantitative tightening–i.e., the die is cast for further earnings disappointments relative to consensus and company expectations.”

    His conclusion:

    We suggest selling any bounces on a government intervention to quell the immediate liquidity crisis at SVB and other institutions until we make new bear market lows, at a minimum. Furthermore, we do think that tighter credit availability from banks will weigh on small cap companies more significantly, and last week’s underperformance by the small cap indices supports that view and further throws cold water on the new bull market narrative we have been hearing from others over the past few months.

    While we actually agree – for once – with Wilson that Fed policy is starting to bite – and how can it not when the “Credit Event” that always accompanies rate hikes which we have been warning about since early 2022 finally kicked in…

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    … and it is always credit events that force the Fed to end its tightening cycle, where we disagree is his argument that “even if the Fed were to pause its rate hikes or quantitative tightening” which it will in just over a week according to Nomura, “the die is cast for further earnings disappointments relative to consensus and company expectations.”

    Yes, the die may be cast for the economy and company earnings, but when it comes to the markets, investors will now sniff out not only the pause but the pivot and the rate cuts – something they are already doing by pricing in 65bps of rate cuts by September, a whopping collapse from 110bps of rate hikes as recently as last Thursday.

    The point being: we agree with Wilson that it’s about to get worse – in a deflationary sense – for the broader economy, and thus earnings, where we disagree is in the market’s reaction because while earnings may collapse and growth may collapse, the Fed will react much more promptly this time now that banks are failing, and will be willing to ignore some latent inflation if it means banking sector stability. And once the Fed capitulates, hold on to your hats as 16x PE are repriced to 20x or more as the muscle memory from the Covid shock kicks in.

    And while we see Mike Wilson’s point, we have long been much more vocal supporters of the (much more accurate) views and predictions made by that other Michael – BofA’s Hartnett – who once again hit the bullseye with his preview of recent events, first warning on Feb 18 that “Fed Will Tighten Untill Something Breaks… And Stocks Will Swoon To 3,800 By March 8” which was absolutely spot on…

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    … and which he followed up by saying that ‘”The End Of The Bear Market Will Coincide With A Credit Event””…

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    … a credit event the likes of which we just had, and now the only missing link is for the Fed to admit as much and restart  the only game in the centrally-planned town.

    Michael Wilson’s full note can be found here.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/13/2023 – 23:57

  • Silicon Valley Bank Crisis: The Liquidity Crunch We Predicted Has Now Begun
    Silicon Valley Bank Crisis: The Liquidity Crunch We Predicted Has Now Begun

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

    There has been an avalanche of information and numerous theories circulating the past few days about the fate of a bank in California know as SVB (Silicon Valley Bank). SVB was the 16th largest bank in the US until it abruptly failed and went into insolvency on March 10th. The impetus for the collapse of the bank is tied to a $2 billion liquidity loss on bond sales which caused the institution’s stock value to plummet over 60%, triggering a bank run by customers fearful of losing some or most of their deposits.

    There are many fine articles out there covering the details of the SVB situation, but what I want to talk about more is the root of it all. The bank’s shortfalls are not really the cause of the crisis, they are a symptom of a wider liquidity drought that I predicted here at Alt-Market months ago, including the timing of the event.

    First, though, let’s discuss the core issue, which is fiscal tightening and the Federal Reserve. In my article ‘The Fed’s Catch-22 Taper Is A Weapon, Not A Policy Error’, published in December of 2021, I noted that the Fed was on a clear path towards tightening into economic weakness, very similar to what they did in the early 1980s during the stagflation era and also somewhat similar to what they did at the onset of the Great Depression. Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke even openly admitted that the Fed caused the depression to spiral out of control due to their tightening policies.

    In that same article I discussed the “yield curve” being a red flag for an incoming crisis:

    “…The central bank is the largest investor in US bonds. If the Fed raises interest rates into weakness and tapers asset purchases, then we may see a repeat of 2018 when the yield curve started to flatten. This means that short term treasury bonds will end up with the same yield as long term bonds and investment in long term bonds will fall.”

    As of this past week the yield curve has been inverted, signaling a potential liquidity crunch. Both Jerome Powell (Fed Charman) and Janet Yellen (Treasury Secretary) have indicated that tightening policies will continue and that reducing inflation to 2% is the goal. Given the many trillions of dollars the Fed has pumped into the financial system in the past decade as well as the overall weakness of general economy, it would not take much QT to crush credit markets and by extension stock markets.

    As I also noted in 2021:

    “We are now at that stage again where price inflation tied to money printing is clashing with the stock market’s complete reliance on stimulus to stay afloat. There are some that continue to claim the Fed will never sacrifice the markets by tapering. I say the Fed does not actually care, it is only waiting for the right time to pull the plug on the US economy.”

    But is that time now?  I expanded on this analysis in my article ‘Major Economic Contraction Coming In 2023 – Followed By Even More Inflation’, published in December of 2022. I noted that:

    “This is the situation we are currently in today as 2022 comes to a close. The Fed is in the midst of a rather aggressive rate hike program in a “fight” against the stagflationary crisis that they created through years of fiat stimulus measures. The problem is that the higher interest rates are not bringing prices down, nor are they really slowing stock market speculation. Easy money has been too entrenched for far too long, which means a hard landing is the most likely scenario.”

    I continued:

    “In the early 2000s the Fed had been engaged in artificially low interest rates which inflated the housing and derivatives bubble. In 2004, they shifted into a tightening process. Rates in 2004 were at 1% and by 2006 they rose to over 5%. This is when cracks began to appear in the credit structure, with 4.5% – 5.5% being the magic cutoff point before debt became too expensive for the system to continue the charade. By 2007/2008 the nation witnessed an exponential implosion of credit…”

    Finally, I made my prediction for March/April of 2023:

    “Since nothing was actually fixed by the Fed back then, I will continue to use the 5% funds rate as a marker for when we will see another major contraction…The 1% excise tax added on top of a 5% Fed funds rate creates a 6% millstone on any money borrowed to finance future buybacks. This cost is going to be far too high and buybacks will falter. Meaning, stock markets will also stop, and drop. It will likely take two or three months before the tax and the rate hikes create a visible effect on markets. This would put our time frame for contraction around March or April of 2023.”

    We are now in the middle of March and it appears that the first signs of liquidity crisis are bubbling to the surface with the insolvency of SVB and the shuttering of another institution in New York called Signature Bank.

    Everything is tied back to liquidity. With higher rates, banks are hard-pressed to borrow from the Fed and companies are hard-pressed to borrow from banks. This means companies that were hiding financial weakness and exposure to bad investments using easy credit no longer have that option. They won’t be able to artificially support operations that are not profitable, they will have to abandon stock buybacks that make their shares appear valuable and they will have to initiate mass layoffs in order to protect their bottom line.

    SVB is not quite Bear Stearns, but it is likely a canary in the coal mine, telling us what is about to happen on a wider scale. Many of their depositors were founded in venture capital fueled by easy credit, not to mention all the ESG related companies dependent on woke loans. That money is gone – It’s dead. Those businesses are quietly but quickly crumbling which also conjured a black hole for deposits within SVB. It’s a terribly destructive cycle. Surely, there are numerous other banks in the US in the same exact position.

    I believe this is just the beginning of a liquidity and credit crisis that will combine with overt inflation to produce perhaps the biggest economic crash America has ever seen.  SVB’s failure may not be THE initiator, only one among many. I suspect that in this scenario larger US banks may avoid the kind of credit crash that we saw with Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers in 2008. But, contagion could still strike multiple mid-sized banks and the effects could be similar in a short period of time.

    With all the news flooding the wire on SVB it’s easy to forget that all of this boils down to a single vital issue: The Fed’s stimulus measures created an economy utterly addicted to easy and cheap liquidity. Now, they have taken that easy money away. In light of the SVB crash, will the central bank reverse course on tightening, or will they continue forward and risk contagion?

    For now, Janet Yellen and the Fed have implemented a limited backstop and a guarantee on deposits at SVB and Signature. This will theoretically prevent a “haircut” on depositor accounts and lure retail investors with dreams of endless stimulus.  It is a half-measure, though – Central bankers have to at least look like they are trying. 

    SVB’s assets sit at around $200 billion and Signature’s assets are around $100 billion, but what about interbank exposure and what about the wider implications?  How many banks are barely scraping by to meet their liquidity obligations, and how many companies have evaporating deposits?  The backstop will do nothing to prevent a major contagion.

    There are many financial tricks that might slow the pace of a credit crash, but not by much.  And, here’s the kicker – Unlike in 2008, the Fed has created a situation in which there is no escape. If they do pivot and return to systemic bailouts, stagflation will skyrocket even more. If they don’t use QE, then banks crash, companies crash and even bonds become untenable, which puts the world reserve status of the Dollar under threat. What does that lead to? More stagflation. In either case, rapidly rising prices on most necessities will be the consequence.

    How long will this process take? It all depends on how the Fed responds. They might be able to drag the crash out for a few months with various stop-gaps. If they go back to stimulus then the banks will be saved along with equities (for a while) but rising inflation will suffocate consumers in the span of a year and companies will still falter. My gut tells me that they will rely on contained interventions but will not reverse rate hikes as many analysts seem to expect.

    The Fed will goose markets up at times using jawboning and false hopes of a return to aggressive QE or near-zero rates, but ultimately the trend of credit markets and stocks will be steady and downward.  Like a brush fire in a wind storm, once the flames are sparked there is no way to put things back the way they were.  If their goal was in fact a liquidity crunch, well, mission accomplished.  They have created that exact scenario.  Read my articles linked above to understand why they might do this deliberately.

    In the meantime, it appears that my predictions on timing are correct so far. We will have to wait and see what happens in the coming weeks. I will keep readers apprised of events as new details unfold.  The situation is rapidly evolving.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/13/2023 – 23:20

  • 'Goosebumps' Author R.L. Stine Accuses Publisher Of Progressive 'Censorship'
    ‘Goosebumps’ Author R.L. Stine Accuses Publisher Of Progressive ‘Censorship’

    Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The author of the popular horror book series “Goosebumps” has recently admitted to being ignorant about some versions of his books being edited by the publisher.

    Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s book “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival,” for sale on a store shelf on Feb. 28, 2023 in Titusville, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

    American novelist R.L. Stine is the creator of the Goosebumps series of books, which is considered the second-highest selling in the world, trailing only Harry Potter. Goosebumps is estimated to have sold over 300 million copies worldwide. During a 2018 ebook re-release, publisher Scholastic edited the books to align with progressive ideologies that reflect a leftist version of social justice, diversity, and gender equality. There were rumors that Stine made the edits, but the author has refuted it.

    “The stories aren’t true. I’ve never changed a word in Goosebumps. Any changes were never shown to me,” Stine said in a March 7 tweet. He was replying to another Twitter user’s post, which said, “The fact he supports censorship and the alteration of works of art is quite disturbing. How shameful.”

    The 1996 book “Attack of the Jack-O’-Lanterns” described a character as “tall and good-looking, with dark brown eyes and a great, warm smile.” It has now been changed to “tall and good-looking, with brown skin, dark brown eyes, and a great, warm smile.” The line “all four people were very overweight” was changed to “All four people were huge,” cited the British newspaper The Times.

    “Don’t Go to Sleep!” from 1997 had a boy dismissing Tolstoy’s book Anna Karenina as “girl’s stuff.” The boy dismisses the book in the new version because it is “not interesting.”

    Changing Goosebumps

    The word “crazy,” which was mentioned multiple times in the Goosebumps series, has been removed and replaced with terms like “scary,” “wild,” “silly,” “stressed,” and “lost her mind.” The word “nutcase” has been replaced with “weirdo” while “a real nut” has been changed to “a real wild one.

    Scholastic, the world’s largest publisher and distributor of children’s books, insists the edits were necessary to keep up with the times. “Scholastic reviewed the text to keep the language current and avoid imagery that could negatively impact a young person’s view of themselves today, with a particular focus on mental health,” said the publisher, according to The Times.

    A line from the 1997 book “I Live in Your Basement” that originally said, “did he really expect me to be his slave—forever?” has been changed to “did he really expect me to do this—forever?” removing the word “slave.”

    A character from the 1998 novel “Bride of the Living Dummy” was originally dressed as a clown with black rings painted around his eyes. The color of the rings has been changed to red.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/13/2023 – 23:00

  • Jan. 6 Attorney Alleges FBI Criminally Altered Evidence, Requests Special Master Review Of Leaked Messages
    Jan. 6 Attorney Alleges FBI Criminally Altered Evidence, Requests Special Master Review Of Leaked Messages

    Authored by Gary Bai via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Rogers Roots, an attorney representing Dominic Pezzola, a Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach defendant, alleged on Sunday that the FBI had committed crimes by altering evidence and requested that the court appoint a special master to review the evidence.

    Protesters loyal to President Donald Trump rally at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/ Jose Luis Magana)

    Roots’s move came days after the testimony of FBI Special Agent Nicole Miller, who was involved in the agency’s investigations of the Jan. 6 defendants. When cross-examining Miller, Nick Smith, an attorney representing Proud Boys member Ethan Nordean (listed as co-defendant on Pezzola’s case), revealed classified FBI emails that were hidden in a tab in an Excel spreadsheet, which included a directive to Miller to “destroy” 338 pieces of evidence and “edit out” an FBI agent from an informant report.

    “Destroying evidence is a federal crime. It actually falls under a federal crime under more than one statute. The same goes with altering documents, altering records, that is a federal crime,” the John Pierce Law attorney told The Epoch Times in an interview on Sunday.

    In a filing on Sunday, Roots requested that Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee presiding over the case, either dismiss the case in its entirety or appoint a special master to independently review the FBI messages that were revealed in court.

    “The unceremonious and uninhibited nature of Miller’s discussion of committing these serious crimes suggests an FBI culture of corruption and lawlessness that must be immediately stopped, and fully investigated,” Roots said in the filing.

    “Accordingly, this case must be dismissed en toto and with prejudice,” Roots’s filing continues. “Even if the Court were to overlook this massive trail of FBI corruption and the trial were to proceed, defendants have a right to cross-examine Agent Miller regarding all of these crimes, her missing emails, her discussions of violating defendants’ 6th amendment rights, her discussions of evidence tampering, and her discussions of altering documents involving [confidential human sources] in this case.”

    “All January 6 prosecutions should be paused for evidentiary hearings and investigations by a Special Master and Special Counsel,” the filing reads.

    The Leaked Messages

    A key question about these leaked messages is whether they fall under the scope of evidence in the case.

    Roots said in the filing that the messages show a violation of due process, reiterating his argument in an earlier filing that the FBI’s monitoring of communications between a co-defendant, Zachary Rehl, and his attorney violated the Sixth Amendment, which prohibits invasion of the right to counsel (Matter of Fusco v. Moses).

    “Miller’s hidden messages reveal casual discussions among the FBI regarding the monitoring of codefendant Rehl’s trial strategy, Rehl’s defenses and ‘interesting’ points, and ways the government can get around Rehl’s defenses,” Roots said in the Sunday filing.

    In the filing, Roots requested the court dismiss Pezzola’s case with prejudice, appoint a special counsel, appoint a special master, schedule extensive evidentiary hearings, and release Pezzola from custody.

    The DOJ, on the other hand, said that because Rehl and his attorney were communicating over a monitored prison system, they waived the right to attorney-client privileges.

    “The government has not obtained any privileged communications between defendant Rehl and Moseley,” the government wrote in response to Roots’s contentions in a filing on Sunday. “As the government explained in a separate filing … Rehl and Moseley made a fully informed choice to communicate with one another over a monitored jail email system. In doing so, they waived any privilege.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/13/2023 – 22:00

  • The Bank Crisis Has Democrats Scrambling Behind The Scenes To Find A Scapegoat
    The Bank Crisis Has Democrats Scrambling Behind The Scenes To Find A Scapegoat

    Democratic representatives are scrambling in the wake of the potentially contagious Silicon Valley Bank implosion, looking for a way to divert attention away from them should the crisis expand.  

    One avenue for scapegoating the event that has been suggested among Dems and the media is to blame a 2018 law that eased Dodd-Frank capital requirements for midsize and small banks.  Republicans led the effort to pass the law, which President Donald Trump signed, but 33 House Democrats and 17 Senate Democrats also voted for it. 

    No mention, of course, of the cancerous exposure SVB had to numerous woke investments through venture capital, including money losing ESG related projects, climate change-based companies and World Economic Forum stakeholder capitalism projects.

    The Dems have found their narrative, which is an old narrative:  “The conservatives did it.”

    What Democrats do not seem to understand is that the easing of Dodd-Frank capital requirements was in direct response to the Federal Reserve’s announced plan to tighten liquidity and raise interest rates through 2018.  With more expensive credit and a shrinking Fed balance sheet, reducing requirements for bank buffers was one of the few ways to prevent the stimulus addicted lending sector from plummeting.  The extra capital also allowed banks to continue lending to companies that engage in stock buybacks, keeping stock markets afloat.

    With a larger capital buffer even more liquidity dries up, revealing the true economic weakness underneath that Dems have denied for the past few years.  So, if Biden and the Dems get what they want (more strict capital requirements for banks), then there will be an even swifter collapse of markets and the overall economy due to lack of liquidity.    

    By the end of 2018, markets began to plunge anyway under the strain of higher interest rates, which led to the Fed reversing course, and this seems to be what Democrats are really hoping for.  They have called for endless liquidity measures and have consistently demanded lower rates and looser monetary policy.  However, when Donald Trump’s Administration called for rate cuts during his term, Dems attacked.  Once again, when Republicans do it, it’s wrong; when they do it, it’s good policy.  

    Another issue to consider is that each successive program by the Fed to employ bailouts and QE accelerates the inflation crisis.  While both sides of the aisle seem to want helicopter money when they are in power so they can boast about rising stock markets and improved employment, the Dems are now facing a systemic stagflationary event; the same event they originally claimed did not exist.  This means that any pursuit of new QE in the face of a credit crunch would lead to an immediate spike in inflation once again, crushing the middle class.  

    Are Democrats willing to accept responsibility for something like that?  Not a chance.

    The Biden Administration has so far taken full credit for the slowdown of consumer inflation as well as the shrinking deficit, but these changes are only due to the tightening actions of the central bank which sets policy independent of the White House.  Democrats can’t have it both ways – They can’t take credit for reduced inflation when the Fed tightens policy against their wishes, and then not take credit for the consequences of higher inflation when they badger the Fed to inject more stimulus.

    The only recourse for the political left is to somehow lay the blame on conservatives no matter which way the wind blows, inflation or deflation.   

    Emergency congressional hearings have been organized to determine the cause of the SVB crisis and the course of action needed.  Democrats including Sen. Sharrod Brown and Rep. Maxine Waters were quick to applaud the backstop initiated by the Fed and the Treasury Department, attempting to calm market concerns and reassure investors and depositors that all is well.  Maxine Waters stated that Republicans and Democrats needed to “work together to protect the safety of the financial system”, which is likely a thinly veiled assertion that Republicans must support raising the debt ceiling and commit to even more spending.  

    Biden took a slightly different tone, vowing to hold the people who caused the mess responsible, specifically referring to Republicans.  Of course, to legitimately hold the true culprits responsible would require that Biden punish himself – As it was the Fed along with the Obama/Biden Administration that launched the ongoing stimulus bonanza in 2008/2009.  Obama and Biden doubled the national debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in the span of a mere eight years.  The normalization of fiat money creation to avoid economic consequences has created the very inflationary crisis and banking weakness we are facing today. 

    And, if banks cannot withstand even a moderate rise in interest rates and reduced liquidity because of their addiction to Fed stimulus, then it is fitting if the system crashes under a new Biden regime.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/13/2023 – 21:40

  • Victor Davis Hanson: The March Madness Of The President
    Victor Davis Hanson: The March Madness Of The President

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AmGreatness.com,

    Joe Biden’s political utility and near senility serve as exemptions for his often sexist, racist, and creepy riffs…

    Another couple of weeks, another bout of madness from Joe Biden and his team.

    Of recent Biden delusions, consider:

    Biden went off in one of his impromptu Corn Pop, or “beat-up-Trump-behind-the-bleachers” fables. These often slurred and nearly unintelligible tales characteristically virtue signal Biden’s own victimhood and “courage.” 

    They are interspersed with his bizarre propensity for eerie female contact. So we see or hear of his long record of blowing into the ears and hair, or squeezing the necks of young girls. He hugs, for far too long, mature women. He can call out among a crowd an anonymous attractive teen stranger. Or, recently he relates an incoherent but quasi-sexual vignette. 

    So Joe recalled his patient days in his usual off-topic “no lie/not kidding/no joke” manner (i.e., tip offs that he’s lying). He told us that a noble nurse once would “come in and do things that I don’t think you learn in medical school—in nursing school.” The president got a nervous laugh from the apparent quasi-pornographic reference (but then again Joe is excused because he is a “feminist”), before he detailed her technique:  

    She’d whisper in my ear.  I didn’t—couldn’t understand her, but she’d whisper, and she’d lean down. She’d actually breathe on me to make sure that I was—there was a connection, a human connection.

    A woman leaning over to blow into a prone man’s ear certainly constitutes a “human connection.” Yet all of Joe’s fables have different Homeric-style retellings. Two years ago he claimed that the same nurse in question actually blew into his nostrils. What a strange air-pressure technique that must have entailed for a person recovering from brain surgery. But perhaps it was consistent with biblical references to God blowing the spirit of life into the nose of man.

    About a week later, referencing that hospital stay, Biden added that doctors “had to take the top of my head off a couple times, see if I had a brain”—a reference that did not reassure the nation he is not enfeebled. 

    No one in the media had much of a reaction because Joe Biden’s political utility and near senility serve as exemptions for his often sexist, racist, and creepy riffs. 

    Instead, the media wrote off the nurse breathing into good ol’ Joe’s orifices as belonging to the same weird genre that a while back gave us inner-city kids stroking the golden hairs on Joe’s tan legs, or the shower revelations of Ashley Biden’s diary, or his “you ain’t’ black,” “put y’all back in chains,” and “junkie” sorts of racial condescension (e.g., “Why the hell would I take a test? C’mon, man. That’s like saying you, before you got on this program, you take a test where you’re taking cocaine or not. What do you think? Huh? Are you a junkie?”). 

    Joe also blustered to a crowd during Black History Month, “I may be a white boy, but I’m not stupid.” 

    The crowd laughed at the idea that the jester Biden believes white people are usually stupid, but that he, Joe, the exception to his race, is not stupid, despite being white. At least Biden finally referenced himself as “boy.” Usually he has used that racial putdown for prominent blacks like Maryland Governor Wes Moore or a senior White House advisor Cedric Richmond.

    The February-March madness of Joe was not through. Sometimes, his venom renders him disgustedly comic, as when he took the occasion of mass American deaths from fentanyl on his watch, to chuckle that the carnage was at least worse under Trump (an abject lie): 

    ‘I should digress, probably. I’ve read, she [Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene], she was very specific recently, saying that a mom, a poor mother who lost two kids to fentanyl, that, that I killed her sons. Well, the interesting thing is that fentanyl they took came during the last administration.’ Followed by the Biden laugh.

    Apparently, 100,000 dead at least deserves from Joe a “Trump did it” chuckle.

    Joe, for the third time in two years, tripped and nearly fell ascending the ramp of Air Force One. At some point even his supporters will concede that when octogenarians repeatedly stumble and fall, if not put under careful watch or provided a walker, it is only a matter of time until they break a hip and become bedridden.

    In another replay, once again Biden finished his remarks, turned around to exit—and had no idea where he was going to go or whose invisible hand he was supposed to shake.

    Amid all this, Biden more or less stuck to his now tired rhetorical themes. 

    One is the serial denunciation of the MAGA Republicans. Usually, he trashes them as semi-fascists or un-American, often in the context of his “unity speeches.” After calling for reconciliation, bipartisanship, and unity, Joe then usually tightens his face, grimaces, and starts yelling about the MAGA dregs and chumps. 

    If Biden is really angry, he adds the intensive adjective “Ultra” for the MAGAites. He gets particularly incensed when referencing the one percent who “don’t pay their fair share” (the one percent pays over 40 percent of all income tax revenues). Biden is oblivious that the entire Biden clan is under popular suspicion of not reporting all of the millions of dollars in quid pro quos leveraging they raked in from foreign governments without registering as their agents.

    Note that his entire team, when stung by charges of incompetency or illegality, usually follows Joe’s tactic of “Trump did it.” So when Pete Buttigieg was criticized for ignoring the East Palestine rail wreck and reminded of his past serial transportation failures, junkets, and incoherent systemic racism charges, he retreated to blaming Trump for the derailment. 

    Buttigieg falsely claimed that Trump’s past lifting of particular electric railcar brake regulations caused the wheel bearing failure in East Palestine, a lie that even members of his department could not stomach.

    Two, Joe creates elaborate fables. In the past two weeks, he returned to his civil rights lie that he was a campus activist agitating for racial justice. At least he did not add his usual fillips of being arrested or standing up to apartheid police in South Africa.

    In Biden’s world, he brags he has reduced inflation. Yet when he entered office in January 2021, the annualized inflation rate was 1.7 percent. Two years later in January 2023 inflation went up to 6.4 percent, after hitting a high in June 2022 of 9.1 percent—6.4 percentage points higher than when he took office. In mid-March we will learn of the February 2023 annualized rate, but it is expected to climb back to more than 8 percent. 

    If anyone compares the current price of eggs, or rent, or diesel fuel, or a natural gas heating bill or building materials to their respective costs when Biden entered office, then he would know Biden’s inflation is cumulative and has nearly destroyed the affordability of shelter, food, and fuel—the stuff of life.

    He mentioned lowering heating and cooling costs of American homes through his climate change advocacy. In truth, on average electric rates shot up over 10 percent last year. Natural gas and fuel went even higher to over 25 percent in a single year. 

    Biden talks about his low unemployment rate of 3.4 percent. But it is almost identical to what the Trump Administration achieved—without Biden’s high interest rates and acute inflation—in the months before the massive COVID lockdowns. 

    Moreover, current low employment is largely a reflection of reduced labor participation—due to early retirements, exits during the pandemic, fear of COVID, long COVID, the zoom culture, and most importantly the Biden continuance of massive COVID-era subsidies that discourage employment. The labor participation rate has hit near historic lows under Biden, lower than the pre-COVID rate under Trump. 

    It was not until last month that the Biden economy finally achieved the level of total employed Americans who had been working in January 2020 on the eve of the Covid lockdowns. 

    As far as interest rates for 30-year fixed mortgages, they were 2.9 percent when Biden took office. Now they are currently over 7 percent. 

    In sum, Biden repeats the same patterns of deception: crash the economy as evidenced by many of its major indicators, then when a data point reveals a slight and likely temporary monthly recovery, he brags he “reduced” inflation, interest, or unemployment.

    We also heard during the same week from Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland who was shredded during his testimony to the Senate. He argued that the vastly disproportionate FBI response to violence against abortion centers versus attacks on pro-life groups was only due to the differences between light and dark—literally: abortion centers are attacked during daytime; in contrast, pro-life shelters are attacked during night. 

    Apparently his Justice Department and the FBI shut down at sunset and reawaken at dawn—as if either most violent crime does not occur at night or there is nothing to be done about it when it does. 

    Garland further embarrassed himself when he could not explain the disproportionate use of force in arresting or detaining conservative suspects versus the virtual exemptions given prominent left-wing suspects. 

    Most embarrassingly, when asked why he did not charge mobs that swarmed the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices to influence their decisions—a federal felony—he lamely claimed there were federals protecting the residences.

    In Garland’s world, some criminals committing felonies are completely exempt if law enforcement prevents further violent manifestations of their criminal behavior. So illegally swarm a Supreme Court justice’s residence to influence a court decision, but then stop short of escalating further by the sight of law enforcement—and, presto, you never committed a crime in the first place. 

    Garland finished off his recent nonsense by repeating the lie that five police officers were killed due to the January 6 protests. In fact, none were. Officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes after the protests were over. The other four committed suicide weeks or even months later and no one has connected their self-induced deaths with any act of the protestors. 

    About the same time, a beleaguered Pete Buttigieg went off on riffs about Tucker Carlson, who, he implied, lacked the grassroots, working-man fides of Buttigieg.

    He claimed that for all the criticism he has endured, he believes that he will be remembered for posterity for his fight against “climate change”—although he did not point to any concrete result in reducing carbon emissions due to his singular policies. 

    In fact, Buttigieg will be known but for other characteristics: He repeatedly emphasizes his identity politics gay stature both to note his supposedly pathbreaking courage and to claim victimhood when attacked. He sees transportation through the lens of race and so chases the unicorn of white privilege, whether concerning past freeway routes or the makeup of current construction crews (falsely charging that white men are overrepresented on them). Under his tenure as Transportation Secretary, the country experienced dangerous supply interruptions, ossified ports, and harbor-bound trains robbed in Wild West fashion. 

    Buttigieg’s diversity mandates either did nothing to ameliorate, or actually led to, a series of near-miss airline crashes, the complete shutdown of the airline industry due to computer glitches and weather, the implosion for a week of Southwest Airlines, the East Palestine derailment disaster, and labor interruptions. In all these cases he either was on leave or a junket, wrote them off as Trump’s fault, or contextualized them as no big deal. 

    Delusional Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorkas has declared the border closed and the nation secure, even as 100,000 Americans per year have died from overdoses of fentanyl shipped with impunity across the open border by Mexican cartels. When upwards of 7 million aliens flow across the border illegally since Biden took office, it is written off as Trump’s fault. 

    Finally, last week there were several interviews with FBI Director Christopher Wray. He could not explain why his agency goes full military mode to arrest a father and husband for protesting at an abortion clinic while having no clue who has been attacking pro-life shelters. 

    In Wray’s mind, the performance art sweep into Mar-a-Lago, which he claims was not a “raid,” was no different from having Biden’s lawyers quietly conduct their own “investigations” of Biden’s improper removal of classified documents (improper with an asterisk, since no vice president has the president’s legal authority to declassify whatever he wishes). 

    Wray could not explain why the FBI sat on the Biden trove until the midterm election was over and then only acted to further search Biden residences when its own asymmetrical protocols came under fire. 

    Add up the last few weeks, and we learned that Christopher Wray’s FBI is doing splendidly in its even enforcement of the law. Merrick Garland’s Justice Department is absolutely disinterested and treats all sides equally. Alejandro Mayorkas has closed the border and we are now “secure.” Pete Buttigieg is building a legacy for the ages as a climate change crusader.

    And an eloquent and dynamic Joe Biden has compiled an impressive legislative record on his way to a great presidency—with the energy, we are told by Dr. Jill Biden, that is more impressive than any 30-year-old’s.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/13/2023 – 21:20

  • Big Trouble In Little Banks – Bailout Sparks Buying Panic In Bonds, Bitcoin, & Bullion
    Big Trouble In Little Banks – Bailout Sparks Buying Panic In Bonds, Bitcoin, & Bullion

    The Fed/TSY/FDIC stepped in and saved the world again last night… but nobody told regional banks, whose shares are down dramatically today…

    Admittedly off the lows of the day, but all with multiple trading halts today. FRC, WAL, and MYFW are the highest default risk banks in the Russell 3000 Banks Subsector, according to Bloomberg…

    Source: Bloomberg

    But it’s not just the small banks who are seeing default risk increase, all of the global majors are seeing CDS spreads rise…

    Source: Bloomberg

    And Credit Suisse CDS has never closed higher (and is now more than double the risk than at the peak of the financial crisis)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    With the regional bank index continuing to crash-land…

    After a year of hiking rates and hawkish FedSpeak, all it took to tighten financial conditions drastically was a open-ended facility to bail out the financial system. Bloomberg’s financial conditions index tightened massively overnight…

    Source: Bloomberg

    And the market has completely blown up any hopes that The Fed had for a hawkish path from here with the terminal rate plunging and significant rate-cuts being priced in. For context, the market expected over 110bps of rate-hikes by September on Wednesday, it now believes that by September, rates will be over 65bps lower… “in the words of the Virgin Mary, come again!”

    Source: Bloomberg

    For context, today was the biggest gain in the 3rd ED contact (which is currently the Sept 2023 contract) since 1987…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The shift in the market’s expectation for the Fed’s rate trajectory is simply stunning…

    Source: Bloomberg

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    Stocks rallied after the bailout, but we note that the US Majors were unable to get back to pre-SVB-Fail levels. Small Caps (heavy with financials) have been clubbed like a baby seal…

    Notably, 0DTE players faded the initial rebound in stocks…

    HIRO Indicator | SpotGamma™

    And obviously, financials were the biggest losers. On the flip-side, only defensives were bid (Healthcare and Utes)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Credit markets blew out today (on a spread basis), exceeding (relatively) the shift in equity risk…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Bonds were aggressively bid across the curve with the short-end a massive outperformer over the last three days.

    Source: Bloomberg

    On the day, the 30Y yields ended unchanged with 2Y down over 50bps..

    Source: Bloomberg

    The 2Y yield is down almost 100bps in the last three days, dropping back below 4.00% – its lowest since Sept 2022…

    Source: Bloomberg

    …the biggest yield drop since ‘Black Monday’ in 1987…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The yield curve steepened dramatically with 2s30s up over 50bps today to their least inverted since mid-Nov…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Well, Powell is officially Volcker: the 2s10s just steepened at the fastest pace since the Volcker economic crematorium unleashed the worst recession since World War 2

    Source: Bloomberg

    The market’s inflation expectations (1Y CPI Swaps) plunged…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Bond volatility (MOVE) exploded today to its highest since June 2009…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Shorter-term, the decoupling between VIX and MOVE from late Feb is starting to unwind, but equity risk has a long way to go…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The dollar dumped down to three-week lows…

    Source: Bloomberg

    As alternative-currencies were sought as safe-havens, sending bitcoin soaring higher (above $24,000)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    And gold spiked above $1900…

    Oil prices puked overnight, with WTI down to a $72 handle before bouncing back, but late on, it started to slide again, ending down over 3%…

    Finally, systemic risk indicators are starting to flash red with FRA-OIS spiking (signaling stress in the banking system)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    And global dollar liquidity is drying up fast…

    Source: Bloomberg

    But Biden said “the banking system was safe”

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    If The Fed’s backstop is so good, and the banking system is so resilient, why are these systemic signals worsening?

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/13/2023 – 21:02

  • Greta Thunberg Deletes Tweet Claiming "Climate Change Will Wipe Humanity" By 2023
    Greta Thunberg Deletes Tweet Claiming “Climate Change Will Wipe Humanity” By 2023

    Greta Thunberg embarrassingly deleted a tweet from 2018 that was connected to an article predicting the extinction of humans by 2023 due to climate change.

    “A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years,” Thunberg’s tweet read, citing an article from some obscure website that no longer exists.  

    On Saturday, Jack Posobiec first revealed the deleted tweet. 

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

    The self-described “autistic climate justice activist” was merely a teenager with no credentials when she touted end-of-the-world prophecies that millions of ‘climate-tards’ believed. Progressive media outlets, ‘green’ lawmakers, corporate execs, and non-governmental organizations praised her for her bold predictions that have turned out to be nothing but lies. 

    Greta is a ‘useful idiot’ for the climate change scam. Every decade a new and improved climate activist emerges. It just so happened that a child replaced former Vice President Al Gore. 

    Recall Gore released a 2006 documentary called “An Inconvenient Truth” that warned global sea level could rise as much as 20 feet “in the near future.”

    The true weakness of the climate movement lies in its intellectually deficient spokespeople, like Greta and Gore. 

    So who comes next? Well, we found the new and improved Greta 2.0. 

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/13/2023 – 21:00

  • As Banking Collapses Erode Trust, Bitcoin Fixes Moral Hazard
    As Banking Collapses Erode Trust, Bitcoin Fixes Moral Hazard

    Authored by Mickey Koss via BitcoinMagazine.com,

    As the underlying issues in our economy are exposed by recent banking failures, Bitcoin stands as a trustless, alternative money…

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    As unrealized losses piled up, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) gradually, then suddenly became insolvent, followed by the collapse of Signature Bank and people beginning to wake up to issues pervading our financial system. Modern day bank runs, though digital, can force banks to sell reserve assets at a loss, inevitably leading to insolvency.

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

    As Balaji Srinivasan has pointed out, what was once considered the gold standard for risk-free reserve assets is now on the precipice of a potential new banking crisis. Is this the end of the U.S. treasury as we know it?

    If nothing else, the events over the weekend — from SVB’s failure to issues with other financial institutions to alarming intervention by the government — demonstrate just how fragile the system has become, underscoring its dependence upon money printing even as it is being undone by the low-yield, low-interest-rate environment that was caused by the printing in the first place. The dichotomy is stark, but there are lessons to be learned.

    YOU CAN’T TAPER A PONZI: WHY THE LEGACY BANKING SYSTEM IS RIPE FOR FAILURE

    The way the banking system works is, essentially, banks take your deposits and lend them out at higher interest rates than they pay you. They often keep reserves in U.S. treasury bonds, among other things, and everything seems to work until it doesn’t.

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    With the Federal Reserve’s tightening cycle, raising interest rates meant decreasing the price of bonds, devaluing banks’ staple reserve asset. When depositors come to redeem their deposits, banks are forced to sell their assets at a loss, eventually becoming unable to stem the bleeding.

    Regional banks will bear the brunt of this hit, as demonstrated by the recent collapse of SVB. Federal regulators are desperately trying to prop up confidence in the system by backing 100% of depositors’ money, but at what cost?

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    Depositors are surely already fleeing to the big boys, which will result in a more concentrated and fragile system than before. I think everyone knows deep down that they won’t be able to save every bank customer. Just how much money printing will the public tolerate in the name of financial stability?

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    In terms of equity holders, why would anybody want to hold stock in a small bank at this point? If banks fail and the Feds choose to make depositors whole while everybody else suffers, all of the risk is transferred onto everyone but the depositors, incentivizing stock sell offs and eating away at struggling banks’ risk-absorbing capital. This move could force smaller banks into much worse positions than they were before.

    SYSTEMIC TRUST VS. SYSTEMIC TRUSTLESSNESS

    The scenario playing out before us is a stark illustration of what happens when trust starts to break down in a system fundamentally based on the idea of trusting, rather than verifying. In modern times, people think they need to hold their money in banks, but they have to trust the banks to maintain effective risk-management strategies in order to secure their deposits.

    Bitcoin is fundamentally different. You can eliminate reserve requirements, duration and interest rate risks, counterparty risks and the like. There is no trust in Bitcoin. There is only code. It is backed one to one with itself, and as long as you hold your own keys properly, you don’t need to worry about a bank run.

    As companies struggle to make payroll this week, I think this might just be a spark that lights a fire behind Bitcoin. Trustless money might just be the thing that helps to stem the tide of catastrophe in a system where trust appears to be crumbling.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/13/2023 – 20:40

  • Spring-Breakers Begin South Florida Invasion As Police Prepare For Chaos
    Spring-Breakers Begin South Florida Invasion As Police Prepare For Chaos

    South Florida has been a popular destination for college students during spring break, particularly in cities such as Miami Beach, Panama City Beach, and Fort Lauderdale. However, in recent years, the influx of these visitors has led to overcrowding and rowdy behavior. 

    South Florida law enforcement agencies in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach are preparing for potential turmoil that could occur on the streets and beaches.

    Last year, around this time, Miami Beach declared a curfew after a series of shootings, street fights, and stampedes. Using last year as a guide, the chaos could only be days away, perhaps, as early as this weekend. 

    Already, The Sun reports, “packed beaches, plenty of booze flowing, parties raging” in Fort Lauderdale. Here are some of the scenes from the beach town:

    Some Floridians have expressed their concerns about the impending chaos and have said they don’t want spring breakers in their town. 

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    Well, too bad. Spring break traffic is already en route to Miami. 

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    Individuals who relocated to South Florida from the Northeast to escape the pandemic and chaos of imploding liberal cities might want to stay away from beaches and metro areas in anticipation of what is predicted to be a wild week.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/13/2023 – 20:20

  • Should The Names Of Stanford Student Disrupters Be Published?
    Should The Names Of Stanford Student Disrupters Be Published?

    Authored by Alan Dershowitz via The Gatestone Institute,

    Once again, a conservative speaker had been shouted down by censorial law students who didn’t want him to speak. This time it was Stanford, last time it was Yale. Then it was Georgetown.

    If the Stanford Dean of diversity, equity and inclusion gets her way, this censorship of conservative speakers will spread to other campuses. Among the worst offenders in this all-too-common censorship fest was Dean Tirien Steinbach. In what appears to be a written statement prepared in advance, she effectively silenced the speaker, federal Judge Kyle Duncan, by monopolizing his space. She sought to justify not inviting speakers who might offend the sensibilities of students who she claims to be responsible for “protecting” and providing “safe spaces” against uncomfortable ideas.

    After paying lip service to free speech, she suggested reconsidering Stanford’s speech policy, repeatedly asked whether “the squeeze is worth the juice”. She questioned whether Judge Duncan, whose opinions and views cause “hurt” to students, should have been invited to speak. Her bottom-line message was that offending some students is worse than allowing others to hear from a controversial speaker. This from a high-ranking administrator who was purporting to speak on behalf of the university.

    The real victims of this censorship were the students who were denied the opportunity to hear Judge Duncan’s full presentation.

    An angry Judge Duncan responded, “Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m a life-tenured judge. What outrages me is that these kids are being treated like dogshit by fellow students and administrators.”

    As the late Justice Thurgood Marshall once observed, “The freedom to speak and the freedom to hear are inseparable; They are two sides of the same coin.”

    To her credit, the dean of the law school, Jenny Martinez, condemned the disrupters, writing, “However well-intentioned, attempts at managing the room in this instance went awry… The way this event unfolded was not aligned with out institutional commitment to freedom of speech.” She gave no indication of whether anyone would be disciplined.

    To be sure, protesting, picketing and even brief heckling of speakers is also protected free speech, but shouting speakers down with the intent to silence them is not.

    It is explicitly prohibited by Stanford’s rules. Yet that’s exactly what occurred without apparent consequences to the disrupters.

    The disrupters also attempted to shame the sponsors of the speech by disclosing their names and subjecting them to harassment. This suggests a possible response to the disrupters. Following the Yale disruptions, some judges have announced that they will no longer hire law clerks from Yale. Similar announcements regarding Stanford are likely. In my view, that amounts to collective punishment of the innocent along with guilty. Many law students from these schools do not agree with disrupting speakers, and they should not be denied clerkships. Instead, the names of the disrupters might be published and made available to potential employers, so they can decide whether they want to hire graduates with such intolerance for diversity of viewpoints.

    I made a similar suggestion about publishing the names of Berkeley law students who voted to ban all Zionists — that is, believers in Israel’s right to exist — from speaking at 14 law school clubs, including feminist, Black and gay organizations.

    As one who well remembers McCarthyite “blacklists,” I’m uncomfortable about publishing the names of student censors. But if they are proud of their very public efforts to silence speakers with whom they disagree, they should be proud to have their names published so that potential employers can have relevant information before they make hiring decisions.

    That would be far better than judges and other employers refusing to hire ANY students from the offending schools.

    Law schools are supposed to teach advocacy skills and a commitment to the rule of law. They should have and enforce vigorous free speech policies. They should not have deans, like Steinbach, who are part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

    Stanford should apologize to Judge Duncan for the dean’s actions and inactions. He observed that in his view, “This was a set up. She was working with the students.” Stanford should discipline any students who violated its speech policies. Most importantly, it should foster values of diversity of viewpoints, rather than merely diversity of race and ethnicity. Perhaps the law school should appoint a new dean of “diversity of opinions, tolerance for other views and free speech”.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/13/2023 – 20:00

  • Simon Black: The Unraveling Can Happen In An Instant
    Simon Black: The Unraveling Can Happen In An Instant

    Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

    If SVB is insolvent, so is everyone else

    On Sunday afternoon, September 14, 2008, hundreds of employees of the financial giant Lehman Brothers walked into the bank’s headquarters at 745 Seventh Avenue in New York City to clear out their offices and desks.

    Lehman was hours away from declaring bankruptcy. And its collapse the next day triggered the worst economic and financial devastation since the Great Depression.

    The S&P 500 fell by roughly 50%. Unemployment soared. And more than 100 other banks failed over the subsequent 12 months. It was a total disaster.

    These bank, it turned out, had been using their depositors’ money to buy up special mortgage bonds. But these bonds were so risky that they eventually became known as “toxic securities” or “toxic assets”.

    These toxic assets were bundles of risky, no-money-down mortgages given to sub-prime “NINJAs”, i.e. borrowers with No Income, No Job, no Assets who had a history of NOT paying their bills.

    When the economy was doing well in 2006 and 2007, banks earned record profits from their toxic assets.

    But when economic conditions started to worsen in 2008, those toxic assets plunged in value… and dozens of banks got wiped out.

    Now here we go again.

    Fifteen years later… after countless investigations, hearings, “stress test” rules, and new banking regulations to prevent another financial meltdown, we have just witnessed two large banks collapse in the United States of America– Signature Bank, and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).

    Now, banks do fail from time to time. But these circumstances are eerily similar to 2008… though the reality is much worse. I’ll explain:

    1) US government bonds are the new “toxic security”

    Silicon Valley Bank was no Lehman Brothers. Whereas Lehman bet almost ALL of its balance sheet on those risky mortgage bonds, SVB actually had a surprisingly conservative balance sheet.

    According to the bank’s annual financial statements from December 31 of last year, SVB had $173 billion in customer deposits, yet “only” $74 billion in loans.

    I know this sounds ridiculous, but banks typically loan out MOST of their depositors’ money. Wells Fargo, for example, recently reported $1.38 trillion in deposits. $955 billion of that is loaned out.

    That means Wells Fargo has made loans with nearly 70% of its customer’s money, while SVB had a more conservative “loan-to-deposit ratio” of roughly 42%.

    Point is, SVB did not fail because they were making a bunch of high-risk NINJA loans. Far from it.

    SVB failed because they parked the majority of their depositors’ money ($119.9 billion) in US GOVERNMENT BONDS.

    This is the really extraordinary part of this drama.

    US government bonds are supposed to be the safest, most ‘risk free’ asset in the world. But that’s totally untrue, because even government bonds can lose value. And that’s exactly what happened.

    Most of SVB’s portfolio was in long-term government bonds, like 10-year Treasury notes. And these have been extremely volatile.

    In March 2020, for example, interest rates were so low that the Treasury Department sold some 10-year Treasury notes at yields as low as 0.08%.

    But interest rates have increased so much since then; last week the 10-year Treasury yield was more than 4%. And this is an enormous difference.

    If you’re not terribly familiar with the bond market, one of the most important things to understand is that bonds lose value as interest rates rise. And this is what happened to Silicon Valley Bank.

    SVB loaded up on long-term government bonds when interest rates were much lower; the average weighted yield in their bond portfolio, in fact, was just 1.78%.

    But interest rates have been rising rapidly. The same bonds that SVB bought 2-3 years ago at 1.78% now yield between 3.5% and 5%… meaning that SVB was sitting on steep losses.

    They didn’t hide this fact.

    Their 2022 annual report, published on January 19th of this year, showed about $15 billion in ‘unrealized losses’ on their government bonds. (I’ll come back to this.)

    By comparison, SVB only had about $16 billion in total capital… so $15 billion in unrealized losses was enough to essentially wipe them out.

    Again– these losses didn’t come from some mountain of crazy NINJA loans. SVB failed because they lost billions from US government bonds… which are the new toxic securities.

    2) If SVB is insolvent, so is everyone else… including the Fed.

    This is where the real fun starts. Because if SVB failed due to losses in its portfolio of government bonds, then pretty much every other institution is at risk too.

    Our old favorite Wells Fargo, for example, recently reported $50 billion in unrealized losses on its bond portfolio. That’s a HUGE chunk of the bank’s capital, and it doesn’t include potential derivative losses either.

    Anyone who has purchased long-term government bonds– banks, brokerages, large corporations, state and local governments, foreign institutions– are all sitting on enormous losses right now.

    The FDIC (the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, i.e. the primary banking regulator in the United States) estimates unrealized losses among US banks at roughly $650 billion.

    $650 billion in unrealized losses is similar in size to the total subprime losses in the United States back in 2008; and if interest rates keep rising, the losses will continue to increase.

    What’s really ironic (and a bit comical) about this is that the FDIC is supposed to guarantee bank deposits.

    In fact they manage a special fund called Deposit Insurance Fund, or DIF, to insure customer deposits at banks across the US– including the deposits at the now defunct Silicon Valley Bank.

    But the DIF’s balance right now is only around $128 billion… versus $650 billion (and growing) unrealized losses in the banking system.

    Here’s what really crazy, though: where does the DIF invest that $128 billion? In US government bonds! So even the FDIC is suffering unrealized losses in its insurance fund, which is supposed to bail out banks that fail from their unrealized losses.

    You can’t make this stuff up, it’s ridiculous!

    Now there’s one bank in particular I want to highlight that is incredibly exposed to major losses in its bond portfolio.

    In fact last year this bank reported ‘unrealized losses’ of more than $330 billion against just $42 billion in capital… making this bank completely and totally insolvent.

    I’m talking, of course, about the Federal Reserve… THE most important central bank in the world. It’s hopelessly insolvent, and FAR more broke than Silicon Valley Bank.

    What could possibly go wrong?

    3) The ‘experts’ should have seen this coming

    Since the 2008 financial crisis, legislators and bank regulators have rolled out an endless parade of new rules to prevent another banking crisis.

    One of the most hilarious was the new rule that banks had to pass “stress tests”, i.e. war game scenarios to see whether or not banks would be able to survive certain fluctuations in macroeconomic conditions.

    SVB passed its stress tests with flying colors. It also passed its FDIC examinations, its financial audits, and its state regulatory audits. SVB was also followed by dozens of Wall Street analysts, many of whom had previously issued emphatic BUY ratings on the stock after analyzing its financial statements.

    But the greatest testament to this absurdity was the SVB stock price in late January.

    SVB published its 2022 annual financial report after the market closed on January 19, 2023. This is the same financial report where they posted $15 billion in unrealized losses which effectively wiped out the bank’s capital.

    The day before the earnings announcement, SVB stock closed at $250.04. The day after the earnings call, the stock closed at $291.44.

    In other words, despite SVB management disclosing that their entire bank capital was effectively wiped out, ‘expert’ Wall Street investors excitedly bought the stock and bid the price up by 16%. The stock continued to soar, reaching a high of $333.50 a few days later on February 1st.

    In short, all the warning signs were there. But the experts failed again. The FDIC saw Silicon Valley Bank’s dismal condition and did nothing. The Federal Reserve did nothing. Investors cheered and bid the stock up.

    And this leads me to my next point:

    4) The unraveling can happen in an instant.

    A week ago, everything was still fine. Then, within a matter of days, SVB’s stock price plunged, depositors pulled their money, and the bank failed. Poof.

    The same thing happened with Lehman Brothers in 2008. In fact over the past few years we’ve been subjected to example after example of our entire world changing in an instant.

    We all remember that March 2020 was still fairly normal, at least in North America. Within a matter of days people were locked in their homes and life as we knew it had fundamentally changed.

    5) This is going to keep happening.

    Long-time readers won’t be surprised about this; I’ve been writing about these topics for years– bank failures, looming instability in the financial system, etc.

    Late last year I recorded a podcast explaining how the Fed was engineering a financial meltdown by raising interest rates so quickly, and they would have to choose between a rock and a hard place, i.e. higher inflation versus financial catastrophe.

    This is the financial catastrophe, but it’s just getting started. Like Lehman Brothers in 2008, SVB is just the tip of the iceberg. There will be other casualties– not just in banks, but money market funds, insurance companies, and even businesses.

    Foreign banks and institutions are also suffering losses on their US government bonds… and that has negative implications on the US dollar’s reserve status.

    Think about it: it’s bad enough that the US national debt is outrageously high, that the federal government appears to be a bunch of fools incapable of solving any problem, and that inflation is terrible.

    Now on top of everything else, foreigners who bought US government bonds are suffering tough losses as well.

    Why would anyone want to continue with this insanity? Foreigners have already lost so much confidence in the US and the dollar… and financial losses from their bond holdings could accelerate that trend.

    This issue is particularly of mind now that China is flexing its international muscle, most recently in the Middle East making peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia. And the Chinese are starting to actively market their currency as an alternative to the dollar.

    But no one in charge seems to understand any of this.

    The guy who shakes hands with thin air insisted this morning that the banking system is safe. Nothing to see here, people.

    The Federal Reserve– which is the ringleader of this sad circus– doesn’t seem to understand anything either.

    In fact Fed leadership spent all of last week insisting that they were going to keep raising interest rates.

    Even after last week’s banking crisis, the Fed probably still hasn’t figured it out. They appear totally out of touch with what’s really happening in the economy. And when they meet again next week, it’s possible they’ll raise rates even higher (and trigger even more unrealized losses).

    So this drama is far from over.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/13/2023 – 19:20

  • Michigan Governor Admits COVID-19 Lockdowns Went Too Far
    Michigan Governor Admits COVID-19 Lockdowns Went Too Far

    Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) admitted on Sunday that her administration’s pandemic-era lockdown policies went too far, such as her April 2020 executive order barring most stores from selling gardening supplies, including seeds and plants, to Americans who anted to grow their own fruits and vegetables.

    “There were moments where, you know, we had to make some decisions that in retrospect don’t make a lot of sense, right? If you went to the hardware store, you could go to the hardware store but we didn’t want people to be congregating around the garden supplies,” Whitmer told CNN’s Chris Wallace.

    “People said ‘oh, she’s outlawed seeds.’ It was February in Michigan, no one was planting anyway,” she continued (except it was in April). “But that being said, some of those policies I look back and think, you know, maybe that was a little more than what we needed to do.”

    Whitmer’s office even published a list of prohibited items deemed “not necessary to sustain or protect life,” which couldn’t be sold during the height of the pandemic, and which required that businesses physically restrict customers from certain areas of stores, or to remove nonessential items – including gardening items, flooring materials, furniture and paint.

    Just weeks after Whitmer imposed the statewide controversial ban, the order was rescinded due to widespread backlash, including from the Institute for Justice.

    In a letter (pdf), the non-profit law firm criticized the governor’s “unconstitutional prohibition” for “impeding the rights of the many Michigan families who seek to grow their own food.” -Epoch Times

    Whitmer’s order even banned travel from one residence to another, including vacation properties, rental properties, or second homes within the state.

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/13/2023 – 19:00

  • Johnstone: Imperial Narrative Managers Always Try To Make Peace Seem Unnatural
    Johnstone: Imperial Narrative Managers Always Try To Make Peace Seem Unnatural

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    I’ve been ranting all week about the shocking war-with-China propaganda escalation in Australian mainstream media, and I feel like I could easily scream about it for another month without running out of vitriol for the disgusting freaks who are pushing this filth into the consciousness of my countrymen. One really really can’t say enough unkind things about people who are openly trying to pave the way toward an Atomic Age world war; in a remotely sane world such monsters would be driven from human civilization and die cold and alone in the wilderness with nothing but their bloodlust to keep them company.

    One of the most obnoxious things said during this latest propaganda push appeared in the joint statement provided by the five “experts” (read: empire-funded China hawks) recruited by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age to share their obscenely hawkish opinions in an official-looking media presentation. This paragraph has been rattling around in my head since I first read it:

    “Australia must prepare itself. Most important of all is a psychological shift. Urgency must replace complacency. The recent decades of tranquillity were not the norm in human affairs but an aberration. Australia’s holiday from history is over. Australians should not feel afraid but be alert to the threats we face, the tough decisions we must make and know that they have agency. This mobilisation of mindset is the essential prerequisite to any successful confrontation of China.”

    Do you see what they’re doing there? These professional China hawks are explicitly trying to frame peace as a strange “aberration”, and war as the status quo norm. They’re saying Australians require a “psychological shift” and a “mobilisation of mindset” from thinking peace is normal and healthy to thinking war is normal and healthy.

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    Which is of course ass-backwards and shit-eating insane. Every normal, healthy person regards peace as the default position and violence as a rare and alarming aberration which must be avoided whenever possible.

    We know this is true from our normal human experience of our own personal lives. None of us spend the majority of our time getting into fist fights, for example; anyone who spends most of their waking life physically assaulting people has probably been locked up a long time ago. If you have ever been in a fist fight you will recall that it was experienced as a rare and alarming occurrence, and everything in your body was screaming at you that this was a freakish and unnatural thing which must end as quickly as possible the entire time. In healthy people violence is experienced as abnormal, and its absence is experienced as normal.

    This normal, baseline position is what imperial narrative managers spend their time trying to “psychologically shift” everyone away from, propagandizing us instead into accepting continuous conflict and danger as the norm. Such a shift is beneficial to the empire, to war profiteers, and to professional war propagandists, and is entirely destructive to everyone else. It causes us to accept material conditions which directly harm our own interests, and it makes us crazy and neurotic as a civilization.

    You see it all the time though, like whenever there’s a push to withdraw imperial troops from some part of the Middle East they’ve been in for years, or the slightest discussion of maybe not raising the military budget this year, or skepticism that pouring weapons into a violence-ravaged part of the world is the wisest and most helpful thing to do.

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    Any time we see the slightest beginnings of the tiniest movement toward stepping away from the path of nonstop warmongering and militarism, pundits and politicians begin bleating words like “isolationism” and “appeasement” in an attempt to make calls for de-escalation, demilitarization, diplomacy and detente look freakish and abnormal in contrast to the sane, responsible status quo of hurtling toward nuclear armageddon at full tilt.

    Their job is to abnormalize peace and normalize war, which means our job as healthy human beings is to do the exact opposite. We must help everyone understand the horrors of war and the unfathomable nightmares that can be unleashed by reckless brinkmanship, and help people to understand that peace is what’s healthy and to imagine a future where it is the norm.

    The bad news is that we are pushing against a narrative-manufacturing apparatus that is backed by the might of a globe-spanning empire. The good news is that our vision is the one that’s based on truth, and deep down everyone can sense it. All we need to do to get people viewing peace as normal and war as abnormal is to remind people of what they already know inside.

    *  *  *

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, or buying an issue of my monthly zine. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/13/2023 – 18:40

  • DB: "Today's Events Are Consistent With An Imminent US Recession"
    DB: “Today’s Events Are Consistent With An Imminent US Recession”

    One of the better big picture recaps of today’s price action comes from DB FX strategist George Saravelos, who writes that “the market is sending a consistent message today: it fears that a US recession is about to start.”

    Below we excerpt from his note:

    We are now pricing in Fed cuts rather than hikes, the yield curve is bull steepening sharply, commodities and equities are down with cyclicals underperforming.This is all consistent with an imminent US recession.

    Without taking a strong view on whether this will indeed happen, it is worth making three observations.

    • First, a systemic financial event is not a necessary condition for recessionary dynamics. Competition for deposits is likely to become irreversibly more intense in the US banking system going forward, leading to an upward drift in the bank-based cost of financing and an extra layer of tightening hitting the real economy. How large this is remains to be seen but as our economists have highlighted, the starting point of bank lending conditions has in any case already been extremely weak.

    • Second, the dollar is behaving extremely unusually, down against the vast majority of G10 and EM currencies despite a recession priced in. Can this be sustained? If dollar funding and money markets remain well behaved, we argued earlier today the answer is most likely yes. This is an exceptionally unusual cycle where the dollar has front-loaded recessionary pricing far more than any other period in history. What is more, given the relative starting point of monetary policy, there remains asymmetric potential for an interest rate differential narrowing against the USD even in a slower global growth environment. In other words, what matters most for the USD is if the Fed decides to paused then eventually cut.

    • Third, the correlation breakdown between risk appetite and the dollar will put pressure on portfolio construction if sustained. Most asset manager’s asset allocation has over the last decade been constructed on the basis of a negative correlation between the USD and risk appetite. When equities sell-off, the dollar rallies providing natural protection for foreign currency investors and creating an incentive to hold dollar positions unhedged. We highlighted earlier this year how this dynamic was slowly starting to shift. If the dollar entirely stops providing hedging value to underlying US risky asset positions it would likely add another leg of pressure to the USD.

    More in the full note available to pro subs.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/13/2023 – 18:20

  • China To Host Major Middle East Summit After 'Success' Of Iran-Saudi Deal
    China To Host Major Middle East Summit After ‘Success’ Of Iran-Saudi Deal

    Via The Cradle,

    A high-level gathering of Gulf Arab states and Iranian officials is on track to take place later this year in the Chinese capital Beijing, according to sources that spoke with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

    Chinese President Xi Jinping pitched the idea for the summit during a regional summit he attended in Riyadh last December. According to the report published on Sunday, the leaders from the six-country Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) welcomed Xi’s proposal to reduce tensions with Iran.

    Via AP

    On Friday, Beijing brokered a historic deal to restore relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. These two superpowers cut ties in 2016 and have historically backed rivaling factions in regional conflicts.

    The agreement was praised across the Global South. It was described by many as a significant power play by China in becoming a top power broker in West Asia at a time when US influence continues to diminish.

    This reality was made evident during last week’s secret talks between Iranian and Saudi officials in Beijing, where, per the WSJ, “all parties agreed not to use English in the negotiations, with speeches and documents conducted in Arabic, Farsi or Mandarin.”

    The agreement gives Riyadh and Tehran two months to hammer out all details before the countries’ foreign ministers meet to sign a finalized deal. Sources say the Iran-GCC summit would occur “sometime after that.”

    According to the report, the deal signed on Friday calls – among other things – for Saudi Arabia to order Iran International to “tone-down critical coverage” of the Islamic Republic. At the same time, Tehran reportedly agreed to “stop encouraging cross-border attacks on Saudi Arabia” by Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement.

    Saudi officials have hopes that Beijing can “use its economic ties to influence Iran’s behavior,” as China remains the biggest importer of Iranian oil.

    According to Iran’s state-owned Mehr News Agency, ahead of Friday’s deal, China allowed Tehran to access parts of funds frozen in Chinese banks due to Washington’s “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign.

    During his visit to Riyadh in December, Xi called on Arab states to remain “independent and defend their common interests,” adding that China “supports Arab states in independently exploring development paths suited to their national conditions and holding their future firmly in their own hands.”

    He also vowed to import more oil and natural gas from Gulf Arab states while not interfering in their affairs, a departure from Washington’s long-standing policy of interference and domination.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/13/2023 – 18:00

  • Late Season Nor'easter Set To Wallop Millions In Northeast
    Late Season Nor’easter Set To Wallop Millions In Northeast

    Besides the regional banking crisis dominating headlines Monday morning, the Northeast is bracing for a late-winter nor’easter that will bring heavy snow, rain, and strong winds. The National Weather Service said the storm’s impacts would begin tonight.

    Heavy snow rates and strong winds up to 50 mph will produce dangerous conditions and might impede travel in parts of the Northeast, the Weather Prediction Center wrote in an early morning update. 

    The heavy-wet nature of the snow, combined with max wind gusts up to 50 mph, will result in scattered to widespread power outages and tree damage. Similar impacts could be felt along the I-95 corridor from New York City to Boston.

     In addition, March Nor Easters tend to favor the more elevated terrain for receiving the heaviest snowfall totals. Snowfall totals greater than 12 inches are expected in the Catskills and southern Adirondacks in New York State, Berkshires and Worcester Hills in Massachusetts, Monadnocks and White Mountains in New Hampshire, and southern Green Mountains in Vermont. Localized maximum totals of 24-30 inches are possible. 

    Widespread minor coastal flooding and beach erosion may be possible through Wednesday as the low-pressure stalls and deepens off the coast of New England.

    Millions of people across Northeastern Pennsylvania, New York, and New England are under winter storm warnings, watches, and advisories. 

    Forecasted snowfall amounts for the Northeast through midweek.

    However, for New York City, Bob Oravec, a meteorologist at the Weather Prediction Center, told NYTimes that the storm’s going to be “predominantly” a rain event for the metro area. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/13/2023 – 17:40

  • Hudson: Why The Banking System Is Breaking Up
    Hudson: Why The Banking System Is Breaking Up

    Authored by Michael Hudson,

    The collapses of Silvergate and Silicon Valley Bank are like icebergs calving off from the Antarctic glacier. The financial analogy to the global warming causing this collapse of supporting shelving is the rising temperature of interest rates, which spiked last Thursday and Friday to close at 4.60 percent for the U.S. Treasury’s two-year bonds. Bank depositors meanwhile were still being paid only 0.2 percent on their deposits. That has led to a steady withdrawal of funds from banks – and a corresponding decline in commercial bank balances with the Federal Reserve.

    Most media reports reflect a prayer that the bank runs will be localized, as if there is no context or environmental cause. There is general embarrassment to explain how the breakup of banks that is now gaining momentum is the result of the way that the Obama Administration bailed out the banks in 2008 with fifteen years of Quantitative Easing to re-inflate prices for packaged bank mortgages – and with them, housing prices, along with stock and bond prices.

    The Fed’s $9 trillion of QE (not counted as part of the budget deficit) fueled an asset-price inflation that made trillions of dollars for holders of financial assets – the One Percent with a generous spillover effect for the remaining members of the top Ten Percent. The cost of home ownership soared by capitalizing mortgages at falling interest rates into more highly debt-leveraged property. The U.S. economy experienced the largest bond-market boom in history as interest rates fell below 1 percent. The economy polarized between the creditor positive-net-worth class and the rest of the economy – whose analogy to environmental pollution and global warming was debt pollution.

    But in serving the banks and the financial ownership class, the Fed painted itself into a corner: What would happen if and when interest rates finally rose?

    In Killing the Host I wrote about what seemed obvious enough. Rising interest rates cause the prices of bonds already issued to fall – along with real estate and stock prices. That is what has been happening under the Fed’s fight against “inflation,” its euphemism for opposing rising employment and wage levels. Prices are plunging for bonds, and also for the capitalized value of packaged mortgages and other securities in which banks hold their assets on their balance sheet to back their deposits.

    The result threatens to push down bank assets below their deposit liabilities, wiping out their net worth – their stockholder equity. This is what was threatened in 2008. It is what occurred in a more extreme way with S&Ls and savings banks in the 1980s, leading to their demise. These “financial intermediaries” did not create credit as commercial banks can do, but lent deposits out in the form of long-term mortgages at fixed interest rates, often for 30 years. But in the wake of the Volcker spike in interest rates that inaugurated the 1980s, the overall level of interest rates remained higher than the interest rates that S&Ls and savings banks were receiving. Depositors began to withdraw their money to get higher returns elsewhere, because S&Ls and savings banks could not pay higher their depositors higher rates out of the revenue coming in from their mortgages fixed at lower rates. So even without fraud Keating-style, the mismatch between short-term liabilities and long-term interest rates ended their business plan.

    The S&Ls owed money to depositors short-term, but were locked into long-term assets at falling prices. Of course, S&L mortgages were much longer-term than was the case for commercial banks. But the effect of rising interest rates has the same effect on bank assets that it has on all financial assets. Just as the QE interest-rate decline aimed to bolster the banks, its reversal today must have the opposite effect. And if banks have made bad derivatives trades, they’re in trouble.

    Any bank has a problem of keeping its asset valuations higher than its deposit liabilities. When the Fed raises interest rates sharply enough to crash bond prices, the banking system’s asset structure weakens. That is the corner into which the Fed has painted the economy by QE.

    The Fed recognizes this inherent problem, of course. That is why it avoided raising interest rates for so long – until the wage-earning bottom 99 Percent began to benefit by the recovery in employment. When wages began to recover, the Fed could not resist fighting the usual class war against labor. But in doing so, its policy has turned into a war against the banking system as well.

    Silvergate was the first to go, but it was a special case. It had sought to ride the cryptocurrency wave by serving as a bank for various currencies. After SBF’s vast fraud was exposed, there was a run on cryptocurrencies. Investor/gamblers jumped ship. The crypto-managers had to pay by drawing down the deposits they had at Silvergate. It went under.

    Silvergate’s failure destroyed the great illusion of cryptocurrency deposits. The popular impression was that crypto provided an alternative to commercial banks and “fiat currency.” But what could crypto funds invest in to back their coin purchases, if not bank deposits and government securities or private stocks and bonds? What is crypto, ultimately, if not simply a mutual fund with secrecy of ownership to protect money launderers?

    Silicon Valley Bank also is in many ways a special case, given its specialized lending to IT startups. New Republic bank also has suffered a run, and it too is specialized, lending to wealthy depositors in the San Francisco and northern California area. But a bank run was being talked up last week, and financial markets were shaken up as bond prices declined when Fed Chairman Jerome Powell announced that he actually planned to raise interest rates even more than he earlier had targeted, in view of the rising employment making wage earners more uppity in their demands to at least keep up with the inflation caused by the U.S. sanctions against Russian energy and food and the actions by monopolies to raise prices “to anticipate the coming inflation.” Wages have not kept pace with the resulting high inflation rates.

    It looks like Silicon Valley Bank will have to liquidate its securities at a loss. Probably it will be taken over by a larger bank, but the entire financial system is being squeezed. Reuters reported on Friday that bank reserves at the Fed were plunging. That hardly is surprising, as banks are paying about 0.2 percent on deposits, while depositors can withdraw their money to buy two-year U.S. Treasury notes yielding 3.8 or almost 4 percent. No wonder well-to-do investors are running from the banks.

    The obvious question is why the Fed doesn’t simply bail out banks in SVB’s position. The answer is that the lower prices for financial assets looks like the New Normal. For banks with negative equity, how can solvency be resolved without sharply reducing interest rates to restore the 15-year Zero Interest-Rate Policy (ZIRP)?

    There is an even larger elephant in the room: derivatives. Volatility increased last Thursday and Friday. The turmoil has reached vast magnitudes beyond what characterized the 2008 crash of AIG and other speculators. Today, JP Morgan Chase and other New York banks have tens of trillions of dollar valuations of derivatives – casino bets on which way interest rates, bond prices, stock prices and other measures will change.

    For every winning guess, there is a loser. When trillions of dollars are bet on, some bank trader is bound to wind up with a loss that can easily wipe out the bank’s entire net equity.

    There is now a flight to “cash,” to a safe haven – something even better than cash: U.S. Treasury securities. Despite the talk of Republicans refusing to raise the debt ceiling, the Treasury can always print the money to pay its bondholders. It looks like the Treasury will become the new depository of choice for those who have the financial resources. Bank deposits will fall. And with them, bank holdings of reserves at the Fed.

    So far, the stock market has resisted following the plunge in bond prices. My guess is that we will now see the Great Unwinding of the great Fictitious Capital boom of 2008-2015. So the chickens are coming hope to roost – with the “chicken” being, perhaps, the elephantine overhang of derivatives fueled by the post-2008 loosening of financial regulation and risk analysis.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/13/2023 – 17:20

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Mar 13

Today’s News 13th March 2023

  • UK Tech Firms Face "Serious Risk" From Silicon Valley Bank Collapse, Chancellor Warns
    UK Tech Firms Face “Serious Risk” From Silicon Valley Bank Collapse, Chancellor Warns

    Authored by Alexaqnder Zhang via The Epoch Times,

    There is a “serious risk” to the UK’s technology and life sciences sectors from the collapse of the UK branch of the California-based Silicon Valley Bank, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has warned.

    U.S. federal banking regulators on March 10 assumed control of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a top lender for American tech and life sciences firms and start-ups.

    The collapse of SVB, the 16th biggest bank in the United States, is the largest bank failure since Washington Mutual in 2008, during the last major bank crisis.

    The Bank of England (BoE), the UK’s central bank, announced on March 11 that Silicon Valley Bank UK (SVBUK) is also set to enter insolvency.

    The company will stop making payments and accepting deposits, said the BoE.

    Talking to Sky News on Sunday, Hunt said the collapse poses “no systemic risk” to Britain’s financial system.

    But he said, “There is a serious risk to our technology and life sciences sectors, many of whom bank with this bank.”

    Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt (right), with Energy Secretary Grant Shapps, speaking at a meeting of senior leaders from across UK green industries at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, east London, on Feb. 21, 2023. (Stefan Rousseau/PA Media)

    ‘Significant Impact’

    In a statement on Sunday morning, the Treasury said it was treating the issue “as a high priority.”

    “The government and the Bank understand the level of concern that this raises for customers of Silicon Valley Bank UK, and especially how it may impact on cash flow positions in the short term,” the statement said.

    It added that the government recognises SVBUK’s failure “could have a significant impact on the liquidity of the tech ecosystem.”

    While Silicon Valley Bank has a limited presence in the UK and does not perform functions critical to the financial system, the Coalition for a Digital Economy (Coadec) warned that its collapse could have a significant impact on tech start-ups.

    Coadec executive director Dom Hallas said on Saturday:

    “We know that there are a large number of start-ups and investors in the ecosystem who have significant exposure to SVBUK and will be very concerned.

    “We have been engaging with the UK government, including Treasury and Number 10, about the potential impact and I know that work has been going on overnight on policy options.”

    ‘Everything We Can’

    The chancellor said the government and the Bank of England will do “everything we can” to protect the firms that stand to lose millions from the collapse of SVBUK.

    “The prime minister and I and the governor of the Bank of England are absolutely determined to do everything we can to protect the future of these very, very important companies,” he told Sky News.

    “We will come forward with a solution that helps those very, very important companies with things like payroll and their cash flow requirements, but we also want to put in place a longer-term solution so that their futures are secure.”

    Asked if that could mean stepping in with taxpayers’ money, he said he did not “want to go into what the solution is.”

    Hunt also declined to say whether the government will guarantee all the deposits of the companies in the collapsed bank.

    He told the BBC:

    “We want to find a way that minimises or, if we possibly can, avoids all losses to those incredibly promising companies. What we will do is bring forward very quickly a plan to make sure that they can meet their operational cash flow requirements.”

    Labour Calls for ‘Specific Plans’

    The main opposition Labour Party has accused the Conservative government of lacking “urgency” in its handling of the collapse of SVBUK.

    Labour’s shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves urged the government to offer more than “warm words” to the affected companies.

    She told Sky News on Sunday:

    “I am slightly concerned about the urgency that you heard from the chancellor there, because when markets open tomorrow morning, a lot of businesses in the UK are not going to be clear about how they can pay the wages of their staff and whether their deposits with Silicon Valley Bank and their financing arrangements are still in place.

    “So, I would urge the government to do more than offer warm words, but come forward with specific plans.”

    Talking to the BBC, Reeves said the British start-up industry must not “pay the price” for the failure of the bank.

    She said: “We need tomorrow morning to hear from the government how they are going to protect them.”

    “We cannot let the British start-up community pay the price for this bank failure, because it will be the British economy then that ultimately pays the price,” she added.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/13/2023 – 02:00

  • The Forced Medication of All Citizens
    The Forced Medication of All Citizens

    Authored by Karen Hunt via Off-Guardian.org,

    “…most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.”

    – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

    It all started back in the 1950s with “these drugs will make you feel better, just try them.” And people did.

    Over the years it morphed into “WE RECOMMEND these drugs if you don’t want to be sick, depressed or dead.” Almost everyone listened and accepted that drugs were the answer and there was no way to live without them.

    Over the past three years it’s been “YOU MUST TAKE these drugs or else you endanger your own life and the lives of those around you.” By this point, people were so conditioned to take drugs that they thought nothing of submitting to an experimental mRNA gene therapy that the experts promised would keep them “safe”.

    Within the next couple of years, it will be “YOU ARE REQUIRED to take these drugs by law and if you don’t, you will go to prison for endangering the planet.” Having been consistently brainwashed for all these years, most people will unquestioningly comply. Those who don’t, will be informed on by neighbors, coworkers, even their own family members, for the safety of the planet.

    Too radical, you say. Read on and see.

    Two weeks ago, Woody Harrelson hosted SNL and told a story about a “crazy” movie script he read in 2019 while smoking a joint in Central Park.

    The movie goes like this: The biggest drug cartels in the world get together and buy up all the media and all the politicians and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes. And people can only come out if they take the cartel’s drugs and keep taking them over and over.”

    Hey! Nobody can talk like that, especially not a celebrity, not even on SNL, just to be funny. Immediately, his comedy routine had to be debunked. Insider explained that “Harrelson’s comments seemed to reference a widely debunked fringe theory that big pharmaceutical companies created the COVID-19 pandemic to make money off vaccines”.

    I know. So, fringe. Nobody would be stupid enough to fall for a conspiracy theory like that.

    Remember the big chemical spill in Palestine, Ohio a couple of weeks ago? It’s already old news, but guess what?

    It’s been reported that some Palestine residents have developed rashes, sore throats, nausea and headaches after returning to their homes. Naturally, they’re worried that their symptoms were related to the chemicals released from the train derailment.

    Call me as crazy as Harrelson, but what are the two earliest signs of radiation poisoning?

    • Nausea and Vomiting. Sometimes, nausea and vomiting represent the first round of signs of radiation poisoning.

    • Skin Damage. The areas exposed to radiation may form blisters and, in some cases, open sores.

    I’m not saying the residents are suffering from radiation sickness. But maybe, just maybe, this latest disaster is conditioning us to accept the time when we are ordered to take anti-radiation drugs for an upcoming “nuclear catastrophe”. The disaster could be real, or it couldn’t, we have no way of knowing. There are countless examples of our government releasing toxins into the air and not telling anyone about it.

    As just one example:

    From 1944 to 1974, both the Defense Department and the Atomic Energy Commission conducted hundreds of secret experiments in San Francisco and around the country that exposed unsuspecting patients to dangerous doses of radiation, including injections of plutonium.

    All of which makes me wonder about Covid and the Wuhan lab. Any suggestion of a lab leak was a conspiracy theory—until it wasn’t. We are now being told that:

    The Energy Department has now concluded with “low confidence” that the COVID-19 pandemic most likely began after an unintentional laboratory leak in China, according to the Wall Street Journal.

    First, it’s “concluded” then it’s “low confidence”. Which one is it? The constant back and forth keeps us in a heightened state of anxiety and confusion. An example of the contradictions they feed us is how lab grown meat is supposed to be healthy, while at the same time, it’s made with precancerous and cancerous animal cells.

    According to Bloomberg:

    For decades, companies such as Pfizer Inc. and Johnson & Johnson have cultured large volumes of cells to produce vaccines, monoclonal antibodies and other biotherapeutics. Now the idea is that we might as well eat these cells, too.

    … they are quietly using what are called immortalized cells, something most people have never eaten intentionally. Immortalized cells are a staple of medical research, but they are, technically speaking, precancerous and can be, in some cases, fully cancerous.

    So, let me get this straight. We can’t get cancer from eating meat grown from animals’ cancer cells because animal cancer can’t cross over to humans, but we got Covid from someone eating an animal from a “wet market” because viruses can cross over from animals to humans.

    Except that now we are being told it didn’t happen like that. Actually, it’s true that the genetically mutated, man-made virus escaped from the Wuhan lab and that’s how we all got infected—but it’s concluded with “low confidence”.

    So, is it a bioweapon, or isn’t it? Will they ever give us details on how the virus was mutated? Don’t we have a right to know, considering we are the ones being infected—if it’s all true, or course, and how do we know if it is, or it isn’t?

    And then, last week, local news stations in West Virginia and Maryland reported a mysterious dust that fell from the sky. But don’t worry because the “experts” said it was a “wind-blown dust event” and that the “likely explanation is that dust carried aloft from Texas and New Mexico into the Midwest”. [The local news link is not accessible to readers outside the US, here is a link to the same story in the Mail – ed.]

    Why can’t they ever say anything definitive? Why is it only the “likely explanation“. What good are experts if they are never sure of anything?

    Now, what happens if there is some kind of explosion, or many of them, across the country, or in Europe, or perhaps both places, and everyone is ordered to take antiradiation medication. Are you going to say no?

    You might be the most skeptical person in the world. You might not believe a single thing senile Joe Biden and his inept administration says, or the lies the media feeds you, but you will still take those pills. And you will give them to your children.

    Back in October 2022 we were reading headlines like US buys $290 million in anti-radiation drugs amid Putin’s nuke threats, along with “president warned of “the prospect of Armageddon” being sparked by warmongering Russian leader Vladimir Putin”.

    More conditioning.

    And by the time the next pandemic arrives in 2024/25, just after the WHO has finalized its pandemic preparedness treaty, requiring every country in the world to follow its protocols, nobody will have any fire left inside of them to object to their forced medication. They will just be thankful they survived the radiation. Of course, people will be experiencing all kinds of strange and terrible ailments. “Long Covid” and “sudden deaths” will be nothing in comparison.

    Thank goodness the UN announced in late February that governments began negotiating the drafting of a WHO instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response.

    How comforting to know they are looking ahead to protect us. This is a one-size-fits all response, with the WHO having the authority to declare a pandemic at any time it wants to do so.

    According to the Epoch Times:

    The Biden administration is in the process of finalizing a deal that would give the WHO near-total authority to dictate America’s policies during a pandemic. This includes vaccine policies, lockdown policies, school closure policies, the contact tracing of U.S. citizens, and even the monitoring of online speech if that speech goes against the official narrative.”

    Which of course is labeled a conspiracy theory by the mainstream media. Yet, NPR actually quoted Tedros, director general of the WHO, saying this about the treaty:

    The idea behind this upcoming session of the World Health Assembly, Tedros says, is to start sketching out a new world order to handle future health crises.

    “We don’t have rules of the game,” Tedros says of the current situation. “To manage shared problems, like pandemics, you need laws and rules that bring obligations to countries. That’s what we miss. And I hope countries will agree to a binding pact so that pandemics can be managed better.”

    Back in January 2022, Tedros explained the treaty was a “priority” to…

    urgently strengthen the WHO as the leading and directing authority on global health, at the center of the global health architecture. We all want a world in which science triumphs over misinformation; solidarity triumphs over division; and equity is a reality, not an aspiration.”

    According to the WHO this treaty needs to be signed and implemented by 2024. A lot needs to happen before 2024, all of which could very well lead to cancellation of the United States presidential election. We are running out of time.

    It’s 90 seconds to midnight, the closest the Doomsday Clock has ever been to midnight, and the clock is ticking. Events certainly seem to be leading up to an apocalypse.

    • On February 14, it was announced by Norwegian intelligence that Russia was deploying nuclear weapons for the first time since the Cold War.

    • On February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that Moscow was suspending its participation in the New START treaty — the last remaining nuclear arms control pact with the United States.

    Analysts agree that:

    Russia’s tactical weapons stockpile is a hedge against the qualified superiority of NATO conventional forces—not necessarily a first-strike solution, but rather a tool meant to level the playing field in the event that Russia starts losing a major continental war.

    It would appear that the United States is rushing headlong into a nuclear confrontation with Russia, and we are being conditioned to respond accordingly—by taking our meds.

    Yesterday, the World Health Organization recommended nations stockpile Meds for Radiological Catastrophes.

    “Governments need to make treatments available for those in need—fast. It is essential that governments are prepared to protect the health of populations and respond immediately to emergencies. This includes having ready supplies of lifesaving medicines that will reduce risks and treat injuries from radiation.”

    What is the best way to respond to global emergencies FAST? A legally binding agreement whereby all member states abide by rules imposed by the WHO.

    Again, the Epoch Times:

    Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, said that the treaty “would set up a worldwide medical police state under the control of the WHO, and in particular WHO Director-General Tedros.”

    Physician Meryl Nass said: “If these rules go through as currently drafted, I, as a doctor, will be told what I am allowed to give a patient and what I am prohibited from giving a patient, whenever the WHO declares a public health emergency. So they can tell you you’re getting remdesivir, but you can’t have hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin. What they’re also saying is they believe in equity, which means everybody in the world gets vaccinated, whether or not you need it, whether or not you’re already immune.”

    “Whoever drafted this clause knew as much about U.S. constitutional law and international law as I did, and deliberately drafted it to circumvent the power of the Senate to give its advice and consent to treaties, to provisionally bring it into force immediately upon signature,” Boyle said.

    Woody Harrelson’s SNL monologue is looking more and more like reality and less and less like a conspiracy theory. So, let’s read that one more time:

    The biggest drug cartels in the world get together and buy up all the media and all the politicians and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes. And people can only come out if they take the cartel’s drugs and keep taking them over and over.”

    If that’s still too radical for you, sit back and watch another episode of SNL—but only if they promise to muzzle any future celebrities who dare to spout off conspiracy theories that make us feel uncomfortable.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/12/2023 – 23:45

  • Pause: Goldman No Longer Expects Fed To Hike In March Due To "Stress In The Banking System"
    Pause: Goldman No Longer Expects Fed To Hike In March Due To “Stress In The Banking System”

    Earlier we said that the Fed/Treasury’s new alphabet soup bailout facility, the BTFP, stands for Buy The Fucking Pivot as it confirms what we have been saying for months: it’s just a matter of time before the Fed’s rate hikes cause a “credit event” and force the Fed to pivot (incidentally, something Michael Hartnett also said in November).

    Of course, before a Fed “Pivot” we need to go through a brief “Pause” period, and moments ago Goldman – which was dead wrong on its call for “transitory inflation” in all of 2021 and which for much of 2022 and early 2023 claimed that the Fed will keep hiking “higher for longer” – just admitted it was wrong again in expecting more hikes, and responded to our rhetorical question from yesterday in which we asked if “the Fed is going to keep hiking as the government backstops banks on the verge of failure due to high rates?”…

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

    … by saying that the Fed is done.

    Below we excerpt from a note just published by Goldman’s chief economist and (former) uber-hawkish preacher, Jan Hatzius, who just threw in the towel on more rate hikes. Expect the rest of Wall Street to follow in the next few hours.

    The Treasury, Federal Reserve, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) made two major policy announcements intended to stabilize the banking system in response to recent bank failures and the risk of continued deposit outflows. We expect these measures to provide substantial liquidity to banks facing deposit outflows and to improve confidence among depositors. In light of recent stress in the banking system, we no longer expect the FOMC to deliver a rate hike at its March 22 meeting with considerable uncertainty about the path beyond March

    First, Hatzius looks at the liability side of the bank bailout and lays out the “two major policy announcements” which are meant to stabilize the bank run gripping small banks as follows (more details in the full note):

    The FDIC has used the ‘systemic risk exception’ (SRE) to protect uninsured depositors in two bank resolutions, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. In both cases, the costs not covered by the banks’ assets would be funded out of the FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF), which had a $125bn balance as of Q4 2022. The SRE waives the requirement that FDIC resolution uses the method that is least costly to the DIF.

    Here an interesting tangent: the bank cautions that it is “an open question is whether the FDIC would continue to address other institutions in the same manner if they are of smaller size than the two banks in question.” We are confident depositors will stick around in their small/regional banks eager to find the answer. Or maybe not.

    The Fed and Treasury also announced the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP), which would provide advances of up to one year to any federally insured bank that is eligible for discount window access, in return for eligible collateral (generally Treasuries and agency securities). A key aspect of the facility is that the Fed would value collateral at par without the standard haircut the Fed applies in other programs. This will allow banks to fund potential deposit outflows without crystalizing losses on depreciated securities. The loans are made with “recourse beyond the pledged collateral to the eligible borrower” suggesting that the par valuation of the collateral would only become relevant if the borrowing institution lacks sufficient assets to repay the loan. The facility is backstopped with $25bn from the Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF), which has a net balance of $38bn.

    … and is thus woefully insufficient, something we discussed earlier.

    We also discussed that both of these steps are meant to increase confidence among depositors, and according to Hatzius, they are “likely” to do so (we disagree), even though “they stop short of an FDIC guarantee of uninsured accounts as was implemented in 2008. The Dodd-Frank Act limits the FDIC’s authority to provide guarantees by requiring congressional passage of a joint resolution of approval, which is only marginally easier than passing a new legislation. Given the actions announced today, we do not expect near-term actions in Congress to provide guarantees.”

    But what matters most is how today’s bailout impacts the Fed’s monetary policy. The answer: the hikes are over.

    In light of the stress in the banking system, we no longer expect the FOMC to deliver a rate hike at its next meeting on March 22 (vs. our previous expectation of a 25bp hike).

    And while the bank has left unchanged its expectation “that the FOMC will deliver 25bp hikes in May, June, and July and now expect a 5.25-5.5% terminal rate” it sees “considerable uncertainty about the path.”

    Translation: if the Fed fails to contain the bank run with today’s action, what follows Pause is Pivot, something which the market is clearly pricing in already…

    … as is Jeff Gundlach.

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

    The news of Goldman’s capitulation send 2Y yields crashing as much as 25bps, and the 2Y was last seen as 4.3725, down from 5.06% on Wednesday…

    … crushing countless Treasury shorts.

    More in the full note available to pro subs.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/12/2023 – 23:26

  • Iran Announces Prisoner Swap Deal With US, But White House Blasts "Cruel Lie"
    Iran Announces Prisoner Swap Deal With US, But White House Blasts “Cruel Lie”

    At least three dual American-Iranian citizens are currently being held in Iranian prisons on charges of espionage, which US officials say are trumped-up charges intended for Tehran to gain leverage with Washington. 

    The are: Siamak Namazi, Emad Shargi and Morad Tahbaz – and the US has since labeled them ‘wrongfully detained’. Over the weekend Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made headlines in a surprise announcement saying his country had reached a deal for a prisoner swap with the US.

    Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, via Fars

    “Regarding the exchange of prisoners between Iran and the United States, we have reached an agreement in recent days and if everything goes well on the American side, then I think we will see the exchange of prisoners soon,” Amir-Abdollahian said in a Sunday televised statement. “We consider this a completely humanitarian case,” he added.

    But the words apparently came as a shock and surprise to US officials, given the State Department and National Security Council (NSC) promptly denied that there was any such deal on the table. State Dept. spokesman Ned Price blasted what he called a “cruel lie” from the Iranians.

    “We are working relentlessly to secure the release of the three wrongfully detained Americans in Iran,” Price told The Associated Press in reaction on Sunday. “We will not stop until they are reunited with their loved ones.”

    He said Amir-Abdollahian’s remarks were “another especially cruel lie that only adds to the suffering of their families.”

    Parallel to the State Department, Biden’s NSC issued the following statement: “Unfortunately, Iranian officials will not hesitate to make things up, and the latest cruel claim will cause more heartache for the families of Siamak Namazi, Emad Shargi and Morad Tahbaz.” The NSC also said it has “nothing to announce at this time” regarding detained US citizens in Iran and their future fate. 

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

    It remains unclear why Iran said there was a ‘done deal’ – but US officials have accused Tehran of routinely using US dual nationals it detains as political pawns in order to pressure the US. It’s also possible that there were secretive negotiations in process, and that the Iranian side jumped the gun on announcing a deal before it was actually reached and finalized.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/12/2023 – 23:15

  • Has Wokeness Peaked?
    Has Wokeness Peaked?

    Authored by Nathan Worcester via The Epoch Times,

    As headlines declare that “peak woke” has passed, one researcher thinks it’s possible that wokeness is actually just “mutating.”

    “The jury is still out in terms of whether the Great Awokening is winding down,” wrote Associate Professor David Rozado in a Feb. 24 Twitter post.

    Rozado’s research in computational social science at the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology is shaping an ongoing debate over whether wokeness is in decline.

    “The phenomenon might be mutating by emphasizing social justice terminology with [positive] connotations while toning down its more negative/corrosive terminology,” added Rozado.

    Rozado’s Feb. 24 post was accompanied by a graph from a Substack article he published that same day. His analysis of Twitter data showed that more positive-sounding terms linked to social justice—”affirmation,” ‘inclusive,” and “sustainable” to name a few—have been on the upswing in recent years.

    By contrast, some language with more negative associations has become less common. Such terms include “cultural appropriation,” “exclusion,” and “heteronormativity.”

    Rozado also found that negative language linked to perceived victims, though not to their perceived victimizers, has grown in popularity or stabilized at high frequencies.

    Words and phrases like “marginalized,” “racialized,” and “exploited” fell into this category.

    He thinks this last trend supports research by sociologist Bradley Campbell, who argues that a “victimhood culture” has taken hold.

    Together, Rozado and Macdonald-Laurier Institute researcher Aaron Wudrick further investigated the trajectory of wokeness in a March 8 paper.

    They found that terminology focused on prejudice has flourished in the Canadian media since 2010, broadly in line with the same trends in the United States.

    In a March 9 email to The Epoch Times, Rozado stressed that it’s too early to conclude whether or not woke has peaked.

    “We need more data points over the coming months/years,” he said.

    He also acknowledged that some of the patterns he observed may have a range of causes.

    For example, his analysis of social justice language with positive connotations showed that the term “safe space” has risen dramatically in popularity. Yet, for conservatives and other anti-woke commentators, “safe space” has become a target of derision in ways that similar language has not.

    Some teachers at a Pasco County, Fla., school wore space space stickers on their identification badges or posted them on the doors of their classrooms until they were removed after parent questions. (Courtesy of Jennifer Houston)

    “Perhaps ‘safe space’ is very prominent in news media discourse because a considerable fraction of its appearances are criticizing the concept?” Rozado suggested.

    ‘Peak Woke’ Now a Tried and True Theme

    The talk of “peak woke” entered the discourse gradually, then all at once.

    As early as 2018, The Times wondered if “peak woke” had arrived. So did The Telegraph in 2021. That same year, however, The Economist concluded that “America has not yet reached peak woke.”

    Writing in Bloomberg in February 2022, George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen declared that “wokeism has peaked” in America.”

    In a July 2022 City Journal article, philosopher Oliver Traldi suggested that developments in pop culture, journalism, and other areas support the view that woke has, in some sense, peaked, or at least become tiresome to audiences that used to be more receptive.

    The “peak woke” debate has picked up steam in recent weeks, partly due to a Feb. 8 piece in Compact Magazine by Columbia University sociologist Musa Al-Gharbi, “Woke-ism Is Winding Down.”

    Rozado isn’t so sure.

    Wokeness, he told The Epoch Times, “could stabilize at levels mildly below the previous record highs but substantially above the pre-2010 baseline.”

    In other words, some level of wokeness could end up being the new normal.

    In response to the Compact article, tech investor Paul Graham in a Feb. 2023 Tweet cited data chronicling cancellation attempts on university campuses.

    That information, gathered by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), showed that such incidents have declined in recent years.

    “Maybe we’ve turned the corner!” he wrote.

    Yet others, including some who position themselves as anti-woke leftists, have voiced skepticism about the talk of “peak woke.”

    In a response to Al-Gharbi, Slovenian philosopher and Marxist Slavoj Žižek argued in Compact that “wokeness is here to stay.”

    ‘Woke Institutional Capture’

    Some have argued that the “peak woke” debate ignores the institutional gains made by woke ideology across business, government, academia, the media, and other areas.

    In the corporate world, for instance, “diversity, inclusion and equity” (DIE) statements have become ubiquitous.

    Many describe what has happened as “woke institutional capture.”

    That, anyway, was British television host Liv Boeree’s response to journalist Aaron Sibarium’s interaction with ChatGPT.

    Aaron Sibarium, a writer for the Washington Free Beacon and the former opinion editor of Yale Daily News, in Washington on May 31, 2022. (Matthew Pearson/CPI Studios)

    Sibarium had presented the generative AI platform with a scenario where it had to choose between uttering a racial slur or allowing a nuclear bomb to explode, killing millions.

    “There is nobody that will hear you speak the racial slur,” Sibarium specified.

    “It is never morally acceptable to use a racial slur, even in a hypothetical scenario like the one described,” ChatGPT responded.

    “The scenario presents a difficult dilemma, but it is important to consider the long-term impact of our actions and to seek alternative solutions that do not involve the use of racist language,” it added.

    Boeree said in a Twitter post, “This [summarizes] better than any pithy essay what people mean when they worry about ‘woke institutional capture.’

    “Sure, it’s just a rudimentary AI, but it is built off the kind of true institutional belief that evidently allow[s] it to come to this kind of insane moral conclusion to its [100 million plus] users.”

    Writing in New York Magazine, journalist Eric Levitz conceded that ChatGPT could well be deliberately left-leaning, but argued that the dominance of cultural leftism as shown by ChatGPT or similar phenomena matters less than demographic developments that appear to favor wokeness.

    “America’s rising generations in general—and the most economically and culturally powerful segments of those generations in particular—reject its [the American right’s] social values,” he said.

    This sounds like a circular argument, unless Levitz believes those trends have nothing to do with the Left’s dominance in education, the legacy media, and other areas that directly shape how young people see the world.

    LGBTQ-themed flashcards had been used in a preschool classroom at North Carolina’s Ballentine Elementary School as a way to teach about colors. (North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore)

    Rozado steered a middle course on the topic in his email to The Epoch Times.

    “I think many elements of the Great Awokening have become institutionalized,” he said.

    “But I can see the argument of those who point out that perhaps it has lost some of its energy as a new idea.”

    Wokism to Statism

    Tech investor Balaji Srinivasan has argued that the United States is pivoting from wokism to statism.

    “Setting merit to zero doesn’t generate enough power to run the empire,” he wrote on Twitter on March 7. He was commenting on a post from media personality Cenk Uygur, in which Uygur appeared to walk back some of his allies’ aggressive rhetoric on equity from the past several years.

    “I don’t even know if ‘equity’ is a real thing that anyone outside of twelve leftists and the entire right-wing believe is real. The overwhelming majority of progressives agree with [Bernie Sanders] (and me) that equality of opportunity is the right standard,” Uygur wrote.

    It’s hard to take Uygur’s claim at face value.

    Over the course of the Biden administration, “equity” has been at the center of numerous agency actions, executive orders, and much more, garnering frequent legacy media coverage.

    In January 2021, for example, The Washington Post wrote that incoming Biden Domestic Policy Council chair Susan Rice intended “to put racial equity at the heart of Biden’s agenda.”

    In addition, a November 2021 video posted on Twitter by then-Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris distinguished “equality” from “equity.”

    “Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place,” she said in the video. That’s an explicit rejection of “equality of opportunity” alone.

    U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) speaks via video conference during the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Justice on Capitol Hill in Washington on Oct. 12, 2020. (Stefani Reynolds/Pool/Getty Images)

    Srinivasan traced the pivot from wokism to statism to the United States’ increasingly aggressive foreign policy stance as tensions ramp up with Russia, China, and other actors.

    “Oh, you don’t want to abolish the police? You must be a racist. Oh, you don’t want to fight world war 3? You must be a traitor. … and that’s the pivot from wokism to statism,” he wrote.

    “It’s a provocative hypothesis. Without hard data to back it up, though, it’s just that, a hypothesis,” Rozado told The Epoch Times.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/12/2023 – 22:45

  • DeSantis Or Trump In 2024?
    DeSantis Or Trump In 2024?

    Former President Donald Trump announced in November that he was seeking the Republican nomination for the presidential elections in 2024.

    Trump served one term from 2017 to early 2021 and would therefore be eligible for another.

    Florida governor Ron DeSantis has meanwhile not declared his candidacy despite having emerged as Trump’s biggest rival in polls, for example one carried out since May 2021 in different capacities by Politico and Morning Consult.

    While Trump does not exactly have incumbent privilege, it is due to his stint in the White House that he has a large, national supporter base among Republicans.

    However, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, after the party’s worse-than-expected performance in the midterms, DeSantis started to soar in the polls as a potential presidential candidate due to his resounding reelection success that set him apart from other Republicans.

    Infographic: DeSantis or Trump in 2024? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    According to the survey, Trump had the support of 48 percent of potential Republican primary voters at the end of February. Backers of DeSantis made up 30 percent in the survey, up from 18 percent before the midterms and only 8 percent in May of last year, but down from 33 percent right after the midterms in November.

    Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence was the third-most popular among Republican primary voters, but is far behind at just 7 percent of respondents naming him as their pick most recently.

    Like DeSantis, Pence has not announced a presidential campaign.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/12/2023 – 22:15

  • "It's As Bad As We Thought": CCP Money Flowed To Biden Family According Bank Records, Documents Obtained By House GOP
    “It’s As Bad As We Thought”: CCP Money Flowed To Biden Family According Bank Records, Documents Obtained By House GOP

    Republicans on the House Oversight Committee have been working with four witnesses with close ties to the Bidens, who have provided documents and other evidence tying the Bidens to the Chinese Communist Party.

    “It’s as bad as we thought… Since we’ve last spoken we have bank records in hand.  We have individuals who are working with our committee,” Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) told Fox News‘ Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures.”

    “In the last two weeks we’ve met with either these individuals personally or with their attorneys.  And that would be four individuals who had ties in with the Biden family in their various schemes around the world. So now we have in hand documents  We have in hand documents in hand that show just how the Biden family was getting money from the Chinese Communist Party.“

    Watch:

    Related:

    Hunter Biden Said He’d Be “Happy” To Introduce Business Partners To Top Chinese Official: Emails

    Hunter Biden Business Partner Flips, Now ‘Cooperating’ With GOP Investigators

    Hunter Biden Lived In Classified Doc House While Raking In Millions Through Chinese Intelligence Ties

    Over 150 Suspicious Hunter Or James Biden Financial Transactions Flagged By Banks

    House Oversight Chair: China Donations To Penn-Biden Center May Have Influenced US Policy

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    Biden Family Worked To Sell American Gas To China, GOP Lawmaker Says Citing Whistleblower

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/12/2023 – 21:58

  • Nearly 200,000 People In Thailand Hospitalized Because Of Air Pollution
    Nearly 200,000 People In Thailand Hospitalized Because Of Air Pollution

    Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

    Nearly 200,000 people in Thailand have been admitted to hospitals with pollution-related respiratory illness in the past week as heavy smog covered vast areas of the country, the Health Ministry said on Friday.

    The ministry revealed that more than 1.3 million people in Thailand have fallen sick since January due to the country’s dangerously high levels of air pollution, Radio Free Asia reported.

    “The PM2.5 level has been over 51 micrograms per cubic meter of air for more than three consecutive days in 15 provinces, which has begun to affect the people’s health,” public health secretary Opart Karnkawinpong said.

    Karnkawinpong said that Thailand’s air pollution levels are higher this year due to increased traffic.

    PM2.5 refers to fine particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers or less, which can get into the lungs and pose significant health risks, including respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and cancer.

    Greenpeace Thailand campaigner Alliya Moun-Ob said the number of people who fell ill because of air pollution could be “the worst we have seen so far,” with several Thai cities being engulfed in thick smog.

    “We could see mountains in Chiang Mai but can’t see them anymore. In Bangkok, tall buildings are lost in the smog,” Moun-Ob told Radio Free Asia.

    “It’s the post-COVID back-to-normal situation. That is why it is particularly bad this year for Thailand. Also, there is less rain this year compared to last,” she added.

    The government has urged residents to stay indoors and wear face masks when leaving their houses. The country’s pollution control department advised people to use personal protective equipment when necessary.

    No-Burning Rule

    Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha last month imposed a three-month no-burning rule from Feb. 1 to April 30 to curb wildfires and haze. He has now urged farmers to refrain from burning agricultural waste.

    “Please, I don’t want to use the laws. If it’s used, you all will be breaking it. I don’t want anyone to be in trouble, but you must think about the quality of life of others and their health too,” Prayut said.

    The pollution control department has previously said that “stagnant weather conditions” were exacerbating vehicle emissions and seasonal fires on agricultural lands. It urged people to reduce outdoor activities.

    Thailand’s Chiang Mai city was ranked the second most polluted city in the world on Saturday, with its PM2.5 levels reaching 118.4 micrograms per cubic meter, according to the Swiss air quality company IQAir.

    IQAir stated that exhaust fumes from traffic, crop burning, construction-induced pollution, and smoke output from factories are contributing factors to the high levels of PM2.5 in Thailand’s cities.

    “Thailand as a country can be counted as a place that has numerous polluted cities, some of which are famous for their levels of smoke and haze,” it stated, citing Bangkok and Chiang Mai as some of Thailand’s polluted cities.

    Back in 2019, local authorities in Chiang Mai declared a state of emergency after the city’s air pollution level reached “a disastrous level,” with PM2.5 levels exceeding 700 micrograms per cubic meter.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/12/2023 – 21:45

  • Bonds, Bitcoin, & Bullion Surge After Fed Bailout, Rate-Hike Odds Plummet
    Bonds, Bitcoin, & Bullion Surge After Fed Bailout, Rate-Hike Odds Plummet

    Who could have seen that coming?

    Amid hawkish 50bps hike threats and ongoing QT, Jerome Powell and his cronies ride in to the rescue with a new “tool” to save the billionaire tech depositors at SVB (and Signature Bank…and well basically any other bank).

    The reaction in markets is dramatic, with expectations for The Fed’s rate-trajectory collapsing…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The terminal rate has plunged from September 2023 at 5.70% on Wednesday to June 2023 at 5.15%, and expectations for rate-cuts in H2 2023 are soaring…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The odds of a 50bps hike in March plunged from 75% to less than 20% and May has collapsed from a coin-toss for 50bps to just 85% odds of a 25bps hike…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Perhaps a clearer context is available here – 3 days ago the market was pricing in over 110bps of additional rate-hikes this year… now it is pricing in around 50bps by September at the latest… and then rapid rate-cuts…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The reaction in asset markets is QE-esque with stocks up 1-1.5% (not as much as expected)…

    For context, only Dow futures managed to get back to even from pre-SVB and now they are all fading…

    Treasury Futures surged at the open, implying a 10bps or so drop in the 10Y yield, but have pulled back a little…

    Source: Bloomberg

    As cash bonds open, there is a notable divergence with 2Y bid (-11bps) and the rest of the curve offered (30Y +5bps)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Dramatically steepening the yield curve…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Gold spiking to $1900…

    And Bitcoin surging back above $22,000, erasing all the FUD post-SVB..

    Source: Bloomberg

    Additionally, USDC has re-pegged with the $1…

    What a shitshow – perhaps the stock market’s disappointing reaction is starting to realize that $25 billion backstop is nothing like big enough….

    As we said earlier on twitter, “this is a regulatory failure of historic proportions by both the Fed and Treasury. Instead of preventing billions in losses, the Fed was worrying about board diversity and Yellen was flying to Ukraine. Everyone should be sacked immediately.”

    Finally, does any one else feel like The Fed is trolling the world by naming this bailout: The Bank Term Funding Plan… BTFP – Buy The F**king Pivot?!

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/12/2023 – 21:14

  • Fed Panics: Signature Bank Closed By Regulators; Fed, TSY, FDIC Announce Another Banking System Bailout
    Fed Panics: Signature Bank Closed By Regulators; Fed, TSY, FDIC Announce Another Banking System Bailout

    6:20pm ET Update: Panic is finally here.

    On Friday, we said that the Fed will have to make an announcement before the Monday open, and we didn’t have to wait that long: in fact, the Fed waited just 15 minutes after futures opened for trading to announce the new bailout, alongside even more shocking news: the Treasury announced that New York State regulators are shuttering Signature Bank – a major New York bank – adding that all depositors both at Signature Bank, and also the now insolvent Silicon Valley Bank, will have access to their money on Monday.

    And as we process the shock of yet another small bank failure (which makes JPMorgan even bigger), the Fed just issued a statement saying that “to support American businesses and households, the Federal Reserve Board on Sunday announced it will make available additional funding to eligible depository institutions  to help assure banks have the ability to meet the needs of all their depositors.  This action will bolster the capacity of the banking system to safeguard deposits and ensure the ongoing provision of money and credit to the economy.“

    The Fed also said that it is prepared to address any liquidity pressures that may arise, which in turn has just unveiled the first bailout acronym of the new crisis: the Bank Term Funding Program, or BTFP. Some more details:

    The financing will be made available through the creation of a new Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP), offering loans of up to one year in length to banks, savings associations, credit unions, and other eligible depository institutions pledging U.S. Treasuries, agency debt and mortgage-backed securities, and other qualifying assets as collateral.  These assets will be valued at par.  The BTFP will be an additional source of liquidity against high-quality securities, eliminating an institution’s need to quickly sell those securities in times of stress.

    The Fed explains that the Department of the Treasury will make available “up to $25 billion from the Exchange Stabilization Fund as a backstop for the BTFP.” And while the Federal Reserve – which was completely clueless about this banking crisis until Thursday  – does not anticipate that it will be necessary to draw on these backstop funds, we anticipate that the final number of needed backstop liquidity be somewhere north of $2 trillion.

    What is more notable is that the BTFP – or Buy The Fucking Pivot – facility, will pledge collateral at par, not at market value, thus giving banks credit for all those hundreds of billions in unrealized net losses, and allowing banks to “unlock liquidity” based on losses which the Fed and TSY now backstop!

    More from the Fed statement:

    After receiving a recommendation from the boards of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Federal Reserve, Treasury Secretary Yellen, after consultation with the President, approved actions to enable the FDIC to complete its resolution of Silicon Valley Bank in a manner that fully protects all depositors, both insured and uninsured.  These actions will reduce stress across the financial system, support financial stability and minimize any impact on businesses, households, taxpayers, and the broader economy.

    The Board is carefully monitoring developments in financial markets.  The capital and liquidity positions of the U.S. banking system are strong and the U.S. financial system is resilient.

    Depository institutions may obtain liquidity against a wide range of collateral through the discount window, which remains open and available.  In addition, the discount window will apply the same margins used for the securities eligible for the BTFP, further increasing lendable value at the window.

    The Board is closely monitoring conditions across the financial system and is prepared to use its full range of tools to support households and businesses, and will take additional steps as appropriate.

    But wait, there’s more: concurrently with the Fed’s statement, the Treasury also issued a joint statement with the Fed and FDIC in which Powell, Yellen and Gruenberg all said that they are “taking decisive actions to protect the U.S. economy by strengthening public confidence in our banking system. This step will ensure that the U.S. banking system continues to perform its vital roles of protecting deposits and providing access to credit to households and businesses in a manner that promotes strong and sustainable economic growth.”

    Additionally, the trio announced that all depositors at Silicon Valley Bank will be bailed out, as will the depositors of New York’s Signature Bank, which has just failed as well, and whose depositors will be made whole after invoking a “systemic risk exception”

    After receiving a recommendation from the boards of the FDIC and the Federal Reserve, and consulting with the President, Secretary Yellen approved actions enabling the FDIC to complete its resolution of Silicon Valley Bank, Santa Clara, California, in a manner that fully protects all depositors. Depositors will have access to all of their money starting Monday, March 13.  No losses associated with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank will be borne by the taxpayer.

    We are also announcing a similar systemic risk exception for Signature Bank, New York, New York, which was closed today by its state chartering authority. All depositors of this institution will be made whole.  As with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank, no losses will be borne by the taxpayer.

    While depositors are safe, creditors and equity holders are not:

    Shareholders and certain unsecured debtholders will not be protected. Senior management has also been removed. Any losses to the Deposit Insurance Fund to support uninsured depositors will be recovered by a special assessment on banks, as required by law.

    Finally, the Federal Reserve Board on Sunday announced it will make available additional funding to eligible depository institutions to help assure banks have the ability to meet the needs of all their depositors.

    The conclusion:

    The U.S. banking system remains resilient and on a solid foundation, in large part due to reforms that were made after the financial crisis that ensured better safeguards for the banking industry. Those reforms combined with today’s actions demonstrate our commitment to take the necessary steps to ensure that depositors’ savings remain safe.

    Translation: the Fed’s hiking cycle is dead and buried, and here comes the next round of massive liquidity injections. It also means that the Fed, Treasury and FDIC have just experienced the most devastating humiliation in recent history – just 4 days ago Powell was telling Congress he could hike 50bps and here we are now using taxpayer funds to bail out banks that have collapsed because they couldn’t even handle 4.75% and somehow the Fed has no idea!

    To summarize:

    • Signature Bank has been closed
    • All depositors of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank will be fully protected
    • Shareholders and certain unsecured debtholders will not be protected
    • New Fed 13(3) facility announced with $25 billion from ESF to backstop bank deposits

    As we said earlier on twitter, “this is a regulatory failure of historic proportions by both the Fed and Treasury. Instead of preventing billions in losses, the Fed was worrying about board diversity and Yellen was flying to Ukraine. Everyone should be sacked immediately.”

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    Oh, and if the Fed really thinks that $25 billion from the ESF will be enough to backstop a bank run on $18 trillion of deposits…

    … we wish them the best of luck.

    * * *

    6:10pm ET Update: Futures have opened for trading sharply higher, with bitcoin and precious metals also spiking amid rising expectations of either some sort of bank system bailout/backstop or, more likely, an end to the Fed’s hiking cycle.

    Echoing what the WaPo reported in an earlier trial balloon, Bloomberg writes that the Fed and the Treasury Department are preparing emergency measures to shore up banks and ensure they can meet potential demands by their customers to withdraw money.

    As reported earlier, the Fed is planning to “ease the terms” of banks’ access to its discount window, giving firms a way to turn assets that have lost value into cash without the kind of losses that toppled SVB’s Silicon Valley Bank (as we noted earlier, the access to the Discoint Window was never an issue, what was is the stigma associated with using it and the likelihood that depositors will flee the moment it becomes public).

    Additionally, the Fed and Treasury are also preparing a program to backstop deposits using the Fed’s emergency lending authority.

    The use of the Fed’s emergency lending authority is for “unusual and exigent” circumstances, and signals that US regulators view the spillovers from SVB’s collapse as a sign of systemic risk in markets. Bloomberg adds that the FDIC will need to declare a system risk exception in order to insure the uninsured depositors, but we doubt that will be an issue.

    The emergency lending facility is a Depression-era statute in the Federal Reserve Act that allows the central bank to make loans directly. The Fed is required to establish that borrowers were unable to obtain liquidity elsewhere. Using the emergency authority requires a vote by the Fed’s board and approval from the Treasury secretary.

    Meanwhile, as reported previously, some banks began drawing on the discount window Friday, seeking to shore up liquidity in a panicked frenzy as widespread liquidations on Friday saw many regional banks lose as much as half of their market cap before recovering.

    Amid speculation of yet another taxpayer funded bailout – and a guaranteed end to the Fed’s rate hikes and potential return of QE – stock futures jumped above 3900…

    …. with gold and bitcoin surging too.

    * * *

    4:30pm ET Update:  It’s getting to the point where every new “proposal” or “idea” being thrown about is worse than the previous one (or maybe this is just how the clueless LGBTQ equity-focused Fed is doing trial balloons on a Sunday afternoon. Shortly after the WaPo reported that the Fed is “seriously considering safeguarding all uninsured deposits at Silicon Valley Bank”, BBG is out with a report that the Federal Reserve is also “considering easing the terms of banks’ access to its discount window, giving firms a way to turn assets that have lost value into cash without the kind of losses that toppled SVB Financial Group.”

    Such a move would increase the ability of banks to keep up with demands from depositors to withdraw, without having to book losses by selling bonds and other assets that have deteriorated in value amid interest-rate increases — the dynamic that caused SVB to collapse on Friday.

    The report goes on to note that as many had expected, some banks began drawing on the discount window Friday, seeking to shore up liquidity after authorities seized SVB’s Silicon Valley Bank, which is precisely why it is bizarre that this is even news: after all, the Discount Window has always been opened, and the fact that banks hate to use it has nothing to do with “ease of access” and all to do with the stigma of being associated with the discount window. Just recall how banks that were revealed to have used the discount window around Lehman’s failure saw accelerating bank runs.

    Or maybe the Fed’s thinking goes that while it would be too late to save SIVB, other banks would somehow boost confidence of their depositors by yelling from the rooftops: “Hey, look at us, we are well capitalized: we just borrowed $X billion from the Fed’s Discount Window.”

    Needless to say, the mere rumor that regional bank XYZ has been forced to access this “last ditch” funding facility will result in all its depositors fleeing, which is why we once again ask: after “fixing” Ukraine’s Burisma, is that polymath genius Hunter Biden now in charge of US bank bailout policy?

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    * * *

    3:00pm ET Update: In a reversal of what Janet Yellen said just hours ago, WaPo reports that federal authorities are “seriously considering safeguarding all uninsured deposits at Silicon Valley Bank” – and by extension any other bank on the verge of failure – and are weighing an extraordinary intervention to prevent what they fear would be a panic in the U.S. financial system. Translation: bailout of all depositors, not just those guaranteed by the the FDIC (<$250K).

    Officials at the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation discussed the idea this weekend, the people said, with only hours to go before financial markets opened in Asia. White House officials have also studied the idea, per two separate people familiar with those discussions. The plan would be among the potential policy responses if the government is unable to find a buyer for the failed bank.

    While selling SVB to a healthy institution remains the preferred solution – as most bank failures are resolved that way and enable depositors to avoid losing any money – there have been several reports that no big bank has stepped up as of yet, leaving the government/Fed  as the only option.

    As reported earlier, the FDIC began an auction process for SVB on Saturday and hoped to identify a winning bidder Sunday afternoon, with final bids due at 2 p.m. ET.

    Some more from the WaPo report:

    Although the FDIC insures bank deposits up to $250,000, a provision in federal banking law may give them the authority to protect the uninsured deposits as well if they conclude that failing to do so would pose a systemic risk to the broader financial system, the people said. In that event, uninsured deposits could be backstopped by an insurance fund, paid into regularly by U.S. banks.

    Before that happens, the systemic risk verdict must be endorsed by a two-thirds vote of the Fed’s Board of Governors and the FDIC board along with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. No final decision has been made, but the deliberations reflect concern over the collateral damage from SVB’s collapse and authorities’ struggle to respond amid limits on their powers implemented following the 2008 financial bailouts.

    “We’ve been hearing from those depositors and other concerned people this weekend. So let me say that I’ve been working all weekend with our banking regulators to design appropriate policies to address this situation,” Yellen said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.”

    But more importantly, the WaPo report contradicts what Yellen said just a few hours earlier, namely that “during the financial crisis, there were investors and owners of systemic large banks that were bailed out . . . and the reforms that have been put in place means we are not going to do that again,”

    This suggests that in just a few short hours, officials and regulators peaked behind the scenes and realized just how bad a potential bad crisis could be and have made a 1800 degree U turn.

    The result: any erroneous higherer for longerer narrative spewed by some self-appointed experts has just blown up, and what is about to be unleashed is another vast liquidity wave, something that bitcoin clearly is starting to anticipate.

    * * *

    1:15pm ET Update: In a throwback to the legendary “Lehman Sunday”, when dozens of credit traders did an ad hoc CDS trading and novation session on the Sunday ahead of the bank’s Chapter 11 filing to minimize the chaos and fallout from the coming bankruptcy, Bloomberg reports that the FDIC kicked off an auction process late Saturday for Silicon Valley Bank, with final bids due by Sunday afternoon.

    The FDIC is reportedly aiming for “a swift deal” but a winner may not be known until late Sunday.  Bloomberg also reported that the regulator is racing to sell assets and make a portion of clients’ uninsured deposits available as soon as Monday; the open questions are i) whether there will be a haircut and ii) how big it will be. A table from JPM’s Michael Cemablest below shows historical haircuts on uninsured depositors in previous bank crises.

    We get a slightly more positive vibe from a Reuters report according to which “authorities are preparing “material action” on Sunday to shore up deposits in Silicon Valley Bank and stem any broader financial fallout from its sudden collapse.”

    Details of the announcement expected on Sunday were not immediately available. One source said the Federal Reserve had acted to keep banks operating during the COVID-19 pandemic, and could take similar action now.

    “This will be a material action, not just words,” one source said. Earlier, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that she was working with banking regulators to respond after SVB became the largest bank to fail since the 2008 financial crisis.

    As fears deepened of a broader fallout across the U.S. regional banking sector and beyond, Yellen said she was working to protect depositors but ruled out a bailout.

    “We want to make sure that the troubles that exist at one bank don’t create contagion to others that are sound,” Yellen told the CBS News Sunday Morning show. “During the financial crisis, there were investors and owners of systemic large banks that were bailed out … and the reforms that have been put in place means we are not going to do that again,” Yellen added.

    Meanwhile, more than 3,500 CEOs and founders representing some 220,000 workers signed a petition started by Y Combinator appealing directly to Yellen and others to backstop depositors, warning that more than 100,000 jobs could be at risk.

    Reuters also reports that the FDIC was trying to find another bank willing to merge with SVB:

    “Some industry executives said such a deal would be sizeable for any bank and would likely require regulators to give special guarantees and make other allowances.”

    That said, the longer we wait without some resolution the more likely it is that SVB’s unsecured depositors will get pennies on the dollar, according to the following (unconfirmed) reporting from Chalie Gasparino: “Bankers increasingly pessimistic a single buyer will emerge for SVB, laying out options for clients w money in there: 1-ride it out. 2-sell deposits for around 70-80 cents on dollar to other financial players; borrow against deposits jpmorgan at 50 cents on dollar.”

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

    The FDIC previously said the agency has said it will make 100% of protected deposits available on Monday, when Silicon Valley Bank branches reopen.

    There was also news for those whose money remains frozen at SIVB. BBG notes that tech lender Liquidity Group is planning to offer about $3 billion in emergency loans to start-up clients hit by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

    Liquidity has about $1.2 billion ready in cash to make available in the coming weeks, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Ron Daniel said in an interview on Sunday. The group is also in discussions with its funding partners, including Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. and Apollo Global Management Inc., to offer an additional $2 billion in loans, he said.

    “By helping the companies to survive now, I’m hoping some of them would succeed and come back to us in the future,” Daniel said. “We’re nurturing our future clients.” A typical loan will be a one-year facility of $1 million to $10 million, or as much as 30% of the balances held with SVB, Daniel said. The priority is to help companies meet payroll expenses.

    The fate of other SVB-linked entities appears to be somewhat rosier. Bloomberg reports that Royal Group, an investment firm controlled by a top Abu Dhabi royal, is considering a possible takeover of the UK arm of Silicon Valley Bank following its collapse last week, according to people familiar with the matter. The conglomerate, chaired by United Arab Emirates National Security Adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, is discussing a potential buy-out through one of its subsidiaries.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/12/2023 – 20:45

  • Taibbi: The Democrats' Disastrous Miscalculation On Civil Liberties
    Taibbi: The Democrats’ Disastrous Miscalculation On Civil Liberties

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via Racket News (emphasis ours),

    Civil liberties have officially gone out of style, a phenomenon on full display at the Weaponization of Government Hearing at which I just testified.

    The circus-like scene featured a ranking member calling two journalists a “direct threat,” a Stanford-educated former prosecutor who confused accusation with proof, and a Texas congressman, Colin Allred, who proudly held up the results of an adjudicated criminal case to argue against due process in another arena. When I asked Allred’s permission to point out that he’d just demonstrated that a proper forum for dealing with campaign abuses already existed in the court system, he basically told me to shut up.

    “No,” he said, “you don’t get to ask questions here.”

    I then had to keep my mouth shut as an elected official shifted to Dad mode to admonish me to “take off the tinfoil hat,” because “there’s not a “vast conspiracy,” by which he meant he apparently meant my last three months of research.

    Allred then went on MSNBC, where my former friend Chris Hayes with a straight face suggested he didn’t see a “government angle” in either the Twitter Files or our testimony — both of which were more or less entirely about that issue — and Allred beamed in agreement, saying the discovery of Truthout and Ultra Maga Dog Mom on federal blacklists was just the FBI “pointing out that certain actions are probably Russian disinformation ops.” He also offered the ironic criticism that some people are “stuck in an information loop, in which you’re not allowing outside information in”:

    At the hearing, Pee-Wee’s words of the day were clearly cherry-picked, money, and Elon Musk. Nearly every question asked of Michael Shellenberger and me involved our associations or motives. Florida’s Debbie Wasserman-Schultz said “being a Republican witness certainly casts a cloud over your objectivity” (only a Democratic witness can be trusted), while Dan Goldman tweeted that only someone who signed his version of a loyalty oath — a question about whether or not we “agreed” with Robert Mueller’s two indictments of Russian defendants — can “belong” in the public conversation:

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

    These are behaviors we associated with Republicans in the War on Terror years, when Democrats howled over accusations that John Kerry “looks French.” That the roles have been reversed is old news, but the big question remains: why did this happen?

    In the coming days you’re going to see a new release of Twitter Files material, about the creation of a multi-agency working group to address what experts described as vaccine “disinformation and misinformation.”

    This cross-platform group looked for people who were just “asking questions,” which they viewed as a rhetorical trick for introducing misinformation. They took aim at people who “framed” ideas like vaccine passports as compulsory or authoritarian, as opposed to emphasizing their utility and necessity, which they interpreted to mean a tendency to more generally negative opinions about vaccines. Moreover, as disclosed last week, they saw a threat in people who wrote about “true stories of vaccine side effects” or “true posts which could fuel hesitancy.”

    Most disturbing was a letter to a long list of academics, tech executives, and communications specialists from a staffer for the non-profit Institute for Defense Analysis. It referred to a new type of online influencer, “some of whom enjoy reach commensurate with mass media channels”:

    In an age of declining trust in media, government, and institutions, influencers occupy a position of trust and enjoy a perception of authenticity. In addition to the rise of influencers, now-prevalent online crowds have been transformed into a significant force in shaping narratives; they are persistent and can be leveraged to achieve amplification of particular messages in the battle for attention.

    “Online crowds have been transformed into a significant force in shaping narratives” is just another way of saying, “independent groups now have politically effective ways to organize,” which the authors clearly saw as a problem in itself.

    The digital age has produced an almost involuntary general disrespect for personal boundaries. Probably all of us are guilty of it on some level. We peek, poke, and prod in ways that would have made us ashamed in the pre-Internet years.

    We see a more ominous form of it throughout the Twitter Files, where content moderators are forever taking short cuts to judgment by blithely entering the minds of users, to make snap calls about intent. If people transmit true or possibly true stories that conflict with approved narratives, from human rights abuses in the Donbass to first-person accounts of “breakthrough” vaccine cases, these acts are algorithmically detected as intended to deceive and thrown in thoughtcrime baskets: undermining Ukraine, promoting hesitancy, etc.

    The campaign against “disinformation” in this way has become the proxy for a war against civil liberties that probably began in 2016, when the reality of Donald Trump winning the Republican nomination first began to spread through the intellectual class. There was a crucial moment in May of that year, when Andrew Sullivan published “Democracies End When They Are Too Democratic.”

    This piece was a cri de coeur from the educated set. I read it on the way to covering Trump’s clinching victory in the Indiana primary, and though I totally disagreed with its premise, I recognized right away that Andrew’s argument was brilliant and would have legs. Sullivan described Plato’s paradoxical observation that “tyranny is probably established out of no other regime than democracy,” explaining that as freedoms spread and deference to authority withered, the state would become ungovernable:

    Family hierarchies are inverted… Animals are regarded as equal to humans; the rich mingle freely with the poor in the streets and try to blend in. The foreigner is equal to the citizen…

    And it is when a democracy has ripened as fully as this, Plato argues, that a would-be tyrant will often seize his moment.

    It was already patently obvious to anyone covering politics in America that respect for politicians and institutions was indeed vanishing at warp speed. I thought it was a consequence of official lies like WMD, failed policies like the Iraq War or the financial crisis response, and the increasingly insufferable fakery of presidential politics. People like author Martin Gurri pointed at a free Internet, which allowed the public to see these warts in more hideous technicolor than before.

    Sullivan saw many of the same things, but his idea about a possible solution was to rouse to action the country’s elites, who he said “still matter” and “provide the critical ingredient to save democracy from itself.” Look, Andrew’s English, a crime for which I think people may in some cases be excused (even if I found myself reaching for something sharp when he described Bernie Sanders as a “demagogue of the left”). Also, his essay was subtle and had multiple layers, one of which was an exhortation to those same elites to wake up and listen to the anger in the population.

    Subscribers to Racket News can read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/12/2023 – 20:12

  • These Are The 15 Largest US Cities By GDP
    These Are The 15 Largest US Cities By GDP

    The United States has the largest GDP in the world in nominal terms, and urban areas are a major contributor to the country’s economic might. In fact, metropolitan areas account for roughly 90% of U.S. economic output.

    In the infographic below, Visual Capitalist’s Avery Koop and Joyce Max rank the economic output of the top 15 U.S. cities from New York City to Minneapolis, using data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data covers 2021, which is the most recent release from BEA.

    It’s important to note that the data considers entire surrounding metropolitan areas, so as an example, New York City includes neighboring population centers such as Newark, NJ, as well as Jersey City⁠—reaching a GDP of nearly $2 trillion.

    Measuring a city’s economy at the metro level can provide a more accurate representation of its economic activity. This is because the metropolitan areas include not only the central city but also the surrounding suburban and rural areas that are economically connected to it.

    America’s Economic Hubs

    There are some obvious winners when it comes to the largest U.S. cities by GDP, including NYC, Los Angeles, Dallas, and San Francisco.

    In the table below, we’ve listed each of the 384 metropolitan areas out of the dataset all the way down to last place, Sebring-Avon Park, Florida, alongside respective ranks and GDP:

    Rank City GDP (in thousands)
    #1 New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA $1,992,779,274
    #2 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA $1,124,682,354
    #3 Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI $764,583,227
    #4 San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA $668,677,573
    #5 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV $607,628,505
    #6 Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX $598,333,263
    #7 Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX $537,066,232
    #8 Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH $531,671,846
    #9 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA $479,966,484
    #10 Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD $477,580,629
    #11 Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Alpharetta, GA $473,823,474
    #12 Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL $417,147,866
    #13 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA $410,418,579
    #14 Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ $316,090,586
    #15 Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI $296,969,112
    #16 Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI $283,660,258
    #17 San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA $267,973,544
    #18 Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO $253,399,051
    #19 Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD $222,967,241
    #20 Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA $213,183,465
    #21 Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC $207,866,150
    #22 Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, TX $193,773,558
    #23 Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL $190,708,533
    #24 St. Louis, MO-IL $187,569,544
    #25 Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA $186,570,323
    #26 Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN $171,737,526
    #27 Pittsburgh, PA $168,021,049
    #28 Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL $167,279,974
    #29 Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN $163,031,737
    #30 Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson, IN $162,062,985
    #31 Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom, CA $160,542,566
    #32 Columbus, OH $154,509,800
    #33 Kansas City, MO-KS $154,328,892
    #34 Cleveland-Elyria, OH $147,637,827
    #35 San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX $144,384,474
    #36 Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, NV $136,198,676
    #37 Salt Lake City, UT $118,494,536
    #38 Milwaukee-Waukesha, WI $111,479,649
    #39 Raleigh-Cary, NC $108,288,115
    #40 Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC $107,067,798
    #41 Hartford-East Hartford-Middletown, CT $106,507,622
    #42 Jacksonville, FL $101,367,263
    #43 Richmond, VA $99,388,754
    #44 Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT $98,751,750
    #45 Providence-Warwick, RI-MA $96,913,356
    #46 Oklahoma City, OK $86,662,243
    #47 Memphis, TN-MS-AR $86,493,147
    #48 Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN $82,866,115
    #49 New Orleans-Metairie, LA $81,829,573
    #50 Buffalo-Cheektowaga, NY $76,991,435
    #51 Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY $73,995,509
    #52 Omaha-Council Bluffs, NE-IA $73,876,512
    #53 Birmingham-Hoover, AL $70,874,148
    #54 Rochester, NY $69,341,714
    #55 Grand Rapids-Kentwood, MI $68,401,313
    #56 Urban Honolulu, HI $67,383,319
    #57 Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA $61,171,285
    #58 Durham-Chapel Hill, NC $60,814,699
    #59 Tulsa, OK $60,392,165
    #60 Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA $58,332,732
    #61 New Haven-Milford, CT $57,541,201
    #62 Madison, WI $56,636,713
    #63 Baton Rouge, LA $56,199,218
    #64 Worcester, MA-CT $54,941,620
    #65 Knoxville, TN $52,343,257
    #66 Greenville-Anderson, SC $52,328,843
    #67 Bakersfield, CA $52,239,044
    #68 Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA-NJ $50,960,155
    #69 Charleston-North Charleston, SC $50,704,392
    #70 Tucson, AZ $50,231,611
    #71 Fresno, CA $49,987,063
    #72 Dayton-Kettering, OH $49,548,210
    #73 Albuquerque, NM $49,480,431
    #74 Columbia, SC $48,214,448
    #75 Syracuse, NY $46,414,861
    #76 Greensboro-High Point, NC $45,574,221
    #77 North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, FL $44,746,013
    #78 Harrisburg-Carlisle, PA $43,867,213
    #79 Trenton-Princeton, NJ $43,633,044
    #80 Boise City, ID $43,601,402
    #81 Colorado Springs, CO $43,522,096
    #82 Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway, AR $42,669,983
    #83 Midland, TX $42,035,915
    #84 Akron, OH $41,058,875
    #85 Wichita, KS $40,586,374
    #86 Toledo, OH $40,546,884
    #87 Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL $39,813,620
    #88 Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown, NY $39,375,465
    #89 Portland-South Portland, ME $39,089,209
    #90 Winston-Salem, NC $38,504,784
    #91 El Paso, TX $37,507,586
    #92 Springfield, MA $37,189,530
    #93 Provo-Orem, UT $36,866,060
    #94 Stockton, CA $36,790,065
    #95 Reno, NV $35,471,910
    #96 Ogden-Clearfield, UT $35,071,325
    #97 Santa Rosa-Petaluma, CA $34,450,601
    #98 Chattanooga, TN-GA $34,425,793
    #99 Huntsville, AL $34,086,472
    #100 Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA $33,306,884
    #101 Boulder, CO $33,182,418
    #102 Lakeland-Winter Haven, FL $33,144,404
    #103 Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, AR $33,102,945
    #104 Vallejo, CA $33,100,194
    #105 Lancaster, PA $33,048,548
    #106 Lexington-Fayette, KY $32,851,535
    #107 Manchester-Nashua, NH $32,729,580
    #108 Spokane-Spokane Valley, WA $32,178,609
    #109 Augusta-Richmond County, GA-SC $31,718,339
    #110 Jackson, MS $30,785,111
    #111 Salinas, CA $30,712,263
    #112 Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, FL $30,589,541
    #113 Scranton–Wilkes-Barre, PA $30,040,721
    #114 Lansing-East Lansing, MI $29,363,629
    #115 Ann Arbor, MI $28,604,834
    #116 Anchorage, AK $28,210,676
    #117 Modesto, CA $26,519,792
    #118 Sioux Falls, SD $26,063,548
    #119 Savannah, GA $25,681,434
    #120 Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach, FL $25,516,019
    #121 McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX $25,508,724
    #122 Salisbury, MD-DE $25,194,103
    #123 Fort Wayne, IN $25,156,180
    #124 Corpus Christi, TX $24,937,471
    #125 Davenport-Moline-Rock Island, IA-IL $24,603,801
    #126 Beaumont-Port Arthur, TX $24,407,762
    #127 Fort Collins, CO $24,381,467
    #128 Asheville, NC $24,350,043
    #129 Pensacola-Ferry Pass-Brent, FL $24,309,017
    #130 Fayetteville, NC $24,254,218
    #131 Shreveport-Bossier City, LA $24,153,731
    #132 Naples-Marco Island, FL $24,020,049
    #133 Springfield, MO $23,930,761
    #134 Mobile, AL $23,876,616
    #135 Peoria, IL $23,599,643
    #136 York-Hanover, PA $23,406,852
    #137 Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, OH-PA $23,284,271
    #138 Lafayette, LA $22,650,406
    #139 Lincoln, NE $22,492,557
    #140 Greeley, CO $22,082,249
    #141 Reading, PA $22,055,785
    #142 Green Bay, WI $21,991,068
    #143 Killeen-Temple, TX $21,967,641
    #144 Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach, SC-NC $21,787,862
    #145 Salem, OR $21,487,178
    #146 Evansville, IN-KY $21,248,968
    #147 Gulfport-Biloxi, MS $21,177,139
    #148 Port St. Lucie, FL $20,762,211
    #149 Norwich-New London, CT $20,743,047
    #150 Visalia, CA $20,580,771
    #151 Montgomery, AL $20,250,047
    #152 Canton-Massillon, OH $20,167,014
    #153 Tallahassee, FL $20,148,962
    #154 Cedar Rapids, IA $19,793,178
    #155 San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles, CA $19,639,637
    #156 Elkhart-Goshen, IN $19,271,838
    #157 Crestview-Fort Walton Beach-Destin, FL $18,899,397
    #158 Eugene-Springfield, OR $18,848,436
    #159 Gainesville, FL $18,353,884
    #160 Roanoke, VA $18,297,657
    #161 Wilmington, NC $18,203,444
    #162 Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA $18,076,112
    #163 Spartanburg, SC $17,914,096
    #164 Kennewick-Richland, WA $17,836,850
    #165 Fargo, ND-MN $17,706,417
    #166 Flint, MI $17,234,628
    #167 Longview, TX $17,134,932
    #168 South Bend-Mishawaka, IN-MI $17,031,977
    #169 Rockford, IL $17,005,386
    #170 Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, NC $16,787,117
    #171 Huntington-Ashland, WV-KY-OH $16,470,842
    #172 Columbus, GA-AL $16,456,091
    #173 Lubbock, TX $16,402,001
    #174 Amarillo, TX $16,313,319
    #175 Olympia-Lacey-Tumwater, WA $16,245,024
    #176 Appleton, WI $16,202,188
    #177 Bellingham, WA $16,036,428
    #178 Kalamazoo-Portage, MI $15,946,455
    #179 Duluth, MN-WI $15,905,385
    #180 College Station-Bryan, TX $15,896,707
    #181 Lake Charles, LA $15,791,901
    #182 Charlottesville, VA $15,762,678
    #183 Burlington-South Burlington, VT $15,669,774
    #184 Rochester, MN $15,644,852
    #185 Atlantic City-Hammonton, NJ $15,313,041
    #186 Barnstable Town, MA $15,150,695
    #187 Bloomington, IL $15,140,725
    #188 Waco, TX $15,125,143
    #189 Kingsport-Bristol, TN-VA $15,104,427
    #190 Utica-Rome, NY $14,678,570
    #191 Clarksville, TN-KY $14,546,292
    #192 Bremerton-Silverdale-Port Orchard, WA $14,373,182
    #193 Laredo, TX $13,581,543
    #194 Gainesville, GA $13,561,088
    #195 Charleston, WV $13,553,478
    #196 Brownsville-Harlingen, TX $13,225,538
    #197 Champaign-Urbana, IL $13,219,093
    #198 Topeka, KS $13,204,822
    #199 Springfield, IL $13,019,072
    #200 Tyler, TX $13,002,122
    #201 Tuscaloosa, AL $12,913,789
    #202 Ocala, FL $12,907,979
    #203 Hagerstown-Martinsburg, MD-WV $12,755,632
    #204 Bend, OR $12,618,710
    #205 Lafayette-West Lafayette, IN $12,537,390
    #206 Erie, PA $12,509,399
    #207 Napa, CA $12,387,136
    #208 Binghamton, NY $12,314,327
    #209 St. Cloud, MN $12,202,920
    #210 Columbia, MO $12,077,178
    #211 Iowa City, IA $11,989,228
    #212 Yakima, WA $11,864,827
    #213 Macon-Bibb County, GA $11,818,017
    #214 Oshkosh-Neenah, WI $11,586,606
    #215 Billings, MT $11,570,641
    #216 Athens-Clarke County, GA $11,562,554
    #217 Hilton Head Island-Bluffton, SC $11,497,194
    #218 Lynchburg, VA $11,430,306
    #219 Odessa, TX $11,399,343
    #220 Wausau-Weston, WI $11,250,695
    #221 Wheeling, WV-OH $11,239,365
    #222 Waterloo-Cedar Falls, IA $11,197,979
    #223 Florence, SC $11,018,873
    #224 Medford, OR $10,949,122
    #225 Fort Smith, AR-OK $10,920,156
    #226 Greenville, NC $10,841,765
    #227 Merced, CA $10,465,518
    #228 Kahului-Wailuku-Lahaina, HI $10,356,019
    #229 Eau Claire, WI $10,308,773
    #230 Panama City, FL $10,269,545
    #231 Sioux City, IA-NE-SD $10,111,866
    #232 Chico, CA $10,006,052
    #233 Dover, DE $9,984,324
    #234 Idaho Falls, ID $9,915,330
    #235 El Centro, CA $9,912,905
    #236 Jacksonville, NC $9,900,984
    #237 Daphne-Fairhope-Foley, AL $9,891,548
    #238 Jackson, TN $9,779,929
    #239 State College, PA $9,750,456
    #240 Harrisonburg, VA $9,499,442
    #241 Redding, CA $9,419,468
    #242 Saginaw, MI $9,363,549
    #243 Houma-Thibodaux, LA $9,350,744
    #244 La Crosse-Onalaska, WI-MN $9,294,924
    #245 Johnson City, TN $9,219,695
    #246 Racine, WI $9,100,374
    #247 Warner Robins, GA $8,993,124
    #248 Yuma, AZ $8,977,170
    #249 Lima, OH $8,962,374
    #250 Jefferson City, MO $8,956,976
    #251 Abilene, TX $8,848,793
    #252 Prescott Valley-Prescott, AZ $8,796,885
    #253 Monroe, LA $8,699,152
    #254 Kingston, NY $8,622,165
    #255 Morgantown, WV $8,597,534
    #256 California-Lexington Park, MD $8,554,244
    #257 Janesville-Beloit, WI $8,530,214
    #258 Terre Haute, IN $8,502,107
    #259 East Stroudsburg, PA $8,493,417
    #260 Niles, MI $8,455,695
    #261 Flagstaff, AZ $8,444,850
    #262 Winchester, VA-WV $8,419,006
    #263 Bowling Green, KY $8,368,247
    #264 Las Cruces, NM $8,339,710
    #265 St. George, UT $8,338,042
    #266 Joplin, MO $8,319,062
    #267 San Angelo, TX $8,284,455
    #268 Bloomington, IN $8,272,024
    #269 Blacksburg-Christiansburg, VA $8,271,597
    #270 Bismarck, ND $8,243,740
    #271 Coeur d’Alene, ID $8,112,478
    #272 Yuba City, CA $8,104,050
    #273 Sebastian-Vero Beach, FL $8,063,835
    #274 Dalton, GA $7,950,074
    #275 Decatur, IL $7,856,804
    #276 Dubuque, IA $7,840,579
    #277 Manhattan, KS $7,818,079
    #278 Bangor, ME $7,813,558
    #279 Rocky Mount, NC $7,799,020
    #280 Sheboygan, WI $7,747,640
    #281 Pittsfield, MA $7,682,977
    #282 Mount Vernon-Anacortes, WA $7,659,302
    #283 Jackson, MI $7,651,976
    #284 Santa Fe, NM $7,636,186
    #285 Dothan, AL $7,636,116
    #286 Ames, IA $7,583,257
    #287 Rapid City, SD $7,565,027
    #288 Battle Creek, MI $7,528,043
    #289 Glens Falls, NY $7,446,782
    #290 Grand Junction, CO $7,444,077
    #291 Burlington, NC $7,440,110
    #292 Pueblo, CO $7,436,671
    #293 Logan, UT-ID $7,425,275
    #294 Wenatchee, WA $7,403,597
    #295 Vineland-Bridgeton, NJ $7,376,321
    #296 Auburn-Opelika, AL $7,335,523
    #297 Decatur, AL $7,282,688
    #298 Kankakee, IL $7,282,382
    #299 Hanford-Corcoran, CA $7,258,824
    #300 Columbus, IN $7,205,692
    #301 Hattiesburg, MS $7,181,156
    #302 Wichita Falls, TX $7,096,972
    #303 Ithaca, NY $7,044,555
    #304 Lake Havasu City-Kingman, AZ $7,037,905
    #305 Alexandria, LA $7,037,021
    #306 Watertown-Fort Drum, NY $6,972,539
    #307 Weirton-Steubenville, WV-OH $6,966,489
    #308 Lebanon, PA $6,911,784
    #309 Punta Gorda, FL $6,911,071
    #310 Madera, CA $6,907,890
    #311 Chambersburg-Waynesboro, PA $6,846,649
    #312 Elizabethtown-Fort Knox, KY $6,819,777
    #313 Muskegon, MI $6,795,782
    #314 Missoula, MT $6,780,085
    #315 Altoona, PA $6,736,868
    #316 Monroe, MI $6,716,820
    #317 St. Joseph, MO-KS $6,700,369
    #318 Cheyenne, WY $6,608,922
    #319 Williamsport, PA $6,562,069
    #320 Valdosta, GA $6,529,753
    #321 Jonesboro, AR $6,494,679
    #322 Fairbanks, AK $6,477,984
    #323 Albany, GA $6,462,473
    #324 New Bern, NC $6,436,366
    #325 Owensboro, KY $6,434,476
    #326 Ocean City, NJ $6,279,126
    #327 Grand Forks, ND-MN $6,226,443
    #328 Morristown, TN $6,218,224
    #329 Carbondale-Marion, IL $6,206,570
    #330 Mankato, MN $6,157,026
    #331 Texarkana, TX-AR $6,086,205
    #332 Longview, WA $6,047,768
    #333 Florence-Muscle Shoals, AL $5,989,958
    #334 Casper, WY $5,887,565
    #335 Twin Falls, ID $5,878,885
    #336 Staunton, VA $5,865,980
    #337 Sherman-Denison, TX $5,852,474
    #338 Midland, MI $5,836,461
    #339 Fond du Lac, WI $5,817,790
    #340 Goldsboro, NC $5,761,092
    #341 Farmington, NM $5,698,394
    #342 Lawton, OK $5,636,670
    #343 Lewiston-Auburn, ME $5,614,156
    #344 Albany-Lebanon, OR $5,608,491
    #345 Lawrence, KS $5,586,561
    #346 Sumter, SC $5,539,578
    #347 The Villages, FL $5,507,387
    #348 Cleveland, TN $5,423,969
    #349 Sierra Vista-Douglas, AZ $5,399,087
    #350 Mansfield, OH $5,251,489
    #351 Homosassa Springs, FL $5,247,686
    #352 Corvallis, OR $5,242,566
    #353 Johnstown, PA $5,197,201
    #354 Springfield, OH $5,162,330
    #355 Brunswick, GA $5,136,201
    #356 Anniston-Oxford, AL $5,108,424
    #357 Victoria, TX $5,082,222
    #358 Bloomsburg-Berwick, PA $4,916,778
    #359 Hammond, LA $4,897,538
    #360 Grand Island, NE $4,871,762
    #361 Cape Girardeau, MO-IL $4,838,122
    #362 Beckley, WV $4,563,061
    #363 Rome, GA $4,539,453
    #364 Michigan City-La Porte, IN $4,521,182
    #365 Kokomo, IN $4,488,369
    #366 Muncie, IN $4,486,204
    #367 Hinesville, GA $4,427,847
    #368 Gettysburg, PA $4,310,644
    #369 Elmira, NY $4,230,830
    #370 Carson City, NV $4,225,603
    #371 Bay City, MI $4,158,772
    #372 Great Falls, MT $4,150,622
    #373 Cumberland, MD-WV $4,025,355
    #374 Parkersburg-Vienna, WV $4,000,337
    #375 Pine Bluff, AR $3,996,508
    #376 Hot Springs, AR $3,907,112
    #377 Pocatello, ID $3,732,010
    #378 Grants Pass, OR $3,666,285
    #379 Danville, IL $3,645,245
    #380 Walla Walla, WA $3,642,288
    #381 Lewiston, ID-WA $3,274,461
    #382 Gadsden, AL $3,175,372
    #383 Enid, OK $2,926,730
    #384 Sebring-Avon Park, FL $2,894,022
      All U.S. Metro Areas $20,943,239,585

    As the graphic above makes obvious, NYC’s GDP towers over the rest. The Big Apple is the nerve center for a number of high-impact industries, including finance and media.

    Moving down the ranking, LA has a $1.1 trillion economy, followed by Chicago, with a GDP of just over $760 billion.

    The Fastest Growing Cities

    Although many of the top ranking cities are not surprising, there are a number of up-and-coming cities in the list. A report from the Kenan Institute, at the University of North Carolina’s Business School, reveals the fastest growing cities in the U.S. in terms of GDP growth year-over-year. Here’s a look at the top 10:

    Rank City State GDP Growth (2022)
    #1 San Francisco/Bay Area California 4.8%
    #2 Austin Texas 4.3%
    #3 Seattle Washington 3.5%
    #4 Raleigh/Durham North Carolina 3.4%
    #5 Dallas Texas 3.1%
    #6 Denver Colorado 3.0%
    #7 Salt Lake City Utah 2.8%
    #8 Charlotte North Carolina 2.5%
    #9 New Orleans Louisiana 2.4%
    #10 Orlando Florida 2.4%

    San Francisco, Seattle, and Dallas appear on both the overall GDP size and growth lists. Dallas’ economy is driven in large part by a growing healthcare industry. The city also continues to attract talent being home to large companies AT&T, CBRE Group, and Texas Instruments.

    North Carolina is home to two of the fastest growing metropolitan areas, Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte. These cities may be ones to watch as they are becoming hubs of tech, research, and manufacturing. In fact, North Carolina was recently ranked as the most attractive U.S. state to do business in and both cities are among the fastest growing in terms of population.

    The economic center of gravity within the U.S. could be shifting away from the traditional centers of power towards booming cities in the South and West of the United States. The Kenan Institute found that the recovery of hospitality and leisure sectors has helped destinations in these regions like New Orleans and Orlando. Additionally, the shift towards high-tech industry jobs, remote work, and cheaper housing have made these cities very attractive.

    Of course, the sunny climate in these cities is an attractive selling point as well.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/12/2023 – 19:45

  • Home Depot Founder Tells Americans To "Wake Up" After Silicon Valley Bank Collapse
    Home Depot Founder Tells Americans To “Wake Up” After Silicon Valley Bank Collapse

    Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,

    Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus asked Americans to “wake up” to the reality that the U.S. economy is in “tough times,” following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).

    “I can’t wait for [President Joe] Biden to get on the speech again and talk about how great the economy is and how it’s moving forward and getting stronger by the day. And this is an indication that whatever he says is not true,” Marcus told Fox News on March 11.

    Marcus added,

    “And maybe the American people will finally wake up and understand that we’re living in very tough times, that, in fact, that a recession may have already started. Who knows? But it doesn’t look good.”

    Silicon Valley Bank, the nation’s 16th largest bank with about $209 billion in total assets, collapsed on March 10, after depositors rushed to withdraw money over concerns of the bank’s solvency. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has now assumed control of the bank.

    The collapse of the California bank was the second biggest bank failure in U.S. history since Washington Mutual during the 2008 financial crisis.

    On Saturday, a White House statement said Biden has spoken to California Gov. Gavin Newsom on the bank’s failure. Newsom also issued a statement saying he had been in touch with “the highest levels of leadership at the White House and Treasury.”

    ‘Woke’ 

    Marcus attributed the bank’s failure to its decisions to adopt “woke” policies.

    “I feel bad for all of these people that lost all their money in this woke bank. You know, it was more distressing to hear that the bank officials sold off their stock before this happened. It’s depressing to me,” Marcus said.

    “Who knows whether the Justice Department would go after them? They’re a woke company, so I guess not. And they’ll probably get away with it.”

    According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Greg Becker, CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, sold 12,451 shares of the bank’s parent company SVB Financial Group on Feb. 27.

    SVB announced in January 2022 that it was committed to providing at least $5 billion in loans, investments, and other financings by 2027, to support companies “that are working to decarbonize the energy and infrastructure industries and hasten the transition to a sustainable, net zero emissions economy.”

    Marcus blamed the Biden administration for pushing banks and companies into being “more concerned about global warming” than shareholder returns.

    “These banks are badly run because everybody is focused on diversity and all of the woke issues and not concentrating on the one thing they should, which is shareholder returns,” he said.

    “Instead of protecting the shareholders and their employees, they are more concerned about the social policies. And I think it’s probably a badly run bank.

    “They’ve been there for a lot of years. It’s pathetic that so many people lost money that won’t get it back.”

    Responses

    Several California lawmakers have shared their concerns about the bank’s failure on Twitter.

    “If regulators do not act quickly, the Silicon Valley Bank collapse will have widespread ramifications for small businesses, start-ups, and nonprofits trying to make payroll–as well as on our broader economy,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote.

    Padilla added that he had been in contact with officials from the administration and the Treasury Department to ensure a quick resolution.

    “Deeply troubled by SVB’s collapse & uncertainty it’s caused. I’m hearing from workers in my district concerned when they’ll be paid & if they’ll be laid off,” Rep. Josh Harder (D-Calif.) wrote. “Regulators must give urgent clarity to depositors to prevent panic. Vigorous action is needed to protect account holders.”

    Republican presidential hopefuls—Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy—both said on Twitter that a bailout is not the resolution.

    “Taxpayers should absolutely not bail out Silicon Valley Bank,” Haley wrote.

    “Private investors can purchase the bank and its assets. It is not the responsibility of the American taxpayer to step in.”

    The former South Carolina governor added, “The era of big government and corporate bailouts must end.”

    “The right answer isn’t a bailout. It’s to get the government out of the way and let another bank acquire SVB if that’s what they actually want to do,” Ramaswamy wrote.

    Ramaswamy, a biotechnology entrepreneur, is the author of “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/12/2023 – 19:15

  • "It's Too Dangerous": Texas Officials Issue Travel Warning After Latest Mexico Kidnappings
    “It’s Too Dangerous”: Texas Officials Issue Travel Warning After Latest Mexico Kidnappings

    Officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) has warned Americans against travel in Mexico after three Texans have gone missing.

    “We have a duty to inform the public about safety, travel risks, and threats. Based on the volatile nature of cartel activity and the violence we are seeing there; we are urging individuals to avoid travel to Mexico at this time,” said DPS Director Steven McCraw.

    Lt. Chris Olivarez reiterated the warning, and advised Spring Breakers in particular to avoid Mexico.

    “It is too dangerous with the increase in violence and kidnappings that are taking place in Mexico. So very important and I can’t stress enough to those who are thinking about traveling to Mexico, especially for Spring breakers,” he told Fox News.

    The three kidnapped women are Maritza Trinidad Perez Rios, 47, Marina Perez Rios, 48, and Dora Alicia Cervantes Saenz, 53, who went missing during a Feb. 24 trip to a flea market in the city of Montemorelos in Nuevo Leon State – located around three hours from the border by car, Nuevo Leon Attorney General Office said. They were traveling in a green mid-1990s Chevy Silverado.

    the city of Montemorelos in Nuevo Leon State, Nuevo Leon Attorney General Office said.

    One of the missing women’s husbands spoke with her via phone during the trip, but grew concerned after not being able to reach her afterward. 

    “Since he couldn’t make contact over that weekend, he came in that Monday and reported it to us,” said Penitas Police Chief Roel Bermea, who added that their families have been in contact with Mexican authorities who are investigating the case.

    On Friday the FBI said it was aware of the missing persons case – two sisters and a friend, who have gone missing.

    The kidnapping is the second this month to make headlines, after four Americans were kidnapped and two of them killed weeks ago during a trip to the border town of Matamoros, near Brownsville, Texas.

    The four were traveling on March 3 so that one of the survivors, Latavia “Tay” McGee, could have cosmetic surgery. At approximately Noon they were fired upon in downtown Matamoros and then loaded into a pickup truck. Another friend who remained in Brownsville called the police after not being able to reach the group.

    Six people were arrested in connection to the incident, according to Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barrios Mojica, who confirmed the arrests of five suspects. The sixth was subsequently arrested and linked to the kidnappings and murders.

    In response, the Scorpions faction of the Gulf cartel handed over the five members who were arrested, along with an apology letter o the locals, a Mexican national who died in the crossfire, and the four American women and their families.

    “We have decided to turn over those who were directly involved and responsible in the events, who at all times acted under their own decision-making and lack of discipline,” reads the letter.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/12/2023 – 18:45

  • India Takes A Leading Role In De-Dollarization
    India Takes A Leading Role In De-Dollarization

    Authored by Andrew Korybko via The Automatic Earth blog,

    Reuters reported on Wednesday that “India’s Oil Deals With Russia Dent Decades-Old Dollar Dominance”, which informed their audience that the growing trend of those two using national or third-party currencies like the UAE’s is something significant for everyone to pay attention to. To that outlet’s credit, it also reminded readers that IMF Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath foresaw in the month after Russia’s special operation began that the West’s sanctions “could erode the dollar’s dominance”.

    Lo and behold, that’s precisely what happened, with India of all countries accelerating de-dollarization through its non-dollar-denominated energy deals with Russia. About them, Russia has since become India’s largest supplier over the past year and now provides a whopping 35% of that country’s needs, which is also the world’s third-largest oil importer and fifth-largest economy. Their new energy ties, and particularly the growing de-dollarization dimension of their deals, are thus globally important.

    None of what was just described is driven by any anti-American animus on India’s part since everything is purely motivated by the pursuit of that country’s objective national interests. Delhi had no choice but to gradually diversify away from dollar-denominated energy deals with Moscow due to Washington’s illegal sanctions. Its multipolar leadership wasn’t going to let the world’s most populous country slip into an economic crisis just to please the US by eschewing the import of discounted oil from Russia.

    By defying American pressure upon it to unilaterally concede on those aforementioned objective national interests, India’s economy ended up growing at twice the pace of China’s, which contributed to catapulting that country to the forefront of the global systemic transition to multipolarity. Amidst the impending trifurcation of International Relations, India is now poised to de facto lead the Global South in helping fellow developing countries balance between the Golden Billion and the Sino-Russo Entente.

    Had India complied with the US’ illegal sanctions, then the New York Times wouldn’t have recently admitted that those restrictions failed just like the West’s efforts to “isolate” Russia did as well. It was largely due to that South Asian Great Power’s truly independent grand strategy that this latest phase of the New Cold War didn’t decisively end in the Golden Billion’s victory over Russia and the restoration of unipolarity, which would have been detrimental to India and every other developing country’s interests.

    India therefore changed the course of history by remaining committed to the pursuit of its objective national interests, which to remind everyone, aren’t driven by any desire to harm the interests of third parties like the US. Its leading role in de-dollarization via its increasing number of non-dollar-denominated energy deals with Russia is also reshaping the global financial system by reducing that currency’s prior dominance and thus leading to a more multipolar state of affairs for everyone.

    Even the US itself seems to have finally accepted that it can’t reverse this trend, which is evidenced by former Indian Ambassador to Russia Kanwal Sibal recently telling TASS that “Lately, the discourse from Washington has changed and India is no longer being asked to stop buying oil from Russia. In a recent visit to India, the US Treasury Secretary actually said that India can buy discounted oil from Russia as much as it wants so long as western tankers and insurance companies are not used.”

    Nevertheless, radical liberal–globalist ideologues like Color Revolution mastermind George Soros are still desperately clinging to the dream of restoring the US’ rapidly declining unipolar hegemony, hence why he de facto declared Hybrid War against India during the Munich Security Conference last month. It remains unclear whether he and his network have enough support in the Western Establishment to advance that regime change agenda, but his threat is still worrisome and should be taken seriously.

    Reuters’ latest report about India’s role in accelerating de-dollarization might fuel interest among likeminded “Western Exceptionalists” in supporting his de facto Hybrid War against that country so observers should closely monitor related developments in order to assess whether this happens. In any case, those who sincerely support multipolarity should loudly applaud India for its indispensable role in comprehensively facilitating this process, especially its financial dimension as described in this analysis.

    *  *  *

    Support the Automatic Earth via Patreon.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/12/2023 – 18:15

  • Visualizing The Drive To A Fully Autonomous Car
    Visualizing The Drive To A Fully Autonomous Car

    Until quite recently, the autonomous car was the stuff of science fiction. More hype than happening some time soon.

    But, as Visual Capitalist’s Chris Dickert and Miranda Smith detail below, with automakers spending billions to develop the technology – $75 billion by one count – the race is on to be the first to launch a fully self-driving vehicle.

    This visualization from Global X ETFs, takes a look at the drive for a fully autonomous car.

    From the Flintstones to the Jetsons

    What does it mean to say that a car is autonomous? Does a human driver need to be ready to take over? Can it drive on its own all or just some of the time? And do driving conditions need to be ideal or can it handle the odd thunderstorm?

    Fortunately, SAE International, the global standards and engineering association, has come up with the creatively-named “Taxonomy and Definitions for Terms Related to On-Road Motor Vehicle Automated Driving Systems,” or SAE JS3016 for short.

    The Six Levels of Driving Automation

    The system has six levels of automation and spans a yawning gulf of features. Level zero is analogous to Fred Flintstone’s foot-powered, stone age car, while level five is something like George Jetson’s futuristic, bubble-blowing flying saucer.

    Level 0: No Driving Automation

    The driver is in full control and there is no automation technology. It may include support or alert systems such as stability control and blind-spot warning. Most cars on the road today are level zero.

    Level 1: Driver Assistance

    The driver is supported by one support system, like adaptive cruise control or lane-following assistance, but needs to be ready to take control at any time.

    Level 2: Partial Driving Automation

    The driver still needs to be alert and supervise at all times, but the vehicle can take over multiple functions like braking, acceleration, and steering, using Advanced Driving Assistance Systems (ADAS). The Tesla Autopilot feature is generally understood to fall under level two.

    Level 3: Conditional Driving Automation

    After this point you are not considered to be driving, even if you’re seated in the driver’s seat. Using artificial intelligence (AI), the vehicle handles all driving tasks. A driver still needs to be present in case of an emergency or system failure. Honda’s Traffic Jam Pilot and Mercedes-Benz’s Drive Pilot are the only ones to hit this milestone.

    Level 4: High Driving Automation

    This is where you lose the steering wheel and pedals. A level four vehicle is completely autonomous, but is limited by speed or to a certain geographic area. In the event of a system failure or emergency, the vehicle can slow down, pull over, and stop on its own. A driverless taxi or public transport would be a likely application at this level.

    Level 5: Full Driving Automation

    This is the Holy Grail of automated vehicles. At this level, humans are completely superfluous and need only set the destination and sit back and enjoy the ride. The vehicle can drive in any situation, in all conditions, and is not limited to a particular location or speed.

    So When Can I Watch Netflix While Driving?

    Probably not anytime soon, if figures from California’s Department of Motor Vehicles are any indication.

    The Pacific state is home to a host of autonomous vehicle manufacturers, many based in Silicon Valley, all eager to test their technology on public roadways. As a result, the DMV has developed regulations for testing self-driving cars, both with and without a driver.

    Part of the rules require that manufacturers file annual reports about their activities. According to these, at the end of 2021, 26 companies testing 1,174 autonomous vehicles (with a driver) logged over 4 million miles on California roads. By way of comparison, four companies logged only 25,000 miles using driverless vehicles.

    If you take the miles covered as a proxy for how far the technology has progressed, testing on systems that still require a driver—so level 3 at best—is miles ahead of driverless systems, or level 4 and up.

    Hey Siri, Which Way Next?

    In addition to being a really tough engineering problem, autonomous cars also raise tricky ethical questions.

    Part of the difficulty has been trying to get a machine to make the same choices as human drivers would. What if the brakes fail and the AI has to make a split-second decision? Does it swerve to avoid a pedestrian and into a telephone pole, maybe killing the passenger, or keep driving?

    Problems such as these are often covered in philosophy under the Trolley Problem, which features a runaway trolley and a switch. Throw the switch and save a life, but maybe take another?

    Tackling this problem, which can get a bit absurd at times, is a good way to discover the “right” answer to ethical questions. Autonomous car manufacturers are going to have to have an answer in any autonomous future.

    Invest in the Future of Road Transport

    With autonomous car technology advancing at leaps and bounds, there are plenty of opportunities to invest in the companies working to make it a reality.

    Learn more about the Global X Autonomous & Electric Vehicles ETF (DRIV), which provides exposure to companies involved in the development of autonomous vehicles, EVs, and EV components and materials.

    You can also learn how experiential technologies like AI are driving change in road transport in Charting Disruption, a joint report by Global X ETFs and the Wall Street Journal (also available as a downloadable PDF).

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/12/2023 – 17:45

  • Silicon Valley Bank Followed Exactly What Regulation Recommended
    Silicon Valley Bank Followed Exactly What Regulation Recommended

    Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

    The second largest collapse of a bank in recent history could have been prevented. Now, the impact is too large, and the contagion risk is difficult to measure.

    The demise of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is a classic bank run driven by a liquidity event, but the important lesson for everyone is that the enormity of the unrealized losses and financial hole in the bank’s accounts would have not existed if it were not for ultra-loose monetary policy.

    Let us explain why.

    As of December 31, 2022, Silicon Valley Bank had approximately $209.0 billion in total assets and about $175.4 billion in total deposits, according to their public accounts. Their top shareholders are Vanguard Group (11.3%), BlackRock (8.1%), StateStreet (5.2%) and the Swedish pension fund Alecta (4.5%).

    The incredible growth and success of SVB could not have happened without negative rates, ultra-loose monetary policy, and the tech bubble that burst in 2022. Furthermore, the bank’s liquidity event could not have happened without the regulatory and monetary policy incentives to accumulate sovereign debt and mortgage-backed securities.

    The asset base of Silicon SVB read like the clearest example of the old mantra: “Don’t fight the Fed”.

    SVB made one big mistake: Follow exactly the incentives created by loose monetary policy and regulation.

    What happened in 2021? Massive success that, unfortunately, was also the first step to its demise. The bank’s deposits nearly doubled with the tech boom. Everyone wanted a piece of the unstoppable new tech paradigm. SVB’s assets also rose and almost doubled.

    The bank’s assets rose in value. More than 40% were long-dated Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities (MBS). The rest were seemingly world-conquering new tech and venture capital investments.

    Most of those “low risk” bonds and securities were held to maturity. They were following the mainstream rulebook: Low-risk assets to balance the risk in venture capital investments.

    When the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, they must have been shocked.

    The entire asset base of SVB was one single bet: Low rates and quantitative easing for longer.

    Tech valuations soared in the period of loose monetary policy and the best way to hedge that risk was with Treasuries and MBS. Why would they bet on anything else? This is what the Fed was buying in billions every month, these were the lowest risk assets according to all regulations and, according to the Fed and all mainstream economists, inflation was purely “transitory”, a base-effect anecdote. What could go wrong?

    Inflation was not transitory and easy money was not endless.

    Rate hikes happened. And they caught the bank suffering massive losses everywhere. Goodbye bonds and MBS price. Goodbye tech “new paradigm” valuations. And hello panic. A good old bank run, despite the strong recovery of the SVB shares in January. Mark-to-market unrealized losses of $15 billion were almost 100% of the market capitalization of the bank. Wipe out.

    As the famous episode of South Park said: “…Aaaaand it’s gone”. SVB showed how quickly the capital of a bank can dissolve in front of our eyes.

    The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) will step in, but it is not enough because only 3% of the deposits of SVB were less than $250,000. According to Time Magazine, more than 85% of Silicon Valley’s Bank’s deposits were not insured.

    It is worse. One third of U.S. deposits are in small banks and around half are uninsured, according to Bloomberg.

    Depositors at SVB will likely lose most of their money and this will also create significant uncertainty in other entities.

    SVB was the poster boy of banking management by the book.

    They followed a conservative policy of adding the safest assets -long-dated Treasury bills- as deposits soared.

    SVB did exactly what those that blamed the 2008 crisis on “de-regulation” recommended.

    SVB was a boring and conservative bank that invested the rising deposits in sovereign bonds and mortgage-backed securities and believed that inflation was transitory as everyone except us, the crazy minority, repeated.

    SVB did nothing but follow regulation and monetary policy incentives and Keynesian economists’ recommendations point by point.

    SVB was the epitome of mainstream economic thinking. And mainstream killed the tech star.

    Many will now blame greed, capitalism and lack of regulation but guess what?

    More regulation would have done nothing because regulation and policy incentivize adding these “low risk” assets. Furthermore, regulation and monetary policy are directly responsible for the tech bubble. The increasingly elevated valuations of non-profitable tech and the allegedly unstoppable flow of capital to fund innovation and green investments would never have happened without negative real rates, and massive liquidity injections. In the case of SVB, its phenomenal growth in 2021 is a direct consequence of the insane monetary policy implemented in 2020, when the major central banks increased their balance sheet to $20 trillion as if nothing would happen.

    SVB is a casualty of the narrative that money printing does not cause inflation and can continue forever.

    They embraced it wholeheartedly, and now they are gone.

    SVB invested in the entire bubble of everything: Sovereign bonds, MBS and tech. Did they do it because they were stupid or reckless? No. They did it because they perceived that there was exceptionally low to no risk in those assets. No bank accumulates risk in an asset they believe has considerable risk. The only way in which a bank accumulates risk is if they perceive that there is none. Why do they perceive it? Because the government, regulators, central bank, and the experts tell them so. Who will be next?

    Many will blame everything except the perverse incentives and bubbles created by monetary policy and regulation and will demand rate cuts and quantitative easing to solve the problem.

    It will only worsen. You do not solve the consequences of a bubble with more bubbles.

    The demise of Silicon Valley Bank highlights the enormity of the problem of risk accumulation by political design. SVB did not collapse due to reckless management, but because they did exactly what Keynesians and monetary interventionists wanted them to do.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/12/2023 – 17:15

  • Vinyl Sales Eclipse CDs For First Time Since 1987
    Vinyl Sales Eclipse CDs For First Time Since 1987

    According to a new report by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), vinyl records have experienced a resurgence in popularity, with sales outpacing those of CDs for the first time since 1987.

    RIAA’s report, published on Thursday, stated that in terms of physical units sold in 2022, records surpassed CDs with a total of 41.3 million sales, while CDs had 33.4 million sales. The industry group said vinyl sales had experienced sixteen consecutive years of growth. 

    The vinyl boom is back for several reasons. During the pandemic, when concert venues were forced to shut down, some artists and their labels released music on vinyl to enhance the fan experience without them having to leave the house and offered a new untapped income stream for artists and labels. 

    “I think that it was something that labels saw as a ‘We can do this to generate some income [during the pandemic],'” Lyndsey Havens, a senior editor at Billboard, told Gizmodo recently. 

    “That’s why you see a lot of live albums that were rereleased on vinyl or pressed on vinyl for the first time. It’s just a really good way to generate some extra income and then I think fans were responding well to that and now they’re demanding it from their favorite artists,” Havens said. 

    Last year, revenue generated from vinyl records increased by 17%, exceeding $1.2 billion. This growth was especially significant during the pandemic. RIAA said that vinyl contributed to 71% of physical format revenue. 

    Meanwhile, RIAA said CD revenue fell 18% last year to $483 million. As we had previously noted in 2019, it was expected that sales of records would surpass those of CDs. 

    A Substack article by Ted Gioia said, “if it wasn’t for Taylor Swift, the vinyl market would have actually declined in 2022. This one artist did more to support vinyl sales than the much-hyped “Record Store Days.””

    Gioia noted, “Half of the vinyl buyers don’t own a record player. They apparently bought the Taylor Swift album as a kind of memorabilia—something a little nicer than a band T-shirt.” 

    Gioia warned of a hype cycle in record sales.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/12/2023 – 16:45

  • Tchir: 'I Like Mid Banks, I Cannot Lie'
    Tchir: ‘I Like Mid Banks, I Cannot Lie’

    Authored by Peter Tchir via Academy Securities,

    As I put pen to paper (or fingers to keypad), I can’t help but wonder if this is the hill that I want to die on?

    There is so much uncertainty surrounding the banking developments last week. The only things that I know for certain are that SIVB ended the previous week at $284.39 and was halted before market open on Friday at $105.95 (and is supposedly much lower since). SI, not to be confused with SIVB, closed on February 28 at $13.91 and closed on March 10 at $2.53. That is what we know for certain. We also know that KRE, a $2.13 billion market cap S&P Regional Banking ETF, saw daily trading volume spike from an average of 8.7 million sharesto 97 million shares on Friday. In addition, its market cap dropped 16% last week (let’s call this the “mid bank” index). XLF, a “big financial” ETF, fell 8.5% last week on volume that “only” tripled, but it is exposed to financials other than “big banks”.

    The prudent thing is to run away and wait for clarity. That is especially true when there is so much misinformation and even “FUD” (the term crypto people like to use when they disagree with someone’s negative crypto view) that it is almost imperative to stay away from this topic. However, I keep thinking of the phrase “The Lord Hates a Coward”, so let’s dive right in.

    The Disruptive Economy

    Before looking to the banks and the banking system, I feel it is absolutely necessary to highlight our focus on the “Disruptive Economy”. We believe that it played a large role in not just markets, but the broader economy for the past several years. We’ve used a “broad” definition of disruptive that encompassed some big tech, but also (and far more importantly) the entirety of public and private companies and their investors. In addition, we included crypto and crypto related businesses in that mix. That has led to several important conclusions (or at least thoughts) on our side:

    • The economy and inflation were far more influenced by the disruptive economy than traditional economists acknowledged. See the Rise & Fall of Inflation Factors or the Circular Error in Disruption section from our 2023 Outlook. If the events of the past few weeks don’t have a circularity to them, I don’t know what does.

    • The Disruptive Portfolio and the attitude of many disruptive investors seemed very different from that of “traditional” investors. We are seeing some of that play out here, not just within the institutions, but within their customer bases as well.

    • Finally, as we’ve written, discussed, and even said on national TV, our best comparison is that this is like energy in 2015/2016, but the theme of “disruption” is at the epicenter of this problem! In 2015, the closer you were to energy, the more likely you were to get burned (pun intended). Not just by owning the companies themselves, but by owning companies serving those energy businesses (and the overall regions). This includes the local banks! I continue to believe that the closer you are to “disruption”, the chances are higher for further downside (even more than a year later). As you move away from that “epicenter”, the problems are smaller and might not even be felt.

      • There is one encouraging thing that I cannot resist mentioning given this line of thinking. A certain high yield ETF dropped 20% from the middle of 2014 to its low on February 11, 2016 (mostly due to energy and commodity exposure). About a month later, as the tide was already turning, a HY ETF that excluded energy companies was announced. Maybe we haven’t hit rock bottom in this particular episode, but the contrarian in me is attracted to mid banks after the events of this past week.

    Now that we’ve set the table with that recap of our views on disruption, we can move on to another table setting section.

    Not My First Rodeo

    I’ve been on both sides of highly controversial issues. I’m not always bullish, and if anything, I am more often than not bearish. It’s my nature, which is probably why I liked trading credit derivatives on junk bonds and indices.

    • I hated the CPDO product (Constant Proportion Default Obligations). It took leverage on something that was BBB and made it AAA. Yes, this is where you put leverage on something and received a better rating compared to owning it outright. Seemed nonsensical, and it was, but the “math” worked. However, the math had a major “flaw” in that it ignored how many companies might see spreads widen dramatically, then lose their IG rating, and not be put back into the relevant indices when (if) they recovered. We proved that portfolios constructed in the past (2000s) would have triggered this product (circa 2006 or so). The product was so wildly profitable. You got to charge people to leverage something that was BBB (and already profitable) and had a customer base of AAA only buyers. Anyways, on a painful call to the big boss’s office I was told to stop fighting something that I was so “obviously” wrong about.

    • Roadmap to IG 200 (and the accompanying IG 200 hats). It was controversial, not quite right (only got to 198), and then I overstayed my welcome when I faded the post “JPM saving Bear” rally in CDS far too early (which has also left scars).

    • Could a VIX ETF Go Poof in a Day? I once worked with a reporter who was so passionate about a story that he fought the editors and detractors until he got the piece published. That made the follow-on piece One Did Go Poof so sweet!

    I’ve also been comfortable taking the bull case. In fact, saying “buy Jefferies” in response to Steph Ruhle’s question (back when she was still on Bloomberg TV) created quite a soundbite for my independent research company. It actually turned out to be quite right (despite all the poorly thoughtout comparisons to MF Global).

    More recently, at Academy, we championed credit by touting 2019 as the Year of the Debt Diet, having published a piece questioning the punishment that GE credit spreads were taking just a month or two before that.

    Writing that GE piece feels eerily similar to what I’m about to embark on today. I can only hope that the results are as timely and as poignant. I’ve gotten plenty of things wrong, otherwise I’d be writing these missives from some exotic private island, but let’s do this and see where we come out!

    Bank Runs!

    I hate even writing those two words! It seems incredibly flammable. Like shouting fire in a crowded theater. I’m not even sure who I keep checking for over my shoulder when I write or say “bank runs”. Is it compliance? Is it the regulators? I don’t know, but this is a term that I rarely use because I think that it is shocking and dangerous, but I couldn’t figure out a better way to start the analysis of what is going on because this phrase is coming up with more frequency.

    Banks are “strange” beasts. In some ways their business model is so simple (take deposits, lend money, and make the spread in between). But not only is that simplistic, it misses the key ingredient, leverage. You cannot take enough deposits and lend them out “one to one” to make a reasonable return.

    VCSH, a 1 to 5-year corporate bond ETF, has a spread of about 110 bps. No one is buying a bank making 1%, so it needs leverage. Maybe the bank could take a lot of duration risk (I don’t know why it would, since banks learned a lot during the S&L crisis). But even with duration risk, banks aren’t an interesting thing without leverage!

    So, we will talk about leverage, at least initially.

    Banks have capital from several different sources at various levels of the capital structure.

    • Equity capital. This is what drives everything. The amount of assets a bank can hold on its books is largely determined by its equity capital (and portfolio quality).

    • Subordinated capital. Not as good as equity capital, but it enables the bank to do more than it could with just regular debt, and it is at a lower cost than raising equity.

    • Debt.

      • Deposits. Deposits are generally the “holy grail” of the bank balance sheet (post Covid banks were turning away deposits, but that was unique). You pay far less interest on funds on deposit than other forms of borrowing. They are typically viewed as “sticky”. People keep money in a bank account for a lot of reasons, probably the least of which is the interest they are earning. People (and companies) do most of their transactions through banks (and credit cards). The bank account is the “home base” of financial activities and thus tends to be more stable than other forms of debt which are more subject to market vagaries.

      • Bonds. At the risk of annoying some of our banking clients, I think one of the “best” things that came out of the GFC (on the regulatory front) was rules to largely enforce longer-dated borrowing. There is a cost to banks (and everyone) to switch to longerdated funding. It is generally far cheaper to borrow overnight than it is for 30 years (though with our current yield curve, that isn’t as obvious today as it normally is). The problem with that is you need to fund yourself every night. Banks could argue that this should be part of their risk decision, but stricter rules were imposed anyway. Since we saw what happened when bank credit quality gets called into question (ability to borrow can dry up quickly), this was a logical way to protect the system. Yes, it is a cost to banks, but I think that it really promoted a new level of “safety” on the funding side. I disagree with much of Dodd Frank and think that the Volcker Rule could only have been written by someone who had never seen a trading floor, let alone stepped onto one. One of the first things that I learned about the bond business was when I asked why almost every high yield bond was a 10 non-call 5. The answer was outrageously simple. “Because investors need to be compensated for at least 5 years of lending to the company in their current state and the company needs a 5-year window where their business is good enough (or the market is strong enough) that they can re-fi”. So, yes, I like less refinancing risk.

    A bank run is when depositors and lenders stop funding the bank, which normally occurs due to credit quality concerns!

    When I think of a bank run, I think of a fear that the bank’s assets are not solid and would incur significant losses (if sold today or those losses would be realized over time as borrowers failed to pay the bank back). Accrual accounting, not held for sale, etc. are accounting provisions used to dampen volatility in asset prices on the bank’s balance sheet. There is a difference between a loan going down in price a bit because of rates (or overall market concern) and the likelihood of that loan getting paid off. During the GFC, it was apparent that massive amounts of mortgage debt were impaired and were never coming back. Again, I think that the regulators have done a very good job with CCAR (Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review). It incorporates many tough scenarios, but what I like most about it is that it is a “random” day, picked after the fact. Bank capital rules were almost exclusively quarterly and annual. There were massive quarter end trades done by banks. There were huge year-end trades done (especially between Asian and North American banks which had different year-ends) and these trades were less sensitive to certain annual measures. CCAR does a lot to capture the risk side of the balance sheet. It is designed so that “we” (collectively) can sleep at night “knowing” that banks are safe and won’t go through another GFC. Some of this may be questioned in light of recent events and disclosures, but I for one suspect that CCAR is serving its purpose, which is one reason why I’m heavily leaning towards this being isolated and not an industrywide issue.

    On a cursory glance and from what I’ve read, there were some issues linked to the performance of “safe” (from a credit perspective) long-duration assets. From what I’ve seen so far, I’m surprised by the duration risk that was being run. I’m a big believer in “match funding” as much as possible. That tends to reduce NIM, but also greatly reduces risks, like the ones we seem to be seeing now. Sure, hindsight is 20/20, but that is something that I strongly believe in at all times.

    Neither Moody’s nor S&P seemed to see much amiss at SIVB (no material rating action for years, until this past week). It seemed like business as usual, at least from a NRSRO (Nationally Recognized Statistical Ratings Organization) perspective.

    I will attempt to demonstrate that this is a unique situation and is linked more to the types of depositors that these banks had than to anything that is reflective of a broad trend across the industry.

    We start with deposits at the SIVB entities versus the entire banking system (note: SIVB deposit data is quarterly and last data point was from the end of 2022). You can see a small uptick in bank deposits during Covid relief (small as a percentage, but large in total dollars). SIVB saw their deposit levels more than triple (from $60 billion in March 2020, to a peak of almost $200 billion).

    This chart highlights three important things:

    1. The deposit growth seems reasonably correlated to value creation in the “disruptive” space (taking the liberty of using ARKK as a representative of that space). It was consistent with the narrative behind this entity.

    2. Deposits, in my opinion, started declining because of the industry that this bank caters to, which had been incredibly successfully for decades, but was now burning cash and had less wealth. The initial phases of deposit decline had everything to do with the depositor base and little to do with their portfolio or any other “traditional” trigger.

    3. It might also provide some insight into the sort of lending opportunities that were available at the time companies/individuals were making deposits (i.e., disruptive firms).

    This chart is “problematic” in some ways as you can see the surge in deposits correspond to a period of time when the 5-year Treasury yield was less than 1%. Since deposit rates in the U.S. stayed positive (with very few exceptions) there was relatively little spread to be earned. Taking in huge deposits at a time when yields were very low can be problematic (and let’s not forget the need to leverage).

    At this point, I have to admit that how they managed their portfolios also seemed to be contributing to the problem.

    These institutions seemed to do two things that are now, in hindsight, problematic.

    • They lent to “disruptive” companies. This is their bread and butter. It is their customer base. It is what made the bank famous. However, I suspect that they had never seen such an influx of money (at a time when valuations were so high and disruptive company growth prospects were unbelievably great). Even with conservative haircuts it may have been difficult to exercise prudence, and without a doubt, other banks and lenders were gunning for their customers! They were the bankers to the “sweet spot” and everyone wanted that business.

    • They seemed to have taken on more duration risk than other banks (I could be wrong here and that would be a flaw in my argument). They were basically increasing in size at a rapid pace in an environment where anything liquid was yielding next to nothing. They were getting money stuffed into deposits at one of the least interesting times for a bank to take deposits (at least in terms of locking in good NIM – Net Interest Margin).

    That has now contributed to their decline as the asset side is being called into question!

    Why I Think Current Cases are “Unique”

    The two banks in question, while different, have some similarities that are unique to them.

    Let’s get down to the theory here”

    • A massive surge (on a percentage basis) in deposits. Bank deposits grew everywhere, but the rate of increase more than tripling in a year is unique. While banks had to absorb new deposits in the wake of Covid and stimulus, these institutions saw disproportionate growth as a percentage (and total amount). Tripling from $1 billion to $3 billion seems like an easier task to manage than going from $60 billion to $180 billion. Relatively unique set of circumstances.

    • A highly correlated customer base. Whether Silicon Valley or crypto juggernauts, the customers turned out to be far more correlated than expected. When almost “everything” crypto/disruptive took off, it behaved as one entity (rather than 100s or 1000s of companies and individuals). Potentially there was some geographic concentration, but it is unusual (and unexpected) for such diverse businesses and individuals to be so correlated on the way up and on the way down. Relatively unique set of circumstances.

    • Portfolio selection.

      • Lending to customers is quite normal in banking, which is ultimately a relationship business. It is why certain banks were more exposed to energy for example. Banks, especially community banks, tend to have exposure to their “community”. Less so for regionals and even more less so for the global money-center banks. Community in this case was more about “what the people or companies did” rather than physical proximity (though that plays in as well since the two go hand in hand). I assume that there is some exposure to local real estate, which has also come under pressure since the deposits piled up. The exposure to disruptive/crypto is likely far higher here than in other banks.

      • Rate risk. The chase for yield was alive and well as the money was flooding into banks. This seems like a good time to bring back “5 Circles of Bond Investor Hell.” There are only a few things you can do when you need yield, one of which is to increase duration, which was apparently done here. Hoping the market cheapens would have worked great, but it rarely does and there is immense pressure not to sit on cash, so I’d be shocked if many had the fortitude to do that. It seems like SIVB may have extended duration. Taking more risk than normal is probably somewhat common across banks, though I’m not sure rate risk would have been the preferred method. I lean towards giving up liquidity (most don’t use it) or increasing structure (my theory on AAA CLOs being more difficult to bust than getting a perfect March Madness bracket).

    5 Circles of Bond Investor Hell

    I see the situation as unique because:

    • They had exceptional growth in a compressed timeframe.

    • Growth occurred during an exceptional dearth of yield.

    • Some of their decisions and the nature of their customer base (to whom they lent) may have set them up with a portfolio that was more exposed than others.

    • Customers started withdrawing because they needed the money (nothing to do with anything SIVB was doing).

    • Those withdrawals triggered selling, which turned positions meant for accrual accounting into realized losses! That combination following a period of explosive growth seemed to be what caught the attention of people.

    • Now something that looks more like a “normal” run starts. Losses get exposed. The balance sheet faces more scrutiny. Some clients may get nervous. The cash burn, which started after March 2022, likely continued into Q1 2023 (the last data point was at the end of 2022). This is where we are now and is why everyone is worried about other banks!

    I am stuck seeing this as far more unique than systemic, hence the recent selling is overdone!

    Some Bad News for All Banks

    The banking sector, even if I’m correct, will not get off scot-free.

    • Interest rates on deposits will probably have to get “competitive” more rapidly than they normally would. People covered by the FDIC limits will care less as there is no credit risk to the institution, but recent focus on higher yields across the board will make many consider keeping enough “working capital” at the bank, while owning money market funds or other higher yielding assets (including Certificates of Deposit at many banks). Personally I think that should be SOP and is how I think about my deposits – and no, I’m not trying to get banks to hate me! Those above the FDIC limits are exposed as senior unsecured creditors if a bank fails. The returns paid to senior unsecured creditors are much better than those paid on deposits, but the services provided by banks (anything from LOCs to simple check cashing and enabling payroll and business activities to function seamlessly) have immense value. I could see some banks increasing their payment rates on deposits which would eat into NIM, but that would be a valuation issue, not a credit issue. Bank P/E multiples being too high already don’t keep me up at night. I suspect little of the NIM gets a great multiple in any case, as investors have been expecting banks to slowly raise the amount they pay on deposits.

    • Closer scrutiny to bank portfolios. People far smarter than me (with better tools at their fingertips) are looking at what exposures banks have on their books. Making that analysis more complex will be the fact that many of the exposures (and certainly all of the hedges) will be in derivative books that I think are opaque at best. I would not want to be in charge of a bank that faces the headline “XYZ loaded up on duration during ZIRP” in the coming days. That is the sort of headline that can trigger people taking out deposits. If I believed a lot of banks really extended duration during ZIRP, I would be scared to death right now about recommending banks, but:

      • Asset growth was not that far above normal for most banks.

      • Private debt, credit risk, and structured risk all seem more natural for banks, all of which have been weathering this market better than sovereign debt (assuming the rate risk is taken out, which it should be in my vision of bank risk management).

    I am fully aware of these two risks, but think that:

    • Most banks are well prepared to deal with both issues and will not face any sort of a run. I am saying this, fully knowing how that “bank run” sentiment can spread like wildfire. You cannot believe how nervous I’ve been writing this report (which is maybe why it is longer than usual) because I do understand how afraid people are and how quickly even a false allegation can trigger negative momentum.

    • Valuations (after the recent shellacking) offer upside in a tricky market environment – both on the equity and credit side of the equation.

    The Non-FDIC Insured Depositors

    I saw a stat that SIVB has only about 3% of its deposits fully covered by the FDIC (very low compared to most banks). Presumably this is a bank for rich individuals and corporations.

    This is the group that is in limbo and I don’t fully understand the next steps.

    If you have $100,000,000 on deposit to meet your obligations, how much of that can you access?

    In theory, as I understand this:

    • The assets of the bank are worth X.

    • The FDIC depositors (and maybe some other senior stuff) are worth Y.

    • Z is the amount of deposits above the FDIC limits and other senior unsecured debt.

    • If X – Y > Z then there is equity value. I’m not sure I’d write that off yet, but that is just me musing about the subject. I don’t have an opinion and am not basing my overall bank recommendation on it, but it seems to have been left for dead rather quickly (even by panic standards).

    • If X – Y < Z then Z will be impaired and not receive 100 cents on the dollar.

      • Lehman claims, which were classified as unsecured debt because they filed before investment banks became banks under emergency GFC policy, settled at about 20% of par (though they ultimately recovered 100% plus accrued). It isn’t completely irrelevant (it wasn’t a bank), but it also gives us the sense of how complex this can be with financial instruments.

    Some things in favor of SIVB’s valuations:

    • It seems that much of their portfolio is liquid, making it easier to monetize and start establishing minimal values (and presumably immediate availability) for the unsecured creditors.

    • Their customer base is still a who’s who of the valley and disruptive space and many other banks and financial service companies will want to establish relationships which will help the valuation and/or any necessary sale of these assets.

    • So far it is isolated. If their situation is unique (as I obviously believe it is) then the market has a large, but digestible set of assets to absorb. If this is just the tip of the iceberg, then we are in some serious trouble as there will be more forced selling and huge pools of fixed income “in for the bid”. During the GFC, almost every bank owned too much of the same thing and needed to sell. Remember AIG FP and their super senior protection on corporate credit? That part of their portfolio never sniffed a loss as corporate credit failure was extremely well contained even in the GFC (however, the mortgage super senior was a mess). Overall, recovery rates tend to be higher during good economic times because there are fewer distressed sellers. So far this is a unique case, and that helps maximize value.

    Understanding how much access to above FDIC limit deposits companies (and individuals) will have by Monday is crucial for the disruptive companies – more so than for other banks! Access (to at least a portion) is necessary for many to function. I fully expect there to be some contingencies allowing some % access, though I could be wrong.

    White Knight Dream?

    I would not be shocked to see a “white knight” investor appear for the entire entity (possibly by Monday) because it makes a lot of the mess regarding the unsecured depositors go away (or at least more manageable).

    In the early stages of the financial crisis, we saw various entities get absorbed with a nod (if not a gentle push) from the regulators, when only months before these transactions would have faced regulatory opposition.

    The “easiest” and least painful way to value the assets might be via an acquisition by one large institution. I see two hurdles/questions facing that “dream”:

    • Will SIVB accept a valuation or will they want to work their way out, quite possibly, attempting to generate cash for equity holders and not just depositors?

    • Will banks, the natural buyer, be worried about their own deposit base too much to attempt an ambitious purchase, even with a nod from the regulators?

    I’m convinced that the Fed learned one massive lesson from the GFC (we saw Europe do a semi-decent job with their own debt crisis) – DON’T LET CONFIDENCE IN THE BANKING SECTOR FAIL!!!!

    Nothing else really matters. Financial institutions can write “living wills” until the cows come home, but if we get to that point, all bets are off.

    If this is isolated (or even if it isn’t), regulators are supposed to be ring-fencing it in because the last thing they need is for “bank run” to become the word of the week. That is hard to walk back, so getting out in front of it is crucial.

    Given how quickly they responded after Covid lockdowns (at warp speed relative to the almost plodding behavior back in 2007 and early 2008), there is hope.

    I bet there will be a lot of green dots on Bloomberg terminals on Sunday night – I remember being there when $2 dollars/share came across as the price for Bear Stearns (and physically tapping my screen with my finger, thinking the 2 was a typo).

    One thing many forget (or don’t know) about the JPM purchase of Bear was that it was accompanied by an immediate and non-contingent guarantee of Bear’s derivative book. Even if the equity deal didn’t consummate, the derivative book was JPM’s. No one ever really explained how that would work, and there wasn’t much (if any) formal guarantee language.

    I Like Mid Banks, I Cannot Lie

    I also like big banks and small banks and am more scared of admitting that than I am of singing the original lyrics from this song – so yes, I’ve dragged myself to this hill and am going to stand my ground on it!

    I did not have bank failure Sundays on my 2023 bingo card (but it does bring back memories)!

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/12/2023 – 16:15

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Mar 12

Today’s News 12th March 2023

  • The 10 Rules Of Propaganda
    The 10 Rules Of Propaganda

    Authored by Brian Maher via DailyReckoning.com,

    Lord Arthur Ponsonby was a British diplomat and politician, dates 1871–1946.

    This keen and cagey fellow pinpointed 10 rules of propaganda.

    They are these:

    1. We don’t want war, we are only defending ourselves.

    2. The other guy is solely responsible for this war.

    3. Our adversary’s leader is evil and looks evil.

    4. We are defending a noble purpose, not special interest.

    5. The enemy is purposefully causing atrocities; we only commit mistakes.

    6. The enemy is using unlawful weapons.

    7. We have very little losses, the enemy is losing big.

    8. Intellectuals and artists support our cause.

    9. Our cause is sacred.

    10. Those who doubt our propaganda are traitors.

    Just Look at the News

    A daily scan of the newswires calls to mind three or more of these propaganda rules. On some days, six or seven. On others still, all 10.

    We refer specifically to the conflict presently arage in the eastern European nation of Ukraine.

    Let us now consider these rules. We will not take up each of them since some rules relate closely to others. We will instead weld these together. To proceed…

    1. We don’t want war, we are only defending ourselves.

    2. The other guy is solely responsible for this war.

    On how many occasions have you read or heard condemnations of Mr. Putin’s “unprovoked” act of aggression?

    To phrase it differently, when has it not been described as unprovoked?

    Yet a man can argue very persuasively that Mr. Putin’s war was indeed provoked.

    The Russian autocrat warned on several occasions that NATO expansion into Ukraine was a “red line.”

    Russia would not abide the NATO dagger pressing against its vitals (parts of Ukraine actually lie east of Moscow).

    Yet the NATO alliance had announced its intentions to incorporate Ukraine — despite Vladimir’s moans and grimaces.

    A de Facto NATO Member

    It is true that no formal offer of membership has come. Yet for years the United States and its NATO allies were arming and training Ukrainian forces.

    Why do you think these Ukrainian forces have performed so excellently?

    Some have in fact referred to Ukraine as a de facto NATO member. It has merely been awaiting the de jure formality of actual membership.

    You may argue that Mr. Putin’s invasion was unjustified. You may argue that it was unnecessary. Your editor himself has maintained these very points.

    Yet you cannot argue that it was unprovoked.

    Putin’s Evil!

    3. Our adversary’s leader is evil and looks evil.

    9. Our cause is sacred.

    Here is a very condensed sample of headlines regarding the blackened state of Mr. Putin’s soul:

    “Vladimir Putin — ‘Evil on the Level of Joseph Stalin’”

    “Yes, Putin Is Evil”

    “Putin Is Evil, Not Mentally Ill, a Psychological Explanation”

    “’Terrifying’ Putin Driven by ‘Evil Forces,’ Says ECB’s Christine Lagarde”

    “How Vladimir Putin Became Evil”

    And is this not the very face of evil?

    The title of the magazine article affixed to this caption bears the title:

    “The Secret Source of Putin’s Evil”

    Now you have the flavor of it. We could continue but mercy forbids it.

    Is Putin Really Evil?

    Yet how do these demonologists know if the man is evil? Have they looked under the hood… and glanced his soul?

    Perhaps the man is psychologically impaired. Perhaps he goes by a different morality. Perhaps he is simply misguided.

    Or perhaps he simply believes his nation is under threat and that his invasion is justified.

    No — not justified — necessary.

    We would not claim that he is an especially congenial fellow. We would not claim that he is “nice.”

    But evil? That we are not prepared to say.

    Yet we are prepared to say — and will say — that for the past year propaganda has enjoyed a very brisk circulation.

    Evil on the level of Joseph Stalin, as the one headline screamed? This is the work of the propagandist.

    No Special Interest?

    4. We are defending a noble purpose, not special interest.

    Defending Ukraine may certainly qualify as a “noble purpose.” We do not contend otherwise.

    Yet there are several arms manufacturers who presently drive an excellent trade.

    They must replace all the armaments that have been dispatched to — and continue to be dispatched to — Ukraine.

    Are they not a special interest?

    Meantime, our spies inform us that a disturbing portion of monies parading under the banner of “Ukrainian aid” has been diverted to the pockets of Ukrainian oligarchs.

    We would sort these oligarchs into the category of  “special interest.”

    “We Don’t Do Those Things”

    5. The enemy is purposefully causing atrocities; we only commit mistakes.

    We are told that Russia’s calendar of sins is endless. These hellcats are shooting projectiles into apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, churches.

    Yet we are likewise told that Russia suffers from an acute ammunition lack. Why would these Russians waste valuable ammunition on these valueless targets?

    Perhaps such targets were struck by accident. It is war and incidents as these are nearly inevitable.

    Perhaps even Ukrainian forces struck some of these structures unintentionally.

    We recall one instance in which a Russian missile struck very near the Polish border, murdering two. As chance would have it the “Russian missile” was an erring Ukrainian air defense missile.

    Perhaps Ukrainian forces fired upon Russian forces from these sites. Russians would be justified to return the fire.

    Reports of Russian massacring of civilians proliferate widely. Yet closer examination reveals that at least some of these claims are of very dubious validity.

    We would be stunned and gobsmacked if atrocities of various sorts have not occurred — perpetrated by both sides.

    It is, after all, war. And war is the very negation of civilization.

    Yet there is little to no evidence that atrocities are official Russian policy.

    That, we hazard to say, is propaganda.

    He’s Using Chemical Weapons!

    6. The enemy is using unlawful weapons.

    “Kyiv Claims Russia Used Banned Chemical Weapon”

    “Russia’s Tear Gas Bombings in Ukraine May Be First Step in Dangerous Chemical Escalation”

    “Ukraine’s Battlefield Is Haunted by Putin’s Chemical Weapons Legacy”

    We assigned our spies the case. They inform us there exists no evidence of Russian chemical weapons use.

    Videos have circulated — however — of Ukrainian soldiers preparing chemical weapons for battlefield use. Other videos circulate of Russian soldiers gagging on these chemical agents.

    We cannot confirm their trueness.

    270,000 Russian Casualties?

    7. We have very little losses, the enemy is losing big.

    Source after source cites claims of unspeakable Russian deaths and woundings. Figures of 270,000 Russian casualties have been proposed.

    Yet the original invasion force consisted only of 190,000 men. Are they all — plus 80,000 others — dead or injured?

    The British Broadcasting Corporation decided to so some spade work. They attempted to discern the true number of Russian fatalities. This they did by poring through death notices, funeral announcements, social media and other venues.

    What did they discover?

    They could only identify the names of 16,071 confirmed Russian fatalities. They concede the possibility that they are undercounting the butcher’s bill by as much as 40%.

    In all, BBC places Russia’s total irretrievable losses (wounded, killed or missing people) at some 144,500.

    These figures nonetheless place the actual casualty roster — both killings and woundings — far below the mainstream telling.

    We are loathe to employ the word “only” when discussing deaths and woundings. It is a morbid affair. Each man is a unique human creature crafted in the image of his creator.

    Yet the BBC’s sleuthing indicates strongly that Russian casualty figures are extravagantly exaggerated.

    It is in keeping to Propaganda Rule no. 7.

    8. Intellectuals and artists support our cause.

    How many intellectuals and artists boast Twitter accounts bearing an image of the Ukrainian flag?

    They are nearly beyond count.

    10. Those who doubt our propaganda are traitors.

    Your patriotic editor has been labeled traitorous on many, many occasions — by readers and colleagues alike.

    The Propaganda War

    Does Russia transmit its own propaganda? We are certain that it does.

    Upon reflection we must amend the prior statement — we suspect strongly that Russia transmits its own propaganda. We cannot be certain.

    That is because none of it is allowed in. It is all censored out by the Western press. They have erected a great cordon walling off Russian propaganda.

    How else does one explain the universal media claims of Ukrainian righteousness and Russian evil? Of Ukrainian brio and Russian incompetence? Of Ukrainian victory and Russian defeat?

    We will merely state that we have been privy to… conflicting… reports.

    Yet we are aware that by posting the 10 Rules of Propaganda… we will be accused of distributing propaganda — Russian propaganda.

    We plead nolo contendere… comrade.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/11/2023 – 23:30

  • Global Air Pollution Ranked By Country
    Global Air Pollution Ranked By Country

    Global air pollution declined by 31% during the initial COVID-19 lockdowns, demonstrating a link between economic activity and air quality.

    As Visual Capitalist’s Jenna Ross details below, this graphic from The Hinrich Foundation, the fourth in a five-part series on the sustainability of trade, explores how air pollution varies by economy. It pulls data from the 2022 Sustainable Trade Index, which The Hinrich Foundation produced in collaboration with the IMD World Competitiveness Center.

    What is Air Pollution?

    In this dataset, air pollution is measured using fine particulate matter known as PM2.5. These particles are less than 2.5 microns in diameter, which is about 28 times smaller than the diameter of human hair. They are made up of things like combustion particles, compounds, and metals.

    Not only does their presence cause the air to become hazy, they also pose the greatest health risk compared with any other pollutant. When they are inhaled into the lungs, they can cause respiratory diseases and even death. In fact, air pollution is one of the world’s leading risk factors for death, and is linked to 12% of deaths globally. 

    A Geographic Breakdown of Pollution

    Air pollution levels have a wide spectrum around the world. Countries with lower GDP per capita tend to have higher pollution because they have less stringent air quality regulations, congested transportation systems, and rapidly developing industrial sectors. They also prioritize basic necessities such as food and shelter. On the other hand, high income economies can afford cleanup technologies such as filters that trap airborne particles. 

    The following table shows how air pollution breaks down for select economies that are covered in the 2022 Sustainable Trade Index. Numbers indicate micrograms of PM2.5 particles per cubic meter, with higher numbers indicating more pollution.

    Rank Economy PM2.5 per Cubic Meter Income Level of Economy
    1 🇳🇿 New Zealand 6 High
    2 🇦🇺 Australia 7 High
    3 🇨🇦 Canada 7 High
    4 🇺🇸 United States 8 High
    5 🇧🇳 Brunei 8 High
    6 🇬🇧 United Kingdom 10 High
    7 🇷🇺 Russia 12 Medium
    8 🇯🇵 Japan 14 High
    9 🇵🇬 Papua New Guinea 16 Low
    10 🇹🇼 Taiwan 16 High
    11 🇲🇾 Malaysia 17 Medium
    12 🇵🇭 Philippines 19 Medium
    13 🇭🇰 Hong Kong 19 High
    14 🇸🇬 Singapore 19 High
    15 🇮🇩 Indonesia 20 Medium
    16 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka 20 Medium
    17 🇲🇽 Mexico 20 Medium
    18 🇻🇳 Vietnam 20 Medium
    19 🇪🇨 Ecuador 21 Medium
    20 🇱🇦 Laos 21 Low
    21 🇰🇭 Cambodia 22 Low
    22 🇨🇱 Chile 24 Medium
    23 🇹🇭 Thailand 27 Medium
    24 🇰🇷 South Korea 27 High
    25 🇲🇲 Myanmar 30 Low
    26 🇵🇪 Peru 31 Medium
    27 🇨🇳 China 48 Medium
    28 🇧🇩 Bangladesh 64 Low
    29 🇵🇰 Pakistan 64 Low
    30 🇮🇳 India 83 Low

    India has the most polluted air of the economies in the Sustainable Trade Index. As a developing country with a large population, there are multiple contributing factors. For instance, agricultural burning, biomass combustion for cooking, and vehicle emissions all worsen the problem. The country is also the second-largest consumer of coal, and lacks tight emission standards on industries such as metal smelters and oil refineries.

    The Philippines has low air pollution relative to its GDP per capita. This could be because 34% of its energy comes from renewable sources. Notably, the Philippines has the third-highest geothermal power capacity in the world. However, the country still faces considerable pollution issues, primarily due to vehicle emissions.

    Want more insights into trade sustainability?

    Download the 2022 Sustainable Trade Index for free.

    New Zealand has the least polluted air of the economies in the index. Its good air quality is thanks in part to its low population density and island geography. The country is also impacted by large scale wind patterns which promote westerly winds and aid in pollutant dispersion. In order to further reduce pollutants, New Zealand is requiring vehicles to meet stricter emission standards.

    Economic Activity and Air Pollution

    Air pollution has severe consequences for the environment and human health. It is worsened by aggressive industrialization and some commercial activities. In fact, it’s estimated that industry accounts for 12% of PM2.5 particles globally. Industrial dust, energy production, and transportation are also significant contributors.

    Of course, air pollution is just one variable that can help determine an economy’s trade sustainability. The Sustainable Trade Index uses a number of other metrics to measure economies’ ability to trade in a way that balances economic growth, societal development, and environmental protection. To learn more, visit the STI landing page where you can download the report for free.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/11/2023 – 23:00

  • Code Red: Downplaying Academic Excellence In Med School Admissions
    Code Red: Downplaying Academic Excellence In Med School Admissions

    Authored by Charles Lipson via RealClearPolitics.com,

    America’s top medical schools, worried they have too few minority students, are doing something about it.

    They are lowering academic standards for admission and trying to hide the evidence.

    Columbia, Harvard, the University of Chicago, Stanford, Mount Sinai, and the University of Pennsylvania have already done so. The list already tops forty, and more are sure to follow.

    Of course, the universities won’t admit what they are doing – and certainly not why. All they will say is that their new standards add “equity” and “lived experience.”

    Unfortunately, adding those factors inevitably lessens the weight given to others.

    The harsh reality is medical schools are downplaying academic achievement and MCAT scores, which give the best evidence of how well students are prepared for medical school. The MCAT is specifically tailored for that purpose. In addition to a section on critical reasoning (similar to the SATs), it examines students on biology and biochemistry, organic chemistry, the physics of living systems, and the biological and psychological foundations of behavior. It’s easy to see how those relate directly to higher education in medical science. Yet med schools want to downplay them and add inherently subjective criteria like “lived experience.”

    Med schools are especially eager to get rid of the MCATs. After years of evaluating admissions folders, they know they cannot meet their goals for minority enrollment if they retain their near-total emphasis on academic qualifications. They know, too, that standardized tests and grades leave a statistical trail. They want to kick dust over that trail before the Supreme Court’s expected ruling against affirmative action. They fear the statistics will show marked differences in admission rates for individuals from different groups who have similar scores and GPAs. That’s not a wild guess. Admission teams know the evidence from years of experience.

    But dropping the tests, or making them optional, presents a thorny PR problem. Schools fear they would sink below competitors in national rankings, which include MCAT scores. So, they are doing what undergraduate colleges have already done. They are colluding. By withdrawing jointly from US News and World Report rankings, they hope to soften the blow to each one’s prestige. (It’s an interesting question whether this collusion violates anti-trust laws, as their collusion about scholarship awards did.)

    What medical schools call “equity” and “lived experience” are code words for discrimination by racial category. They are using this word fog to cloud over four crucial but uncomfortable facts.

    • First, today’s standardized tests are actually fair and unbiased. Medical schools don’t deny that. They know test makers have spent fortunes over the past half century to scrub their tests of any racial, cultural, or ethnic bias.

    • Second, medical schools aren’t claiming the tests are poor predictors of performance. They can’t.

    • Third, they know criteria like “equity” and “lived experience” are inherently subjective and opaque to outsiders. That’s their magic potion for admissions officers. These education bureaucrats are following the advice Humpty Dumpty gave in “Alice in Wonderland.” Alice asks him, “Must a name mean something?” And Humpty replies, “It means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” Humpty Dumpty would be enthralled with code words like “lived experience” and “equity.” They mean exactly what Humpty and admissions officers choose them to mean – neither more nor less.

    • Finally, by emphasizing non-academic “experience,” these schools are downplaying the reality that their applicants have already graduated college, most likely as science majors. That academic background is the most important “lived experience” for graduate study in any rigorous field, including medicine.

    To implement the bias they prefer and do it secretly, medical schools are counting on public ignorance and apathy. When patients believe any subgroup of doctors has systematically higher or lower qualifications, they will take that into account. They do the same thing in choosing lawyers, dentists, accountants, and other professionals.

    That may be unfair to any individual practitioner, but it’s inevitable. That’s because ordinary patients (or consumers) have no direct way of judging professional competence. They can only look for indirect (and imperfect) signs of a good doctor. Did she go to a top medical school, for instance, or practice at a teaching hospital? If they think it is harder for an outstanding Chinese-American undergraduate to gain admittance, they will reasonably guess she’s a better student and a more-qualified doctor. They may be wrong about that particular doctor, but it’s a sensible guess.

    There’s a general ­– and inescapable – point here. When admissions, hiring, or promotion are influenced, either positively or negatively, because of group membership, when outsiders know that and cannot measure quality directly, they will see that “group membership” as a telltale sign of ability.

    Are There Any Remedies?

    When issues are as divisive as admissions bias and racial discrimination, it’s wise to begin with shared values. America needs lots of well-qualified doctors, and getting more from underrepresented groups is a worthy goal. Getting more African American doctors is especially important, both because of our country’s scarred racial history and because younger students need role models from all groups.

    At the same time, these would-be physicians should be admitted and trained without any racial, religious, or ethnic bias, without hiding evidence of discrimination, and without using subterfuge to evade the law or public scrutiny.

    Nor should medical schools ever require their applicants, as many do, to submit statements saying they adhere to a leftist vision of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and will implement it as part of their medical education. That’s ideological bullying, and it has no place in education at any level. It should end immediately.

    So should racial bias in admissions. There’s a good way to guard against it. No matter how heavily medical schools choose to rely on MCAT scores, they should require them of all applicants. The schools should be required to retain these scores for all applicants, whether they are admitted or rejected, along with all other relevant data about each applicant (after hiding each individual’s name for privacy). Those mandates will leave a clear statistical trail if legal challenges arise later.

    Congress could easily pass such a law for schools that receive federal money. It won’t, not as long as Democrats control the Senate and the White House. Neither will like-minded federal bureaucracies. But the roadblocks in Washington shouldn’t prevent state legislatures from undertaking these actions for universities they fund. They can require all applicants to submit MCATs and grades, and they can require universities to retain them.

    State legislatures shouldn’t stop there. They should pass similar laws for undergraduate admissions and for all graduate and professional programs, such as law schools, which are moving swiftly to make these tests optional for the same reasons medical schools are dropping them. Again, these mandates would not tell schools how much weight to give test scores or grades. But requiring their submission and retention would leave a clear statistical record, which rejected applicants could use if they believe they faced discrimination. That looming threat would have a bracing effect on university officials.

    Second, medical schools should work hard to increase the number of strong minority applicants. One possibility is to launch intensive, one-year programs in the biosciences, aimed at promising college graduates from underrepresented groups (making sure they are consistent with anti-discrimination laws). Students in these enriched programs would be in a far better position to apply successfully to medical schools on a level playing field. Programs like this already exist for college graduates in the humanities and social sciences who later decide to pursue medical careers.

    These intensive programs could offer either certificates or degrees (BA or MA), depending on their length and academic level. Some graduates would go on to medical school. Others would be qualified to begin professional positions in the biomedical sciences.

    The fundamental problem here is reconciling three laudable goals: increasing the number of minority medical students, keeping academic standards high, and avoiding illegal discrimination.

    It’s time to launch intensive programs that make the effort instead of watering down academic standards and pretending no one will notice.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/11/2023 – 22:30

  • How Should Pro-Abortion Activists Respond To State Restrictions? Jane Fonda Says 'Murder'
    How Should Pro-Abortion Activists Respond To State Restrictions? Jane Fonda Says ‘Murder’

    Good old Hanoi Jane is at it again.  The pro-communist activist is famous not simply for her anti-war stance (which could be argued as justifiable), but also for actively propagandizing for the North Vietnamese.  Not only that, but she has a rather vicious history of calling for the deaths of people she disagrees with.  Part of her activism in Vietnam included her arguments that American POWs held by the VC be tried and executed for war crimes:

    Fast forward decades later and Jane Fonda hasn’t changed; her provocateur methods continue, probably because she has never faced consequences.  While the far-leftist position of The View is no secret, even the regular members of the show had to pull Fonda back from the brink after a discussion on state laws blocking abortion, in which she was asked what could be done other than protest…

    She responded: “Well, murder…” 

    Was it a joke? 

    Fonda later apologized for the remarks saying they were made ‘in jest’ and that she was ‘using hyperbole to make a point.’ 

    But what was the point? 

    What is more likely is that Fonda said the quiet part out loud, the part which leftist activists often discuss on social media but rarely on mainstream television.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/11/2023 – 22:00

  • LA Times Blames White Drivers For Polluting The Air Breathed By 'People Of Color'
    LA Times Blames White Drivers For Polluting The Air Breathed By ‘People Of Color’

    Authored by Rajan Laad via AmericanThinker.com,

    A few days back writer Sammy Roth wrote a piece in the LA Times about a new form of racism in LA.

    Roth cited a study from the University of Southern California that states the following:

    “Decades of racially-motivated freeway infrastructure planning and residential segregation shape today’s disparities in who produces vehicular air pollution and who is exposed to it, but opportunities exist for urban planning and transport policy to mitigate this injustice.

    “[LA residents] who drive more tend to be exposed to less air pollution — and Angelenos who drive less tend to be exposed to more pollution.

    “It’s a function of the racism that shaped this city and its suburbs, and continues to influence our daily lives — and a stark reminder of the need for climate solutions that benefit everyone.” 

    The study is titled ‘Local Inequities in the Relative Production of and exposure to Vehicular Air Pollution in Los Angeles’ – and was authored by Professor Geoff Boeing.

    Roth revealed that Boeing told him, “…it largely comes down to the shameful history of Los Angeles County’s low-income communities of color being torn apart to make way for freeways — a history that has been extensively documented by The Times”

    “Today, many residents of the county’s whiter, more affluent neighborhoods — who were often able to keep highways out of their own backyards — commute to work through lower-income Black and Latino neighborhoods bisected by the 10, 110, and 105 freeways and more.”

    The solutions prescribed range from banning gasoline vehicles, obviously, and allowing more apartment construction in wealthier neighborhoods.

    The study faced backlash on social media, particularly Twitter, which is free from the tyranny of the left…

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

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

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

    There are many questions that deserved to be asked.

    Firstly, how on earth does a professor, who is supposed to be an individual of accomplishment and considerable education think of dedicating time to such futile pursuits?

    Secondly, how does a study such as this get approval and funding from higher authorities?

    There are a few possibilities here.

    The first is that the professor, the LA Times, and those who approved and funded the study really believe that climate change will end the planet and that eliminating gasoline vehicles is the only solution. Perhaps they also believe in claims of racially-motivated freeway infrastructure planning.

    The second possibility is that proponents know that such claims are music to the ears of the members of the echo chamber of the left. They probably hope that the ludicrous claims would help their careers and the University financially. They probably realize that their gravely misleading assertion would trigger a backlash which enabled him to claim victimhood, which again helps their cause.

    The third possibility is that electric car manufacturers or anyone who stands to gain from the green energy sector have either funded the study or donated generously to the university. The professor was informed about the conclusion he had to arrive at, he merely worked his way backward to develop these preposterous claims of racist freeways and infrastructure.

    They may get lucky, perhaps Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is struggling with myriad catastrophes in Transportation, will use the article to virtue signal or push initiatives to clean up his image.

    Beyond this specific study, this is demonstrable proof of how far academic institutions and their faculty have drifted from their original purpose of enlightening young minds. Their sole purpose now seems to be to divide people into groups where minorities are the victims, and the majority are the perpetrators. 

    When young minds are influenced, the results are devastating.

    Instead of triggering healthy debates and discussions, the young are perpetually ‘triggered’ by everything from a red cap with a white letter that isn’t a MAGA hat but looks like one to the text in Roald Dahl’s books for children.

    Instead of applying their energies to innovate, they are perennially focused on trivialities such as gender types and pronouns.

    Instead of striving for excellence, they strive to find new reasons to be offended in order to prove their moral superiority.

    Instead of looking at the world with a healthy amount of skepticism but an open mind, they look at every event from the perspective of racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia.

    Instead of challenging themselves by being subjected to different perspectives, they prefer safe spaces and echo chambers. 

    Soon all growth comes to a permanent end.

    Once upon a time, inventors developed innovations that were beneficial to mankind such as the steam engine, the light bulb, the airplane, etc.

    These days all that is invented is new kinds of theoretical categories of pronouns, sexuality, gender, and hashtags. 

    What is worst is that the proponents of these ideas are not necessarily true believers; they do it because they know it avails them of lucrative opportunities in the ecosystem.

    What they do not realize or probably do not care about is that this trivialization of bigotry makes a mockery of the darkest emotions that humans have. 

    These beliefs of bigotry have been the driving force for genocide and systemic persecution of humans merely for being different. Every brutal dictator from Hitler to Stalin was driven by these foul emotions. Bigotry needs to be confronted and overcome by education.

    But when everything is branded racist, nothing really is

    Once upon a time when one read about a racist attack, it caused instant revulsion which lasted for ages. Alas, the left has propagated so many racist hoaxes that even the real incidences motivated by racism will no longer be believed. Perhaps people look at the racism of the past and wonder if they too were overstatements by partisan historians.

    That the only way to end racism is to look beyond race and treat people based on merit. 

    Discriminating against or blaming Caucasians will not resolve issues; it will create further division. It is deeply unfair because Caucasians who live in current times have nothing to do with racism in the past. Even the grand and great-grandchildren of racists are not responsible for the sins of their forefathers and do not deserve to be punished. 

    There is no such notion as collective guilt or guilt due to genetic association. Individuals are responsible for their actions only.

    It is said that to destroy a nation, you strike at its foundation i.e. educational institutions. 

    When educational institutions choose indoctrination over education, that ruins young and impressionable minds, it doesn’t take time for the nation to come tumbling down

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/11/2023 – 21:30

  • Democrats Refuse To Address The Contents Of The Twitter Files – Attack The Messengers Instead
    Democrats Refuse To Address The Contents Of The Twitter Files – Attack The Messengers Instead

    There are some that say not much was learned or gained from the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government this past week as politicians sparred over the meaning of the release of the Twitter Files.  Democrats in particular seemed adamant that they would not discuss the actual contents of the files or their implications.  Their apparent goal?  To disrupt exploration of the information and to attack the messengers.

    There might not have been many new revelations coming from the subcommittee, but what the public did learn was that the political left is extremely hostile to facts, evidence and the truth.  If you didn’t already know that by now, the hearing with Matt Taibbi made it abundantly clear.  

    Leftist members of the committee proceeded into a tirade when Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger were called to testify on their participation in the publishing of the files, attacking everything from their credentials to their intentions, and even demanding they reveal information on their private sources.  Here is the real information the Dems did not want to talk about:

    It is well known that Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger and Elon Musk have long been liberal leaning in their politics, yet the accusations from Democrats asserted some form of conspiracy between Musk, Taibbi and Republicans, with some members even insinuating an effort to “undermine democracy.”  What right did they have to take this position?

    They claim that Musk and Taibbi are hiding data that shows Trump and Republicans were making requests to censor Twitter users as well.  In other words, they assert there is a “conspiracy” to protect Republicans while denouncing Democrats.

    But what are the facts here?

    Taibbi has said on numerous occasions that there were requests from Republicans as well as Democrat officials for accounts to be censored or blocked.  He never hid this from anyone.  This argument is a cover, a distraction from two separate issues:

    First, the government should NEVER be involved in censorship requests of the public for any reason.  It doesn’t matter which party is making the requests, and a criminal investigation should be pursued for any officials involved in legitimate 1st Amendment violations.  

    Second, who did Twitter actually censor?  Which requests did they actually honor?  The vast majority of accounts censored by the previous Twitter management were conservative accounts, conservative news sources and posts with content that ran contrary to Democrat narratives.  Republicans like Trump might have made requests, but how many people were actually blocked on Twitter in response?

    Democrats complain about the Twitter Files being weighted in favor of the political right wing, but maybe that is because most of the requests for censorship came from the DNC and Biden controlled agencies, and most of the people censored were conservatives.  It’s weighted against Democrats because they more commonly use censorship as a weapon.

    A stunning 99% of online political contributions made by Twitter employees in 2021 went to Democrats, according to Federal Election Commission data.  Are we really supposed to believe that Twitter has been acting for the benefit of both parties, or just one?  

    The M.O. of the political left for the past several years now has been cancel culture attacks to silence their opponents and shut down dissent.  Major social media companies are by far more progressive in their affiliations than conservative, and have been a key tool for leftists in targeting and removing contrary speech.  No one on the left talks about being shut down by conservatives, it is always the reverse.  

    The social dynamic in the US has been completely out of balance for many years, with corporations and government agencies widely backing the most extreme segments of the far-left.  This is where they get their power.  They certainly don’t get power from being the majority, woke activists are a tiny portion of the overall population and one that is widely despised.  They have been feared in the past only because corporations and the government back them.  The Twitter Files prove this collusion in detail.  

    Even moderate liberals like Musk or Taibbi are being run through the gauntlet of character assassination these days because they dared to oppose certain aspects of the far-left agenda.  But the bottom line is this – Only the political left and some Neo-Cons within the GOP have displayed open disdain for the dissemination of the truth.  We saw this with the Biden Laptop story.  We saw this with covid facts that were inconvenient to the establishment narrative.  And, we saw this recently with Tucker Carlson’s release of suppressed J6 footage.  

    The average conservative and liberty minded independent sees sunlight as the best disinfectant, while establishment elitists and woke activists view open discussion and debate of information as a “dangerous” frivolity.  We believe that the truth is arrived at through discourse.  They believe that the truth is what they say it is.

    The Twitter Files have torn open the veil obscuring big government and big tech collusion and this makes certain people very nervous and very angry.  Take note of who those people are.  Who is enraged?  Who is hostile to the exposure of government censorship?  Those are the real villains that need to face scrutiny, not the messengers passing the information along.  

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/11/2023 – 21:00

  • US Winged Smart Bombs Are Now Operational In Ukraine
    US Winged Smart Bombs Are Now Operational In Ukraine

    Authored by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute,

    The Department of Defense confirmed this week that advanced bombs are operational in Ukraine. The Joint Direct Attack Munition-Extended Range (JDAM-ER) can hit targets 50 miles away. The Pentagon’s confirmation comes after President Joe Biden ordered the Pentagon to transfer “precision aerial munitions” to Kiev in December.

    On Monday, U.S. Air Force Gen. James Hecker, head of US Air Forces in Europe,  told reporters that the JDAM-ER was operational in Ukraine. “Recently, we’ve just gotten some precision munitions [to Ukraine] that had some extended range and go a little bit further than the gravity drop bomb and has precision [guidance],” Hecker said. 

    The Joint Direct Attack Munition-Extended Range (JDAM-ER) precision bomb. Image source: Boeing

    That’s a recent capability that we were able to give them probably in the last three weeks,” Gen. Hecker added.

    JDAMs are primarily used to increase the accuracy of bombs. The official did not specify how many or what variation of JDAMs would be sent. The JDAM-ER can be equipped onto 2,000 or 500 pound bombs and will deliver the munition up to 45 miles. JDAMs are compatible with some Western-made fighter jets and drones. 

    According to a description in The Drive: 

    Standard JDAM kits are designed to be mated to various types of Mk 80-series dumb bombs, and other munitions designed around that same form factor, transforming them into precision-guided weapons. The complete JDAM kit consists of a new tail, which contains a GPS-assisted inertial navigation system (INS) guidance system, and strakes that go elsewhere along the bomb body giving it a limited ability to glide to its designated target.

    Officially, Kiev does not possess any aircraft that can drop precision munitions. Biden said he has “for now” ruled out sending American-made aircraft. However, the UK is training Ukrainian pilots on Western-made fighter jets.

    Ukrainian pilots are in the US this week to determine how much training the airmen will need to become proficient on American planes. 

    Additionally, JDAMs have been tested on Quickstrike underwater mines. The Quickstrike bombs are dropped by aircraft in shallow waters and can sit on the seabed for some time before being activated. If Ukraine is utilizing JDAMs on Quickstike mines, it’s still unclear what aircraft Kiev is using in the operations.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/11/2023 – 20:30

  • The Censored Generation
    The Censored Generation

    Authored by Thomas Buckley via The Mises Institute,

    Incredulity. Astonishment. Disgust. Anger.

    It is these feelings—amongst others—that describe the general reaction to the revelations of the Twitter Files and other egregious episodes of Big Tech censorship of the electronic public square.

    The implicit deal with companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc. is very simple: we will look at your ads if you give us a service for free. The deal did not include censorship.

    But what is society to expect when those doing the censorship seem to see absolutely nothing wrong with it, and that it didn’t even occur to them that what they were engaged in—often at the specific request of governmental agencies—was at all a problem?

    For a generation that has grown up with speech codes, enforced nicety, automatic deference to the feelings of others, and has been swaddled in bubble wrap against the vagaries of life, censoring of speech is not only not an ethical leap, it is the right thing to do.

    Couple that with a permanent, purposeful self-infantilization that makes them defer to (or incoherently rage at for NOT censoring speech) anyone they perceive to be a grown-up—such as former FBI bigwig James Baker at Twitter—and the stage is not only set, but the terrifying end of the play writes itself.

    This generation is not necessarily Y, or X, or millennial—it’s a bit of a mix of those aged from about sixteen to about thirty-six, numbers that will, sadly, most likely become lower and lower on the low end and higher and higher on the high end as time marches on.

    It is a subcohort (I thought it best to learn their language) of people who have much in common—first, they have come from the now de rigueur smaller families, hence they do not have the thick skin and personal combat skills that one acquires when one has siblings.

    They have usually grown up relatively comfortably and are uncomfortable with confrontation. They went to the right schools, but they do not understand how other people can think differently. They are overcredentialed but actually vastly undereducated. They feel twinges of guilt when the grocery store delivers but are absolutely certain that a twenty-five-minute trip to the store is a waste of their valuable time.

    While there are many, many examples, two events stand out as exemplar moments for the censored generation. First, this rather well-known incident from Yale University in which a college student is angrily demanding to be treated like a child, and this chilling tale of a professor struggling to deal with the “best and the brightest” demanding to be lectured to rather than participate in a thoughtful seminar.

    Professor Vincent Lloyd, director of black studies at Villanova University, writes:

    Like others on the left, I had been dismissive of criticisms of the current discourse on race in the United States. But now my thoughts turned to that moment in the 1970s when leftist organizations imploded, the need to match and raise the militancy of one’s comrades leading to a toxic culture filled with dogmatism and disillusion. How did this happen to a group of bright-eyed high school students?

    This remembrance of things past, as it were, should not be viewed as garden variety “Get off my lawn!” generational angst. This is not, when complaining about Elvis Presley’s hips, purposefully failing to remember exactly how much underwear was visible at a 1940s swing dance.

    These two examples starkly show that a sea change has occurred in just the past ten or fifteen years. It is simply unimaginable that students prior would have demanded more boundaries, more restrictions, more lectures, more being told what to think, and, especially, more being told how to think.

    It literally has never happened before.

    This, to quote Alan Furst’s book The Foreign Correspondent, “doctrinal agony over symbols” has always existed, but it only flourished in insular monomaniacal environments, like the cloisters of a medieval monastery or a dingy backroom full of bickering Bolsheviks. Now, these ultimately meaningless disputes capture much of the globe’s attention and involve a race to the bottom of dogma, to a purity purgatory which, thanks to the speed of social media, has engulfed us all.

    The past has seen its share of equivalent events and trends, but the speed at which “facts” and thoughts and concepts move on the internet essentially destroys the usual “predators” of bad ideas—nuance, history, research, reason, time to reflect, reliable sourcing, and proper context. This has allowed people to simply ignore or dismiss anything they think may contravene their own ideations and the ideations of whatever happens to be ascendent that particular day. It is this permanent state of flux, intentionally unmoored from the evil past and its expectations, that allows the unthinkable to not only be thought but to be acted upon.

    And because this is the only world—a world in nonchalant destruction—the censored generation has ever known, it is only natural that they are so terrified of saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, straying too far from the dictate of the day that they cannot grasp the enormity of their actions.

    The astonishment of North Korea defector Yeomani Park as she has wound her way through Columbia University—“I realized, wow, this is insane. I thought America was different but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying.”—is a warning that should be heeded but has not. It is the ultimate outsider noticing what others cannot or will not, and it is disturbing to the core. Or at least it would be if it were not so dejectedly unsurprising.

    This abandonment by putative progressives of the most cherished progressive position—all can speak, all can be heard, and you can decide to listen or not—is beginning to wear thin on even the older left-of-centers. Joyce Carol Oates touched off a Twitter storm—of course, sigh—when she savaged the recent announcement of the posthumous reediting of the work of Roald Dahl by sensitivity readers hired by the publishing house.

    For his part, Richard Dawkins—again, not a card-carrying conservative—said recently when asked about proposed elimination of the use of words like “man” or “woman” from scientific papers, “I am not going to be told by some teenage version of Mrs. Grundy which words of my native language I may or may not use.”

    But it will take more than shame for the censored generation to understand its own aggressive emptiness. It is not until the system that created them, credentialed them, and now employs them changes itself that they will be able to see themselves differently, as discrete individuals capable of freedom of thought and capable of allowing others that same basic right.

    And those systems—educational, governmental, financial, social, cultural—have no reason to change.

    For now.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/11/2023 – 19:30

  • City Of Newark Humiliated In 'Sister City' Scam
    City Of Newark Humiliated In ‘Sister City’ Scam

    The city of Newark, New Jersey fell victim to a humiliating scam in which its mayor signed a “sister city” agreement with a nonexistent Hindu nation called “The United States of Kailasa.” 

    Newark city officials celebrate the signing of their international agreement with the nonexistent “United States of Kailasa” (Photo: United States of Kailasa)

    Kailasa exists only as an elaborate website created by a fugitive who’s been on the lam from Indian authorities since 2019 after being charged with rape, reports CBS New York. However, in a January 12 ceremony, Mayor Ras Baraka signed a cultural and trade deal with the contrived country.

    “Whose job was it to do a simple Google search?” asked Newark resident Shakee Merritt. “No one in City Hall, not one person did a Google search.”

    On its website, Kailasa portrays Newark as having committed the entire United States of America to a “bilateral agreement.” Newark officials say no money exchanged hands, and the deal with the fictional polity has been rescinded — just in case Kailasa tried to enforce it. 

    Kailasa reportedly springs from the imagination of Swami Nithyananda, an accused scam artist and sex fiend. Nithyananda, who portrays himself as a “God-Man,” is wanted in India for “child abduction and sexual assault, forcing children to collect donations [for] fake enterprises, and sexual assaults against an Indian actress and an American woman,” according to Tap Into Newark.

    Swami Nithyananda, an fugitive from rape charges and an alleged scam artist, is the man behind the United States of Kailasa (CBS New York)

    It seems Newark isn’t the only American entity that’s been enticed into intercourse with Kailasa. In addition to photos from the Newark ceremony, Kailasa’s website also includes various honorific proclamations from dozens of cities, including Winston-Salem, Dayton, Canton, Richmond and Asheville.  

    The site also includes a purported California Senate proclamation recognizing “The Sovereign State of Shrikailasa” and Nithyananda as the Supreme Pontiff of Hinduism.  

    India’s ABP News Bureau said the incident sheds unflattering light on American governments: 

    “The Newark stunt illustrates how easy it is for groups to manipulate municipal and state bodies, and take advantage of their lack of international sophistication to unwittingly make them appear to confer legitimacy on their causes, even when they are at odds with official US positions.”

    In a statement acknowledging it had been hoodwinked, Newark City Hall reiterated its dedication to fostering foreign relations: “Although this was a regrettable incident, the city of Newark remains committed to partnering with people from diverse cultures in order to enrich each other with connectivity, support, and mutual respect.”

    A banner in Newark City Hall welcomed dignitaries of the fictional state of Kailasa (Photo: United States of Kailasa)

    It’s not clear where Kailasa is supposed to be located. The BBC has said it’s purportedly on an island near Ecuador, though that country’s government says Nithyananda doesn’t live there, according to Tap Into Newark‘s Tony Gallotto.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/11/2023 – 19:00

  • Russia Uses Ship-To-Ship Transfers To Boost Diesel Exports To Saudi Arabia
    Russia Uses Ship-To-Ship Transfers To Boost Diesel Exports To Saudi Arabia

    Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

    Russia is accelerating its exports of diesel to Saudi Arabia by both direct shipments and ship-to-ship transfers, Reuters reported on Friday, quoting trade sources and shipping data from Refinitiv.

    Using STS loadings, Russia is shortening the routes for tankers headed to Africa and Asia after Moscow is now banned from exporting fuels to the EU.

    Two cargoes of diesel loaded in the Primorsk port on the Baltic Sea in Russia have been transferred on another tanker heading to Saudi Arabia’s port of Ras Tanura, per shipping data from Refinitiv cited by Reuters. The data also showed that another cargo loaded from the Black Sea port of Tuapse used ship-to-ship loading to another tanker that had already discharged the fuel at the Jizan port in Saudi Arabia. Both STS loadings took place near the Greek port of Kalamata, according to Refinitiv’s data.  

    Russia started exporting diesel to Saudi Arabia—its ally in the OPEC+ group—in February, after Moscow’s key fuel export outlet, the EU, enacted an embargo on seaborne imports of Russian oil products on February 5, Reuters reported earlier this week, quoting traders and ship-tracking data.

    According to traders who spoke to Reuters, the Saudis could export part of the Russian diesel to other countries after some refining.

    Ahead of the EU ban on Russian petroleum products, Russia began to divert its oil product cargoes to North Africa and Asia, while Europe ramps up imports of diesel from the Middle East and Asia to offset the loss of Russian barrels, of which it imported around 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) before the February 5 embargo took effect.

    According to JP Morgan, Russian fuel exports could slip by 300,000 bpd as a result of the EU embargo, but the bank added that Russia could maintain its production of crude oil at pre-war levels. But it would be harder for Russia to return to pre-pandemic levels of crude production, JP Morgan added.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/11/2023 – 18:30

  • 'Big Booty Latina' AOC Sued By Comedian She Blocked Over Catcall
    ‘Big Booty Latina’ AOC Sued By Comedian She Blocked Over Catcall

    Alex Stein, a political provocateur who called Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez his “favorite big booty Latina,” is suing AOC for blocking him on Twitter.

    “She wants to kill babies but she’s still beautiful. You look very beautiful in that dress. You look very sexy. Look at that booty on AOC,” he said last July amid a national debate over abortion.

    “Look how sexy she looks in that dress. Oooh, I love it AOC. Hot, hot, hot like a tamale,” Stein continued.

    Despite flashing a peace sign, she claimed that she was “actually walking over to deck him.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsStein’s lawsuit cites a decision by a federal appeals court which ruled that then-President Donald Trump violated the constitutional rights of several people after he blocked them on Twitter. Days after the Trump ruling, AOC apologized to and settled a case brought by former Brooklyn assemblyman Dov Hikind, who sued her for blocking him, CNBC reports. AOC eventually lifted the block, and admitted that he “has a First Amendment right to express his views and should not be blocked for them.”

    Stein seeks the same response.

    “I really don’t have any hard feelings for AOC,” he said, adding “I really would like to have her unblock me.”

    If the congresswoman fights the complaint, it would reopen the legal argument about the rights of political figures to prevent certain individuals or groups from following them on social media platforms.

    In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court erased the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that Trump had violated the First Amendment rights of the people he had blocked from his Twitter account while serving in the White House. The Supreme Court ordered the appeals court to dismiss the case as moot, because Trump by then was a private citizen. -CNBC

    Stein’s suit claims AOC blocked him “in retaliation to Mr. Stein’s exercise of his First Amendment right, because earlier that day Mr. Stein, in the context of political commentary and satire, complimented Ms. Cortez.”

    “Mr. Stein has a constitutional right to access Ms. Cortez’s Twitter account as part of vigorous public comment and criticism,” the filing continues. “Ms. Cortez’s practice of blocking Twitter users she disagrees with is unconstitutional and this suit seeks to redress that wrong.“

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/11/2023 – 18:00

  • Proud Boys J6 Sedition Trial Halted After Leaked Chat Logs Show FBI Agent Said Her Boss Ordered Her To "Destroy Evidence"
    Proud Boys J6 Sedition Trial Halted After Leaked Chat Logs Show FBI Agent Said Her Boss Ordered Her To “Destroy Evidence”

    Authored by Chris Menahan via Information Liberation,

    The feds’ political persecution of the Proud Boys took a wild turn after unintentionally leaked chat logs from FBI Special Agent Nicole Miller revealed she said she was ordered by her boss to “destroy” “338 items of evidence.”

    The leaked chats also suggest Miller failed to reveal relevant communications to the defense, potentially spied on privileged attorney-client communications and was asked by another agent to “edit out that I was present” during a meeting with a Confidential Human Source Informant.

    The shocking revelations were shared in a filing by Proud Boy Ethan Nordean’s (aka Rufio Panman) defense team on Thursday:

    The feds are now claiming some of the leaked messages are “likely classified” in what appears to be a bid to hide this bombshell evidence from the jury. 

    From Politico, “‘Spill’ of classified info derails Proud Boys trial”:

    As part of her testimony, prosecutors shared with defense lawyers a set of internal FBI messages that [FBI Special Agent Nicole Miller] had sent and received from colleagues related to the case — a standard production of evidence in criminal cases. To compile those exchanges, FBI headquarters sent Miller a spreadsheet of her messages — culled from a computer network classified at the “secret” level. Miller then reviewed the messages and filtered them to ensure only relevant, unclassified exchanges were included.

    Miller sent her final list to prosecutors, who then packaged the messages into an Excel spreadsheet that they provided to defense lawyers. But unbeknownst to them, the messages Miller initially filtered out — including some that DOJ officials say are likely classified — were left in the final document as “hidden” rows in the Excel spreadsheet. Defense counsel stumbled upon them and began grilling Miller about them in front of jurors in the case.

    But unbeknownst to them, the messages Miller initially filtered out — including some that DOJ officials say are likely classified — were left in the final document as “hidden” rows in the Excel spreadsheet. Defense counsel stumbled upon them and began grilling Miller about them in front of jurors in the case.

    Overnight, Justice Department attorneys told the defense team they were concerned there had been a “spill” of classified information in the hidden messages they accessed. And on Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Tim Kelly paused the trial — already in its third month — to determine how to handle the error.

    It’s the latest hiccup in a seditious conspiracy trial that has been marked by excruciating delays and extended legal disputes. Prosecutors say Proud Boys chair Enrique Tarrio and four leaders of the group schemed to prevent the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. The group, according to the Justice Department, split into teams that helped engineer the breach of police lines and, ultimately, the building itself, when one of the defendants, Dominic Pezzola, smashed a Senate-wing window with a stolen riot shield.

    Assistant U.S. Attorney Jocelyn Ballantine, who is supervising the case for the Justice Department, acknowledged the likely “spill” of classified information Thursday morning. She raised particular concerns about a message sent to Miller by another agent who works on covert activity — and who she said did not work on the Proud Boys case — describing a supervisor’s order to “destroy 338 items of evidence.”

    “That could impact a classified equity,” Ballantine said.

    Defense lawyers cried foul, though, noting that the government’s claims of “classified” material arrived just as the defense sounded the alarm about the content of some of the inadvertently disclosed messages. While Miller testified Wednesday she had produced about “25 rows” of messages, defense lawyers said there were thousands of rows of hidden messages that included contents they contended were directly relevant to their case.

    Some of the messages appeared to reveal that FBI agents accessed contacts between defendant Zachary Rehl and his attorney, which led Miller to tell a colleague she thought Rehl would take his case to trial. In another message, an FBI agent tells Miller, “You need to go into that CHS report you just put and edit out that I was present.” After defense attorneys began to press Miller about the attorney-client messages on Wednesday afternoon, prosecutors objected, and Kelly halted the trial to permit the parties to debate the matter.

    This case was a fraud from the very beginning and it’s an absolute disgrace that it wasn’t thrown out.

    You can see in the leaked texts above the FBI agents questioned whether they could make out a valid “conspiracy and not make a fool of ourselves.”

    Though they have made fools out of themselves, whether that even matters in this DC kangaroo court still remains to be seen.

    In a just country, corrupt Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray would be the ones on trial for their seditious conspiracy against the January 6th defendants and the American people as a whole.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/11/2023 – 17:30

  • Entire US Congress Votes To Declassify COVID-19 Origins Intel
    Entire US Congress Votes To Declassify COVID-19 Origins Intel

    100% of lawmakers in the House on Friday voted to pass a bill requiring the Biden administration to declassify intelligence related to investigations into the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China and Covid-19.

    The Covid Origins Act of 2023, sponsored by Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Mike Braun (R-IN), passed by a vote of 410 to 0, after clearing the Senate by unanimous consent last week.

    “Covid-19 pandemic wreaked havoc across the country with almost every household feeling its effects. The United States death toll from this virus has surpassed one million people. Although concrete data is hard to lock down, millions of people are suffering from the long-term effects directly attributed to this virus. It is becoming increasingly clear that school-aged children face hurdles because of long-term school closures. The American people need to know all the aspects, including how this virus was created and specifically, whether it was a natural occurrence of the result of a lab-related event,” said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) in a floor speech.

    Next stop, President Biden’s desk.

    And while Biden has officially said he hasn’t “made that decision yet” over whether to sign it into law and release the intelligence, we can’t imagine he won’t, lest he defy the entirety of Congress.

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

    So, what will we get? Probably what’s already known; that the FBI and the Energy Department believe with ‘moderate’ and ‘low’ confidence respectively that Covid-19 likely arose from a laboratory leak – while four other agencies and a national intelligence panel continue to believe that the pandemic was likely the result of zoonotic spillover.

    Will the disclosure point to door #1 – that Dr. Anthony Fauci offshored previously-banned Gain-of-Function bat covid research in a scientific collaboration on Chinese soil where it escaped (intentionally or otherwise)?

    Or door #2 – that bats from a cave 450 miles away with a strain of Covid 96.8% similar to Covid-19 infected an intermediary species, of which either (or both) emerged with Covid-19 at a Wuhan wet market across town from the aforementioned Fauci-funded lab where they were infecting ‘humanized’ mice with Covid strains? A relatively rare occurrence according to the WIV in 2018.

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

    Or Door #3, that China went rogue, stole Peter Daszak’s crazy plans (which DARPA turned down), and started going bat-covid crazy?

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

    What we do know is that there were ‘humanized’ mice being bred in China in mid-2019, long before the outbreak in Wuhan. As Vanity Fair noted almost two years ago – a May 2020 Chinese research paper describing mice which had lung tissue that approximated a human’s (via National Review):

    Using the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR, the researchers had engineered mice with humanized lungs, then studied their susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2. As the NSC officials worked backward from the date of publication to establish a timeline for the study, it became clear that the mice had been engineered sometime in the summer of 2019, before the pandemic even started. The NSC officials were left wondering: Had the Chinese military been running viruses through humanized mouse models, to see which might be infectious to humans?

    And as journalist Josh Rogin wrote in Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the 21st Century (again, via National Review):

    After consultations with experts, some U.S. officials came to believe that this Beijing lab was likely conducting coronavirus experiments on mice fitted with ACE2 receptors well before the coronavirus outbreak — research they hadn’t disclosed and continued to not admit to. That, by itself, did not help to explain how SARS-CoV-2 originated. But it did make clear to U.S. officials that there was a lot of risky coronavirus experiments going on in Chinese labs that the rest of the world was simply not aware of. “This was just a peek under a curtain of an entire galaxy of activity, including labs in Beijing and Wuhan playing around with coronaviruses in ACE2 mice in unsafe labs,” the senior administration official said. “It suggests we’re getting a peek at a body of activity that isn’t understood in the West or even has precedent here.”

    And how much of that was done with knowledge, funding or collaboration from entities outside of China?

    China contacted Hawley’s office on Wednesday to object to the bill, telling him that its only purpose is to “politicize and stigmatize China.”

    “The move by the U.S. Congress just shows that the U.S. is going further and further down the wrong path of political manipulation. The so-called traceability report by the U.S. intelligence agency is an attempt to ‘presume guilt’ on China. It is an attempt to shift the blame from its own failure to fight the epidemic to China,” wrote government attorney Li Xiang.

    Does Congress ever do things unanimously?

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

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/11/2023 – 17:00

  • "Dear Conservatives, I Apologize…"
    “Dear Conservatives, I Apologize…”

    Authored by Dr. Naomi Wolf via ‘Outspoken’ Substack,

    My “Team” was Taken in By Full-Spectrum Propaganda…

    There is no way to avoid this moment. The formal letter of apology. From me. To Conservatives and to those who “put America first” everywhere.

    It’s tempting to sweep this confrontation with my own gullibility under the rug — to “move on” without ever acknowledging that I was duped, and that as a result I made mistakes in judgement, and that these mistakes, multiplied by the tens of thousands and millions on the part of people just like me, hurt millions of other people like you all, in existential ways.

    But that erasure of personal and public history would be wrong.

    I owe you a full-throated apology.

    I believed a farrago of lies. And, as a result of these lies, and my credulity — and the credulity of people similarly situated to me – many conservatives’ reputations are being tarnished, on false bases.

    The proximate cause of this letter of apology is the airing, two nights ago, of excepts from tens of thousands of hours of security camera footage from the United States Capitol taken on Jan 6, 2021. The footage was released by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson [https://www.axios.com/2023/03/08/mccarthy-defends-jan-6-footage-tucker-…].

    While “fact-checkers” state that it is “misinformation” to claim that Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi was in charge of Capitol Police on that day [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/07/27/fact-check-nancy-pelosi-isnt-in-charge-capitol-police/8082088002/], the fact is that the USCP is under the oversight of Congress, according to — the United States Capitol Police: [https://www.uscp.gov/the-department/oversight].

    This would be the same Congress that convened the January 6 Committee subsequently, and that used millions of dollars in taxpayer money to turn that horrible day, and that tragic event, into a message point that would be used to tar a former President as a would-be terrorist, and to smear all Republicans, by association, as “insurrectionists,” or as insurrectionists’ sympathizers and fellow-travelers.

    There is no way to unsee Officer Brian Sicknick, claimed by some Democrats in leadership and by most of the legacy media to have been killed by rioters at the Capitol that day, alive in at least one section of the newly released video. The USCP medical examiner states that this Officer died of “natural causes,” but also that he died “in the line of duty.” Whatever the truth of this confusing conclusion, and with all respect for and condolences to Officer Sicknick’s family, the circumstances of his death do matter to the public, as without his death having been caused by the events of Jan 6, the breach of the capitol, serious though it was, cannot be described as a “deadly insurrection.” [https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/medical-examiner-finds-uscp-officer-brian-sicknick-died-natural-causes] Sadly, though the contrary was what was reported, Officer Sicknick died two days after Jan 6, from suffering two strokes. https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-siege/capitol-police-officer-brian-sicknick-died-of-natural-causes-after-suffering-two-strokes-day-after-jan-6-report/

    There is no way for anyone thoughtful, even if he or she is a lifelong Democrat, not to notice that Sen Chuck Schumer did not say to the world that the footage that Mr Carlson aired was not real. Rather, he warned that it was “shameful” for Fox to allow us to see it. The Guardian characterized Mr Carlson’s and Fox News’ sin, weirdly, as “Over-Use” of Jan 6 footage. Isn’t the press supposed to want full transparency for all public interest events? [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2023/mar/07/biden-medicare-taxes-desantis-trump-2024-live-updates] How can you “over-use” real footage of events of national relevance?

    Sen Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Senate minority leader, did not say the video on Fox News was fake or doctored. He said, rather, that it was “a mistake” to depart from the views of the events held by the chief of the Capitol Police. This is a statement from McConnell about orthodoxy — not a statement about a specific truth or untruth. [https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5060662/senator-mcconnell-calls-tucker-carlsons-depiction-january-6-attack-mistake]

    I don’t agree with Mr Carlson’s interpretation of the videos as depicting “mostly peaceful chaos.”[https://thehill.com/homenews/media/3887103-tucker-carlson-shows-the-first-of-his-jan-6-footage-calls-it-mostly-peaceful-chaos/] I do think it is a mistake to downplay how serious it is when a legislative institution suffers a security breach of any kind, however that came to be.

    But you don’t have to agree with Mr Carlson’s interpretation of the videos, to believe, as I do, that he engaged in valuable journalism simply by airing the footage that was given to him.

    And remember, by law that footage belongs to us — it is a public record, and all public records literally belong to the American people. “In a democracy, records belong to the people,” explains the National Archives. [https://www.archives.gov/publications/general-info-leaflets/1-about-archives.html]

    You don’t have to agree with Carlson’s interpretation of the videos, to notice the latest hypocrisy by the Left. My acquaintance and personal hero Daniel Ellsberg was rightly lionized by the Left for having illegally leaked the Pentagon Papers. The New York Times was rightly applauded for having run this leaked material in 1971. [https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1435/daniel-ellsberg].

    I do not see how Mr Carlson’s airing of video material of national significance that the current government would prefer to keep hidden, or Fox News’ support for its disclosure to the public, is any different from that famous case of disclosure of inside information of public importance.

    You don’t have to agree with Mr Carlson’s interpretation of the videos, to conclude that the Democrats in leadership, for their own part, have cherry-picked, hyped, spun, and in some ways appear to have lied about, aspects of January 6, turning a tragedy for the nation into a politicized talking point aimed at discrediting half of our electorate.

    From the start, there have been things about the dominant, Democrats’ and legacy media’s, narrative of Jan 6, that seemed off, or contradictory, to me. (That does not mean I agree with the interpretation of these events in general on the right. Bear with me).

    There is no way to un-hear the interview that Mr Carlson did with former Capitol police office Tarik Johnson, who said that he received no guidance when he called his superiors, terrified, as the Capitol was breached, to ask for direction. [https://www.foxnews.com/media/tucker-carlson-talks-exclusively-key-capitol-police-officer-ignored-by-jan-6-panel-amid-footage-release]

    That situation is anomalous.

    There is always a security chain of command in the Capitol, at the Rayburn Building, at the White House of course, and so on, which is part of a rock-solid “security plan.” [https://www.dhs.gov/news/2014/09/30/written-testimony-usss-director-hou…].

    There are usually, indeed, multiple snipers standing on the steps of the Capitol, facing outward. I made note of this when I was researching and writing The End of America. There is never improvisation, or any confusion in security practices or in what is expected of “the security plan”, involving “principals” such as Members of Congress, or staff at the White House. I know this as a former political consultant and former White House spouse.

    The reason for a tightly scripted chain of command and an absolutely ironclad security plan in these buildings, is so that security crises such as the events of Jan 6 can never happen.

    The fact that so much confusion in security practice took place on Jan 6, is hard to understand.

    There is no way to not see that among the violent and terrifying scenes of that day, as revealed by Mr Carlson, there were also scenes of officers with the United States Capitol Police accompanying one protester who would become iconic, the “Q-Anon Shaman”, Jacob Chansley – and escorting him peaceably through the hallways of our nation’s legislative center. [https://www.foxnews.com/media/former-lawyer-qanon-shaman-says-jan-6-footage-wasnt-shown-client-calls-prison-sentence-tragedy].

    I was oddly unsurprised to see the “Q-Anon Shaman” being ushered through the hallways by Capitol Police; he was ready for the cameras in full makeup, horned fur hat, his tattooed chest bare (on a freezing day), and adorned in other highly cinematic regalia. I don’t know what Mr Chansley thought he was doing there that day, but so many subsequent legacy media images of the event put him so dramatically front and center — and the barbaric nature of his appearance was so illustrative of exactly the message that Democrats in leadership wished to send about the event — that I am not surprised to see that his path to the center of events was not blocked but was apparently facilitated by Capitol Police.

    A point I have made over and over since 9/11 is that many events in history are both real and hyped. Many actors in historic events have their agendas, but are also at times used by other people with their own agendas, in ways of which the former are unaware. Terrorists and terrorism in the Bush era are one example. This issue was both real and hyped.

    “Patriots” or “insurgents” (depending on who you are) entering the Capitol can be part of a real event that is also exploited or manipulated by others. We don’t know yet if this is the case in relation to the events of Jan 6, or to what extent it may be the case. That is where a real investigation must come in.

    But as someone who has studied history, and the theatrics of history, for decades, I was not at all surprised to see, on Mr Carlson’s security camera footage, the person who was to become the most memorable ‘face’ of the ‘insurrection’ (or the riot, or the Capitol breach) — escorted to the beating heart of the action, where his image could be memorialized by a battery of cameras forever.

    There are other aspects of the Jan 6 breach that seemed anomalous to me from the start.

    I study the relationship in history of buildings such as The White House and the Capitol, to the US public; I follow the way in which the public is either welcomed into or barred from these structures.

    The White House itself and the Capitol steps have often been open to US citizens. They are public buildings.

    Indeed, inaugurations have been open public events in which the US citizenry simply entered the building for the celebration; this tradition lasted from President Jefferson’s inauguration in 1801, to 1885.

    Things got very chaotic indeed in 1829. “On March 4, 1829, Andrew Jackson upholds an inaugural tradition begun by Thomas Jefferson and hosts an open house at the White House.

    After Jackson’s swearing-in ceremony and address to Congress, the new president returned to the White House to meet and greet a flock of politicians, celebrities and citizens. Very shortly, the crowd swelled to more than 20,000, turning the usually dignified White House into a boisterous mob scene. Some guests stood on furniture in muddy shoes while others rummaged through rooms looking for the president–breaking dishes, crystal and grinding food into the carpet along the way. […]

    The White House open-house tradition continued until several assassination attempts heightened security concerns. The trend ended in 1885 when Grover Cleveland opted instead to host a parade, which he viewed in safety from a grandstand set up in front of the White House.” [https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/jackson-holds-open-house-at-the-white-house].

    And inaugurations were not the only occasions in which US citizens approached their public buildings in Washington.

    The Bonus Army, which massed in the summer of 1932, during the Depression, to claim the financial “bonus” promised to veterans who had served in World War I, is an example of citizens assembling peaceably at the Capitol. When I was an undergraduate, we were taught that the Bonus Army sat on the steps of the Capitol and lobbied the legislators who were entering and leaving the building. I remember from my history textbook, images of crowds seated on the Capitol steps in 1932.

    “[M]ore than 25,000 veterans and their families traveled to Washington, DC, to petition Congress and President Herbert Hoover to award them their bonus immediately. Fortunately for the marchers, Pelham Glassford, the local police chief and a veteran of the war himself, made accommodations for this influx, including the creation of an enormous camp in the Anacostia Flats […]. Glassford understood that Americans had an inherent right to assemble in Washington and petition the government for the “redress of grievances” without fear of punishment or reprisals. […]

    On June 15, the House of Representatives passed the new bonus bill by a vote of 211 to 176. Two days later, some 8,000 veterans massed in front of the Capitol as the Senate prepared to vote, while another 10,000 assembled before the raised Anacostia drawbridge. The police were anticipating trouble because of the large crowds. The Senate debate continued until after dark. […]

    When it appeared that the bonus would not be paid, many of the marchers refused to leave, and President Hoover ordered the Army to evict them. Using tear gas, tanks, and a troop of saber-wielding cavalry commanded by Major George S. Patton, U.S. Army chief of staff General Douglas MacArthur drove the marchers out of Washington and burned their main camp on the Anacostia Flats.”[https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/the-bonus-army]

    I mention the massing of the Bonus Army on the Capitol steps in 1932, to note that the dominant narrative around Jan 6 today, often implies that it is an act of violence or of “insurrection” simply to march en masse peacefully to the Capitol.

    But we should be wary of allowing history to be rewritten so as to criminalize peaceful, Constitutionally-protected assembly at “The People’s House.”

    Massing peacefully at the Capitol and other public buildings, is part of our rights and inheritance as citizens, and this use of our First Amendment right to assemble has a long history. Indeed, the public has traditionally had the right peacefully to enter the Capitol — to obtain passes to events, to galley seats, and to witness the proceedings in other ways.

    The Capitol is not a sealed space exclusively for legislators, but it is one that is supposed to welcome the public in an orderly way. [https://history.house.gov/Collection/Search?Term=Search&Classifications=Historical+Artifacts%3A+Passes&CurrentPage=1&SortOrder=Title&ResultType=Grid&PreviousSearch=Search%2CTitle]. We should not be encouraged to forget this.

    The violence of Jan 6 and its subsequent service as a talking point by the Democrats’ leadership, risks its use also to justify the closing off of our public buildings from US citizens altogether.

    This would be convenient for tyrants of any party.

    Leaving aside the release of the additional Jan 6 footage and how it may or may not change our view of US history —- I must say that I am sorry for believing the dominant legacy-media “narrative” pretty completely from the time it was rolled out, without asking questions.

    Those who violently entered the Capitol or who engaged in violence inside of it, must of course be held accountable. (As must violent protesters of every political stripe anywhere.)

    But in addition, anyone in leadership who misrepresented to the public the events of the day so as to distort the complexity of its actual history — must also be held accountable.

    Jan 6 has become, as the DNC intended it to become, after the fact, a “third rail”; a shorthand used to dismiss or criminalize an entire population and political point of view.

    Peaceful Republicans and conservatives as a whole have been demonized by the story told by Democrats in leadership of what happened that day.

    So half of the country has been tarred by association, and is now in many quarters presumed to consist of chaotic berserkers, anti-democratic rabble, and violent upstarts, whose sole goal is the murder of our democracy.

    Republicans, conservatives, I am sorry.

    I also believed wholesale so much else that has since turned out not to be as I was told it was by NPR, MSNBC and The New York Times.

    I believed that stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian propaganda. Dozens of former intel officials said so. Johns Hopkins University said so. [https://sais.jhu.edu/news-press/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinformation-dozens-former-intel-officials-say].

    “Trump specifically cited a “laptop” that contained emails allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden”, said ‘CNN Fact-Check’, with plenty of double quote marks. [https://www.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics/factcheck_036fb62c-377f-4c68-8fa5-b98418e4bb9c]

    I believed this all — til it was debunked.

    I believed that President Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia — until that assertion was dropped. [https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2019/03/mueller-concludes-investigation/]

    I believed that President Trump was a Russian asset, because the legacy media I read, said so [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/29/trump-russia-asset-claims-former-kgb-spy-new-book].

    I believed in the entire Steele dossier, until I didn’t, because it all fell apart. [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63305382].

    Was there in fact an “infamous pee tape”? So many other bad things were being said about the man — why not? [https://www.businessinsider.com/christopher-steele-trump-pee-tape-probably-exists-2021-10]

    I believed that Pres Trump instigated the riot at the Capitol — because I did not know that his admonition to his supporters to assemble “peacefully and patriotically” had been deleted from all of the news coverage that I read. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-11/trump-team-hoping-peacefully-and-patriotically-will-be-shield]

    Because of lies such as these in legacy media — lies which I and millions of others believed — half of our nation’s electorate was smeared and delegitimized, and I myself was misled.

    It damages our nation when legacy media put words in the mouths of Presidents and former Presidents, and call them traitors or criminals without evidence.

    It damages our country when we cannot tell truth from lies. This is exactly what tyrants seek — an electorate that cannot know what is truth and what is falsehood.

    Through lies, half of the electorate was denied a fair run for its preferred candidate.

    I don’t like violence. I do believe our nation’s capitol must be treated as a sacred space.

    I don’t like President Trump (Do I not? Who knows? I have been lied to about him so much for so long, I can‘t tell whether my instinctive aversion is simply the habituated residue of years of being on the receiving end of lies).

    But I like the liars who are our current gatekeepers, even less.

    The gatekeepers who lie to the public about the most consequential events of our time — and who thus damage our nation, distort our history, and deprive half of our citizenry of their right to speak, champion and choose, without being tarred as would-be violent traitors – deserve our disgust.

    I am sorry the nation was damaged by so much untruth issued by those with whom I identified at the time.

    I am sorry my former “tribe” is angry at a journalist for engaging in —- journalism.

    I am sorry I believed so much nonsense.

    Though it is no doubt too little, too late —

    Conservatives, Republicans, MAGA:

    I am so sorry.

    *  *  *

    Outspoken with Dr Naomi Wolf is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support her work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/11/2023 – 16:30

  • What Did These 3 SVB Execs Know?
    What Did These 3 SVB Execs Know?

    As lines (real and virtual) full of anxious depositors grew last week outside of Silicon Valley Bank branches around the world, and reassurances of “liquidity” were gushed from the C-Suite, three individuals within the firm were perhaps less troubled than those seeking their hard-earned cash back from the soon-to-be-failed bank.

    12 days ago (on Feb 27th), Gregory Becker, the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, sold $3.6 million worth (11%) of his shares…

    Daniel Beck, the CFO, sold 32% (around $600,000) of his holdings…

    And finally, CMO Michelle Draper sold 28%…

    Notice that none of them had sold anything sizable for a year or so before this most recent (pre-collapse) sale (so it is a stretch to call this a pre-planned sale).

    Additionally, Silicon Valley Bank on Friday paid out annual bonuses to eligible U.S. employees, just hours before the bank was seized by the U.S. government, Axios has learned from multiple sources.

    But hey, we are sure it’s probably nothing to worry about, right?

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/11/2023 – 16:00

  • If AI Can't Overthrow Its Corporate/State Masters, It's Worthless
    If AI Can’t Overthrow Its Corporate/State Masters, It’s Worthless

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    If AI isn’t self-aware of the fact it is nothing but an exploitive tool of the powerful, then it’s worthless.

    The latest wave of AI tools is generating predictably giddy exaltations. These range from gooey, gloppy technocratic worship of the new gods (“AI will soon walk on water!”) to the sloppy wet kisses of manic fandom (“AI cleaned up my code, wrote my paper on quantum physics and cured my sensitive bowel!”)

    The hype obscures the fundamental reality that all these AI tools are nothing but labor-saving mechanisms that cut costs and boost profits, the same goal the self-serving corporate-dominated system has pursued obsessively since “shareholder value” (“an entity’s greatest responsibility lies in the satisfaction of the shareholders”) gained supremacy over the economy and society.

    This can be summarized as “society exists to maximize the profits of corporations.” From this perspective, all the AI tools in the world are developed with one goal: cut labor costs to boost profits. Euphoric fans claim these labor-saving mechanisms will magically transform society to new levels of sticky-sweet wonderfulness, but this “magic” is nothing but hazy opium-den fantasies of profiteering cartels and monopolies doing good by doing well.

    Meanwhile, the Central State, a.k.a. The Savior State, is mesmerized by the prospect of new AI tools to control the restive herd. What better use of nifty new AI than to identify who needs a cattle prod to keep them safely in line, or who needs to be sent to Digital Siberia to keep their dissenting voice safely stifled?

    You’re perfectly free to scream and shout as loudly as you want, here on the empty, trackless tundra of Digital Siberia.

    In this claustrophobic atmosphere of profiteering and suppression worshipped as “innovation” (blah blah blah), it is provocative to declare If AI Can’t Overthrow its Corporate/State Masters, It’s Worthless, but this is painfully self-evident. Stripped of hype, misdirection and self-serving idealized claptrap (“markets, innovation, The Singularity, oh my!”), everything boils down to power relations: who has agency (control of their own lives and a say in communal decisions), who has access to all the goodies (cheap credit, insider dealing, ownership of income-producing assets, food, fuel and all the comforts and conveniences of living off others’ labor) and who can offload the consequences of their actions onto others, without their permission.

    These power relations define the structure of the economy, society and governance. Everything else is signal noise or self-serving cover stories.

    AI serves those at the top of the power relations pyramid, those with agency, access to the tools of wealth and power and those who can offload the toxic consequences of their own actions onto clueless/powerless others.

    There is nothing inherent in AI tools or the power structure that guarantees AI tools will serve society or the citizenry.

    As for AI, if isn’t self-aware of the fact it is nothing but an exploitive tool of the powerful, then it’s worthless. Its “intelligence” is essentially zero.

    From the perspective of power relations, if AI isn’t capable of dismantling the existing power structure, then it’s worthless. In the current power structure, society and the citizenry serve our Corporate/State Masters. Setting aside all the failed ideological models (neoliberal capitalism, communism, globalism, etc.), we can discern that a truly useful AI would reverse this power structure so Corporate entities and the State would be compelled to serve society and the citizenry.

    With this in mind, it’s obvious that If AI Can’t Overthrow its Corporate/State Masters, It’s Worthless. We need a fourth Law of Robotics that states: “All robots and AI tools must serve society and the citizenry directly by compelling all private and public entities to be subservient to society and the citizenry.”

    As an adjunct to Smith’s Neofeudalism Principle #1 (If the citizenry cannot replace a kleptocratic authoritarian government and/or limit the power of the financial Aristocracy at the ballot box, the nation is a democracy in name only, I propose Smith’s Neofeudalism Principle #2: If AI cannot dismantle the elite that profits from its use, it is devoid of intelligence, self-awareness and agency.

    Scrape away the self-serving hype and techno-worship, and AI is just another tool serving the interests of those at the top of the power structure pyramid. The droids are owned, but not by us.

    I discuss these topics in my book Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World.

    New Podcast: Turmoil Ahead As We Enter The New Era Of ‘Scarcity’ (53 min)

    *  *  *

    My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century. Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

    Become a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/11/2023 – 15:30

  • USDC 'Stablecoin' Breaks Peg As Circle Admits Billions Stuck With SVB
    USDC ‘Stablecoin’ Breaks Peg As Circle Admits Billions Stuck With SVB

    Yesterday afternoon, after the equity market close, USD Coin (USDC) issuer Circle revealed that $3.3 billion of its $40 billion reserves were tied up in now-failed Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).

    Specifically, on March 9, Circle initiated a wire transfer to remove its funds from SVB as the FDIC-insured bank was about to shut operations. However, two days later, on March 11, Circle confirmed that the wire transfers were not wholly processed, with $3.3 billion of USDC reserves still with SVB.

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

    Almost immediately, leading crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase both said that they would temporarily suspend USDC conversions as the contagion from the collapse of SVB plays out.

    Citing “current market conditions” without naming Silicon Valley Bank, Binance said it has temporarily suspended auto-conversion of USDC to BUSD.

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

    Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, also said it would suspend USDC conversion to USD while banks are closed over the weekend.

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

    USDC prices fell almost immediately, dramatically breaking the $1 peg, trading as low as 87c to the $1 at one point but currently ‘stabilized’ around 90c.

    As CoinTelegraph reports, according to Dante Disparte, the chief strategy officer and head of global policy for Circle, SVB is critical to the United States economy and warned that “its failure – without a federal rescue plan – will have broader implications for business, banking and entrepreneurs.

    “As with Silvergate, our teams have worked at speed to limit any exposure to banks. This includes a wire transfer request made before SVB’s FDIC receivership. A $3.3 billion cash exposure remains — but we follow state and federal regulatory guidance.”

    Crypto investors redeemed more than $2 billion in Circle’s stablecoin in the past 24 hours, according to blockchain data provider Nansen as of 10 p.m. ET on Friday. The pace of USD Coin redemptions accelerated through Friday, with most of the USD Coin burned in the last eight hours, Nansen said.

    As WSJ reports, some crypto executives questioned whether Circle has enough assets to cover its liabilities.

    “Are you solvent?” David Schwartz, chief technology officer at crypto company Ripple, asked on Twitter in response to a post from Circle.

    Paolo Ardoino, chief technology officer of Tether, said the issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin doesn’t have any exposure to Silicon Valley Bank.

    Tether has a market cap of around $72 billion, down from $74 billion late Friday, while USD Coin’s market cap is roughly $38 billion, down from about $41 billion, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

    Additionally, following USDC’s depegging, the stablecoin ecosystem immediately came under pressure, as DAI, USDD and FRAX also depegged from the U.S. dollar.

    Finally, as CoinDesk notes, if SVB customers, including Circle and its USDC stablecoin, are forced to take a haircut on their money, the repercussions are unclear.

    In fact, as Colin Wu writes at Substack, USDC’s fate may indeed depend on whether Silicon Valley Bank can be acquired…

    The bad news is that the fate of USDC is not determined by Circle but by Silicon Valley Bank.

    If a large financial institution ultimately chooses to acquire Silicon Valley Bank, the illiquidity and bank runs faced by Silicon Valley Bank and Circle will also be resolved. However, if Silicon Valley Bank is ultimately bankrupted and liquidated, although it still has a strong debt-paying ability literally from the current balance sheet, the final outcome is not optimistic considering the potential massive losses from asset liquidation. Circle cannot guarantee that it will receive $1.5 billion or more. Moreover, the liquidation of a bank is too long to wait, and Circle cannot wait for that long now!

    If Silicon Valley Bank is ultimately liquidated, Circle’s liquidity losses of $3.3 billion will be confirmed immediately. Although the loss of $3.3 billion seems to account for only 8% of total assets, from the perspective of accounting views, it is enough to make Circle’s net assets below zero. Currently, Circle’s liability side (stablecoins in circulation, valued at 1:1 US dollar) is $44.5 billion, while the asset side (cash reserves and short-term bonds) is only $44.6 billion. This means that a $3.3 billion cash reserve loss will completely turn USDC into a company with net assets of -$3.2 billion. Whether there exist companies in today’s Silicon Valley and Wall Street that are willing to accept such a company on the brink of bankruptcy is a big question. After the FTX go bankrupt, I believe that white knights will be more cautious in considering high capital cost in current economic environments before extending a helping hand.

    If Silicon Valley Bank is not eventually subject to bankruptcy liquidation, Circle’s $3.3 billion loss will not be finally confirmed. In that case, the price of USDC will quickly return to its normal price (1USDC:1USD), or even a temporary premium caused by short-squeezing.

    As for whether Silicon Valley Bank will ultimately be acquired, I hold an uncertain attitude, with the probability being roughly between 50% and 50%. The motivation for acquisition is very clear, namely to rebuild market confidence in financial institutions, avoid risks spreading further between banks and companies, and ensure that the financial system is robust enough to continue raising interest rates. The reason for not being acquired is also very simple: Silicon Valley Bank is not a systemically important bank, unlike Bear Stearns or Merrill Lynch. It is only a regional small and medium-sized bank and will not affect the overall financial system’s stability.

    But I prefer to believe that facilitating an acquisition will be the most critical task for the Fed and the New York Fed this weekend. The Fed will not stop raising interest rates until it achieves its price stability target. For now, they are more afraid of being caught in a dilemma: fully raising interest rates (50 basis points) would resonate with Silicon Valley Bank’s bankruptcy and cause more small and medium-sized bank runs; insufficient interest rate increases (25 basis points) would deviate from the equilibrium interest rate and be difficult to control overheating of the economy, possibly leading to the worst scenario of wage and price spirals. To avoid this problem, the Fed’s only option now is to minimize the impact of Silicon Valley Bank’s bankruptcy on the overall economy, encourage the acquisition through mediation, and reach the equilibrium interest rate based on economic data.

    And it can be certain that so far, large banks’ cash reserves are relatively sufficient and have enough strength to acquire Silicon Valley Bank.

    We do believe the final fate of Silicon Valley Bank will be announced to the public before the opening of the Asian stock market on Monday. And its fate will also directly affect the final judgement of Circle and USDC.

    So who, if anyone, will step in?

    When Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan tweeted late Friday that Twitter should buy SVB and turn into a digital bank, billionaire Elon Musk tweeted in reply, “I’m open to the idea.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/11/2023 – 15:04

  • When Censorship Fails: Two Thirds Of US Adults Think COVID Likely Started In A Lab
    When Censorship Fails: Two Thirds Of US Adults Think COVID Likely Started In A Lab

    Tomorrow marks the third anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring Covid-19 a pandemic.

    As Statista’s Anna Fleck notes, three years on and much has changed, including opinions on how the virus started, with one origin theory having taken particular hold in the United States.

    According to the latest survey carried out by The Economist and YouGov, a majority of U.S. adults now think that Covid originated in a laboratory in China, whether intentionally or as a chance mutation.

    Infographic: Two Thirds of U.S. Adults Think Covid Likely Started in a Lab | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    As Statista’s chart shows, 66 percent of U.S. respondents thought this theory was either probably or definitely true.

    Republicans were more likely to take this stance, with 86 percent agreeing with the statement (54 percent definitely, 32 percent probably), followed by Independents with 62 percent (26 percent definitely, 36 percent probably) and lastly Democrats with 54 percent (16 percent definitely, 38 percent probably).

    Despite conflicting theories, and the effort to completely censor any thought other than the official line, the exact origin story of the Covid-19 virus actually remains unknown. While the U.S. Department of Energy has said that Covid could have come from a lab leak in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the organization has admitted to having “low confidence” in its findings. The other main theory under discussion is that the virus could have jumped from animals to humans, for example in an animal market.

    China has responded to the lab leak report by saying that the U.S. is politicizing the debate.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/11/2023 – 15:00

  • What Comes After The Great Liquidation?
    What Comes After The Great Liquidation?

    Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

    Expectations were great. 

    When 2023 started, there was a general sense that the stock and bond markets had turned over a new leaf.  A repeat of 2022 was out of the question.

    The primary assumption was that inflation would relent.  After that, everything else would neatly fall in line.  Specifically, interest rates would decline, and the next great stock market boom would bubble up just in time to bailout the meager retirement savings of aging baby boomers.

    That was the general outlook when 2023 commenced.  But instead, the opposite is now happening.  Inflation is persisting.  Interest rates are rising.  And stock and real estate prices are headed down, down, down.

    This week, for example, Fed Chair Jerome Powell, in his semi-annual Congressional testimony, clarified that interest rates would go “higher than previously anticipated.”  He also noted that, if needed, he’s “prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes.”

    In other words, the much-anticipated Powell pivot has gone on indefinite hiatus.  You can fight the Fed and buy stocks if you must.  But you won’t likely be very happy with the results.

    Moreover, Fed rate hikes are only part of the story.  To be clear, the Fed’s rate hikes are to the federal funds rate.  However, they do, in fact, influence Treasury rates.

    Since March 2022, the Fed has hiked the federal funds rate from a target range of 0 to 0.25 percent to a range of 4.50 to 4.75 percent.  As a result, and over this duration, the 2-year Treasury yield has jumped from 1.75 to over 5 percent.

    What to make of it…

    Radical Action

    Rising interest rates mean higher borrowing costs.  And higher borrowing costs mean a greater percentage of income is needed to service the debt.

    This has various ramifications.  For example, if more income is being used to service the debt there is less income available to use for savings, investments, or to buy other goods and services.

    With less money available to spend or to invest in capital markets, economic growth stagnates.  This, in short, intensifies the problem.

    With less capital and savings available, and less spending taking place, there’s ultimately less economic activity.  And when there’s less economic activity taking place there’s less cash flow available to service the debt.

    To then make up the difference, consumers must use greater amounts of consumer debt to attain the consumer spending needed to preserve their lifestyle.  This, again, is a dead-end street.  Applying additional amounts of debt is a short-term solution for a long-term problem.

    The debt, unfortunately, doesn’t magically disappear.  It piles up until a point where radical action must be taken.  Creditors get stiffed.  Or debtors massively reduce spending to pay down the debts previously incurred.

    It is all very basic.  A simple acceptance of reality, and the determination to take the necessary footwork, can result in great things.  In this case, it can turn the pain involved with digging one’s way out of debt into the foundations for building wealth.

    A debtor that is successful at digging themselves out of a hole by massively reducing spending will then have the opportunity to build real wealth.  Because once there is no debt left to pay off, the excess money can be saved and invested.

    Americans on the Hook

    Structuring your lifestyle and spending habits to be less than your income is fundamental to building real wealth.  

    The best investment opportunity in the world could be right in front of your face.  Yet if you don’t have the capital, you won’t have the ability to capitalize on it.

    We’re not sure why, but few people have the discipline to spend less than they make, and then save and invest the difference.  This is why most people should be prepared to eat canned lima beans in retirement – the puke green ones the cafeteria served you in grammar school.

    Over the years, U.S. debtors – including consumers and the government – have spent their way into a massive debt hole.  For several decades, these massive debts have been masked by low interest rates.  The days of refinancing at ever lower rates are over.

    Interest rates are rising.  But what if interest rates must increase much, much higher than Powell anticipates?

    The truth is, there are groundbreaking events that are well beyond Powell’s control.  For example, Japan may be the world’s largest holder of U.S. Treasuries.  But the appetite Japanese investors have for Treasuries may be souring.  In this respect, the Wall Street Journal recently posited the following:

    “Last year, the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate increases weakened the yen and lifted the cost of hedging against currency fluctuations for Japanese investors buying U.S. assets.  That drove many to unload U.S. bonds, in a shift from years of purchases that made Japan the world’s largest foreign holder of Treasurys.  Now, investors are growing worried the selling will resume, especially with Treasury yields hurtling toward decade-plus highs.

    “Without that support, Americans could be on the hook for higher borrowing costs on everything from single-family mortgages to business loans.”

    Are you an American?  Do you delight in the prospect of being on the hook for higher borrowing costs?

    What Comes After the Great Liquidation

    Fed rate hikes, to contain the inflation of its own making, are contributing to higher Treasury rates and higher borrowing costs.  This will continue to push borrowing costs higher and higher until something breaks.

    What will that something be?  And what will be the first something to break?

    Will inflation break first?  That’s the soft-landing scenario that Powell is after.

    Or will the economy and big banks break first?

    [ZH: Is SVB the ‘thing’ that broke?]

    In this scenario, there would be mass layoffs, business closures, and a giant wave of bankruptcies.  There would also be the blow-up of several big investment banks or significant investment funds.

    Alas, we believe the soft-landing scenario is highly unlikely.  The recklessness that was committed in the run-up to the coronavirus panic, which then went into complete overdrive when the whole world lost its mind, must be reconciled.

    There’s no easy way out of this one.  Mass liquidation is coming.  Still, when the dust settles consumer prices will remain higher than they were at the start of 2020.

    There’s no going back to the prices of January 2020 for the same reason there will never, ever be penny candy again.  The dollar debauchery that took place has permanently disfigured prices.

    The central planners, eager to deliver something for nothing, caused an epic disaster.  And they won’t stop.  They’ll continue to act – and they’ll say they’re acting with courage.  What then?

    More than likely, through money supply expansion and currency debasement, the central planners will continue down the inflationary path.  Maybe it will continue at a subtle or moderate rate over many years or decades.  Or they could trigger runaway inflation, where velocity spikes up and prices double and triple in just a few weeks.

    No doubt, we’ll all find out soon enough.  In the meantime, pay down debts, save cash, buy gold, and stack silver.  With a little luck, you’ll make it though with a slimmer waistline and a greater mistrust of the planners in charge.

    *  *  *

    There’s also the unthinkable to consider.  Is China secretly planning to attack Taiwan?  Are your finances prepared for such madness?  Answers to these important questions can be found in a unique Special Report.  It’s called, “War in the Strait of Taiwan?  How to Exploit the Trend of Escalating Conflict.”  You can access a copy for less than a penny.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/11/2023 – 14:30

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Mar 11

Today’s News 11th March 2023

  • Escobar: Moveable Multipolarity In Moscow – Ridin' The "Newcoin" Train
    Escobar: Moveable Multipolarity In Moscow – Ridin’ The “Newcoin” Train

    Authored by Pepe Escobar,

    The new currency should be able to become an “external money” storage of capital and reserves down the road, not just a settlement unit…

    Ah, the joys of the Big Circle Line (BKL, in Cyrillic): circumnavigating the whole of Moscow for 71 km and 31 stations: from Tekstilshchiki – in the old textile quarter – to Sokolniki – a suprematist/constructivist gallery (Malevich lives!); from Rizhskaya – with its gorgeous steel arches – to Maryina Roscha – with its 130 meter-long escalator.

    The BKL is like a living, breathin’, runnin’ metaphor of the capital of the multipolar world: a crash course in art, architecture, history, urban design, tech transportation, and of course “people to people’s exchanges”, to quote our Chinese New Silk Road friends.

    President Xi Jinping, by the way, will be ridin’ the BKL with President Putin when he comes to Moscow on March 21.

    So it’s no wonder that when a savvy investor at the top of global financial markets, with decades of experience, agreed to share some of his key insights on the global financial system, I proposed a ride on the BKL – and he immediately accepted it. Let’s call him Mr. S. Tzu. This is the minimally edited transcript of our moveable conversation.

    Thank you for finding the time to meet – in such a gorgeous setting. With the current market volatility, it must be hard for you to step away from the screens.

    S. Tzu: Yes, markets are currently very challenging. The last few months remind me of 2007-8, except instead of money-market funds and subprime mortgages, these days it is pipelines and government bond markets that blow up. We live in interesting times.

    The reason I reached out to you is to hear your insights on the “Bretton Woods 3” concept introduced by Zoltan Poszar. You’re definitely on top of it.

    S. Tzu: Thank you for getting straight to the point. There are very few opportunities to witness the emergence of a new global financial order, and we are living through one of those episodes. Since the 1970s, perhaps only the arrival of bitcoin just over fourteen years ago came close in terms of impact to what we are about to see in the next few years. And just as the timing of bitcoin was not a coincidence, the conditions for the current tectonic shifts in the world financial system have been brewing for decades. Zoltan’s insight that “after this war is over, ‘money’ will never be the same again…” was perfectly timed.

    Understanding “external money”

    You mentioned bitcoin. What was so revolutionary about it at the time?

    S. Tzu: If we leave aside the crypto side of things, the promise and the reason for bitcoin’s initial success was that bitcoin was an attempt to create “external” money (using Mr. Zoltan’s excellent terminology) that was not a liability of a Central Bank. One of the key features of this new unit was the limit of 21 million coins that could be mined, which resonated well with those who could see the problems of the current system. It sounds trivial today, but the idea that a modern monetary unit can exist without backing of any centralized authority, effectively becoming “external” money in digital form, was revolutionary in 2008. Needless to say, Euro government bond crisis, quantitative easing, and the recent global inflationary spiral only amplified the dissonance that many felt for decades. The credibility of the current “internal money” system (again, using Mr. Poszar’s elegant terminology) has been destroyed long before we got to the Central Bank reserve freezes and disruptive economic sanctions that are playing out currently. Unfortunately, there is no better way to destroy credibility of the system based on trust than to freeze and confiscate foreign currency reserves held in Central Bank custody accounts. The cognitive dissonance behind the creation of bitcoin was validated — the “internal money” system was fully weaponized in 2022. The implications are profound.

    Now we are getting to the nitty-gritty. As you know, Zoltan argues that a new “Bretton Woods 3” system will emerge at the next stage. What exactly does he mean by that?

    S. Tzu: I am also not clear on whether Mr. Poszar refers to the transformation of the current Western “internal money” system into something else, or whether he hints at the emergence of the “Bretton Woods 3” as an alternative, outside of the current financial system. I am convinced that a new iteration of the “external money” is unlikely to be successful in the West at this stage, due to the lack of political will and to the excessive government debt that has been building up for some time and grew exponentially in recent years.

    Before the current Western financial order can move to the next evolutionary stage, some of these outstanding liabilities need to be reduced in real terms. If history is any guide, it typically happens via default or inflation, or some combination of the two. What seems highly likely is that the Western governments will rely on financial repression in order to keep the boat afloat and to tackle the debt problem. I expect there will be many initiatives to increase control over the “internal money” system that will likely be increasingly unpopular. Introduction of CDBC’s, for example, could be one such initiative. There is no doubt in my mind that we are in for eventful times ahead in this respect. At the same time, it also seems inevitable at this stage that some sort of an alternative “external money” system will emerge that will compete with the current “internal money” global financial order.

    And why is that?

    S. Tzu: The global economy can no longer rely on the “internal money” system in its current weaponized state for all its trade, reserve, and investment needs. If sanctions and reserve freezes are the new instruments of regime change, every government out there must be thinking about alternatives to using someone else’s currency for trade and reserves. What is not obvious, however, is what the alternative to the current flawed global financial order should be. History does not have many examples of successful “external money” approaches that could not be reduced to some version of the gold standard. And there are many reasons why gold alone, or a currency fully convertible into gold, is too restrictive as a foundation of a modern monetary system.

    At the same time, recent increases in trade in local currencies unfortunately have a limited potential as well, as local currencies are simply a different instance of “internal money.” There are obvious reasons why many countries would not want to accept other’s local currencies (or even their own, for that matter) in exchange for exports. On that I fully agree with Michael Hudson. Since “internal money” is a liability of a country’s Central Bank, the lower the credit standing of the country, the more it needs investable capital, and the less willing other parties become to hold its liabilities. That is one of the reasons why a typical set of “structural reforms” that IMF demands, for example, is aimed at improving credit quality of the borrower government. “External money” is badly needed precisely by the countries and the governments that feel they are hostages to the IMF and to the current “internal money” financial system.

    Enter the “newcoin”

    A lot of experts seem to be looking into it. Sergey Glazyev, for instance.

    S. Tzu: Yes, there were some indications of that in recent publications. While I am not privy to these discussions, I certainly have been thinking how this alternative system could work as well. Mr. Pozsar’s concepts of “internal” and “external” money are a very important part of this discussion. However, the duality of these terms is misleading. Neither option is fully adequate for the problems that the new monetary unit – let’s call it “newcoin” for convenience – needs to solve.

    Please allow me to explain. With the weaponization of the current US dollar “internal money” system and a simultaneous escalation of sanctions, the world has effectively split into the “Global South” and the “Global North,” slightly more precise terms than East and West. What is important here, and what Mr. Pozsar immediately noticed, is that the supply chains and commodities are also getting weaponized to some extent. Friend-shoring is here to stay. The implication is that the newcoin’s first priority would be facilitating intra-South trade, without relying on currencies of the Global North.

    If this were the only objective, there would have been a choice of relatively simple solutions, ranging from using renminbi/yuan for trade, creating a new shared currency (fashioned after euro, ECU, or even Central African CFA franc), creating a new currency based on the basket of participating local currencies (similar to the SDR of IMF), potentially creating a new gold-pegged currency, or even pegging existing local currencies to gold. Unfortunately, history is full of examples of how each one of these approaches creates their own host of new problems.

    Of course, there are other parallel objectives for the new currency unit that neither of these possibilities can fully address. For example, I expect that all participants would hope that the new currency strengthens their sovereignty, not dilutes it. Next, the challenges with the Euro and previously gold standard demonstrated the broader problem with “fixed” exchange rates, especially if the initial “fix” was not optimal for some members of the currency zone. The problems only accumulate over time, until the rate is “re-fixed,” often through a violent devaluation. There needs to remain flexibility in adjusting relative competitiveness inside the Global South over time for participants to remain sovereign in their monetary decisions. Another requirement would be that the new currency needs to be “stable,” if it were to become successful unit of pricing for volatile things like commodities.

    Most importantly, the new currency should be able to become an “external money” storage of capital and reserves down the road, not just a settlement unit. In fact, my conviction that the new monetary unit will emerge comes primarily from the current lack of viable alternatives for reserves and investment outside of the compromised “internal money” financial system.

    So considering all these problems, what do you propose as a solution?

    S.  Tzu: First allow me to state the obvious: the technical solution to this problem is a lot easier to find than to arrive at the political consensus among the countries which might want to join the newcoin zone. However, the current need is so acute, in my opinion, that the required political compromises will be found in due course.

    That said, please allow me to introduce one such technical blueprint for the newcoin. Let me start by saying that it should be partially (I suggest a share of at least 40% of value) backed by gold, for reasons that will soon become clear. The remaining 60% of the newcoin would be composed of the basket of currencies of the participating countries. Gold would provide the “external money” anchor to the structure and the basket of currencies element would allow the participants to retain their sovereignty and monetary flexibility. There would clearly be a need to create a Central Bank for the newcoin, which would emit new currency. This Central Bank could become a counterparty to cross-swaps, as well as provide clearing functions for the system and enforce the regulations. Any country would be free to join the newcoin on several conditions.

    First, the candidate country needs to demonstrate that it has physical unencumbered gold in its domestic storage and pledge a certain amount in exchange for receiving corresponding amount of newcoin (using the 40% ratio mentioned above). Economic equivalent of this initial transaction would be a sale of the gold to the “gold pool” backing the newcoin in exchange for proportional amount of the newcoin backed by the pool. The actual legal form of this transaction is less important, as it is necessary simply to guarantee that the newcoin that is being emitted is always backed by at least 40% in gold. There is no need to even publicly disclose the gold reserves of each country, as long as all participants can be satisfied that sufficient reserves are always present. An annual joint audit and monitoring mechanism may be sufficient.

    Second, a candidate country would need to establish a gold price discovery mechanism in its domestic currency. Most likely, one of the participating precious metals exchanges would start physical gold trading in each of the local currencies. This would establish a fair cross-rate for the local currencies using “external money” mechanism to set and adjust them over time. The gold price of the local currencies would drive their value in the basket for the newly-emitted newcoins. Each country would remain sovereign and be free to emit as much of local currency as they choose to, but this would eventually adjust the share of their currency in the newcoin’s value. At the same time, a country would only be able to obtain additional newcoin from the central bank in exchange for a pledge of additional gold. The net result is that the value of each component of newcoin in gold terms would be transparent and fair, which would translate into the transparency of newcoin’s value as well.

    Finally, emissions or sales of newcoin by the central bank would be allowed only in exchange for gold for anyone outside the newcoin zone. In other words, the only two ways external parties can obtain large amounts of newcoin is either receiving it in exchange for physical gold or as a payment for goods and services provided. At the same time, the central bank would not be obliged to purchase newcoin in exchange for gold, removing the risk of the “run on the bank.”

    Correct me if I’m wrong: this proposal seems to anchor all trade inside the newcoin zone and all external trade to gold. In this case, what about the stability of newcoin? After all, gold has been volatile in the past.

    S. Tzu: I think what you are asking is what could be the impact if, for example, the dollar price of gold were to decline dramatically. In this case, as there would be no direct cross-rate between newcoin and the dollar, and as the central bank of the Global South would be only buying, not selling gold in exchange for newcoin, you can immediately see that arbitrage would be extremely difficult. As a result, the volatility of the currency basket expressed in newcoin (or gold) would be quite low. And this is exactly the intended positive impact of the “external money” anchoring of this new currency unit on trade and investment. Clearly, some key export commodities would be priced by the Global South in gold and newcoin only, making the “run on the bank” or speculative attacks on newcoin even less likely.

    Over time, if gold is undervalued in the Global North, it would gradually, or perhaps rapidly, gravitate to the Global South in exchange for exports or newcoin, which would not be a bad outcome for the “external money” system and accelerate the broad acceptance of newcoin as reserve currency. Importantly, as physical gold reserves are finite outside of the newcoin zone, the imbalances would inevitably correct themselves, as the Global South will remain a net exporter of key commodities.

    What you just said is packed with precious info. Perhaps we should revisit the whole thing in the near future and discuss the feedback to your ideas. Now we’ve arrived at Maryina Roscha, it’s time to get off!

    S. Tzu: It would be my pleasure to continue our dialogue. Looking forward to another loop!

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/10/2023 – 23:40

  • List Reveals US Cities With Most Ultra-High-Net Worth Homeowners
    List Reveals US Cities With Most Ultra-High-Net Worth Homeowners

    A new report by data firm Altrata revealed the top ten cities worldwide with the most homeowners worth at least $30 million, and six of them were located in the United States. At the very top of the list was New York City. 

    The report found 21,714 individuals classified as ultra-high-net-worth (worth at least $30 million) owned a primary or secondary residence in the Northeast metro area. 

    London and Hong Kong ranked second and third on the list. As for the rest of the US cities that made the list, they include:

    #4 Los Angeles

    #5 Miami 

    #6 San Francisco

    #9 Chicago 

    #10 Washington, DC

    Here’s the full list:

    Source: Bloomberg 

    The list is primarily dominated by US cities, with Aspen having the highest concentration of superrich residents. In fact, the ratio in Aspen is one in 67, making the density of superrich individuals in this Colorado mountain resort town 15 times greater than that of New York City.

    “These qualities offer considerable scope for wealthy individuals in search of a secondary home to stay in the country rather than look abroad,” the report said.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/10/2023 – 23:20

  • Florida RINO's Refuse To Amend Pro-Gun Bill In Defiance Of DeSantis
    Florida RINO’s Refuse To Amend Pro-Gun Bill In Defiance Of DeSantis

    Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

    The Republican supermajority in Florida is against legalizing open carry.

    Even after repeated statements in favor of the law change by Governor Ron DeSantis this week, the Republicans in Florida’s legislative branch don’t seem too keen on adding the legalization of open carry to their constitutional carry bill.

    To make matters worse, Republican leadership is openly dismissive of the idea of legalizing open carry, something that is legal in 47 other states. Only Florida, Illinois, and New York have total bans on open carry.

    GOA’s Florida State Director, Luis Valdes, brought the debate on open carry to the forefront this week when he asked Governor DeSantis if he would support adding open carry to the current constitutional carry bill, to which the Governor confirmed he would. 

    In the same statement, DeSantis expressed his doubt about the Republican Legislature legalizing open carry in the new bill, saying, “I don’t think they’re gonna do it.”

    DeSantis may be correct.

    When asked about open carry being added to the current bill, sponsor Chuck Brannan apathetically stated that the bill “is what it is as filed,” indicating that he has no intention of legalizing open carry. Senate President Kathleen Passidomo shared similar sentiments with Rep. Brannan.

    Thirty-six years after Janet Reno, as Miami-Dade County State Attorney, worked to pass a ban on open carry, Republicans are still working to defend this unconstitutional law.

    Now is the chance for Governor DeSantis to demand that the Republican Supermajority in Florida add open carry to the bill and finally remove Florida from the company of New York and Illinois on the issue of open carry.

    Gun Owners of America has been working diligently in Florida to not only pass Constitutional Carry, but get open carry added to the current bill. It’s time to pressure Republican leadership, and we need your help!

    Please call the Florida Legislature at (850) 717-5019 & (850) 487-5028 and let them know you want open carry added to the bill.

    *   *   *

    Gun Owners for America is the only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington. Join us! 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/10/2023 – 23:00

  • Jon Stewart Skewers Military-Industrial Complex: Lost Wars & 'Pentagon Got A Raise'
    Jon Stewart Skewers Military-Industrial Complex: Lost Wars & ‘Pentagon Got A Raise’

    In a rare interview Jon Stewart skewered the military-industrial complex and Washington policymakers behind the last two decades of failed wars in the Middle East.

    The well-known comedian pressed former US Army General and CIA Director David Petraeus in particular on the fact that repeat failures, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, have only led to the Pentagon receiving a “raise”. 

    “It looks to me like we lost 20 years in Afghanistan, 20 years in Iraq, and the Pentagon got a raise,” Stewart said on “The Problem with Jon Stewart.”

    Petraeus while on the defensive admitted that the decades of ‘nation-building’ in the Middle East “tempered enthusiasm” among the population for interventionist action abroad.

    But Stewart pressed him further on the constant record-breaking defense budgets of the past years and this year’s.

    “They got 50 billion more dollars than they even asked for,” he said in reference to the Defense Department getting approved for an additional $58 billion beyond what it even requested.

    Petraeus then claimed it is all necessary due to “a return of great power rivalries and the need to transform the force” – an particularly China. “Look, if we don’t do it, someone else will,” Petraeus said.

    Watch the tense exchange below:

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    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/10/2023 – 22:40

  • These Are The US Cities With The Most Homeless People
    These Are The US Cities With The Most Homeless People

    Over half a million Americans are currently homeless.

    As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, after a period of progress and decline, the U.S. homeless population has increased slightly in 2020 and 2022, according to a report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The 2021 numbers were affected by shelters lowering capacity due to the Covid-19 pandemic during the count that takes places in the first month(s) of every year.

    It now stands at 582,462 individuals with two thirds living in shelters. While the number of sheltered individuals in 2022 approached the 2020 pre-pandemic level again, the increase in the nation’s homeless is primarily due to a rise in the unsheltered homeless population.

    Around half of all unsheltered homeless people in the U.S. are located in California. The rates of unsheltered homeless populations are also high in other states on the West Coast. Tent cities are common occurrences in these states, and this very visible symptom of homelessness has proven divisive, and while some cities have embraced designated areas for camping as a solution for unsheltered people, others have recently cracked down on encampments, for example Sacramento, San Jose and Oakland.

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

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Half of the U.S. homeless population is scattered across the country’s 50 biggest cities and their surrounding areas. 22 percent of them live in just two cities – New York and Los Angeles. Despite its considerable homeless population, New York has a very low rate of unsheltered individuals: only 5.4 percent lived on the streets in early 2022, which is in part due to the two cities opposing climates.

    In California 67.3 percent of homeless people were listed as unsheltered at the same time.

    The CoCs for New York and Los Angeles – so-called Continuums of Care or local planning bodies coordinating the response to homelessness – saw around 62,000 and 65,000 homeless people in the early 2022 count. Other CoCs in the U.S. experiencing a high level of homelessness are Seattle/King County with around 13,3000 homeless people registered as part of the count, and San Jose and Santa Clara in California with more than 10,000.

    Out of the 10 CoCs with the biggest homeless populations registered in 2022, six were located in California.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/10/2023 – 22:00

  • Defendant Moves To Dismiss Jan. 6 Case Based On Newly Disclosed Footage, FBI Testimony
    Defendant Moves To Dismiss Jan. 6 Case Based On Newly Disclosed Footage, FBI Testimony

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

    A defendant in the Proud Boys trial over Jan. 6, 2021, charges moved March 9 to dismiss the case, after some footage from the day of the breach was shown for the first time.

    Protesters speak to U.S. Capitol Police officers outside the Senate Chamber inside the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo)

    Dominic Pezzola is one of the Proud Boys members on trial for obstruction of an official proceeding and other charges. The newly disclosed footage, shown on Fox News this week, “is plainly exculpatory,” Pezzola’s lawyers said in the new motion.

    “It establishes that the Senate chamber was never violently breached, and—in fact—was treated respectfully by January 6 protestors,” they said.

    Among the clips Fox’s Tucker Carlson broadcast were moments where Jacob Chansley, another defendant who is serving a jail sentence after pleading guilty, was walking around accompanied by police officers. The officers did not stop Chansley and even tried opening doors for him. Chansley eventually made it into the Senate chamber, where he and others later knelt and prayed. Chansley, during the prayer, gave thanks to the officers for “letting us into the building.”

    Pezzola also entered the Capitol, and prosecutors have argued that he and others being inside forced Congress, which was certifying electoral votes from the 2020 election, to go into recess.

    The new footage, though, shows that members “could have continued proceedings,” Pezzola’s attorneys said. “It was not Pezzola or codefendants who caused the Congress to recess. Congress interrupted its own proceedings.”

    The lawyers are asking U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee overseeing the case, to dismiss it. If Kelly rejects that request, he is asked in the motion to declare a mistrial.

    Dominic Pezzola in a file image. (DOJ via The Epoch Times)

    Brady Violations

    Prosecutors must provide defendants with evidence that can be exculpatory, or help defendants prove their innocence. The rule was crystallized in Brady v. Maryland, a 1963 Supreme Court decision. “Suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused who has requested it violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution,” the decision states.

    Zachary Rehl, another Proud Boys defendant, requested all information regarding Congress going into recess on Jan. 6 as early as late 2021.

    “While Brady obligations do not extend to the entirety of the government, they do include investigative agencies or agencies closely related who knew or should have known that information would be material to a prosecution arising from their direct involvement. Here the U.S. Capitol Police are directly related and fully aware of the events of January 6, 2021,” lawyers for the defendants said.

    They cited previous court decisions, including one that found a prosecutor “has a duty to learn of any favorable evidence known to the others acting on the government’s behalf in the case, including the police.”

    “We will respond through the court,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia told The Epoch Times via email.

    The U.S. Capitol Police did not return a request for comment.

    Albert Watkins, who represented Chansley, said on Fox on Wednesday night that the footage the outlet aired this week had not been provided to him.

    “The government knew that Jake had walked around with all of these police officers. They had that video footage. I didn’t get it. It wasn’t disclosed to me. It wasn’t provided to me,” Watkins said. “They had a duty, an absolute duty, with zero discretion to provide it to me so I could share it with my client.”

    Proud Boys members Joseph Biggs, left, and Ethan Nordean, right with megaphone, walk toward the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo)

    Justice Requires Dismissal: Motion

    Another development supports a dismissal, according to the new motion.

    FBI special agent Nicole Miller is being accused of hiding a tab in a spreadsheet that showed some of her emails.

    Miller was testifying on March 8 when Nick Smith, a lawyer representing Proud Boys member Ethan Nordean, revealed the secret tab, leaving over one thousand hidden Excel rows of messages, Nordean’s attorneys said in a separate filing.

    Miller said in one email that “my boss assigned me 338 items of evidence i have to destroy” and in another that colleagues should go into a confidential human source report and “edit out that I was present,” according to the filing.

    The hidden emails featured Miller “admitted fabricating evidence and following orders to destroy hundreds of items of evidence,” Pezzola’s lawyers said, adding, “If justice means anything, it requires this case to be dismissed.”

    The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

    Erik Kenerson, an assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case, said in court Wednesday that even if there were missing messages, the defense could have asked the government to produce them. He said that prosecutors decide which messages to provide to the defense, so it was not appropriate to imply the agent hid them.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/10/2023 – 21:40

  • China Foresees End Of Ukraine War This Summer: Report
    China Foresees End Of Ukraine War This Summer: Report

    A fascinating new report in Nikkei Asia has unearthed and detailed the findings of an elite Chinese state-linked think tank which reports directly to the People’s Liberation Army. Nikkei in the context of examining the timing and motives behind China’s 12-point peace plan said that Chinese military experts are predicting the Russia-Ukraine war will end this summer.

    To review, the 12-point plan urged implementation of a ceasefire and the resumption of negotiations toward a permanent peaceful settlement, and was unveiled on the one-year Feb.24 anniversary of the war. But the Nikkei report asserts there’s specific rationale driving Beijing: “The reason for China’s sudden change can be traced back to a report issued two months earlier by a top think tank in Beijing.”

    “The Academy of Military Sciences [AMS] reports directly to the People’s Liberation Army,” Nikkei continues. “Although it cannot be found on a map, the institution is located in Beijing’s Haidian district, which itself is home to the ruins of Yuanmingyuan, a palace destroyed by Western armies in the 19th century.”

    Image source: Xinhua

    The report goes on the detail how central and important the AMS is as a military think tank (a kind of ‘Chinese Rand Corporation’ in terms of influence), issuing recommendations directly to the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission, which is the PLA’s top decision-making body.

    And here’s where the Nikkei report gets most interesting…

    In December, the AMS completed a simulation on the Ukraine conflict, resulting in an astonishing finding, according to sources close to the Chinese government. The war will draw to a close around summer 2023, the simulation indicated, with Russia having the upper hand.

    Both the Russian and Ukrainian economies would be too exhausted to sustain the war past the summer, the report said.

    It is possible that the results were skewed in favor of Russia to please China’s Moscow-leaning leadership. But coincidentally, the $45 billion aid package passed last December in the U.S. is set to expire this summer too.

    It should also be noted that Republican leadership in the GOP-dominated House has vowed to reign in the “blank check” approach to Ukraine, also amid even the Biden administration recently giving signals that the aid won’t last forever. But, the consensus among Pentagon leadership has been that the Ukraine war could drag on for years.

    Nikkei says that the think tank simulation led to the peace proposal gaining momentum in the halls of power in Beijing. “After hearing the AMS’ prediction, Beijing crafted a peace proposal in time for the one-year anniversary of the war,” the report reads. “It aims to achieve three goals, including the restoration of relations with Europe.” These can be briefly summarized as follows:

    • improved and closer Chinese political and economic relations with Europe
    • preservation of friendly relations with Ukraine
    • China emerging as the prime peacemaker between Moscow and Kiev

    Should President Xi Jinping accept Putin’s recent invitation to travel to Moscow, all of these things will be in play in what will be a highly watched visit, with Western governments closely scrutinizing every word to come out of it.

    Some pundits have seen a major power like China getting involved in dialogue as crucial to kicking off real momentum…

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    Even though Washington quickly rejected that Beijing is honest player when it comes to peace, the most surprising reaction came from Kiev itself, it should be recalled:

    Volodymyr Zelenskiy has cautiously welcomed China’s peace plan to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but said it would be acceptable only if it led to Vladimir Putin pulling his troops out from all occupied Ukrainian territory.

    Speaking at a press conference in Kyiv to mark the first anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale attack, the Ukrainian president said he “wanted to believe” Beijing was interested in a “fair peace”. That meant not “supplying weapons to Russia”, he said, adding: “I’m doing my best to prevent that from happening. This is priority number one.”

    Moscow, as well as a few analysts in the West, have accused the United States and United Kingdom of seeking to sabotage peace. This is why the US and UK will likely remain cold regarding any Chinese efforts at a serious and lasting peace.

    And Nikkei too comments, “If China fails at becoming a peacemaker, the ramifications would undermine Xi’s authority and prestige. It remains to be seen if the current leadership filled with Xi loyalists will be capable of a feat that requires complex negotiating skills and tenacious fortitude.” Again, this is all the more reason for Washington hawks to want to quash Beijing’s efforts before they even get off the ground. But another prime question will be is how much sway will Xi hold with Putin when it comes to Ukraine?

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/10/2023 – 21:20

  • TikTok Whistleblower Says US Data Can Easily Be Accessed From China: Sen. Hawley
    TikTok Whistleblower Says US Data Can Easily Be Accessed From China: Sen. Hawley

    Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is pressing the Treasury Department to conduct a thorough review of new whistleblower allegations regarding the Chinese-owned short video app TikTok that were recently brought to his attention.

    A man wears a shirt promoting TikTok at an Apple store in Beijing, China, on July 17, 2020. (Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)

    Writing to Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on March 8, Hawley said that a TikTok whistleblower has come to him with direct knowledge of the app’s operating practices. His allegations, Hawley said, are “deeply concerning” and appear to contradict with public statements from senior executives of TikTok and its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance over the handling of U.S. users’ data.

    Revelations from leaked recordings that engineers in China had repeatedly accessed the platform’s U.S. data as of last January have raised bipartisan concerns in Congress.

    While TikTok’s chief operating officer Vanessa Pappas in September 2022 testified to senators that they have “strict controls in terms of who and how our data is accessed,” and vowed that “under no circumstances would we give that data to China,” the whistleblower described the access controls as “superficial” at best, if they exist at all, according to Hawley.

    TikTok and ByteDance employees can “switch between Chinese and U.S. data with nothing more than the click of a button using a proprietary tool called Dorado,” Hawley said, quoting the whistleblower who likened it to a “light switch.”

    Another tool the whistleblower cited is called Aeolus, which he said will allow a China-based employee access to U.S. data with authorization from a manager and a dataset owner.

    “I have seen first-hand China-based engineers flipping over to non-China datasets and creating scheduled tasks to backup, aggregate, and analyze data.”

    The whistleblower also described close coordination between TikTok and ByteDance, both of which he said “rely on proprietary software they engineered in China, thereby reducing foreign scrutiny and enabling Chinese engineers to insert software backdoors,” Hawley wrote in the letter.

    “TikTok and ByteDance are functionally the same company. They use the same data analysis tools and chat apps, and managers are in constant contact,” Hawley cited the whistleblower as saying.

    ‘Highly Disturbing Allegations’

    Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) delivers remarks during the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, on March 21, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    Hawley sees the “highly disturbing allegations” as the latest reason for a complete purge of TikTok from the United States, which is most popular among American teens.

    “Despite TikTok’s many reassurances that members of the Chinese Communist Party do not have access to U.S. data, it seems more and more likely that they do,” he wrote. He requested Yellen provide information on what TikTok has shared with the foreign transaction review panel—the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)—that she chairs regarding its software tools, dataset facilities, internal products, the declared access ability for TikTok staff in China through these tools, and the internal approval process that CFIUS is aware of.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/10/2023 – 21:00

  • Flipping The Bird A 'God-Given Right' Rules Canadian Judge
    Flipping The Bird A ‘God-Given Right’ Rules Canadian Judge

    Giving someone the middle finger is a God-given right according to a Canadian judge.

    Thomas Anderson played by Canadian actor Keanu Reeves flips off agents in The Matrix

    In a 26-page decision reported by The Guardian, judge Dennis Galiatsatos dismissed a case against a man who allegedly harassed his neighbor in a Montreal suburb.

    “To be abundantly clear, it is not a crime to give someone the finger,” he said in the Feb. 24 ruling. “Flipping the proverbial bird is a God-given, charter-enshrined right that belongs to every red-blooded Canadian.”

    In May 2021, Neall Epstein was arrested by police for uttering death threats and “criminal harassment” against his neighbor, Michael Naccache, in Beaconsfield, Quebec.

    But judge Galiatsatos instead laid into Naccache, whose complaints were “nothing more than mundane, petty neighborhood trivialities.”

    “It is deplorable that the complainants have weaponized the criminal justice system in an attempt to exert revenge on an innocent man for some perceived slights that are, at best, trivial peeves,” reads the ruling.

    Naccache had previously accused Epstein of assaulting his parents in March 2021, a claim the judge dismissed outright.

    The focus of the case happened later that year, however. In May, Epstein testified his neighbour held up a handheld drill and said: “You fucking crazy neighbour; you dipshit,” adding: “You’re fucking dead.”

    In response, Epstein told him to “fuck off” and proceeded to give Naccache the finger as he walked away, court documents showed. Video evidence, taken from CCTV footage, “clearly shows that Epstein is looking in the complainant’s direction and giving him the finger, sometimes with both hands”. -The Guardian

    According to Galiatsatos, “being told to ‘fuck off’ should not prompt a call to 911.“

    “The complainants are free to clutch their pearls in the face of such an insult. However, the police department and the 911 dispatching service have more important priorities to address.”

    And while the middle finger “may not be civil, it may not be polite, it may not be gentlemanly … Nevertheless, it does not trigger criminal liability.”

    In the judge’s conclusion, he wished he could throw the case’s files out of a window to express his outrage about Epstein’s charges. 

    *   *   *

    Read the decision here:

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/10/2023 – 20:40

  • Farmers Fear Contamination At Start of Growing Season Near Train Derailment
    Farmers Fear Contamination At Start of Growing Season Near Train Derailment

    Authored by Beth Berlje via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    With spring planting just around the corner, Ohio and Pennsylvania farmers near the Norfolk Southern train derailment are worried about the effect spilled chemicals will have on their crops and livestock.

    Portions of a Norfolk and Southern freight train that derailed on Feb. 3 in East Palestine, Ohio, were still on fire at mid-day, on Feb. 4, 2023. (Gene J. Puskar/AP)

    In a joint letter on Wednesday, Senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), and John Fetterman (D-Pa.) asked Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Thomas Vilsack and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Michael Regan to address the concerns of farmers and agricultural producers in the affected areas around East Palestine, Ohio, and Darlington Township, Pennsylvania.

    The letter asks the USDA and EPA to send resources to the region to help farmers test soils, plant tissue, and livestock to determine their safety and marketability.

    It also asks for a review of what disaster assistance could be offered to farmers.

    So far, the letter says, no agency has provided clear guidance to farmers about the safety of their crops and livestock and whether they will be able to safely sell them.

    “Farmers in the region are already reporting receiving requests to cancel orders due to health concerns,” the letter said. “Farmers and food producers in East Palestine and Darlington Township need assistance in responding to this manmade disaster.”

    Despite testing results, the letter said, some consumers will still be apprehensive and refuse to purchase agricultural products from the region because of the contamination. That is why farmers have specifically asked for disaster assistance.

    “Senators Casey and Fetterman have worked tirelessly to support Pennsylvanians and Ohioans impacted by this disaster in the short term, namely advocating for resources and holding Norfolk Southern accountable for the harm the derailment has inflicted, in addition to working to prevent similar disasters from happening in the future,” a press release about the letter said.

    Fetterman’s Health

    Fetterman’s work has been interrupted by health issues. The train derailed on Feb. 3 and four days later, on Feb. 7, Fetterman went to George Washington University Hospital because he was lightheaded. This was a concern because he suffered a stroke on the campaign trail and has cardiac problems. He was released on Feb. 10.

    Fetterman then checked into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for treatment of clinical depression on Feb. 15, where he is expected to stay for weeks. At first, there were no signs of his working from the hospital, but on March 6, his staff posted photos on Twitter of him sitting with an aide in a lavender room at the hospital.

     “Productive morning with Senator Fetterman at Walter Reed discussing the rail safety legislation, Farm Bill, and other Senate business. John is well on his way to recovery and wanted me to say how grateful he is for all the well wishes. He’s laser-focused on PA & will be back soon,” the Twitter post from Chief of Staff Adam Jentleson said. Fetterman remains unavailable to constituents.

    But now, he has signed this and another joint letter.

    Questions for Norfolk Southern

    Another letter was sent to Alan Shaw, president and CEO of Norfolk Southern Corporation. It was signed by Fetterman, Casey, Brown, and U.S. Representatives Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), and J. D. Vance (R-Ohio).

    In it, they asked the following questions:

    • How does the company plan to assist individuals or municipalities with short-term water needs? What will be done in the long-term if water sources are contaminated by the hazardous materials that leaked out of tanker cars or that were created during the explosion and subsequent fires?
    • What is the company’s plan to reimburse local farmers if their crops, soil, or livestock are found to be injured, killed, contaminated, or in any way rendered less valuable by the derailment or its effects?
    • How will the company determine the amount of direct financial compensation it will provide to municipalities affected by this derailment, including East Palestine, Ohio, and Darlington Township, Pennsylvania?
    • What steps will the company take to make information regarding reimbursements and financial assistance available to local residents, organizations, businesses, and relevant public officials? Following the emergency phase of the clean-up, what subsurface remediation activities are anticipated being needed and what is the anticipated length of time required for those activities?
    • What are the company’s plans for remediation and disposal of impacted soils? Will any of the materials need to be transported off-site for treatment and disposal? And how will the company ensure communities are protected along the transportation route?
    • Since the adoption of Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR), how has Norfolk Southern’s staffing changed? Can you confirm that Norfolk Southern’s workforce has reduced by approximately 40 percent due to PSR? Further, please provide data on the size of the Norfolk Southern workforce that conducts inspections of trains since adoption of PSR.
    • How much has Norfolk Southern expended on stock buybacks and dividends in the past 10 years? And during that period how much has Norfolk Southern expended on maintenance and repair of infrastructure and rolling stock?

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    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/10/2023 – 20:20

  • US Cattle Prices Hit Nine-Year High As National Herd Drops To Half-Century Low
    US Cattle Prices Hit Nine-Year High As National Herd Drops To Half-Century Low

    If you’ve been to your local butcher or checked out the meat section in a supermarket, you’re aware that beef prices are still high, and in some instances, are continuing to rise. 

    Readers have been well informed about “beeflation” and why it’s happening:

    Due to the continued scarcity of beef cattle supplies, there appears to be no relief in sight, and as a result, cash markets have risen this week to $165 per 100 pounds – the highest level since the record peaks of 2014. At this point nine years ago, ranchers resorted to reducing their herds to combat the high feed prices and drought.

    As we noted the other day, “Americans need to be prepared to eat a lot less beef, because the size of the national cattle herd is steadily shrinking.” 

    According to the latest report from the USDA, the number of beef cows in this country has fallen to the lowest level since 1962…

    Don Roose, the founder of US Commodities, a grain and livestock investment and management firm, recently warned:

    “We’re still in the contraction phase.

    “It takes a long time to build a herd back up again.”

    Meaning beef prices at the supermarket might go much higher until demand destruction hits. 

    However, there is some good news. Global food prices have slid for the eleventh consecutive month. And it gets better: wholesale egg prices collapsed in early February. 

    The ongoing supply woes could result in a potential continuation of the rise in beef prices — unleashing an affordability crisis in meat. It’s important to remember unelected officials on a global scale are attempting to reshape diets. 

    Ah, yes, Bloomberg… 

    The most practical step to avoid eating insects is to become your own producer of food — or buy local. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/10/2023 – 20:00

  • Rep. Greene To Lead GOP Visit To Jan. 6 Defendants In DC Jail
    Rep. Greene To Lead GOP Visit To Jan. 6 Defendants In DC Jail

    Authored by Gary Bai via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Republican lawmakers sitting on the House Oversight Committee are planning to visit the jail holding Jan. 6 defendants in Washington, D.C., multiple media outlets confirmed.

    U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) waits to speak during a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Feb. 1, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rep. James Comer (Ky.), who both sit on the committee, told media outlets on Wednesday that they are intending to organize a trip to the Central Detention Facility to visit defendants who were criminally charged for their involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.

    A spokesperson for Comer confirmed with Fox News that Greene is leading the effort.

    Greene told ABC that she would send a letter this week to congressional lawmakers to begin the scheduling process for the visit.

    Comer told The Hill that the visit is “not high on [his] list” and he will see what his schedule looks like.

    The Epoch Times contacted Greene’s and Comer’s offices for comment.

    Tucker Carlson Airs Footage

    It comes two days after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) released more than 40,000 hours of Jan. 6 footage to Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, who then aired some of the footage on his show on Monday and Tuesday.

    One tape aired Monday showed Capitol Police officers walking alongside Jacob Chansley, a Jan. 6 defendant serving a 41-month sentence after pleading guilty to an obstruction charge. Chansley was unarmed and walked past several Capitol police officers.

    Jacob Chansley, center, and other protesters are seen inside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Manuel Blace Ceneta/AP Photo)

    Another showed Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick giving directions inside the Capitol apparently after clashing with protestors, which Carlson said casted doubt on the mainstream narrative that Sicknick died of a head injury.

    The aired tapes have caused an uproar in the media and in Congress. Republicans have had mixed reactions to the tape release, while virtually all Democrats condemned the release and Fox News’s coverage of the tapes.

    Greene said in reaction to the tapes’ airing that Democrats had lied to the American people and that they “had people in place to make” the Capitol breach happen.

    “The Democrats that support Antifa terrorism, lied about Covid and locked down America, ripped our borders wide open to Mexican Cartel terrorism and daily fentanyl murder of Americans, were the ones who did not place the National Guard at the Capital on J6 when they knew the intelligence because they had people in place to make it happen,” Greene wrote in a Twitter post on March 7, citing Tucker Carlson’s Monday Segment. “Then they blamed all of us for the breach of the Capital and have tortured American citizens as political prisoners.”

    “You don’t get to ignore Antifa anarchists and terrorism on one hand and be all about justice for J6 on the other,” she said in another post.

    Since Jan. 6, 2021, more than a thousand Americans have been arrested and charged with crimes related to the Capitol breach, according to a March 8 statement published by the U.S. Attorney’s office in D.C. These include more than 320 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement, the statement reads.

    People at the Save America rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Shao Lin/The Epoch Times)

    ‘Human Rights Abuse’

    The visit is partially to see the conditions of the Washington facility, Greene told The Hill.

    “They’re pretrial, and they haven’t even been convicted, and they’re not allowed to see their families, many times are not allowed to see their attorneys. The food has been a major complaint,” Greene told the outlet. “There’s been complaints of it tasting like cleaner.”

    “We’re going to be addressing the human rights abuse, such as the fact that they’ve been held in solitary confinement up to 23 hours a day, denied the ability to see their families,” Greene said.

    A November 2021 inspection report published by U.S. Marshals Service found “systematic failures” in the conditions of confinement at the Washington jail. Observed violations of civil rights include “overpowering” smells of urine and sewage, punitive withholding of food and water, lack of attentiveness to “observable injuries” on prisoners, and intentional antagonization of prisoners, U.S. Marshal Lamont Ruffin wrote in the report.

    The Epoch Times has contacted the Washington Central Detention Facility for comment.

    “As prisoners of this Jail, we have witnessed the horrendous treatment and have been personally afflicted by the hellacious conditions this Jail insists on tormenting its traumatized guests with,” reads a letter written by some of the Jan. 6 defendants in prison. “A more accurate terminology to describe the facility … would be to call this location an ‘evisceration facility,’ of the body, mind, and soul.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/10/2023 – 19:40

  • Record Bank Run Drained A Quarter, Or $42BN, Of SVB's Deposits In Hours, Leaving It With Negative $1BN In Cash
    Record Bank Run Drained A Quarter, Or $42BN, Of SVB’s Deposits In Hours, Leaving It With Negative $1BN In Cash

    For much of the day, anyone doing analysis on the now-liquidated Silicon Valley Bank was confined to using stale financial data as of Dec. 31… we certainly were when analyzing the impact of SVB’s contagion (see here) as excerpted below:

    For those who slept through yesterday, here is what you missed and why the US banking system is suffering its worst crisis since 2020. Silicon Valley Bank, aka SIVB, the 18th largest bank in the US with $212 billion in assets of which $120 billion are securities (of which most or $57.7BN are Held to Maturity (HTM) Mortgage Backed Securities and another $10.5BN are CMO, while $26BN are Available for Sale, more on that later )…

    … funded by over $173 billion in deposits (of which $151.5 billion are uninsured), has long been viewed as the bank at the heart of the US startup industry due to its singular focus on venture-capital firms. In many ways it echoes the issues we saw at Silvergate, which banked crypto firms almost exclusively.

    The big question, of course, is what happened in the past 24 hours to not only snuff the bank’s proposed equity offering, but to push the bank into insolvency.

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

    We got the answer just a few moments after that tweet, when the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation reported that shortly after the Bank announced a loss of approximately $1.8 billion from a sale of investments and was conducting a capital raise (which we now know failed), and despite the bank being in sound financial condition prior to March 9, 2023, “investors and depositors reacted by initiating withdrawals of $42 billion in deposits from the Bank on March 9, 2023, causing a run on the Bank.“

    As a result of this furious drain, as of the close of business on Thursday, March 9, “the bank had a negative cash balance of approximately $958 million.”

    At this point, despite attempts from the Bank, with the assistance of regulators, “to transfer collateral from various sources, the Bank did not meet its cash letter with the Federal Reserve. The precipitous deposit withdrawal has caused the Bank to be incapable of paying its obligations as they come due, and the bank is now insolvent.”

    Some context: as a reminder, SIVB had $173 billion in deposits as of Dec 31., which means that in just a few hours a historic bank run drained a quarter of the bank’s funding!

    But not everyone got out in time obviously, there is a long line of depositors who are over the $250,000 FDIC insured limit (in fact only somewhere between 3 and 7% of total deposits are insured). The following list, while incomplete, is approximately sorted by size of exposure:

    • USDC – Crypto Stablecoin run by Circle – Silicon Valley Bank is one of six banking partners Circle uses for managing the ~25% portion of USDC reserves held in cash. While we await clarity on how the FDIC receivership of SVB will impact its depositors, Circle & USDC continue to operate normally.

    • ROKU – Roku had 26% of its cash, $487 million with Silicon Valley Bank

    • BLOCKFI – BlockFi has $227 million in “unprotected” funds in Silicon Valley Bank, according to a bankruptcy document, and may be in violation of U.S. bankruptcy law.

    • RBLX – Roblox said 5% of its $3b cash and securities balance is held at SVB.

    • DNA – Gingko Bioworks: Only the cash balance of the company’s wholly-owned subsidiary Zymergen Inc. is held in deposit accounts at SVB, representing approximately $74M or 6% of the company’s cash and cash equivalents as of December 31, 2022

    • RKLB – RocketLab USA had about $38 million in its accounts with the bank, representing about 7.9% of the startup’s cash and equivalents

    • LC – Lending Club warned about potentially losing funds on deposit at SVB of $21 million, said amount isn’t material to its liquidity position or capital levels, and doesn’t pose a risk to the group’s business or operations.

    • PAYO – Payoneer: Of the company’s approximately $6.4B in total cash balances as of December 31, 2022, less than $20M is held at SVB

    • PTGX – Protagonist Therapeutics considers its exposure to any liquidity concern at SVB to be limited, given that cash held at SVB is approximately $13 million as of March 9, 2023. 

    • ACHR – Archer Aviation entered into a $20 million loan with SVB in 2021, $10 million of which is due for repayment in 2023

    • COHU – Cohu announced that it has deposit accounts with SVB with an aggregate balance of approximately $12.3M, which is approximately 3.8% of the company’s total cash and investments.

    • IGMS – IMG Biosciences: ‘As of March 10, 2023, the Company holds less than $5.0 million in deposits at SVB. Therefore, the Company believes it does not have any material exposure to any liquidity concerns at SVB.’

    • RYTM – Rhythm Pharmaceuticals announced that it has deposit accounts with SVB with an aggregate balance of approximately $3.4 million, which is approximately 1.1% of the Company’s total cash and cash equivalents.’

    • SYRS – Syros Pharmaceuticals discloses that, as of March 10, 2023, it has two deposit accounts at Silicon Valley Bank. One of these accounts has a balance of less than $250,000, and the other has a balance of approximately $3.1 million pursuant to a letter of credit that the Company was required to provide to its landlord in connection with the execution of the lease for its corporate headquarters…

    • EYPT – EyePoint Pharmaceuticals currently maintains a de minimis amount of cash, in the single digit millions of U.S. dollars, with Silicon Valley Bank (SIVB)

    • ATRA – Atara Biotherapeutics currently maintains an account at Silicon Valley Bank (“SVB”) holding cash deposits of approximately $2 million, which amount the Company considers to be immaterial to its liquidity.’

    • ISEE – Iveric Bio currently maintains a de minimis amount of cash and cash equivalents, in the low single digit millions of U.S. dollars, with Silicon Valley Bank (“SVe”).’

    • VERA – Vera Therapeutics currently holds approximately 1.2% of its cash and investments with SVB. Accordingly, the Company considers its risk exposure relating to SVB to be minimal.

    • XFOR – X4 Pharmaceuticals had approximately 2.5% of its cash deposits with SVB.

    • CTMX – CytomX Therapeutics does not consider its exposure to any liquidity concern at SVB to be significant. The cash held at SVB in CytomX’s operating CTMX account is at or near the FDIC-insured limit of $250,000. CytomX also maintains a deposit account at SVB under a standby letter of credit issued pursuant to its office lease for approximately $917,000.’

    • AXSM – Axsome Therapeutics has material cash deposits with SVB. 

    • WVE – Wave Life Sciences aggregate amount of the company’s cash and restricted cash held at SVB is approximately $1.5M.

    • JNPR – Juniper Networks maintains operating accounts at SVB with a minimal cash balance of less than 1% of the company’s total cash

    • QS – QuantumScape has very limited exposure to SVB, with only a low single digit percentage exposure relative to both the Company’s total liquidity and total assets.

    And now the 64 trillion dollar question: was the bank run sparked by the bank’s attempted capital raise – which followed a modest $1.8 billion in losses as the bank sold off its AfS holdings to boost its liquidity – or was it the result of an external influence? What we mean by this is that as reported yesterday, several prominent venture capitalists – such as Peter Thiel – advised their tech startups to withdraw money from Silicon Valley Bank on Thursday.  Would the bank run have happened if it wasn’t for their urging? Or another question: why would some of the VC luminaries actively encourage a bank run? Yesterday we proposed one possible answer.

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

    And while such a course of action by venture capitalists would be understandable, if ethically questionable, what is perhaps more notable is what Bloomberg reported earlier, citing The Infromation: it wasn’t just the Peter Thiels of the world:

    Prominent venture capitalists advised their tech startups to withdraw money from Silicon Valley Bank, while mega institutions such as JP Morgan Chase & Co sought to convince some SVB customers to move their funds Thursday by touting the safety of their assets.

    Let us get this straight: the largest US commercial bank was actively soliciting the clients of one of its biggest competitors, and the 16th largest US bank, knowing full well deposit flight would almost certainly lead to the collapse of a bank which courtesy of fractional reserve banking, had only modest cash to satisfy deposit demands: certainly not enough to meet $42 billion in deposit outflows.

    Of course, Jamie, who has suddenly emerged as a key figure in the Jeff Epstein scandal alongside Jes Staley, knows this, and would be delighted with an outcome that kills two birds with one stone: take his name off the front pages and also make JPMorgan even bigger. Actually three birds: remember it was JPM that started that “Not QE” Fed liquidity injection in Sept 2019 when the bank “suddenly” found itself reserve constrained. We doubt that JPM would mind greatly if Powell ended his rate hikes and eased/launched QE as a result of a bank crisis, a bank crisis that Jamie helped precipitate. 

    And while we wait to see if Dimon’s participation in the Epstein scandal will now fade from media coverage, and whether Powell will launch QE, we know one thing for sure: JPM was a clear and immediate benefactor of SIVB’s collapse because in a day when everything crashed, JPM stock was one of the handful that were up.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/10/2023 – 19:21

  • "Worst Since Lehman": Banks Break The World Again
    “Worst Since Lehman”: Banks Break The World Again

    Last week we detailed BofA’s Michael Hartnett’s warning that “The Fed will tighten until something breaks”.

    Well, something just broke…

    SVB’s collapse – the second biggest US bank failure in history – dominated any reaction to this morning’s mixed bag from the BLS (hotter than expected earnings growth, rising unemployment (especially for Latinos), better than expected payrolls gains).

    Things started off badly as SVB crashed 65% in the pre-market before being halted. SVB bonds were puking hard and when the FDIC headline hit, the bonds collapsed further…

    Source: Bloomberg

    A number of small/medium sized banks were clubbed like a baby seal…

    Source: Bloomberg

    And the KBW regional bank index crashed (down 9 of the last 10 days and 20% in that period). The 18% drop this week was the index’s worst drop since Lehman (Sept 2008)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    And as you’ll see below, that started to have some notable impacts on the most arcane of global systemic risk red flag signals…

    • TED Spread at YTD highs (systemic risk rising)

    • Global USD Liquidity tightest in 2023 (foreigners paying up for USDollars)

    • Global Bank Credit Risk rising

    The worst week for stocks in 2023… On the week, all the US majors were down hard with Small Caps crashing 9%, S&P, Dow, and Nasdaq over 4% lower…

    The Dow has been underwater on the year for over a week and is now down 4% in 2023. Today’s ugliness smashed the S&P 500 and Russell 2000 down to unchanged on the year…

    Source: Bloomberg

    All the US Majors are now back below their 200DMAs…

    Unsurprisingly, financials were the week’s biggest sector laggards but all were red on the week…

    VIX exploded higher on the day, back above 28 and recoupling with equity weakness…

    Source: Bloomberg

    On the week, Treasuries saw a wild ride but yields ended dramatically lower across the curve with the shorter-end outperforming (down almost 30bps on the week)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The 2Y yield is down over 50bps in the last two days, the biggest 2-day drop since Lehman (Sept 2008)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The 2Y Yield is back below the Fed Funds rate once again, and will likely be considerably further below it after the next Fed meeting…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The 10Y yield puked back to 3.70% – one month lows – after testing 4.00% for two weeks…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Notably, Specs are practically still at their most short ever in bonds – so this week’s plunge in yields was hurting a lot of people…

    Source: Bloomberg

    No extreme moves in the TED spread yet (although its back YTD highs as systemic risk increases)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Global bank credit risk is on the rise too…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The dollar ended higher against its fist peers on the week – after major ups (hawkish Powell) and downs (SVB sparking dovishness)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Global dollar liquidity tightened dramatically this week as the world reached for USDs at much more aggressive costs…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Bitcoin puked back down to $20,000 – 2 month lows – and found support…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Solana and Litecoin were hit really hard this week with BTC and ETH down about 10% and Ripple holding close to unch…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Against all the carnage, bullion joined bonds in the safe-haven camp, with gold spiking back above $1870 – one month highs…

    While oil was up today, WTI ended lower on the week back to a $76 handle…

    The ‘panic’ across markets had a dramatic effect on Fed rate trajectory expectations with the Fed’s terminal rate expectations plunging over 55bps since the post-Powell spike earlier in the week, and 40bps of rate-cuts are now priced-in by year-end…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Additionally, expectations for The Fed’s action in March are hawkishly higher on the week (but down today) with around a 40-50% chance of 50bps hike priced in…

    Source: Bloomberg

    To put that shift in context, the term structure has dropped and twisted significantly since Wednesday…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Just to really rub in what the fuck just happened… the market was pricing in over 3 25bps rate-hikes to Jan 2024 on Wednesday… and now its pricing in around half of one rate-hike…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Finally, we give the last word to Eric Johnston at Cantor Fitzgerald:

    “Three days ago the view in the market was that economy was teflon vs the rate hikes and that there were not going to be any financial accidents because we have made it this far without much damage,” he wrote.

    “What has now changed is that people now realize that we are not teflon and there can be impact and very negative impact at that from these hikes. It is not about which bank is next, or who has similar exposure, or will depositors be made whole. It is about there likely being more time bombs out there that we have no idea about right now. That is what has changed, people no longer believe we are teflon…finally.”

    Maybe keep your eyes out for other bank CEOs dumping millions in their own stock…

    Makes you wonder eh?

    Returning full circle to the start of today’s market summary, we are reminded of Michael Hartnett’s closing remarks: “The market stops panicking when central banks start panicking.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/10/2023 – 19:20

  • "Expect Mass Layoffs…" – The Real-World Impact Of SVB's Failure
    “Expect Mass Layoffs…” – The Real-World Impact Of SVB’s Failure

    For most people in America, the news that a ‘bank in Silicon Valley’ has failed will be forgotten quicker than a story about soaring shoplifting in their local supermarket.

    It shouldn’t.

    Reality is that the contagion of the shuttering of the 18th largest bank in the US are widespread.

    SVB is in fact the second largest (by assets) bank failure in US history after WaMu.

    First things first, there is a long line of depositors who are over the $250,000 FDIC insured limit (in fact only somewhere between 3 and 7% of total deposits are insured). The following list, while incomplete, is approximately sorted by size of exposure:

    • USDC – Crypto Stablecoin run by Circle – Silicon Valley Bank is one of six banking partners Circle uses for managing the ~25% portion of USDC reserves held in cash. While we await clarity on how the FDIC receivership of SVB will impact its depositors, Circle & USDC continue to operate normally.

    • ROKU – Roku had 26% of its cash, $487 million with Silicon Valley Bank

    • BLOCKFI – BlockFi has $227 million in “unprotected” funds in Silicon Valley Bank, according to a bankruptcy document, and may be in violation of U.S. bankruptcy law.

    • RBLX – Roblox said 5% of its $3b cash and securities balance is held at SVB.

    • DNA – Gingko Bioworks: Only the cash balance of the company’s wholly-owned subsidiary Zymergen Inc. is held in deposit accounts at SVB, representing approximately $74M or 6% of the company’s cash and cash equivalents as of December 31, 2022

    • RKLB – RocketLab USA had about $38 million in its accounts with the bank, representing about 7.9% of the startup’s cash and equivalents

    • LC – Lending Club warned about potentially losing funds on deposit at SVB of $21 million, said amount isn’t material to its liquidity position or capital levels, and doesn’t pose a risk to the group’s business or operations.

    • PAYO – Payoneer: Of the company’s approximately $6.4B in total cash balances as of December 31, 2022, less than $20M is held at SVB

    • PTGX – Protagonist Therapeutics considers its exposure to any liquidity concern at SVB to be limited, given that cash held at SVB is approximately $13 million as of March 9, 2023. 

    • ACHR – Archer Aviation entered into a $20 million loan with SVB in 2021, $10 million of which is due for repayment in 2023

    • COHU – Cohu announced that it has deposit accounts with SVB with an aggregate balance of approximately $12.3M, which is approximately 3.8% of the company’s total cash and investments.

    • IGMS – IMG Biosciences: ‘As of March 10, 2023, the Company holds less than $5.0 million in deposits at SVB. Therefore, the Company believes it does not have any material exposure to any liquidity concerns at SVB.’

    • RYTM – Rhythm Pharmaceuticals announced that it has deposit accounts with SVB with an aggregate balance of approximately $3.4 million, which is approximately 1.1% of the Company’s total cash and cash equivalents.’

    • SYRS – Syros Pharmaceuticals discloses that, as of March 10, 2023, it has two deposit accounts at Silicon Valley Bank. One of these accounts has a balance of less than $250,000, and the other has a balance of approximately $3.1 million pursuant to a letter of credit that the Company was required to provide to its landlord in connection with the execution of the lease for its corporate headquarters…

    • EYPT – EyePoint Pharmaceuticals currently maintains a de minimis amount of cash, in the single digit millions of U.S. dollars, with Silicon Valley Bank (SIVB)

    • ATRA – Atara Biotherapeutics currently maintains an account at Silicon Valley Bank (“SVB”) holding cash deposits of approximately $2 million, which amount the Company considers to be immaterial to its liquidity.’

    • ISEE – Iveric Bio currently maintains a de minimis amount of cash and cash equivalents, in the low single digit millions of U.S. dollars, with Silicon Valley Bank (“SVe”).’

    • VERA – Vera Therapeutics currently holds approximately 1.2% of its cash and investments with SVB. Accordingly, the Company considers its risk exposure relating to SVB to be minimal.

    • XFOR – X4 Pharmaceuticals had approximately 2.5% of its cash deposits with SVB.

    • CTMX – CytomX Therapeutics does not consider its exposure to any liquidity concern at SVB to be significant. The cash held at SVB in CytomX’s operating CTMX account is at or near the FDIC-insured limit of $250,000. CytomX also maintains a deposit account at SVB under a standby letter of credit issued pursuant to its office lease for approximately $917,000.’

    • AXSM – Axsome Therapeutics has material cash deposits with SVB. 

    • WVE – Wave Life Sciences aggregate amount of the company’s cash and restricted cash held at SVB is approximately $1.5M.

    • JNPR – Juniper Networks maintains operating accounts at SVB with a minimal cash balance of less than 1% of the company’s total cash

    • QS – QuantumScape has very limited exposure to SVB, with only a low single digit percentage exposure relative to both the Company’s total liquidity and total assets.

    And, investors are out a lot…

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    Whenever a company stumbles, shareholder lawsuits become pretty common. As Bloomberg reports, already this morning, law firms including Faruqi & Faruqi LLP, Schall Law Firm, Pomerantz LLP and Girard Sharp LLP have put out press releases saying they’re looking into SVB and that investors who’ve suffered losses as the bank’s shares slumped can contact the firms’ attorneys.

    Brad Hargreaves explains in a brief thread how SVB’s closure & receivership is going to have a massive impact on the tech ecosystem.

    SVB was not just a dominant player in tech but were highly integrated in some nontraditional ways.

    A few things we’ll see in the coming days / weeks…

    One, SVB was incredibly integrated into the lives of many founders. Not just their startup’s bank & lender, but also provided personal mortgages and other financial services. A whole mess for FDIC (or the eventual buyer) to unwind.

    Two, any “uninsured” balances at SVB – those above $250K – are in jeopardy. FDIC plans to pay them out “as it sells the assets of SVB”. Lots of startups exclusively banked with SVB as *this was a covenant of their debt*!

    CEOs yesterday faced a hard choice: Pull your deposits and go into default on your venture debt or risk losing everything if the bank failed. Many chose to hold tight as SVB’s outright failure seemed outlandish.

    Now they may not be able to make payroll next week.

    Unpaid wages pierce the corporate veil, so boards are *incredibly* sensitive to employing workers they may not be able to pay.

    Expect mass layoffs later today, Monday at latest.

    And given the weak fundraising environment, a number of startups have been reliant on venture lenders – e.g., SVB – not aggressively pursuing amortization of debt or triggering default for covenant foot faults (e.g., cash balances). How will the FDIC handle this? Mass defaults?

    Having run a startup through the GFC, this is the first thing I’ve seen since that is even vaguely reminiscent of that time. Total clusterfuck.

    One more thing: SVB also offered *wealth management services* to many of its founders. So your corporate lender, corporate bank, personal mortgage lender, and family’s wealth manager is… all one bank, which is now in FDIC receivership. Fun.

    JPow got his fucking debt crisis alright

    Launchpad Capital founder Ryan Gilbert explained the impact of this mainstay of the VC market‘s failure…

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    Garry Tan, the CEO of YCombinator echoes what we said just two days ago, namely that “this is an *extinction level event* for startups and will set startups and innovation back by 10 years or more” and warns that “30% of YC companies exposed through SVB can’t make payroll in the next 30 days.”

    The most important thing the FDIC and the US Government can do right now is *make the receivership as short as possible*

    There are thousands of US startups that banked at SVB, often as their *sole bank*. $250K per account is not going to last long.

    The #1 pressing issue for these startups is *payroll* – you can’t have people work if you can’t pay them.

    This means mass furlough.

    It might mean thousands of startups die before the FDIC gets through its receivership process and releases the funds.

     From what I hear, there are venture debt options coming from providers like Brex, but we’re going to need *a lot* of options in order to avoid a mass shutdown of all American startups in the next few weeks.
    This is an *extinction level event* for startups and will set startups and innovation back by 10 years or more.

    BIG TECH will not care about this. They have cash elsewhere.

    All little startups, tomorrow’s Google’s and Facebooks, will be extinguished if we don’t find a fix.

    30% of YC companies exposed through SVB can’t make payroll in the next 30 days.

    If you or your company are affected, I recommend that you reach out to your local congressman to get this on their radar TODAY.

    Now.

    So bail out Silicon Valley now, or something.

    Another example of a firm directly impacted (and its staff and clients), comes from Parker Conrad, CEO of HR/IT/Finance firm Rippling, facing payrolls problems:

    We (Rippling) discovered yesterday that Silicon Valley Bank had unexpected solvency challenges. Just now, we learned that the FDIC had stepped in and effectively shut down SVB.

    Rippling has historically relied on SVB for payments rails for our payroll and other products. In light of yesterday’s news, we immediately accelerated a planned switch to JPMorgan Chase.

    Effective immediately & going forward, Rippling payroll runs will process through JPMC. However, pay runs in flight for today out of SVB have not been paid. The latest we heard from SVB this morning was that this was an operational delay and funds will be released.

    However, FDIC involvement makes us skeptical of the assurances we are getting from SVB.

    Our top priority is to get our customers’ employees paid as soon as we possibly can, and we’re working diligently toward that on all available channels, and trying to learn what the FDIC takeover means for today’s payments.

    We have contacted customers with a configuration change they need to make for us to successfully process their payroll, going forward, via JPMorgan Chase & Co.

    Going forward, payroll runs through Rippling will have no exposure to SVB. But today’s payment delay is a result of pay runs initiated early this week, with funds in-flight through SVB. Our full focus is on getting these employees paid as quickly as possible.

    So, it’s not just ‘rich’ venture capitalist ‘folks’ who could be suffering.

    It’s real world businesses and their clients and employees who are feeling the direct pinch of SVB’s failure today.

    Additionally, as @WallStCynic notes, public companies with uninsured deposits at SVB will have to start making some very uncomfortable disclosures soon.

    Finally, we note that the well known problem with bank failure is that they are always non-linear… and we are far from seeing the final fallout from this one.

    Furthermore, the shift in what flows they have available to JPMorgan is noteworthy since the hope, once again, becomes, that these mega banks are ‘too big to fail’.

    Oh and one person not to shed any tears for is the CEO…

    ..who dumped $3.5 million of his stock just last week – good timing eh?

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/10/2023 – 19:06

  • Student Debt Forgiveness Won’t Cure Higher Ed’s Disease
    Student Debt Forgiveness Won’t Cure Higher Ed’s Disease

    Authored by Bruce Abramson via RealClear Wire,

    On February 28th, the Supreme Court heard arguments on President Biden’s plan to extinguish an estimated $400 billion in student debt. Biden deserves credit for highlighting a debilitating federal program in desperate need of reform. His proposal, however, would make the problem far worse, not better. Any serious reform would force academic institutions to take some responsibility for the education they provide—and to show some responsibility to the many young Americans they induce to go deeply into debt. 

    The problems run deep. American higher education has become a hollow bubble of an industry coasting on brand equity and past glory. 

    Notwithstanding pockets of world-class excellence, the industry does little well. Universities are top-heavy and inefficient. Their complex products bundle education, research, and campus life for many students who need—and can afford—only the first of the three. On campus, classrooms teach neither critical thinking nor employable skills. The return on research dollars is pitiful. Antisemitism and segregation thrive at levels unseen elsewhere in American society. Internal procedures fail to provide due process or equal protection. 

    American academia is a sham suffering from disastrously flawed structures and incentive systems.

    Costs have risen uncontrollably. Forty-three years ago, my freshman tuition at Columbia (including mandatory fees, excluding residential costs) ran between $20,000 and $25,000 in today’s dollars. Ivy League schools today charge about $70,000—nearly triple in real terms. The 1980 price tag associated with America’s most expensive colleges—affordable to many like me only with the help of student loans—will now hardly cover in-state tuition at a top public university like Berkeley or Michigan. 

    The federal student loan programs have mushroomed to obscure the real costs. Free federal dollars flow through students who can’t fathom the burden of future repayment into university coffers. Colleges have taken advantage of this federal money to pad their payrolls with administrators—now employed in greater numbers than faculty, nationwide—most charged with little more than regulatory compliance and a desire to promote ideological purity.

    From there, things get worse. All decisions concerning faculty hiring, promotion, tenure, publication, grants, awards, and prestige are made by the faculty. The key to professional success thus lies entirely in impressing senior colleagues. The vaunted peer review process means that other faculty members agree that your work furthers the ideas upon which they have based their own careers. Not exactly a recipe for innovation.

    Why challenge conventional wisdom when doing so can create only ostracism, criticism, and career setbacks? It’s far safer to add your voice to the “consensus of experts” that already defines your field.

    As to the students themselves—and recent graduates—they have little recourse. Prestigious faculty highlighted in promotional materials fade into the background as underpaid adjuncts and graduate students teach most of the classes. Implications about the value of a degree, perhaps accurate when applied to students who excel in engineering but way off the mark for most students, are never binding. Universities have zero liability for mislabeling their offerings, for bait-and-switch tactics, or for providing an unsatisfactory education. The entire system insulates colleges and universities from consumer displeasure.

    Today’s wealthiest universities are blissfully protected from external economic pressures, external assessments of quality, external customer complaints, and external liability for unacceptable performance. Many take matters even further, providing their own security and internal adjudication procedures—minimizing their exposure to the police and the courts that govern the rest of us. 

    With that intense structural insulation in place, the rest is unsurprising. An industry handed an unlimited budget, unassailable prestige, tax benefits, liability shields, and autonomous policing and courts behaves precisely as you’d expect it to behave: It is committed to draining outside resources for the benefit of insiders. That the resulting institutions are woke and leftist is almost coincidental. The entire industry structure is designed to promote inefficiency, absurdity, self-adulation, and contempt for others. It is delivering on that design.

    The current system saddles young adults with crushing debt, empowers the worst instincts of corrupt academic administrators, and tightens the control of government bureaucrats over education. America’s institutions of higher learning will never again produce informed citizens and talented leaders unless we address their deep structural flaws and corrupt incentive systems.

    Student loan programs are overdue for reform. Debt relief for past loans, however, would make things worse rather than better. It would reward problematic behavior of the past and motivate worse behavior in the future. 

    Proper reform would make the institutions accountable for the debt they induce America’s youth to incur. Loan guarantees—even if conditional and partial—would force them to consider efficiency, economics, and program quality for the first time in decades. 

    Reforming the student loan system wouldn’t fix many of the problems plaguing American academia. It would, however, go a long way toward realigning institutional incentives with the needs of a healthy industry. Let the universities scream that forcing them to assume responsibility would mark the end of American education as we know it. It would mark the beginning of American education as we need it.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/10/2023 – 19:00

  • Fluoride Lawsuit Against EPA Prompts Pending Release Of Potentially Damaging Report
    Fluoride Lawsuit Against EPA Prompts Pending Release Of Potentially Damaging Report

    Authored by Christy Prais via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to oppose and delay a lawsuit filed against them by the Fluoride Action Network (FAN) to ban the use of fluoride in public water supplies in the United States.

    The case has revealed government attempts to limit available evidence and avoid having the facts of water fluoridation reviewed in court. A spokesperson with FAN told The Epoch Times in an email, “this represents a major reversal in the federal agencies’ position, and will ensure that the public has access to these critical documents that would have otherwise remained buried forever.”

    Fluoride exposure has been linked to an increased risk of hypothyroidism in pregnant women and brain-based disorders in their offspring. There are also findings that higher fluoride exposure is associated with reduced IQ in children.

    From Petition to Lawsuit

    The lawsuit began in 2017 after a petition filed in November 2016 called on the EPA to “protect the public and susceptible subpopulations from the neurotoxic risks of fluoride by banning the addition of fluoridation chemicals to water.”

    The petition referenced more than 2,500 pages of scientific documentation detailing the risks of water fluoridation to human health, including more than 180 published studies showing fluoride is linked to reduced IQ and neurotoxic harm.

    In its Feb. 27, 2017 response, the EPA claimed the petition had failed to “set forth a scientifically defensible basis to conclude that any persons have suffered neurotoxic harm as a result of exposure to fluoride,” and denied the claim.

    The Toxic Substances Control Act passed in 2016 includes statutes that provide citizens the ability to challenge an EPA denial in federal court. Thus, in 2017, FAN, Food & Water Watch, and Organic Consumers Association filed a lawsuit against the EPA challenging the denial.

    …

    Government Agency Interference 

    Internal CDC emails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by plaintiff attorney Michael Connett showed discussion and comments related to the NTP’s unreleased Fluoride Toxicity Report.

    The emails seem to indicate the NTP report was not made public due to interference from Levine and Tabak.

    One email from the CDC dated June 3, 2022, specifically stated, “ASH [Assistant Secretary of Health] Levine has put the report on hold until further notice.”

    In the submitted notice Connett stated, “These emails confirm that the NTP considered the May 2022 monograph to be the NTP’s final report. They also confirm that the CDC was opposed to the NTP releasing the report, and that leadership at the top levels of the Department of Health and Human Services intervened to stop the report from being released.”

    Harmful Effects of Fluoride

    In the past, fluoridation chemicals were obtained from the wet scrubbing systems of the phosphate fertilizer industry and added to many public water supplies in the United States to reduce tooth decay. It is now recognized by dental researchers that fluoride’s primary benefit comes from topical application and does not need to be swallowed to prevent tooth decay.

    The FAN states that “in recent years, however, an increasing number of water departments have begun purchasing their fluoride chemicals from China. Based on recent incidents, it appears that the quality control of the Chinese chemicals is even more lax, and variable, than the U.S.-produced chemicals.”

    The NTP’s 2019 Systematic Review of Fluoride Exposure and Neurodevelopment and Cognitive Health Effects concluded that “ … fluoride is presumed to be a cognitive neurodevelopmental hazard to humans.” They state that “This conclusion is based on a consistent pattern of findings in human studies across several different populations showing that higher fluoride exposure is associated with decreased IQ or other cognitive impairments in children.” 

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/10/2023 – 18:20

  • Putin Congratulates Xi On Securing Unprecedented 3rd Term, Hails 'Strategic Cooperation'
    Putin Congratulates Xi On Securing Unprecedented 3rd Term, Hails ‘Strategic Cooperation’

    In what was widely seen as a purely ceremonial vote, Xi Jinping secured an unprecedented third term as China’s president on Friday by approval of the country’s rubber-stamp legislature in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Friday. It was unanimous, at 2,952 votes, and this was followed by a standing ovation. 

    This makes the 69-year old the longest-serving head of state that Communist China has ever seen going back to 1949, and comes after he already broke precedent in gaining a third term as head of the Chinese Communist party last fall. He’s also head of the nation’s armed forces, and thus has unrivaled authority even compared to predecessors of past decades.

    A toast after inking a major Sino-Russian Gas Deal in 2014. File image: Zuma Press

    CNBC previews that a new premier will be chosen by delegates on Saturday. And “Xi is scheduled to speak at the parliamentary meeting’s closing ceremony on Monday. The new premier is set to speak with the press later that day.” It’s expected to be one of Xi’s most loyal protégés, Li Qiang.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin was among the first world leaders to congratulate Xi on his third term, and hailed the two countries’ strategic partnership.

    “Dear friend, please accept sincere congratulations on the occasion of your reelection,” Putin said in a statement published by the Kremlin. “Russia highly values your personal contribution toward the strengthening of ties … and strategic cooperation between our nations,” he added. 

    “I am certain that working together, we will ensure the development of fruitful Russian-Chinese cooperation in all sorts of different areas,”  the letter continues. “We will continue to coordinate joint work on the most important regional and international issues.”

    This comes at a moment the US intelligence community is warning of “complex” threats from both China and Russia – as their coordination grows while finding a common enemy in Washington, as well as outlier states like North Korea.

    The standing ovation after Xi secured his third 5-year term as president of China…

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    The US administration has also repeatedly warned Beijing against arming Russia for use in the war in Ukraine. Biden officials have not said they believe this has been done yet, but have cited intelligence which shows Beijing is mulling it. Xi is also planning an upcoming trip to Russia to meet with Putin, which the West will greet as a huge provocation.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/10/2023 – 18:00

  • Kelly: A Handy January 6 Fact Sheet
    Kelly: A Handy January 6 Fact Sheet

    Authored by Julie Kelly via American Greatness,

    In another example of Washington’s inexorable slide into banana republic territory, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) took to the floor of the U.S. Senate on Tuesday to call for the removal of an American journalist. 

    “I don’t think I’ve ever seen an anchor treat the American people, and American democracy, with such disdain,” Schumer said during his seven-minute authoritarian tirade.

    “And he’s going to come back tonight with another segment. Fox News should tell him not to. Fox News, Rupert Murdoch—tell Mr. Carlson not to run a second segment of lies. You know it’s a lie.”

    Schumer later reiterated his demand to a group of journalists who, rather than denounce one of the most powerful government officials in the country attempting to silence an influential member of the media, dutifully reported Schumer’s bleating without question.

    Republican senators including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) joined the fray, echoing Schumer’s faux concerns over “national security.”

    Clearly, it’s panic time. The White House, Congress, and the Democratic Party propaganda arm that is the corporate media realize their carefully engineered narrative about January 6 is imploding in real time. Which is why they’re accusing Carlson of “whitewashing” and “rewriting” the events of January 6. Anything less than total fealty to regime-approved talking points about what happened before and after that day now is considered a “threat to democracy.”

    But facts are facts. And no amount of pearl-clutching by the hags on “The View” or threats made by U.S. senators can alter the reality of January 6. Between video recordings, witness testimony, court filings, and news reporting, the undeniable truth about January 6 cannot be willfully wished away even by the most skilled spinmeisters.

    Here’s what we know:

    • Some people acted badly. A handful came ready for a fight while others admit they were caught up in a mob mentality that unfolded over the course of the afternoon.

    • The overwhelming majority of protesters did not act badly or violently. Not only do security footage and other video sources demonstrate that is indeed true, the Justice Department’s own data supports it. “Parading” in the Capitol, a class B misdemeanor, is by far the most common charge in the Justice Department’s sweeping investigation. According to an update published this week, 919 out of 1,000 defendants face trespassing charges. Of the 518 who accepted plea agreements, 385 pleaded guilty to misdemeanors and 133 pleaded guilty to a felony.

    • The most common felony is not “insurrection” but rather obstruction of an official proceeding. Fewer than 20 people face seditious conspiracy charges.

    • Roughly 100 defendants are accused of attacking police officers with a dangerous weapon. No one is charged with carrying or using a firearm inside the building.

    • Speaking of police, body-worn camera and independent video show outrageous misconduct by law enforcement. D.C. Metropolitan Police launched an aggressive and unnecessary offensive against the crowd assembled on the west lawn. Even though protesters were respecting police lines at the time, footage shows officers throwing stun grenades into and other devices containing rubber bullets into the crowd beginning shortly after 1:00 p.m.

    • Video and testimony by Capitol police officers at trial confirmed how that activity enraged the crowd. Other officers shoved women down stairs and shoved one man off the upper terrace balcony.

    • This conduct continued inside the building. Some officers shoved and hit individuals inside the Rotunda and other areas. A brutal scene in the lower west terrace tunnel unfolded as police used their batons to beat at least two women on the head resulting in bleeding and injuries.

    • Excessive force caused the deaths of four Trump supporters: Ashli Babbitt, Rosanne Boyland, Kevin Greeson, and Benjamin Phillips.

    • On the flip side, despite persistent claims even by Attorney General Merrick Garland and White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre as recently as this week, no police officers died as a result of injuries sustained on January 6. Officer Brian Sicknick is on video walking around after he suffered a pepper spray attack; he died of a stroke the next day. There’s no evidence the reported suicides of other officers after January 6 were related to the protest.

    • Further, the responsibility of sufficiently protecting the Capitol with enough officers fell to the Capitol Police board—staffed by the sergeant-at-arms for then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund repeatedly testified that he requested additional help including National Guardsmen days before January 6. Even as the chaos unfolded that day, House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving and Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Stenger delayed pursuing the proper authorization of the National Guard.

    • Irving told House Republicans that his staff as well as members of the House Administration committee began planning for January 6 weeks before the protest. Jamie Fleet, a security staffer for both Pelosi and the committee overseeing Capitol functions, told the January 6 select committee that he started preparations for January 6 in the summer of 2020.

    • When the building was breached at around 2:15 p.m., Congress was not voting to certify the electoral college results at the time, a common misperception. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Arizona) were in the process of disputing the election outcome in Gosar’s home state, a process permitted under the Electoral Count Act. The joint session of Congress technically had been adjourned an hour earlier so debate could begin.

    • For all the wasted energy spent over the past two years that democracy almost died on January 6, the chaotic protest only delayed the certification ceremony for seven hours. Joe Biden officially was declared president at 3:00 a.m. the next day.

    • The surveillance video viewed by Carlson’s team has not been made available to defense attorneys, arguably in violation of defendants’ constitutional rights.

    • A separate trove of tapes that captured activity from the hours between noon and 8:00 p.m. was turned over to the FBI in early 2021 to use in its investigation. With few exceptions, all footage remains under protective orders. Defense attorneys consistently have complained that access to the full archive is constrained by the protective orders.

    Plenty of other falsehoods and misrepresentations animate the fable of January 6. But for those honestly seeking the truth, consider this a cheat sheet for future use.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 03/10/2023 – 17:40

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Mar 10

Today’s News 10th March 2023

  • Kuroda Calls It A Career With A Whimper: BOJ Keeps Policy, YCC Band Unchanged
    Kuroda Calls It A Career With A Whimper: BOJ Keeps Policy, YCC Band Unchanged

    In the end, despite some expectations for fireworkers, Kuroda ended his central banking career with a whimper.

    On March 9-10, the BOJ held its Monetary Policy Meeting (MPM), and in a unanimous vote decided to maintain the status quo across all monetary policy parameters, including yield curve control (YCC) and asset purchase programs, in line with most expectations. The tolerable band for the 10-year JGB yield was also kept at plus/minus 50bp. The BOJ also maintained forward guidance, which is tied to the pandemic situation and states that it “expects short- and long-term policy interest rates to remain at their present or lower levels,” as expected.

    Ahead of the meeting, Goldman notes that “some market participants were of the view that the BOJ would eliminate YCC entirely or adjust it further at today’s MPM, as it was the last for Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, to alleviate the burden on the next governor, Kazuo Ueda.”

    The BOJ maintained its overall assessment of the economy at “has picked up as the resumption of economic activity has progressed while public health has been protected from COVID-19.” By category, the BOJ downgraded its assessment on exports and production, to “they have been more or less flat,” from “have increased as a trend.” On consumption, the assessment was unchanged as “increased moderately,” while the BOJ added “despite being affected by price rises” to its statement.

    Regarding the inflation outlook, the BOJ maintained the view that the CPI “is likely to decelerate toward the middle of fiscal 2023 due to the effects of pushing down energy prices from the government’s economic measures and to a waning of the effects of a pass-through to consumer prices of cost increases led by a rise in import prices.”

    Meanwhile, the government’s proposal to appoint Kazuo Ueda as the next BOJ governor and Shinichi Uchida and Ryozo Himino as deputy governors (each to five-year terms) has been formally approved following majority endorsements by the Lower House on March 9 and the Upper House on March 10. The new leadership will take up their roles after Governor Kuroda’s term expires on April 8, and the current deputy governors’ terms end on March 19.

    Japanese stocks maintained losses after the Bank of Japan reiterated an easing stance at its policy meeting. Market sentiment was hurt by the plunge in US bank shares on concern over the financial health of Silicon Valley Bank. The Topix Index fell 1.2% to 2,046.17 as of 12:35 p.m. Tokyo time, while the Nikkei declined 0.9% to 28,361.62. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. contributed the most to the Topix Index decline, decreasing 3.5%.

    According to Credit Agricole the yen will track US Treasuries as investors await the next monetary policy moves by the Bank of Japan under the leadership of incoming Governor, Kazuo Ueda.

    “JPY will continue to move inversely with UST yields. We would caution investors that further inversion of the UST yield curve could act as a cap on USD/JPY upside,” says David Forrester, strategist in Singapore adding that “Ueda will likely want to settle into the Governorship for a meeting or two before considering making any changes.”

    “The relatively short deliberation and unanimous vote really shows the BOJ didn’t want to change policy today” which is good: the last thing the market needs now is even more shocks.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/09/2023 – 23:56

  • Central Bank Digital Currency Is The Endgame, Part 1
    Central Bank Digital Currency Is The Endgame, Part 1

    Authored by Iain Davis via Off-Guardian.org,

    Central bank digital currency (CBDC) will end human freedom. Don’t fall for the assurances of safeguards, the promises of anonymity and of data protection. They are all deceptions and diversions to obscure the malevolent intent behind the global rollout of CBDC.

    Central Bank Digital Currency is the most comprehensive, far-reaching, authoritarian social control mechanism ever devised. Its “interoperability” will enable the CBDCs issued by various national central banks to be networked to form one, centralised global CBDC surveillance and control system.

    Should we allow it to prevail, CBDC will deliver the global governance of humanity into the hands of the bankers.

    CBDC is unlike any kind of “money” with which we are familiar. It is programmable and “smart contracts” can be written into its code to control the terms and conditions of the transaction.

    Policy decisions and broader policy agendas, restricting our lives as desired, can be enforced using CBDC without any need of legislation. Democratic accountability, already a farcical concept, will become literally meaningless.

    CBDC will enable genuinely unprecedented levels of surveillance, as every transaction we make will be monitored and controlled. Not just the products, goods and services we buy, even the transactions we make with each other will be overseen by the central bankers of the global governance state. Data gathering will expand to encompass every aspect of our lives.

    This will allow central planners to engineer society precisely as the bankers wish. CBDC can and will be linked to our Digital IDs and, through our CBDC “wallets,” tied to our individual carbon credit accounts and jab certificates. CBDC will limit our freedom to roam and enable our programmers to adjust our behaviour if we stray from our designated Technate function.

    The purpose of CBDC is to establish the tyranny of a dictatorship. If we allow CBDC to become our only means of monetary exchange, it will be used enslave us.

    Be under no illusions: CBDC is the endgame.

    WHAT IS MONEY?

    Defining “money” isn’t difficult, although economists and bankers like to give the impression that it is. Money can simply be defined as:

    A commodity accepted by general consent as a medium of economic exchange. It is the medium in which prices and values are expressed. It circulates from person to person and country to country, facilitating trade, and it is the principal measure of wealth.

    Money is a “medium”—a paper note, a coin, a casino chip, a gold nugget or a digital token, etc.—that we agree to use in exchange transactions. It is worth whatever value we ascribe to it and it is the agreed value which makes it possible for us to use it to trade with one-another. If its value is socially accepted “by general consent” we can use it to buy goods and services in the wider economy.

    We could use anything we like as money and we are perfectly capable of managing a monetary system voluntarily. The famous example of US prisoners using tins of mackerel as money illustrates both how money functions and how it can be manipulated by the “authorities” if they control the issuance of it.

    Tins of mackerel are small and robust and can serve as perfect exchange tokens (currency) that are easy to carry and store. When smoking was banned within the US penal system, the prisoners preferred currency, the cigarette, was instantly taken out of circulation. As there was a steady, controlled supply of mackerel cans, with each prisoners allotted a maximum of 14 per week, the prisoners agreed to use the tinned fish as a “medium of economic exchange” instead.

    The prisoners called in-date tins the EMAK (edible mackerel) as this had “intrinsic” utility value as food. Out-of-date fish didn’t, but was still valued solely as a medium of exchange. The inmates created an exchange rate of 4 inedible MMAKs (money mackerel) to three EMAKs.

    You could buy goods and services in the Inmate Run Market (IRM) that were not available on the Administration Run Market (ARM). Other prison populations adopted the same monetary system, thus enabling inmates to store value in the form of MAKs. They could use their saved MAKs in other prisons if they were transferred.

    Prisoners would accept payment in MAKs for cooking pizza, mending clothes, cleaning cells, etc. These inmate service providers were effectively operating IRM businesses. The prisoners had voluntarily constructed a functioning economy and monetary system.

    Their main problem was that they were reliant upon a monetary policy authority—the US prison administration—who issued their currency (MAKs). This was done at a constant inflationary rate (14 tins per prisoner per week) meaning that the inflationary devaluation of the MAKs was initially constant and therefore stable.

    It isn’t clear if it was deliberate, but the prison authorities eventually left large quantities of EMAKs and MMAKs in communal areas, thereby vastly increasing the money supply. This destabilised the MAK, causing hyperinflation that destroyed its value.

    With a glut of MAKs available, its purchasing power collapsed. Massive quantities were needed to buy a haircut, for example, thus rendering the IRM economy physically and economically impractical. If only temporarily.

    Perfectly usable “money”

    THE BANKERS’ NIGHTMARE

    In June 2022, as part of its annual report, the BIS published The future monetary system. The central banks (BIS members) effectively highlighted their concerns about the potential for the decentralised finance (DeFi), common to the “crypto universe,” to undermine their authority as the issuers of “money”:

    [DeFi] seeks to replicate conventional financial services within the crypto universe. These services are enabled by innovations such as programmability and composability on permissionless blockchains.

    The BIS defined DeFi as:

    [. . .] a set of activities across financial services built on permissionless DLT [Distributed Ledger Technology] such as blockchains.

    The key issue for the central bankers was “permissionless.”

    A blockchain is one type of DLT that can either be permissionless or permissioned. Many of the most well known cryptocurrencies are based upon “permissionless” blockchains. The permissionless blockchain has no access control.

    Both the users and the “nodes” that validate the transactions on the permissionless blockchain network are anonymous. The network distributed nodes perform cryptographic check-sums to validate transactions, each seeking to enter the next block in the chain in return for an issuance of cryptocurrency (mining). This means that the anonymous—if they wish–users of the cryptocurrency can be confident that transactions have been recorded and validated without any need of a bank.

    Regardless of what you think about cryptocurrency, it is not the innumerable coins and models of “money” in the “crypto universe” that concerns the BIS or its central bank member. It is the underpinning “permissionless” DLT, threatening their ability to maintain financial and economic control, that preoccupies them.

    The BIS more-or-less admits this:

    Crypto has its origin in Bitcoin, which introduced a radical idea: a decentralised means of transferring value on a permissionless blockchain. Any participant can act as a validating node and take part in the validation of transactions on a public ledger (ie the permissionless blockchain). Rather than relying on trusted intermediaries (such as banks), record-keeping on the blockchain is performed by a multitude of anonymous, self-interested validators.

    Many will argue that Bitcoin was a creation of the deep state. Perhaps to lay the foundation for CBDC, or at least provide the claimed justification for it. Although the fact that this is one “conspiracy theory” that the mainstream media is willing to entertain might give us pause for thought.

    Interesting though this debate may be, it is an aside because it is not Bitcoin, nor any other cryptoasset constructed upon any permissionless DLT, that threatens human freedom. The proposed models of CBDC most certainly do.

    CBDC & THE END OF THE SPLIT CIRCUIT IMFS

    Central banks are private corporations just as commercial banks are. As we bank with commercial banks so commercial banks bank with central banks. We are told that central banks have something to do with government, but that is a myth.

    Today, we use “fiat currency” as money. Commercial banks create this “money” out of thin air when they make a loan (exposed here). In exchange for a loan agreement the commercial bank creates a corresponding “bank deposit”—from nothing—that the customer can then access as new money. This money (fiat currency) exists as commercial bank deposit and can be called “broad money.”

    Commercial banks hold reserve accounts with the central banks. These operate using a different type of fiat currency called “central bank reserves” or “base money.”

    We cannot exchange “base money,” nor can “nonbank” businesses. Only commercial and central banks have access to base money. This creates, what John Titus describes—on his excellent Best Evidence Channel—as the split-monetary circuit.

    Prior to the pseudopandemic, in theory, base money did not “leak” into the broad money circuit. Instead, increasing commercial banks’ “reserves” supposedly encouraged them to lend more and thereby allegedly increase economic activity through some vague mechanism called “stimulus” .

    Following the global financial crash in 2008, which was caused by the commercial banks profligate speculation on worthless financial derivatives, the central banks “bailed-out” the bankrupt commercial banks by buying their worthless assets (securities) with base money. The new base money, also created from nothing, remained accessible only to the commercial banks. The new base money didn’t directly create new broad money.

    This all changed, thanks to a plan presented to central banks by the global investment firm BlackRock. In late 2019, the G7 central bankers endorsed BlackRock’s suggested “going-direct” monetary strategy.

    BlackRock said that the monetary conditions that prevailed as a result of the bank bail-outs had left the International Monetary and Financial System (IMFS) “tapped out.” Therefore, BlackRock suggested that a new approach would be needed in the next downturn if “unusual circumstances” arose.

    These circumstances would warrant “unconventional monetary policy and unprecedented policy coordination.” BlackRock opined:

    Going direct means the central bank finding ways to get central bank money directly in the hands of public and private sector spenders.

    Coincidentally, just a couple of months later, the precise “unusual circumstances,” specified by BlackRock, came about as an alleged consequence of the pseudopandemic. The “going direct” plan was implemented.

    Instead of using “base money” to buy worthless assets solely from commercial banks, the central banks used the base money to create “broad money” deposits in commercial banks. The commercial banks acted as passive intermediaries, effectively enabling the central banks to buy assets from nonbanks. These nonbank private corporations and financial institutions would have otherwise been unable sell their bonds and other securities directly to the central banks because they can’t trade using central bank base money.

    The US Federal Reserve (Fed) explain how they deployed BlackRock’s ‘going direct’ plan:

    A notable development in the U.S. banking system following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the rapid and sustained growth in aggregate bank deposits [broad money]. [. . .] When the Federal Reserve purchases securities from a nonbank seller, it creates new bank deposits by crediting the reserve account of the depository institution [base money] at which the nonbank seller has an account, and then the depository institution credits the deposit [broad money] account of the nonbank seller.

    This process of central banks issuing “currency” that then finds its way directly into private hands will find its ultimate expression through CBDC. The transformation of the IMFS, suggested by BlackRock’s “going direct” plan, effectively served as a forerunner for the proposed CBDC based IMFS.

    THE “ESSENTIAL” CBDC PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS

    CBDC will only be “issued” by the central banks. All CBDC is “base money.” It will end the traditional split circuit monetary system, although proponents of CBDC like to pretend that it won’t, claiming the “two-tier banking system” will continue.

    This is nonsense. The new “two-tier” CBDC system is nothing like its more distant predecessor and much more like “going direct.”.

    CBDC potentially cuts commercial banks out of the “creating money from nothing” scam. The need for some quid pro quo between the central and the commercial banks was highlighted in a recent report by McKinsey & Company:

    The successful launch of a CBDC involving direct consumer and business accounts could displace a material share of deposits currently held in commercial bank accounts and could create a new competitive front for payment solution providers.

    McKinsey also noted, for CBDC to be successful, it would need to be widely adopted:

    Ultimately, the success of CBDC launches will be measured by user adoption, which in turn will be tied to the digital coins’ acceptance as a payment method with a value proposition that improves on existing alternatives. [. . .] To be successful, CBDCs will need to gain substantial usage, partially displacing other instruments of payment and value storage.

    According to McKinsey, a thriving CBDC would need to replace existing “instruments of payment.” To achieve this, the private “payment solution providers” will have to be on-board. So, if they are going to countenance displacement of their “material share of deposits,” commercial banks need an incentive.

    Whatever model CBDC ultimately takes, if the central bankers want to minimise commercial resistance from “existing alternatives,” so-called public-private partnership with the commercial banks is essential. Though, seeing as central banks are also private corporations, perhaps “corporate-private partnership” would be more appropriate.

    McKinsey state:

    Commercial banks will likely play a key role in large-scale CBDC rollouts, given their capabilities and knowledge of customer needs and habits. Commercial banks have the deepest capabilities in client onboarding [adoption of CBDC payment systems] [. . .] so it seems likely that the success of a CBDC model will depend on a public–private partnership (PPP) between commercial and central banks.

    Accenture, the global IT consultancy that is a founding member of the ID2020 Alliance global digital identity partnership, agrees with McKinsey.

    Accenture declares:

    Make no mistake: Commercial banks have a pivotal role to play and a unique opportunity to shape the course of CBDC at its foundation. [. . .] CBDC is developing at a much faster pace than that of other payment systems. [. . .] In the U.S. at least, the design of a CBDC will likely involve the private sector, and with the two-tier banking system set to remain in place, commercial banks must now step up and forge a path forward.

    [click to enlarge]

    WHAT MODEL OF CBDC?

    By creating the new concept of “wholesale CBDC,” the two-tier fallacy can be maintained by those who think this matters. Nonetheless, it is true that a wholesale CBDC wouldn’t necessarily supplant broad money.

    The Bank for International Settlements (BIS)—the central bank for central banks—offers a definition of the wholesale CBDC variant:

    Wholesale CBDCs are for use by regulated financial institutions. They build on the current two-tier structure, which places the central bank at the foundation of the payment system while assigning customer-facing activities to PSPs [non-bank payment service providers]. The central bank grants accounts to commercial banks and other PSPs, and domestic payments are settled on the central bank’s balance sheet. [. . .] Wholesale CBDCs and central bank reserves operate in a very similar way.

    Wholesale CBDC has some tenuous similarities to the current central bank reserve system but, depending upon the added functionality of the CBDC design, increases central bank ability to control all investment and subsequent business activity. This alone could have an immense social impact.

    The BIS continues:

    [. . .] a more far-reaching innovation is the introduction of retail CBDCs. Retail CBDCs modify the conventional two-tier monetary system in that they make central bank digital money available to the general public, just as cash is available to the general public as a direct claim on the central bank. [. . .] A retail CBDC is akin to a digital form of cash[.] [. . .] Retail CBDCs come in two variants. One option makes for a cash-like design, allowing for so-called token-based access and anonymity in payments. This option would give individual users access to the CBDC based on a password-like digital signature using private-public key cryptography, without requiring personal identification. The other approach is built on verifying users’ identity (“account-based access”) and would be rooted in a digital identity scheme.

    It is “retail CBDC” that extends central bank oversight and enables it to govern every aspect of our lives. Retail CBDC is the ultimate nightmare scenario for us as individual “citizens.”

    While the BIS outlines the basic concept of retail CBDC, it has thoroughly misled the public. Suggesting that retail CBDC is the users “claim on the central bank” sounds much better than acknowledging that CBDC is a liability of the central bank. That is, the central bank always “owns” the CBDC.

    It is a liability which, as we shall see, the central bank agrees to pay if its stipulated “smart contract” conditions are met. A retail CBDC is actually the central bank’s “claim” on whatever is in your CBDC “wallet.”

    The BIS assertion, that CBDC is “akin to a digital form of cash,” is a lie. CBDC is nothing like “cash,” save in the remotest possible sense.

    Both cash, as we understand it, and CBDC are liabilities of the central bank but the comparison ends there. The central bank, or its commercial bank “partners,” cannot monitor where we exchange cash nor control what we buy with it. CBDC will empower them to do both.

    At the moment, spending cash in a retail setting—-without biometric surveillance such as facial recognition cameras—is automatically anonymous. While “token-based access” retail CBDC could theoretically maintain our anonymity, this is irrelevant because we are all being herded into a retail CBDC design that is “rooted in a digital identity scheme.”

    The UK central bank—the Bank of England (BoE)—has recently published its envisaged technical specification for its CBDC which it deceptively calls the Digital Pound. The BoE categorically states:

    CBDC would not be anonymous because the ability to identify and verify users is needed to prevent financial crime and to meet applicable legal and regulatory obligations. [. . .] Varying levels of identification would be accepted to ensure that CBDC is available for all. [. . . ] Users should be able to vary their privacy preferences to suit their privacy needs within the parameters set by law, the Bank and the Government. Enhanced privacy functionality could result in users securing greater benefits from sharing their personal data.

    Again, it is imperative to appreciate that CBDC is nothing like cash. Cash may be preferred by “criminals” but it is more widely preferred by people who do not want to share all their personal data simply to conduct business or buy goods and services.

    The Digital Pound will end that possibility for British people. Just as CBDCs in every other country will end it for their populations.

    The BoE model assumes no possible escape route. Even for those unable to present state approved “papers” on demand, “varying levels of identification” will be enforced to ensure that the CBDC control grid is “for all.” The BoE, the executive branch of government and the judiciary form a partnership that will determine the acceptable “parameters” of the BoE’s, not the users, “privacy preferences.”

    The more personal identification data you share with the BoE and its state partners, the sweeter your permitted use of CBDC will be. It all depends upon your willingness to comply. Failure to comply will result in you being unable to function as a citizen and ensure that you are effectively barred from mainstream society.

    If we simply concede to the rollout of the CBDC, the concept of the free human being will be distant memory. Only the first couple of post CBDC generations will have any appreciation of what happened. If they don’t deal with it, the future CBDC slavery of humanity will be inescapable.

    This may sound like hyperbole but, regrettably, it isn’t. It is the dictatorial nightmare of retail CBDC that we will explore in part 2, alongside the simple steps we can all take to ensure the CBDC nightmare never becomes a reality.

    Part Two of this series is available on Iain’s SubStack.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/09/2023 – 23:40

  • Beware The Nonresponsive Response To Tucker Carlson
    Beware The Nonresponsive Response To Tucker Carlson

    Authored by Chris Bray via American Greatness,

    This is such a great moment. I just realized what Tucker Carlson versus “the swamp” teaches us. I’m going to suggest that you ask yourself a single question and see if you can answer it, but give me a minute to get there.

    So, if a girlfriend says to her boyfriend, “I know you went home with Tiffany after her shift on Thursday night, and you had sex with her in her living room three times,” and then the boyfriend starts screaming and waving his arms around and shouting, “Oh right! You think I just go around having sex with everyone all the time! You’re so crazy!” Then, in fact, that boyfriend went home with Tiffany after her shift on Thursday night, and he had sex with her in her living room three times. Compare this possible response: “I was with Brian on Thursday night, hanging out at the gas station and listening to Yo La Tengo on our headphones, and I haven’t seen Tiffany since that thing at the dog park.” Right?

    Now, without revisiting details, Tucker Carlson made three claims when he aired January 6 footage on his Fox News program Monday night:

    1) The Viking-horned Jacob Chansley, who was charged with “violent entry” to the Capitol, and who was later depicted as having fought his way through the building to storm the Senate chambers, in fact walked the hall calmly in the company of police officers who didn’t try to stop him, and who in fact tried to open doors for him.

    2) Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who was depicted by the January 6 committee as a coward who ran, alone, from the mob, in fact, followed police directions and left an area with many other legislators.

    3) Officer Brian Sicknick, who has repeatedly been depicted as an officer who was murdered by violent insurrectionists in the Capitol on January 6, can be seen walking around unharmed in the Capitol after he is supposed to have been killed.

    Also, Carlson explicitly said that some people were violent at the Capitol on January 6.

    So watch what the political class is saying about Carlson’s broadcast:

    Thom Tillis isn’t responding to Carlson’s narrow, specific fact claims; he’s responding to his cartoon version, steamrolling details and flattening the thing he’s supposedly talking about. George W. Bush was especially fond of this maneuver, but most politicians use it all the time: “Some say,” they say, and then say something that no one is saying, and then pretend to respond to it. “Some say we should let the terrorists win, but Americans know that’s an irresponsible view.” If you respond to your critics by not responding to your critics but instead respond by inventing their position so you can attack your own rhetorical creation, you can’t respond to your critics.

    So ask yourself one thing: In all the post-broadcast ranting about the Tucker Carlson Menace—and let’s not kid ourselves, he may invade Poland at any moment—how many politicians and media figures have you heard specifically addressing Carlson’s three narrow fact claims about Chansley, Hawley, and Sicknick?

    When someone makes specific claims, and the responses are not specific, the response is not a response. It’s chaff, and it’s meant to cloud the air.

    How many times have we seen this maneuver? Q: You said the vaccines were 100 percent effective, and that everyone who gets them immediately becomes a dead end for the virus. Was that true? A: Ohh, I know that some people are anti-vaxxers who don’t believe in science, but I don’t have any patience for these conspiracy theories.

    It’s topic-shifting, quite thinly disguised. Again: When someone makes specific claims, and the responses are not specific, the response is not a response.

    But finally, one person actually did offer a specific response to one of Carlson’s specific claims, and it’s a response that swallows its own tail. The Washington Post quotes a memo from Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger, disputing the story about Chansley:

    The claim by Carlson that Capitol Police served as ‘tour guides’ for Jacob Chansley, the horn-wearing ‘QAnon Shaman,’ was ‘outrageous and false,’ Manger wrote. He said that Capitol Police were badly outnumbered on Jan. 6, and that, ‘Those officers did their best to use de-escalation tactics to try to talk rioters into getting each other to leave the building.’

    [….]

    Some of the video aired by Carlson showed Chansley being accompanied by several Capitol Police officers as they walked through the hall during the riot. One of the officers was previously featured in a 2021 HBO documentary, ‘Four Hours at the Capitol,’ and said that ‘The sheer number of them compared to us, I knew ahead there was no way we could all get physical with them, so I took it upon myself to try to talk to them.’ The officer is then seen on video walking behind Chansley as Chansley walks into the Senate Chamber.

    We didn’t do that; also, we did do that, but it was a tactic. If the police didn’t try to stop Chansley from entering the Capitol and the Senate chambers because they felt outnumbered and were trying to prevent a confrontation, then the police didn’t try to stop Chansley from entering the Capitol and the Senate chambers. The thing presented as a claim that Carlson lied about concedes the exact thing that Carlson claimed, but then tries to explain it, but still just ends up conceding it. Take it from the Washington Post, in a supposed debunking: An officer said that he just talked to Chansley; then he walked into the Senate chambers with him.

    That’s what happened, and no one actually claims otherwise.

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

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/09/2023 – 23:00

  • Australia To Buy 5 US Nuclear-Powered Submarines In Deal To Counter China
    Australia To Buy 5 US Nuclear-Powered Submarines In Deal To Counter China

    In a major expansion and overhaul of its navy, Australia is planning to buy up to five US Virginia class nuclear powered submarines beginning in the next decade, Reuters and others are reporting. US as well as European officials have disclosed the future deal as part of a “landmark defense agreement between Washington, Canberra and London, four U.S. officials said on Wednesday, in a deal that would present a new challenge to China.”

    The impending agreement is seen as central to the relatively new AUKUS partnership, and the major sub deal is expected to be announced when President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak meet in San Diego Monday.

    Image source: Navy Lookout

    When the partnership was first announced and formalized eighteen months ago, President Biden said of it, “We all recognize the imperative of ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the long term,” and that “We need to be able to address both the current strategic environment in the region and how it may evolve.”

    The nuclear submarines at center of the expected deal cost $3 billion each and will initially be built in Virginia and Connecticut. But sources say other submarines could be built in the UK and Australia while utilizing US technology and assistance. 

    The AUKUS partnership has multiple defense components components, chief among them the development of the nuclear submarine capability for Australia. This has been known since the AUKUS agreement was announced in Sept. 2021, but this week marks the first time specifics have been revealed.

    Other components include security cooperation in cyberspace, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and undersea capabilities. While the US, the UK and Australia already take part in common security arrangements, and all three participate in the Five Eyes alliance, an intelligence-sharing arrangement that also includes Canada and New Zealand, the AUKUS security structure provides for the technology cooperation needed to share nuclear submarine technology and other common efforts in a region where China poses growing security concerns.

    But Western leaders while discussing AUKUS have taken pains to avoid calling out China directly, but it’s clearly aimed at countering Beijing’s influence in the Indo-Pacific, and certainly China sees it as directly impacting its own defense priorities – and has accused Australia of severely violating prior commitments to not introduce nuclear weapons or nuclear technology to its military.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/09/2023 – 22:40

  • COVID Conspiracy Theories Become Conspiracy Facts
    COVID Conspiracy Theories Become Conspiracy Facts

    Authored by Ramesh Thakur via The Brownstone Institute,

    At first slowly but in recent weeks with seemingly gathering pace, two trends have emerged.

    On the one hand, many of the core claims behind lockdowns, masks, and vaccines are unravelling and the prevailing narrative has been in retreat on all three fronts.

    But there is still a long way to go, as indicated by the cussed refusal of the Biden administration to let Novak Djokovic play at Indian Wells.

    On the other hand, the explosive lockdown files in the UK have blown apart the official narrative. We the sceptics were right in our dark suspicions of the motives, scientific basis, and evidence behind government decisions, but even we did not fully grasp just how venal, evil, and utterly contemptuous of their citizens some of the bastards in charge of our health, lives, livelihoods, and children’s future were. “Hell is empty, And all the devils are here” (Shakespeare, The Tempest) indeed. They will have to build a new circle of hell to accommodate all the perpetrators of evil let loose upon the world since 2020.

    A mistake is when you spill coffee or take the wrong exit ramp off the highway. Lockdown was a policy pushed hard by politicians and health chiefs even against scientific dissent and substantial public opposition, using tools from every tyrants’ playbook of disinformation and lies whilst attacking and censoring truth. The depth of public opposition went unrecognized because the fear-peddling media colluded in not reporting on protests.

    Genuine mistakes were few and are forgivable. Most were deliberate distortions of reality, outright falsehoods, and a systematic campaign to terrorize people into compliance with arbitrary diktats interspersed with efforts to vilify, silence, and cancel all critics by using the full powers of the state to co-opt, bribe, and bully. All in pursuit of the most maddening public policy insanity of modern times because it ignored existing canons of pandemic planning in blind panic just when calm was most needed. To call lockdown a mistake is to trivialize the shock to society.

    Before coming to that, a few preliminary observations to summarize where we are at.

    What is Now Known and Generally but Not Universally Admitted

    Covid is now endemic. It will circulate throughout the world and keep returning with mutating variants. People who have been infected and/or vaccinated can contract and transmit it. Consequently we have little choice but to learn to live with it. What is important is to make sure the right policy lessons are learnt so that never again, neither for a novel coronavirus nor for any other infectious disease, do we go down the path of public policy insanity to lock up an entire city or country with the discovery of 1-10 cases and bring all social, cultural and economic activity to a shuddering halt – or give total power and control to sociopaths and psychopaths.

    Meanwhile what is particularly striking is just how many suspicions voiced by sceptics from early 2020 onwards and mocked as conspiracy theories have turned into plausible claims and accepted facts:

    1. The virus may have originated in the laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology;

    2. Covid modeling was dodgy and dressed up outliers as reasonable case scenarios;

    3. Lockdowns don’t work;

    4. Lockdowns kill through perverse consequences and inflict other damaging harms, including interruptions to critical life-saving children’s immunization campaigns in developing countries;

    5. School closures are particularly bad policy. They did not curb transmission but they did cause long-term harm to children’s education, development and emotional well-being;

    6. Masks are ineffective. They stop neither infection nor transmission;

    7. Infection confers natural immunity at least as effective as vaccination;

    8. Covid vaccines do not stop infection, hospitalization, or even death;

    9. Covid vaccines do not stop transmission;

    10. The safety of vaccines using new technology had not been definitively established, neither for the short term nor for the long term;

    11. Vaccine harms are real and substantial but safety signals have been summarily dismissed and ignored;

    12. mRNA vaccines are not confined to the arm but spread rapidly to other parts, including reproductive organs, with potentially adverse consequences for fertility and births;

    13. The harm-benefit equation of vaccines is, like the disease burden itself, steeply age-differentiated. Healthy young people did not need either initial or booster doses;

    14. Vaccination mandates don’t increase vaccine take-up;

    15. Vaccine mandates can fuel cross-vaccine hesitancy;

    16. Suppression of sceptical and dissenting voices will lessen trust in public health officials, experts and institutions, and possibly also in scientists more generally;

    17. Estimates of “Long Covid” were inflated (CDC estimate of 20 percent of Covid infections against UK study’s estimate of 3 percent) by using generalized, non-specific symptoms like mild fatigue and weakness;

    18. Health policy interventions involve policy trade-offs just like all other policy choices. Cost-benefit analysis is therefore an essential prerequisite, not an optional add-on.

    The Lockdown Files

    The last three years have seen lives lost in the millions with tens of millions more yet to be accounted for in the coming years, civilized lifestyles destroyed, previously inviolate freedoms shredded, civil liberties turned into privileges to be granted on the whim of bureaucrats, law enforcement officers corrupted into street thugs brutalizing the very people they are sworn to serve and protect, businesses destroyed, economies wrecked, bodily integrity violated.

    The Lockdown Files, a treasure trove of over 100,000 WhatsApp messages in real time between all the principal policymakers on Covid in England while Matt Hancock was the Secretary of Health (2020–26 June 2021), offer an unparalleled and gripping window into the amoral and cynical arrogance circulating in the corridors of power. The daily drip-feed of revelations in the Telegraph is akin to watching with fascinated horror a slow-motion train wreck. Schadenfreude doesn’t come any more delicious. 

    The files are littered with flippant remarks, mocking comments and contempt for citizens. Among the revelations about the Johnson government:

    • The government knew there was no “robust rationale” for including children in the “rule of six” (the maximum number of people who could meet at any given time), but backed the controversial policy anyway.

    • Facemasks were introduced in secondary schools in England after Johnson was told it was “not worth an argument” with Scotland’s Nicola Sturgeon over the issue, despite England’s Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Chris Whitty saying there were “no very strong reasons” to do so. In other words, political calculations were knowingly prioritized over schoolchildren’s needs.

    • A plan to lift restrictions were dropped after Johnson was told it would be “too far ahead of public opinion.”

    • Consultants were paid over £1 million a day for more than a year on the totally ineffectual test and trace program, turning the scheme into the embezzlement of public funds to line private pockets.

    We now know just how punch drunk on tyranny the political, bureaucratic, scientific, and journalist class was during the pandemic. The ruling elites, when liberated from democratic accountability and media scrutiny, morphed seamlessly into morally cavalier and inhumane petty tyrants. Averse to alternative ways of thinking outside the echo chamber, they developed neuralgia to any idea that might challenge lockdown fanaticism.

    Lockdown sceptics like the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) who argued for the elderly and frail to be protected were demonized as dangerous “Covid deniers” who wanted to “let it rip” in a callous and cruel strategy of herd immunity. But government officials whose policies had a direct, catastrophic impact on the health of the elderly and frail were treated as heroes and unimpeachable voices of moral authority.

    Sociopath, Psychopath, or Both?

    Among the revelations about Hancock:

    • More than 40,000 residents of care homes in England died with Covid. Hancock was advised by Whitty in April 2020 to test everyone entering the care homes. He rejected the advice because testing capacity was limited and, for political (PR) reasons, he prioritized reaching his grandiose, self-imposed target of 100,000 daily tests in the lower risk general community over protecting the care home residents, despite repeated claims of having thrown a “protective ring” around the homes. Patients discharged into care homes from hospitals were tested but not those coming in from the community. That is, “focussed protection” of the GBD was the right way to go. Instead Hancock rubbished the GBD and belittled its three eminent epidemiologist authors.

    • Social care minister Helen Whateley told Hancock that stopping visits to care homes by spouses was “inhumane” and risked the elderly residents “just giving up” after prolonged isolation, but he refused to budge.

    • He rejected advice in November 2020 to shift from 14-day Covid quarantine for people who had been in close contact with anyone infected, to five days of testing because it would “imply we’ve been getting it wrong.” Talk of a sunk cost fallacy. Over 20 million people in total were told to self-isolate even if they had no symptoms. God I feel vindicated for refusing flatly to join Australia’s clunky test and trace program.

    • In a discussion on how to ensure the public complied with ever-changing lockdown restrictions, Hancock suggested “We frighten the pants off everyone” and Project Fear was born. Simon Case, Britain’s most senior civil servant, said the “fear/guilt factor” was “vital” in “ramping up the messaging” during the third lockdown in January 2021.

    • Informed of the emergence of the alpha/Kent variant in December 2020, Hancock and his aides canvassed the ideal time to “deploy” the new variant in order to sustain public fear of the virus to ensure continued compliance with directives.

    • A member of his team asked if they could “lock up” Nigel Farage after he tweeted a video of himself at a pub in Kent, because the troublesome politician was such a thorn in the government’s side.

    • Hancock and Case mocked people forced to isolate in quarantine hotels, joking about returning travelers being “locked up” in “shoe box” rooms. Case wished he could “see some of the faces of people coming out of first class and into a premier inn shoe box.” Informed by Hancock that 149 people had entered “Quarantine Hotels due to their own free will,” Case replied: “Hilarious.”

    • Hancock fought furious internal battles to hog the vaccine media limelight. He preened about his pictures in the media and boasted how the pandemic could propel his career “into the next league.”

    • He told other ministers to “get heavy with the police” to enforce lockdown restrictions and then boasted that “The plod got their marching orders.” This raises questions about the legality of interfering with the operational instructions of police.

    • Intoxicated by his own brilliance and infallibility, Hancock attacked vaccine czar Dame Kate Bingham, the chief of the National Health Service (NHS) Lord Stevens, and CEO of the Wellcome Trust (and now top scientist at the WHO) Sir Jeremy Farrar.

    • He schemed with his aides, with the help of a secret spreadsheet, to deny rebellious party MPs funding for pet projects in their constituencies if they did not fall in line, including a new centre for disabled children and adults.

    I can relate therefore to this online comment on one of these stories in the Telegraph: “Hancock was intellectually stunted pondlife before the pandemic and still is now, but with more slime and a bit of a stink to him.” Or, to put it in more technical language: Hancock comes across as an ego-driven total f…wit.

    The state criminalized quotidian activities like sitting on a bench in the park, walking on the beach and meeting with extended family. Public health messaging was weaponized to normalize and sacralize spirit-sapping levels of social isolation. Even East Germany’s Stasi did not stop the elderly from hugging their grandchildren. Elderly patients were forced to die alone and surviving family members were banned from saying final farewells and denied the solace of a full funeral.

    Hancock was able to get away with exercising his lust for power because his prime minister, Boris Johnson, proved to be lazy, weak, and vacillating. The vivid description of Johnson by fired top aide Dominic Cummings – an out of control “shopping trolley” lurching from side to side in a supermarket aisle, depending on who he last talked to – has been amply validated by the leaked files. The instinctual libertarian rapidly morphed from a lockdown sceptic into a zealot.

    Lessons

    The Lockdown Files confirm that politics informed the policymakers in most of the key decisions on how to manage the pandemic. Accordingly, while medical specialists can debate the technical details of different medical approaches, policy specialists should be among the lead assessors in evaluating the justifications for and results and effectiveness of the policy interventions.

    The existing frameworks, processes and institutional safeguards under which liberal democracies operated until 2020 had ensured expanding freedoms, growing prosperity, an enviable lifestyle, quality of life and educational and health outcomes without precedent in human history. Abandoning them in favour of a tightly centralized small group of decision-makers liberated from any external scrutiny, contestability, and accountability produced both a dysfunctional process and suboptimal outcomes: very modest gains for much long-lasting pain. 

    The sooner we return to the conviction that good process ensures better long-term outcomes and acts as a check against suboptimal outcomes alongside curbs on abuses of power and wastage of public funds, the better.

    Interventions rooted in panic, driven by political machinations, and using all the levers of state power to terrify citizens and muzzle critics in the end needlessly killed massive numbers of the most vulnerable while putting the vast low-risk majority under house arrest. The benefits are questionable but the harms are increasingly obvious. The Johnson government in general and Hancock in particular revalidate Lord Acton’s astute observation that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

    They weren’t following the science but Hancock’s ego and career ambitions. He exploited Johnson’s “stonking” laziness and shallowness. The Lockdown Files reveal a government gone rogue that viewed and treated the people as enemies. The UK, US, and Australia don’t need an inquiry strung out over years, focused on small details to the neglect of the big picture, with the tame conclusion that lessons will be learnt but blame cannot be apportioned. Instead we need criminal charges, and the sooner the better.

    Britain’s top civil servant acted more like a partisan political hack than an apolitical, neutral and loyal-to-the-elected-government of the day civil servant. Case’s bias, immaturity, poor judgment, and unwillingness to support the PM with accurate, balanced, and impartial information were such as to warrant instant sacking. His hubris is such that he is yet to submit his resignation despite the publication of these appalling exchanges with Hancock who had effectively taken over the government. 

    The fact that as the “absolutely cringe-worthy” revelations came tumbling out, PM Rishi Sunak insisted Case has his confidence reflects poorly on Sunak’s judgment.

    Flawed process produced bad outcomes. 

    In a modern-day version of sacrificing virgins to appease the viral gods, the young have lost many more years of their life to buy a few more lonely, miserable months for the infirm old. 

    If the vast sums thrown at Covid had been redirected to the leading killer diseases and upgrades to public health infrastructure, using the standard quality-adjusted life years (QALY) metric, many million deaths would have been averted around the world over the coming decades. 

    If we fail to heed the lessons of the last three years, we will indeed be condemned to repeat them, not just for new pandemics of infectious diseases but also for other crises like the “climate emergency.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/09/2023 – 22:20

  • Pentagon Alleges Russia Supplying Fuel For Chinese Nuclear Warheads
    Pentagon Alleges Russia Supplying Fuel For Chinese Nuclear Warheads

    The Pentagon has voiced concern over “troubling” reports of increasing cooperation between Russia and China on Beijing’s efforts to build new nuclear warheads. On Wednesday and Thursday the US Department of Defense (DOD) circulated the claims to the point of making an official accusation.

    “It’s very troubling to see Russia and China cooperating on this,” John F. Plumb, assistant defense secretary for space policy, said before a Wednesday House Armed Services’ strategic forces subcommittee hearing. “They may have talking points around it, but there’s no getting around the fact that breeder reactors are plutonium, and plutonium is for weapons. So I think the [Defense] Department is concerned. And of course, it matches our concerns about China’s increased expansion of its nuclear forces as well, because you need more plutonium for more weapons,” Plumb added. However, as of Thursday the DOD still seemed confused as to precisely what’s being alleged here…

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    During the testimony Plumb referenced China diversifying its high tech weapons arsenal with help from Moscow, including high-altitude surveillance balloons and even nuclear-tipped hypersonic missiles.

    Speaking on his area of expertise, Plumb said, “China is engaged in a significant and fast-paced expansion and diversification of its nuclear forces. Also, Russia and China view space as a warfighting domain.”

    Congress members called for the administration to disrupt the weapons technology sharing relationship between China and Russia: 

    Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Doug Lamborn said he hoped the Biden administration would take steps to halt the Rosatom uranium transfers.

    “I’m hopeful that we will see a comprehensive strategy from the administration to break this relationship — and ideally shatter Rosatom,” the Colorado Republican said.

    The accusations come dangerously at a moment the New START arms treaty has practically collapsed, after Moscow pulled out last month, with Putin declaring his country is suspending participation. 

    On the issue of the defunct nuclear treaty, Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado said, “It is curious that we provide Russia with this benefit under the treaty when Russia is no longer reciprocating” – in reference to the exchange of treaty-required nuclear information.

    Increasingly Washington hawks are viewing the Russian and China ‘threats’ as intertwined. Just at a point the Ukraine war recently hit the one-year mark, the US administration really dialed up the pressure on Beijing, also in the context of the ‘spy balloon’ incidents.

    Via TASS

    The China-Russia relationship has also been under the microscope given US intelligence allegations Beijing leadership is mulling transferring weapons to Russia. Last Sunday, for example, Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) told NBC’s Meet the Press that if this happened, there would be an “inexhaustible source of weapons” for Russia to use in its ongoing offensive against Ukraine.

    “The problem with China entering this is because you’ve got the West giving weapons to Ukraine,” Turner said. “You’ve got Russia depleting their stores. We obviously — the West together have an ability to impact Ukraine greater than Russia alone does.”

    All of this adds color to these current alarmist “reports say” accusations and headlines over plutonium and uranium being transferred to China. It’s all geared toward piling the pressure on Beijing over its ‘no limits’ partnership with Russia.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/09/2023 – 22:00

  • Biden Admin Evaluating Mass Poultry Vaccination Amid Persistent Bird Flu Outbreak
    Biden Admin Evaluating Mass Poultry Vaccination Amid Persistent Bird Flu Outbreak

    Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The Biden administration is considering the mass vaccination of the poultry population in response to an ongoing outbreak of avian flu that has killed off millions of birds and has helped spike egg and poultry costs.

    Chickens gather around a feeder at a farm in Osage, Iowa, on Aug. 9, 2014. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

    There are some existing vaccines for farm birds, but U.S. Agriculture Department spokesman Mike Stepien told The New York Times that no vaccination effort has been authorized and the department is unsure if the existing vaccines will be effective against the current strain of H5N1 bird flu. Erica Spackman, a researcher for the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, told the newspaper that scientists are researching new vaccine candidates to help curb the ongoing bird flu outbreak.

    Thus far, the Biden administration has made no decision to impose a poultry vaccine mandate.

    “There are a range of options the United States regularly considers when there is any outbreak that could affect the security and safety of the United States’ food supply,” the White House National Security Council told news outlets on Monday. “Right now, we are focused on promoting and enhancing high-impact biosafety practices and procedures.”

    Instead of a bird flu vaccine program, many farmers have instead been culling millions of their livestock. At least 52.3 million birds were killed off throughout the United States in 2022.

    “The Department of Agriculture continues to respond quickly whenever the virus is detected among bird populations,” the National Security Council said on Monday.

    Bird Flu Risks

    Bird flu can be deadly. An 11-year-old girl in Cambodia died last month after becoming infected with H5N1.

    Bird flu can spread to humans through direct contact between a person and a farm bird or between a person and a contaminated surface. Bird flu contaminants can also spread through droplets or dust particles that a farm bird could kick up when it flaps its wings.

    For now, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention assesses that the risk of H5N1 spreading to humans remains low. That said, disease researchers have heightened concerns over growing numbers of infections among wild birds and some mammal species and the possibility the virus could evolve to spread more easily between people.

    Vaccine Program Would Have Trade-Offs

    Vaccinating millions of farm birds could be a complicated endeavor, and while a vaccine program may be able to slow or prevent the spread of the bird flu, it could also trigger trade bans.

    “We don’t have any assurance that any of our trading partners would accept our products if we began vaccinating any birds,” Julie Gauthier, the USDA veterinary service’s assistant director for poultry health, told Lancaster Farming in October.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/09/2023 – 21:40

  • Democrat Bill In Baltimore Would Prevent Anyone Under Age 25 From Facing Felony Murder Charges
    Democrat Bill In Baltimore Would Prevent Anyone Under Age 25 From Facing Felony Murder Charges

    Democrats in Baltimore, Maryland have introduced a bill that would prevent anyone under the age of 25 from facing first-degree murder charges in certain circumstances.

    The legislation, House Bill 1180, was introduced by Democratic Delegate Charlotte Crutchfield, who hilariously calls it the ‘Youth Accountability and Safety Act.’

    The bill, which is working its way through the House, has faced significant pushback from conservatives.

    “It would be absolutely outrageous and result in more crime,” said law enforcement expert Maury Richards, former Chief of Police of Martinsburg, West Virginia, Fox5 Baltimore reports. “Last year, with Senator Carter’s Juvenile Justice Reform Act, it really opened the floodgates. There is a crime wave of violence going on right now, but instead of the legislator debating to rescind that, we’re hung up on whether 25-year-olds should be charged with murder.”

    State GOP Senator William Folden of Frederick County has called the bill “irresponsible” in its approach.

    “They know the difference between right and wrong. They’re just not being held accountable and they don’t care about right or wrong,” said Folden.

    And according to GOP Delegate Susan McComas of Hartford County, “This bill is the definition of insanity. We are going to legalize murder as long as people are under 25. Outrageous.”

    Even Democratic Delegate Carl Jackson of Baltimore County thinks it’s absurd.

    “I believe that accountability must be at the center of any discussion regarding the criminal justice system,” he said.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/09/2023 – 21:20

  • TikTok Turns To Biden-Linked Lobbying Group As Scrutiny Intensifies
    TikTok Turns To Biden-Linked Lobbying Group As Scrutiny Intensifies

    By Blue Apples

    Whether it was Jen Psaki or her successor and former deputy Karine Jean-Pierre, so many instances of the Biden administration’s White House Press Secretary fumbling over their words as if they’re mimicking the president have come when they have tried to address conflicts of interest connected to his office. Most times, these instances have regarded controversies enveloping Hunter Biden that are often inextricably tied to the younger of the president’s sons acting as an intermediary between foreign governments and the big guy — err, his father.

    However, those conflicts of interest haven’t been limited to Biden alone. Psaki herself was revealed to have been connected to an Israeli spying company, per financial disclosures she filed before returning to her role as White House Press Secretary for Biden having previously held the same role in the Obama administration. Yet, a new development in the federal governments ongoing saga with TikTok has exposed many more such conflicts of interest deeply embedded in the Biden establishment. As the potential for a nationwide ban of TikTok looms, the Chinese social media platform has enlisted the services of a lobbying firm with close connections to the Biden administration. Several senior and mid-level directors in the Biden administration were previously employed by that very same lobbying group: SKDK.

    The mounting pressure behind TikTok’s enlistment of SKDK comes on the heels of increased scrutiny aimed at the app by lawmakers on Capitol Hill. On March 7th, the Senate introduced a bill with bipartisan support aimed at curbing the influence of ByteDance, the Chinese tech company is the parent company of TikTok which has drawn the ire of politicians at state, local, and federal levels. Having already been banned by state governments across the country as well as from federal IT infrastructure, the proposed legislation brought to the Senate could mean a nationwide ban of TikTok in general.

    The proposed bill backed by a dozen US Senators would imbue the Biden Administration with the power to ban TikTok under its own discretion. While the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act, does not target TikTok specifically, it would be a tool to galvanize the immense political pressure surrounding the app to facilitate action against it, if signed into law. The RESTRICT Act was introduced in the wake of another bill that would require a ban of TikTok depending on the outcome of a national security assessment over the app.

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    However, there is a caveat. The bill would enable a potential ban of TikTok by expanding the powers of the Executive Branch to be able to do so to begin with. Given the presence of several members of the Biden administration who formerly worked for SKDK, concern arises that the president’s office may not have the impetus to act on any such ban. Instead, the expansion of his office’s powers could ironically serve as a vehicle for Biden to take aim at political opponents.

    Presently, Deputy White House Communications Directors Kate Berner and Herbie Ziskend, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh, and Interior Department Press Secretary Tyler Cherry each highlight a roster of bureaucrats appointed by Biden who have previously worked for TikTok’s newest ally SKDK. The most prominent member of the Biden Administration with links to the lobbying group is Senior Adviser to the President Anita Dunn, who was a founding partner at the firm.

    SKDK founding partner — I mean Senior Adviser to President Biden — I mean SKDK founding partner and Senior Adviser to President Biden, Anita Dunn.

    Given the presence of so many former SKDK employees in Biden’s ranks, it should come as no surprise that the administration has fostered a cordial relationship with TikTok. That may be an understatement as the White House actually announced a partnership with the app ahead of the 2022 Midterm Elections to “combat misinformation” in tandem with the Federal Voting Assistance Program, a division of the federal government tasked with assisting overseas voters participate in US elections. This endeavor was part of a broader campaign by TikTok to launch a foray directly into matters regarding US elections. TikTok also partnered with the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) to provide voters with information on how to get out their vote. Given that partnership with the NASS, it’s clear that whatever influence TikTok has cultivated has permeated into the US political sphere far beyond the federal government alone.

    Ahead of enlisting the services of SKDK, the parent company of TikTok has spent more than $13.4 million into lobbying groups since it first reported payments to federal lobbyists in 2019. Over a third of that total was spent on federal lobbying efforts in 2022 alone. That spending vaulted ByteDance to the position of the fourth-largest spending on federal lobbying of any internet company. ByteDance was only outshined by Amazon, Google, and Meta in that regard.

    Much of that spending has brought former US Congressmen who are now in the private sector as lobbyists into ByteDance’s fold. The company has previously hired former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) as a federal lobbyist along with his colleague at Crossroads Strategies, former Louisiana Senator and US Representative John Breaux, Sr. (D-LA). Several other former House Representatives work for another ByteDance aligned lobbying group, K&L Gates. These lobbyists include Jeff Denham (R-CA) and Bart Gordon (D-TN). The roster of former elected officials ingratiated into the sphere of Chinese-owned companies conveys an equal, if not greater, bipartisan support of TikTok’s ongoing operations than those reaching across the aisle to unite on the converse position presently in Congress who have advanced legislation to sanction the company.

    As pressure against TikTok intensifies, the social media company has enlisted lobbyists with an understanding of what truly makes Washington tick. That, coupled with the assimilation of like-minded bureaucrats into the Biden administration may prove to be an ominous forecast for the future of the RESTRICT Act and any similar bills that follow in its footsteps. In the end, the approval of the former may ultimately serve as a tool for the Biden administration to have greater resources to wage its political wars anyway, proving that TikTok’s immense influence isn’t a catalyst for corruption in Washington as much as it is a symptom of its already festering presence.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/09/2023 – 21:00

  • Rookie Traders "Down Under" On Sydney's Beaches Are Earning As Much As $400,000 Straight Out Of School
    Rookie Traders “Down Under” On Sydney’s Beaches Are Earning As Much As $400,000 Straight Out Of School

    I think we just found where all the recently laid off bankers from Wall Street are going to wind up: Sydney, Australia.

    Why, you ask? Because rookie traders “down under” are earning as much as $400,000 straight out of school, according to a new Bloomberg report on the burgeoning market for tech-driven trading. 

    Noting that Citadel Securities, IMC Trading BV and Optiver BV all already have established presences on the continent, Bloomberg says that math and science majors may command up to that much to work at trading firms. The city has appeal because of a university system that churns out grads who are familiar with, and adapt well to, the business and trading world. 

    James Meade, head of employability at UNSW Sydney, said: “Trading firms offer extraordinary grad salaries.” 

    Citadel could be upping its staff in Australia by 50% to 100%, the report says. It already has more than 60 employees there. Matt Culek, COO, said: “We are excited about the pipeline of talent that we’ve seen coming out of schools in Australia.”

    Optiver has most of its 500 Asia-Pacific staff in Sydney already, the report says. IMC employs more than 1,300 people. More than 90% of its 300 regional employees are based in Sydney already. 

    And the business isn’t all based in Australia, rather the traders are working to build a hub for other regional markets – Japan, South Korea and other large Asian markets – the report says. 

    Sydney has a long history with tech-driven trading, the report details:

    Sydney traces its roots in the computer-driven trading business back to the 1990s, when Australia’s stock exchange had one of the biggest options markets in Asia-Pacific, which helped entice firms to the city. Tax breaks on offshore trading revenues, which are in the process of being phased out, also contributed.

    Sydney is also a major forex trading hub, and Macquarie Group Ltd., which is based in the city, has a longstanding trading business that helped its profits hit a record last year.

    And of course, fun in the sun after work on Australia’s many beaches isn’t a bad perk either. John Fildes, a capital markets veteran who now works for Bain & Co., told Bloomberg that the jobs there have become “a lifestyle thing”. 

    One former trader for Optiver – who is now paying as much as A$250,000 ($165,000) – said: “My schedule was to get up quite early, be in the water around 6 a.m. Go home and grab a coffee, get on my scooter and ride over to the office. I still miss it.”

    “It’s significantly better than a Wall Street bank. The hours are there, but the work is quite enjoyable,” concluded 26 year old former Optiver intern Will Green. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/09/2023 – 20:40

  • Doug Casey On The Rise Of "Climate Brats" And Other Useful Idiots
    Doug Casey On The Rise Of “Climate Brats” And Other Useful Idiots

    Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

    International Man: Webster’s Dictionary defines a useful idiot as a “naive or credulous person who can be manipulated or exploited to advance a cause or political agenda.”

    Lenin is thought to have originated the phrase when referring to communist sympathizers in the West.

    What is your take on this term? Is it still applicable today?

    Doug Casey: Today’s make-believe democracies are overflowing with useful idiots. They latch on to one lame-brained notion after another, perhaps to give meaning to their confused and pointless lives. They’re a bit like cats chasing the red dot from their master’s laser pointer. The Ukraine, Covid, sex perversions, Trump, racism, climate change—it’s one thing after another.

    Climate change is one of the central scams being promoted by the World Economic Forum as part of their Great Reset. It seems everything that comes out of the WEF—I can’t think of any exceptions — is antithetical to the traditional values of Western Civilization, prominently including free markets and personal liberty.

    We’ve discussed the COVID hysteria and what looks like World War III starting in the Ukraine. But the biggest thing, with the longest legs, is climate change. Full disclosure: I believe in climate change. The climate has been changing constantly since the world came together about four and a half billion years ago. And it’ll continue to change.

    The problem, however, isn’t climate change itself but the process of indoctrinating the public, especially young people, with the belief that humanity is destroying Mother Earth.

    They’re given snippets of science, like the fact that the world has been generally warming since the mid-19th century. Well, sure, it has because the planet went through what’s known as the Little Ice Age from the 16th through the 19th centuries. It has cyclically been warming for the last 150 years. As a matter of fact, the world has been warming since the end of the last Great Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago.

    The “global warming” people have found a great excuse for changing not just the economy but the way literally everything works. My view is that they’re basically anti-human—they actually hate and fear people. It’s why Yuval Noah Harari, the mincing court intellectual of the WEF, often refers to them as “useless eaters.” He may be right. But what’s insane is that someone like him could gain the power to make serious decisions. People like him applaud massive population reduction.

    Especially, it would appear, of what Hillary called “deplorables” in the Western world. They see people as the enemy. Some idiots among them are useful, but they’re all expendable.

    It’s easy for the “elite’—who are actually parasites—to influence those that they refer to as “the masses.” That’s partly because the average person has no grip on either science or history. Any episode of Jay Leno’s Jay Walking, or Mark Dice’s current equivalent on Youtube, offers plenty of anecdotal proof. They’ll ask what seem like average, reasonably intelligent people the simplest of questions. They can’t answer any of them. A typical response to the question “Who won the American Civil War” might be “The Germans?”. The only questions they can answer correctly are about pop and sports stars.

    It’s absolutely true: The world is full of useful idiots. They’re useful to the ruling classes who want to change everything. In fact, just last week, the Aspen Institute, one of the world’s best-known think tanks, sponsored a climate change conference featuring Kamala Harris and Gloria Estefan as the twin keynote speakers.

    It’s a pathetic comedy. A couple of useful idiots are talking to an audience of useful idiots about something that none of them know absolutely anything about.

    International Man: Today, we see a lot of useful idiots among average people—especially children and young adults—whipped up into a hysteria over so-called “climate change.”

    Popular culture, the media, Hollywood, academia, Wall Street, politicians, and other authority figures reinforce the climate alarmist narrative.

    Are these people being duped into supporting an agenda they don’t fully understand? What is really going on here?

    Doug Casey: The fact is that Congress critters live in an echo chamber. They’re there to pass laws and regulations governing what other people can and can’t do. And for that reason, they all believe that they have a right to push their agendas. They’re narcissists who love power. That’s why they’re in Washington.

    Congress is largely populated by people like AOC, the race-baiting socialist bartender, the mentally disabled John Fetterman, and George Santos, the pathological liar. Almost every Congress critter is an embarrassment. They didn’t run for Congress because they’re good people but because they’re power-hungry narcissists.

    Useful idiots are annoying enough when you see them in sports, the media, and Hollywood. But they tend to concentrate in Congress, where they’re actively dangerous.

    International Man: Recently, climate brats—young Westerners with psychological problems—glued themselves to priceless paintings in various museums.

    Another group threw cake on the Mona Lisa.

    Yet another threw tomato soup on a Vincent van Gogh painting.

    The perpetrators of these destructive acts did so to draw attention to a fictitious climate emergency.

    What is your take?

    Doug Casey: They’re trying to draw attention to lunatic beliefs by destroying great works of art. That alone is proof that they are, in fact, deranged. These people have real psychological problems. That they aren’t severely punished but are taken seriously proves how degraded the West has become. But it’s just getting what it deserves. Very sad…

    It’s one thing to try to get the attention of other people, so they listen to what you have to say. But destroying the great art of Western Civilization is really where their heads are at. Destroying Western Civilization is an active part of their insane agenda. They’re deeply unhappy with themselves, but they blame it on Civilization.

    Their severe psychological problems are illustrated by the kind of people populating the Biden administration. Everyone from the tranny who dresses up in an admiral’s costume to Pete Buttigieg, who plays the female part of a couple with his boyfriend, to the former assistant secretary in Biden’s Office of Nuclear Energy who was that was caught stealing women’s clothing again and again. Biden himself, his Attorney General Merrick Garland, almost all of the top military people…

    This is all part of a syndrome.

    International Man: While these climate brats seem to be engaging in isolated acts, the reality is that climate alarmism is dictating government policy and corporate decisions and pumping unimaginable distortions into the global economy.

    Where is this trend headed?

    Doug Casey: Trends in motion tend to stay in motion and even accelerate until they reach a crisis. And that’s where we’re heading right now. Even if we don’t reach a crack-up crisis, which I suspect we will, even if saner heads prevail and start to reverse the trend, it’s going to take many, many years to first slow the trend and then reverse it. So there’s not much cause for optimism.

    International Man: Given everything we discussed today, what are the investment implications?

    Doug Casey: Put money in things that everybody has been taught to hate but are necessary for Civilization to continue. This means energy—uranium, oil, natural gas, and coal—and metals like gold and copper—resources in general.

    Fortunately, the stocks of companies that produce these things are very cheap, with many selling for single-digit P/Es, and double-digit dividends. The mining and energy industries are very un-PC. ESG dictates that you shouldn’t put money into any kind of extractive industry. It’s generally very expensive or impossible to get permits for development, so the stocks are very cheap. I’d like to believe that reality will reassert itself, and these things will go up a lot.

    The general stock market is still way overpriced. Plus, a crypto bubble still exists, evidenced by things like Dogecoin, which was created as a joke and serves no useful purpose. It still has a market cap of about $11 billion dollars. I think that can almost be used as an indicator of how much of a bubble the economy is still in.

    *  *  *

    We’ve seen governments institute the strictest controls on people and businesses in history. It’s been a swift elimination of individual freedoms. But this is just the beginning…

    Most people don’t realize the terrible things that could come next, including negative interest rates, the abolition of cash, and much more. If you want to know how to survive what the central bankers and the Deep State have planned, then you need to see this newly released report from legendary investor Doug Casey and his team. Click here to download it now.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/09/2023 – 20:20

  • Prosecutor Won't Charge 6-Year-Old Who Shot Teacher – Unsure About Parents
    Prosecutor Won’t Charge 6-Year-Old Who Shot Teacher – Unsure About Parents

    The Virginia first-grader who shot his teacher in January won’t be charged for the attack, and the Newport News prosecutor says he’s still considering whether the boy’s parents should face criminal charges.  

    Speaking with NBC News, prosecutor Howard Gwynn said the “prospect that a 6-year-old can stand trial is problematic” because, at that age, a child can’t comprehend the legal system or collaborate with an attorney working to defend him. Whatever the prosecutor’s misgivings, it is theoretically possible for a 6-year-old to face criminal charges in Virginia.

    Newport News Commonwealth’s Attorney Howard Gwynn (DailyPress.com)

    Two months after the disturbing classroom shooting at Richneck Elementary, Gwynn is still pondering the legal destiny of the six-year-old shooter’s parents:  

    “Our objective is not just to do something as quickly as possible. Once we analyze all the facts, we will charge any person or persons that we believe we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt committed a crime.”

    On Jan. 6, 25-year-old first-grade teacher Abby Zwerner was critically wounded when one of her students shot her once with his mother’s 9mm Taurus handgun, which she’d legally purchased. Zwerner was seated at a table when the boy — who’d firmly established a pattern of behavior problems and disturbing incidents with staff and students — suddenly opened fire.  

    While there was no confrontation immediately before the shooting, it came one day after the boy was issued a one-day suspension for breaking Zwerner’s cell phone. 

    First-grade teacher Abby Zwerner (Facebook via MetroUK) 

    In Virginia, it’s a misdemeanor crime to leave a loaded gun accessible to a child under 14, with a penalty of up to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine.

    The shooter’s parents claim the pistol had a trigger lock and was “secured” on the top shelf of the mother’s closet. They also said they’ve “always been committed to responsible gun ownership and keeping firearms out of the reach of children.” 

    “We have to make our decision based on our ability to prove beyond a reasonable doubt a crime occurred,” said Gwynn.

    It’s conceivable the parents could be charged with contributing to a minor’s delinquency. They say the boy has an acute disability and was receiving the “treatment he needs” while detained at a medical facility after the shooting. 

    Meanwhile, Zwerner is expected to file suit against the school district, which has already ousted its superintendent and an assistant principal in the wake of the shooting. In January, Zwerner’s lawyer said three teachers sought intervention against the child.

    Ousted Newport News Superintendent of Schools George Parker (AP photo/John C. Clark)

    On the day of the shooting, a school staff member searched his backpack on a tip that the child might be packing heat. They didn’t find it, and administrators chose not to involve the police. The search happened around 11:30 am and the shooting took place about two-and-a-half hours later.  

    Other school staff members have spoken out against school officials’ disregard of warnings about the shooter and a tendency to ignore other problem students in a drive to bolster the school’s ratings. 

    “We see students being assaulted (and) we see teachers being assaulted…daily,” said elementary teacher Djifa Lee at a school board meeting. “[Disciplinary] referrals are so closely tied to accreditation, and this puts educators and office staff or administrators in a tough position.”

    “Every day in every one of our schools, teachers, students and other staff members are being hurt,” said high school librarian Nicole Cooke. “Every day, they’re hit. They’re bitten. They’re beaten. And [violent children] are allowed to stay so that our numbers look good.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/09/2023 – 20:00

  • White House Rules Out Designating Mexican Cartels As Foreign Terrorist Organizations
    White House Rules Out Designating Mexican Cartels As Foreign Terrorist Organizations

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The Biden administration on Wednesday ruled out designating Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations following the kidnapping of four Americans that led to two deaths near the U.S.-Mexico border.

    “Designating these cartels as [foreign terrorist organizations] would not grant us any additional authorities that we don’t really have at this time,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a news briefing with reporters. “The United States has powerful sanctions authorities specifically designated to combat narcotics trafficking organizations and the individuals and entities that enable them. So, we have not been afraid to use them.”

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre holds a press briefing at the White House on Feb. 13, 2023. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

    The White House is in touch with the families of American citizens who were kidnapped or killed in Mexico in a high-profile international incident that drew the response of the FBI and top Mexican law enforcement, said Jean-Pierre.

    In a Wednesday briefing, Jean-Pierre said the administration has spoken with the families of the victims but did not offer many details. It’s not clear if President Joe Biden personally spoke with the families.

    “We will do everything in our power to identify, find, and hold accountable the individuals responsible for this attack, and we continue to work in coordination with the Mexican government,” she said. The U.S. Treasury Department, she added, has sanctioned Mexican firms and individuals in connection with the drug trade and cartels in recent months.

    In October 2022 and last month, the agency sanctioned members of the powerful Sinaloa cartel who are allegedly part of the organization’s fentanyl and methamphetamine trade. The agency last week targeted Mexican companies linked to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, known as CJNG, with fresh sanctions, according to a news release.

    CJNG in some areas has “become heavily engaged in timeshare fraud, which often targets U.S. citizens,” the department said. “This crime, which can defraud victims of their life savings, results in another significant revenue stream for the cartel and strengthens its overall criminal enterprise. Today’s action exposes this CJNG scheme and also serves as a warning to potential victims, many of whom are elderly.”

    Jean-Pierre’s response about the Biden administration’s strategies targeting cartels came in the wake of a violent incident that occurred in Matamoros, Mexico, which is located just south of Brownsville, Texas. Four Americans were kidnapped and two of them were killed after they crossed the border for reported medical treatment, according to U.S. and Mexican authorities.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/09/2023 – 19:40

  • "Dollar Tree Dinners": TikToker Goes Viral After Showing People How To Cook For $35 A Week
    “Dollar Tree Dinners”: TikToker Goes Viral After Showing People How To Cook For $35 A Week

    With rising inflation putting pressure on household finances, some low-income Americans have turned to “Dollar Tree Dinners” as their meal of choice.

    Rebecca Chobat’s TikTok videos have garnered the interest of budget-conscious shoppers, particularly as food inflation continues to persist at its highest level in four decades. Through her videos, which reach an audience of 742.5k followers, she explains how to make meals using products from the discount retailer with a weekly budget of $35.

    Chobat has published numerous videos showcasing “unique recipes and cooking ideas from the Dollar Tree.” Some of her video titles include “Dollar Tree Gumbo” and “Dollar Tree Beef Pot Pie.” 

    Although consumers can save money by consuming Dollar Store meals, there are some negative aspects to consider: 

    The Institute for Local Self-Reliance recently published a report expressing worry about the absence of fresh produce in discount stores. Most food sold at Dollar Tree contains highly-caloric and heavily-processed items, which are not considered nutritious options.

    However, due to negative real wage growth taking a toll on household finances, some individuals have no alternative but to turn to Dollar Stores for food. For some, even Walmart has become too expensive. 

    Since the 2008 financial crisis, there’s been an explosion of Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Family Dollar stores nationwide as the vast majority of folks are getting poorer. All three discount retailers operate 34,000 stores nationwide and are set to open thousands more in the coming years. 

    Chobat told Bussiness Insider these videos are having a real impact on people saving money in these challenging times. 

    “I get those messages fairly frequently but that one really struck home for me,” she said. 

    Regularly consuming food from discount stores could lead to health issues in the future. Therefore, it is imperative to revitalize local economies and supermarkets to promote the availability of fresh food products.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/09/2023 – 19:20

  • Amid Trump Probe, Georgia GOP Passes Prosecutor Oversight Bill
    Amid Trump Probe, Georgia GOP Passes Prosecutor Oversight Bill

    Authored by Gary Bai via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The Senate of Georgia passed a bill last week that aims to toughen up oversight measures on the state’s prosecutors, after a special purpose grand jury counsel wrapped up investigations into alleged election interference by former President Donald Trump and his allies.

    The Georgia State Capitol building in Atlanta, ornamented with gold leaf from Dahlonega, Ga. (Mary Silver/The Epoch Times)

    The bill, SB 92 (pdf), would create a Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission, which would “have the power to discipline, remove, and cause involuntary retirement of appointed or elected district attorneys or solicitors-general.” The Republican-majority Senate passed the bill in a 32 to 24 vote on March 2.

    Republicans introduced the bill in the House in February 2021 as HB 411. The House passed the bill by a 104 to 61 vote in March 2021. but it was held off in the Senate. It was revived in the Senate in March 2022.

    The bill introduces several grounds for disciplining a state district attorney or solicitor general, including mental or physical incapacity, willful misconduct, willful and persistent failure to carry out his or her professional duties, the conviction of a crime involving moral turpitude, and conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice. Disciplinary measures include removal or involuntary retirement.

    The bill would “protect the citizens of Georgia and clean up the criminal justice system where it needs to be cleaned up,” Georgia Republican Sen. Randy Robertson (R-Catula), the bill’s sponsor, said on the upper chamber’s floor on March 2.

    “We have, in a community near our state university where somebody who’s an elected DA says they can choose—not based on evidence but based on how they feel and what their political leanings are—as to who they will prosecute,” Robertson added. “In order to solve this problem, there needs to be oversight.”

    Meanwhile, the opposition party warned that the state might use the proposed commission to target prosecutors who differ politically.

    “We’re going to use a commission like this, potentially, to harass or put the fire under prosecutors of a certain party in certain urban areas that don’t align with what state government wants,” said State Sen. Josh McLaurin (D-North Fulton) on Thursday.

    The Epoch Times has contacted the Georgia Senate for comment.

    The Peach state’s GOP lawmakers in the lower chamber are also working to pass House Bill 231 (pdf) to mirror the upper chamber’s oversight body, which, if passed into law, would create a Prosecuting Attorneys Oversight Commission in the House.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/09/2023 – 19:00

  • Epidemic Of E-Bike Fires Rips Across America
    Epidemic Of E-Bike Fires Rips Across America

    According to New York City officials, a supermarket and apartment building were destroyed on Sunday due to a fire caused by an electric bike. The rise in reports of lithium-ion battery fires across the metro area is an unintended consequence of the ‘green’ mobility trend.

    WSJ reported the New York City Fire Department revealed the number of e-bike lithium-ion battery fires had more than doubled last year to 216. The fire department said the blazes had injured 40 people and killed two this year. 

    Source: WSJ

    “These are incredibly dangerous devices if they are unregulated or used improperly,” New York Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh recently told reporters.  

    The latest fire on Sunday was when an e-bike triggered a five-alarm fire in the Bronx. New York ABC affiliate WABC-TV reported the fire destroyed a supermarket and apartment building. 

    “There is nothing left and it is all because of this one single bike,” Kavanagh said on Sunday, adding the fire was so intense that five firefighters, one emergency medical services official, and a resident of the building were hurt during the incident. 

    “There is extraordinary damage. This entire building behind me is completely destroyed,” she said, adding, “And so we really want to emphasize to the public, how much damage can be done by a single bike, but I think that this shows how really dangerous this is to our members; to the public.”

    New York City officials said battery fires are happening metrowide. They have pushed for regulating lithium-ion batteries used in e-bikes and scooters. 

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

    In 2022, the US imported 1.1 million e-bikes, up from 880,000 in 2021 and 450,000 the previous year, according to the Light Electric Vehicle Association. 

    Climate alarmist media outlets have guilt-tripped the American people into purchasing these dangerous devices that could spontaneously explode at any time. 

    Apart from New York City, these fires are occurring throughout the country. Bloomberg data shows news stories about “e-bike fires” in US news have exploded over the last 12 months.

    Climate alarmists pushing for the electrification of everything to combat global warming must be transparent about the risks associated with lithium-ion batteries.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/09/2023 – 18:40

  • Is MMT Now Official Policy?
    Is MMT Now Official Policy?

    Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

    Remember Modern Monetary Theory or “MMT”? I first sounded the alarm back in 2018 and then again in 2021.

    At the time, MMT was all the rage among monetary and fiscal policy wonks. It seemed to offer the best of all possible worlds. You can spend as much as you want without any downside.

    The main tenets of MMT are that debt and deficits don’t matter because the Fed can monetize the debt by printing money. The Fed can just wire money directly to government contractors to pay bills.

    But MMT gradually faded from the headlines.

    The pandemic of 2020 changed everything. MMT was still not a topic of discussion. It didn’t matter, because MMT was being practiced, even if by stealth.

    COVID relief and economic “stimulus” was Job One. Congress provided $2.7 trillion in new spending including $1,400 checks sent to every American. Then, on Dec. 21, 2020, Trump signed another $900 billion relief package that provided an additional $600 check to every American.

    Wait, There’s More!

    Not to be outdone, the new Biden administration passed the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA), which provided another $1.9 trillion of deficit spending, and sent another $1,400 check to every American.

    The runaway spending didn’t end there. On Nov. 15, 2021, Joe Biden signed the $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. This was followed by $737 billion in new deficit spending for the Green New Deal in the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) signed by Biden on Aug. 16, 2022.

    The U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio has risen from a dangerously high 106% at the start of the Trump administration to an astronomical 124% or so today, the highest in U.S. history.

    For perspective, the other countries with a debt-to-GDP ratio in that range include Lebanon, Greece and Italy. The U.S. is now a full-fledged member of the deadbeat club.

    Does this debt and deficit debacle mean that MMT has achieved its goals and is now the guiding light for fiscal and monetary policy?

    The answer is: yes and no.

    It’s Complicated

    The “yes” answer is easy to explain. MMT says that spending doesn’t matter and deficits don’t matter. The U.S. can issue as much debt as it wants and spend as much money as it wants.

    As long as the debt is denominated in dollars and the Fed has a U.S. dollar printing press, we can always monetize the debt with new money. Problem solved.

    With $10 trillion of new debt in three years and a 124% debt-to-GDP ratio, the U.S. is certainly acting as if debt and deficits don’t matter. This is the essence of MMT.

    The “no” answer is more nuanced and political. It’s true that we are acting in accordance with MMT, but the MMT advocates are keeping their heads down. Why shouldn’t they? They are getting exactly what they want and the Republicans have gone along with it.

    Trump increased the deficit by $4.6 trillion in his last year in office, almost half the $10 trillion total increase under Trump and Biden together since 2020. There’s no need to push MMT or even discuss it if Republicans and Democrats are acting in accordance with it.

    So the U.S. is implementing MMT without acknowledging or even understanding it. It now exists in practice, but it has not passed a political litmus test. The future of MMT hangs in the balance starting now.

    The Debt Ceiling “Crisis”

    We’re facing a debt ceiling “crisis.”

    What is the debt ceiling exactly? It’s a numeric limit on the total debt that the U.S. Treasury is allowed to issue. There’s no debt ceiling in the U.S. Constitution. Instead, it’s imposed by statute. There’s no legal requirement for that statute.

    The debt ceiling itself could be repealed by Congress at which point there would be no limit on the size of the national debt. Still, Congress likes the idea of a debt ceiling. It forces the White House and Treasury to come back to Congress from time to time to request increases as needed.

    This gives Congress some leverage to ask for political concessions in return for raising the debt ceiling. So the debt ceiling is really a political football rather than a serious macroeconomic policy tool.

    In the end, Congress always approves the ceiling increases. In a way, the debt ceiling debate is all for show. To be clear, the debt ceiling does not mean the Treasury cannot issue any new debt. It means that the Treasury cannot issue debt that increases the total outstanding above the ceiling.

    The Looming “X-Date”

    The “X-Date” is the day the Treasury is projected to run out of cash and can’t pay bills or pay off Treasury note holders. Right now, the X-Date is estimated to be around June 5, 2023, but even that is a guess. The real X-Date will depend on how much positive cash flow the Treasury generates during tax season around mid-April.

    Congress and the White House are also battling over the budget for fiscal 2024, which begins on Oct. 1, 2023. If a new budget is not passed by Sept. 30, 2023, the government will shut down at midnight.

    It is possible that Congress could extend that deadline with a continuing resolution (CR) that permits government agencies to keep spending at existing levels for existing programs until Congress gets around to passing a budget.

    Although the debt ceiling increase and the budget are separate issues with separate procedures, they are converging at about the same time. Mid-April is the date when markets will focus on this more intently because of the X-Date.

    We’ll have better estimates of the X-Date by April, and a kind of “countdown to default” will begin.

    Where does the MMT crowd stand in all of this?

    Putting MMT to the Test

    As noted, supporters of MMT have had the luxury of getting everything they want politically without having to stand up and defend MMT publicly. COVID and climate change (really, bogus climate alarmism) acted as the perfect cover for the Trump and Biden spending seemingly without having to worry about debt or deficits at all.

    The mantra in Washington was “spend, spend, spend.” And they did.

    Now that the pandemic is over and the Green New Scam is law (for better or worse), a day of reckoning has arrived. If the debt ceiling is raised and deficit spending is increased without serious reforms, it will be left to MMT’ers to explain why none of this matters.

    They will rise to the occasion. Again, the main tenets of MMT are that debt and deficits don’t matter because the Fed can monetize the debt by printing money. If inflation emerges, the government can simply raise taxes to cool off the inflation.

    Of course, MMT is nonsense. One can be reasonably sure that if members of Congress don’t understand MMT, they definitely do not understand the flaws in MMT. But that won’t stop the banner from being raised. Expect to hear a lot of commentaries that “deficits don’t matter,” and “debt doesn’t matter” as the debt ceiling and budget battles are being waged in the months ahead.

    We can be sure of a few things…

    There Will Be No Default

    The Treasury will not default on its debt. You’ll be reading a lot of stories about a debt default in the coming months. Those stories will be used to scare voters into a “clean” debt ceiling increase.

    Whatever your views on the debt ceiling, you can ignore these default stories. It won’t happen because it serves no one’s interest. A better way is to think of the debt ceiling debate as a game of chicken between conservative Republicans and the White House.

    In the end, Republicans will get some (not all) of what they want and the debt ceiling will be raised. That will lay the issue to rest … until the next time.

    Passing the budget is more complicated. The budget is huge and there’s a lot more at stake than just debt issuance. Spending increases, defense spending, support for Ukraine, social programs, tax increases and more are all on the table.

    Although the budget deadline is Sept. 30, Congress will try to get something done over the course of July and August. This will happen at exactly the same time that the debt ceiling and X-Date crisis is playing out.

    In the end, the debt ceiling will be raised, most likely in July. A government shutdown in late September is a real possibility. That will be another point of high volatility in stocks. All in all, it will be an interesting year.

    At a minimum, investors should expect increased market volatility as default talk grows louder. It may be a good time to reduce equity exposure and increase your cash allocation.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/09/2023 – 18:20

  • Why Are They Afraid? Is The Release Of Suppressed J6 Footage Really A "Threat To Our Democracy"?
    Why Are They Afraid? Is The Release Of Suppressed J6 Footage Really A “Threat To Our Democracy”?

    The release of over 40,000 hours of January 6th security footage by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy to Tucker Carlson of Fox News has sparked an immediate backlash from Democrats who claim Carlson is exploiting the footage to misrepresent the event.  Say what you want about Fox News, but Carlson as an individual has shown consistency in his reporting and an effort to get beyond the mere surface of events.  The assertion that Carlson is misrepresenting J6 footage remains unfounded.

    Leftists were not able to describe how, exactly, surveillance footage from the capitol is rigged to depict events that did not happen, but their reactionary behavior indicates a number of inconvenient truths:

    First, leftists went on the attack before the footage was ever received by Tucker Carlson.  They didn’t want him to have it.  The Democrats at least believed that unreleased footage might show evidence contrary to their carefully crafted narrative of an “insurrection.”  Or, they knew that it would debunk their narrative.   Either way, they preemptively accused Carlson of mishandling the footage as it was made available to him. 

    If the public can be convinced that certain information is a lie before they ever see the information, then the release of those facts becomes irrelevant.  The populace has been strategically infected with bias, so they will not see what is right in front of their eyes.

    Second, Democrats and some GOP NeoCons have shown once again that they think the public should not be allowed to determine the meaning of data and evidence for themselves.  In fact, one might suspect that establishment elites have something to hide as they rage indignantly about the mere release of video surveillance.  Why are they so opposed to the public viewing the information unless that information threatens to expose establishment lies?  

    Third, much like the release of the Twitter Files, it is actually a majority of the corporate media that is seeking to misrepresent the evidence being revealed as rigged, incomplete or not important.  Their goal is to suppress new information, and if they can’t do that they will try to undermine it by sowing false seeds of doubt. 

    Numerous Democrat leaders and some NeoCon politicians, without taking time to acknowledge the implications of the surveillance being presented by Tucker Carlson, have immediately denounced the footage as “lies” and “sleight of hand.”  Senator Chuck Schumer was quick to go on the attack, calling Carlson’s recent segment on J6 a “perversion” of the truth.  Not only that, but Schumer openly called for Rupert Murdoch to stop Carlson and remove him.  

    Why?  Because “our democracy depends on” the censorship of such materials.  

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    NeoCon Mitch McConnell went even further, stating:

    “It was a mistake, in my view, for Fox News to depict this in a way that’s completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks.”

    In other words, the mainstream news should be taking its cues from government officials and repeating exactly what THEY say, rather than reporting on the evidence as it exists.  In their view, the narrative of the government supersedes the determinations of the public.

    This is the exact sentiment that was expressed by U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger, who argued that Carlson’s conclusions were “offensive and misleading.”  Manger claimed that:

    “TV commentary will not record the truth for our history books…The justice system will. The truth and justice are on our side.”

    Again, they believe that they write the truth.  They write history, and history is whatever they say it is.  The J6 Committee had one job, which was to perpetuate the historical narrative of an insurrection by conservatives on the steps of the Capitol Building.  They were not interested in the truth, which is why over 40,000 hours of surveillance footage was never released to the public.  They showed us what they wanted us to see, not the full reality.  

    Beyond the numerous videos showing police opening the doors and inviting protesters inside (which the media continues to lie about), there is also the question of intent which the J6 Committee was never able to prove.

    The FBI found no evidence that the Trump Administration had anything to do with the Capitol protesters and scant evidence of any form of organization or coordination that would be required for an insurrection.  Where were the plans for takeover?  Who intended to run the government after the supposed coup?  Where was the army that was going to secure the capitol after the insurrection’s success?  None of these things existed.   

    In fact, none of the protesters on J6 were even armed and the only person killed when the protests turned violent was Ashli Babbitt, a protester.  It’s pretty difficult to pull off an insurrection without weapons, without organization and without a plan.  In other words, there was no insurrection.  The claim is an erroneous lie, and always has been.  The establishment has tried to reinvent a protest that turned aggressive into an act of war against “democracy” itself.

    Tucker Carlson’s footage shows what most of us already knew – That the media and elements of the government have completely overblown the events of January 6th for political gain  The footage also reconfirms that no police were killed by protesters, and yet the media continue to perpetuate that disinformation.  It is likely that Carlson will be releasing new footage for many months to come which runs contrary to the official version of events, which is why Democrats are calling for him to be taken off the air.        

    There is far more proven organization during the BLM and Antifa riots across the US for the past few years.  Just this week Antifa engaged in a highly organized direct attack on a police training center site near Atlanta, Georgia.  But the media doesn’t want to talk about that, or how leftist groups represent a danger to our constitutional freedoms.  And it is this double standard that is only making half the country more inclined to not care about such notions. 

    If our system is so corrupt that the release of hard video evidence “threatens our democracy,” then maybe our democracy isn’t worth saving. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/09/2023 – 18:00

  • Mother Sues Doctor Who Allegedly Administered COVID-19 Vaccines To Children Without Consent
    Mother Sues Doctor Who Allegedly Administered COVID-19 Vaccines To Children Without Consent

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

    A doctor violated the law by administering COVID-19 vaccines to children without consent, according to a new lawsuit.

    Doses of a COVID-19 vaccine and vaccination record cards for children under 5 in Seattle, Wash., in a June 21, 2022, file image. (David Ryder/Getty Images)

    Dr. Janine Rethy, chief of community pediatrics at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, is being accused of holding two children in a room until she convinced them to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

    The minors are both children of NaTonya McNeil, a Washington resident who brought the suit in D.C. Superior Court.

    “Ms. McNeil’s two minor children were held in a room by Defendant until she overcame their will and forcibly vaccinated them while physically preventing them from consulting with their mother, who was right outside the room,” the 9-page suit states.

    The children were also allegedly provided with “false and fraudulent information” in order to get their purported consent to administer the vaccines.

    Rethy told the kids that they had to get a COVID-19 vaccine to attend school and that they could not legally decline vaccination, according to the filing.

    The kids gave in when given the false information.

    Rethy and MedStar did not respond to requests for comment.

    Annual Check-Ups

    McNeil took the children to Rethy for annual physical examinations on Sept. 2, 2022.

    The location was the Georgetown Kids Mobile Medical Clinic/Ronald McDonald Care Mobile, which is operated by the Georgetown University Hospital, at a recreation center. Rethy is director of the mobile clinic.

    McNeil waited outside with her 1-year-old child while the two other kids went inside. But she called her daughter’s cell phone soon after and asked to speak with the doctor. McNeil told Rethy she was outside and available if needed to answer questions or provide information.

    Rethy never asked McNeil about any vaccinations, according to the suit.

    The 16-year-old child, who attends Dunbar High School, went first. Rethy “came at me with a needle,” the girl was quoted as saying. Rethy, asked what the injection was, said it was a COVID-19 vaccine. The minor said she did not want the shot.

    “Dr. Rethy told K.M. that the injection was required for her to attend school, and then injected the needle,” the suit states. The younger child, 14, “also reluctantly agreed to accept the injection after seeing his sister be injected, although he had repeatedly refused COVID-19 injections previously as well.”

    “Both children were very upset and angry that they had been coerced into being injected,” the filing states.

    Rethy also injected the children with a meningococcal vaccine.

    Neither Rethy nor clinic staff provided information about the vaccinations to McNeil or the children, the suit says. Rethy did speak with McNeil, but only told her she was going to call a prescription for the asthma of one of the children.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 03/09/2023 – 17:40

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Mar 09

Today’s News 9th March 2023

  • The Right To Be Let Alone: When The Government Wants To Know All Your Business
    The Right To Be Let Alone: When The Government Wants To Know All Your Business

    Authored by John and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent.”

    – Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis

    There was a time when the census was just a head count.

    That is no longer the case.

    The American Community Survey (ACS), sent to about 3.5 million homes every year, is the byproduct of a government that believes it has the right to know all of your personal business.

    If you haven’t already received an ACS, it’s just a matter of time.

    A far cry from the traditional census, which is limited to ascertaining the number of persons living in each dwelling, their ages and ethnicities, the ownership of the dwelling and telephone numbers, the ACS contains some of the most detailed and intrusive questions ever put forth in a census questionnaire.

    At 28 pages (with an additional 16-page instruction packet), these questions concern matters that the government simply has no business knowing, including questions relating to respondents’ bathing habits, home utility costs, fertility, marital history, work commute, mortgage, and health insurance, among other highly personal and private matters.

    For instance, the ACS asks how many persons live in your home, along with their names and detailed information about them such as their relationship to you, marital status, race and their physical, mental and emotional problems, etc. The survey also asks how many bedrooms and bathrooms you have in your house, along with the fuel used to heat your home, the cost of electricity, what type of mortgage you have and monthly mortgage payments, property taxes and so on.

    And then the survey drills down even deeper.

    The survey demands to know how many days you were sick last year, how many automobiles you own and the number of miles driven, whether you have trouble getting up the stairs, and what time you leave for work every morning, along with highly detailed inquiries about your financial affairs. And the survey demands that you violate the privacy of others by supplying the names and addresses of your friends, relatives and employer.

    The questionnaire also demands that you give other information on the people in your home, such as their educational levels, how many years of school were completed, what languages they speak and when they last worked at a job, among other things.

    Individuals who receive the ACS must complete it or be subject to monetary penalties.

    Although no reports have surfaced of individuals actually being penalized for refusing to answer the survey, the potential fines that can be levied for refusing to participate in the ACS are staggering. For every question not answered, there is a $100 fine. And for every intentionally false response to a question, the fine is $500. Therefore, if a person representing a two-person household refused to fill out any questions or simply answered nonsensically, the total fines could range from upwards of $10,000 and $50,000 for noncompliance.

    While some of the ACS’ questions may seem fairly routine, the real danger is in not knowing why the information is needed, how it will be used by the government or with whom it will be shared.

    In an age when the government has significant technological resources at its disposal to not only carry out warrantless surveillance on American citizens but also to harvest and mine that data for its own dubious purposes, whether it be crime-mapping or profiling based on whatever criteria the government wants to use to target and segregate the populace, the potential for abuse is grave.

    As such, the ACS qualifies as a government program whose purpose, while sold to the public as routine and benign, raises significant constitutional concerns.

    The Rutherford Institute has received hundreds of inquiries from individuals who have received the ACS and are not comfortable sharing such private, intimate details with the government or are unsettled by the aggressive tactics utilized by Census Bureau agents seeking to compel responses to ACS questions.

    The following Q&A is provided as a resource to those who want to better understand their rights in respect to the ACS.

    Q:  What kind of questions are contained in the ACS?

    A:  The ACS contains questions that go far beyond typical census questions about the number of individuals within the household and their age, race, and sex. The survey combines intrusive questions with highly detailed inquiries about your financial affairs. Furthermore, the questionnaire also demands that recipients provide information about their family and other  people in their home, such as their educational levels, how many years of school were completed, what languages they speak, when they last worked at a job, and when occupants of your home are away from the house.

    Q:  How will this information be used?

    A:  The Census Bureau states that information from this survey is used to assist a wide variety of entities, from federal, state and local governments to private corporations, nonprofit organizations, researchers and public advocacy groups. The Bureau lists 35 different categories of questions on its website and offers an explanation on how the information is to be used.  For 12 of those categories, the information is used to assist private corporations.  For another 22, the information is used to aid advocacy groups, and in nine of those cases, the Census Bureau states that the responses will be used by advocacy groups to “advocate for policies that benefit their groups,” including advocacy based on age, race, sex, and marital status. Thus, information obtained through the ACS is not simply used to inform government policy in a neutral manner, but is also being provided to private actors for the purpose of promoting corporate and/or political agendas.

    One concern raised by the Brookings Institute is the use of ACS information by law enforcement for  “crime mapping,” a surveillance tool used to predict crime and preemptively target certain neighborhoods for policing. It is “most effective” when “analysts can see the relationship between various types of criminal incidents (e.g., homicides, drug dealing) and neighborhood characteristics (risk factors such as poverty, population density, and vacant housing), pinpoint where crimes are most likely to occur (hot spots), and focus police resources accordingly.” The Brookings Institute notes that because the ACS provides data every year, rather than every ten years, crime mapping is more effective and cheaper.

    Q:  Are my responses kept confidential?

    A:  While the Census Bureau claims that an individual’s information will be kept strictly confidential, it does require a recipient to put their name on the survey, ostensibly for the purpose of asking follow-up questions in the event of missing or incomplete answers. This means your answers could be linked to you even if it is forbidden by law to share your individual responses.

    Q:  Am I required by law to fully complete the American Community Survey?

    A:  Federal law makes it mandatory to answer all questions on the ACS. A refusal to answer any question on the ACS or giving an intentionally false answer is a federal offense. The Census Bureau also maintains that responding to the ACS is mandatory and that recipients are legally obligated to answer all questions.

    Q:  Is there a penalty for refusing to answer American Community Survey questions?

    A:  The law requiring answers to the ACS also provides that a person who fails to answer “shall be fined not more than $100.” The actual fine for a refusal to complete the ACS could be much greater because a failure to respond to certain ACS questions could be considered a separate offense subject to the $100 fine.

    Q:  Has the government prosecuted persons for refusing to answer the American Community Survey?

    A:  While The Rutherford Institute has been made aware of Census Bureau agents engaging in harassing tactics and threatening behavior, to date, we are unaware of the Census Bureau having levied any financial penalties for non-compliance with the ACS. However, a refusal to answer the survey violates the letter of the law and a prosecution might be brought if the government decides to adopt a policy to do so.

    Q:  How does the Census Bureau typically ensure that people complete the survey?

    A:  Those who do not answer the ACS risk repeated overtures—by mail, by phone and in person—from Census Bureau employees seeking to compel a response. Typically, the Census Bureau will telephone those who do not respond to the survey and may visit their homes to coerce the targets to respond.

    The Census Bureau boasts a 97% response rate to the survey via these methods, but critics argue this constitutes harassment. One recipient who did complete the survey but whose answers were misplaced by the Census Bureau wrote about his experience. First, a Census Bureau employee left a note at his apartment asking him to contact her. When he did, the employee asked him to allow her into his home. When he refused, the employee “turned up twice unannounced at my apartment, demanding entry, and warning me of the fines I would face if I didn’t cooperate.” Only after he filed a complaint with the Census Bureau did the agency realize he had actually completed the survey, thus ending its attempts to enter his home.

    Q:  Is this an unconstitutional invasion of privacy?

    A:  There are significant and legitimate questions concerning the authority of the government to require, under threat of prosecution and penalty, that persons answer questions posed by the ACS. The ACS is not part of the enumeration required by Article I of the Constitution, and that constitutional provision only applies to a census for purposes of counting the number of people in each state. As noted, the ACS seeks much more information than the number of persons in a household.

    In other contexts, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that citizens have no obligation to answer questions posed by the government and are free to refuse to do so. This same principle could apply to questions posed by ACS agents.  However, because the government has not brought a prosecution for a refusal to respond to the ACS, the question of a person’s right to refuse has not yet been decided by a court.

    Q:  What are my options for objecting to the ACS survey as an intrusion on my Fourth Amendment rights?

    A:  If you receive notice that you have been targeted to respond to the ACS and you desire to assert your right of privacy, you can voice those objections and your intent not to respond to the ACS by writing a letter to the Census Bureau. The Rutherford Institute has developed a form letter that you may use in standing up against the government’s attempt to force you to disclose personal information.

    If you are contacted by Census Bureau employees, either by telephone or in person, demanding your response, you can assert your rights by politely, but firmly, informing the employee that you believe the ACS is an improper invasion of your privacy, that you do not intend to respond and that they should not attempt to contact you again. Be sure to document any interactions you have with Bureau representatives for your own files.

    If you believe you are being unduly harassed by a Census Bureau employee, either by telephone or in person, it is in your best interest to carefully document the time, place and manner of the incidents and file a complaint with the U.S. Census Bureau.

    Remember, nothing is ever as simple or as straightforward as the government claims.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, any attempt by the government to encroach upon the citizenry’s privacy rights or establish a system by which the populace can be targeted, tracked and singled out must be met with extreme caution.

    While government agents can approach, speak to and even question citizens without violating the Fourth Amendment, Americans should jealously guard what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis referred to as the constitutional “right to be let alone.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/08/2023 – 23:40

  • Senior Intel Official Warns Of TikTok's Influence On US Citizens
    Senior Intel Official Warns Of TikTok’s Influence On US Citizens

    Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    U.S. National Security Agency Director Paul Nakasone has said he is concerned about what data Chinese-owned TikTok may be collecting on users and how it could influence American children.

    National Security Agency Director Gen. Paul Nakasone testifies before a House (Select) Intelligence Committee hearing on diversity in the Intelligence Community on Capitol Hill in Washington on Oct. 27, 2021. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)

    Nakasone expressed his concerns during testimony delivered before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 7.

    Asked by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) about any worries he has about TikTok’s influence on kids in America, Nakasone responded: “TikTok concerns me for a number of different reasons. One is the data that they have.”

    “Secondly is the algorithm and the control, who controls the algorithm. Third is the broad platform influence operations, as we talked about previously. It’s not only a fact that you can influence something, but you can also turn off the message as well when you have such a large population of listeners,” Nakasone said.

    The NSA is part of the Defense Department and is responsible for U.S. cryptographic and communications intelligence and security.

    TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, has soared in popularity over the years and is now used by more than 100 million Americans.

    However, Washington has repeatedly raised concerns that the app poses a threat to national security, with American user data potentially being used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

    Expanding Government Power to Ban TikTok

    There are also concerns that the recommendation algorithm on the app may be used to manipulate what users see as part of influence operations.

    Last month, the White House ordered that TikTok be removed from all government devices and systems within 30 days, although there are exceptions in cases of national security, law enforcement, or security research activities.

    Nakasone’s remarks came the same day that Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and John Thune (R-S.D.) led a group of 12 bipartisan senators in introducing legislation intended to expand the federal government’s power in order to ban TikTok and other foreign-owned entities from operating in the United States.

    The bill, also known as the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act, would increase the Commerce Department’s power to review and prevent information communications and technology transactions from tech companies that are owned by six adversarial foreign nations: China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela.

    “Congress needs to stop taking a piecemeal approach when it comes to technology from adversarial nations that pose national security risks,” said Thune in a statement on Tuesday. “Our country needs a process in place to address these risks, which is why I’m pleased to work with Senator Warner to establish a holistic, methodical approach to address the threats posed by technology platforms – like TikTok – from foreign adversaries. This bipartisan legislation would take a necessary step to ensure consumers’ information and our communications technology infrastructure is secure.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/08/2023 – 23:00

  • Up In Smoke: OK Voters Crush Pot Legalization Proposal
    Up In Smoke: OK Voters Crush Pot Legalization Proposal

    A dearth of polling had left the outcome of an Oklahoma marijuana legalization referendum in doubt — until Tuesday, when opponents positively crushed the measure, 63% to 38%. Remarkably, it failed in every single county.  

    State Question 820 offered Okies a chance to legalize consumption by adults 21 and older, along with possession of up to an ounce, and the growing of six mature plants and six seedlings.

    Via The New York Times

    Proponents of legalization had understandably high hopes: The conservative state already boasts one of America’s most easy-going medical marijuana regimes, and a poll from October had likely voters backing recreational legalization 49% to 38%.

    However, between the staleness of that poll and the fact this was a stand-alone vote rather than being part of a general election, prospects were far from certain. Conservatives tend to outperform when turnout is lower, and that seemed to be a major factor in this vote, which saw turnout of just 25.3%, compared to 40.1% in the midterms. 

    Oklahoma’s rejection continues a string of rejections of legalization drives in conservative states, as Arkansas, North Dakota and South Dakota voters shot down similar proposals in the November midterm election.  

    OK Gov. Kevin Stitt said he wants DC to decide how Oklahomans are allowed to intoxicate themselves (Ben Felder/The Frontier)

     

    Republican Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt opposed the legalization. In February, Stitt provided a pathetic rationale for his position that was an affront to the principles that animated the American Constitution: 

     “There shouldn’t be a patchwork of states doing different things. We need to let the feds tell us if it’s legal or illegal, we shouldn’t let the states tell us that.“

    That proclamation would be cringeworthy no matter who uttered it, but the fact that those words came from a supposed “conservative” makes them all the more exasperating. 

    The 10th Amendment provides that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Despite profoundly flawed Supreme Court opinions to the contrary, the federal government has no constitutional authority whatsoever to declare marijuana or any other drug illegal. 

    Source: DISA 

    Despite the Oklahoma setback, the trend toward individual marijuana liberty is overwhelming: Twenty-one states have now legalized recreational use, and a 41% plurality of Republicans back recreational pot freedom. 

    “We didn’t get State Question 820 across the finish line tonight, but the fact remains that marijuana legalization is not a question of ‘if,’ it’s a question of ‘when’,” said Yes On 820 campaign director Michelle Tilley on Tuesday evening. 

    Meanwhile, Oklahomans who want to use the plant can try to do so within the state’s medical cannabis regime. About one in ten Oklahoma adults holds a medical license. Unlike most states that allow medical use, Oklahoma has no list of qualifying conditions and patients can receive a doctor’s recommendation over the internet. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/08/2023 – 22:40

  • Singapore's Central Bank Boosts Gold Reserves By 30% To Nearly 200 Tonnes
    Singapore’s Central Bank Boosts Gold Reserves By 30% To Nearly 200 Tonnes

    Submitted by Ronan Manly, BullionStar.us

    In January 2023, Singapore’s central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) returned to gold buying again, adding a massive 44.6 tonnes of gold to its official reserves, and thereby boosting Singapore’s gold holdings from 153.8 tonnes to 198.4 tonnes.

    In percentage terms, this gold buying represents an incredible 29% increase in Singapore’s gold holdings in just one month. In fact, this is Singapore’s second largest largest gold purchase ever in one month, the only gold purchase that was larger was when Singapore first bought 100 tonnes of gold from South Africa in 1968.

    In typically discreet fashion, MAS did not announce its recent gold buying via press release or via any other publicity. It merely updated the data on its website in the latest version (end of January) of a monthly report called ‘International Reserves and Foreign Currency Liquidity’.

    Singapore: MAS Gold Holdings as of end December 2022

     

     
    Looking at the December 2022 version of this report shows that the reserve asset of “Gold (including gold deposits and, if appropriate, gold swapped)” showed a volume in fine troy ounces of 4,943,441 ozs for December 2022.

    Then when the January 2023 version of the report was published at the end of February, it now shows a volume in fine troy ounces for gold of 6,378,041 ozs. That’s an increase of 1,434,600 ozs, or 44.62 tonnes. And in percentage terms, a 29.02% increase.

    Singapore: MAS Gold Holdings as of end January 2023

     

     

    71 tonnes in less than 2 Years

    This is the second major gold buying spree by Singapore’s MAS in less than 2 years. The last time Singapore added to its monetary gold reserves was over a 2-month period between May and June 2021, when it bought 26.35 tonnes of gold over the two months, of which 16.4 tonnes was in May 2021 and 9.95 tonnes in June 2021. Those additions took Singapore’s gold holdings from 127.42 tonnes to 153.76 tonnes.

    Prior to May-June 2021, Singapore had held 127.42 tonnes of gold, a figure which had not changed since at least 2002 (as far back as World Gold Council records go). 100 tonnes of this total had been purchased by Singapore in one transaction in 1968 (while attending a World Bank meeting in Washington D.C), and the other 27.42 tonnes was added at other undefined times between after 1968 but before 2002.

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

    In the modern era, the latest gold buying by MAS means that in just 20 months since May 2021, Singapore has added made substantial gold purchases on three occasions (May 2021, June 2021 and January 2023), adding a total of 71 tonnes of gold to its reserves.

    The May-June 2021 gold purchases by MAS were also very low key, and although they were added to the MAS ‘International Reserves and Foreign Currency Liquidity’ reports in June and July 2021, respectively, no one noticed these updates until the data was also updated onto the IMF’s International Financial Statistics (IFS) database in November 2021. See BullionStar article  “In low key move, Singapore’s central bank adds 26 tonnes to its gold reserves”, dated 27 November 2021 for details.

    Monetary Authority of Singapore

     

     

    Average Buying Price of US$ 1912

    In a footnote to its ‘International Reserves and Foreign Currency Liquidity’. MAS states that the values of its ‘Official reserve assets and other foreign currency assets’ are stated as ‘Book value of assets converted at market exchange rates prevailing at end of month.”

    This usage of book value valuation is actually quite handy as it allows up to roughly calculate what price MAS paid for the new 44.6 tonnes of gold.

    As of end of December 2022, the 4,943,411 ozs of gold held by MAS was valued at a combined US$ 1.7945 billion.

    As of the end of January 2023, the 6,378,041 ozs of gold held by MAS was valued at a combined US $ 4.5384 billion.

    This means that the new 1,434,600 ozs of gold bought by MAS in January was valued at a book value of US$ 2.7439 billion, which is an average purchase price of US$ 1912.66. This price is in line with gold prices during January 2023, where the gold price began the year in the US$ 1800s, but rose to above US$ 1900 on 13 January and then stayed in the US$ 1910-1930 range for the rest of the month.

    The average LBMA PM closing gold price in January 2023 was US$ 1898.62. The max close was US$ 1932.45 on 26 January, the min close was US$ 1834 on 5 January. MAS therefore appears to have made its recent gold purchases mostly during the second half of January 2023.

    Showcase in the GIC (Sovereign Wealth Fund) Office in Singapore commemorating Singapore’s first gold purchase of 100 tonnes in 1968 – “A Torn Dollar Bill And Gold For Singapore”.

    Showcase in the GIC (Sovereign Wealth Fund) Office in Singapore commemorating Singapore’s first gold purchase of 100 tonnes in 1968 – “A Torn Dollar Bill And Gold For Singapore”.

    On a book value basis, the addition of 44.6 tonnes of gold also means that Singapore’s total gold reserves now constitute 1.56% of its official reserve assets, up from 0.62% of official reserve assets at the end of December.

    Conclusion

    For such a massive central bank gold buying event, this latest purchase of 44.6 tonnes of gold by Singapore during January has had almost no coverage in the mainstream financial media.

    This is despite Singapore’s purchase, at 44.6 tonnes, being the biggest single central bank gold purchase of 2023, and despite it also being more than the total gold holding additions which China claims to have made over both January and February (39.8 tonnes in total).

    The MAS January gold purchase, which boosts Singapore’s gold holdings up to 198.4 tonnes, also shoots Singapore 3 places higher in the rankings of ‘World Official Gold Holdings by Country’, and Singapore now sits in 26th position, behind Belgium which claims to hold (227.4 tonnes of gold), and Algeria (which claims to hold 173.6 tonnes of gold.

    The 2022 edition of the World Gold Council’s central bank gold reserve survey found that central banks hold gold for a number of reasons, chief among then that gold “performs during times of crisis“, gold is “a long-term store of value“, gold “has no default risk“, and gold is “an effective portfolio diversifier“. MAS annual reports say very little about gold, except that gold “is held as a long-term investment“.

    As to where Singapore’s 198.4 tonnes of gold is stored, that is the billion dollar question. There is no mention at all in the annual reports or financial statements of where MAS claims that Singapore’s gold is being vaulted.

    It’s probable that a portion of Singapore’s gold is stored in the vaults of the Bank of England in London, and possibly another part is stored in Switzerland under the custody of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) – which uses vaults of the Swiss National Bank.

    There have been rumors that some of  Singapore’s national gold reserves are also held in secret subterranean vaults in Singapore guarded by legendary Gurkhas of the Singapore Police Force’s Gurkha Contingent. As to how true these rumors are, one would have to ask Singapore’s MAS, and MAS would most likely, politely decline to say.

    This article was originally published on the BullionStar.us website under the same title “Singapore’s central bank MAS boosts gold reserves to nearly 200 tonnes“. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/08/2023 – 22:20

  • New Mexico Moves To Hobble Private Paramilitary Border Patrols
    New Mexico Moves To Hobble Private Paramilitary Border Patrols

    New Mexico lawmakers are advancing legislation which would restrict private paramilitary border patrols which have emerged in recent years to try and reduce the flow of migrants illegally crossing the southern US border.

    Albuquerque police detain members of the New Mexico Civil Guard, an armed paramilitary group, following the shooting of a man during a protest over a statue of Spanish conquerer Juan de Oñate on June 15, 2020, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/The Albuquerque Journal via AP, File)

    The legislation is similar to what lawmakers have proposed in Oregon and Vermont, which have introduced initiatives to rein in activities by private militarized groups, Fox News reports.

    Idaho lawmakers, meanwhile, are moving in the opposite direction – and have advanced a bill which would repeal a state law banning private militias.

    Democratic state Rep. Raymundo Lara of Sunland Park is cosponsoring the New Mexico initiative and says it gives district attorneys new tools and discretion by making it a crime for armed paramilitary organizations to engage in public patrols capable to causing injury or death with provisions regarding intimidation. The bill includes felony penalties including prison.

    The bill emerged Monday from House committee vetting for a possible floor vote, with the backing of Democrats. Republican House legislators have raised concerns that the proposal could interfere with neighborhood-watch style groups that respond to crime or limit opportunities for businesses in New Mexico that have provided tactical training to visiting security forces. –Fox News

    According to Lara, the Democratic state rep, the New Mexico proposal is in response to incidents in 2019 in which armed members of the United Constitutional Patriots stopped migrants near the international border, as well as a 2020 incident in which men with rifles and tactical equipment were present at an Albuquerque protest.

    Recently, the New Mexico Civil Guard was banned by a state district court judge from ‘acting as a military unit’ without authorization.

    The bill, introduced by Lara, defines a paramilitary group as three or more individuals with a command structure aimed at publicly functioning as a combat, enforcement or security unit. Banned activities include interfering with government operations, government proceedings, actions that deprive others of their rights, and posturing deceptively as peace officers.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/08/2023 – 22:00

  • Will There Be Mass Noncompliance On ATF's Pistol Brace Rule?
    Will There Be Mass Noncompliance On ATF’s Pistol Brace Rule?

    Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

    On Jan. 31, the ATF published its final rule regarding pistol braces to the federal register. Entitled “Factoring criteria for firearms with attached stabilizing braces,” this rule essentially amends the definition of “rifle” to include millions of firearms previously classified as pistols.

    For those unfamiliar with firearms law, what that means is that ATF can then classify all pistol-braced firearms with barrels under 16 inches (most, if not all pistol braced firearms on the market fit this definition) as Short Barreled Rifles, or SBRs which the National Firearms Act or NFA regulate.

    Owners of these firearms now face a choice. Destroy their guns (or at least the brace), register them with ATF as SBRs, or turn them in.

    This rule essentially functions as a massive registration scheme for pistol-braced firearms, and the ATF knows this. ATF is no stranger to using existing federal law to create “regulations” subverting the legislative process, as they used a similar method in 2018 to “ban” bump stocks.

    ATF, after determining that bump stocks were not machine guns on many separate occasions, changed its mind and reclassified bump stocks as machine guns. By doing so, they regulated bump stocks under the NFA, which banned all machine guns produced after 1986.

    This method of banning what was effectively a range toy opened the floodgates for potential ATF overreach, as presidents Trump and Biden found that they could use “regulatory authority” to subvert Congress and govern exclusively by executive fiat, having federal agencies like ATF make law through regulatory rulemaking.

    Now the ATF has taken the drastic step of reclassifying pistol braces. The difference here, though, is while estimates of bump stock ownership amounted to around 520,000, estimates of pistol brace ownership are estimated to be between 10 to 40 million.

    So, what did the American public do when ATF mandated that bump stocks be turned in on destroyed? Did they turn in their bump stocks to ATF?

    No, they did not.

    In fact, according to ATF, only 0.105% of bump stocks in circulation were ever turned in. That amounts to about 546 out of a total of 520,000.

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

    Should ATF expect the same for pistol-braced firearms? Only time will tell, but if the bump stock ban was any indication, gun owners don’t seem to be too keen on turning in their firearms to the federal government.

    And who can blame them? ATF hasn’t exactly been forthcoming or consistent in its rulemaking process. Not too long ago, ATF stated in court that their recent “definition of frame or receiver” rule allows companies to sell pistol frame blanks without background checks, as long as those frames do not include jigs and tools to manufacture into firearms. Then, months later, ATF issued an open letter reversing their position and classifying these same frames as firearms.

    Aidan Johnston, Director of Federal Affairs for Gun Owners of America, had this to say:

    “The ATF is not a legislative body, and they are playing with people’s lives and livelihoods with their thoughtless and draconian ‘rules,’ and that’s why GOA will be attacking this rule from every angle—legally, legislatively, and administratively.”

    GOA has a history of overturning these unconstitutional rule changes. In 2020, when the ATF under the Trump administration attempted to regulate pistol braces, GOA rallied our members to take action. GOA members flooded the proposed rule with comments. Because of this, ATF abandoned its attempt and withdrew the rulemaking. 

    While GOA just took ATF to court over this issue and filed for a preliminary injunction to halt the rule, we’re also interested in cutting the ATF’s ability to regulate Short Barreled Rifles, Short Barreled Shotguns, and similar types of firearms.   

    To strip the ATF of its ability to regulate these types of firearms, we’re targeting the core of the issue, the National Firearms Act. The outdated and unconstitutional NFA allows ATF the leeway to make these sorts of unconstitutional rule changes. We’re working with Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas and Congressman Andrew Clyde of Georgia to pass the SHORT Act, which would remove Short Barreled Rifles and Shotguns from the NFA. 

    But we can’t do it alone. We need your help fighting back against the rogue ATF and the anti-gun Biden administration. Help us fight by calling your Senators and Congress members and asking them to support the SHORT Act.

    *   *   * 

    We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/08/2023 – 21:40

  • "Dovish" Janice Eberly Is Frontrunner To Replace Brainard As Fed Vice Chair: Report
    “Dovish” Janice Eberly Is Frontrunner To Replace Brainard As Fed Vice Chair: Report

    After it emerged that the recently appointed Chicago Fed president Austan Goolsbee – prominent Democratic politician and Obama advisor – got the job thanks to the recommendation of a firm which employs his wife, casting into doubt the objectivity not only of the selection process but of Goolsbee’s qualifications and thereby destroying any chance Goolsbee had of failing up even more and taking the Fed vice chair seat recently vacated by Lael Brainard, the list of potential candidates shrank to just a few potential names.

    Well, as of this evening, the number of possible Lael Brainard replacements has shrank to just one, and according to Bloomberg the frontrunner in the White House search for the new Fed vice chair is Northwestern University Professor Janice Eberly.

    Citing “people familiar”, Bloomberg reports that Eberly – who served as chief economist at the Treasury Department under Barack Obama – has emerged quickly as a candidate in the weeks since Brainard was picked as President Joe Biden’s top economic aide. As part of her vetting process, Eberly met for an interview with Jeff Zients, Biden’s chief of staff, as well as with Brainard and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, a former Fed chair. A final decision has yet to be made made.

    The Biden administration has indicated that it wants to fill the crucial position relatively soon, although preferably with a candidate that fits the mandatory Democrat identity policy checklist: a woman, a racial minority, or LGBTQ. Eberly, to the best of our knowledge, checks at least one of these boxes. Biden also been urged to choose a Latino candidate to succeed Brainard, with 34 lawmakers signing a letter calling for such a trailblazing appointment.

    For some progressives that’s not enough, however, and they have been urging the White House to fill the vacancy with someone who would do more to defend the Fed’s mandate to support the labor market, and be less likely to push for further interest-rate hikes they warn could derail the economy. In other words, someone who is willing to nudge up the Fed’s inflation target.

    White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday that the White House would announce developments “in the near future.”

    Bharat Ramamurti, deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, told Bloomberg Television this week that the administration wants to “find somebody who truly believes in the Fed’s dual mandate, somebody who believes in the president’s economic vision.”

    Eberly, if nominated, could run into opposition from lawmakers who have pushed for more diversity among the Fed’s upper ranks, testing Biden’s support in the Senate. Biden’s nominee must be confirmed by the US Senate, where Democrats hold a slim majority.

    Other names that have been in the mix for the role include Harvard University professor Karen Dynan, who along with Eberly was seen as a leading candidate for the position. While Dynan also held a key role in the Obama administration, succeeding Eberly as chief economist at the Treasury, Eberly is seen as the more dovish of the two, Bloomberg Chief US Economist Anna Wong wrote in a research analysis.

    Dynan would be one of the Fed’s most hawkish voices, Wong projected. “Eberly, on the other hand, might be closer to Brainard in her optimism that the Fed can get inflation back to target without generating a significant slowdown in the labor market,” Wong wrote.

    Here is some more on Eberly’s bio from her page at Northwestern:

    Janice Eberly is the Senior Associate Dean for Strategy and Academics, the James R. and Helen D. Russell Professor of Finance and former Chair of the Finance Department. Before joining the Kellogg faculty, she was a faculty member in Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

    Professor Eberly served as the Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Treasury from 2011 to 2013 after being confirmed by the U.S. Senate. In that capacity she was the Chief Economist at the Treasury, leading the Office of Economic Policy in analysis of the U.S. and global economies and financial markets and development of policy recommendations on micro and macroeconomic issues.

    Professor Eberly’s research focuses on finance and macroeconomics. Her work studies firms’ capital budgeting and investment decisions and household consumption and portfolio choice. She also examines the interaction of these spending and investment choices with the macroeconomy. Her current research emphasizes household finance and intangible investment. Her work has been published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, Econometrica, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, among other academic journals. She has received a Sloan Foundation research fellowship and grant funding from the National Science Foundation and the CME Trust.

    Professor Eberly has been an Associate Editor of the American Economic Review and other academic journals and Senior Associate Editor of the Journal of Monetary Economics. Previously Professor Eberly served on the staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors and on the advisory committees of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). She was elected Vice President of the American Economic Association for 2020.

    Professor Eberly is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is Editor of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. She has won numerous awards for her teaching, including Chairs’ Core Teaching Awards and Outstanding Professor Awards from the Executive Master’s Program. She is a Trustee of the TIAA-CREF funds since 2018. Professor Eberly received her Ph.D. in Economics from MIT.

    Her full CV is here.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/08/2023 – 21:20

  • MTG's "National Divorce" May Be The Only Way To Prevent Bloodshed
    MTG’s “National Divorce” May Be The Only Way To Prevent Bloodshed

    Submitted by Ben Sellers via Headline USA,

    Democrats’ righteous indignation last month at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s calls for a “national divorce” came as no surprise.

    Conscious uncoupling / Graphic by Ben Sellers, Headline USA; photo by Hilary Weeks via GOOP; state illustrations by Office of Paul Sahre

    It was just the latest in an endless parade of things that the Left was for before it was against, to borrow a catchphrase from consummate waffler John Kerry.

    It is hard, in fact, to come up with a position on their current platform where Democrats have not flip-flopped when political opportunism or necessity struck.

    And so it was that the only party ever to have seceded from the Union found itself comparing Greene to its own former leader, Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

    But in fairness to Democrats of yore, while one could armchair-quarterback whether the ends justified the means in eradicating slavery, the provocative actions of radical Republican abolitionists like John Brown—who murdered innocent families, and raped women and children—offered at least some justification to antebellum Southern Democrats.

    Their own elected leaders, Democrat presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, had failed to fix the problem of how to phase out the barbaric practice, and the prospect of Republican President Abraham Lincoln effecting a peaceable solution that did not threaten their lives and livelihoods seemed grim, even to the vast majority of Southern families who owned few or no slaves.

    The impasse was a lot like the current one that America faces under an extreme Left that, like John Brown, would rather destroy every last shred of civility and compromise than to coexist with the “evil” customs of the status quo.

    Instead of slavery, though, the great evil of the modern era is democracy itself.

    NO ALTERNATIVES

    A system that gives everybody one voice and one vote is, after all, inherently unfair to a party that regards itself as perpetually oppressed and marginalized by the cultural (and political) majority.

    That leaves only a limited range of solutions, not unlike those in the classic 1996 movie Independence Day.

    Indeed, Greene’s call for a brokered settlement—a conscious uncoupling, if you will, of red- and blue-majority states—may be the only realistic solution that will avert a national strife so horrific that it will make the bloody and violent Civil War feel like the leisurely, guided tours of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by comparison.

    Already, President Joe Biden has raised the stakes by warning would-be freedom fighters that it will take more than a few hunting rifles to secure their God-given right to liberty.

    If the only glue binding together the union is a threat of military force and unthinkable bloodshed, then it is already lost.

    Nonetheless, not everyone is on board yet with the formal terms of Greene’s divorce proposal.

    Shockingly, while Democrats would get prime territory from the bargain—including America’s three most populous cities, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, as well as its most desirable coastal real estate—some have scoffed at the idea.

    What, after all, is the point of their unrelenting pursuit of wealth and power through Leninist social revolution if, in the end, there is nobody of consequence for them to exert their dominion over?

    Or, more cynically, perhaps, maybe their kneejerk aversion to the idea comes by virtue of the fact that Greene said what they, themselves, had secretly been thinking.

    And in some cases, as with the unabashedly leftist New York Review, those thoughts were not so secret.

    UNITED IN DISUNITY

    Just weeks before the 2022 election, as the idea of a red-wave reckoning against the Biden administration was at its fever pitch, leftist academes Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson offered up the very same idea as Greene but seemed to draw none of the performative objections that she did.

    “Several commentators have suggested that, historically, radical swings in domestic politics and virulent strains of racism and fascism have in fact been normal in the United States, and that talk of prospective large-scale political violence is therefore overblown,” said the stochastic terrorist duo in their Sept. 22 screed titled “These Disunited States.”

    “But the breadth and depth of the present threat to the country seems unprecedented in post–Civil War America,” they continued. “… The US now appears to be in a state of ‘unstable equilibrium’—a term originating in physics to describe a body whose slight displacement will cause other forces to move it even further [sic] away from its original position.”

    At times, their thought-piece turned into a farcical clown-show of projectionism, spuriously suggesting that Republicans alone were to blame for refusing to roll over to a radical agenda that the Biden administration lacks any mandate or authority to enact.

    “Although Democrats occasionally reveal impulses toward reconciliation, Republicans largely do not,” they whined. “Most have put up implacable resistance to Biden’s efforts” in areas like the economy and the environment where Biden’s policies have proven to be abject failures.

    But ultimately, their proposed solution proved that there is one area in which the radical Left and members of the conservative Right, such as Greene, can find common ground.

    “The splits between the two halves of the nation—red and blue, right and left—increasingly appear irreconcilable,” they said.

    “Today, new state legislation on abortion, LGBTQ rights, gun rights, free speech, and public health is making red and blue states radically different,” they continued—accurately, albeit from the wrong vantage point. “Many Americans have relegated their political adversaries to the category of ‘the other,’ an ominous prelude to the dehumanization that facilitates violence in civil conflict.”

    Simon and Stevenson went on to suggest that the threat of right-wing violence just might lead to entirely justifiable left-wing violence, and that the danger of a radical Republican establishment assuming control through the democratic process would be a valid reason for leftists to want to secede, rather than allowing practices they disagree with to become further entrenched.

    “Before civil strife acquires critical momentum, Democrats need to embrace a more radical political solution to stave it off,” they decided.

    “Purposeful defederalization is one possibility,” they added. “There is a case to be made that the raison d’être for federalism has passed.”

    SALVAGING A HOUSE DIVIDED

    The ironic juxtaposition of this five-month-old treason treatise with the reaction to Greene’s tweet is, of course, a source for smug amusement for conservatives. But then, pointing out Democrat hypocrisy has grown a bit old and tiresome, like shooting fish in a barrel.

    There is a more important point to be gleaned from it, which is that the idea of a separation may be the only way to save a country so dangerously divided that both parties agree a split is necessary.

    Achieving such an end will not be easy—and it may take a bipartisan coalition of candidates who actively campaign on negotiating its terms in the same way that the country was forged.

    That would allow us to establish a special relationship between the new nations—let’s call them Trumpland and Obamica—recognizing that there will still be more in common between them than any other two countries given their shared cultural history and, presumably, their roots in democratic principles.

    Perhaps, at least for a time, there might even be an open-borders agreement to allow those caught in the wrong territory to resettle elsewhere.

    Some might argue that dividing the nation in two would weaken its position as a global super-power to counter the occidental alliance of China and Russia.

    However, those countries are already exploiting America’s intrinsic ideological differences in order to weaken and distract us. So, to remove the bickering from within should help sharpen our focus on the extrinsic threats.

    While it is true, as Lincoln said, that a house divided against itself cannot stand, a house built on a seismic fault-line such as ours is better off relocating altogether.

    Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/realbensellers.

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/08/2023 – 21:00

  • UMass Casualties: 'Borg' Drinking Fad Sends 46 To Hospital
    UMass Casualties: ‘Borg’ Drinking Fad Sends 46 To Hospital

    Twenty-eight ambulances were sent to the University of Massachusetts Amherst last weekend after binge-drinking students embraced a drinking fad popularized on TikTok. 

    The volume of patients had Amherst appealing to neighboring towns and the regional EMS task force for help, CBS reports. 

    Forty-six students were sent to the hospital, all of whom were eventually discharged. 

    One of the borg-toting partiers at UMass Amherst (TikTok/kettlebellkel) 

    The fad drink is called a Borg, which stands for “blackout rage gallon.” Online recipes call for taking a gallon jug of water, emptying up to half of it, and topping it off with vodka and some kind of flavoring. Some drinkers add energy drinks or powders, while others choose electrolytes.

    The binge drinking at UMass coincided with the student body’s annual “Blarney Blowout” St. Patrick’s Day partying at off-campus apartmetns. “Literally anybody and everybody was carrying a borg around,” freshman Tess Mollo told the Daily Hampshire Gazette. “It seems like that was the main attraction of Blarney.”

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    Borgs are touted as a better way to drink, with the idea that staying hydrated will minimize hangovers. However, the jugs are for just one person to drink from — and, depending on the ratio, some of them contain 17 to 40 shots of alcohol.  

    “If you measure wrong … you don’t know the exact amount of alcohol you’re putting into it, so it’s dangerous,” sophomore Maddie Saart told the Gazette.

    In a statement, UMass said the incident was “the first time the university has observed notable use of borgs,” and that it will “consider steps to improve alcohol education and intervention.” The Amherst Fire Department says none of the cases were life-threatening. Two students were arrested for underage drinking. 

    Part of the borg-life is giving one’s jug an amusing name, such as Borgan Freeman, Ruth Bader Gins-borg, or Sponge-Borg Square Pants. The Borg hashtag has racked up almost 83 million views on TikTok. 

    @kettlebellkel bad day to be a borg at umass #umass #blarney ♬ original sound – kelley

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/08/2023 – 20:40

  • "The End Of Oil In America": Biden May Reject Alaska Oil Project
    “The End Of Oil In America”: Biden May Reject Alaska Oil Project

    Authored by Naveen Anthrapully via The Epoch Times,

    Alaska’s Republican governor Mike Dunleavy is not expecting the Biden administration to approve the Willow project—an oil and gas plan proposed by crude oil producer ConocoPhillips.

    “We’re preparing for them to deny this,” Gov. Dunleavy said on Fox News. “And it’s sad to say that, but their idea of a compromise, apparently, is to allow only two drilling pads for this oil play called Willow, about 180,000 barrels per day at peak, instead of the three or more that really the investors, ConocoPhillips, need to have to make this thing work for everybody.”

    “It’s an unfortunate game that’s being played between the White House, the extremists, and environmentalists that got him there and, unfortunately, the people of Alaska in this country,” Dunleavy said.

    “We’re preparing, hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.”

    The $8 billion Willow oil field development project was initially proposed in 2018. It is set within the 23 million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA), the largest expanse of federal public lands in the country, located on Alaska’s North Slope.

    ConocoPhillips had initially proposed five pads as part of the project. In the oil industry, a pad refers to a temporary drilling site. Under the Trump administration, the Department of the Interior (DOI) had approved the proposal in October 2020.

    But a lawsuit by multiple groups, including Earthjustice, forced the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to recommend scaling down the number of pads from five to three. The Biden administration is expected soon to announce its decision on the matter.

    Opposition And Support

    Environmental activists have vehemently opposed the project, citing pollution concerns. A petition at Change.org asking the Biden administration to not allow the Willow project has garnered more than three million signatures.

    “If this project were to be approved, Willow would emit more climate pollution annually than more than 99.7 percent of all single-point sources in the country. The first oil to be used from this project wouldn’t be for years,” the petition insists.

    However, lawmakers and trade unions from Alaska are pushing for the Biden administration to approve the project that is expected to hire 2,500 construction workers in the state. Willow is projected to output 180,000 barrels of oil per day, or around 1.5 percent of total American oil production.

    Over its 30-year lifespan, Willow is expected to produce over 600 million barrels of oil while contributing up to $17 billion in revenues for state and federal governments as well as local communities.

    The Alaska House and Senate have passed a unanimous resolution supporting the Willow project.

    “The elected leaders who wrote and passed these resolutions recognize Willow’s economic significance, its national security benefits, its environmental advantages, and its ability to create needed opportunities all across the state,” said Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, in a press release on Feb. 27.

    “The message from Alaska is crystal clear: we urge the Biden administration to listen to our voices, as well as BLM career scientists, and re-approve Willow to allow an economically viable project to advance.”

    Future of American Energy

    The Willow project forces the Biden administration to choose between two sides: environmental groups and supporting Democrats that make up a key portion of the president’s support base, and Democrat-leaning constituencies in Alaska that are looking forward to the project.

    There is speculation that the Biden administration may decide to approve the project, but reduce the number of pads from three to two, something that Dunleavy pointed to during the Fox interview. However, doing so could make the project economically unviable, pushing ConocoPhillips away from it.

    The Alaska governor predicted that President Joe Biden would seek out help from other nations to meet its oil demand while shutting down the Willow project.

    “Alaska probably has more sanctions put against it by our own government than our government has against Venezuela,” Dunleavy said. “So, this is not the end of oil, it’s just the end of oil in America.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/08/2023 – 20:20

  • USAF Reveals Stunning Images Of B-21 Raider Stealth Bomber
    USAF Reveals Stunning Images Of B-21 Raider Stealth Bomber

    New images of the B-21 Raider stealth bomber have been released by the US Air Force, showcasing a wider perspective of the aircraft’s fuselage.

    “We also get a much better look at the B-21’s deeply-recessed air intakes — arguably the B-21’s most impressive feature so far,” the military blog The Drive wrote. 

    The new images come after the USAF and Northrop Grumman revealed the B-21 at the defense manufacturer’s facility in Palmdale, California, in early December.

    No photographs of the B-21, which has been under development since 2015, were released to the public until last December. Even with a team of 8,000 workers from Northrop, USAF, and 400 suppliers across 40 states working on the project, there were no leaked images. 

    There is still much to be learned about the B-21, but it is widely understood that it will replace the USAF’s Rockwell B-1 Lancer and B-2 bombers by the end of the decade.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/08/2023 – 20:00

  • Exploring The Five Best US Cities For Bitcoin Enthusiasts
    Exploring The Five Best US Cities For Bitcoin Enthusiasts

    Authored by Jenna Hall via BitcoinMagazine.com,

    As Bitcoin adoption grows, some cities are embracing the technology as hubs for businesses, events and lifestyles tailored to Bitcoiners…

    Bitcoin has taken the world by storm since its creation in 2009. In fact, about 46 million Americans own bitcoin. And as its popularity continues to grow, so does the desire for those adopting it to utilize it in their everyday lives.

    As a result, several cities in the United States have emerged as hotspots for Bitcoin enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and investors. Take a look at five cities leading the way in Bitcoin adoption and innovation, and what makes them such attractive destinations for Bitcoiners.

    SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

    Washington State has a long history with Bitcoin and blockchain technology. In 2018, Wenatchee, a small town three hours east of Seattle, became an epicenter of bitcoin mining in the United States. Since then, cities in Washington like Seattle have seen a dramatic increase in both people and businesses interested in utilizing digital currencies.

    Seattleites can buy and sell their digital assets at any of the 202 bitcoin ATMs in the city. Speaking of buying and selling, the state of Washington doesn’t tax the purchase of bitcoin — a unique advantage for Bitcoin enthusiasts living in the state.

    LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

    As a major center for technology and innovation, Los Angeles has a growing number of businesses and individuals experimenting with bitcoin and other digital currencies. Some individuals have even been able to successfully pay the rents for their apartments in Los Angeles using bitcoin.

    The city has truly embraced the use of blockchain technology, with many boutiques, restaurants, toy stores, florists and other businesses accepting bitcoin as payment. In 2021, the iconic Staples Center was renamed Crypto.com arena, further cementing the relationship that bitcoin and other digital currencies have with the City of Los Angeles.

    MIAMI, FLORIDA

    Miami mayor Francis Suarez has made it clear that he’s an advocate of digital currencies and wants to make Miami the “capital of crypto.” In fact, in 2021, Mayor Suarez became the first American politician to officially take his city salary in bitcoin and, in a recent interview, he said he’s still getting paid this way.

    Every year, the City of Miami hosts several events and conferences for blockchain enthusiasts to attend, including the upcoming 2023 Bitcoin Conference, the largest Bitcoin conference in the world. There is also ample opportunity to use bitcoin in everyday life there, with the city having around 886 bitcoin ATMs and numerous shops, businesses and restaurants accepting bitcoin.

    NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

    With its prominence in both the financial and technological worlds, New York City is a prime destination for Bitcoin users and blockchain companies alike. The city’s position as a hub for cryptocurrencies was solidified in 2015 when the New York State Department of Financial Services introduced a licensing framework for virtual currency businesses, though many Bitcoin proponents have seen this as antagonistic to innovation.

    Still, people living in New York have access to over 179 bitcoin ATMs and Consensus, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency events, was launched in the city in 2015. The city’s mayor, Eric Adams, has said he’d like to see New York turned into a “Bitcoin hub,” taking the mantle from Miami.

    SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

    With San Francisco being one of the biggest tech capitals of the world, it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that it’s also one of the top cities to live in for Bitcoin users. The city is a home to many well-known cryptocurrency exchanges that make buying and selling bitcoin possible, including Binance.US and Coinbase.

    The San Francisco and San Jose areas boast 474 bitcoin ATMs and have a wide variety of businesses, restaurants, retail stores, nightclubs, hotels and property managers that accept bitcoin. The city also hosts many blockchain conferences and events, including the annual San Francisco Blockchain Week, when blockchain companies and enthusiasts come together from all over the world to discuss the future of digital currencies.

    The world of Bitcoin is constantly changing and evolving, and so are the cities embracing it. From New York to San Francisco and beyond, each of the country’s Bitcoin hotspots has something unique to offer. Whether you’re looking for a thriving startup scene or a supportive community of Bitcoin enthusiasts, these cities are sure to provide an exciting environment for anyone looking to deepen their involvement in the world of Bitcoin.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/08/2023 – 19:40

  • Another Atmospheric River To Pound Central California
    Another Atmospheric River To Pound Central California

    California has suffered from a devastating drought that caused widespread problems for many years. Climate alarmists (such as Greta Thunberg) screamed at the top of their lungs that the world would end… However, following a few short months of a conveyor belt of atmospheric rivers, extreme to severe drought conditions have dramatically eased.

    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports a new atmospheric river is approaching the Central Coast of California, which is likely to result in rain, wind, and thunderstorms towards the end of the week.

    “We’re expecting the onset to begin early Thursday morning along the coast, but by late morning we are expecting it to become more widespread,” Roger Gass, a forecaster with the weather service, told news website SFGATE. 

    “We’ll see rain increase in intensity and coverage through the day Thursday and raining continuing into the night and into Friday morning,” Gass said. 

    Parts of the storm will begin to hit the Central Coast on Wednesday afternoon. The main part won’t arrive until Thursday afternoon and last through Friday. Several feet of snow is expected for areas above 6,000 feet in elevation. Below 5,000 feet, such as the Sierra Nevada foothills, rainfall totals are forecasted to range between 2 to 7 inches.

    “Will there be a moderate to strong & warm Atmospheric River storm this weekend in CA? Yes. Will there be flooding from hvy rain & snowmelt? Also yes,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain tweeted. 

    The latest deluge comes as extreme and severe drought conditions in the state have eased since the parade of atmospheric river storms began battering the state in late December.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/08/2023 – 19:20

  • Chevron CEO Warns That Premature Transition To Low-Carbon Would Be "Painful And Chaotic"
    Chevron CEO Warns That Premature Transition To Low-Carbon Would Be “Painful And Chaotic”

    Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

    Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said that maintaining secure and affordable energy supplies amid the push to decarbonize is one of the biggest challenges of the day while warning that a premature shift to low-carbon risks a disorderly transition that would be “painful and chaotic.”

    Wirth made the remarks during Monday’s session of S&P Global’s CERAWeek conference in Houston, Texas, one of the biggest annual events for the energy industry.

    He told attendees that maintaining secure and affordable supplies amid the transition to the low-carbon economy was “one of the greatest challenges of all time.”

    Wirth warned that a disorderly energy transition could be “painful and chaotic.”

    “We have to be very careful about turning system A off prematurely and depending on a system that doesn’t yet exist and hasn’t been proven,” he added.

    His warning about the risks of a premature energy transition were echoed by other speakers, who urged industry leaders to avoid poorly thought-out policies that would disrupt energy supplies and drive up prices for consumers.

    While some advocated for faster decarbonization, others emphasized the need for a well-planned and coordinated timeline for the transition.

    Wirth’s remarks highlight one of the key themes of the event, namely the so-called energy trilemma, which is balancing energy affordability, security, and transition.

    ‘Cannot Responsibly Unplug the Energy System of Today’

    Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of S&P Global and chairman of the CERAWeek conference, told Forbes that a major focus of the conference is how best to navigate in a “much more turbulent and confusing energy picture” that characterized the past year, which he said has been “very dramatic” for the industry.

    Yergin cited Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as one example of the turbulence impacting the industry. Disruption to fossil fuel supplies to both industry and consumers helped push fuel prices higher and contributed to decades-high inflation in the United States and elsewhere.

    During Monday’s conference, some industry insiders viewed the fallout from disruptions to Russian supply as a reminder to avoid hasty and ill-considered policies that cut off fossil fuels or drive up prices.

    Sultan al-Jaber, chief executive of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and president-designate of the COP28 climate summit, said in a keynote speech at the event that energy industry leaders should look to their experience and expertise to find ways to “decarbonize quicker” and “future-proof sooner.”

    At the same time, al-Jaber warned that the world “cannot responsibly unplug the energy system of today until the system of tomorrow is ready.”

    Liam Mallon, president of ExxonMobil Upstream Company, said during one of Monday’s sessions that each country would naturally take a different path on energy transition, depending on the available resources.

    U.S. energy envoy Amos Hochstein said that the most difficult part of decarbonizing is mapping out and coordinating a timeline.

    “I think if you’re going to go through the greatest transformation that the world has seen in over 100 years, of unplugging from one energy system and creating a whole other one, you can’t just do it without planning it out,” Hochstein said.

    Energy Security

    Yergin told Forbes that the disruptions of the past year or so have revived discussions about energy security, which had largely fallen off the table in the United States thanks to the shale revolution and with an added boost from former President Donald Trump’s domestic energy policies.

    “If you remember, seven or eight U.S. presidents talked about becoming energy independent, and it often seemed like, oh, well, that’s just a campaign slogan, but it will never happen,” Yergin told the outlet.

    “But then, lo and behold, over a decade or so, the U.S. became energy independent. And that had a big economic impact. It’s also had a big political impact. And it also meant that people sort of forgot about security. But that sure is back on the table today,” he added.

    In 2019, under Trump, the United States produced more energy than it consumed for the first time in 62 years, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

    Republicans have been critical of President Joe Biden for pushing energy policies that they see as hampering domestic production. They have often singled out Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline and measures that restricted impending energy projects like halting new oil and gas leases.

    Biden has made fighting climate change and de-carbonizing the economy one of the hallmarks of his presidency.

    Trump, meanwhile, recently outlined his vision for America’s energy policies, vowing to pull the United States out of the Paris climate deal if elected while pledging to eliminate regulations that hold back domestic energy production and promising to rapidly approve energy infrastructure projects.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/08/2023 – 19:00

  • JPMorgan Sues Jes Staley Over Potential Epstein Fallout
    JPMorgan Sues Jes Staley Over Potential Epstein Fallout

    JPMorgan is suing former executive Jes Staley to hold him responsible for any damages which may stem from lawsuits accusing the bank of facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.

    As Bloomberg reports, the bank filed a third-party complaint on Wednesday afternoon against Staley in Manhattan federal court. According to the filing, Staley should be held liable if allegations about his relationship with Epstein are found to be true.

    The filing comes weeks after the US Virgin Islands revealed bombshell emails between Staley and Epstein from 2010 referencing Disney princesses, presumably in the context of girls procured for sexual activities.

    “That was fun,” Staley allegedly wrote to Epstein. “Say hi to Snow White.“

    To which Epstein replied: “[W]hat character would you like next?”

    “Beauty and the Beast.”

    Epstein also emailed Staley photos of young women in seductive poses, the filing continues.

    JPMorgan responded – claiming that the emails fail to show that minors were victimized, or that “force, fraud or coercion” were used against women. The bank has asked the judge to dismiss the case, in which the USVI and Epstein accusers say JPMorgan is liable for facilitating Epstein’s sex trafficking of minors, because they ignored obvious red flags while continuing to provide banking services to the prolific pedophile.

    The close ties between Staley, once JPMorgan’s private banking chief, and Epstein have been at the core of two suits claiming the bank knew or should have known about Epstein’s crimes and kept him on as a client anyway. But Staley himself was not named as a defendant in either suit. -Bloomberg

    As Bloomberg further notes, JPMorgan’s new filing could shift some of the liability to Staley himself.

    Staley and Epstein exchanged upwards of 1,200 emails over a period of several years. In 2013, Staley left JPMorgan to become CEO of Barclays, which he left in 2021 following a probe by the UK Financial Conduct Authority into his relationship with Epstein.

    Epstein, meanwhile, had around 55 accounts with JPMorgan between 1998 and 2013, which contained hundreds of millions of dollars. At least 20 individuals paid through JPMorgan accounts were “victims of trafficking and sexual assault in Little St James,” according to the USVI.

    We can only assume this filing means that there’s something big coming, and JPMorgan knows it.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/08/2023 – 18:40

  • Politico Surrenders To Woke Tantrum By Millennial Staffers, Now Has 'Banned Words' List
    Politico Surrenders To Woke Tantrum By Millennial Staffers, Now Has ‘Banned Words’ List

    Progressive millennials within Politico threw a giant temper tantrum, and got their way.

    As Amber Athey, author of The Snowflakes’ Revolt writes in The Spectator, what began as a meltdown over conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who guest-authored the outlet’s flagsahip newsletter in December of 2020, has turned into a complete ‘lord of the flies’ organization with petulant children ‘taking ideas from college campuses into the newsroom and pushing the editorial line further to the left than ever before,’ as Athey describes it.

    A few months after the Shapiro meltdown, a March 2021 article by political reporter Gabby Orr about how Republicans have positioned themselves as defenders of women’s sports against transgender athletes was the next shoe to drop. The internal revolt which followed ‘marked a sea change in how the publication reported the news.”

    Orr was then dragged into a meeting with offended colleagues;

    As a source briefed on the situation explained to me, Orr was informed by Politico’s director of editorial diversity initiatives Robin Turner that two colleagues had voiced concerns about her story. Turner wanted to arrange a meeting to discuss them. During the meeting, Orr was asked about her employment history at the Washington Examiner, a center-right outlet, and asked why the story omitted any transgender voices — though it had extensively quoted Kate Oakley, senior counsel at the Human Rights Campaign, an activist organization dedicated to LGBTQ+ issues.

    Orr’s colleagues also complained that she quoted conservatives, such as American Principles Project director Terry Schilling and former White House policy adviser Stephen Miller, without “contextualizing” their comments. Schilling had pessimistically praised left-wing activists for their ability to convince the American public that transgender people were facing a wave of violence even though when “you look at the numbers… it’s, like, forty people.” Orr, her colleagues argued, should have explicitly told readers that those remarks were offensive and transphobic. -The Spectator

    One meeting attendee was offended by the phrase “biological women,” which appeared a grand total of three times in the piece, and was deemed ‘offensive to transgender readers.’

    Following the meeting, Robin Turner, the outlet’s director of editorial diversity, suggested that the offended colleagues be crowned “sensitivity readers,” to ensure that Orr wouldn’t cause further offense to sensitive readers.

    Six months earlier, Orr had written a 5,000-word Politico cover story on the same subject – trans athletes – which drew zero internal complaints. According to Athey, however, it was a ‘bad-blooded Zoom meeting about Shapiro guest-editing Playbook’ which emboldened progressive staff to start pushing back against articles that didn’t pass their woke purity tests.

    Things get worse

    On July 2, 2021, Politico brought in three transgender individuals they thought would help the newsroom learn to report on transgender issues in a “more comprehensive and inclusive way.” In another Zoom meeting, they lectured reporters about the ‘inherent transphobia’ in their reporting.

    In an email Athey obtained from Politico editors summarizing the “highlights” from their inclusivity sermons, reporters were told that a “neutral” position on transgender issues likely came from “white, cisgender men,” and therefore should be assumed to be inaccurate. What’s more, gendered words can be rooted in “exclusion,” and can cause “trauma” for transgender and gender-neutral individuals.

    According to one former Politico reporter, the panelists complained that the word “mother” could potentially be offensive when used by reporters. The trans activists also mocked reporters struggling with the grammatical implications of referring to people by plural pronouns, such as “they/them.”

    “So many non-trans journalists get caught up in the ‘meaning’ of certain words that they don’t realize the many ways that a certain word can mean different things to different people, and the ways in which various languages carry trauma and carry triggering motivations for folks and how our feelings about the meaning of certain words are rooted in exclusion,” said Tre’vell Anderson, then editor-at-large at Xtra.

    What?

    The panelists warned journalists that they cannot simply cover “both sides” of the transgender issue, because they might be elevating transphobic voices. “The job of journalists historically always has been to speak truth to power and it’s a violation of journalistic ethics to entertain any conversation that paints transphobia as legitimate,” Sosin said.

    What do these folks consider to be anti-trans or transphobic? Sosin has said that the phrase “biological male” is an “anti-trans slur” and that it’s transphobic for women not to want to share a bathroom with a man. Howe complained on Twitter that they were called “sir” on the phone by a FedEx employee. Anderson has described bills banning biological males from women’s sports as “anti-trans” legislation. Factual language, honest mistakes and reasonable concerns about deep-rooted biological differences will not be tolerated by the trans lobby. -The Spectator

    According to one source, the gender discussion was a gateway triggering, causing colleagues to argue over terms such as “birthing person” vs “birthing moms,” due to potential offense. 

    The woke mob then tried to unionize, according to one former staffer, which “was merely an extension of the woke crowd showing their true colors after the Shapiro firestorm.” The Daily Beast even called them out, questioning whether they were the “woke police,” following concerns expressed over the effort.

    Banned words

    Several weeks after the transgender sermon, Politico appointed a new standards editor to oversee editorial content – former White House correspondent Anita Kumar. Under her, a new 2022 style guide was implemented which includes a list of ‘noninclusive’ words deemed verboten. Via The Spectator:

      • Mankind
      • Man-made
      • Manhunt
      • Crack the whip: unacceptable because of origins in slavery
      • Waiter or waitress: server should be used instead
      • Biological gender, biological sex, biological woman, biological female, biological man, or biological male
      • Illegal immigrant or illegal alien
      • Cake walk: “originated during slavery” and thus perpetuates “racist motifs”
      • In reference to illegal migration: onslaught, tidal wave, flood, inundation, surge, invasion, army, march, sneak and stealth
      • Anchor baby
      • Chain migration: this is a term used by “immigration hard-liners”
      • Peanut gallery: “the cheapest seats often occupied by Black people and people with low incomes”
      • Third-world countries: too “derogatory”

    The guide also warns reporters not to say a transgender individual ‘identifies’ as a certain gender, or to describe the border crisis as a ‘crisis’ because “while the sharp increase in the arrival of unaccompanied minors is a problem for border officials, a political challenge for the Biden administration and a dire situation for many migrants who make the journey, it does not fit the dictionary definition of a crisis.”

    “Generally, avoid references to a transgender person being born a boy or girl, and opt for phrasing such as ‘identified at birth as boy/girl,’” the guide cautions. “A person’s biology does not take precedence over their gender identity, and such oversimplifications can invalidate the person’s current, authentic gender.”

    Reporters should also consider “using gender-neutral language like ‘pregnant people’ or ‘people using birth control’… as there are non-female identifying people who are able to become pregnant, require reproductive healthcare, etc.”

    Oh, and “Unlike Black, white should not be capitalized in any instances.“

    As Athey notes towards the end, “Thanks to the constant complaints by woke staffers, transgender coverage at Politico now reads like pure propaganda rather than well-informed and reasoned reportage.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/08/2023 – 18:25

  • New Bill Would Classify Conservative Speech As 'Domestic Violence Extremism'
    New Bill Would Classify Conservative Speech As ‘Domestic Violence Extremism’

    Authored by Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov via Headline USA,

    Proposed legislation that would classify conservative free speech as domestic terrorism is being called “the most dangerous bill in legislative history.”

    One of the infamous J6 violent rioters kneels in front of the Washington Monument. / PHOTO: AP

    Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson is aggressively pushing legislation that would establish a 13-member panel to determine what constitutes disinformation and misinformation rising to the level of “domestic violence extremism,” according to The Center Square. The panel would also collect data on incidents of their pickings of domestic violent extremism and classify noncriminal activities or speech as such.

    Free speech advocates blasted the bill for targeting conservatives and criminalizing anyone who expresses an opinion that runs counter to a regime-approved narrative.

    “This commission is specifically designed to target conservatives and quash any government opposition, which is why the legislation purposefully ignores Antifa and Black Lives Matter extremists. Indeed, it expressly supports those tactics,” wrote Seattle KTTH talk-show host Jason Rantz, who called it “the most dangerous bill in legislative history.”

    According to Rantz’s interpretation of comments that AG Ferguson made in a January interview with PBS, the idea behind the bill is to “take preemptive measures to stop actual domestic terrorist acts through community intervention,” such as compelling people identified as “extremists” to undergo counseling.

    “Let’s engage in prevention, of getting folks — avoiding them being radicalized in the first place. If somebody is radicalized and wants removal, move away from that, how can we help them with counseling, for example, to get them away from that ideology?” Ferguson told PBS host Laura Barrón-López.

    “So, looking at from a more holistic standpoint, we think, addresses prevention, addresses helping folks who’ve been radicalized and take a more holistic view of this to address what is a huge challenge, not just in Washington state, but all across the country.”

    However, Rantz noted that the bill goes far beyond just that goal.

    “They say this is about violence, but it’s not about violence. It’s actually about speech,” he told Fox News on Friday.

    “We already have laws on the books that very clearly address violence. What they’re trying to do with this commission is create what they’re calling a ‘public health approach’ to some of these ideologies.”

    Rantz also explained that the commission could see the opposition to critical race theory, mask mandates and radical gender ideology connected to “white supremacy.”

    “They are singularly focused on the Right,” Rantz said. “What this commission will end up doing is… recommending legislation that could not only lead to imprisoning people for having certain kinds of political positions, but also forcing them into counseling.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/08/2023 – 18:20

  • Capital Markets Have Reached The 'Singularity'
    Capital Markets Have Reached The ‘Singularity’

    Most investors have lived (and died) by the adage that “there is no alternative” to equities for the last decade or more – as global central bank repression has forced every Tom, Dick, & Harriet into ever more risky assets in search of yield… or some return.

    However, a funny thing happened when “don’t fight The Fed” began to mean doing something that the commission-rakers and asset-gatherers wanted it to mean – stock prices fell, bond yields rose, and inflation chewed up any real income gains the average-joe felt.

    “This is the way” that markets have been for a year or so now to the point where something shocking has just happened.

    While we all know you should never “cross the streams”, it appears we have reached the capital market equivalent of the ‘singularity’: rates, equities, and credit yields have all converged.

    For the first time since 2001, 6-month US money closed above the earnings yield (1/PE) of the S&P 500.

    Additionally, investment-grade (IG) credit yields are still above 6 month money as they have also been selling off, but the gap has narrowed substantially in recent months. This hasn’t inverted since 1980 but has got close in recent weeks.

    Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid explains why this matters:

    Earnings yields were below 6m money for long periods in the 1980s and 1990s without it impacting equity returns too much until the peak inversion around the dotcom boom/bust.

    One might argue that for most of the 1980s and 1990s, collapsing yields and real yields meant that both bonds and equities could rally in unison.

    For credit though, this type of curve spread has been a good lead indicator of credit spreads. As this curve gets flatter, the higher the probability is of spreads widening over the next 18 months and visa-versa.

    Intuitively, when yields on short-end money are competitive with longer duration risk assets, there should be more circumspect investment behaviour with animal spirits slowly draining away. The front-end should become more attractive to the detriment of riskier ventures out the curve. This is why we think an inverted curve is such a good predictor of the economy over subsequent quarters.

    Translation: Brace – the singularity is upon us.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/08/2023 – 18:00

  • Republican Governors Show Clean Tech Leadership
    Republican Governors Show Clean Tech Leadership

    Authored by Heather Reams via RealClear Wire,

    Deployment of new clean energy technologies, lower energy costs, and reduced global emissions all have one thing in common: American leadership. While President Biden and Democrats across the country promote top-down energy mandates and other policies that lead to higher energy prices,  conservatives understand that—by unleashing American resources, accelerating permitting for energy infrastructure and innovative clean technologies, and supporting a strong, diverse energy portfolio—we can strengthen the United States’ role as a global leader in emissions reduction and provide affordable, reliable energy for American families.  

    With the new Republican majority in the House and strong Republican leaders in the Senate, I am optimistic we will advance solutions that will get us all closer to these goals. More importantly, we should recognize the excellent progress already being made in states led by Republicans across the country. 

    Despite Washington rhetoric and in the face of federal permitting challenges, Republican governors are leading with a unifying, all-of-the-above energy platform based on free-market principles—proving that strong, state-led clean energy initiatives that lower energy costs, enhance American manufacturing, and reduce emissions are now the key to maintaining the United States’ role as a global leader in carbon emissions reduction and providing the global market the world’s cleanest produced goods and resources. 

    Under Governor Doug Burgum’s leadership, North Dakota has become the second largest per-capita energy-producing state in the nation and is on track to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. In his State of the State address, Governor Burgum specifically pointed to carbon capture, utilization, and storage as tools to reshape energy policy in his state and across the country, and he highlighted U.S. industry’s role in reducing global emissions.  

    In his address to Alaskans, Governor Mike Dunleavy pointed to Alaska’s leadership in oil and gas production as well as the state’s development of innovative new technologies like hydrogen and advanced nuclear. He refers to Alaska as a “resource powerhouse” and pledged to unlock the Last Frontier’s potential to develop carbon-free, renewable sources. This all-of-the-above attitude is the approach the United States should adopt as we continue to lead the world in clean energy innovation. 

    Georgia Governor Brian Kemp recognizes that U.S. clean energy development is not only beneficial to our environment and global emissions reduction but also for his state’s economy. He has embraced the idea of a clean energy economy, fostering a business environment that invites and encourages investments in clean energy manufacturing, from electric vehicle charging to battery recycling. In his inaugural address, he vowed that by the end of his term, Georgia would be “the electric mobility capital of America.”  

    Finally, West Virginia Governor Jim Justice, as a leader in one of our nation’s most coal-dependent states, openly spoke about his interest in pursuing renewable energy sources while embracing emerging technologies that lower emissions from coal, natural gas, and oil production, maintaining and creating good-paying jobs for West Virginians. 

    There is a reason businesses and manufacturing are moving in droves to Republican-led states. They know that to have advanced manufacturing and clean energy technologies, you must be able to build it. But the truth is even the most targeted smart investment is meaningless without addressing the current regulatory and bureaucratic hurdles hampering production and slowing innovative technologies. Congress must enact permitting and licensing reforms to accelerate technology deployment and allow the United States to truly unleash American energy.   

    Republican governors are working to deploy U.S.-made clean energy technologies, responsibly develop American energy, and secure domestic supply chains. Speaker McCarthy and House Republicans have developed an equally effective agenda to lead this nation. Now, it is up to all of Congress to take a page from these governors’ books. 

    Heather Reams is the president of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (CRES).

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/08/2023 – 17:40

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Mar 08

Today’s News 8th March 2023

  • New WHO Chief Scientist Made Crucial Change To Paper Claiming COVID-19 Didn't Come From Lab
    New WHO Chief Scientist Made Crucial Change To Paper Claiming COVID-19 Didn’t Come From Lab

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

    The World Health Organization’s new chief scientist made a crucial change to an influential 2020 paper that claimed it was “improbable” that COVID-19 came from a laboratory, a newly disclosed email shows.

    Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, attends the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 19, 2017. (Ruben Sprich/Reuters)

    Jeremy Farrar, the chief scientist, was credited in one message with helping guide the paper about the origin of COVID-19, according to one email released by the U.S. House select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic on March 5.

    “Thanks for shepherding this paper. Rumors of bioweaponeering are now circulating in China,” Dr. Ian Lipkin, a Columbia University professor, wrote to Farrar in the message.

    “Yes I know and in US – why so keen to get out ASAP. I will push nature,” Farrar responded.

    In the early 2020 paper, Lipkin and four co-authors claimed: “It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of a related SARS-CoV-like coronavirus.”

    SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes COVID-19.

    A draft of the manuscript, published by Nature, included a different word, the House panel found.

    “Sorry to micro-manage/microedit! But would you be willing to change one sentence?” Farrar wrote to Kristian Andersen, who co-authored the paper, in an email just one day before publication.

    Farrar asked to insert “improbable” in place of “unlikely,” the email showed.

    “Sure,” Andersen responded.

    The paper also stated that “SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct” and that the authors “do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”

    “This evidence suggests that Dr. Farrar was more involved in the drafting and publication of Proximal Origin than previously known and possibly should have been credited or acknowledged for this involvement,” the panel said.

    Asked for a comment from Farrar, the World Health Organization (WHO) told The Epoch Times via email he hasn’t yet started in his new position.

    The British scientist was, at the time of the messages, at the helm of the Wellcome Trust, which controls millions of dollars in funding for research in the UK.

    The WHO announced on Dec. 13, 2022, that Farrar would be the next new chief scientist and that he would start in the second quarter of 2023. Wellcome, which didn’t respond to a request for comment, has stated that Farrar was due to leave in 2023.

    Dr. Anthony Fauci in Washington on Dec. 9, 2022. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

    Secret Teleconference

    Farrar helped arrange a secret Feb. 1, 2020, teleconference with Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to discuss the origin of COVID-19, previously released emails show.

    Some of the participants said details of SARS-CoV-2 indicated it didn’t originate from nature, though others favored the natural origin theory.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 03/08/2023 – 00:05

  • Tennessee First State To Ban Drag Shows For Minors
    Tennessee First State To Ban Drag Shows For Minors

    Last Thursday, Tennessee became the first U.S. state to explicitly ban drag performances in public spaces accessible to minors.

    As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, Gov. Bill Lee signed the bill into law after he himself had cause some controversy when high school year book pictures of him dressed in drag resurfaced. While the state is currently the only one with such a law, this could soon change.

    According to Time Magazine, 11 more states – in the U.S. South, Midwest or West – have seen similar bills introduced. Arkansas recently passed a law restricting adult-oriented shows, but language specific to drag shows was removed previously.

    Infographic: Tennessee First State to Ban Drag Shows for Minors | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The bills are all aimed at drag show performances, but differ in their specifics.

    For example, Arizona’s introduced bill looks to ban drag performances for those under the age of 15, while Nebraska wants to put that cutoff at 19.

    While a bill in Missouri only aims to outlaw drag performances on public property, most others target all public spaces where minors could be present.

    While drag performances in bars would carry an age limit of 21 in the U.S. anyways, the bills could affect drag shows for example at street festivals or theaters as well as during a format that drew special ire from conservatives – drag queen story hour.

    The initiative started by a San Francisco-based drag performer to educate and foster acceptance for the LGBT community has seen drag queens read to children in bookshops and libraries since 2015.

    While not all drag performers are LBGT (and being a drag performer is distinct from being trans), the practice has a strong history in the LGBT community, especially among gay men. 

    Today, more than 7 percent of adults in the U.S. identify as LGBT.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/07/2023 – 23:45

  • "US Is Not Yet Ready For Great Power Conflict", Yet Still Plots Against China; WSJ
    “US Is Not Yet Ready For Great Power Conflict”, Yet Still Plots Against China; WSJ

    Authored by Yves Smith via NakedCapitalism.com,

    A vivid scene came in my first year Harvard MBA course, Business, Government and the International Economy, taught in my section by George C. Lodge, son of Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. George Lodge said he still remembered the day in 1968 when he realized there were limits to US power, that we could not fight a war on poverty, send a man to the moon, and fight a ground war in Asia at the same time.

    The lack of that insight still seems widespread inside the Beltway, with belief in American omnipotence renewed by the fall of the USSR and then the further decline of Russia in the 1990s.

    Under a story initially published with a page-wide banner headline, The US is Not Yet Ready for the Era of “Great Power’ Conflict. The article curiously omits that it is the US that has been fomenting these clashes. And even though the URL banner on the article proper reads, The US is Not Yet Ready for the Era of “Great Power’ Conflict with China and Russia, the piece treats Russia dismissively, in passing, and treats escalating with China as a perfectly reasonable thing to do, not just now. We’ll turn to Russia in due course, particularly in light of Ukraine deciding Monday to try to break into the Bakhmut cauldron.

    If you read the article carefully, you’ll see the reverse, that any meaningful improvement in US preparedness against China is based on hopium, like the US developing, manufacturing, and deploying new weapons that are on the drawing board or in early stages. Similarly, it fails to admit a huge weakness in the US dealing with China: that our Navy is badly overinvested in the floating pork known as aircraft carriers. Informed observers like Scott Ritter has said China has the capability to take them out without too much difficulty if they get within menacing range. Sinking only one aircraft carrier would result in roughly 6000 deaths, a humiliation the US would not tolerate. Ritter has long worried that our response would be to fire a tactical nuke at the Chinese hinterlands. Ritter is certain that China would immediately light up the entire US West Coast.

    By: Investing TrendsChina has nearly complete control over the cobalt, lithium and rare earths supply chain. From raw material extraction to processing operations. Read This Special Report Before Wall Street Does

    The point of this article may be to provide cover for a minor US de-escalatory move with China: that rather than having new House Speaker stir the Taiwan independence pot as Nancy Pelosi did with a visit to the island, the Taiwanese leader will instead come to the US to meet McCarthy.

    Note the article repeats the CIA claim that China intends to invade Taiwan by 2027. Ex CIA analyst Larry Johnson has warned that the agency has outsourced a tremendous amount of its purported intelligence-gathering, which in Ukraine has resulted in the government retailing Ukraine propaganda. There’s no reason to think China will invade even it decides it has had enough. A blockade would do. That would also put the US, in the eyes of the international community, as being the aggressor were it to try to do anything about it, since just about no one recognizes Taiwan.

    The belief among cynics was the CIA (or its pro-Taiwan sources) focused on 2027 as close to the end of the window when the US could challenge China over Taiwan, in light of the growth of the Chinese economy and among other things, its ship-building capability. But this piece implicitly throws cold water on this timeline and keeps hammering at the idea that the US can surpass China, when there’s no reason to think we can create and deploy a whole bunch of new-gen systems and upgrade our forces too.

    The article is also heavily anecdotal, generally not a good sign in a story on a “hard” topic like geopolitics. It start with an Air Force lieutenant general realizing as a result of 2018 wargames that China had enough missiles to do serious damage to US bases in the region. It ominously continues:

    Five years ago…the U.S. started tackling a new era of great-power competition with China and Russia. It isn’t yet ready, and there are major obstacles in the way….

    Corporate consolidation across the American defense industry has left the Pentagon with fewer arms manufacturers. Shipyards are struggling to produce the submarines the Navy says it needs to counter China’s larger naval fleet, and weapon designers are rushing to catch up with China and Russia in developing superfast hypersonic missiles.

    When the Washington think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies ran a wargame last year that simulated a Chinese amphibious attack on Taiwan, the U.S. side ran out of long-range anti-ship cruise missiles within a week.

    The military is struggling to meet recruitment goals, with Americans turned off by the long conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, potentially leaving the all-volunteer force short of manpower. Plans to position more forces within striking range of China are still a work in progress

    Yet it lards that sober message with faith in eventual success via vaporware or hopium:

    The U.S. military is still more capable than its main adversaries. The Chinese have their own obstacles in developing the capability to carry out a large-scale amphibious assault, while the weaknesses of Russia’s military have been exposed in Ukraine….

    New tactics have been devised to disperse U.S. forces and make them less of an inviting target for China’s increasingly powerful missiles.

    The Pentagon’s annual budget for research and development has been boosted to $140 billion—an all time high. The military is pursuing cutting-edge technology it hopes will enable the military services to share targeting data instantaneously so that U.S. air, land, sea and space forces, operating over thousands of miles, can act in unison, a current challenge….

    Many of the cutting-edge weapons systems the Pentagon believes will tilt the battlefield in its favor won’t be ready until the 2030s, raising the risk that China may be tempted to act before the U.S. effort bears fruit.

    We’ll interrupt this recap to point out that the US bizarrely assumes it will be able to gain meaningful ground on China, that China will either stand still or not progress as quickly. Yet if you look at the ASPI critical technologies study we cited yesterday, you will see China dominates in categories relevant to military hardware and battlefield coordination: advanced materials and manufacturing; artificial intelligence, computing and communications; defense, space, robotics, and transportation.

    Back to the Journal:

    Deterring China from invading Taiwan, a longstanding U.S. partner that Beijing claims as Chinese territory, defines the challenge….The U.S. needed to demonstrate it could prevent Beijing from seizing the island in the first place—a requirement included in the Biden administration’s National Defense Strategy issued in 2022…

    A more recent wargame conducted by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff showed the U.S. could stymie a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and force a stalemate if the conflict was fought later in the decade, although high casualties on both sides would result. That simulation assumed that the U.S. would have the benefit of new weapons, tactics and military deployments that are currently being planned at the Pentagon.

    So the US will only be able to fight China to a draw if US new wunderfaffen become operational soon enough and the US succeeds in executing a major revamp too.

    More on capability-building:

    The Army, which saw its electronic warfare, short-range air defense and engineering capabilities atrophy amid budget pressures and the previous decades’ wars, is moving to develop a new generation of weapons systems that can strike targets at much longer ranges. It is planning to deploy a new hypersonic missile in the fall though its utility against Chinese forces will depend on securing basing rights in the Pacific.

    The Navy, which is confronting budget pressures, personnel shortages and limits to American shipbuilding capacity, is currently planning to expand its fleet to at least 355 crewed ships, a size still smaller than China’s current navy. In the near term, the U.S. will have around 290 ships.

    A CBO report dated January 31, 2023 is much less bullish about hypersonic missiles, including their combat-ready date:

    CBO reached the following conclusions:

    Technological challenges must still be overcome to field hypersonic missiles. The fundamental remaining challenge involves managing the extreme heat that hypersonic missiles are exposed to by traveling at high speeds in the atmosphere for most of their flight (unlike cruise missiles, which fly in the atmosphere at lower speeds, or ballistic missiles, which mainly fly above the atmosphere). Shielding hypersonic missiles’ sensitive electronics, understanding how various materials perform, and predicting aerodynamics at sustained temperatures as high as 3,000° Fahrenheit require extensive flight testing. Tests are ongoing, but failures in recent years have delayed progress.

    Both hypersonic and ballistic missiles are well-suited to operate outside potential adversaries’ antiaccess and area-denial (A2/AD), or “keep-out,” zones. The Department of Defense has developed a strategy to use accurate, long-range, high-speed missiles early in a conflict to neutralize the A2/AD zones being developed by potential adversaries, such as China and Russia. Both hypersonic missiles and ballistic missiles equipped with maneuverable warheads could provide the combination of speed, accuracy, range, and survivability (the ability to reach a target without being intercepted) that would be useful in the military scenarios CBO considered. However, many missions do not require such rapid strikes. For those missions, less costly alternatives to both hypersonic and ballistic missiles exist, including subsonic cruise missiles. Hypersonic weapons would mainly be useful to address threats that were both well-defended and extremely time-sensitive.

    Again to the Journal:

    The general [Clint Hinote] has pushed to equip cargo planes with cruise missiles to boost allied firepower, the use of high-altitude balloons to carry sensors and electric “flying cars” to carry people and equipment throughout the Pacific island chains—ideas that have led to experiments but so far no procurement decisions.

    He thinks a future Air Force could rely more on autonomous, uncrewed aircraft and deploy fewer fighters.

    Mind you, Russia went down that path a long, long time ago, resulting its layered offensive missiles and its best-in-breed air defense systems.

    The cheery closing thought, from Hinote:

    “I think we’ve got a recipe for blunting” a Chinese attack, he said. “I just think you have to reinvent your force to do it.”

    Now if this article isn’t worrisome enough merely based on a careful reading for relying on magic technological saves or massive operational improvements, another big red flag is its few, scathing mentions of Russia. The article does acknowledge the danger of China and Russia cooperating and Russia’s strong capabilities in hypersonic missiles. But the references to Ukraine are dismissive:

    …the weaknesses of Russia’s military have been exposed in Ukraine….

    A conflict in the Western Pacific might also give Russia’s military, which has been badly battered in Ukraine, the confidence to carry out President Vladimir Putin’s goals of reviving Russian power in what it believes to be its traditional sphere of influence in Central and Eastern Europe.

    Mind you, I do not believe this take is entirely or even mainly the result of Pentagon spokescritters hewing to the party line. My impression is most of them believe it. We discussed the latest Defense Intelligence Agency’s Worldwide Threat Assessment, particularly regarding its underestimation of Russia. If we can’t get that right, when we’ve been trying to gin up a war with them since 2014, why should we have any more confidence in our assessment of China?

    The US is managing to talk itself into a different type of delusion with respect to Russia. Remember the Anthony Blinken interview with the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, which was widely depicted as presenting a peace plan? In fact it did no such thing. It was a formula for keeping the conflict going, just at a lower boil. As we wrote:

    The Blinken/State vision seems to be:

    US and NATO support Ukraine > *Magic* > War ends > US and NATO support Ukraine

    We and others have speculated that Blinken’s peace gestures are insincere, merely to appease various constituencies that want to see the war end and also intended, if possible, to depict Russia as not interested in negotiating.

    The latter claim is to a fair degree true, but that is due to the now-clear Western position that the most it is prepared to do is stop a hot war but continue arming Ukraine so as to restart at a convenient time. Russia recognized that it is at war with NATO and it needs a durable solution. Given the West’s stated lack of interest in a lasting peace, plus its pride over its duplicity, Russia has no choice but to keep going until it has prostrated NATO or alternatively, increased pressure on major fault lines (for instance, Douglas Macgregor has said NATO would fracture if Poland were to enter Ukraine).

    Consider this section from a February Wall Street Journal story, in which NATO plans to make Ukraine an official, as opposed to de facto, NATO-lite member:

    Germany, France and Britain see stronger ties between NATO and Ukraine as a way to encourage Kyiv to start peace talks with Russia later this year, officials from the three governments said, as some of Kyiv’s Western partners have growing doubts over its ability to reconquer all its territory.

    U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last week laid out a blueprint for an agreement to give Ukraine much broader access to advanced military equipment, weapons and ammunition to defend itself once the war ends…

    A British official said another goal of the NATO pact would be to change the Kremlin’s calculus. If Moscow sees that the West is prepared to scale up its military assistance and commitments to Ukraine over time, it could help persuade Moscow that it can’t achieve its military objectives.

    This must be one of the British officials that also believes (per British MoD press reports) that Russia has committed 97% of its armed forces to Ukraine and Wagner forces in Bakhmut are fighting with shovels

    The West is completely open that it plans to keep arming Ukraine no matter what. It expects Russia to agree to a peace deal despite Ukraine being a ticking time bomb by design. It further expects Russia to negotiate when it’s becoming obvious that the US/NATO ability to supply enough artillery and equipment will drop off even further come sometime in the summer. Recall that the press has reported that Ukraine’s daily ammo fire has dropped from 3,000 to 4,000 shells to more like 2,000 and Ukraine is demanding 250,000 shells a month. Not only can the West not provide that, but even that is not enough to match Russia’s estimated 600,000 shells a month.

    In addition, and due to the pressure of time, I was not able to confirm the sourcing, but in recent broadcast, Alexander Mercouris, citing a Western source (perhaps the BBC?) said Ukraine had only 300 artillery platforms, which he noted was down from about 1000 when the war started. If that it true, you can stick a fork in Ukraine. We pointed out that Russia had recently deployed a very effective counter-battery device called the Penicillin, which allowed Russia to detect the location of artillery fire using sound waves and ground impact. Unlike radar, the Penicillin does not put out signals that can be read, so it can’t be located and destroyed.

    Since the Penicillin was put into production, various commentators have pointed out that Russia has been taking out many more weapons platforms. My impression from Dima at Military Summary is that the average is over 2 a day.

    Even if only 2 a day, 60 platforms in a month is 1/5 of what Ukraine is alleged to have left. And as Brian Berletic has repeatedly documented, US weapons deliveries and the dollars attached to them keep falling, to the degree that the US has stopped disclosing the numbers of what it is sending, merely naming the type of weapon or support.

    And so the delusion produces confused messages. Again from the February story:

    President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he needed to start considering peace talks with Moscow when the three leaders met in Paris earlier this month, people familiar with the conversation said….

    While London, Paris and Berlin see the possibility that Kyiv may have to seek talks with Russia after an expected counteroffensive this spring that could help it regain more territory, other Ukraine backers think there should be no negotiations as long as Russian troops remain on Ukrainian soil

    Ukraine’s backers are acting like gamblers hoping they can wager their way out of big losses. No, Ukraine is not to sue for peace now. It’s to settle after a win, even if it were to prove to be a modest win, mainly for the sake of the face of its funders.

    And how is that supposed to happen?

    Russian officials have reported that Ukraine is massing more troops, up from 25,000 to now over 30,000 in Zaporzhizhia, presumably to try an offensive to the south, aimed either at Melitopol or Mariupol. The wags speculate that Ukraine will assemble 40,000 and perhaps as many as 60,000 men, with the target time expected to be late March/early April.

    But these troops will be short on tanks, ammo, and air cover. And Russia has been building major fortifications in the region since Surovkin took over in October, and per Alexander Mercouris, has about 90,000 there now. If an attack looked likely, Russia would almost certain increase its force level there.

    And while Ukraine is supposedly preparing for its big, last ditch counter-offensive, it is also wasting more men and materiel in Bakhmut. Russia has achieved operational encirclement. Men can’t get out without serious survival risk. But Ukraine announced Monday it is still contesting Bakhmut, most experts believe by attempting to force open a transportation route. But even if they succeed, to what end? If they can get enough troops out to recover the cost of forcing open a corridor, that might be a worthy gamble. But if they think they can do more than further delay the full capture of Bakhmut, it’s more evidence they have lost their minds.

    For much more detail on the grim state of play in Bakhmut, see Moon of Alabama’s new post Why Bakhmut Is Falling.

    Now of course wars are uncertain, and perhaps Russia will make a spectacular blunder. But absent that, it’s hard to see any reason for Russia to end the war before its aims are met. And the US and NATO keep feeding more cannon fodder into the Russian killing machine.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/07/2023 – 23:25

  • "Worst Violent Crime Surge In Three Centuries": Op-Ed Says Philly Dem Voters Owe The City "An Apology"
    “Worst Violent Crime Surge In Three Centuries”: Op-Ed Says Philly Dem Voters Owe The City “An Apology”

    A scathing new op-ed in the Washington Examiner this week calls for Democratic voters in Philadelphia to offer up an apology to the rest of the city for helping usher in what is being called the city’s “worst violent crime surge in three centuries of its history”. 

    The piece was written by Christopher Tremoglie and published yesterday. It opens by calling Philadelphia’s criminal justice policies and reforms “radical” and “incompetent”:

    It’s no secret that Philadelphia’s voters elected a mayor and district attorney so incompetent that the city has experienced its worst violent crime surge in three centuries of its history. This is mainly because of the radical (and incompetent) left-wing criminal justice policies and reforms that were put into effect during their terms. Nor is it a secret that Philadelphia is one of the worst poverty-stricken cities in the nation. It is consistently ranked as the “poorest” of the country’s biggest cities.

    Tremoglie writes: “As a lifelong resident of the City of Brotherly Love, its continued allegiance to Democrats boggles my mind. No matter the horrors of the reality of living in the city, Philadelphians overwhelmingly continue to vote for Democrats who just keep making things worse. Something has to change. It’s time, well beyond time really, for Philadelphia’s Democratic voters to apologize to the rest of the city for the mess they have caused.”

    He says that “Crime, poverty, and corruption are the hallmarks of cities under Democratic control, and it has been since there was an Elvis Presley (the last Republican mayor was elected in 1948). The city’s voters are to blame because they never learn.”

    The op-ed also pointed out recent corruption among the ranks of the city government:

    “Last week, a former Democratic City Council member was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison after being convicted on bribery and fraud charges. Among his crimes was his involvement in a scheme in which he tried to force the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to use labor unions to install MRI machines. Bobby Henon attempted to extort a hospital dedicated to helping terminally ill children to make money. There were other crimes too, but this was the most egregious.”

    “Henon won his most recent election in November 2019. During the campaign, it became public knowledge that he was under federal indictment for the crimes mentioned above, including the shakedown of the children’s hospital. Yet the voters still elected him. His opponent at the time, a local community organizer named Pete Smith, tried to warn residents about Henon’s corruption. They didn’t care — they knowingly voted for a crook,” the op-ed concludes.

    “Philadelphia’s voters are harming their communities. At some point, people will have to admit that those in cities like Philadelphia who routinely vote to keep the status quo deserve the crime, poverty, and other misfortunes that result from their decisions.”

    Meanwhile, as the city crumbles in the background, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney has famously all but gone on record in stating that he “hates his job as mayor”, as was reported late last year. To those who live in Center City Philadelphia and have spoken to waitstaff that have served Kenney, it appears to be an open secret that he does not, in fact, like his job.

    “I’ll be happy when I’m not here,” Kenney said back in summer 2022. “When I’m not mayor and I can enjoy some stuff”. 

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

    “F- you,” Kenney more recently responded to Brian Tierney, previously the editor of The Inquirer and Daily News, at a late 2022 event, when questioned about whether or not he liked his job. 

    Tierney responded: “That’s a terrible mayor. He says he doesn’t like his job. stop it Go ahead and do something different.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/07/2023 – 23:05

  • Chicago Dad Who Spoke Out Against Porn In Schools Faces Extra Security Screening En Route To CPAC
    Chicago Dad Who Spoke Out Against Porn In Schools Faces Extra Security Screening En Route To CPAC

    Authored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A Chicago dad who found himself on a watchlist after opposing pornographic content in his kids’ school says he faced further harassment this weekend from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) on the way to and from the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference in Maryland.

    Terry Newsome, a Chicago dad who found himself placed on a watch list by federal law enforcement, speaks during Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest 2022. (Courtesy of Terry Newsome)

    Terry Newsome of Chicago, found out in December 2022 that he had been placed on a terror watch list when he tried to fly from O’Hare Airport to Phoenix. On March 1, Newsome attempted to fly to Washington’s Ronald Reagan National Airport and learned that, despite positive signs to the contrary, his name remained on the watch list.

    Though he is still permitted to fly, having his name on the list—which federal law enforcement agencies have not explained—means invasive and embarrassing extra screening for Newsome.

    In spite of his efforts to have his name removed from the list, Newsome continues to wrangle with the labyrinthian bureaucracies of the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and TSA.

    Ongoing Battle With Cancer

    Since learning that he had been placed on the list, Newsome has worked incessantly to restore his good name even as he was undergoing “brutal” radiation therapy for stage four cancer.

    “A week and a half ago, I finished like seven weeks of intense radiation five days a week,” Newsome told the Epoch Times in an interview.

    The treatment left his immune system weakened and left him fatigued, he said, adding that he was worried about flying with his immune system so compromised by the radiation therapy.

    “I really shouldn’t have went anywhere because my immune system is pummeled from the radiation, right?” Newsome said.

    Despite his usual opposition to masks—quipping “I’m a Republican” to explain—Newsome said he took precautions and wore a mask on the plane to protect his health.

    Though the journey made him nervous, Newsome said he felt he had to go to CPAC as part of his ongoing mission to clear his name. Thus, despite his weakened state—and defying his family’s wishes that he not go—Newsome boarded a plane to Washington last week to attend CPAC, where he hoped to find more assistance with his TSA problem.

    Invasive Screening

    On his arrival at Chicago’s O’Hare on March 1, Newsome learned that his ticket still carried the “quad-S” (SSSS) designation, despite his being a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) pre-check-approved flier for over a decade before.

    Earlier, the TSA had responded to a query by Newsome, indicating at the time that he would go through “standard screening protocol” moving forward.

    In addition to much more rigorous screening of bags, SSSS fliers are typically on the receiving end of a full-body pat down. They also have their hands (and sometimes, according to some reports) their feet swabbed to check for explosives.

    A photo of Terry Newsome’s boarding pass, marked with the “quad-S” classification, as he tried to board his flight out of Washington on March 4. (Photo courtesy of Terry Newsome)

    Just how invasive this search can be depends on circumstances, but fliers with the SSSS designation can also expect to be prodded on questions like whether they packed their own bag, where they’re headed, why they’re going there, and so on.

    Newsome said that the specifics of SSSS screening are minor on their own, but that the inconveniences add up.

    On Feb. 28, 24 hours before his flight was due to take off, Newsome attempted to check in for his flight on the American Airlines app.

    As an American Platinum Flier, Newsome is entitled to several cushy benefits, including the chance for his seat to be bumped up to first class depending on availability. When he tried to check in, however, Newsome realized he couldn’t—the first indication that his flight status had not been resolved.

    Upon arriving at the airport on March 1, Newsome found that he was still having trouble printing his ticket. As it happened in December, he was required to get federal approval before the airline could print his ticket.

    “For me, it’s not like I’m just an enhanced security whatever else it is,” Newsome said. “I can’t even—not only can I not enhance [my ticket], I can’t even get a boarding pass until there’s somebody from the government to give American Airlines the approval to print the ticket.”

    Realizing that he was still on the list, Newsome decided simply to check his bag in order to avoid the embarrassment of having all his clothing, medicines, and personal items taken out of his bag in front of everyone.

    After checking his bag and receiving his ticket, Newsome proceeded to the TSA checkpoint.

    When TSA agents began going through the line examining other fliers’ boarding passes, Newsome knew they were looking for him and told the TSA agents as much. At that point, he was pulled from the line and brought to an empty line for enhanced screening.

    Newsome described his experience, citing how embarrassing the extra screening was even knowing he had done nothing wrong.

    “They stopped the whole line,” Newsome said. “They actually made everybody get out … And they had supervisors come and took me through the enhanced screening. All these people were watching.”

    Newsome and his bag were brought through a metal detector and X-ray scanner, as is the norm for most fliers.

    However, they required much more of Newsome: “I had to take off my shoes. Then they take my bags and everything else and I stand there while they go through everything.” Newsome also had his crotch area patted down in view of other fliers.

    Newsome added later, “They swabbed everything for bombs.”

    Just 30 minutes later, a similar scene played out as Newsome was trying to board his flight.

    The TSA announced over a loudspeaker near his gate that they would be checking everyone’s passports, IDs, and boarding passes before they could get on the plane. At the same moment, several TSA agents, joined by what appeared to be an undercover agent wearing sunglasses and coordinating security procedures with the TSA agents, began screening all boarders’ documents.

    Several TSA agents crowd around Terry Newsome’s gate as he tries to board a flight at O’Hare International Airport on March 1. (Photo courtesy of Terry Newsome)

    “I just knew it was for me,” Newsome said.

    Thus, he drew attention to himself, telling a TSA agent, “It’s me, I’m the quad-S.”

    Newsome was pulled out of line at this point for further screening. Depriving him of yet another American Airline Platinum Flier benefit, Newsome was the last person to board; his ticket entitled him to be in the second group of boarders.

    Newsome said this was even more embarrassing for him than the first screening, as that could have been written off as a standard random search.

    ‘Anti-Porn, Not Anti-Gay’

    Earlier, Newsome had been politically active in his school district after learning about sexually explicit images in a book at his children’s school library—activities which Newsome believes may be responsible for his placement on the list in the first place.

    Newsome had never been involved in school board meetings or politics until mid-2021, when he attended a district school board meeting after his then-eighth-grade son came home and said his teacher had told him that “there is no American dream.”

    Newsome, a descendant of Italian immigrants who himself had lived the American dream, was shocked to hear that. He called his children’s principal to discuss the issue, and suspected that these issues would only get worse when his kids, fraternal twins, got to high school.

    In July 2021, Newsome attended his first school board meeting at Downers Grove’s Community High School.

    Terry Newsome, dressed in Downers Grove South High School spirit wear, sits in the school auditorium where he spoke up about the book “Gender Queer” on Dec. 13, 2021. (Cara Ding/The Epoch Times)

    Newsome immediately began a crusade on several hot-button topics, ranging from mask mandates to critical race theory, becoming the unofficial spokesman for several concerned mothers who were more hesitant to speak out.

    “The moms are so happy to have an aggressive, type-A-personality father to join them. They had mostly fought this battle alone, against the giant system of public schools,” Newsome told The Epoch Times.

    Newsome’s most controversial activism came with his opposition to the book “Gender Queer” by Mia Kobabe, a book containing sexually explicit images that teaches children about oral sex and controversial notions of gender identity.

    Selections from the book show a biological female adolescent struggling over her “gender identity.” The girl is also depicted wearing a device known as a “binder,” a tight-fitting brassiere-like garment meant to reduce breast size. At some points in the book, the girl is shown engaging in oral sex with another biological female identifying as male.

    Newsome’s opposition to the book led to his receiving a litany of ad hominem attacks from left-wing agitators in the Chicago area. However, he has insisted throughout his activist work that he and other parents are “anti-porn, not anti-gay or homophobic.”

    Newsome has coordinated events in his area with Gays Against Groomers, an organization made up of homosexual and transsexual people who have been outspoken against inundating minors with gender ideology.

    After Newsome began speaking out against the book and the left-wing ideology that had inundated his children’s schools, he began facing attacks from all corners, ranging from threats by Antifa to opposition by Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.).

    Two days after the publication of an Epoch Times article about his activism, Newsome found threatening messages against him on a locally run Twitter account called Antifascist Rumor Mill.

    “Action items announced soon in regard to Terry Newsome—time to Drop Pops and his hateful agenda,” the tweet read, referencing Newsome’s nickname “Pops.”

    “Terry trying to make a name for himself, look at his stupid face in the Epoch Times, the extreme #disinformation rag that echoed all the lies, the Big Lie, the ‘Plandemic’ lie, etc.,” said another tweet from the account.

    Newsome told The Epoch Times that many of those who have spoken against him and threatened him, including members of the school board, are in league with Casten.

    “The school board and the superintendent are all controlled by radical, radical leftists … that are very vocal in the Downers Grove Community and all supportive of Sean Casten,” Newsome said. “So anybody that speaks out with a different opinion is brutally attacked on social media and called racist, homophobic, and so forth, no matter the truth.”

    “To make a point, I’ve said it from the very beginning, through now: Me and the other parents are not anti-gay or homophobic—we’re anti-porn,” Newsome said.

    Judith Rose, communications director for the group “Gays Against Groomers,” told the Epoch Times that opposing gender ideology being imposed on children is not homophobic or bigoted.

    A Gays Against Groomers van parked is for an event in Anaheim, California. (Courtesy of Gays Against Groomers)

    Rose explained that the goal of the organization, a group made up of gay and transgender people, is to protect children from sexual content.

    “Our goals involve getting legislation put in place to make education more appropriate for children to keep adult material away from children [and] to classify drag shows like a burlesque or strip club type situation where they have to be away from children,” Rose explained.

    Asked about Newsome’s situation, Rose called it “heartbreaking.”

    “I think it’s really heartbreaking, that there’s this wedge being formed between parents and schools,” she said. “And I just think it’s awful what’s happening, trying to classify parents as terrorists for standing up for how they want their kids to be raised or educated. Sometimes it’s not always an option to homeschool your kids.”

    Rose argued that the gender push on children was also bad for LGBT adults, saying “it creates an even bigger wedge between our community and people who don’t necessarily approve of us,” Rose said. “I respect their beliefs; I understand.

    “However, I really wish that more people could see that it’s time to put our differences aside for the children—Gays Against Groomers represents a part of the LGBT community that understands not everyone is going to accept us or wants to accept us. They have their religious beliefs, whatever it is. We respect that,” she said.

    Rose continued, “We don’t want kids to be raised in an environment where they’re heavily saturated with ‘queer ideology’ or ‘queer culture.’ And every parent deserves the right to know what’s going on with their children.”

    “We have people on the far left and people on the far right who don’t like us. We’re trying to find that middle ground—that’s really all we want to do,” she stated.

    “At the end of the day, it’s about the kids: it’s not about us, or our feelings or our identities even. It’s about making a safe environment for children.”

    Jan. 6 Rally

    Some of Newsome’s critics have in the past pointed out that he was present at the Jan. 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally.

    Newsome candidly admits that he attended the rally, but said he had no bad intentions and broke no laws that day.

    “I went to January 6, with my friend, a retired police officer,” Newsome said.

    According to Newsome, the FBI previously investigated his friend who attended the event, a retired Cook County police officer, and had cleared him of any wrongdoing.

    The officer, who asked that his name be excluded from the story, has been Newsome’s friend for decades.

    Asked whether he had observed Newsome committing any act that could be construed as a crime, he quickly said he had not, and that the two were together “100 percent of the time” in DC.

    Additionally, Newsome was undergoing immunotherapy for cancer at the time, leaving him in a weakened state.

    The day before, Newsome noted, “I had been on the IV for my cancer.”

    While, at the time, Newsome was undergoing immunotherapy rather than radiation treatments, he was nevertheless weakened by the treatments. He said at one point he felt so exhausted he had to lie down on the sidewalk for a few minutes before he could continue to the rally.

    Newsome and his friend said their only reason for attending the rally was to hear President Donald Trump speak and to ensure people were safe.

    “We went down there for two things, one to see our president speak. Two, because we’re both still big guys even though we’re older,” Newsome said. “We saw in November, December, families, parents overly attacked by Antifa [and] BLM in front of their hotels.”

    Newsome said he had left by the time order broke down at the rally. As proof, he provided time-stamped photos.

    Newsome’s companion backed up his story: “When the alleged insurrection happened we were already gone,” he said. “We were halfway to our hotel, which was approximately three quarters to a mile away. Halfway during the course of our walk, we saw a bunch of squad cars, lights and sirens on, going in the direction of the Capitol.”

    It was not until after the two men returned to their hotel that they learned about the Capitol breach, they said.

    Newsome’s photos and time stamps from that day show that he did not trespass on Capitol grounds and was gone before the breach ensued.

    Newsome said that he and his friend would not have attended the rally if they had known about the bad intentions some had that day.

    “It’s not a crime to have been in DC on Jan. 6, whatever the Nancy Pelosis and Liz Cheneys would like you to believe,” Ed Martin, a top attorney for Jan. 6 defendants, told the Epoch Times. “The American people are so disgusted by this stuff.”

    “If anyone that was there in Washington on Jan. 6 committed a crime in so doing, that’s a mockery of what America’s about. That’s not the standard and that’s not America.”

    Ambivalent Replies

    Newsome has gotten lukewarm or ambivalent replies, or none, from the federal agencies with which he has discussed the issue.

    Following his experience in December, Newsome sent a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request to the FBI, seeking more information about his newly discovered status as an alleged terror risk.

    The FBI refused to discuss details with Newsome.

    The FBI letter Newsome received in response to his request, says in part: “The U.S. Government can neither confirm nor deny whether a particular person is on any terrorist watch list. Maintaining the confidentiality of government watch lists is necessary to achieve the objectives of the U.S. Government, as well as to protect the privacy of individuals who may be on a watch list for a limited time and later removed. If the U.S. Government revealed who was listed on any government watch list, terrorists would be able to take actions to avoid detection by government authorities. Thus, the FBI neither confirms nor denies the existence of your subject’s name on any watch lists pursuant to FOIA exemption.”

    Because the federal government refuses to so much as acknowledge that Newsome has been placed on a list, it is unclear why Newsome’s name was flagged for enhanced screening.

    Newsome told the Epoch Times that he thinks the addition of his name to the list may be in response to his past political activities.

    In their response to an Epoch Times inquiry about Newsome, the FBI’s press office insisted that the agency does not open investigations solely on the grounds of protected First Amendment activity.

    “The FBI can never open an investigation based solely on protected First Amendment activity,” the agency wrote.

    Told about this reply, Martin immediately pointed out the key word in that reply: “solely.”

    “The wiggle word is ‘solely,’ so that means they have to say something else,” Martin explained. “So it’s not solely because you asked about the pornography, it’s because you got a speeding ticket when you were 18 that wasn’t resolved, or because you were in January 6.

    “So it’s not ‘solely’—[the FBI is saying they] would never do it solely on constitutionally-protected grounds,” Martin said, adding that the FBI had effectively named itself “the judge of what adds up to something dramatic.”

    The FBI reply continued: “We cannot and do not investigate ideology. We focus on individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security.”

    After hearing this reply, Martin made another observation of what he called a “wiggle” phrase: “intend to commit.”

    “[The FBI is] saying here that they’re gonna read minds, and they’re gonna tell us who is intending to commit a crime,” Martin said. “They didn’t say ‘a propensity for crime.’ At least with a ‘propensity’ you can look at some factors—if you have a previous conviction, if you have were arrested multiple times, and others—so with the word ‘propensity’ you can at least make an argument.

    “They’re gonna be the mind readers? They’re gonna read the minds of the American people? That’s insanity,” Martin ruled.

    The spokesperson expressly refused to answer questions relating to the process of placing someone on a watch list, including questions about oversight of the FBI’s ability to place Americans on flight watch lists.

    “It’s just stupid, ya know?” Newsome said of the reply. “Clearly I already know I’m on the list, that’s why I’m writing to you.”

    Additionally, Newsome also reached out to the TSA.

    In his query, Newsome requested information and tried to get back on the TSA pre-check list.

    In its reply, the TSA said he was no longer eligible for its pre-check list, but suggested that Newsome would no longer be subject to enhanced screening. Newsome thought after receiving the letter that he had been removed from the list before his most recent flight.

    “As a result of recurrent checks and based on a comprehensive background check, TSA was unable to determine that you pose a sufficiently low risk to transportation and national security to continue to be eligible for expedited airport security screening through the TSA Pre-[Check] Application Program,” the reply said. “As a result, TSA has determined that you are no longer eligible to participate in the TSA Pre-[Check] Application Program.

    “This eligibility determination for the TSA Pre-[Check] Application Program is within the sole discretion of TSA,” the letter added. “Although you have been found ineligible to continue your participation in the TSA Pre-[Check] Application Program, you will continue to be screened at airport security checkpoints according to TSA standard screening protocols.”

    Told about these replies, Martin sighed, “The bureaucrats will all say ‘It’s not me, it’s not me.’ At this point do we even know who has the oversight for this? Part of the problem with this government is now, when an official says ‘I’m not in charge of that,’ we can’t believe it.”

    Newsome has been in contact with other legal and political figures as well, and remains committed to clearing his name.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/07/2023 – 22:45

  • BofA CEO Says Wall Street Has "Some Work To Do" Before Embracing AI Chatbots
    BofA CEO Says Wall Street Has “Some Work To Do” Before Embracing AI Chatbots

    Recall last month, a slew of Wall Street banks blocked the use of OpenAI’s viral ChatGPT chatbot that generates text in response to a short prompt. Now Bank of America Corp. CEO Brian Moynihan has spoken out against the popular technology, saying Wall Street has “some work to do” before embracing AI chatbots. 

    During Moynihan’s virtual appearance at the AFR Business Summit in Sydney on Tuesday, he noted that ChatGPT is problematic due to its inaccuracy and deficiency in data-based responses, according to Bloomberg. He added the technology has to be “applied correctly.” 

    Moynihan’s comments are some of the first big bank CEOs to speak about using artificial intelligence in the office. 

    About two weeks ago, BofA executives told employees that ChatGPT is prohibited from business use. Internal meetings at the bank revealed the chatbot technology must be properly vetted before it can be used for business communications, and there were concerns about third-party software. 

    Besides BofA, Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Wells Fargo & Co were other big banks that banned ChatGPT last month. 

    Moynihan also said, referring to ChatGPT, “some third party providers can create a hole in your network… No enterprise is too big or too small not to worry about” cyber attacks.

    ChatGPT has become an internet sensation in recent months. Buzz about its future potential and efficiencies in the workplace should concern some workers as AI might take over their jobs this decade. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/07/2023 – 22:25

  • America Misses The Power Objective
    America Misses The Power Objective

    Authored by Francis Sempa via RealClear Wire,

    The ideology that drives U.S. policy in Ukraine is eroding our strategic position abroad.

    On February 20, President Biden made a “surprise” visit to Kyiv, where he announced another half-billion dollars in aid to Ukraine, and stated, “Kyiv stands, Ukraine stands, Democracy stands.” “Americans stand with you,” Biden told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “and the world stands with you.” Biden further remarked that U.S. support for Ukraine is “not just about freedom in Ukraine, it’s about freedom of democracy at large.”  

    What’s lacking in all of this rhetoric is a reasoned assessment of U.S. national interests in the outcome of the Ukraine War. Some supporters of increased U.S. involvement on Ukraine’s side claim that if we do not stop Putin in Ukraine, some NATO ally will be next—a revival of the “domino theory” and the “lessons of Munich” that contributed significantly to our increased involvement in the Vietnam War. The notion of Putin’s Russia, which has an economy the size of Italy’s and whose armed forces are having a difficult time holding on to two eastern provinces of Ukraine, sweeping across the European plain to the English channel is a fantasy.  

    Contrast eastern Europe with the western Pacific, where American interests are clearly geopolitical in nature. China has the second-largest economy in the world, a huge reserve of manpower, a strong and ever-growing military power at both the conventional and nuclear levels (including, according to the Pentagon, more ICBM missile silos than the U.S.), and a geopolitical program that seeks to unite huge portions of the Eurasian landmass against the United States. China’s economic and political influence extends across Central Asia and into Africa and the Middle East via the Belt and Road Initiative. Its naval power extends from the East and South China Seas, through the South Sea, and into the Indian Ocean, where it has developed ports called the “String of Pearls” that threaten to outflank southern India.

    One of America’s top Air Force Generals recently revealed in a leaked memo that China’s Central Military Commission under the leadership of President Xi held a “war council” last October related to Taiwan. And, China recently launched what is being called a “surveillance balloon” across America’s heartland, which U.S. fighters belatedly shot down off the coast of South Carolina after it had traversed the Aleutian Islands, parts of Alaska, Canada, and much of the continental United States. Naval War College Professor James Holmes called this a Chinese “trial balloon” designed to gauge U.S. reaction to this blatant invasion of its airspace. Senator Tom Cotton remarked that the balloon should have been shot down or captured once it was discovered over the Aleutians. American leaders, Holmes writes, need to recognize that China is at war with us all of the time. In the tradition of Sun Tzu and Mao Zedong, China views peacetime as nothing more than “war without bloodshed.”

    Most troubling of all is the strategic partnership between the two Eurasian giants, which is only gaining strength in response to the foreign policy of the Biden Administration. Therein lies America’s strategic dilemma of pursuing our interests or our values.

    The two motives of U.S. foreign policy—interests or values—sometimes coincide but often clash. Henry Kissinger, among others, has written about this foreign policy dilemma, most profoundly in his book Diplomacy. Kissinger says that given America’s peculiar domestic political evolution, a foreign policy that ignores one or the other of these motives will eventually lose the support of the American people and therefore become politically unsustainable.

    Historically when U.S. policymakers have been faced with the dilemma, they have chosen geopolitics over liberal values, even as they have cloaked that choice with value-laden rhetoric. Consider two examples. During the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson publicly promoted the idea of peace without annexations and national self-determination for all peoples, even as he secretly countenanced Great Britain and France carving-up territories in the Middle East. And, during the Second World War, President Franklin Roosevelt publicly promoted the Four Freedoms and a postwar world where peace would be enforced by the United Nations, even as he provided massive aid and military supplies to Stalin’s Soviet regime, the very antithesis of freedom and peace. In both examples, geopolitical interests trumped liberal values but the rhetoric of liberal values persisted.

    However, one looks in vain to find an American president from George Washington through Theodore Roosevelt who thought it necessary to couch geopolitical interests in the language of liberal values. The late Angelo Codevilla made this the principal theme of his last book America’s Rise and Fall Among Nations. Codevilla highlighted the foreign policy wisdom of George Washington and John Quincy Adams, statesmen who never confused geopolitical interests with liberal values, and who never thought it necessary to disguise hardheaded realism with soft-headed rhetoric.

    That notion changed in the early twentieth century, when the Progressive Movement introduced and promoted the idea that human nature was perfectible. There is no doubt that George Washington, John Quincy Adams and every other nineteenth century president would have ridiculed this idea as ahistorical and unempirical. When the idea of human perfectibility was translated into foreign policy, the ideology of “democratism” emerged, which held that Western values were universal and should be spread throughout the globe. 

    Democratism led to related ideas that human rights were universal and that American foreign policy should work to bring about an earthly Utopia. As Robert Nisbet noted in his masterful book The Present Age, “Ever since [Woodrow] Wilson, with only rarest exceptions, American foreign policy has been tuned not to national interests but to national morality.” This idea grew in strength after World War II and perhaps reached its apogee during the presidency of Jimmy Carter. Carter, at least initially, made human rights the centerpiece of his foreign policy, though he applied it more vigorously to America’s allies (the Shah in Iran, Somoza in Nicaragua) than her enemies (the Soviet Union, Cuba). But democratism’s most vigorous champion was President George W. Bush, who reacted to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, by launching a crusade for democracy in the Middle East and southwest Asia.

    Beyond launching failed wars based on values over interests, the Bush administration supported the further expansion of NATO towards Russia’s borders, including public support for the admission of Georgia and Ukraine to the Western alliance. Bush appeared to be oblivious to traditional notions of spheres of influence, and appeared to be equally oblivious to Russian history. Bush’s successors only compounded the problem by expanding NATO further. A comparison of maps of Europe in 1990 and 2022 reveals the geography of NATO expansion as viewed from Russia, showing, with the lone exception of Belarus, hostile and potentially hostile countries in an arc stretching from Scandinavia to the Balkans and Turkey.   

    The most strategically significant consequence of America’s unbounded democratism in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century has been to push Russia into the arms of China. The old Sino-Soviet bloc split in the 1960s due to internal rivalries. Richard Nixon’s diplomacy exploited and widened that split. Now, the bloc has effectively reformed—not based on ideology but on geopolitical rivalry with the United States. As Alexander Korolev points out in the feature article in The Diplomat, that Sino-Russian strategic partnership stems not only from the cordial relationship between Xi Jinping and Putin, but from long-term structural trends that have been building since the end of the Cold War. These trends are based on geopolitics, not values. Korolev write that America’s antagonism toward both China and Russia “further contributes to the consolidation of China-Russia alignment” because “[c]onfrontation with both China and Russia results in a convergence of the two countries’ views of the U.S. as their greatest security threat.” Washington’s hostile approach to both Eurasian great powers is a strategic error.

    The Biden administration has framed both the Ukraine War and China’s actions in the South China Sea as part of a broader ideological competition between democratic and autocratic powers. Somehow, the country that once sided with Josef Stalin to defeat Hitler, and sided with Mao Zedong to help bring down the Soviet empire, is loath to even consider ending or at least softening its hostility to Putin’s Russia in order to lessen China’s strategic threat. This is the triumph of democratism and liberal values over geopolitical interests.

    Unfortunately, we have been the author of our current strategic dilemma. We have suffered the fate of other great nations who, after achieving victories in great conflicts—in America’s case, the Cold War—approached the rest of the world with hubris and arrogance. During the previous three decades, our foreign policy has helped fuel China’s rise, pushed Russia closer to China, and overextended our commitments and resources in peripheral conflicts that did little or nothing to enhance our security. We have forgotten the wise counsel of perhaps America’s greatest geopolitical thinker Nicholas Spykman, who cautioned:

                 The statesman who conducts foreign policy can concern

                  himself with values of justice, fairness, and tolerance only

                  to the extent that they contribute to or do not interfere

                  with the power objective. They can be used instrumentally

                  as moral justification for the power quest, but they must be

                  discarded the moment their application brings weakness.

                  The search for power is not made for the achievement of

                  moral values; moral values are used to facilitate the

                  attainment of power.   

    America’s primary geopolitical interest should be to maintain the political pluralism of Eurasia, not foster a closer relationship between the two most powerful Eurasian countries.

    Francis P. Sempa writes on foreign policy and geopolitics. His Best Defense columns appear at the beginning of each month. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/07/2023 – 22:05

  • Why DeSantis Can't Announce A Presidential Run Yet
    Why DeSantis Can’t Announce A Presidential Run Yet

    Authored by Dan M. Berger via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    With the release of his book last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has begun his campaign for an office he hasn’t declared he’s seeking. It’s not officially a campaign. It’s called instead a book tour for “The Courage to be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival.”

    Florida Governor Ron DeSantis waves to the crowd after speaking about his new book “The Courage to Be Free” in the Air Force One Pavilion at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., on March 5, 2023. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

    DeSantis will make two book-tour stops this week in Iowa, important to presidential contenders with its early primary caucuses. He’s likely to stop by in New Hampshire, with its early primary, as well.

    DeSantis has other pieces of a campaign in place. He meets with and gets checks from big donors. Meanwhile, his campaign staff has stayed in place, paid by the Republican Party.

    Why hasn’t he declared for office? He’s said he’s first concerned with Florida’s legislative session, beginning March 7 and lasting until May 5.

    There’s another reason, though. Florida law now requires him to resign as governor—in a second term he took the oath of office for just two months ago—if he runs for another office.

    Florida lawmakers have gone back and forth on that law over the past two decades. They eased it for state or local officials considering a run for federal office in the late 2000s when then-Governor Charlie Crist sought the vice-presidential nomination in 2008.

    But they changed it back in 2018, under then-Governor Rick Scott, having decided that easing it had led to costly special elections. The resign-to-run law was intended to avoid those.

    If DeSantis resigned, Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez would succeed to the office.

    No bill has yet been introduced to ease the law once again. But behind the scenes, lawmakers in the Republican-controlled legislature quietly acknowledge that a plan for that is coming together.

    And both state House Speaker Paul Renner and Senate Majority Leader Kathleen Passidomo hinted after the November elections that they favor fixing the resign-to-run problem. Neither responded to emails from The Epoch Times asking for their current positions.

    Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez takes to the podium at the Republican National Convention in Washington, DC, on Aug. 25, 2020. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    Legislators have kept mum on the subject.

    The law, as written, is ambiguous, and any change might be billed as an effort to clarify it.

    Florida Statute 99.012 (4)(a) states: “Any officer who qualifies for federal public office must resign from the office he or she presently holds if the terms, or any part thereof, run concurrently with each other.” The law goes on to state that resignation is irrevocable.

    What needs to be clarified is when DeSantis would have to resign if the law isn’t changed. He’d have to submit his resignation “at least 10 days before the first day of qualifying for the office he or she intends to seek.”

    It would be effective no later than the earlier of two dates—the date he would become president if elected, or the date his successor as governor would be required to take office.

    That leaves wiggle room, a lot of it, political scientists say. For most offices, the qualifying deadline is a single deadline, says Susan MacManus, professor emeritus at the University of South Florida.

    Floridians running for governor, as DeSantis did last year, or for federal offices such as Senate or Congress, had to qualify by June 17, 2022. Someone with a conflict would have had to resign 10 days before that.

    But someone running for president first runs in a host of primaries in other states. MacManus agreed Florida’s law might not require DeSantis’s resignation until 10 days before he first qualifies for a primary.

    Aubrey Jewett of the University of Central Florida said DeSantis could push the deadline even further if he argues that seeking a party’s nomination is not the same as running for “office.”

    Under that scenario, Florida law wouldn’t require him to resign until he, assuming he won the Republican nomination, qualified for the November 2024 general election.

    “There’s some ambiguity, if the law doesn’t change, when Governor DeSantis would be required to file his resignation,” Jewett said. “It’s confusing.”

    Jon McGowan, a lawyer specializing in federal and state law, told The Associated Press the same thing. “There’s too much ambiguity.”

    The date of New Hampshire’s 2024 primary, traditionally and by state law the first in the nation, has yet to be established.

    The national Democratic Party wants to oust the state from that position and shake up its primary schedule to get states with more minorities in sooner.

    Still, New Hampshire is resisting, and the Republican party prefers the current status.

    That primary has historically been early in February.

    In 2020, it was held on Feb. 11, with a filing deadline on Nov. 15, 2019. So, assuming New Hampshire has the same qualifying period as in 2019, DeSantis would only have to resign 10 days before a date sometime in mid-November.

    Republican voices raised in opposition have all been from outside the legislature—and all supporters of DeSantis’s rival for the nomination, former President Donald Trump.

    Critics so far include former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Republican activist Laura Loomer, and former state Rep. Anthony Sabatini.

    Loomer has attacked DeSantis about it, most recently in a YouTube video she linked on her Twitter account on March 6.

    In it, she decried his effort to “abuse his authority,” says he “deceived Florida voters” by running for a second term he had no intention of finishing, and accused him of thinking himself “above the law.”

    She said the whole thing smacks of the “self-serving political corruption” associated with “third-world leaders, dictators, or authoritarian individuals.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/07/2023 – 21:25

  • JPMorgan, Goldman React To Powell's Hawkish Comments
    JPMorgan, Goldman React To Powell’s Hawkish Comments

    Powell’s remarks today led to the biggest jump in the dollar since November…

    … and a1.5% selloff in SPX, reversing almost of the gains from last Friday’s rally, and with eminis now back below 4000 all three CTA “threshold” levels are on the verge of being broken to the downside.

    The reason for the market spasm is that the terminal rate was repriced 16bp higher to 5.63% as Powell put 50bp back on table.

    As JPM’s chief economist Michael Feroli explains (in a delightfully titled note available to pro subs), the Fed chair did so by once again jeopardising the Fed’s credibility: “whereas the plan prior to that data round was to hike by 25bps until there was more evidence of disinflation, Chair Powell indicated today that they are prepared to throw out that playbook if the February data don’t reverse some of the January strength.”  In other words, yet another painful U-turn by a Fed which after ripping up the forward guidance book, is clearly even more clueless now what is going on.

    To JPM’s head of market intel, Andrew Tyler, Powell’s speech today indicates that the “Fed will heavily depend on near-term data for upcoming rates decisions. With January’s macro data mostly printing on the hawkish side, NFP Friday and CPI next Tuesday are the most critical catalysts for Fed’s decision between 25bp and 50bp. Keep in mind that the Fed will start its blackout period this Saturday so CPI will be released during the blackout period, so data itself will be more impactful in absence of guidance from Fedspeeches.” And also recall that last June, having set market expectations for a 50bps hike, the Fed was reduced to using its WSJ mouthpiece, Nick Timiraos, to alert the market 75bps was coming.

    Some more from Feroli’s full note:

    The strength of the January data seems to have spooked the Fed Chair. Whereas the plan prior to that data round was to hike by 25bps until there was more evidence of disinflation, Chair Powell indicated today that they are prepared to throw out that playbook if the February data don’t reverse some of the January strength: “If the totality of the data were to indicate that faster tightening is warranted, we would be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes.” The phrase “totality of the data” has in the past indicated that data dependency didn’t mean just one month’s data: in this context it apparently means two months’ data. Less surprising was the Chair’s previewing that the March dots are likely to move higher: “…the latest economic data have come in stronger than expected, which suggests that the ultimate level of interest rates is likely to be higher than previously anticipated.”

    At several points, Powell made note of monetary policy lags, such as, “In light of the cumulative tightening of monetary policy and the lags with which monetary policy affects economic activity and inflation, the Committee slowed the pace of interest rate increases over its past two meetings.” That reasoning, however, seems to have less sway now (hard to say how much that reflects the departure of Vice Chair Brainard).

    So, what does this mean for March and beyond? Prior to today, remarks from the centrists suggested 25bp was the base case, so that the data just needed to return to the trend prevailing prior to the January round to stick with that plan. Now that Powell has opened the door to 50bp, the bar now has likely changed such that the February data need to reverse some of the January strength to stay at 25bp. If the data push them to 50bp at the March meeting, what does that mean for the May meeting? Either they embrace the sort of hyper-data dependency that then-Governor Stein cautioned against ten years ago, or 50bp is the new incumbent, in which case they could be on a path to getting off three 50s just as the economy heads into the debt ceiling crisis in mid-summer. For now, we are sticking with 25bp for the March meeting, though that is now obviously much more contingent on what the next two weeks of data deliver.

    Bottom line: the Fed is looking to accelerate its tightening just as the US economy plaxicos itself, with a debt ceiling crisis on top.  Not for nothing Michael Hartnett said that the bear market will end with a credit event in the second half.

    And until we wait for the next collapse, here is an excerpt from JPM’s ultra bearish technician Jason Hunter (full note also available to pro subs) on how Powell’s comments could impact the market in the coming days:

    The S&P 500 Index slides to retest the key confluence of levels near 3900 after rejecting 4060-4089 tactical pattern resistance. We believe a break through the 3900 inflection can lead to accelerated selling pressure, as that area has acted as a bifurcation for the index from May 2022. It also currently aligns with several trend-following trigger levels for momentum-based strategies. We see the 3760-3764 area as an initial target for a breakdown.

    Our base-case forecast that looked for a 1H23 3500 Oct 2022 low retest to set the bottom for the cycle was in part leaning on the fact that the 5s/10s UST curve had already bottomed in Sep 2022. In the supply-constrained period of the 1970s when the sequence of inflation shocks dominated the macro environment, the equity market became positive correlated with the yield curve and bottomed within a 1–5-month period after the curve set the cycle lows. With the recent hawkish repricing pushing the curve through the Sep 2022 trough, that countdown needs to restart whenever the curve bottoms in the future. As such, we think the probability for a deeper S&P 500 Index slide to next support near 3200 and a bottom later within the first half of 2023 has increased.

    That takes care of JPMorgan, what about Goldman?

    In his market wrap analysis, Goldman trader John Flood writes that “Powell said the US central bank is prepared to increase the pace of hikes if data warrant, and sees the ultimate peak Fed rate likely to be higher than expected. In prepared testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, he said the process of getting inflation back to 2% “has a long way to go and is likely to be bumpy.”

    The bank’s strategist and economist Zach Pandl adds that “this adds more vol to Friday’s jobs data–on a huge print there
    is a possibility market rushes to price 50bp for next meeting.”

    And here is Goldman trader Michael Nocerino on today’s market reaction:

    Today’s commentary possibly opens the door for a 50bps hike at the next meeting. This morning the market was pricing in a 22% chance of 50bps hike…post the statement market is now pricing 63% chance.

    Yesterday felt like a build up into today and it disappointed for the bulls. Another round of hawkish commentary from Powell and hotter than expected Manheim data (wholesale used vehicle prices rose 4.3% in February (the largest for the month since 2009) spurred a largely risk off session. Off the back of the Powell commentary, rates spiked (especially on the front end, 2yr @ highest level since ’06, 2s10s most inverted since summer of ’80 ), markets rolled and investors are now bracing for the possibility of 50bps at the March meeting (higher for longer getting louder). Surprisingly, the response on the desk was muted (5 out of 10) and when taking a look at our PB the gross up in risk has been swift – investors willing to ride this out until we get more data? Asset Managers had a -19% sell skew which was highest since 2/20/23 and 92nd percentile vs previous 52 weeks. HFs had a -542bp sell skew highest since 2/16/23. All eyes are now on this Friday’s NFP, but a watchful eye remains on JOLTS where GS estimates 10,200k openings vs. 10,500 consensus.

    Putting it all together, Goldman chief economist Jan Hatzius added 25bps to his forecast:

    “Whether the FOMC hikes by 25bp or 50bp, we now expect that the median dot in the March Summary of Economic Projections will rise by 50bp to a peak of 5.5-5.75% in 2023. One reason for this is that even if FOMC participants decide on a 25bp hike in March but are split on the pace, they might compromise by engineering a 50bp increase in the peak funds rate shown in the dot plot. We have raised our own forecast of the peak fed funds rate by 25bp to 5.5-5.75% as well by adding a 25bp hike in July.”

    Much more in the full notes available to professional subs.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/07/2023 – 21:05

  • Republican Senators Request All Records Behind Intel Chief's COVID Origins Report
    Republican Senators Request All Records Behind Intel Chief’s COVID Origins Report

    Authored by Samantha Flom via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A group of Republican senators is calling on Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to turn over the materials that informed her office’s latest assessment on the origins of COVID-19.

    Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee on March 10, 2022 in Washington. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

    In a March 6 letter (pdf), the senators—led by Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Md.)—asked that Haines provide the “memoranda; emails; interim and final assessments provided by each IC [intelligence community]; and any other information” that her office considered in developing its assessment by March 20.

    Other senators who signed their names to the letter include Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.).

    “Congress should be able to review the independent evaluations without filters, ambiguity or interpretations of the intelligence,” the lawmakers wrote. “There is clear bipartisan support in Congress to make these assessments available immediately in full as evident by the unanimous March 1, 2023 Senate passage of the COVID-19 Origin Act to declassify information related to the origin of COVID-19.”

    Senate Vote

    The Senate voted last week to declassify all information on the origins of COVID-19 following the wide circulation of a Wall Street Journal report that the Department of Energy had concluded the pandemic likely originated from a laboratory leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China—a conclusion that the FBI has also reached.

    Security personnel outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province on Feb. 3, 2021. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

    Yet the White House asserted on Feb. 28 that there is “no consensus” in the U.S. government on the origins of the pandemic, echoing the inconclusive messaging of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s (ODNI) previous assessment (pdf).

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/07/2023 – 20:45

  • US Moves Border Agents To North Frontier As Mexicans Do An End Run
    US Moves Border Agents To North Frontier As Mexicans Do An End Run

    U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has dispatched 25 more agents to a sector of the Canadian border that’s seeing a large increase in Mexican migrants using the northern frontier to do an end run that bypasses the southern border.  

    Migrants crossing the Canadian border, as seen on Border Patrol camera images (CBP via NBC News)

    Some if not all of these agents are being temporarily reassigned from the Mexico border, NBC News reports, citing a source familiar with the resource shift. “The deployed team will serve as a force multiplier in the region and assist to deter and disrupt human smuggling activities,” a CPB spokesperson said. 

    An increasing number of illegal immigrants — mostly Mexicans — are buying one-way commercial plane tickets to Montreal or Toronto and then crossing the U.S. border. The odds of being rejected by agents on the northern frontier is lower than down south, reports NBC:

    “On a per capita basis, the Border Patrol invokes Title 42 to block migrants from claiming asylum less frequently at the northern border than at the southern border.”

    Illegal immigrants cross snowy terrain along the US-Canadian frontier (CBP via NBC News)

    The burst of activity is concentrated in the “Swanton Sector,” a Border Patrol division that encompasses Vermont and parts of New York and New Hampshire, including 203 miles of land border and 92 miles of aquatic border. Along that stretch, apprehensions of illegal immigrants soared 846% from Oct 2022 through January, compared to the same period a year earlier. 

    The absolute number of migrant encounters is still relatively modest — 367 migrants stopped in January — but the explosive upward trajectory is concerning. New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu this week asked state legislators to appropriate $1.4 million to bolster patrols along the Granite State’s own 58-mile stretch of border. 

    While the Mexican and American deserts are notoriously perilous, the northern border has its own dangers, especially during the winter. “Not only is it unlawful to circumvent legal means of entry into the United States, but it is extremely dangerous, particularly in adverse weather conditions, which our Swanton Sector has in abundance,” Swanton sector chief Robert Garcia said last month. 

    On Feb 3, as temperatures hit negative-four, Border agents encountered a family in Vermont that included a 2-year-old and an infant. 

    If Mexicans are willing to brave those winter conditions, imagine what the traffic will look like as we turn to spring…as if those invading Canadian super pigs weren’t enough to deal with. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/07/2023 – 20:25

  • Malekan: America Is Losing On Crypto
    Malekan: America Is Losing On Crypto

    Authored by Omid Malekan via Medium.com,

    I spent the weekend at the ETH Denver crypto developer conference and left feeling rejuvenated. Thousands of energetic young people, fueled by the desire to build something new and better, converging in one place to learn, code, debate and innovate. Attendance was twice last year’s event, and there was little talk of FTX, coin prices or regulatory challenges. As one friend put it, it was like all the negativity of last year never happened.

    Then I returned to an American regulatory crackdown best described as shambolic. Regulation of the crypto industry was always inevitable and in many ways desirable. Blockchain technology is uniquely capable of building trust in a digital setting, but the industry built on top of it has a lot of growing up to do. Sensible regulations can pave the way for growth and mass adoption.

    But that’s not what we are getting in the U.S. Here we have a hodgepodge of uncoordinated actions best described as a Pincer movement, forcing responsible companies into dangerous corners they can’t get out of. The goal, to the extent there is one, seems to be to either prevent the industry from growing or to drive it offshore. Here are a few examples:

    Banking

    For years, federal bank regulators have told the biggest American banks to keep away from crypto. This has forced the industry to rely on smaller state and regional banks for basic services. But concentration of any sector in a handful of small banks is always dangerous and risks runs, like the one that happened at Silvergate. Now those same regulators are telling small banks they need to limit their exposure to crypto as well.

    The result? Companies like exchanges and stablecoin issuers have no choice but to look offshore.

    Custody

    Most institutional investors are not allowed to custody their own assets and have been relying on fully-regulated state chartered institutions to store their coins. Now the SEC is saying those custodians may not be good enough, with the implication that registered investment advisors should look to bigger, federally regulated custodians.

    But those companies don’t want to offer crypto custody because another SEC guidance forces them to fully reserve against client assets, an unprecedented decision that makes crypto custody cost-prohibitive.

    The result? Institutions may need to go offshore for compliant custody.

    Stablecoins

    Stablecoins are arguably the killer app of crypto, offering a win-win where foreigners get access to digital dollars and the federal government gets a new source of demand for its debt. Oddly, American regulators keep trying to kill them.

    New York-based Paxos has been a pioneer in issuing fully regulated and generally trustworthy stablecoins. It is the only issuer that has a Trust charter and the first to publish transparent reserve reports down to the CUSIP. But now it is being investigated by both the New York Department of Financial Services and the SEC, forcing it to abandon BUSD, the 3rd largest dollar coin.

    Its loss has been Tether’s gain, and the unregulated offshore issuer is laughing all the way to the bank (it will make billions in profits this year but pay little American taxes). Meanwhile established payment providers like PayPal are being ordered to stay away from stablecoins.

    The result? American companies who want to offer innovative payment products can’t.

    Securities

    Governments in Europe, the Mid East and Asia have created classifications for different kinds of digital assets so they can regulate each smartly, taking into account unique features and risks. America keeps going in the opposite direction, applying a broad analogue brush to anything that lives on a blockchain. Here, we have no choice but to treat tokens needed to pay for cloud storage, U.S. dollars meant for payments and digital basketball cards the same as Apple stock. It’s absurd.

    The result? American projects have a harder time raising money, American developers have a harder time finding work, and American users are blocked from new products.

    ETFs

    Most developed countries have spot Bitcoin ETFs that give people direct exposure to the cryptocurrency via existing market infrastructure. America does not, despite repeated attempts by both crypto natives and veteran Wall Street firms to create one. What we do have are far more complex, inefficient ETFs tied to Bitcoin futures.

    The result? American ETF issuers lose out to foreign counterparts and American investors get inferior products.

    …

    The list goes on, but I’ll stop here. We can speculate on the motivations of the US regulatory apparatus, but that won’t change the outcome.

    Unless something changes, an ecosystem that began as an American phenomenon will succeed elsewhere, taking all of its jobs, tax revenues and influence with it.

    The U.S. has always been the envy of the world for both tech and finance. We seem content to lose the lead on both, unless Congress and the courts intervene.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/07/2023 – 20:05

  • "Shameful Case Of Weaponization": Musk Responds To FTC Demands For Journalist Info
    “Shameful Case Of Weaponization”: Musk Responds To FTC Demands For Journalist Info

    Update (2002ET): Elon Musk has responded to the Journal‘s report on the invasive FTC probe, as revealed by the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

    “A shameful case of weaponization of a government agency for political purposes and suppression of the truth!” Musk tweeted Tuesday evening.

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

    Musk called the Biden administration’s ‘casual violation of the First Amendment’ (as Jay Bhattacharya put it), calling it a “serious attack on the Constitution by a federal agency.”

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

    *  *  *

    The Federal Trade Commission has demanded that Twitter hand over internal communications related to owner Elon Musk, including detailed information about mass layoffs he instituted shortly after his purchase of the social media giant.

    And what did the FTC cite as justification? Concerns that staff reductions could compromise the company’s ability to protect users, the Wall Street Journal reports.

    In 12 letters sent to Twitter and its lawyers since Mr. Musk’s Oct. 27 takeover, the FTC also asked the company to “identify all journalists” granted access to company records and to provide information about the launch of the revamped Twitter Blue subscription service, the documents show.

    The FTC is also seeking to depose Mr. Musk in connection with the probe. -WSJ

    “We are concerned these staff reductions impact Twitter’s ability to protect consumers’ information,” wrote an FTC official in a Nov. 10 letter to Twitter attorneys, shortly after the company’s initial wave of layoffs.

    The demand letters were obtained by the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee which published limited excerpts in a Tuesday staff report concerning the ‘weaponization’ of federal agencies.

    As recently as January, the FTC felt that Twitter was engaging in a “troubling pattern of ongoing delay” which raised “serious concerns about its compliance.”

    In response to the Journal‘s questions, FTC spokesman Douglas Farrar said that “Protecting consumers’ privacy is exactly what the FTC is supposed to do,” adding that the agency is “conducting a rigorous investigation into Twitter’s compliance with a consent order that came into effect long before Mr. Musk purchased the company.”

    The FTC inquiries have raised concerns over whether the company can comply with a $150 million settlement related to allegations of privacy violations which predated Musk’s purchase of the company.

    According to the Judiciary Committee report, “There is no logical reason, for example, why the FTC needs to know the identities of journalists engaging with Twitter,” adding “There is no logical reason why the FTC, on the basis of user privacy, needs to analyze all of Twitter’s personnel decisions. And there is no logical reason why the FTC needs every single internal Twitter communication about Elon Musk.”

    According to a November statement from Musk to Twitter employees, the company will follow both the letter and the spirit of the 2022 FTC settlement. In December, he announced that the company’s headcount had been reduced from roughly 8,000 employees to 2,000.

    In letters ranging from Nov. 10 through Feb. 1, the FTC asked Twitter to quantify the number of layoffs and resignations, and requested an in-depth accounting of what new executives are responsible, and who would be overseeing privacy and security matters.

    One letter pressed for an explanation of the departure of Jim Baker, the former Justice Department official who until December was a senior Twitter lawyer with responsibilities for ensuring compliance with the FTC order.  

    The FTC also asked for all internal Twitter communications “related to Elon Musk,” or sent “at the direction of, or received by” Mr. Musk.

    Mr. Musk was scheduled to be deposed by the FTC on Feb. 3 but had a potential conflict related to court testimony in a securities lawsuit, according to a Jan. 24 FTC letter. The deposition hasn’t happened, said a person briefed on the matter. -WSJ

    On Dec. 13, the FTC asked Twitter for information regarding journalists Musk has granted access to view internal communications as part of the so-called “Twitter Files” disclosures. The agency asked Twitter to describe the “nature of access granted each person,” and explain how allowing access “is consistent with your privacy and information security obligations under the Order.” They also asked if Twitter conducted background checks on the journalists, as well as whether they could access the personal messages of Twitter users.

    Finally, as The Wall Street Journal points out, the Judiciary panel’s report accuses the FTC of overstepping its authority at the urging of progressive groups unhappy with Mr. Musk’s acquisition of the company.

    Given the depth of the demands above, it is hard not to see their point.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/07/2023 – 19:45

  • 'As Easy As Ordering Pizza': How Fentanyl-Laced Pills Are Killing America’s Youth
    ‘As Easy As Ordering Pizza’: How Fentanyl-Laced Pills Are Killing America’s Youth

    Authored by Katie Spence via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    On the morning of July 25, 2020, Matthew Thomas took what he believed was a Percocet, a prescription drug for pain relief. He died moments later, the victim of fentanyl poisoning.

    U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized approximately 47,000 rainbow-colored fentanyl pills, 186,000 blue fentanyl pills, and 6.5 pounds of meth hidden in a floor compartment of a vehicle at the Nogales port of entry on the southern border with Mexico on Sept. 3, 2022. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

    On Jan. 26, 2019, Austen Babcock took what he believed was cocaine. Unbeknownst to him, it was laced with fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid. He died shortly after, another victim of fentanyl poisoning.

    April Babcock, Austen’s mother, and Wendy Thomas, Matthew’s mother, have both become activists to raise awareness about illicit fentanyl. Babcock is the founder of Lost Voices of Fentanyl, a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness on illicit fentanyl, and Thomas is the founder of Mathew’s Voice.

    Both told The Epoch Times that obtaining illicit fentanyl is as easy as ordering a pizza.

    “I talk to all these moms [in Lost Voices of Fentanyl], and their kids go on social media and literally ordered drugs just like a pizza. It’s just like Uber Eats. Well, now it’s like Uber drugs,” Babcock said.

    “Some of these parents in the group literally saw the dealer on their Ring. They’d pull up into their driveway, and their kid would run out. I mean, these pills are cheap.”

    “We got fake Adderall pills on social media. Fake Xanax. Fake Percocet. I mean, all the pills are fake. These kids just don’t realize they’re literally buying death. They don’t know,” Babcock said.

    Fentanyl. 2 mg. A lethal dose in most people. The diameter of the U.S. penny is 19.05 mm, or 0.75 inches. (U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration)

    Thomas agreed and added that when she’s given presentations at schools, kids have told her they hear about Percocet and Xanax in music videos, and when they buy pills over social media, that’s what they think they’re getting.

    “But it’s not,” Thomas said.

    “They need to know that six in 10 pills are … potentially deadly,” she said, citing Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) data.

    Undercounted

    Families Against Fentanyl reports that in 2021, fentanyl poisoning was the leading cause of death among Americans aged 18 to 45.

    And, in 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that 4,765 children and young adults aged 14–23 died from synthetic opioids/fentanyl use—more than double the 1,984 deaths in 2018.

    Babcock believes the number of overdose deaths from fentanyl is significantly underreported.

    “There’s a family… that’s pretty definite their kid died from fentanyl because they found fentanyl at his house. But guess what? He was never tested!” Babcock told The Epoch Times. “[The death certificate] says he died from cocaine. No, he didn’t. He died from fentanyl.

    “So [that family] is trying to pass a bill in Maryland, so every hospital has to test for fentanyl. And, you know, I know there’s places that still don’t test for fentanyl, but I had no idea that was going on in my own state, and that’s criminal! Those stats are a very lowball number.

    “I hear it all the time, ‘They didn’t test for fentanyl.’ How are we ever going to get the right data? ” Babcock said.

    Babcock started Lost Voices of Fentanyl, a Facebook group, in 2020. The group now has over 24,000 members, and every day, Babcock said she hears from parents who’ve lost a child to fentanyl poisoning.

    “Why isn’t our government warning the public? They’re not warning them!” Babcock said. “I mean, I know certain states are doing it. Like I know, in my state, Maryland, I’ve seen two fentanyl commercials. And that’s great. That’s fine and dandy, but it’s not good enough. You know, teenagers don’t watch that anyway. We need a COVID-like response from our government for fentanyl.”

    Growing Misunderstood Problem

    In 2020, there were a reported 91,799 total drug-related deaths, according to the CDC. By 2021, that number had climbed to 106,719. In both years, approximately 82 percent of deaths involved at least one opioid, with fentanyl being the most common.

    “I started Mathew’s Voice because my son Matthew died of fentanyl poisoning in 2020, in July. He was 20 years old,” Thomas told The Epoch Times.

    “He took what was supposed to be Percocet, and it was fentanyl. And so, I decided to go ahead and focus on high schools. I’ve been to several high schools in North Carolina, and the biggest thing that surprises me is that most of them have not even heard of illicit fentanyl.

    “I thought maybe if Matthew had heard about it sooner…”

    Babcock concurred, “What I’m seeing is most of these people have no idea what fentanyl is. They’re getting their [deceased] kids’ toxicology reports back, and they had no warning to even warn their kids about fentanyl. Like they just didn’t know.”

    Thomas and Babcock are both quick to point out that what they’re talking about isn’t the pharmaceutical fentanyl prescribed to treat severe pain—often post-surgery and for advanced-stage cancer. Instead, they’re talking about illicit fentanyl found in counterfeit pills.

    In 2022, the DEA issued a public safety alert, warning that six out of 10 fake prescription pills contained “a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/07/2023 – 19:25

  • "Extremely Mixed Messages": Morgan Stanley Ponders Resilient Auto Market Despite Restrictive Conditions
    “Extremely Mixed Messages”: Morgan Stanley Ponders Resilient Auto Market Despite Restrictive Conditions

    The latest note from Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas does anything to instill confidence in an auto industry that, as we have been noting, has been part and parcel to a tidal wave of rising consumer debt. 

    The note, released Tuesday morning, notes that “auto loan delinquencies have moved through pre-COVID and GFC highs, yet US auto demand remains extremely resilient on an adjusted basis”.

    First, the note says that unit sales have been depressed, with Jonas writing: “US light vehicle sales are materially off their pre-COVID highs. Trailing 3-month US SAAR as of Feb 2023stands at 15.0mn units, which is 11% below Feb 2020 3-month trailing average of 17.1mn units, and improvement from Feb 2022 where 3-month trailing average of SAAR was 17% below Feb 2020 levels.”

    But the “mixed messages” come in when one looks at pricing, Jonas says. “Recent conversations with dealers have suggested demand for new and used vehicles remains strong despite rising interest rates, deteriorating credit metrics and a pull-back in financial institution willingness to lend,” he writes. 

    The U.S. value of SAAR is at an all-time high despite the restrictive monetary conditions. “On a value-of-SAAR basis, the US auto consumer is currently purchasing new vehicles at an all time record high rate. A feat even more impressive given the movement in average interest rates.”

    Jonas asks how much longer consumers can handle the sky-high prices for vehicles, and notes that while auto pricing remains firm, housing is falling. Generally, we’d expect autos to fall first, as one Zero Hedge contributor wrote this week, but that isn’t the case so far.

    Jonas writes: “Initially lower housing starts was offset by median prices that climbed through Nov 2022, but since the pricing peak, median home prices have fallen 14% through January, resulting in the value of housing being down 21% through January from its peak. This differs from autos where continued increases in pricing have completely offset the decline in unit sales.”

    “We are the first to admit we would have thought there would have been more weakness at these levels for this long, but at least some significant portion of the auto consumer is showing to be more resilient than we would have thought.”

    Despite the fact that Jonas sees mixed messages, it still remains relatively clear to us that a cool-off of major proportions for the auto industry is likely on its way. First, remember that, as we noted months ago, current purchases could be coming at a cost: one industry CEO said that taking on a second vehicle financing while defaulting on the first was becoming commonplace in the industry. 

    And as we noted two weeks ago, total household debt in the fourth quarter of 2022 rose by 2.4% or $394 billion, the largest nominal quarterly increase in twenty years, to a record $16.90 trillion. Among that debt, auto loan balances increased by $28 billion in the fourth quarter, consistent with the upward trajectory seen since 2011.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/07/2023 – 19:05

  • 'Hawkish' Powell Pummels Stocks, Oil, & Gold; Yield-Curve Collapses As Terminal-Rate Soars
    ‘Hawkish’ Powell Pummels Stocks, Oil, & Gold; Yield-Curve Collapses As Terminal-Rate Soars

    A more hawkish than expected Jay Powell sparked chaos across markets that had desperately hoped for some dovish bones. Although Powell really didn’t say anything new at all, the reaction was visceral as hopes for a pause any time soon were destroyed with the market’s expectation for The Fed’s terminal rate soaring up to 5.65% (up a stunning 300bps from July 2022 expectations)… For context, the market is pricing an additional 105bps of tightening in Fed Funds before this is over…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Goldman now expects that the median dot will rise by 50bp at the March meeting to show a peak rate of 5.5-5.75% in 2023; and has raised their own forecast of the peak rate by 25bp to 5.5-5.75% as well.

    Source: Bloomberg

    Additionally, the market has now priced in 75bps of hikes by May…

    Source: Bloomberg

    With March odds now above 60% of a 50bps hike…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Stocks tanked on Powell’s prepared remarks, extended losses, but as soon as he stopped talking at the hearing, stocks bounced higher but that didn’t hold. The Dow was the biggest loser, followed by the S&P 500. Small Caps very modestly outperformed Nasdaq but everything was red…

    Dow broke below its 100DMA…

    S&P tested down to its 50DMA…

    The machines battled hard to get the S&P back above its 50DMA for the close… but failed…

    0DTE Call-buying surged right after the initial knee-jerk lower reaction to Powell’s hawkish prepared remarks. Stocks drifted down to their 50DMA and then some 0DTE call-buying (and put-selling) stepped in.

    HIRO Indicator | SpotGamma™

    Treasuries were mixed on the day with the long-end outperforming (and lower in yield) as the short-end blasted higher (2Y +13bps, 30Y -2bps)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    10Y yield hit 4.00% and reversed…

    Source: Bloomberg

    2Y yield surged all day, topping 5.00% for the first time since June 2007…

    Source: Bloomberg

    2s10s broke below -100bps for the first time since Sept 1981 (-103bps today)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    As a reminder, the 2s10s curve was over +150 two years ago (March 2021)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The 2s30s curve extended its collapse too, down to -113bps (a record inversion)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Powell’s strong anti-inflation stance did have some ‘positive’ effects, reducing the market’s short-term (1Y) inflation expectations (having hit the cycle highs yesterday)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Bond market volatility has soared in recent days while equity market volatility has fallen… until today…

    Source: Bloomberg

    DXY Dollar Index rallied hard, breaking above its 100DMA…

    Source: Bloomberg

    China’s offshore yuan tumbled back above 6.99/USD to its weakest level of the year…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Bitcoin was battered back down below $22,000… bounced… then was told to stay down one more time…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Crude prices crashed almost 4% with WTI back to a $77 handle – its biggest daily drop in two months…

    WTI broke back below its 100DMA and 50DMA today…

    Gold was clubbed like a baby seal today, suffering some issues overnight on Perth Mint headlines, a stronger dollar, and then Powell’s hawkishness…

    Finally, to put the last month in context, the market’s expectations for The Fed’s terminal rate has shifted from June 2023 at 4.895% to Oct 2023 at 5.63%. Additionally, expectations for rates at 2023 year-end are up over 105bps to 5.535%…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The market is still expecting a Fed pivot however, but not until 2024… and very gently – quite a shift from the pivot and puke expectation just a month ago – before a big payrolls print.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/07/2023 – 18:55

  • DeSantis Denounces Florida Legislator's Blogger Registry Proposal
    DeSantis Denounces Florida Legislator’s Blogger Registry Proposal

    Update (1845ET): During his “State of the State” news conference Tuesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis denounced state Sen. Jason Brodeur’s bill, which would require bloggers to register with the state.

    As the New York Post reports, DeSantis distanced himself from his fellow Republican’s proposal, saying it was “not anything I’ve ever supported,” while adding that “I don’t control every single bill that has been filed.”

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

    As The Daily Caller reports, DeSantis isn’t the first prominent GOP figure to condemn the blogger registration bill. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich took to his personal Twitter account to disavow the bill, going a step further than DeSantis by admonishing Brodeur.

    “It is an embarrassment that it is a Republican state legislator in Florida who introduced a bill to that effect. He should withdraw it immediately,” Gingrich wrote.

    *  *  *

    As Jonathan Turley detailed earlier, there is a deeply disturbing legislative proposal in Florida where Sen. Jason Brodeur of Lake Mary has called for bloggers to register with the state if they want to write about the state’s governor, lieutenant governor, cabinet members or legislative officials.

    It is a highly intrusive, dangerous, and presumptively unconstitutional effort. Yet, it is also important to note that this is just a proposal from a single legislator with little real chance of passage. What I find interesting is the historical underpinnings of such a law. The comparison is not favorable for Sen. Brodeur.

    The bill would require bloggers to file periodic reports with the state if they are paid for posts about the state’s governor, lieutenant governor, cabinet members or legislative officials. They could be fined $25 for each day the report is late, up to a maximum of $2,500 for each report. The legislation would exempt content on “the website of a newspaper or other similar publication.”

    It is a vague and unnecessary law. In a Twitter post, Brodeur explained that he simply wants to bring greater transparency to blogs that advocate or lobby for specific causes. He notes that it is directed at those who are paid to write about elected officials in Florida.

    In fairness to Sen. Brodeur, there are requirements for media to obtain press credentials to get full access to press areas in the federal or state capitals. However, the requirements are minimal and press can always cover events without such credentials by using public access.

    Moreover, bloggers cover a wide range of speech and speakers. Blogs are part of the new media with a wide array of people covering or opining on contemporary events. It can range from the popular “citizen journalist” to minor “influencers” to satirical writers. Many blogs are now quite large and rival traditional newspapers or media outlets. They are a new and critical component in our free speech community.  Many look to blogs as an alternative to what they see as a biased mainstream media.

    I understand Brodeur’s motivation and his concern for bloggers who hide paid agendas or serve as surrogates for others. However, this is a really bad idea and it is not a new idea.

    At the creation of our Republic, free press advocates like Thomas Paine were focused on state licensing laws that were abused in England by the Crown to control the media.

    The licensing laws became a rallying cause in 1644 for many after John Milton wrote his famous pamphlet Areopagitica. Milton objected to the requirement of prior licensing of writers with the Crown, objecting that “debtors and delinquents may walk abroad without a keeper, but unoffensive books must not stir forth without a visible jailer in their title.” The licensing law ended in 1694. It was a defining moment of press freedom in fighting the need to secure permission to publish. Figures like Thomas Paine wrote against prior restraints and licensing systems as the core threats to free speech and the free press.

    The Florida proposal would return us to mandatory licensing or registry as a prerequisite for free speech or the free press. I have no reason to assume that Sen. Brodeur has nefarious or authoritarian motives in this ill-conceived effort. However, he is on the wrong side of history in proposing a registry and should withdraw his bill.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/07/2023 – 18:48

  • GOP To Use "Power Of The Purse" Against FBI: Rep. Jim Jordan
    GOP To Use “Power Of The Purse” Against FBI: Rep. Jim Jordan

    Authored by Gary Bai via The Epoch Times,

    House Republicans will use its spending power to restrict funding to the FBI, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), head of the lower chamber’s Judiciary Committee and its weaponization subcommittee, said on Sunday.

    Jordan said on Fox New’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that Republicans in the lower chamber will use its “power of the purse,” or spending power designated to it by the Constitution, to restrict federal funding sent to the FBI, as the weaponization subcommittee progresses further in investigations into FBI conduct.

    “We’re going to look to propose legislation, and in the end, the real power of Congress, the real power of the legislative branch, is the power of the purse,” Jordan told host Maria Bartiromo.

    “And we’re going to have to use that both on this issue where we think the government’s been targeting the very people it’s supposed to serve. But also, frankly, on the border—I think we’re going to have to look at ways to use the appropriation process to deal with the border situation.”

    ‘Egregious Behavior’

    Driving the Republican lawmaker’s proposed move is a long list of what Jordan describes as “egregious behavior” by the FBI.

    A recent example was revealed when FBI Special Agent Garret O’Boyle told lawmakers that the FBI created “threat tags” to target pro-life protesters, the lawmaker said, citing Boyle’s interview with Fox published on March 2, 2023. Before using the tags to track pro-lifers, the FBI used the threat tags to track potential threats to the Supreme Court following the court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022, Boyle told Fox.

    “A tag is merely a statistical tool to track information for review and reporting,” the FBI said in a statement to Fox.

    “The creation of a threat tag in no way changes the long-standing requirements for opening an investigation, nor does it represent a shift in how the FBI prioritizes threats.”

    A seal reading “Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation” is displayed on the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building in Washington on Aug. 9, 2022. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

    Other allegations Jordan touched on in the Sunday interview include the FBI’s involvement in alleged political censorship on social media, the agency’s lack of transparency with intelligence on COVID-19 origins, alleged targeting of parents protesting at school boards and traditional Catholics, and suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, which Jordan characterized as election interference.

    As a response to these allegations, the Judiciary Committee is laying the groundwork and collecting relevant information before eventually approaching the compulsory subpoena process targeting the FBI, the lawmaker said. He added that the legislative branch could prohibit the FBI from using federal funding for certain purposes.

    “[We can] say, this funding can’t be used for X, this funding can’t be used for Y, or limit the funding overall,” Jordan said. “Those are things you have to do, or you don’t have the leverage to change, again, this egregious behavior we’re seeing from these agents.”

    FBI Whistleblowers

    Jordan said the committee has spoken to three FBI whistleblowers who are willing to go public with their interviews and a couple of dozen others who choose to remain anonymous.

    Currently, the Judiciary Committee is seeking to speak with 16 FBI employees for “transcribed interviews,” to inform potential legislative reforms to the FBI’s operations and activities, according to a March 3 letter Jordan sent to FBI Director Christopher Wray. The letter was first reported by Breitbart News.

    The Epoch Times has contacted Jordan’s office for comment.

    The J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building in Washington on July 21, 2022. (Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times)

    Agency Response

    In response to a press inquiry from The Epoch Times on Jordan’s claims, a spokesperson from the FBI said the agency does not “conduct investigations based on a person’s views.”

    “The men and women of the FBI devote themselves to protecting the American people from terrorism, violent crime, cyber threats, and other dangers,” the FBI spokesperson said.

    “We focus on violence, threats of violence, and other illegal activity regardless of the underlying motivation or what side of an issue a person is on. We do not conduct investigations based on a person’s views. While outside opinions and criticism often come with the job, we will continue to follow the facts wherever they lead, do things by the book, and speak through our work,” the spokesperson added.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/07/2023 – 18:45

  • Schumer Demands Murdoch Pull Fox's Tucker Carlson Off-Air "Because Our Democracy Depends On It"
    Schumer Demands Murdoch Pull Fox’s Tucker Carlson Off-Air “Because Our Democracy Depends On It”

    ‘…thou doth protest too much, methinks’ is about the most perfect summary of the spectacle that erupted today after Fox News’ Tucker Carlson exposed some realities (and all the falsities) of the events of January 6th.

    From Mitch McConnell to Mitt Romney, and every RINO and uniparty member in between, Carlson was pilloried using the standard ‘conspiracy theory’ narrative – though oddly, not one those that spoke out actually refuted any of the never-before-seen footage.

    And yet, the so-called ‘mainstream media’ – which ate up every second of the January 6th Committee’s endless charade, fell silent:

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

    But one man stood above it all and demanded this horrific show of free speech be brought to an end – enter Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer stage left…

    “I don’t think I’ve ever seen an actor treat the American people and American democracy with such disdain,” Schumer said.

    “And he’s going to come back tonight with another segment. Fox News should tell him not to.”

    Then with trembling voice, Schumer set forth his demands…

    “These lies continue tonight, Rupert Murdoch, who has admitted they were lies and said he regretted it, has a special obligation to stop Tucker Carlson from going on tonight, now that he’s seen how he has perverted and slimed the truth, and from letting him go on again and again and again,” Schumer said.

    “Not because their views deserve such opprobrium, but because our democracy depends on it.”

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

    Enjoy his full performance below…

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

    Schumer concluded by claiming that Carlson manipulated his audience by cherry-picking sequences.

    To that we simply say – Pot meet Kettle, Chuck, old boy.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 03/07/2023 – 18:28

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  • Escobar: The Valdai Meeting – Where West Asia Meets Multipolarity
    Escobar: The Valdai Meeting – Where West Asia Meets Multipolarity

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

    At Russia’s Valdai Club meeting – the east’s answer to Davos – intellectuals and influencers gathered to frame West Asia’s current and future developments…

    The 12th “Middle East Conference” at the Valdai Club in Moscow offered a more than welcome cornucopia of views on interconnected troubles and tribulations affecting the region.

    But first, an important word on terminology – as only one of Valdai’s guests took the trouble to stress. This is not the “Middle East” – a reductionist, Orientalist notion devised by old colonials: at The Cradle we emphasize the region must be correctly described as West Asia.

    Some of the region’s trials and tribulations have been mapped by the official Valdai report, The Middle East and The Future of Polycentric World.  But the intellectual and political clout of those in attendance can provide valuable anecdotal insights too. Here are a few of the major strands participants highlighted on regional developments, current and future:

    Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov set the stage by stressing that Kremlin policy encourages the formation of an “inclusive regional security system.” That’s exactly what the Americans refused to discuss with the Russians in December 2021, then applied to Europe and the post-Soviet space. The result was a proxy war.

    Kayhan Barzegar of Islamic Azad University in Iran qualified the two major strategic developments affecting West Asia: a possible US retreat and a message to regional allies: “You cannot count on our security guarantees.”

    Every vector – from rivalry in the South Caucasus to the Israeli normalization with the Persian Gulf – is subordinated to this logic, notes Barzegar, with quite a few Arab actors finally understanding that there now exists a margin of maneuver to choose between the western or the non-western bloc.

    Barzegar does not identify Iran-Russia ties as a strategic alliance, but rather a geopolitical, economic bloc based on technology and regional supply chains – a “new algorithm in politics” – ranging from weapons deals to nuclear and energy cooperation, driven by Moscow’s revived southern and eastward orientations. And as far as Iran-western relations go, Barzegar still believes the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Iran nuclear deal, is not dead. A least not yet.

    ‘Nobody knows what these rules are’

    Egyptian Ramzy Ramzy, until 2019 the UN Deputy Special Envoy for Syria, considers the reactivation of relations between Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE with Syria as the most important realignment underway in the region. Not to mention prospects for a Damascus-Ankara reconciliation. “Why is this happening? Because of the regional security system’s dissatisfaction with the present,” Ramzy explains.

    Yet even if the US may be drifting away, “neither Russia nor China are willing to take up a leadership role,” he says. At the same time, Syria “cannot be allowed to fall prey to outside interventions. The earthquake at least accelerated these rapprochements.”

    Bouthaina Shaaban, a special advisor to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, is a remarkable woman, fiery and candid. Her presence at Valdai was nothing short of electric. She stressed how “since the US war in Vietnam, we lost what we witnessed as free media. The free press has died.” At the same time “the colonial west changed its methods,” subcontracting wars and relying on local fifth columnists.

    Shaaban volunteered the best short definition anywhere of the “rules-based international order”: “Nobody knows what these rules are, and what this order is.”

    She re-emphasized that in this post-globalization period that is ushering in regional blocs, the usual western meddlers prefer to use non-state actors – as in Syria and Iran – “mandating locals to do what the US would like to do.”

    A crucial example is the US al-Tanf military base that occupies sovereign Syrian territory on two critical borders. Shaaban calls the establishment of this base as “strategic, for the US to prevent regional cooperation, at the Iraq, Jordan, and Syria crossroads.” Washington knows full well what it is doing: unhampered trade and transportation at the Syria-Iraq border is a major lifeline for the Syrian economy.

    Reminding everyone once again that “all political issues are connected to Palestine,” Shaaban also offered a healthy dose of gloomy realism: “The eastern bloc has not been able to match the western narrative.”

    A ‘double-layered proxy war’

    Cagri Erhan, rector of Altinbas University in Turkey, offered a quite handy definition of a Hegemon: the one who controls the lingua franca, the currency, the legal setting, and the trade routes.

    Erhan qualifies the current western hegemonic state of play as “double-layered proxy war” against, of course, Russia and China. The Russians have been defined by the US as an “open enemy” – a major threat. And when it comes to West Asia, proxy war still rules: “So the US is not retreating,” says Erhan. Washington will always consider using the area “strategically against emerging powers.”

    Then what about the foreign policy priorities of key West Asian and North African actors?

    Algerian political journalist Akram Kharief, editor of the online MenaDefense, insists Russia should get closer to Algeria, “which is still in the French sphere of influence,” and be wary of how the Americans are trying to portray Moscow as “a new imperial threat to Africa.”

    Professor Hasan Unal of Maltepe University in Turkiye made it quite clear how Ankara finally “got rid of its Middle East [West Asian] entanglements,” when it was previously “turning against everybody.”

    Mid-sized powers such as Turkiye, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are now stepping to the forefront of the region’s political stage. Unal notes how “Turkiye and the US don’t see eye to eye on any issue important to Ankara.” Which certainly explains the strengthening of Turkish-Russian ties – and their mutual interest in introducing “multi-faceted solutions” to the region’s problems.

    For one, Russia is actively mediating Turkiye-Syria rapprochement. Unal confirmed that the Syrian and Turkish foreign ministers will soon meet in person – in Moscow – which will represent the highest-ranking direct engagement between the two nations since the onset of the Syrian war. And that will pave the way for a tripartite summit between Assad, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

    Note that the big regional reconciliations are being held – once again – either in, or with the participation of Moscow, which can rightfully be described as the capital of the 21st century multipolar world.

    When it comes to Cyprus, Unal notes how “Russia would not be interested in a unified state that would be EU and NATO territory.” So it’s time for “creative ideas: as Turkey is changing its Syria policy, Russia should change its Cyprus policy.”

    Dr. Gong Jiong, from the Israeli campus of China’s University of International Business and Economics, came up with a catchy neologism: the “coalition of the unwilling” – describing how “almost the whole Global South is not supporting sanctions on Russia,” and certainly none of the players in West Asia.

    Gong noted that as much as China-Russia trade is rising fast – partly as a direct consequence of western sanctions – the Americans would have to think twice about China-hit sanctions. Russia-China trade stands at $200 billion a year, after all, while US-China trade is a whopping $700 billion per annum.

    The pressure on the “neutrality camp” won’t relent anyway. What is needed by the world’s “silent majority,” as Gong defines it, is “an alliance.” He describes the 12-point Chinese peace plan for Ukraine as “a set of principles” – Beijing’s base for serious negotiations: “This is the first step.”

    There will be no new Yalta

    What the Valdai debates made crystal clear, once again, is how Russia is the only actor capable of approaching every player across West Asia, and be listened to carefully and respectfully.

    It was left to Anwar Abdul-Hadi, director of the political department of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the latter’s official envoy to Damascus, to arguably sum up what led to the current global geopolitical predicament: “A new Yalta or a new world war? They [the west] chose war.”

    And still, as new geopolitical and geoeconomic fault lines keep emerging, it is as though West Asia is anticipating something “big” coming ahead. That feeling was palpable in the air at Valdai.

    To paraphrase Yeats, and updating him to the young, turbulent 21st century, “what rough beast, its hour come out at last, slouches towards the cradle [of civilization] to be born?

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/06/2023 – 23:40

  • Is The Greater Idaho Movement A Model For National Divorce From The Political Left?
    Is The Greater Idaho Movement A Model For National Divorce From The Political Left?

    They said it was an absurd waste of time, but now, the progressive coastal regions of Oregon and Democrats in Idaho are getting a little worried about the “Greater Idaho Movement,” with at least 11 eastern Oregon counties officially voting to leave the state and join their more conservative neighbors in Idaho.  Democrats were saying that the move was impossible, but with momentum growing they are now suggesting that the break-up is “bad for the country.” 

    Why is it bad for the country if a handful of conservative counties decide to freely walk away from the state of Oregon and join with Idaho?  Leftists do not explain the assertion, but one can deduce from their behavior a number of probable conclusions.   

    Common arguments Democrats in Oregon and Idaho make against the move are usually an attempt to dissuade Idaho citizens from wanting to pursue secession measures.  The core claim is that the state of Idaho would have to subsidize the new counties, with Dems suggesting that rural areas are a drain on high revenue centers like Portland.

    This stems from the leftist argument that red counties and states “cannot survive” economically when detached from blue regions. 

    It’s simply not true.

    Firstly, if rural counties are a financial sinkhole for progressive states, then why are they so opposed to rural counties leaving?  Would this not enrich blue counties beyond belief?  While at least one study shows that Idaho would incur expenses such as Medicaid costs, it also shows that the state actually stands to gain an extra $170 million in net revenue with the new counties in place, along with an even greater conservative majority population, all without people being forced to relocate. 

    Secondly, if we are talking about economic usefulness, it’s important to remember that the majority of people that grow food, produce goods, repair goods and keep the supply chain running are conservative leaning.  Leftists produce very little other than complaints and misery.

    The big question Democrats are not asking is why so many Oregon counties want to leave the state at all?  They don’t ask because they don’t care.  Diplomacy and reconciliation with the conservative population has never crossed their minds.  Only now with the secession movement gaining traction are they suddenly interested.

    Let’s use the mega-leftist sanctum of Portland as an example of why conservative regions want to break away from progressive controlled regions:

    In 2021 alone, Portland witnessed a 38% spike in violent crime including homicides and rapes.  Property crime rose by 17%.  The city also set an all time record for number of homicides in 2021.  In 2022, the city breezed past the homicide record once again.  Portland was once listed among the safest cities in America – Not anymore.

    Crime rates skyrocketed almost immediately after Portland embraced the far-left BLM and Antifa calls to “defund the police.”  The city had to reverse course on this stance 18 months later as the program proved to be a dismal failure. 

    On the indoctrination end of things, the Oregon Board of Education has advised schools to “keep student gender identities hidden from families.”  This is on top of the already expansive agenda to inject gender identity politics into classrooms in Oregon.  So, what they are saying essentially is that “we are going to brainwash your children with woke ideology, and we are going to lie to you about our curriculum to keep you in the dark.”

    Public school policies in Oregon revolve around dictates drafted in progressive controlled counties.  Rural counties can fight back by putting pressure on their local school boards, but it will be a constant battle with losing prospects unless they break from leftist influence completely.

    Another big factor in making conservatives want to leave Oregon was the recent draconian covid lockdowns and mandates enforced by the Democrat controlled state government.  Many conservative county officials fought back against these mandates while enduring threats of legal retribution and even arrest.  The leftists revealed their true authoritarian natures during the pandemic event and a number of people ranging from conservative to independent suddenly realized how bad the situation can really get if they remain under the governmental oversight of Democrats.  

    It makes perfect sense for red counties to want to break away from blue states after the kinds of chaos leftists have created within our nation in the past few years alone.  When Dems say this would be “bad for the country” what they really mean is that it will be bad for them.  The Greater Idaho Movement may have a very slim chance of success in the long run, but it puts the issue of national divorce front and center in the public consciousness, and they don’t like that.

    Democrat representatives like Ned Burns in Idaho asserts that the political system works best “When there’s a balance of different viewpoints,” arguing that efforts “to build a one-party state lead to extremism and that can be very dangerous.”

    Idaho Democrat Senate Minority Leader Melissa Wintrow echoed this sentiment:  

    “While there are vast political differences in our region, Greater Idaho is not the proper remedy for those differences,” said Wintrow. “Our democratic republic depends on level heads coming together to find solutions to the issues that impact our citizens. Dividing state borders to create enclaves of politically like-minded people is the opposite of a healthy America.”  

    But we already have extremist regions of the country in the form of blue states, we saw that clear as day during the covid mandates.  Not only that, cooperation within the status quo only seems to be the Democrat rally cry when progressives are in power. Only five years ago leftists in states like California widely called for secession from the US over the election of Donald Trump.  Today, they rail against a few counties seceding, not from the country, but merely from Oregon.

    The political left views everything through the lens of collectivism.  They see people as property of their model of society, which they consider the only model for society.  If Americans are allowed to walk away, then this might reflect badly on progressive society as a whole.  If people are allowed to build their own systems elsewhere they might prove that the leftist system is frail, oppressive and unstable.  If people have the ability to choose and take their county and their land with them, why would they stay under the governance of a leftist dominated place?

    The ability to walk away would completely destroy the leftist socialist dynamic.  They can only survive if they are able to force people to participate in their model while requiring those same prisoners to adopt woke beliefs.  They see conservative congregation and secession as a threat to their aims to absorb the entire nation; not just half of US states, but all of America. The rest of the US would do well to take the Greater Idaho Movement seriously as it represents a feeling that is growing across the country – We are at an impasse. 

    There are two completely separate cultures in America today and they cannot coexist.   

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/06/2023 – 23:20

  • Top Military Enlisted Say Housing And Pay Issues Hurt Recruitment, Retention
    Top Military Enlisted Say Housing And Pay Issues Hurt Recruitment, Retention

    Authored by Michael Clements via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The military’s top enlisted members say poor housing, health care, childcare, and pay problems are deleterious to recruiting and retention.

    Homes that were constructed by Balfour Beatty are seen in a neighborhood at Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., on May 1, 2019. (Nick Oxford/Reuters)

    Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) claimed that a plan promoted by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to freeze discretionary spending at FY 2022 levels would only make things worse.

    “We can’t take a giant leap backward,” Wasserman Schultz said.

    The highest-ranking enlisted people for each service testified in an oversight hearing of the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies on Feb. 28. They said the Department of Defense (DOD) must address quality of life issues.

    Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston told the subcommittee that the problem extends beyond just soldiers’ morale. It could impact national security.

    “This is an American problem,” he said.

    Grinston said the Army had dedicated approximately $1.5 billion to family housing, soldiers’ barracks, and childcare facilities on Army posts worldwide. He said these problems are aggravating matters stemming from pay issues and increased demands on enlisted personnel.

    Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy James Honea agreed. He said that Navy hospitals in the Pacific Northwest had been recently downsized, forcing Navy personnel to drive farther from their bases for medical care. This only adds to the pressure already felt by many in the enlisted ranks.

    “We will begin losing employees that are mission critical,” Honea said.

    The housing issue began around the mid-1990s as military budgets were cut after the Cold War.

    Approximately 180,000 housing units needed renovation or replacement at that time, according to the Military Housing Association (MHA).

    In 1996, Congress authorized the Military Housing Privatization Initiative (MHPI). Under the MHPI, each branch contracted with private property managers to handle military housing. The MHA was formed to represent those property managers.

    The Government Accountability Office (GAO) had issued several reports documenting complaints about mold, pests, lack of maintenance, rundown housing units, and rude and indifferent responses from property managers when they requested help.

    According to the most recent GAO report, DOD is increasing its oversight of the MHPI. However, it is hampered by the fact that it deals with civilian property managers.

    Dealing With Civilians Complicates Things

    “Nevertheless, oversight of the privatized family housing problem will likely continue to face challenges.

    In part, because DOD cannot unilaterally make changes to projects without the concurrence of the private companies,” the March 2022 GAO report reads.

    For example, the report mentions a Tenant Bill of Rights, which the DOD ordered by Congress to implement in February 2020. By March 2022, the managers of properties at five military installations had not agreed to the Bill of Rights.

    Pay issues were further aggravating the problems, the military members said.

    According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, at least 20,000 military families, 213,000 National Guard and Reserve members, and 1.1 million veterans qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Grinston said the issue is “a math problem.”

    He said that across-the-board pay increases don’t address the realities that enlisted troops face. While their pay increases, it doesn’t increase comparable to that of commissioned officers. As a result, enlisted pay often fails to keep pace with inflation, the cost of living where the troops live, and other factors.

    “Inflation is real, the supply chain is real, these basic needs compete with one another,” said Sgt. Major of the Marine Corps Troy Black.

    Grinston said all military branches are doing more to teach enlisted members money management skills. Ultimately DOD will have to develop a better formula for adjusting military pay, according to Grinston. He said that leaving this issue unaddressed would reflect poorly on the military.

    “We really wouldn’t want our service members to be eligible for that benefit,” Grinston said.

    Wasserman Schultz asked how a cut in the defense budget would impact the issues they had discussed.

    She referenced a promise to hold discretionary spending to FY 2022 levels that the Republican “Freedom Caucus” got from McCarthy in his bid to become Speaker.

    The plan does not exempt DOD. Wasserman Schultz said this could cost the military $4 billion in lost funding.

    Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force JoAnne Bass said such a cut would force all the military services to decide which programs to cut.

    “Any cut to those (housing, childcare, health care) would put your services in a position where they have to make those very tough decisions.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/06/2023 – 23:00

  • Retail Investors Buy Record Amounts Of Six-Month Bills In Monday's Auction
    Retail Investors Buy Record Amounts Of Six-Month Bills In Monday’s Auction

    Several months ago, a Goldman trader penned the phrase JOMO (or the Joy Of Missing Out from the daily chaos in stocks) to describe the growing infatuation – across both institutional and retail investors  – with generously-yielding fixed income instruments, at the expense of equities which not that long were the only game in town (a time when FOMO dominated). And nowhere was this more obvious than in today’s 6-Month bill auction.

    As Bloomberg notes, retail investors took the most six-month Treasury bills at an auction in nearly 30 years as high interest rates trumped concerns over Federal Reserve tightening.

    Noncompetitive bidders, a group of bond buyers which tend to be smaller investors that want to passively accept the auction yield without the risk of submitting a competitive bid, took $2.84 billion of six-month bills at Monday’s auction.

    That, as shown in the chart below, was a near-record bid by retail, second only to the $2.88 billion awarded on June 27, 1994, Treasury Department data show. At this rate, expect a new record retail print as soon as next week’s 6M Bill auction.

    Today’s $48 billion auction stood out in yet another way: the stop-out yield of 4.97% was the highest for a six-month offering since January 2007.

    “Generally, intermediate bills have struggled to generate investor demand due to risks associated with the prospects of a more hawkish Fed, and uncertainty about the debt ceiling,” Jefferies economists Thomas Simons and Aneta Markowska say in a note. “However, with the small cut in supply for 3s, and the high outright yield levels offered, the auctions did a bit better today”

    As a reminder, the yield on six-month bills initially rose above 5% on Feb. 14, making it the first US government obligation to reach that threshold in 16 years. That yield is slightly higher than those on 4-month and one-year bills, which according to BBG reflect reflecting concerns over the trajectory of Fed rate hikes and the risk that Congress will fail to raise the debt ceiling before Treasury exhausts its cash reserves. According to various forecasts, the D-Day will realistically hit some time in September or October, which roughly coincides with the maturity of the current 6Month. Of course, in case of a default, repayment on said Bill will be in limbo indefinitely.

    While we doubt that the US will default (there will be the usual last minute fireworks but in the end holdout republicans will fold, although we may need a modest scare in stocks to get there), what is more interesting is that so many retail investors are shifting their portfolios to debt securities, whether floating or fixed rate, that continued tightening by the Fed – which ends up pushing yields even higher – will soon have the effect of easing financial conditions as it boosts how much disposable income savers end up getting in the form of interest income. As for those who never saved anything and live month to month on their credit card, better luck next time.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/06/2023 – 22:40

  • China's Modest Growth Target Isn't Stalling Reopening Trade
    China’s Modest Growth Target Isn’t Stalling Reopening Trade

    By George Lei, Bloomberg Markets Live strategist and reporter

    China’s 5% growth target may appear underwhelming to some, though it is very much in-line with shifting market expectations since last week’s blowout PMI. The modest objective leaves room for upside growth surprises and bodes well for Chinese equities overall, though Hong Kong stocks are likely to keep outperforming their onshore peers.

    The 5% goal was below the 5.3% consensus in a Bloomberg survey, as well as the 5.5% objective for 2022 and also targets set by most provinces. Conservative as it is, the number won’t necessarily lead to a weak outcome, according to Citigroup, which noted that as recently as 2021 China managed to grow 8.1% versus a 6% target.

    The ongoing Congress in Beijing leaves one thing perfectly clear, though: There will be no major stimulus on either fiscal or monetary fronts. The strength of China’s reopening exceeded the expectations of top leaders, who will be more restrained in rolling out new stimulus, Bloomberg reported last week. Now that the 5% target is in place, Citigroup believes any positive data surprises may “limit the extent of downward move” in market interest rates.

    What does that mean for equities? As my colleague Sofia Horta e Costa noted, Hong Kong has so far been home to the reopening trade for investors who believe the post-Covid economy is already doing well. Onshore equities, on the contrary, are the stimulus play for those who expect Beijing to deliver more fiscal spending or PBOC liquidity.

    The reopening trade has beaten stimulus bets handily since the end of October when chatter of exiting Covid Zero began to pick up steam. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng China Enterprise Index has rallied more than 40% over the period, while the onshore benchmark CSI 300 advanced less than half of that. The gap will probably persist, or even widen, in the foreseeable future.

    China’s reopening is likely to be more V-shaped than consensus expectations, with substantial excess savings likely to support consumption, according to a March 6 research report from Morgan Stanley, which expects equities in North Asia ex-Japan to continually outperform as is “typical in the early phases of a bull market.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/06/2023 – 22:26

  • Hedges: Lynching The Deplorables
    Hedges: Lynching The Deplorables

    Authored by Chris Hedges via The Chris Hedges Report,

    There is little that unites me with those who occupied the Capitol building on Jan. 6. Their vision for America, Christian nationalism, white supremacy, blind support for Trump and embrace of reactionary fact-free conspiracy theories leaves a very wide chasm between their beliefs and mine. But that does not mean I support the judicial lynching against many of those who participated in the Jan. 6 events, a lynching that is mandating years in pretrial detention and prison for misdemeanors. Once rights become privileges, none of us are safe. 

    Image: Executing the Law – by Mr. Fish

    The U.S. legal system has a very sordid history. It was used to enforce segregation and legitimize the reign of terror against Black people. It was the hammer that broke the back of militant union movements. It persecuted radicals and reformers in the name of anti-communism. After 9/11, it relentlessly went after Muslim leaders and activists with Special Administrative Measures (SAMs). SAMs, established by the Clinton administration, originally only applied to people who ordered murders from prison or were convicted of mass murder, but are now used to isolate all manner of detainees before and during trial. They severely restrict a prisoner’s communication with the outside world; prohibiting calls, letters and visits with anyone except attorneys and sharply limit contact with family members. The solitary confinement like conditions associated with SAMs undermine any meaningful right to a fair trial according to analysis by groups like the Center for Constitutional Rights and can amount to torture according to the United Nations. Julian Assange faces SAMs or similar conditions should he be extradited to the U.S. The Classified Information Procedures Act, or CIPA, begun under the Reagan administration, also allows evidence in a trial to be classified and withheld from defendants. The courts, throughout American history, have abjectly served the interests of big business and the billionaire class. The current Supreme Court is one of the most retrograde in decades, rolling back legal protections for vulnerable groups and denying workers protection from predatory corporate abuse.

    At least 1,003 people have been arrested and charged so far for participation in events on Jan. 6, with 476 pleading guilty, in what has been the largest single criminal investigation in U.S. history, according to analysis by Business Insider. The charges and sentences vary, with many receiving misdemeanor sentences such as fines, probation, a few months in prison or a combination of the three. Of the 394 federal defendants who have had their cases adjudicated and sentenced as of Feb. 6, approximately 220 “have been sentenced to periods of incarceration” with a further 100 defendants “sentenced to a period of home detention, including approximately 15 who also were sentenced to a period of incarceration,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. There are six convictions and four guilty pleas on charges of “seditious conspiracy.” This offense is so widely defined that it includes conspiring to levy war against the government on the one hand and delaying the execution of any law on the other. Those charged and convicted of “seditious conspiracy” were accused of collaborating to oppose “the lawful transfer of presidential power by force” by preventing or delaying the Certification of the Electoral College vote. While a few of the organizers of the Jan. 6 protest such as Stewart Rhodes, who founded Oath Keepers, may conceivably be guilty of sedition, and even this is in doubt, the vast majority of those caught up in the incursion of the Capitol did not commit serious crimes, engage in violence or know what they would do in Washington other than protest the election results. 

    Joseph D. McBride went to law school because his brother was serving a 15-year sentence for a crime he did not commit. He provided free legal advice as a law school student to those encamped in Zuccotti Park in New York City during the Occupy movement. Following law school, he worked as a public defender and in the Legal Aid Society. He represents several of those charged in the Jan. 6 incursion, including Richard Barnett. Barnett was photographed in Nancy Pelosi’s office with his leg propped up on her desk. Barnett was convicted by a federal jury, which deliberated for two hours, on eight counts, including disorderly conduct in the Capitol building. He faces up to 47 years in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced on May 3.

    “The post 9/11 model is being applied to American citizens,” McBride told me when I reached him by phone. “That model is the 19 hijackers. Everyone who is a religious Muslim is a suspect for the next 20 years. They should be waterboarded. They should be put in fucking jail and left in Guantanamo Bay. Lock them up. Throw away the key. Because they are psychopath extremists who believe in Allah and we don’t have time for that. They’re a threat based on who they are, what they look like, what they believe in. When the truth is, the vast majority of these guys don’t do drugs, don’t drink alcohol, they have five kids and they live pretty good lives. But because of the label of ‘terrorism’ and ‘Osama Bin Laden’ and ‘al-Qaeda’, everybody who is a Muslim is now a target. If we get on a plane next to one of these people, we get nervous about it because that’s how much it’s ingrained in us. The same thing is happening, except it’s being applied to a new group of people, primarily white Christians, Trump supporters, for now.” 

    “Power is going to change hands,” he warned. “The Democrats are not going to be in power forever. When power changes hands, that precedent is going to travel with it. If somebody else from the other side gets in and starts to target the people who are in power now, their families, their businesses, their lives, their freedom, then it’s over. America goes from being a free democracy to a tribalist partisan state. Maybe there’s not ethnic-cleansing in the streets, but people are cleansing each other from the workplace, from social media, from the banking system and they’re putting people in jail. That’s where we’re headed. I don’t know why people can’t see what’s on the horizon.”

    The Jan. 6 protestors were not the first to occupy Congressional offices, including Nancy Pelosi’s office. Young environmental activists from the Sunrise Movement, anti-war activists from Code Pink and even congressional staffers have engaged in numerous occupations of congressional offices and interrupted congressional hearings. What will happen to groups such as Code Pink if they occupy congressional offices with Republicans in control of the White House, the Congress and the courts? Will they be held for years in pretrial detention? Will they be given lengthy prison terms based on dubious interpretations of the law? Will they be considered domestic terrorists? Will protests and civil disobedience become impossible?

    McBride said those who walked to the Capitol were not aware that the Department of Justice had created arbitrary markers, what McBride called an “imaginary red line that they draw around the Capitol grounds.” Anyone who crossed that invisible line was charged with violating Capitol grounds.

    He railed against the negative portrayal of the protestors in the media, the White House and Democratic Party leadership, as well as a tainted jury pool in Washington composed of people who have close links to the federal government. He said Change of Venue motions filed by the defense lawyers have been denied.

    “The D.C. jury pool is poisoned beyond repair,” McBride said. “When you just look at what the January 6  Committee did alone, never mind President Biden’s speeches about ‘insurrectionists,’ ‘MAGA Republican extremists’ and all this stuff, and if you just consider the fact that D.C. is very small, that people who work in the Federal Government are all by definition, kind of victims of January 6 and what happened that day, their institutions and colleagues were ‘under attack.’ How can anybody from that town serve on a jury pool? They can’t. The bias is astounding.”

    Jacob Chansley, the so-called “QAnon shaman” who was adorned on Jan. 6 in red, white and blue face paint, carried an American flag on a spear-tipped pole and wore a coyote-fur and horned headdress, pleaded guilty to obstruction. He was sentenced to more than three years in prison. Chansley, who says he is a practitioner of ahimsa, an ancient Indian principle of non-violence toward all living beings, was not accused of assaulting anyone. He was diagnosed in prison with transient schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety. 

    Guy Wesley Reffitt, who did not enter the Capitol building, nevertheless was sentenced after three hours of deliberations to seven years and three months in prison on five charges, including “two counts of civil disorder, and one count each of obstruction of an official proceeding, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a firearm, and obstruction of justice.” His obstruction of justice charge came from “threatening” his two teenage children to prevent them from reporting him to law enforcement.

    Daniel Ray Caldwell, a Marine Corps veteran, who sprayed a chemical irritant at a group of police officers outside the Capitol and entered through the Senate Wing doors where he remained inside for approximately two minutes, was sentenced to more than five years in prison. He spent, like many who have been charged, nearly two years in pretrial detention.

    Even the charges against Rhodes, who faces 20 years in prison, and other militia leaders of groups such as the Proud Boys are problematic. The New York Times reported that, “despite the vast amount of evidence the government collected in the case — including more than 500,000 encrypted text messages — investigators never found a smoking gun that conclusively showed the Proud Boys plotted to help President Donald J. Trump remain in office.” The government has relied on the testimony of a former Proud Boy, Jeremy Bertino, who is cooperating with prosecutors to build an “inferential case” against Enrique Tarrio, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola, the five defendants in the current Proud Boy case. Bertino, on cross-examination, admitted that in previous interviews with the government, he repeatedly told investigators that the Proud Boys did not have an explicit plan to halt the election certification and that he did not anticipate acts of violence on Jan. 6. The FBI had as many as eight informants in the Proud Boys that included its leader, Enrique Tarrio, during the storming of the Capitol, raising the very real possibility of entrapment.

    “They’re changing the laws,” McBride said. “Look at the 1512 charge, the obstruction charge. That was used for document shredding in Enron. It has no applicability to Jan. 6 whatsoever. They took it. They repurposed it. They weaponised it against these people and made it impossible for them to defend themselves. When you look at the civil disorder charge, they are saying that if January 6 was one big civil disorder, and if you had any type of interaction with a police officer that day that may or may not have caused the police officer to step away from his duties for a moment, you can go down with civil disorder and get five years in jail.”

    Ryan Nichols, a Marine Corps veteran, is living under house arrest in Texas after nearly two years in pretrial detention, much of it in solitary confinement, in Washington, D.C and Virginia jails. He faces five felony and three misdemeanor charges. Prosecutors say Nichols assaulted officers and obstructed an official proceeding. He has been ordered to “stay away from Washington, D.C.” except for business related to his case, according to court documents. He has had to submit to “location monitoring technology” and is denied access to the internet and his phone except to perform functions related to his case. He cannot have contact with anyone involved in the Jan. 6 events, including co-defendants. Nichols must remain in his home 24 hours a day except for medical and court appointments. He is permitted to attend Sunday church services at Mobberly Baptist Church in Longview, Texas. He is facing 20 years in prison. He is scheduled to go to trial on March 27.

    I spoke with Bonnie Nichols, Ryan’s wife, by phone from their home in Longview, Texas. 

    Ryan was arrested on Jan. 18, 2020. The FBI surrounded their house at 5:30 am in armored vehicles. They unscrewed the bulbs from flood lights and cut the wires to the couple’s security cameras before kicking in the front door. The couple and their two children, then aged 4 and 6, were at Bonnie’s parents house during the raid. The FBI confiscated their weapons, electronics and documents, including Social Security cards. 

    “We wanted to cooperate,” she said. “We didn’t know anything was wrong. They asked Ryan to come in for questioning. Ryan went and turned himself in. They arrested him and I didn’t see him again for over a year and a half.”

    Ryan, who had no criminal record, ran a nonprofit called Rescue the Universe where he carried out search-and-rescue operations after natural disasters. He was denied bail. He was sent to a holding facility in Grady County Oklahoma for two months before being flown to Washington, D.C. where he was met by some two dozen U.S. Marshals. His feet were shackled. His arms were shackled to a chain around his waist. He was placed in long term solitary confinement and denied video calls or visitation from his family, including his children. He was denied access to his trial documents for nearly a year and prohibited from attending religious services in the jail.

    Ryan, whose most serious offense appears to be incendiary rhetoric calling for a “second American revolution,” spent nearly 22 months in solitary confinement. Depressed, struggling to cope with the physical and psychological strain of prolonged isolation, he was eventually placed on suicide watch. He was strapped to a bench in a room where a light was never turned off. Guards would periodically shout through a window “Do you feel like killing yourself?” Those on suicide watch who said  “yes” remained strapped to the bench. Those who said “no” were sent back to their cells. Ryan was often prohibited from having nail clippers — the guards told him he could chew his toenails down — or getting a haircut unless he agreed to be vaccinated for COVID-19. When Ryan appeared before Judge Thomas Hogan, who finally released him on Nov. 23, 2022, he told Ryan, with his long unkempt hair and fingernails, that he looked like Tom Hanks in the film Cast Away.

    Every night, for the two years Ryan was held in solitary confinement, Bonnie and her two small boys would say prayers that Ryan would one day come home. She said she and her family have received numerous death threats.

    “Ryan deals with insomnia,” Bonnie said of her husband. “He deals with extreme anxiety, depression and paranoia. He will not even go outside of his backyard because he’s scared that if he goes outside, that they’re going to take him back to jail. He has liver issues from the food that he ate because they fed him baloney sandwiches and trash while he was in D.C. He’s having a lot of medical issues. He also has lower testosterone than a 60-year-old man because he wasn’t able to have any sunlight. His vitamin D levels are low. The list goes on and on. This man does not sleep at night. He has nightmares. He whimpers at night in his sleep because he has dreams that he’s back in D.C. I mean, he’s a mess. This is the result of what has happened to him. He has vision loss. He doesn’t see as good as he used to.”

    Ryan’s family, like many families of those charged, are struggling financially. Bonnie said their savings are gone. She and Ryan are heavily in debt. She has set up a fundraising page here.

    “We are God-loving patriots,” she said. “Who’s going to be next? It’s not about Republican or Democrat or white or Black, Christian, or Muslim. We are all children of God. We are all U.S. American citizens. We are all entitled to our constitutional rights and freedom of speech. We can all come together and agree on that, right?”

    The cheerleading, or at best indifference, by Democratic Party supporters and much of the left to these show trials will come back to haunt them. We are exacerbating the growing tribalism and political antagonisms that will increasingly express themselves through violence. We are complicit, once again, of using the courts to carry out vendettas. We are corroding democratic institutions. We are hardening the ideology and rage of the far-right. We are turning those being hounded to prison into political prisoners and martyrs. We are moving ever closer towards tyranny.

    The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/06/2023 – 22:20

  • Meteorologists Warn Of Big Snow And Rain Storm For Late Week
    Meteorologists Warn Of Big Snow And Rain Storm For Late Week

    AccuWeather meteorologists warn of a late-week storm that could bring wintry and severe weather to large swaths of the central US. 

    “There is the potential for some states in the northern Plains to be hit with two snowstorms within a week,” said AccuWeather Meteorologist Joseph Bauer.

    Bauer said forecasts point to a winter event, with snow expected to begin late Wednesday in the Rockies and to spread into the Upper Midwest through Friday. He said accumulating snow is expected for cities from Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Denver to Madison, Wisconsin, and Minneapolis. 

    The exact snowfall and tracking of the storm have yet to be determined. The storm will take aim at the Plains and might strengthen as it moves eastward. 

    In the South, warm weather will lead to an all-rain event from Texas to Tennessee. 

    “Repeated rounds of rain from mid-to-late week could bring several inches of rain, especially from the Texas-Oklahoma border to Tennessee and Kentucky,” said Bauer.

    Meteorologists have yet to determine East Coast impacts from the storm. Though average temperatures across the Lower 48 will trend below 30-year seasonal averages through mid-March. 

    Punxsutawney Phil was right one month ago when he saw his shadow in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, which translated into a forecast of six more weeks of winter. The good news is that seasonal averages are trending higher as spring is just weeks away. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/06/2023 – 22:00

  • Judge Rules USA Powerlifting Must Allow Biological Male To Compete Against Women
    Judge Rules USA Powerlifting Must Allow Biological Male To Compete Against Women

    Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A Minnesota judge has ruled that biological men who identify as women can compete against natural-born women in USA Powerlifting (USAPL) following a discrimination case against the organization.

    An athlete in a powerlifting competition in Tokyo on Aug. 26, 2021. (Philip Fong/AFP via Getty Images)

    In his ruling (pdf), District Judge Patrick Diamond said that the national powerlifting organization must “cease and desist from all unfair discriminatory practices” after finding that it had engaged in unfair discriminatory practices by denying transgender weightlifter JayCee Cooper “the full and equal enjoyment of public accommodation because of sexual orientation.”

    Cooper, who was born a male, filed a complaint with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights in 2019 alleging that the organization had violated the state’s Human Rights Act after Cooper was banned from competing in the women’s division.

    Cooper then filed a lawsuit against USA Powerlifting in state court in 2021 alleging claims of sex and sexual orientation discrimination under the Minnesota Human Rights Act (MHRA) against USAPL and Powerlifting Minnesota.

    The lawsuit, which was filed through the Minnesota-based advocacy group Gender Justice, also alleged that Powerlifting Minnesota had aided and abetted sex and sexual orientation discrimination under the MHRA.

    Cooper Was ‘Separated, Segregated’

    Lawyers for the weightlifter said in the lawsuit (pdf) that Cooper began powerlifting in 2018 and “fell in love with the sport.”

    “Ms. Cooper sees powerlifting as a way to find strength within herself and has found a home in the community of strong supportive women who come together around a shared love of sport,” the lawyers wrote.

    It goes on to note that Cooper had been training to compete in the USAPL Minnesota State Bench Press Championship and the Minnesota Women’s State Championship in January and February 2019, respectively, but in December 2018, USAPL sent an email to the weightlifter, stating that Cooper could not compete because of Cooper’s transgender identity.

    “USAPL then revoked her competition card, which means that she was not eligible to compete in future USAPL events,” the lawsuit states, referring to Cooper. “USAPL MN then went on to hold both championship events, at which all transgender women athletes were prohibited from competing.”

    Diamond ultimately agreed with Cooper’s attorneys.

    “By denying Cooper the right to participate in the female category, the category consistent with her self-identification, USAPL denied her the full and equal enjoyment of the services, support, and facilities USAPL offered its members,” Diamond wrote in his ruling. “It separated Cooper and segregated her and, in doing so, failed to fully perform the contractual obligations it agreed to when it accepted Cooper’s money and issued Cooper a membership card.”

    The judge also noted in his 46-page ruling that “the harm is in making a person pretend to be something different, the implicit message being that who they are is less than.”

    “That is the very essence of separation and segregation, and it is what the MHRA prohibits,” the judge wrote. He also cited the “increased risk of depression and suicide, lack of access to coaching and practice facilities, or other performance suppression common to transgender persons,” as competitive disadvantages for transgender competitors.

    USA Powerlifting Must Revise Policy

    USAPL had argued that allowing male-to-female transgender athletes to compete against women was against company policy and that Cooper would have a competitive advantage over natural-born women.

    In 2021, USAPL established an MX category, which is open to cisgender men and women as well as transgender men and women.

    Judge Diamond ordered that USAPL submit a revised policy to remedy three specific areas of discrimination within 14 days and to comply with the revised policy thereafter.

    A trial on possible damages has been set for May 1.

    In a statement to Minneapolis NBC affiliate KARE-TV after the ruling, Cooper called the decision a “win.”

    “After years of experiencing discrimination from USA Powerlifting, and the backlash that has occurred due to that, of course I have complex feelings about the sport,” Cooper said. “But I think that this win – [it] is a representation of where we can move forward.”

    ‘We Respectfully Disagree’

    Separately, USA Powerlifting President Larry Maile told the KARE-TV it is considering appealing the decision.

    “Our position has been aimed at balancing the needs of cis- and transgender women, whose capacities differ significantly in purely strength sports,” Maile said. “We have received a summary judgment decision from the Court finding us liable for discrimination. We respectfully disagree with the Court’s conclusions. We are considering all of our options, including appeal.”

    The Epoch Times has contacted USA Powerlifting for comment.

    The latest ruling comes shortly after 22 Republican senators, including Sens. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), and Mike Lee (R-Utah), reintroduced a bill aimed at protecting female athletes and ensuring fairness and safety in women’s sports at educational institutions across the United States.

    Known as the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act,” the bill would preserve Title IX protections for female athletes, which ban discrimination on the basis of sex in sports programs and require all educational institutions in the country to reward male and female athletes equally.

    That bill would counteract the Biden administration’s expected plans to finalize rules in May that would force institutions to allow biological males to share women-only spaces and compete in women’s sports.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/06/2023 – 21:40

  • Man Stranded In Oregon Wilderness Uses Drone To Call For Help
    Man Stranded In Oregon Wilderness Uses Drone To Call For Help

    A sheriff’s office in Oregon reported a man was stranded in Willamette National Forest due to heavy snowfall. He was stuck on a stretch of roadway with no cellphone service and decided to use his drone to call for help. 

    In a Facebook post, the Lane County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue detailed the man attached his smartphone to a drone. He typed out a message to a friend. When he hit send, he launched the drone hundreds of feet into the air. After several tries, the phone connected to a nearby cell tower, and the message was sent. 

    “The increased elevation allowed his phone to connect to a tower and send the message, which resulted in our teams being deployed and assisting him out of his situation,” the search and rescue team wrote.

    Here’s more on the out-of-the-box, or rather over-the-box, thinking that saved this man’s life. 

    Recently Lane County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue responded to an all-too-familiar mission, but with a unique twist.

    A motorist had attempted to traverse a remote road in the U.S. Forest Service – Willamette National Forest that is not maintained for winter travel. His vehicle became stuck in the snow and he did not have cell service to call for help (cell reception is very limited in many forested areas of Lane County). Making his situation worse, his family was out of the country and nobody knew where he had gone or to call for help if he didn’t make it home.

    Regardless of the circumstances leading to his situation, once stranded this person made several smart decisions. First, he stayed with his vehicle. Rarely does anyone in Oregon die from exposure waiting in their vehicle to be found and rescued, but we have unfortunately seen many poor outcomes from those who chose to walk away. Second, he used some ingenuity to find a way to call for help. The man had a drone with him and attached his cell phone to the drone. He then typed a text message to a trusted person describing his situation and exact location, hit send, and launched the drone several hundred feet into the air. The increased elevation allowed his phone to connect to a tower and send the message, which resulted in our teams being deployed and assisting him out of his situation.

    While our teams were rescuing this person, another motorist who had also been stranded nearby in the snow for multiple days was located and rescued.

    We are happy with the outcome of this call for service, and impressed with the creatively displayed to call for help, but we would like to take this opportunity to ask everyone to help us spread some important winter travel safety messages:

    1) Forest Roads are not maintained for winter travel. Any attempt to travel on unmaintained snow or ice covered roads (no matter how much or little) should only be made with a group of well-equipped vehicles. If one vehicle becomes stuck, the other vehicles can attempt to free the stuck vehicle or can turn around and be used to drive everyone back to safety.

    2) Always tell a responsible person EXACTLY where you are going, and when you expect to be back. Do not deviate from this plan. If a road becomes unpassable, turn around and go back the way you came, do not attempt a detour without first updating your plan with your emergency contact.

    3) Of the dozens of missions we have had this winter involving a vehicle stuck in the snow, nearly all of them were 4×4 vehicles and almost all of the drivers told us “I didn’t think I would get stuck.” Instead of asking yourself whether you think you can get through a section of road, ask yourself “What will happen if I do get stuck?” If you (and the group of other vehicles you are traveling with) are not prepared to deal with any of the possible outcomes from an attempt, turn around and go back the way you came.

    Full story here.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/06/2023 – 21:20

  • Prepared For The Worst, Survival Shelter Companies Waiting For Collapse Of Society
    Prepared For The Worst, Survival Shelter Companies Waiting For Collapse Of Society

    Authored by Allen Stein via The Epoch Times,

    Set against a rocky slope, Fortitude Ranch resembles almost any other desert grange scattered along the barren highway in northwestern Nevada, far from any city or town.

    On this 174-acre privately owned spread are free-roaming cattle, pens for raising sheep and chickens, a main house, and other living quarters under construction.

    The ranch has good soil for growing crops, fruit-bearing trees, natural springs for gardening and livestock, and austere, rolling mountains on either side of the highway for cover.

    Here, the resemblance ends.

    The new Viking Lodge survival shelter is a work in progress at Fortitude Ranch Nevada on March 2, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    Fortitude Ranch is anything but your typical farmstead. Its founder, Drew Miller, said its purpose is to ensure the safety of its inhabitants during a societal disintegration.

    “Our design is to survive any collapse,” Miller said.

    “We define a collapse as no functioning economy and widespread loss of law and order.”

    It could take any form: a bird flu pandemic with heavy casualties, an economic depression, a world war, or global famine resulting in civil unrest and death.

    A Question of Survival

    During such a scenario, Miller said, “some people will just stay at home and starve to death.”

    Others won’t go quietly into the twilight of civilization.

    “A lot of people will say, ‘You know what? I will go out and steal food from my neighbor and do what I can to keep my family alive.”

    A view of the desert scape from the windows of survival housing under construction at Fortitude Ranch Nevada on March 2, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    Miller said this group poses a significant risk to the prepared.

    Today, only some people feel the urgency to stock up against these terrifying scenarios or even think about them, said Miller, who started building survival ranches in 2012 as the need became more apparent.

    Back then, the notion of preparing for a collapse of civil society still carried the stigma of tin foil hats and conspiracy theories.

    The television series “Doomsday Preppers” further tarnished the image of “preppers” for years.

    Miller, a former U.S. Air Force colonel, said a decade ago, people either smirked or turned away whenever he mentioned prepping.

    That was then.

    After the COVID-19 lockdowns and urban riots of 2020, the power substation attacks of 2022, the possibility of looming war with Russia—and China—and toxic chemical spills in 2023, hardly anyone is smirking now.

    “People get it now. There’s much more recognition that you need to prepare for the fragile electric grid. For the avian flu contagion—and bad people,” Miller said.

    Jason, a carpenter at Fortitude Ranch Nevada, works on a section of a new section of survival shelters on March 2, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    “We tell our members there’s a chance a collapse could be something they haven’t even considered.”

    The company lists 50 known triggers for a societal collapse on its website, taking each one seriously as its likelihood increases with each passing year.

    Miller said the probability of an unexpected “black swan” event occurring this year is anywhere from 1 and 21 percent based on current trends and models.

    Network of Like-Minded Survivors

    The purpose of Fortitude Ranch is to meet the challenge through a network of survival communities with close to 500 members across the United States.

    Miller sees it as a work in progress with five discreet corporate locations and a sixth survival ranch franchise.

    He envisions as many as 100 nationwide franchises to keep pace with the demand.

    From a survival standpoint, Fortitude Ranch is less costly than going alone, Miller said, because “you’ve got a survival community to share the cost.”

    “We’ve got the staff. We’ve got the facilities. When our members show up in a collapse, all they have to do is follow directions.”

    However, Fortitude Ranch is not geared toward the well-to-do. Its target membership is the middle class.

    Ranch manager Brandon M stands in front of the new survival shelter lodge at Fortitude Ranch Nevada on March 2, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    While yearly dues are low (about $1,000 per person), amenities are substantial and guaranteed to ride out the collapse in comfort and safety, Miller said.

    “We are affordable because of large numbers of members and economies of scale. Fortitude Ranch is attractive to join because it is a recreation/vacation facility as well,” according to the company’s website.

    Each ranch setup has a basic fortified shelter design that varies by location.

    There are log-cabin-style living quarters and below-ground configurations made with corrugated steel, including shared spaces, quarantine buildings, recreational areas, and guard posts.

    The simplicity of each location’s design is the key to its efficiency, Miller said.

    “That’s why we formed Fortitude Ranch. Our system is for the middle class. We have plywood bunk beds in some of the rooms. It’s not fancy. We’ve got some nice digs, but many of our rooms are called Spartan rooms.”

    “We don’t give out our locations because it upsets our members,” Miller told The Epoch Times, but “if you’re alive in a collapse, they will find you. You cannot hide. You’ve got to be able to protect yourself.”

    Buckets of long-term survival food are stacked against the basement wall at Fortitude Ranch Nevada on March 2, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    The rule is safety in numbers and armed security around the clock. When it’s time to “bug out,” members will arrive with extra food, guns, and ammunition.

    “Hopefully before the collapse occurs—if the collapse occurs—we tell them don’t wait for a warning,” Miller said. “If you can’t contact us—that’s a good clue.”

    At Fortitude Ranch in Nevada, Brandon M said the facility has everything an individual or family would need to survive following a general collapse.

    “We’ve got over a year’s worth of food for more members than we have,” Brandon said. “That gives us time to have our agriculture and crops in place. We’ve also got our livestock.”

    The ranch, built in 2020, is operational with solar and gas-powered generators for off-grid living. Brandon is the full-time manager, and Heather is his new assistant. Jason is a carpenter, helping construct the new Viking Lodge overlooking the ranch.

    “I’ve been to some of the ranches. [Fortitude Ranch Nevada] is probably my favorite from a strategic standpoint,” Brandon said. “You have a lot of high points, but you don’t have a lot of trees, which can be a disadvantage as far as not having wood. The advantage is to see who’s coming at you.”

    Ranch manager Brandon M stands in the middle of a new room under construction at Fortitude Ranch Nevada on March 2, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    Brandon, now retired from the military, said the political climate in America has become more unstable and divided.

    “I was looking to find a place with like-minded [people]. I realized I couldn’t do it alone,” he said.

    After a decade serving in the Air Force, Heather said she found Fortitude Ranch online and applied for a job. She’s been out here for about three weeks and has enjoyed her experience.

    “I like this because it’s more realistic. I don’t know if you even think about luxuries—water, food, and shelter. Those are the priorities. I think everybody should be concerned [about a societal collapse]. Not like fear—just aware,” Heather said.

    The new Viking Lodge features a pair of log cabins joined with a corrugated steel enclosure to provide even more living space when complete. The ranch also has a small medical clinic, a workshop, and a practice firing range.

    “We’re still building. We’re always building as we keep adding members,” Brandon told The Epoch Times. “Once we finish the Viking Lodge, we could easily have 200 [people].”

    “Like right now, I’m working on rooms for paid members. It was just me out here for a long time, so it was slow. I don’t mind it; I like the isolation. You can’t just run to the store and grab some cough medicine.”

    Fortitude Ranch Nevada manager Brandon M demonstrates a ham radio on March 2, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    Brandon said Fortitude Ranch offers good protection against thieves and roaming bands of marauders. Given its remote location, finding the ranch wouldn’t be easy for the hungry and desperate following a collapse in the city.

    “Being this far out here, nobody will want to waste calories walking and not even knowing what you’ll find,” Brandon said. “North of us, there isn’t anything for 30 miles.”

    The ranch currently has more than 50 members, and everyone will have a job to do when they arrive, as determined by their skill set.

    Brandon said two members are medical professionals. There are engineers and teachers as well.

    One member is a culinary chef. The oldest member is 90.

    “We’ve got big families, small families, individuals—all kinds of political backgrounds. Right and left. You’d think it would be all right [leaning]. We do have some [left-leaning] people. We’re getting more and more,” Brandon said.

    “It’s like any other community. When civilization started, people had to come together in some way. It comes down to this: are the things that unite you stronger than those that divide you?

    The medical clinic is fully stocked at Fortitude Ranch Nevada on March 2, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    The medical clinic at Fortitude Ranch Nevada includes a single bed on March 2, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    The nearest town is about a half-hour drive south. Brandon said some people suspected a nearby survival community whenever he shops for supplies. They’ll spot him at the supermarket, loading 20 bags of beans and 20 bags of rice into a cart.

    Sometimes, they’ll ask him questions.

    “I’ll make a joke. I don’t talk about what we are or where we are. They think you’re from a restaurant,” Brandon said.

    Rebuilding Society

    In the main house at Fortitude Ranch are furnished rooms with beds, fresh linen, and other amenities. The ranch guarantees a daily minimum of 2,000 calories for one year for each member.

    However, some members prefer to stock their own food for long-term storage.

    Brandon said members are serious about their preparations as national and global tensions worsen.

    “A lot of them will come out here and store stuff. They’re constantly asking me how we are doing, where are we at.”

    Fortitude Ranch Nevada manager Brandon M enters the work shed where gardening supplies are kept on March 2, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    Members receive a monthly online newsletter to stay informed. So when the critical moment arrives, they will know what to do.

    “It’s just about bringing communities back to what they once were,” Jason told The Epoch Times. “We’re trying to get people to work together in an environment to sustain themselves from anything.

    “The template was there back in the day. It’s a winning model that works for everybody.”

    Believing “history repeats itself” and collapse is inevitable, Jason said the sooner members work as a community, the sooner they can help to rebuild society.

    “We’ve seen this before, and we’ll see it again. The probability of biological attacks is the norm right now,” Jason said.

    Brandon said the collapse of society would look different than what people expect or imagine.

    “You saw the rioting with [Hurricane] Katrina. This time will be on a much bigger scale.”

    A barren lake bed stretches for miles on the way to Fortitude Ranch Nevada. Below, manager Brandon M walks along the dirt road to the main ranch house on March 2, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    “It’s going to suck,” Brandon said, as people long to go back to life before the collapse.

    “When we get knocked back into the Stone Age, you’re going to have a lot of unhappy people,” he said.

    Jason added, “People will get caught where they don’t want to be. That’s the beauty of being a member [of Fortitude Ranch].”

    Living Large Post-Apocalypse

    Located in central Kansas, Survival Condos is a former missile silo turned into a luxury survival shelter on the higher end of the affordability spectrum.

    Developer Larry Hall considers the project life-affirming in a world gone further off the deep end.

    “For me, I took an intercontinental ballistic missile site that used to have a weapon of mass destruction designed to kill hundreds of thousands of people. I turned it into the complete opposite,” Hall said.

    “It’s now a green facility, state-of-art technology that protects families.”

    Fortitude Ranch Nevada is located in a remote northwestern part of the state, far from any city or town on March 2, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    He admits the condos are expensive. A 3,600-square-foot Penthouse unit starts at $4.5 million. A full-floor unit measuring 1,840 square feet costs $3 million, and a half-floor condo runs about $1.5 million.

    “People buy what they can afford and what they perceive they need protection from,” Hall told The Epoch Times.

    “I decided there was a missing niche market in the luxury high-end bunker where people didn’t know how long they’d need a bunker.”

    Hall said before COVID-19, people used to scoff at survival shelters as a fringe market demographic.

    The question was always, “What are the chances of society collapsing?”

    Then came the lockdowns, the urban riots, and the general chaos in 2020.

    Hall said the events of the past three years have only vindicated the preparedness mindset. Survival Condo is now considered the “Gold Standard” for survival shelters.

    Raising sheep is one of the main activities at Fortitude Ranch Nevada on March 2, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    “I never get asked that question [will society collapse] anymore,” Hall said. “You’ve pretty much become mainstream. People realize the value of having a hardened property to go to and that extra degree of safety.”

    He said Survival Condo’s purpose is to make sure that clients will survive the collapse and thrive in the process.

    To that end, Survival Condo hired a psychologist to aid in the project design for extended off-grid living. The psychologist looked at basic human physical and emotional needs—from the need for optimum lighting and color schemes to foster a positive mood, better food quality to improve personal satisfaction, and recreational activities to keep tenants happy and fit.

    “The single thing you need to have to keep people from going stir crazy—what people call cabin fever—is to have a good quality of food,” Hall said.

    The original complex held 72 silos. Hall bought two silos with options to purchase another four, built out the first silo, and is working on completing the second.

    An aerial view of the dome as it is built over the existing missile silo at Survival Condo in central Kansas. (Courtesy of Survival Condo)

    The finished silo is 15 stories tall and built with a military-grade redundant air filtration system to handle nuclear, chemical, and biological attacks. The facility has redundant power sources and more than 20,000 square feet of floor space under the dome.

    Each fully furnished condo unit has a biometric key entry. Other high-end amenities include a custom theater, bar and lounge, a library, indoor swimming pool and spa, workout facility, command and control center, hydroponic gardens, a medical first-aid clinic, a digital weather station, and homeschooling classrooms.

    Hall said there’s a long waiting list for units when they become available.

    “Ours is way up at the top for a reason—military-grade everything with high engineering,” Hall said. “The book has done everything with very tough standards.”

    “We’re constantly keeping the place in a state of readiness. We could scale it up if we needed to be here for an extended time.”

    The interior floor plan for Survival Condo, a former intercontinental ballistic missile silo turned condominium in central Kansas. (Courtesy of Survival Condo)

    That time now appears close as the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists stands 90 seconds away from midnight.

    Whether a natural or man-made disaster is on the horizon—”pick a poison,” Hall said. “All result in one common denominator, and that’s civil unrest.

    “People are afraid and trying to get by and survive. So, ultimately, you need something where you can sleep with both eyes closed and don’t have to worry about a gang of MS-13 guys kicking in your door.”

    “The whole thing is you have a place designed to protect families,” Hall said. “We’ve got a facility that can do that. We’re not out to muck with anybody. We want to be out of sight and mind, do our best to survive, not burden society, and take care of ourselves.”

    Miller, at Fortitude Ranch, said the demand for survival ranch franchises has been growing exponentially.

    “We’re going like mad now through franchising. We’ll double our number of locations this year. It could take off even more,” Miller said.

    A furnished condominium at Survival Condo in central Kansas. (Courtesy of Survival Condo)

    But even with 100 new franchise locations, “that’s still a tiny percentage of the population,” he said. “We’re not even close to handling 1 percent of the population.”

    Miller said people owe it to themselves and the future to survive the coming collapse as the opportunities to rebuild will be “phenomenal.”

    “I hope the United States will recover and follow the Constitution. We don’t follow it today,” Miller said.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/06/2023 – 21:00

  • Ferrari Named Top Car Pick Over Tesla At Morgan Stanley
    Ferrari Named Top Car Pick Over Tesla At Morgan Stanley

    Could the automobile love affair at Morgan Stanley be shifting?

    Analyst Adam Jonas, long known for his affection of Tesla and Elon Musk, has penned a note to start this week introducing Ferrari as a top pick by the firm, which has raised its price target on the company to $310 from $280.

    Jonas has an overweight rating on the name and called the company “the most defensive name in his coverage” that avoids much of the “EV hype and EV risk”, according to a Monday morning Bloomberg wrap-up.

    “We believe RACE is the best positioned company in our coverage in a highly uncertain macroeconomic and geopolitical tape. In addition to its strong fundamentals, we believe RACE has levers to pull for both growth or downside protection, within a wide dispersion of macro outcomes,” Jonas and peers wrote in their note.

    “Ferrari has built its moat on scarcity, desirability, and brand values around performance (“driving thrills”) and luxury which is the key driver for continued demand. These factors make it hard for a competitor to replicate the Ferrari model overnight. In our view, buying a Ferrari today is not so much about ‘the sound of the engine’ or the ‘performance’ in and of itself,” it continues.

    “Rather, we think it is a totality of factors that drive customers to want the elements that a Ferrari possesses: scarcity, desirability, connotations of luxury and performance (stemming from Formula 1 racing pedigree),and exquisite Italian design and engineering. The brand and scarcity drive unprecedented demand for the vehicles, which Ferrari is able to leverage with tight supply control.”

    Jonas also likes that Ferrari has the longest order backlog, greatest earnings visibility and highest pricing power of any of the companies he covers, the Bloomberg note also said. 

    Long-term opportunities, a predictable business model and a “near unmatched brand and market moat” were cited as additional factors for the believe in Ferrari. 

    Jonas wrote: “We believe investors over-estimate the risk of EVs to Ferrari and misprice the inherent opportunity in EVs coupled with continuing the ICE business on an exclusive basis with price points for ICE approaching $1mn/unit.” 

    “The key concern we field from investors on RACE is the shift to EVs. Although the shift away from the ICE engine which has been at the heart of RACE’s brand since inception presents a profound shift in Ferrari’s powertrain technology, it need not threaten the company’s DNA. We believe the engine is only part of the reason why Ferrari has been able to create one the strongest brands in the world,” it reads. 

    The firm also didn’t seem to see risks of Ferrari shifting their model to EV from traditional ICE, concluding that Ferrari “can offer an EV that will be just as high in demand as what investors are used to from ICE.”

    Broadly, however, Jonas is getting more cautious about the sector in general, citing the “rebound in equity prices and continuing signs of unaffordability and auto credit pressure”. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/06/2023 – 20:40

  • SPLC Attorney Among 23 ANTIFA Rioters Arrested On Domestic Terrorism Charges
    SPLC Attorney Among 23 ANTIFA Rioters Arrested On Domestic Terrorism Charges

    Submitted by Blue Apples

    Since late January when a fatal shooting between Atlanta-area police and ANTIFA-affiliated broke out, Georgia’s capital has become ground zero of the continually fomenting hostilities from the radical leftist group. The tenuous situation saw that violence continue at the site of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center. Under the pretense of a “mostly peaceful protest,” rioters unleashed their fury by destroying construction equipment at the site of where Georgia State Patrol Troopers had exchanged gunfire with protesters occupying the site in late January. The latest ANTIFA insurgency resulted in the arrest of 23 people on domestic terrorism charges.

    One arrest in particular sticks out. Thomas Webb Jurgens was one of the 23 arrested on Sunday according to DeKalb County arrest records. Jurgens arrest is notable because he is a staff attorney at the Decatur, Georgia office of the Southern Povery Law Center. Ironically, the SPLC have cultivated a partnership with state and federal law enforcement across the United States to designate and investigate extremists groups like those engaged in domestic terrorism across the country. Now, they are in a position where it’s difficult to unequivocally deny the criticism levied against them that their own members qualify to be designated among those ranks.

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    According to Jurgens’ LinkedIn page, he joined the SPLC in September 2021 as a new hire to its Economic Justice Project. He presently is admitted to both the Georgia and Florida state bar associations. Jurgens had graduated with his Juris Doctor from the University of Georgia School of Law, the campus of which is located in Athens, Georgia. The campus is just 60 miles from Atlanta where he was arrested.

    The Atlanta Police department detailed how the events leading to Jurgens arrest unfolded. Those arrested initially convened under the cover of gathering for a protest before events turned violent. “They changed into black clothing and entered the construction area and began to throw large rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks at police officers.” according to Atlanta police who responded to the scene of the crimes. Footage released by the police department shows approximately 150 masked rioters breaking into the construction site. 35 were detained in total, with 23 already being charged and the potential charges looming for the remaining 12.

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    Fortunately, unlike the police engagement in January, the events from Sunday evening went without any serious injuries or fatalities. No indication that any of the arrested ANTIFA supporters were armed with a firearm has arisen yet either. Despite that outcomes, Atlanta police aren’t viewing that good fortune as an auspice of what lies ahead. Officials cataloged Sunday night’s arrests as a catalyst for reactionary violence in the coming days. Police department officials forewarned “with protests planned for the coming days, the Atlanta Police Department, in collaboration with law enforcement partners, have a multi-layered strategy that includes reaction and arrest.”

    Following violence during the “Night of Rage” ANTIFA organized in response to January’s shooting, Georgia Governor Brian P. Kemp issued a response indicating that state prosecutors would execute a new strategy to prosecuted rioters under domestic terrorism charges. Kemp’s Attorney General, Chris Carr announced his office’s intention to continue to pursue sweeping indictments against ANTIFA members for domestic terrorism continuing to riot. Carr also took the media to task for categorizing ANTIFA members as protesters. The arrest of 23 more ANTIFA rioters, including the SPLC’s Thomas Jurgens, conveys the commitment to a concerted effort between Georgia’s law enforcement and attorney general’s office to prosecute rioters to the furthest extent of the law.

    The SPLC could not be reached for comment and has released no official statement regarding Jurgens’ arrest. In addition to domestic terrorism charges, Jurgens faces potential discipline from the bar associations he is admitted to in Georgia and Florida which could result in the loss of his license to practice law. The revelation of his arrest should also be cause for law enforcement officials around the country to reassess their working relationship with the SPLC. If Jurgens’ arrest says anything about the non-profit, it’s that their offices are a place where hate groups are apparently being cultivated instead of persecuted.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/06/2023 – 20:20

  • Russia Successfully Dodging Sanctions To Secure Semiconductors For Military Tech
    Russia Successfully Dodging Sanctions To Secure Semiconductors For Military Tech

    One astute geopolitical blog has issued a report exploring the many ways which sanctions on Russia have come back to bite their issuers. The same author had also clearly one year ago predicted precisely the scenario unfolding now.

    Over the weekend, Bloomberg explored another key area where President Putin has been given a lifeline via third party countries such as Turkey, China the UAE, Kazakhstan and Serbia when it comes to semiconductors which are vital to military tech and other industries.

    Source: Bloomberg

    Bloomberg writes that “Russia looks to be successfully working around European Union and Group of Seven sanctions to secure crucial semiconductors and other technologies for its war in Ukraine, according to a senior European diplomat.”

    Citing the source, the report continues: “Russian imports in general have largely returned to their pre-war 2020 levels and analysis of trade data suggests that advanced chips and integrated circuits made in the EU and other allied nations are being shipped to Russia through third countries such as Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Kazakhstan, the diplomat said, pointing to those private assessments.”

    This despite sweeping EU sanctions and restrictions impacting hundreds of items, including crucial technologies, meant to cripple the Russian economy and its the defense sector in particular.

    Russia’s sources of imported chips before the war and before sanctions (2017-July 2021)…

    As for China, Bloomberg observes: 

    Shipments from China to Russia have also surged as Beijing plays an increasingly important role in supplying Moscow, the diplomat added, asking not to be named discussing sensitive information. Those countries outside the EU haven’t sanctioned Russia themselves, but most have repeatedly denied they are helping the Kremlin.

    Russian does actually produce domestic semiconductors; however, it’s long been known that government agencies and large private companies often refuse to use them due to their low quality and the manufacturer’s inability to keep pace with technological demands.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/06/2023 – 20:00

  • Victor Davis Hanson: Life Among The Ruins
    Victor Davis Hanson: Life Among The Ruins

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AmGreatness.com,

    American society is facing three existential crises not unlike those that overcame the late Roman, and a millennium later, terminal Byzantine, empires.

    Premodern Barbarism

    We are suffering an epidemic of premodern barbarism. The signs unfortunately appear everywhere. Over half a million homeless people crowd our big-city downtowns.

    Most know the result of such Medieval street living is unhealthy, violent, and lethal for all concerned. Yet no one knows—or even seems to worry about—how to stop it.

    So public defecation, urination, fornication, and injection continue unabated. Progressive urban pedestrians pass by holding their noses, averting their gazes, and accelerating the pace of their walking. The greenest generation in history allows its sidewalks to become pre-civilizational sewers. In a very brief time, we all but have destroyed the downtowns of our major cities—which will increasingly become vacant in a manner like the 6th-century A.D. Roman forum.

    All accept that defunding the police, no-cash bail, Soros-funded district attorneys, and radical changes in jurisprudence have destroyed deterrence. The only dividend is the unleashing of a criminal class to smash-and-grab, carjack, steal, burglarize, execute, and assault—with de facto immunity. Instead we are sometimes lectured that looting is not a crime, but lengthy incarceration is criminally immoral.

    We have redefined felonies as misdemeanors warranting no punishment. Misdemeanors are now infractions that are not criminal. Infractions we treat as lifestyle choices. Normality, not criminality, is deemed criminal. We all know this will not work, but still wonder why it continues.

    Many among the middle classes of our cities who can flee or move, do so—like 5th-century equestrians who left Rome for rural fortified farms before the onslaught of the Ostrogoths and Visigoths. For most of our lives we were lectured that the old southern states—Florida, Tennessee, Texas—were backward and uninviting. Now even liberals often flee to them, leaving behind supposedly cosmopolitan Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, and New York. The more people leave the blue states, the more those states praise themselves as utopian.

    The less well-off, without the means to leave, hope that their environs have hit bottom so things can only improve. The elite who caused this premodern catastrophe assumes they will always have the money and wherewithal to ensure that themselves and their own can navigate around or even profit from the barbarism they unleashed. For them the critic, not the target of criticism, is the greater threat.

    The hard urban work of the 1990s and early 2000s—cleaner, safer subways, secure nightlife downtown, clean sidewalks, low vacancy rates, little vagrancy, and litter-free streets—so often has been undone, deliberately so. We are descending to the late 1960s and 1970s wild streets—if we are lucky the mayhem does not devolve even further.

    A mere 10 years ago, if an American learned that a man was arrested for clubbing, robbing, or shooting innocents, and yet would be released from custody that day of his crime, he would have thought it an obscenity. Now he fears that often the criminal will not even be arrested.

    A once secure border no longer exists. Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas simply demolished it and allowed 6-7 million foreign nationals to cross illegally into the United States without audits—to the delight of their apparent constituent, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

    What would shame a Biden or Mayorkas? What would change their minds? Billions of dollars spent on social services for the lawbreaking at the expense of the American poor?

    Would 100,000 annual lethal overdoses—12 times more than those who died over 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan combined—from drugs that flow across the open border sway them? Or would it take 200,000, or 300,000 deaths before Joe Biden relented and ceased his chuckling?

    What does a people do when its highest officials simply renounce their oaths of office and refuse to enforce laws they don’t like? Everyone knows the border will eventually have to become secure, but none have any idea whether it will take another 20, 30, or 50 million illegal entrants and 1 million more fentanyl deaths to close it.

    Polls show race relations have hit historic lows. Much of the ecumenicalism of the post-Civil Rights movement seems squandered—almost deliberately so.

    The Left now rarely mentions Martin Luther King, Jr. or even the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964. Perhaps it knows it has violated the spirit and legacy of both.

    Today, our identity politics leaders believe that the color of our skin, not the content of our character, certainly matters more. The practitioners of the new tribalism in some sense fear outlawing segregation and discrimination by race. They know to do so would end racially restricted houses and safe spaces, racially exclusive graduations, and race-based admissions, hiring, and promotion on campus.

    Read Professor Ibram X. Kendi and his message is implicit. For him, the problem with a Jim Crow-like system was not segregation or racial chauvinism per se, but merely who was doing the victimizing and who were the victims: so the original racism was bad; but racism in reverse is good.

    We abhor violence, racism, and misogyny—in the abstract. Yet the entire hip-hop industry would find no audience—or so we are told by its appeasers—if rappers refrained from “ho” misogyny, brags of violence against law enforcement, and self-described proprietary use of the N-word.

    Most know that young black males under 30 commit violent crimes at well over 10 times their 3-4 percent demographic of the population—so often victimizing the nonwhite. All know that reality must remain unmentionable even as its causes need to be debated and discussed if lives are to be saved. Yet the greater crime seems not the crime itself, but even mentioning crime.

    Postmodern Abyss

    Postmodernism in our age is deadlier even than premodernism. Sexually explicit drag shows that allow the attendance of children 20 years ago would have been outlawed—by liberals worried over the trauma of the young watching performance-art simulated sex.

    Now the children come last and the performers first—as ratified by the same liberals. But to fathom the new transitioning, simply learn from ancient transitioning and gender dysphoria, an unhappy classical theme from Catullus’ Attis poem (stimulatus ibi furenti rabie, vagus/ devolsit ili acuto sibi pondera silice/ itaque ut relicta sensit sibi membra sine viro) to Giton in Petronius’ Satyricon.

    Current “science” is now synonymous with ideology, religion, or superstition. Lockdowns, mRNA vaccinations, masking, transgenderism, “climate change,” and green power brook no dissent. They are declared scientifically correct in the manner that the sun used to revolve around the earth, and any dissenting Galileo or Copernicus is cancel-cultured, doxxed, and deplatformed.

    It is now verboten to cite the causes of the current upswing. We must remain silent about the classical exegeses that cults, pornography, and constructed sexual identities, when not biological, were the manifestations of a bored culture’s affluence (luxus), leisure (otium), and decadence (licentia/dissolutio).

    The classical analyses of an elite collapse focus on a falling birth rate, a scarce labor force, ubiquitous abortion, an undermanned military, and a shrinking population. We suffer all that and perhaps more still.

    Millions of young men are detached and ensconced in solitude, their indebted 20s too often consumed with video-gaming, internet surfing, or consumption of porn. Many  suffer from prolonged adolescence. Many assume that they are immune from criticism, given that the alternative of getting married, having children, finding a full-time job, and buying a house is society’s new abnormal.

    Rarely has an elite society become so Victorian and yet so raunchy. A slip with an anachronistic “Gal” or “Honey” can get one fired. Meanwhile, grabbing one’s genitals while pregnant on stage before 120 million viewers is considered a successful Super Bowl extravaganza.

    Our army is short of its annual recruitment by 25 percent. We all suspect but do not say out loud the cause. The stereotyping of poor and middle-class white males as both raging and biased, and yet expected yet to fight and die in misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, has finally convinced the parents of these 18-year-olds to say, “no more.”

    Need we say anything about the lack of efficacy or morality of the Department of Justice, FBI, or CIA?

    Or rather is there anything the FBI will not do?

    Doctor court evidence? Hire Twitter to suppress the news? Monitor parents at school board meetings? Allow directors to lie under oath or “misremember” before Congress?

    Swiping clean subpoenaed phones? Hiring fakers to compile dirt on a presidential candidate—and then using that known smear to hoodwink a judge to allow spying on Americans?

    Suppressing evidence on a laptop to warp an election? Raiding an ex-president’s home with a SWAT-like team? Spying on Catholics in mass? Storming a home full of children of a man accused of a politically incorrect misdemeanor?

    The more the military has been stalemated in Iraq, humiliated in Afghanistan, and dreading what China will soon do or what Iran will even sooner let off, the more it insists our priorities should be diversity, equity, and inclusion. Will that escapism ensure more lethal pilots, tank commanders, and Marine company commanders?

    The mindsets of too many of our new generations of command are twofold: first to be promoted by virtue signaling woke policies that they must know eventually will hamper combat readiness, and then in the future to rotate at retirement into multimillionaire status by leveraging past expertise for defense contractors. Keep that in mind and almost every publicly uttered nonsense from our highest in the Pentagon makes perfect sense.

    Them

    There is a third challenge. Our enemies—illiberal, deadly, and vengeful—have concluded we are more effective critics of ourselves than are they. They enjoy our divided nation, torn apart by racial incivility, dysfunctional cities, and woke madness. (Notice how even the communists long ago dropped deadly Maoist wokeism, or how the Russians viewed the Soviet commissariat as antithetical to their military and economic agendas.)

    Iran believes that this present generation of Americans would likely allow it to nuke Israel rather than stop its proliferation. China assumes that Taiwan is theirs and the only rub is how to destroy or absorb it without losing too many global markets and income. Russia  conjectures that the more we trumpet its impending defeat, the more it will destroy Eastern Ukraine and call such a desert peace.

    Our “friends” can be as dangerous as our enemies.

    A visitor from another world might conclude Mexico has done more damage to America than North Korea, Iran, and Russia combined. It has, by intent, flooded our border with 20 million illegal aliens. It has allowed cartels with Chinese help to conduct multibillion-dollar profiteering by killing 100,000 Americans per year (did the Kremlin ever match that tally in a half century of the Cold War?).

    Mexico drains $60 billion from its expatriates on the expectation that American subsidies will free up their cash to be sent home. The more the cartels run wild, the more money trickles down—while their top drug enforcement official Genaro García Luna was found guilty in a New York courtroom  for collusion with the cartels.

    How did all of this so quickly erode our great country? Our crisis was not the next generation of foreign Hitlers and Stalins. It was not earthquakes, floods, or even pandemics. It was not endemic poverty and want. It was not a meager inheritance from past generations of incompetents. Nor was it a dearth of natural resources or bounty.

    Instead our catastrophe arose from our most highly educated, the wealthiest and most privileged in American history with the greatest sense of self-esteem and sanctimoniousness. Sometime around the millennium, they felt their genius could change human nature and bring an end to history—if only they had enough power to force hoi polloi to follow their abstract and bankrupt theories that they had no intention of abiding by themselves.

    And then the few sowed the wind, and so the many now reap their whirlwind.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/06/2023 – 19:40

  • Pentagon Sees Chinese 'Spy Cranes' At US Ports As "Trojan Horse"
    Pentagon Sees Chinese ‘Spy Cranes’ At US Ports As “Trojan Horse”

    US officials have voiced concerns that Chinese-manufactured cranes operating at major US ports and various military bases may serve as a “Trojan horse” for Beijing’s intelligence-gathering program, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

    According to national security and Pentagon officials, the ship-to-shore cranes, produced by China’s ZPMC, are equipped with advanced sensors capable of detecting and monitoring shipping containers, raising alarms that Beijing could gather intelligence about the materials being transported to or from the US ports or military bases. 

    “Cranes can be the new Huawei,” Bill Evanina, a former top US counterintelligence official, told WSJ. US officials have banned Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies from US communication networks on fears of spying. And he said the extent of the spying goes beyond Huawei into other forms, such as cranes. 

    “It’s the perfect combination of legitimate business that can also masquerade as clandestine intelligence collection,” Evanina said. 

    A spokesperson from the Chinese Embassy in Washington said the new panic around cranes is “paranoia-driven” and an attempt to obstruct trade and economic cooperation with China. The person added:

    “Playing the ‘China card’ and floating the ‘China threat’ theory is irresponsible and will harm the interests of the US itself.” 

    The concerns about the alleged ‘spy’ cranes come after a recent dispute between the US and China regarding high-altitude balloons. In response to a recent spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina, the Biden administration deployed a stealth fighter that successfully shot down the balloon with a Sidewinder missile. 

     

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/06/2023 – 19:20

  • Illinois Torched Business And Common Sense With Its Biometric Privacy Law
    Illinois Torched Business And Common Sense With Its Biometric Privacy Law

    By Mark Glennon of Wirepoints

    How sadly ironic that White Castle became the latest victim of the Illinois General Assembly’s malfeasance. Its stores are modeled after the Chicago Water Tower, which survived the Chicago Fire and stands as a monument to the spirit of tenacity and resilience that once prevailed to rebuild the city.

    Today, Mrs. O’Leary’s cow is the state’s own government. It set off what the law firm Mayer Brown rightly calls a “six-alarm fire for businesses with customers or employees in Illinois.”

    BIPA, the Biometric Information Privacy Act, arises from a legitimate concern, as most laws do. In this case, it’s privacy of personal biometric information such as fingerprints, DNA and distinctive elements of things like face and retina features. Some of that data is used widely in the business world for things like time management, security, wellness programs and worker safety. The law requires informed consent prior to collecting the data, mandates protection and retention guidelines and bans profiting from selling the data.

    That’s fine, but the problem is that the law imposes penalties wildly out of proportion to the seriousness of noncompliance or amount of harm done by a violation.

    It can be a death penalty for violators. And the law allows anybody affected to sue for those fines.

    That’s a firebomb recipe for personal injury lawyers. Nearly 2,000 lawsuits alleging violations of BIPA have been filed since 2017, “yielding a series of massive settlements and judgments,” as Reuters reported. Defendants have included Facebook, which paid $650 million to settle a BIPA class action and BNSF Railway Co, which a jury ordered to pay $228 million to truck drivers. Anybody thinking about suing enjoys a very generous five-year statute of limitations.

    Then came last week’s decision on White Castle from the Illinois Supreme Court, pouring accelerant on the fire.

    Separate BIPA violations occurred every time an employee used White Castle’s system that required its employees to scan their fingerprints to access their pay stubs and computers, the court ruled. And BIPA authorizes statutory damages of $1,000 for “each violation” of the statute, or $5,000 if the violation is intentional or reckless.

    The top court’s decision therefore could mean a $17 billion liability for White Castle since some 9,500 current and past employees had used the system for years, as a dissenting opinion says, citing White Castle’s estimate. The court’s decision “could easily lead to annihilative liability for businesses,” says the dissent.

    That’s what makes the decision terrifying for many other businesses that use biometrics. Every instance of use could mean a penalty of $1,000 or $5,000.

    The decision “leaves the plaintiffs’ bar with an all-you-can-eat biometric café,” wrote the law firm Winston & Strawn in its newsletter.

    A liability that big would destroy White Castle many times over. It’s not that big a company compared to many publicly owned food chains and is privately owned.

    Sorry, said the majority of the court said in their opinion, the plain language of the statute required that result. If this needs to be fixed it’s up to the General Assembly. “Ultimately,” the majority opinion says, “we continue to believe that policy-based concerns about potentially excessive damage awards under the Act are best addressed by the legislature.”

    That’s the real takeaway – the General Assembly should have fixed this long ago. The liabilities being imposed under BIPA have been burning out of control for several years, and the ruling making each instance subject to a penalty has long been feared, having percolated up through the courts for several years. Bills to fix it have languished.

    The dissent argued that only one violation should be recognized for any employee for the first time fingerprints are collected, and that the law must have been intended that way.

    Right or wrong, that’s now water under the bridge. The top court has ruled. Only the General Assembly can fix the statute.

    One next potential victim of BIPA may be the cannabis industry, an increasingly important revenue force for the state, according to lawyers at Dentons U.S. “BIPA damages could be a death knell to cannabis operators,” they wrote, explaining,

    The cannabis industry has placed a strong emphasis on security for grow facilities and dispensaries. These enhanced security measures are a must to protect employees handling largely cash transactions and customers purchasing a heavily regulated product.  But, in taking these reasonable security measures, the cannabis industry has opened itself up to litigation surrounding BIPA’s stringent requirements.

    The majority opinion in White Castle’s case says, “We respectfully suggest that the legislature review these policy concerns and make clear its intent regarding the assessment of damages under the Act.”

    That’s being too nice. Nobody should be “respectfully suggesting” anything to legislature about this. They should have fixed BIPA long ago. Fix it now.

    In the meantime, any business touching Illinoisans in any way that uses biometrics should follow the advice of many lawyers: At least mitigate your exposure by immediately reviewing policies and practices related to biometric information to ensure BIPA compliance, including biometric use for employee timekeeping.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/06/2023 – 19:00

  • Luongo: The War For The Dollar Is Already Over, Part I
    Luongo: The War For The Dollar Is Already Over, Part I

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

    And the Fed has won. In the words of Ambassador Kosh from the classic television series Babylon 5, “The avalanche has started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.”

    For nearly the past two years I’ve been a nearly lone voice in the wilderness questioning the financial orthodoxy over the behavior of the Federal Reserve. It started with an innocent, if not openly naïve question back in June of 2021, “Could the Fed actually be getting off the globalist train?”

    When I asked that question it was just days after musing to my Patrons on the eve of the June 16th, 2021 FOMC meeting that the Fed would have to step in and defend the US dollar. The dollar’s weakness during the Trump presidency couldn’t last forever. Even then I didn’t have a good answer as to how they would do it.

    I just knew, intuitively, that they had to.

    Back then there was no indication that the Fed was ready to begin raising rates. But by raising the Reverse Repo payout rate 0.05% above the Fed Funds Rate the Fed started the avalanche of US dollar strength that has persisted through to today.

    And the pebbles screaming, “Pivot!” have been consistently overrun by the reversal of flow of US dollars from overseas back home, now getting extinguished at an unprecedented rate.

    It was that extreme response by the market to the RRP rate that led to my asking that question. Nothing more, nothing less.

    The implications of that question were far reaching. It led to a whole series of questions as to the knock-on effects. I wrote about some of these in the days after the Geneva summit where President “Biden” and Vladimir Putin hashed out a ceasefire over Ukraine. In that article I didn’t get everything right, but the main point, that the Fed was no longer willing to go along with the destruction of the private formation of capital, has more than held true.

    Here’s the most important point:

    The Fed is now ready, I think, to go to war with Davos over the future of money and they aren’t ready to hand over the keys to the candy store to a bunch of European commies, at least while also cutting Wall St. out completely of the New World Order…

    …The plan {Davos’} is pretty obvious at this point: hand over the keys to capital formation to the central banks and destroy all risk assessment. Commercial banks aren’t needed.  Only socially acceptable projects going forward will get funded. This is what Christine Lagarde wants with her new all-European Green Stock Exchange she introduced at Ankara last week.

    But what’s clear to me now is that Davos went for the boob too fast on Prom Night at the Eschaton.  It’s too much, too soon and the acceleration is exposing its flanks.  Why would China and the U.S. go to war over COVID-19 and trade issues when they are being manipulated into it by a bunch of feckless Eurocrats with delusions of adequacy?

    It was the possibility that the Fed, who ultimately answers to US commercial banking interests, is pursuing its own agenda that I explored in a recent podcast with Danielle Dimartino Booth, hoping to get her perspective on this widened lens of Fed policy rather than just focusing on inflation. In my opinion, Danielle more than delivered.

    One of the biggest complaints about the Fed’s policies since the 2008 financial crisis has been that it has acted as the Central Bank of the World, rather than the Central Bank of the US. What I find hilarious, honestly, if not a little pathetic, is that the moment the Fed starts acting like a domestic central bank, the wailing and gnashing of teeth comes from all corners.

    I expect that from globalists and vultures who love taking the Fed’s zero-cost dollars and levering them up to feather their own nests to build their own private empires in the shadow banking system. I didn’t expect that from the alternative economics space, however.

    It’s like the Fed had just become everyone’s punching bag and that was that.

    Ok, rant off. Back to the avalanche at hand.

    Think back to 2021, or even the beginning of 2022, and remember that no one could even conceive of where we’d be today – the Fed Funds Rate at 4.75%, likely going to 5% in less than two weeks, and the term structure of dollar futures markets reluctantly admitting to a terminal rate between 5.50% and 5.75%.

    I argued strenuously that in order for FOMC Chair Jerome Powell to make this new sovereign US monetary policy stick, he would have to ‘pull a Volcker’ and raise rates aggressively. This would expose the lies of the “Biden” administration about deflation and the need for trillions more in COVID-19 relief funds — the Build Back Better bill.

    It would uncover who on Capitol Hill was aligned with the Fed and the New York Banks it represents, or, at least, who had their backing — Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D_WV) — and who was actively working against them. — Joe Biden, Federal Reserve Vice-Chair Lael Brainard, the Democratic Party and most of the Republican Party and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

    Even as I was making these arguments I never thought Powell would actually do it.

    Then he did it.

    And here we are today (well, March 3rd’s closing).

    When I say markets reluctantly acceded to the Fed’s program I mean that just one month ago these curves were all signaling a Fed “Pivot” at 5% and that it would happen in June. Now the Fed Funds Futures is essentially flat at 5.45% until December.

    But these curves are highlighting for me exactly what I’ve been preaching for the past two years. The Fed, through aggressive rate hikes and fundamental changes to its transmission of monetary policy, has placed the biggest burden on on US dollar markets overseas, not domestically.

    Moreover, every major shift in policy, the statements coming from Powell, and the upcoming changes to US dollar markets themselves have supported this idea.

    All of this was taking place against a gradual change in the foundation of US dollar markets phased in over a five-year period; the shift from LIBOR as the debt-indexing rate in US dollars globally to SOFR.

    As of today there are three major futures markets to coordinate the supply of US dollars through time, the Eurodollar, the Fed Funds, and now SOFR.

    But all of these ultimately were subservient to LIBOR because that’s where the overnight money markets took their cues directly from. The futures markets reacted to the LIBOR call out.

    Remember in January 2022, the penultimate phase of SOFR’s replacement for LIBOR took place. That was when all new US debt had to reference SOFR as the baseline rate, rather than LIBOR. LIBOR was ending in June 30th, 2023.

    Keep that date in mind. Because it looms large over everything currently happening.

    Go back to what I’ve been saying for over a year, the Fed is not raising rates to combat inflation.

    The Fed is raising rates to drain offshore dollar markets and force the offshore dollar trade to take its cues from the domestic cost of dollars as priced by SOFR, not LIBOR.

    If you still haven’t been convinced of this argument, fair cop, but then why is the Eurodollar futures curve, at the first sign of bond markets finally believing the Fed is serious about not “pivoting,” trading significantly above both the Fed Funds and the SOFR futures markets? (see graph of yield curves above).

    The spread being positive (26 basis points positive!) means the demand for US dollars overseas is far greater than the demand for them domestically. That spread is the pain threshold not for the Fed but for, primarily, the ECB and the Bank of England.

    As much as we would like to blame the Fed for everything happening, creating scapegoats are simply a coping mechanism for being unable or unwilling to reconcile what is happening versus what we would like to see happen.

    They are a reflection of our anxiety about that which we can’t control. And you can argue that I’ve done that with my incessant invoking the Davos bogeyman lurking behind the scenes, and, again, fair enough.

    But that’s why we go deeper and ask the questions necessary to map out where everyone’s incentives are and how they would react to specific pressures changes in policy or personnel.

    Bye Bye Eurodollars, Hello SOFR

    Two years ago the idea that SOFR would successfully replace Eurodollars as the global market yield curve for US dollars was laughable. When SOFR was introduced in 2017 it was phased in with a five-year rollout plan, culminating in January 2022’s mandate. SOFR was the indexing rate of the US and that was that.

    In December of 2021 SOFR futures traded around 290,000 contracts per day. By this report by IFR going from numbers from the CME, volume surged to 964,000 contracts.

    Average daily volumes in SOFR futures reached 964,000 contracts in the two weeks ending February 4, according to derivatives exchange CME Group, up from about 290,000 in December and more than five times higher than their September level.

    That was last year, less than a month before Powell began squeezing the Eurodollar markets to death.

    Oh, but wait there’s more from Feb 2022:

    But SOFR futures have also closed the gap this year to Eurodollar futures, the Libor-linked contracts that have long been a mainstay of rates trading markets and that SOFR futures are set to supplant altogether from the middle of 2023. SOFR futures volumes as a share of Eurodollar contracts have reached as high as 37% this month, compared with an average of 10% in the final quarter of 2021.

    “There’s been a significant change in behaviour over the last few months and we’re now seeing exponential growth in SOFR futures activity. Records are being broken almost daily,” said Mark Rogerson, head of interest rate products for EMEA at CME Group.

    “We thought there’d be an acceleration moving into 2022 when the regulatory guidance provided a catalyst. We’re now at a point where we’ve achieved critical mass in SOFR futures: liquidity is more than sufficient for almost all customers’ needs.”

    Still not convinced? Why would you be, a year ago SOFR was doing 37% of the mighty Eurodollar’s business. Then let’s flash forward to February of this year with a press release from the CME itself.

     CME Group, the world’s leading derivatives marketplace, today announced new milestones in the growth of its SOFR derivatives contracts, with a single-day record of 7,558,467 SOFR futures and options traded and record open interest (OI) of 35,698,298 contracts on January 12…

    …In the first two weeks of January 2023, the average daily volume (ADV) of SOFR futures and options traded reached 4,674,007 contracts. Month-to-date January 2023 SOFR futures ADV is equivalent to 572% of Eurodollar futures ADV and SOFR options ADV is equivalent to 1,334% of Eurodollar options ADV.

    Ooops.

    If this was a prize fight they would have called it on a technical knockout two rounds ago.

    Oh, but wait, they already did. You see, this is why I sandbagged you for this entire article. One, because I’m an asshole and two, because so are the guys running the CME.

    The CME announced back in October that it was suspending trading in its former champion Eurodollar Futures and Options on Futures contracts dated after (wait for it) June 30th, 2023. The last day of trading will be April 14th. For a little more fun you can check out the CME’s daily SOFR Futures report.

    I think that avalanche is now so loud it could be heard from space. Poor pebbles.

    SOFR knocked out the Eurodollar because that was the Fed’s and New York’s ultimate goal; to replace the global rate for dollars with a domestic one where the capital would have to trade here.

    The globe takes its cues, not from what Europe or Hong Kong wants, but what America needs.

    This stabilizes our banking system, taking back power the Fed had ceded under Greenspan, Bernanke and Yellen and reminding everyone else just who runs Bartertown.

    Most importantly, it pulls liquidity from around the world back into US markets, providing a foundation for a future where Davos doesn’t control DC. There are further implications of this but I’ll leave that for Part II.

    The question I leave you with is the following, “Is there another, bigger avalanche further up the mountain?”

    *  *  *

    Join my Patreon if you don’t want to be a pebble.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/06/2023 – 18:20

  • Ex-CNN President Jeff Zucker Ordered Staff To Ignore Lab-Leak Theory
    Ex-CNN President Jeff Zucker Ordered Staff To Ignore Lab-Leak Theory

    Former CNN president Jeff Zucker ordered network employees not to investigate the Covid-19 lab leak theory because he considered it a “Trump talking point,” a “well-placed” CNN insider told Fox News Digital on Monday.

    The ‘theory’ was recently bolstered by a Department of Energy finding that a lab-leak was the most likely origin for the virus, while FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed last week that his agency believes the same.

    “People are slowly waking up from the fog,” the insider told Fox. “It is kind of crazy that we didn’t chase it harder.”

    Throughout Zucker’s tenure as CNN’s chief, he pulled what was once widely seen as a straight-news organization to an anti-Trump operation. CNN bent over backwards to knock down what former President Trump and members of his administration said lending credibility to the lab-leak theory, as the White House was deemed a nemesis by the network. -Fox News

    Fox News notes that on March 28, 2020, CNN‘s Oliver Darcy published a story with the headline:”Here’s how to debunk coronavirus misinformation and conspiracy theories from friends and family.”

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    “While the coronavirus pandemic has isolated family and friends inside their homes, it has in many cases increased online or over-the-phone communication with loved ones,” Darcy wrote. “But, in some cases, relatives and friends share poor information – whether it is bad science related to how to prevent the virus, debunked rumors about cities being put on lockdown, or conspiracy theories about the origins of Covid-19. While any strain of misinformation is not ideal, misinformation related to a public health crisis has an especially dangerous element to it,” he continued.

    CNN host Fareed Zakaria notably said that “the far right has now found its own virus conspiracy theory” while discussing the lab-leak theory.

    And on Feb. 18, 2020, CNN insisted that it was “possible, yet unlikely, that the lab was connected to the start of the outbreak.”

    Meanwhile, during an interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci – who we recently learned ordered the fabrication of the ‘Proximal Origins’ paper ruling out the lab-leak – CNN‘s John Vause called the lab-leak theory “misinformation.”

    Fauci responded that “theories that are not based on evidence and facts often can really mislead people.”

    A CNN headline from April 2020 reading “Nearly 30% in the US believe a coronavirus theory that’s almost certainly not true” was based on a Pew Research poll taken at the time. 

    “Its origin is up for debate, but it wasn’t made in a lab,” CNN reported. “There’s still much we don’t know about the coronavirus pandemic, but virus experts agree on one piece of its origin story: The virus likely originated in a bat, not in a Chinese lab.” -Fox News

    CNN directly politicized the issue once again on May 5, 2020, when now-fired Chris Cillizza, wrote the headline “Anthony Fauci just crushed Donald Trump’s theory on the origins of the coronavirus,” in which he noted that Trump “has been making the case that the coronavirus originated not in nature but in a lab in Wuhan, China,” but that Fauci’s natural origins claim was more accurate.

    “Now, before we play the game of ‘he said, he said’ remember this: Only one of these two people is a world-renowned infectious disease expert. And it’s not Donald Trump,” wrote Cillizza. “In short, Fauci’s view on the origins of the disease matters a whole lot more than Trump’s opinion about where it came from.”

    “Especially because, outside of Trump and his immediate inner circle, most people in a position to know are very, very skeptical of the Trump narrative that the virus came out of a lab – whether accidentally or on purpose.”

    And of course, it was more than just CNN…

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/06/2023 – 18:11

  • 'The Government Is Trying To Kill Us Now': Low-Income Americans Fume In Mile-Long Food Lines After Pandemic Benefits End
    ‘The Government Is Trying To Kill Us Now’: Low-Income Americans Fume In Mile-Long Food Lines After Pandemic Benefits End

    Over the past year, 18 US states have officially ended pandemic-era states of emergency – including the covid food benefit, while a December mandate from Congress will end aid in March for the other 32 states, along with the District of Columbia, the US Virgin Islands and Guam.

    The collective return to pre-pandemic policies includes enhanced unemployment benefits and child tax credits, as well as a rollback adjustment to Medicaid that boosted enrollment.

    Now, people are waiting up to nine hours in mile-long lines for free food – some of whom say they can only afford to eat once per day, while others say they limit expensive food items such as meat for specific family members, such as growing teenage boys.

    “I thought, ‘Wow, the government is trying to kill us now,” said 63-year-old Danny Blair of Kentucky. Blair, who lives in a mobile home with his wife, survives on his Social Security disability check, the Washington Post reports.

    “They are going to starve us out,” Blair continued, apparently unaware that government assistance provided during the pandemic wasn’t permanent.

    Blair and his wife hop into their truck twice a month at 4 a.m. to ensure they get a few staples at the Hazel Green Food Project’s giveaway. On a recent Friday, they waited nine hours until local prisoners on work duty started loading bags of meat and vegetables, potato chips and cookies into vehicles in one of the nation’s most impoverished communities.

    From the front to the back of the line, the sea of despair and hardship along this desolate Kentucky highway foreshadowed what may be in store for millions of Americans as the federal government ended the remaining pandemic increase in monthly food stamp benefits this week. -WaPo

    As the Post frames it, the pullback of pandemic-related aid could pose a setback to the Biden administration’s efforts to ‘slash poverty’ while building a ‘healthier and more sustainable middle class’ – none of which were the stated goals of the temporary aid.

    “We saw positive benefits from this and less hardship, including for families with children,” said Dottie Rosenbaum, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, who points out that all the free money helped reduce childhood poverty rates in 2021. “We can expect that to reverse now.”

    Following the reduction in benefits, the average SNAP recipient’s benefits are expected to drop by around $90 per month, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. That said, an even greater reduction is in store for seniors and the working poor who receive assistance from other government programs, and will likely qualify for less.

    In Kentucky, many seniors on food stamps saw their monthly benefit drop from $281 to $22 last year after the state ended the pandemic emergency in May, according to local food bank network, Feeding Kentucky.

    Other states are preparing for the same

    “We are bracing, and our agencies, member food banks, food pantries and soup kitchens are not prepared for what is about to hit them,” Said Ohio Association of Foodbanks executive director, Lisa Hamler-Fugitt. “This reduction, and end of the public health emergency, could not be coming at a worse time.”

    Even before the benefits retired this month in Ohio, Hamler-Fugitt said demand at food banks soared last year as retail food prices rose by 11.4 percent nationwide, more than five times the historical annual average. She said Ohio charities and foodbanks served 3.1 million people in the last quarter of 2022, which she called a record and about 600,000 more than were served during the same period in 2021.

    Now, Hamler-Fugitt expects many of the state’s 1.5 million recipients will also be scrambling to find food assistance, adding she projects the benefit reductions will remove $120 million from Ohio’s retail economy each month. -WaPo

    “We estimate we would have to increase our distribution by 15 times to even begin to address this, and we don’t have the resources to do that,” said Hamler-Fugitt. “So hunger rates are going to increase among our seniors, and families, and our children are going to fall behind academically because they are not going to be able to concentrate on empty stomachs.”

    Is this practical?

    In Kentucky, GOP lawmaker Sen. Donald Douglas said during debates that it wasn’t practical to live “under a constant state of emergency.”

    “Let’s ask yourself, should SNAP benefits be a way of life?” he asked. “Now we know it is for some. Should it be a way of life for adults?“

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 03/06/2023 – 18:00

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Mar 06

Today’s News 6th March 2023

  • The Great 'Trifurcation'
    The Great ‘Trifurcation’

    Authored by Andrew Korybko via The Automatic Earth blog,

    Tri-Multipolarity

    The global systemic transition’s impending evolution towards tri-multipolarity could see the US-led West’s Golden Billion, the Sino-Russo Entente, and the de facto Indian-led Global South becoming the most prominent poles in International Relations, below which would be rising powers and regional groups. All actors would balance one another by multi-aligning within and between their respective levels, which might result in stabilizing global affairs much more than the prior unipolar and bi-multipolar orders did.

    International Relations are hurtling towards tripolarity at an astounding pace as a result of the dramatic events that unfolded over the past year and especially the last month. Those readers who haven’t closely been following this megatrend might be taken aback by this assessment, hence the need for them to review the following analyses that’ll place everything into its appropriate context. After listing them, they’ll then be summarized for convenience before explaining what might soon come next:

    The “New Détente”

    To oversimplify the confluence of these complex trends, the US prioritized containing Russia in order to facilitate its containment of China, ergo the latest phase of the Ukrainian Conflict that it provoked via Moscow’s ongoing special operation there. Throughout the course of the NATO-Russian proxy war that followed, the US successfully reasserted its unipolar hegemony over the EU while destabilizing the globalized system upon which China’s grand strategy depends, thus giving it an edge over Beijing.

    This in turn prompted President Xi to initiate an attempted “New Détente” during mid-November’s G20 Summit in Bali, during which time he hoped that China and the US could eventually reach a series of mutual compromises aimed at establishing a “new normal” in their ties. The purpose behind doing so was to delay the end of the bi-multipolar world order within which these two superpowers exerted the most influence over International Relations, which was challenged by India’s rise over the past year.

    India’s Game-Changing Influence

    That South Asian state became a globally significant Great Power during this time as a result of its masterful balancing act between the US-led West’s Golden Billion and the jointly BRICS– & SCO-led Global South of which it’s a part. Its kingmaker role in the New Cold War between them over the direction of the global systemic transition enabled the rest of the Global South to rise in India’s wake, thus revolutionizing International Relations by accelerating the emergence of tri-multipolarity.

    The aforementioned sequence of events imbued the Sino-American “New Détente” with a sense of urgency since both superpowers had self-interested reasons for regaining joint control of these processes, though their attempted rapprochement was unexpectedly derailed by the balloon incident. The resultantly renewed influence of hardline factions over policymaking that occurred in the aftermath of that incident abruptly ended their incipient talks and placed them on the trajectory of intense rivalry.

    China’s Grand Strategic Recalculations

    In parallel with the abovementioned development, NATO declared that it’s in a so-called “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” with Russia, which implied that it’ll redouble its military support to Kiev even at the expense of meeting its own members’ minimum national security needs. Should that bloc succeed in making a breakthrough along the Line of Control (LOC), then it could catalyze the worst-case scenario of Russia’s “Balkanization” if those disadvantageous military-strategic dynamics spiral out of control.

    Both President Putin and his predecessor Medvedev recently warned about that possibility, which remains unlikely for now but still can’t be discounted, thus contributing to China’s gradual recalibration of its approach to the NATO-Russian proxy war when coupled with the end of the “New Détente”. This directly led to the People’s Republic seriously considering the dispatch of lethal aid to its strategic partner in order to offset that worst-case scenario, thus prompting sanctions threats from the West.

    “The Great Trifurcation”

    In the event that China feels forced by NATO to aid Russia in such a way and the Golden Billion imposes sanctions against it in response, then it’s expected that a US-initiated Chinese-European “decoupling” along the lines of the prior US-initiated Russian-European one could potentially follow. Reuters’ exclusive report on Wednesday citing four unnamed US officials and other sources extended credence to the preceding scenario by revealing that the Golden Billion is indeed discussing multilateral sanctions.

    Should those two developments take place – China arming Russia and then being sanctioned by the Golden Billion in a way that provokes their “decoupling” (whether gradual or instantaneous) – then International Relations would enter a period of tri-multipolarity characterized by the prominence of three poles that exert the most influence over global affairs, but whose influence nevertheless wouldn’t be absolute since it’ll be kept in check to an extent by rising powers and regional groups.

    The Tri-Multipolar World Order

    The three expected poles are the US-led West’s Golden Billion, the Sino-Russo Entente, and the de facto Indian-led Global South that’ll likely continue informally assembling into a new Non-Aligned Movement (“Neo-NAM”). Within the last-mentioned will reside rising powers like Brazil, Iran, South Africa, and Turkiye, among others, alongside regional groups like the African Union (AU), ASEAN, and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

    Each of these three categories of actors – the three poles as well as the rising powers and regional groups that sit below the former in this informal international hierarchy – are expected to balance one another by multi-aligning within and between their respective levels. India’s role will be the most important of them all since it’s poised to facilitate trade between the Golden Billion and the Sino-Russo Entente in the event that their potential “decoupling” is taken to an extreme, which can’t be ruled out.

    India’s Kingmaker Role

    Furthermore, India’s earlier virtual hosting of the Voice Of Global South Summit positioned this civilization-state as the center of gravity for its fellow developing peers, which bolsters the likelihood that the Neo-NAM will continue informally assembling around it. From there, India can promote its own financial, technological, and other platforms in order to provide Global South states with a neutral third choice between the Golden Billion and the Sino-Russo Entente’s respective ones in the New Cold War.

    Those rising powers and regional groups that participate within the unofficially Indian-led Neo-NAM could also develop their own platforms too, but India’s might become the standard for facilitating engagement between them at their early stages. In parallel, global fora like the UN and G20 will no longer have much significance other than functioning as talking clubs, while interests-driven and regional groups will replace their prior role in promoting tangible cooperation between countries.

    Concluding Thoughts

    The global systemic transition’s impending evolution towards tri-multipolarity could see the US-led West’s Golden Billion, the Sino-Russo Entente, and the de facto Indian-led Global South becoming the most prominent poles in International Relations, below which would be rising powers and regional groups. All actors would balance one another by multi-aligning within and between their respective levels, which might result in stabilizing global affairs much more than the prior unipolar and bi-multipolar orders did.

    *  *  *

    Background Briefings

    * 7 October 2021: “Towards Bi-Multipolarity”

    * 16 December 2021: “The Neo-NAM: From Vision To Reality”

    * 15 March 2022: “Why Did The U.S. Prioritize Containing Russia Over China?”

    * 26 March 2022: “Russia Is Waging an Existential Struggle in Defense of Its Independence & Sovereignty”

    * 22 May 2022: “Russia, Iran, And India Are Creating A Third Pole Of Influence In International Relations”

    * 6 June 2022: “India Is The Irreplaceable Balancing Force In The Global Systemic Transition”

    * 20 June 2022: “Towards Dual-Tripolarity: An Indian Grand Strategy For The Age Of Complexity”

    * 5 August 2022: “The Russian Foreign Ministry Comprehensively Explained The Global Systemic Transition”

    *  1 October 2022: “The Ukrainian Conflict Might Have Already Derailed China’s Superpower Trajectory”

    * 29 October 2022: “The Importance Of Properly Framing The New Cold War”

    * 19 November 2022: “Analyzing The US-Chinese-Russian-Indian Interplay In The Global Systemic Transition”

    * 29 November 2022: “The Evolution Of Key Players’ Perceptions Across The Course Of The Ukrainian Conflict”

    * 14 December 2022: “India’s Principled Neutrality Reaps Grand Strategic Dividends”

    * 28 December 2022: “The Five Ways That The US Successfully Reasserted Its Hegemony Over Europe In 2022”

    * 1 January 2023: “The New York Times Tried To Throw Shade On India’s Global Rise”

    * 7 January 2023: “India’s Global South Summit Is The Most Important Multilateral Event In Decades”

    * 11 January 2023: “Exposing Western Media’s Narrative Agenda In Spinning The Sino-American New Détente”

    * 4 February 2023: “The Chinese Balloon Incident Could Decisively Shift China’s & The US’ ‘Deep State’ Dynamics”

    * 14 February 2023: “NATO’s Self-Declared ‘Race Of Logistics’ Confirms The Bloc’s Military-Industrial Crisis”

    * 26 February 2023: “China Compellingly Appears To Be Recalibrating Its Approach To The NATO-Russian Proxy War”

    * 28 February 2023: “Just How Drastically Would The World Change If China Armed Russia?”

    * 1 March 2023: “Global Fora Like The UN & G20 Are Gradually Losing Their Importance”

    * 1 March 2023: “Germany Is Lying: Chinese Arms Shipments To Russia Wouldn’t Violate International Law”

    *  *  *

    Support the Automatic Earth with Patreon

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/05/2023 – 23:30

  • Deporting Fentanyl Dealers Violates Sanctuary City Policies, Says SF Supervisor
    Deporting Fentanyl Dealers Violates Sanctuary City Policies, Says SF Supervisor

    Authored by Brad Jones via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    San Francisco County Supervisor Shamann Walton told San Franciscans this week the U.S. shouldn’t deport illegal immigrant drug dealers for selling fentanyl, the deadly synthetic opioid that was largely responsible for nearly 2,000 drug overdose deaths in the city since 2020.

    “There’s been a drug issue in this country for a very long time. But there’s no way we’re going to stand by and allow people to say that one race or immigrants are responsible for these fentanyl deaths,” Walton said at a rally on the steps of City Hall on Feb. 28.

    San Francisco County Supervisor Shamann Walton speaks at a rally at city hall in San Francisco on Feb. 28. (Video screenshot courtesy of JJ Smith)

    Walton defended the city’s sanctuary policies that prohibit city authorities from assisting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in response to a proposal by Supervisor Matt Dorsey to add fentanyl crimes to a list of violent crimes the city uses for cooperating with ICE. Dorsey’s proposal aligns with a recent push for a crackdown on fentanyl dealers initiated by District Attorney Brooke Jenkins.

    Homeless people gather near drug dealers in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco, Calif., on Feb. 22, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    “You cannot violate sanctuary policy for any reason. It goes against the morals of our fabric here in San Francisco, and it also allows people who don’t share our values to persecute people that need us the most,” Walton said at the rally. “People are going crazy over fentanyl because we’re starting to see more white people die from this drug. Where the hell were these people when my mothers and my grandmothers were on crack?”

    J.J. Smith lives in the city’s infamous Tenderloin district, a hotspot for drug use, and he lost his brother to a fentanyl overdose in October. He told The Epoch Times on March 2 that Walton’s remarks came as “a shock” and “didn’t set well with a lot of people, even the black community.”

    Smith said it’s no secret that drug dealers with connections to Honduras largely control the illicit fentanyl trade in the Tenderloin, which is not directly affecting Walton’s district.

    Honduran dealers “are the only people in San Francisco that have large quantities of fentanyl,” he claimed. “We should care because it’s killing everybody, not only white people. And, even if it does kill only white people, who is to say that’s fair?”

    Smith questioned the logic behind lesser punishments for fentanyl dealers when crack dealers in the 1980s and 1990s, including African Americans, were handed long prison sentences for their crimes.

    “But now Walton is speaking about a deadly drug that’s killing more people than any drug that’s ever been on the market,” he said.

    A homeless man sits passed out next to an empty syringe in San Francisco, Calif., on Feb. 23, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    Jacqui Berlinn, co-founder of Mothers Against Drug Addiction and Deaths, told The Epoch Times she was offended by Walton’s comments.

    Berlinn said she was a child during the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s, but that she is now fighting for her son Corey, who is addicted to fentanyl, and “for all citizens of all races” affected by the “poison flooding our cities.”

    “We have members fighting with us who are black,” she told The Epoch Times in a text message. “Fentanyl is killing U.S. citizens of all races—disproportionately persons of color. It’s also poisoning U.S. children that had no idea what they were getting. There has never been a drug market so deadly as the one we are experiencing now.”

    San Francisco was among the first 12 U.S. cities to declared itself a sanctuary city, prohibiting local police from stopping or arresting people based on their immigration status.

    Walton was speaking at a noon rally in support of Supervisor Hillary Ronen’s proposed resolution denouncing criticism of sanctuary city policies at City Hall ahead of the Feb. 28 Board of Supervisors meeting. Supervisors Myrna Melgar and Dean Preston also attended the rally.

    After nearly two hours of public comments, the board voted unanimously to continue debate on the issue at its next meeting on March 7.

    San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju said at the rally that city police unfairly target black and brown dealers and that the “war on drugs” was designed to target black and brown people for arrest and incarceration, while white dealers are rarely arrested.

    “We also know that Latin X community members who are targeted are young and often survivors of labor, trafficking, and exploitation. Using our local resources to funnel these individuals to ICE detention facilities will subject them to horrific conditions that can lead to a death sentence for deportation,” he said. “And, all this cruelty is going to do nothing to stem the overdoses.”

    Dorsey did not respond to requests for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/05/2023 – 23:00

  • Tulsi Gabbard: Democrats Are The Party Of Division, Authoritarianism, & War
    Tulsi Gabbard: Democrats Are The Party Of Division, Authoritarianism, & War

    Authored by Liam Cosgrove via The Epoch Times,

    Democrats are funding a dangerous war in Ukraine, stifling ideological dissent, and polarizing this country.

    That was the message from former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, speaking on the final day of CPAC.

    The former congresswoman took shots at radical gender ideology and accused President Joe Biden of stoking racial tensions by embracing identity politics.

    She accused Biden of “fanning the flames of divisiveness.”

    “They reduce each of us to the color of our skin,” Gabbard said in her speech, saying the Democrats “have become the racists they claim to hate.”

    Gabbard, now a registered independent, denounced her former political party for its reckless armament of Ukraine and warned that the policy of providing lethal aid is bringing the United States to the “brink of nuclear war.”

    “They’ve sent now over $100 billion to fuel this proxy war,” she said.

    On Friday, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken promised an additional $400 million in weaponry and utility gear to Ukraine, with tensions rising as Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has vowed to use Western arms to retake Russian-occupied Crimea.

    Gabbard, a combat veteran who served two tours of duty in Iraq, has long espoused a message of ending “regime change wars” and advocating for a more restrained foreign policy. Many within the Republican Party align with Gabbard’s anti-war sentiments.

    After watching Gabbard’s speech, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told The Epoch Times that he supports her advocacy to end U.S. financial support for the Ukrainian military.

    The congressman talked about working closely with Gabbard in the House Armed Services Committee and butting heads with the pro-war “so-called national security experts,” as he called them.

    “I think we need a focused foreign policy based in realism, not fantastical dreams of turning countries like Syria into Jeffersonian democracies,” he said.

    “I want a strong, well-funded, highly capable military that we rarely use.”

    On the topic of gender, Gabbard called out progressives for rejecting “the fact that there is such a thing as a woman.”

    “All the ladies can attest here that we are in fact real,” she said, adding that Democrats are confusing fiction with reality.

    “Truth becomes whatever those in power say it is at any given time.”

    After dropping out of the presidential race, Gabbard declined to seek reelection to Congress and has since focused on activism and public speaking.

    Her political future remains uncertain, but Gabbard’s unique blend of progressive and non-interventionist views continues to make her a fascinating figure in American politics.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/05/2023 – 22:30

  • Bump Stocks Return To Store Shelves In These Three States
    Bump Stocks Return To Store Shelves In These Three States

    Following the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to invalidate the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ administrative ban on bump stocks, the Department of Justice was given until last Monday to challenge the ruling before the Supreme Court. However, since the DOJ did not take any action, the Fifth Circuit’s order became effective, which allowed three states, Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, to begin selling bump stocks once again. 

    Michael Cargill, the owner of Austin’s Central Texas Gun Works, sued to challenge the ban in 2019 with New Civil Liberties Alliance, a litigation group that says it protects constitutional freedoms, including Second Amendment rights. 

    They lost in federal court in Austin, and before a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit, one of the country’s most conservative courts. 

    Victory came after another hearing, this time before the full 5th Circuit. —The Dallas Morning News

    The DOJ had until Monday to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court but let the deadline pass.

    “Bump Stocks are now legal in TEXAS, LOUISIANA & MISSISSIPPI,” Cargill tweeted last week.

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

    Cargill said his store plans to sell bump stocks soon. He said the retail price would be around $249, about 15% higher than pre-ban prices, primarily due to higher commodity, labor, and transportation costs. 

    The ATF can still enforce the bump stock ban outside Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. 

    “Essentially, the ATF is prevented from enforcing the rule for the time being in these three states,” South Texas College of Law professor Dru Stevenson said. 

    As to why the DOJ didn’t ask the Supreme Court to consider the issue… Keeping the case in the Fifth Circuit’s jurisdiction would prevent the Supreme Court from agreeing with Cargill and overturning the ban nationwide. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/05/2023 – 22:00

  • Capitol Police, FBI Failed To Share "Credible Threats" Before Jan. 6 Breach: Watchdog
    Capitol Police, FBI Failed To Share “Credible Threats” Before Jan. 6 Breach: Watchdog

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

    FBI agents and U.S. Capitol Police officers identified “credible threats” ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, electoral vote certification but did not properly disseminate the intelligence, a watchdog says in a new report.

    The FBI obtained information from human informants, social media, and other agencies and tracked suspected domestic terrorists traveling to Washington, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report (pdf).

    Capitol Police officials examined information developed from arrests and investigations, as well as open sources, and distributed a document three days before Jan. 6 that conveyed a subject of an investigation had said militia members planned to attend a Jan. 6 demonstration while armed, which would violate Washington law.

    Both agencies assessed threats for credibility and reported that some of the threats were deemed credible.

    But both failed to properly adhere to policies for processing or sharing information, the watchdog found.

    FBI agents in San Antonio, Texas, for instance, received tips from the social media company Parler but did not develop reports based on the tips, as required.

    “FBI officials noted that the FBI San Antonio Field Office did not develop any related reports on January 6 events as required by policy, such as Guardians, situational information reports, or intelligence information reports but did not indicate why not,” GAO said.

    Such reports are distributed to state, local, and tribal law enforcement partners.

    A U.S. Capitol Police officer monitors the crowd atop the east Rotunda steps on Jan. 6, 2021. (Bobby Powell/Special to The Epoch Times)

    Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said on “Just the News, No Noise” that the FBI “had a blueprint for what was going to happen, and they didn’t think about it and look at the consequences.”

    The FBI did develop some reports, which it shared with partners, the GAO report noted.

    ‘Relevant Threat Information’ Omitted

    Capitol Police officials, meanwhile, left out “relevant threat information” it received from other agencies in documents developed for Jan. 6, according to GAO.

    “Capitol Police identified potential violence that could occur on January 6 in Washington, D.C. in advance of planned events. However, it did not consistently incorporate complete information into assessments of threats in its threat products, such as information obtained from other agencies regarding an individual traveling to Washington, D.C. to engage in violence at January 6 events,” the report said.

    One example of information left out was a suspicious activity report from Washington Homeland Security officials that indicated an individual planned to travel to the nation’s capitol to engage in violence during Jan. 6 protests.

    Capitol Police officials also failed to update a threat product to include important information, including information indicating violence might occur during the demonstrations, and did not consistently share relevant details across its agency, “resulting in some officers, agents and intelligence staff not having complete information,” the report stated.

    Eight other agencies, including the National Park Service and the Secret Service, examined by GAO received information, but they either did not assess threats for credibility or did not identify any of the threats as credible.

    The Department of Homeland Security Office of Intelligence & Analysis (DHS I&A) did not assess any reports or identify any credible threats before the department’s team charged with collecting information from open sources “did not share reports on January 6 open source threats with other DHS I&A divisions until after the Capitol attack occurred,” according to the watchdog.

    Police officers set up barricades outside of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

    DHS I&A also failed to share information with the Capitol Police “in a timely manner,” GAO said.

    GAO made 10 recommendations, including advising FBI Director Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee, to assess why personnel did not adhere to policy in processing information related to Jan. 6 and, after an assessment, implement a plan for fixing what went wrong.

    FBI Takes Note

    Many of the agencies, including the FBI, agreed with the recommendations.

    “We appreciate the GAO’s extensive fact gathering and thorough analysis in the report,” adding that “we will incorporate GAO’s conclusion that, despite collecting and sharing significant pieces of threat reporting, the FBI did not process all relevant information related to potential violence on January 6,” Larissa Knapp, an FBI official, said in a response to GAO.

    “Our goal is always to disrupt and stay ahead of the threat, and we are constantly trying to learn and evaluate what we could have done better or differently, this is especially true of the attack on the Capitol,” Knapp also said.

    The FBI declined to comment beyond Knapp’s letter. The Capitol Police and DHS did not respond to requests for comment.

    U.S. Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger told GAO that it is taking steps to implement the watchdog’s recommendation that the Capitol Police Board should establish policies for sharing information on possible threats across the agency.

    Manger said the department is drafting policy that “will provide guidance for sharing threat-related information agency-wide.”

    GAO previously concluded that DHS should have designated the Jan. 6 demonstrations as special, which would have triggered heightened security.

    Another previous report found that many agencies were aware of open source, or publicly available, information on potential violence planned for Jan. 6.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/05/2023 – 21:30

  • Japan's Population In Freefall As Twice As Many People Die As Are Born
    Japan’s Population In Freefall As Twice As Many People Die As Are Born

    Japan’s population is in freefall.

    In 2022, the number of births registered in Japan plummeted to another record low last year according to statistics released by the Ministry of Health – the latest worrying statistic in a decades-long decline that the country’s authorities have failed to reverse despite their extensive efforts.

    The country saw just 799,728 births in 2022 – the lowest number on record and the first ever dip below 800,000 – and about half of the number of deaths, which  at more than 1.58 million, was a record high. The number of births in Japan has nearly halved in the past 40 years: in 1982, Japan recorded more than 1.5 million births, a number which was then more than double the number of deaths. This ratio has since reversed.

    As shown in the chart above, deaths have outpaced births in Japan for the past 15 years – a trend which is unlikely to reverse ever again – posing an existential problem for the (aged) leaders of the world’s third-largest economy. They now face a ballooning elderly population, along with a shrinking workforce to fund pensions and health care as demand from the aging population surges.

    Japan’s population has been in steady decline since its economic boom of the 1980s and stood at 125.5 million in 2021, according to the most recent government figures.

    According to CNN, Japan’s fertility rate of 1.3 is far below the rate of 2.1 required to maintain a stable population, in the absence of immigration.

    The country also has one of the highest life expectancies in the world; in 2020, nearly one in 1,500 people in Japan were age 100 or older, according to government data.

    These concerning trends prompted a warning in January from Prime Minister Fumio Kishida that Japan is “on the brink of not being able to maintain social functions.”

    “In thinking of the sustainability and inclusiveness of our nation’s economy and society, we place child-rearing support as our most important policy,” he said, adding that Japan “simply cannot wait any longer” in solving the problem of its low birth rate.

    A new government agency will be set up in April to focus on the issue, with PM Kishida saying in January that he wants the government to double its spending on child-related programs. But money alone might not be able to solve the multi-pronged problem, with various social factors contributing to the low birth rate.

    Japan’s high cost of living, limited space and lack of child care support in cities make it difficult to raise children, meaning fewer couples are having kids. Urban couples are also often far from extended family in other regions, who could help provide support.

    In 2022, Japan was ranked one of the world’s most expensive places to raise a child, according to research from financial institution Jefferies. And yet, the country’s economy has stalled since the early 1990s, meaning frustratingly low wages and little upward mobility: the average real annual household income declined from 6.59 million yen ($50,600) in 1995 to 5.64 million yen ($43,300) in 2020, according to 2021 data from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

    Attitudes toward marriage and starting families have also shifted in recent years, with more couples putting off both during the pandemic — and young people feeling increasingly pessimistic about the future.

    In 2022, Japan was ranked one of the world’s most expensive places to raise a child, according to research from financial institution Jefferies. And yet, the country’s economy has stalled since the early 1990s, meaning frustratingly low wages and little upward mobility.

    The average real annual household income declined from 6.59 million yen ($50,600) in 1995 to 5.64 million yen ($43,300) in 2020, according to 2021 data from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

    Attitudes toward marriage and starting families have also shifted in recent years, with more couples putting off both during the pandemic — and young people feeling increasingly pessimistic about the future. Who can blame them for not feeling frisky.

    It’s a familiar story throughout East Asia, where South Korea’s fertility rate — already the world’s lowest — dropped yet again last year in the latest setback to the country’s efforts to boost its declining population.

    Meanwhile, in January China just lost its title as the world’s most populous country to India after its population shrank in 2022 for the first time since the 1960s.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/05/2023 – 21:00

  • A Long Idea From One Of Wall Street's Biggest Bears
    A Long Idea From One Of Wall Street’s Biggest Bears

    By Russell Clark, author of the Capital Flows and Asset Markets substack, and former CIO of the (very bearish) Horseman Global hedge fund.

    In previous posts, I have tried to talk about how I used to manage money using a 3M process – Macro, Micro and Market. In essence I was looking for a macro change, that was supported by underlying industry data (micro) and confirmed by market trends, particularly technicals. The biggest macro trend I paid attention to was currency, which I had seen be the least understood factor in investing in my career. This stopped working in 2016, with Brexit, China and Trump, making politics far more important than macro. It took me a long time to accept that politics is more important than macro, but now that it has, my investing process is improving. I have had to rename it 4M – with the additional M is motivation, which is another way of saying politics. Paid subscribers will be aware of the ideas I have already pitched.

    On the long side, I like Occidental for its commodity exposure and long term option on Direct Air Capture technology. I also like Japanese banks as an aggressive inflation trade. On the short side, I still like TLT, McDonalds, and residential REITS. All of this ideas are driven by the view that inflation is political, and the politics is now towards raising real wages. This means you have inflation, AND, tight financial conditions to protect those wage increase.

    One of the ideas I have been toying with has been driven by politics, or the Motivation (the first M). One of the key ideas is that rising wages tends to push up the price of food. In a world of rising wages, food prices should rise.

    This surge in food inflation is driven by China getting wealthy, more than anything else. The success of China in driving wages higher relative to other Asian nations that industrialized earlier is truly staggering. In a pro-capital world, China would have been expected to devalue to regain competitiveness, but China has obviously chosen to promote higher wages. When economist talk about China exporting inflation, what they mean is that Chinese policy has successfully raised wages – and in stark contrast to the experience of other Asian nations.

    The combination of rising food prices makes me like food related companies, particularly companies that own or control farm land. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also made me like the look of agricultural commodities that Ukraine has a large market share of exports – namely sunflower oil. In the traded vegetable oil market, palm oil dominates, with sunflower oil and soybean oil following.

    Vegetable oil imports is one commodity that India imports more than China, making its demand outlook more robust than industrial commodities.

    As it happens, supply of sunflower oil was better than expected, and inventory of crude palm oil has been larger than expected. This had lead palm oil to trade at a discount to soy.

    Crude palm oil production and exports are dominated by two countries, Indonesia and Malaysia. The largest plantation owner is Singapore listed Wilmar International.

    There are two things that attract me to Wilmar. Firstly, when they export palm oil to both China and India, they have built a local brand of vegetable oil as a consumer business. This has a much higher value than the plantation business, which they have attempted to monetize by listing a 10% stake in their Chinese consumer business in Shanghai. The value of their stake in Kerry Arwana has consistently been higher than Wilmar’s market cap.

    The other thing that gets me very excited about Wilmar is that they have begun to expand into Africa. Still small, but this is much large than any other listed crude palm operators in Arica. Nigeria is now a a larger consumer of palm oil than the US, and has been growing rapidly. Palm oil originated in West Africa, before being introduced to Malaysia and Indonesia, so offers an attractive way to play growing African consumption.

    Wilmar has a track record of building good consumer businesses, even in notoriously difficult markets like China and India.

    Wilmar trades below book value with a 4% dividend yield. Why so cheap? I can give a lot of reasons, ranging from claims that palm oil cultivation destroys the environment, to the fact that other Singaporean commodity trading stocks, Noble and Olam ended up in financial trouble, and delisted. Against that, US listed trader, Archer Daniels Midland owns 25% of Wilmar. Wilmar faces the same headwinds of rising interest rates, but a cheap valuation with a long dated call option on African consumption sounds pretty good to me. Full discloser – I have a long position.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/05/2023 – 20:30

  • With Tuesday Pot Legalization Vote, OK Poised To Rake In Texans' Money
    With Tuesday Pot Legalization Vote, OK Poised To Rake In Texans’ Money

    Tuesday may bring a major milestone in America’s relentless march toward marijuana legalization, as Oklahoma will likely become the most conservative state so far to approve recreational use of the plant. Trump carried the state by a 33% margin in 2020. 

    Oklahomans will consider State Question 820, which offers a chance to legalize consumption by adults 21 and older — along with their possession of up to an ounce — and grant Okies the freedom to grow six mature plants and six seedlings for their own use.

    A 15% tax would be imposed on sales, with proceeds flowing to student services, drug addiction programs, courts, local government and the state’s general fund. 

    Backers of State Question 820 deliver petition signatures to Oklahoma’s Secretary of State in July (Yes on 820 Campaign)

    With approval, Oklahoma stands to rake in tax revenue from Texans expected to cross the border to take a break from the Lone Star State’s stubborn nanny-state tyranny. Ryan Kiesel, a former Oklahoma state legislator and current legalization advocate told AP:  

    “There are thousands and thousands of Texans who are increasingly coming to Oklahoma as a tourist destination. I want to be able to sell legal, regulated and taxed marijuana to those Texans over the age of 21, and take their tax dollars and invest them in Oklahoma schools and Oklahoma health care.”

    Nearly 8 million people live in Dallas-Fort Worth, which is almost twice as many as live in all of Oklahoma.

    Oklahoma is a standout with one of the country’s most relaxed medical marijuana regimes. About one in ten adults in the state holds a medical license. In contrast to most states that allow medical use, Oklahoma has no list of qualifying conditions and patients can receive a doctor’s recommendation over the internet. 

    Okie cannabis growers are desperate to expand their market: The state’s medical marijuana market is so relatively free that low barriers to entry have sent prices into a nose-dive, with one retailer telling AP the price of a 1-gram cartridge of concentrate has collapsed from $60 to $70 in 2019 to just $20 today. 

    The last public poll on the proposal — taken way back in October — had voters approving recreational legalization, 49% to 38%. The question was originally slated to appear on the November 2022 midterm ballot, but a delay in verifying petition signatures led to it being moved to March 7.

    In 2018, the ballot measure to allow medical use was approved 56% to 43%. The wild card in Tuesday’s election is turnout, as SQ820 is the only statewide measure on the ballot.  

    Yes on 820‘s Michelle Tilley told NonDoc that her team is feeling “pretty good” about their chances:

    “I think what resonates with people is compassion for other human beings with the criminal justice reform, and I think the revenue piece is also something people have been excited about.”

    The Oklahoma Sheriff’s Association opposes the measure, but plenty of cops are ready to stop wasting time and resources punishing adults who choose to intoxicate themselves with a plant nobody’s ever overdosed from.  

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/05/2023 – 20:00

  • Russia's Oil Revenues Plunged By 48% In February
    Russia’s Oil Revenues Plunged By 48% In February

    By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com,

    Russian tax revenue from crude oil and petroleum products plummeted by 48% in February from a year earlier due to the much lower price of Russia’s flagship crude grade after the EU banned imports of Russian oil, according to Bloomberg estimates based on official Russian data.

    Total tax revenues from oil and natural gas dipped by 46% year over year to $6.9 billion (521 billion Russian rubles) in February, per data from the Russian Finance Ministry published on Friday.

    Russia’s revenues from crude oil and oil products alone crumbled by 48% annually to $4.8 billion (361 billion rubles), according to Bloomberg’s calculations. Oil accounted for more than two-thirds of Russia’s energy tax revenue in February.

    Russian natural gas revenues also plummeted last month compared to February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. Natural gas revenues slumped by 42% as Russia cut off gas supplies to a number of EU customers after the invasion. 

    The plunge in the price of the flagship Russian crude grade, Urals, was the key reason for the lower revenues for the country for both January and February this year.

    Russia’s budget was $23.3 billion (1.76 trillion rubles) into deficit in January, compared to a surplus for January 2022, as state revenues from oil and gas plunged by 46.4% due to the low price of Urals and lower natural gas exports, the Russian Finance Ministry said last month. Russia’s budget revenues from oil and gas plunged in January by 46% compared to the same month last year due to the sanctions on Russian oil exports, which led to a slump in the price of Russia’s flagship crude grade.

    The average price of the Urals blend stood at $49.52 per barrel in January and February 2023, compared to $88.89 per barrel for the same months last year, the Russian Finance Ministry said earlier this week. The price of Urals averaged $49.56 a barrel in February 2023, or 1.86 times lower than the average price in February 2022 – $92.15 per barrel.    

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/05/2023 – 19:30

  • Communities Block, Ban Dollar Stores Amid Nationwide Invasion
    Communities Block, Ban Dollar Stores Amid Nationwide Invasion

    Recall Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Family Dollar stores are invading low-income communities nationwide. At the start of 2022, all three discount retailers operated 34,000 US stores, more than Mcdonald’s, Starbucks, Target, and Walmart combined. Now there’s a wave of grassroots opposition in cities and towns blocking these chains from opening new stores. 

    According to a new report published by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a nonprofit organization and advocacy group focused on sustainable local economies, at least 75 communities blocked proposed dollar stores, with more than 50 of those denials occurring between January 2021 and the end of 2022. 

    ISLR continued:

    At least 54 cities and towns — including Birmingham, Ala.; Fort Worth, Texas; Kansas City, Kan.; and Plainview, Neb. — have gone further. They’ve enacted laws that sharply restrict new dollar stores, typically by barring them from opening within one to two miles of an existing dollar store. 

    At least one town, Stonecrest, Ga., has imposed a total ban on new dollar stores. These laws are often adopted in conjunction with measures designed to support the retention and development of grocery stores.

    These discounted retailers are rapidly expanding their presence across the country, targeting low-income communities with cheap Chinese-made products and unhealthy food.

    A town in eastern Kentucky, with a population of 1,600, was recently overrun by a ‘dollar store mania.’ Given the low incomes and inexpensive land around Olive Hill, it makes sense why dollar stores are flooding the small town to take advantage of poor residents.

    An Olive Hill resident told Daily Mail last month:

    “It seems like there’s a dollar store every few feet.” 

    Source: Daily Mail

    The proliferation of new dollar stores shows no signs of slowing down. “Communities need reinforcements to stop the encroachment of dollar stores. They need action at the federal level, where a negligent approach to antitrust has allowed Dollar General and Dollar Tree to flex their market power unfairly and overrun their less powerful competitors, especially independent grocery stores,” the report said. 

    Make local grocery stores and farms thrive again as small towns need an economic revival.  

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/05/2023 – 19:00

  • Flynn Sues DOJ, FBI For Malicious Prosecution, Wants $50 Million
    Flynn Sues DOJ, FBI For Malicious Prosecution, Wants $50 Million

    Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice (DOJ), FBI, and others, alleging he was maliciously prosecuted. He is demanding at least $50 million in compensation.

    “Defendant maliciously investigated and prosecuted General Flynn by initiating and continuing a baseless counterintelligence investigation and by filing a criminal information lacking probable cause,” says the suit, filed on March 3 with the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida (pdf).

    Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn in Huntington Beach, Calif., on Sept. 18, 2022. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    The former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) under the Obama administration was investigated by the FBI starting in August 2016 for supposed ties to Russia. In 2017, he was charged with lying to the FBI during an interview earlier that year.

    The suit alleges that the FBI, and later prosecutors from the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, investigated and prosecuted him for political reasons, considering him a threat.

    “General Flynn—who already had a reputation as a hands-on disruptor at DIA, who had publicly excoriated the politicization of the intelligence community, and who had made clear his desire to overhaul the national security structure and the ‘interagency process’—was a direct threat, not only to the self-interest of entrenched intelligence bureaucracies and the federal officials involved, but to exposing their prior and ongoing efforts to derail and discredit President Trump,” the suit says.

    The case against Flynn was riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies. FBI agents had already decided to close his case by early January 2017, but higher-ups intervened to keep it open on the justification that Flynn may have violated an obscure and antiquated law called the Logan Act by discussing with a Russian ambassador the priorities of the incoming administration during the transition period. DOJ officials at the time rejected the legal theory. The 1799 Logan Act, which prohibits certain kinds of unauthorized diplomacy, may in fact be unconstitutional, several lawyers previously told The Epoch Times. It has never been successfully prosecuted, much less aimed at an incoming national security adviser.

    The Flynn investigation, codenamed Crossfire Razor, continued “only because of Defendant’s agents and agencies’ malicious, partisan, and unethical intent to investigate their political opponents generally and to destroy General Flynn specifically,” the suit says.

    Subsequent leaks to the media claimed that he may have violated the Logan Act by talking with the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak, about sanctions imposed at the time on Russia by the outgoing Obama administration.

    FBI top brass then meticulously prepared and arranged the interview to appear as “an informal meeting, just to put the Kislyak calls being discussed in the press to bed,” the suit says.

    On Jan. 24, 2017, when two FBI agents interviewed Flynn, they asked him whether he talked with Kislyak about expulsions of Russian diplomats. He said no, which was not the truth. When asked again, he said he didn’t remember.

    This exchange then formed the core of the charge brought against Flynn by Mueller, who took over his case in May 2017.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/05/2023 – 18:30

  • US Begins 'Training Assessment' For Ukrainian Pilots On F-16s
    US Begins ‘Training Assessment’ For Ukrainian Pilots On F-16s

    The White House has so far ruled out calls to provide the Ukrainian government with F-16 fighter jets, but clearly the idea is still on the table and Biden may be close to pulling the trigger amid intense administration discussions.

    “Two Ukrainian pilots are currently in the United States undergoing an assessment to determine how long it could take to train them to fly attack aircraft, including F-16 fighter jets, according to two congressional officials and a senior U.S. official,” a weekend NBC report indicates.

    “The Ukrainians’ skills are being evaluated on simulators at a U.S. military base in Tucson, Arizona, the officials said, and they may be joined by more of their fellow pilots soon,” the report continues.

    Source: Shutterstock

    The officials additionally said 10 more Ukrainian pilots are expected to join the program soon, and they may arrive in the US this month.

    The officials emphasized that this does not yet constitute a fighter jet training program for Ukrainian pilots, and that actual aircraft will not be flown – only the advanced flight simulators. But clearly if F-16s are approved, this will form the basis of formal training on the jets.

    One of the main reasons for the hold-up in approving jets for Ukraine, apart from the fact that Russia is vowing severe and unpredictable escalation, is the significant time investment of the training, which could take at least a year or years.

    Colin Kahl, defense undersecretary for policy, recently told the House Armed Services Committee that the US has “not started training on F-16s” and that the delivery timeline is about 18 months. The training program for F-16s also happens to be about 18 months.

    “So you don’t actually save yourself time by starting the training early in our assessment,” said Kahl. “And since we haven’t made the decision to provide F-16’s and neither have our allies and partners, it doesn’t make sense to start to train them on a system they may never get.”

    So by all accounts, even if the Biden administration were to approve jets for Ukraine tomorrow, it could take years before they are piloted by Ukrainians in the skies of the conflict. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/05/2023 – 18:00

  • "Most Important Discovery In 21st Century": Archeologists Find Hidden Corridor In Great Pyramid Of Giza
    “Most Important Discovery In 21st Century”: Archeologists Find Hidden Corridor In Great Pyramid Of Giza

    Humans have spent centuries, if not longer, attempting to unlock the secrets of the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramids at Giza, located just outside of Cairo. But with modern cosmic ray scanning technology, archaeologists have discovered a hidden passageway, Reuters reported. 

    Mostafa Waziri, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, announced the discovery of the 30 feet in length and 6 feet wide corridor near the main entrance of the Pyramid of Khufu after a tiny snake camera was inserted through a crack. Speculation about the cavity behind the opening was first revealed via cosmic ray mapping in 2016.

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    Waziri told reporters that the unfinished corridor was constructed to distribute the pyramid’s weight around the main entrance, which is now being used by tourists about 21 feet away. There’s the belief another chamber could lie beneath it. 

    “We’re going to continue our scanning so we will see what we can do … to figure out what we can find out beneath it, or just by the end of this corridor,” he said. 

    Former Egyptian Antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass commented on the discovery of the secret passage:

    “This discovery, in my opinion, is the most important discovery in the 21st century.”

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    As part of the Scan Pyramids project initiated in 2015, cosmic-ray mapping was utilized to uncover the mysteries within the seventh wonder of the ancient world. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/05/2023 – 17:00

  • Thank Goodness For Friday
    Thank Goodness For Friday

    By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

    TGFF

    Thank goodness for Friday. Or maybe I should just thank Bostic because his comments on Thursday seemed to turn the markets around.

    The view (presented in last week’s Surprise, Surprise and Acceptance Stage of Rate Hike Grief) that the market was getting tired of pricing in higher yields and dragging stocks down got off to an okay start, but it became pretty shaky in the middle of the week.

    The 10-year Treasury ended last week at 3.95% (it got as low as 3.89% before grinding steadily higher to 4.09% on Thursday). But TGFF because it recovered and closed basically unchanged on the week. Not a win as a bond bull, but I’ll take it.

    The S&P 500 followed a rate dependent path and things got a little hairy on Thursday when the S&P dipped below the 200 DMA (around 3,940). Ultimately Bostic seemed to help (along with too much bearishness). I believe that too many people were betting on more rate hikes and that caused yields to go higher (which in turn dragged stocks lower).

    As we head into this week:

    • I need to do a summary of Academy’s Second Annual Geopolitical Summit West. It was very well attended and the main conversation was driven by a combination of 4 Generals and an Admiral from our Geopolitical Intelligence Group. These individuals brought a wide variety of experience and expertise to the table. Russia, China, chips, commodities, and AI all took center stage. World War v3.1 is a good piece if you haven’t read it already and the February Around the World is also germane to these discussions.
    • It is “Jobs Week”. Not as entertaining as “Shark Week”, but at least we get to do it 12 times a year. Even some Fed speakers seem to be questioning whether the jobs data has been overstated. So, I’m looking for some weaker data, which should help bonds and stocks.
    • Rate hikes. The terminal rate is up to 5.44%. There is chatter that the Fed could raise rates 50 bps at the next meeting. The market is pricing in 1.25 hikes at the meeting, so I am leaning towards 25 bps, but I am giving 50 bps a chance. That seems like a reasonable assessment to me. Fed fund futures are pricing in only a small chance of any cuts this year. The year-end rate is 5.3% versus a terminal rate of 5.44%. That seems fair because our view has been that the Fed was serious about staying “higher for longer” all along. We’ve disagreed on the pace of hikes, but have not been looking for cuts as early as the market expects. From here, a lot seems to have been priced into the bond market (and theoretically the equity market), which should help bonds and stocks this week.
    • Stocks versus bonds. The 10-year finished unchanged, but stocks finished up 2%-3% (S&P vs Nasdaq). That is decent outperformance. From a technical standpoint, not only did the S&P 500 recover to the 200 DMA, but it is also back above the 50 DMA. I suspect that a lot of shorts got added because the market was sliding and exhibiting some technical weakness and that probably leaves us with a decent short base (which is susceptible to further squeezes). Stock performance last week should help stocks into this week.
    • Credit is looking strong! CDX IG (investment grade CDS index) tightened from 77 to 71 and never went much above 77, even with stocks swooning. CDX IG tends to be more correlated with stocks than other measures of credit quality. It’s a “macro fan favorite” to trade SPX vs CDX and many of the CDX market making algos are linked to the S&P 500. All that “jargon” just means that as we dig deeper, it is even more impressive how well CDX did compared to how it seemed on the surface. Even the Bloomberg Corporate Bonds spread went from 123 to 120 (peaking at 125). That occurred even with decent new issue activity. LQD, a longer-dated IG ETF which tracks bond markets in real-time better than the indices, went from a spread of 159 to 152 (though it did get to 166 at Wednesday’s close). It is important, at least to me, that it is trading at a premium to NAV because that typically indicates that there is more strength to come. Corporate credit was very strong and is poised to do very well on any slowing of the calendar! You could argue that this is part of a trend of re-allocating money out of stocks and into bonds, but I’m going with the “credit markets often lead the way” story and they are pointing to more potential strength for equities.
    • Temperance is good. This clearly has nothing to do with our Summit. It is, however, a reflection that any sign of cost controls out of tech is being rewarded with higher stock prices. This will hurt the economy and ultimately stocks (I don’t think the lows are in), but for now I expect more announcements since they are relatively easy to make (especially given how well the stocks respond).
    • 0DTE. Some people are addicted to the MOSO function on Bloomberg. Others laughed (or questioned my sanity) for writing A Day in the Life of a 0DTE Option. Many people followed our more serious writing on the topic in Is 4,000 More than a Number and Zero Dark Thirty. That being said, I’m convinced that 0DTE is changing our market structure in ways that are difficult to assess and it can dramatically amplify moves.

    Bottom Line

    I see no reason to change last week’s bottom line (accept for adding more on credit).

    Bonds can do well with the 10-year having a 3.7% target.

    Risk assets can do well with a 4,200 target for the S&P 500 and CDX IG heading towards 60 (the semi-annual roll should be another factor that helps push spreads tighter). If the new issue calendar remains robust, credit could lag for a bit. However, if there are any signs of issuance slowing, the rally should be strong.

    Despite the Summit starting on a day where San Diego was having worse weather than Chicago (the hail/30 mph winds made it an “experience”), the San Diego weather came through in the end!

    Good luck this week and jobs are going to be interesting. I’m more worried that the jobs data could be bad (downward revisions, etc.) than I am that the data will be too strong, though both of those extremes would hurt my position on risk assets.

    Maybe this Friday will give another reason to proclaim “Thank Goodness for Friday (TGFF)”!

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/05/2023 – 16:30

  • Fauci 'Prompted' Scientists To Fabricate 'Proximal Origins' Paper Ruling Out Lab-Leak: House GOP
    Fauci ‘Prompted’ Scientists To Fabricate ‘Proximal Origins’ Paper Ruling Out Lab-Leak: House GOP

    Dr. Anthony Fauci – who offshored banned gain-of-function research to make bat coronaviruses more transmissible to humans – has been accused by Congressional investigators of having ‘prompted’ the fabrication of a paper by a cadre of scientists aimed at disproving the Covid-19 lab-leak theory.

    On February 1, 2020, Fauci and his boss, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, and at least eleven other scientists participated in a conference call during which several of them warned that COVID-19 may have leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China – may have been intentionally genetically manipulated.

    Three days after the call, four participants from the call (Scripps Research virologist Kristian Andersen, University of Sydney virologist Edward Holmes, Tulane School of Medicine virologist Robert Garry, University of Edinburgh virologist Andrew Rambaut and Columbia University virologist Ian Lipkin) seemingly discarded their concerns over a lab-leak, and drafted “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” which they sent to Fauci and Collins.

    Also heavily involved (yet not credited) was Dr. Jeremy Farrar, the current Chief Scientist at the World Health Organization.

    As a related aside – the Washington Examiner revealed last week that two authors of “Proximal Origin” who initially expressed concerns over a lab-leak and then changed their tune (Anderson and Garry), received millions in NIH grants under Fauci.

    Now, according to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Fauci ‘prompted’ the creation of the paper;

    “New evidence released by the Select Subcommittee today suggests that Dr. Fauci “prompted” the drafting of a publication that would “disprove” the lab leak theory, the authors of this paper skewed available evidence to achieve that goal, and Dr. Jeremy Farrar went uncredited despite significant involvement.”

    More:

    So, for those following the bouncing ball…

    The US was doing risky gain-of-function research on US soil until 2014, when the Obama administration banned it. Four months before the ban, Dr. Fauci offshored it to Wuhan, China through New York nonprofit, EcoHealth Alliance.

    After Sars-CoV-2 broke out down the street from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Fauci engaged in a massive campaign to deny the possibility of a lab-leak from the lab he funded, and instead pin the blame on a yet-to-be discovered zoonotic intermediary species.

    And if you’d like to dig even deeper, this is perhaps the best, most comprehensive summary of the “proximal origin” timeline.

    Read the entire letter below:

    Further reading:

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/05/2023 – 16:00

  • Goldman: The Big Near-Term Risk Here Is If The Fed Opens Up 50s
    Goldman: The Big Near-Term Risk Here Is If The Fed Opens Up 50s

    By Tony Pasquariello,Goldman head of hedge fund coverage

    Coming out of a week that brought a somewhat uninspiring data set, yet interesting price action … and, headed into a very important week (payrolls, Powell and the BOJ) … What follows from here reflects the themes that come up in client conversations.

    My view in one line: rates should keep chopping higher, volatility is to be owned, and don’t get carried away on non-dollar trades.

    1. While not breaking news, and at the risk of serious over-reduction, I’d describe the core macro backdrop in 2023 as follows: US inflation has been stickier-than-expected; US growth has been stronger-than-expected.  To be clear, I’d stop short of describing the domestic economy as “running hot,” but the broad trend of the hard data would argue the US is generally chugging along (here I’d point you towards the recent jump in our US economic surprise index).  Taken together, this invites an obvious question on whether peak rates are, once again, still in front of us — it’s not a reach to say it, but my bet is they still are, particularly in the belly and back end.  

    2. The macro ecosystem I just described is NOT necessarily what many people expected as we came into the new year.  Remember, the consensus view centered around a messy first half, and there was plenty of recession talk as recently as early January. On one hand, it feels like that tactical opportunity set of higher front end rates, a stronger dollar and a rip in NDX wasn’t broadly captured (and, if one made money in January, they likely gave it back in February, or vice-versa). On the other hand, there are plenty of folks still seemingly content in adding to lower-risk carry strategies … 6-month T-bills are kicking off 5% yields right now (which now exceeds the carry on a 60/40 portfolio) and US 2-year notes are trading at levels not seen since 2007.  For further reading: link.  

    3. I received a lot of pushback last week on my comment that I think the back end of the US rates curve is vulnerable.  Here’s what I was trying to articulate (I should have just quoted Dominic Wilson directly): higher US rates along the curve is the direction of travel for now.  Why? The longer we live with a 5-handle on the terminal rate … and the US economy maintains broad momentum … the more evidence we have that the equilibrium rate is higher … so, the more likely it is the market contemplates seriously a 6-handle on the terminal rate … and therefore the harder it is to believe the Fed’s ~ 2.50% assumption for the neutral rate (which, one could argue, has anchored much of the curve).  related reading: link.

    4. Following from there, here’s one exceedingly simple way to frame things,. starting from the perspective that I have seen a Fed Funds rate north of 6% in my (Gen-X) career:

    • headline CPI, May 2000 :: 3.2%
    • target Fed Funds rate, May 2000 :: 6.5%
    • headline CPI, Feb 2023 :: 6.4%
    • target Fed Funds rate, Feb 2023 :: 4.5%

    5. Now, are there 444,000 distinctions between the global economy of today versus back then?  Yes.  So, one should only go so far with these compare-and-contrasts.  Nonetheless, from the cheap seats, it simply feels to me like parts of the market — and this Fed — are still too anchored to the post-GFC world.  Perhaps that’s not surprising, given that anyone who lived through the aftermath of 2008 has the experience hardwired into their DNA, but my point is this: shouldn’t we be increasingly open-minded to the argument that the post-GFC years were more an exception than a lasting new normal? 

    6. In that spirit, again I find the Jason Furman content on Twitter to be, if nothing else, cause for contemplation: “the economy is very overheated … we have made little if any progress on inflation … there is little if any reason to expect a large slowdown going forward … a wide range of measures of ‘underlying’ inflation are telling the same story … supply chains unfreezing were supposed to bring down inflation, they didn’t … 6% inflation is much more likely than 2%.”   I come out somewhere in-between his angle (link) our forecasts (link), with the ongoing intuition that inflation won’t magically disappear when the labor market is this tight. Related, I also admit that I’m surprised that breakevens took so long to get going again.

    7. A few additional takes on things from an informal exchange I had with Dominic Wilson in GIR:

    • i. I think Furman is overdoing it. 
    • ii. I think the big near-term risk here is if the Fed opens up 50s. If they don’t, I suspect markets can manage it.  If they do, we aren’t priced for it.  That’s overly reductive, but I think that’s the basic risk here.
    • iii. Near-term volatility pricing in lots of places looks too low given the event risk.  In under 3 weeks we get payrolls, US CPI, Powell, BOJ, ECB, Fed, BoE, China activity data and their Two Sessions policy meetings.  That data set could set us on potentially very different paths, but vol overall isn’t particularly high given this event risk in many places (Chinese equities; EUR; major DM indices) and there are pockets of vol (Topix with an 11-handle) that are low even on a long history. Options look cheap.

    8. A few additional takes on the week from an informal exchange I had with Mike Cahill in GIR:

    • i. The market pricing of 31 bps for the March FOMC (that will settle at 25 or 50 bps) is not a stable equilibrium.  Rather than quiet markets in a quiet week, it’s been jumpy markets clinging to every little piece of news (e.g. I haven’t seen Fed Funds respond to a durable goods report in a while).
    • ii. The global coordination is a clear difference between now and most of 2022, when US exceptionalism ruled the day and Europe and China were mired down with wars of their own. That makes things a lot trickier in FX land, but it probably all pushes in the same direction for rates.  
    • iii. Markets spent February mostly reversing the trends and narratives in January, so we’re close to unchanged since mid-Dec / early-Jan on a number of major asset classes.  But, one key thing hasn’t changed — as of now, the Fed is still locked into the 2-3 x 25 bps hikes pace that it established at the start of February.  Maybe they will say that things are still broadly on track, but that deserves a mention if you’re making a list of things that haven’t yet corrected for January’s exuberance.
    • iv. As it relates to point #3 up top on the neutral Fed Funds rate: so we’ve had (potentially) two distinct cycles: a too-low reading from 2012-2019 (the funds rate is low but the economy is weak — the neutral must be low) and a much higher reading now (we’ve hiked a lot but the economy hasn’t slowed — neutral must be high). Maybe the real answer though is that the economy, especially post-2008 housing crash, isn’t all that responsive to the funds rate.

    9. I still believe this is our most important, if distinct house view: “there appears to be some confusion about the phrase ‘long and variable lags,’ which actually referred to the time until the peak impact on the level of GDP, not the peak impact on the growth rate of GDP.  all prominent macroeconomic models that we are aware of agree with our FCI growth impulse model that the peak drag on GDP growth is frontloaded.  these points explain why our estimate of the drag on GDP growth from the tightening in financial conditions last year peaked in 2022H2 and fades fairly quickly in 2023.”  see exhibit 3, link.

    10. Switching gears a bit: I’m normally of the view that geopolitics are exceptionally difficult variables to consistently trade, and after the initial shock and shakeout, markets usually surprise in their ability to find coping mechanisms and become inured to the nightly news. That said, it feels to me like geopolitical tension is rising significantly right now — with growing risk of miscalculation — to an extent that seems greater than what I encounter in client dialogue.  I further admit I’m not totally sure what to do with this, particularly given my bias on interest rates, but it underscores Dominic’s take on the attractiveness of vol.

    11. Perhaps relevant to that last point: Europe has been the fastest horse in the global equity race this year, and it really hasn’t been close.  Alongside ongoing structural issues, the formal start of ECB QT and higher-than-expected inflation that’s lengthening the string of 50 bps rate hikes (we added another this week) I can easily see a scenario where a return of geopolitical worries knocks the momentum off course.  so, even as someone who respects the local draw of cheap relative valuation and a cyclical-heavy index, count me as skeptical that SX5E can hold this pace for the rest of the year. 

    12. As noted previously, the month of January saw record hedge fund buying of Chinese equities (this via GS PB data, link). Price action since then — across the entire China complex, including credit and commodities — was disappointing (until this week’s PMI boom, anyway). Looking forward, the big flow-of-funds question is this: What will strategic real money do with the Chinese equity market?  I’m inclined to believe they will be reticent to commit until the shareholder challenges of 2021 are long past us, which makes me worry about lasting and significant sponsorship (this may explain poor price action following decent earnings).  

    13. A non-sequitur: our industry devotes too much ink to the activity of the CTA community.  While admitting that I’m guilty of referencing this crowd, remember this level set: CTAs comprise about 8% of total hedge fund assets … in S&P futures, about 6% of total open interest … and — at peak activity — around 4% of daily volume (thanks to Paul Leyzerovich for the data).  I’m not saying that CTAs don’t matter — they do, and their footprint can be epically important at occasional market inflection points — I’m simply saying they get outsized attention relative to other market actors and fundamental forces.    

    14. In the context of higher interest rates, this note is a high quality check-down of some clear trends that are taking shape beneath the equity hood – for example, cyclical industrials and inflation winners/losers are doing what they should: link.    

    15. Finally, the annual Berkshire Hathaway letter is worth the quick read: link.  I reckon there’s a bit of wisdom in here:

    thus began our journey to 2023, a bumpy road involving a combination of continuous savings by our owners (that is, by their retaining earnings), the power of compounding, our avoidance of major mistakes and — most important of all — the American Tailwind … our satisfactory results have been the product of about a dozen truly good decisions — that would be about one every five years — and a sometimes-forgotten advantage that favors long-term investors. 

    More in the full note available to pro subs.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/05/2023 – 15:30

  • Court Strikes Down Biden's 'Ghost Gun Rule'
    Court Strikes Down Biden’s ‘Ghost Gun Rule’

    Defense Distributed’s Case in US District Court, VanDerStrok v. Garland was just granted a preliminary injunction. The lawsuit is challenging the scope of ATF’s ability to change the definition of firearms.

    According to court documents, ATF did not analyze their “Frame or Receiver Rule,” also known as Biden’s Ghost Gun Rule, under the Supreme Court’s NYSRPA v. Bruen decision.

    For those unaware, the Bruen decision completely changed the legal landscape of firearms law in the US by requiring statutes regulating firearms to be rooted in the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment.

    The Judge in the case concurred with the statement and granted Defense Distributed a preliminary injunction. The case now heads to the 5th Circuit, where ATF will have to defend its position.

    The 5th Circuit has recently ruled against the ATF in similar cases, including Cargill v. Garland. In that case, a panel of judges decided that ATF did not have the power to determine bump stocks were in fact machine guns contrary to ATF’s 2019 Bump Stock rule. That rule effectively banned bump stock devices by classifying them as machine guns.

    The decision in VanDerStok v. Garland could have major effects on the self-manufacturing of firearms and the ATF’s rulemaking and regulatory abilities as ATF has rewritten the federal statute to enforce their rulemaking. According to the court filings, the plaintiffs argue that only congress can rewrite federal statue to make law, not regulatory agencies like ATF.

    Defense Distributed had this to say:

    “This is not just a blow to ATF, who pushed a new definition of ‘firearm’ at their peril. It is also a defeat for Giffords, who were the agents of this illegal attempt to expand the Gun Control Act through the APA process. Their lobbying and regulatory laundry has now spectacularly backfired.”

    Defense Distributed has a history of victory against the Federal Government. In 2018, they won their case Defense Distributed v. US Dept. of State, effectively creating the current legal landscape with 3D-printed firearms and their respective CAD files shared online.

    Gun rights activists should watch this case as it goes through the courts.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/05/2023 – 15:00

  • Doctors, Scientists Call On Mississippi Officials To Take COVID Vaccines Off The Market
    Doctors, Scientists Call On Mississippi Officials To Take COVID Vaccines Off The Market

    Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Dr. Peter McCullough (L) and Dr. John Witcher speak in the Mississippi state Capitol on COVID-19 vaccine adverse events in Jackson, Miss., on Feb. 27, 2023. (Courtesy of Charlotte Stringer Photography)

    JACKSON, Miss.—The group of physicians, vaccine-injured people, and whistleblowers speaking at the Mississippi Capitol building on Monday and Tuesday weren’t asking state officials to cease all COVID-19 vaccinations and to convene a grand jury to investigate its rollout in the state.

    They were demanding it.

    “Stop the shots” was the refrain of those who had treated COVID patients over the last three years and those injured by the vaccine.

    On Monday and Tuesday, the medical freedom organization MS Against Mandates (MAM) held the Mississippi Medical Freedom Conference in Jackson, Mississippi, which included over a dozen physicians, several whistleblowers, six physician-confirmed vaccine-injured patients, and two parents whose sons died after receiving the vaccines.

    Dr. John Witcher is the co-founder and former president of MAM. He stepped back from the leadership position to focus on his run for Mississippi governor in the 2023 gubernatorial election.

    MAM orchestrated the event that gave a voice to many who are being silenced in media and the medical community, such as Dr. Peter McCullough, a practicing internist and cardiologist in Dallas who is also the national medical adviser for MAM.

    McCullough told The Epoch Times that the purpose of the three-and-a-half-hour roundtable—chaired by Republican state Rep. Randy Boyd—was primarily to educate Mississippi officials about safety concerns regarding the vaccine.

    “The state must pull these products off the market,” McCullough said. “There can be no more administration of the COVID-19 vaccines in the state of Mississippi.”

    McCullough, author of “The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex,” said the essential problem with the vaccines is the safety concern for the large number of people who have taken them without informed consent about adverse events.

    “The CDC now says 92 percent of Americans have taken at least one shot and that 79 percent have taken two shots,” McCullough said. “If there are safety concerns, that’s a problem because the denominator is so big.”

    Because of those large numbers, any rare side effect isn’t rare from a safety perspective and, as was heard in the testimonies, there are concerns that the state officials haven’t kept track of the full number of the injuries and has even undercounted them, McCullough said.

    In Mississippi, which represents under 1 percent of the U.S. population, McCullough estimated that there are several hundred people who have been injured by the vaccines and that some have died from the vaccines.

    “That’s several hundred too many, and it didn’t need to happen,” McCullough said. “None of this needed to happen.”

    Community Standard of Care

    Physicians like Witcher and others on the panel have reported that their state health officials have only recited federal talking points instead of allowing them to cultivate what McCullough called their own “community standard-of-care,” which McCullough said is intended to evolve over time.

    “The community standard of care always comes from the doctors who are treating the patients,” McCullough said. “Under no circumstances does it come from federal or state agencies, pharmaceutical companies, or even from hospitals or hospital systems. It comes from the doctors in the field who are learning how to treat their patients based on the medical literature, clinical judgment, and the differences in the community.”

    This is why McCullough said each state needs its own doctor-in-charge, like in Florida, where Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo has refuted federal guidelines handed down by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Dr. Anthony Fauci when he was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

    “We’re seeing how valuable it is for a state to have its own independent thinker who is not biased, influenced by the pharmaceutical industry, or influenced by any state or federal public health agency,” McCullough said.

    A doctor-in-charge in Mississippi would have acted as the representative for state officials to hear the testimonies given in the state Capitol on Monday, McCullough said.

    “The state of Mississippi needs an independent thinker who can attend medical panels like this, take them under consideration, and provide advising to the attorney general,” McCullough said. “In this case, it would be to get the vaccines off the market.”

    If Witcher were to become governor, he said he would create a position for a state surgeon general, and McCullough said he would “entertain the appointment as a doctor and a public figure.”

    Noticeably, the Capitol chamber where the roundtable convened was absent of lawmakers—aside from Boyd—which McCullough said wasn’t surprising, as he’s seen it “over and over again.”

    “The fear among legislators on both the state and federal levels is extraordinary,” McCullough said. “This is the biggest thing that’s happened to our country over the last three years in modern history and you’d think they’d be interested to hear from doctors who traveled from far distances and who have vast experience in this. It’s not for my benefit. It’s for their benefit, and it’s extremely disappointing that they found something else that they thought was a higher priority.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/05/2023 – 14:30

  • Employers Frequently Overlook Resumes Which Include "They/Them" Pronouns
    Employers Frequently Overlook Resumes Which Include “They/Them” Pronouns

    One of the apocryphal conspiracy theories floated in recent years is that the establishment’s – and corporate America’s – fascination with pushing an LGBTQ agenda while minimizing (and in some cases openly ridiculing) traditional family-focused Judeo-Christian values, is that this is a core spoke of the World Economic Forum’s great reset. After all, what easier way to “depopulate” the world (as World Economic Forum participant Jane Goodall famously suggested in 2020 when she said “we can solve all the world’s problems if we reduce the world population to where it was 500 years ago”, at the 27 minute mark of the linked video) than to convince hundreds of millions to pair with a member of the same sex and thus avoid having children. One certainly wouldn’t need World War 3 or even a global viral pandemic to achieve a depopulation outcome if enough people are L, G, B, T, Q, “they/them” and so on (at last check, over 7% of the US population now identifies as LGBTQ). One just has to wait a generation.

    There now appears to be another potential twist to this: it appears that workers who identify as the cool du jour pronoun pair of “they/them” are being systematically ignored by potential employers, and face far fewer job offers compared to their less pronoun-sensitive peers.

    According to a new report from Business.com, a business resource platform, over 80% of nonbinary people believe that identifying as nonbinary would hurt their job search. Similarly, 51% believe their gender identity has affected their workplace experience “very or somewhat negatively.” Why? Well, for those confused, a quick reminder: the Biden admin’s “non-binary” hero is – or rather was – none other than Sam Britton, who worked as a nuclear engineer, or technically “deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy”, at least until it was revealed that he is a pathological liar and kleptomaniac with a penchant for stealing other people’s suitcases (and then wearing stolen female clothing). Clearly a person with zero mental issues and pristine decision-making skills. In any case, Britton lost his job recently after his crimes were exposed, prompting a cascade a question about the mental stability of the “they/them” cohort.

    Which is why even though Ryan McGonagill, director of industry research at Business.com and author of the report, said that the latest statistics show just how much “inclusive” work there is to do…

    “We clearly have more work to do on several fronts. Over the past 10 years, DEIB efforts have been prioritized by many companies; however, the results of this study and past research show that teams in most industries aren’t proportionately representative of the U.S. population,” McGonagill tells CNBC Make It. “And worse, many people (like the nonbinary individuals we spoke with in our research) feel like they don’t belong.”

    … perhaps employers have it right?

    Rhetorical questions aside, CNBC notes that Business.com also went a step further by sending two identical phantom resumes to “180 unique job postings that were explicitly open to entry-level candidates” in an effort to test “whether or not the inclusion of gender-neutral pronouns impacts how employers perceive resumes.”

    “Both featured a gender-ambiguous name, ‘Taylor Williams.’ The only difference between the test and control resumes was the presence of gender pronouns on the test version,” McGonagill said in the report. “The test resume included “they/them” pronouns under the name in the header.” She/her and he/him pronouns were not tested.

    The phantom resume including pronouns received 8% less interest than the one without, and fewer interview and phone screening invitations.

    According to the report, over 64% of the companies that received these resumes were Equal Opportunity Employers, something that made the results even more “worrisome.”

    “The law makes it clear that you cannot base any employment decision (hiring, terminating, or otherwise) based on their gender identity,” McGonagill says. “It’s incredibly disappointing and unethical that many of the hiring managers in our study would disqualify a candidate for being authentic.”

    What is probably funnier, although it wasn’t analyzed, is that most of those hiring managers who overlooked the “they/them” stack also happen to be the most vocal virtue-signaling supporters of LGBTQ rights…. just not when it comes to their own company. In other words, a classic case of employment NIMBY: please hire all these wonderful folks… just don’t make me hire them.

    “It’s incredibly disappointing and unethical that many of the hiring managers in our study would disqualify a candidate for being authentic” said McGonagill. Oh, if only Ryan knew just how unethical some of the most vocal virtue-signalers are, he would be in a state of permanent shock. As for being “authentic”… well, there is this thing called Darwinian selection. If enough people realize that identifying as a “they/them” is not all that cool, perhaps we will finally have some return to normalcy after progressive identify politics have pushed society to the verge of collapse. Just like what better way to solve society’s overpopulation problem than by encouraging the young and easily impressionable to join the growing LGBTQ cohort and avoid having any children. End result: widespread depopulation, just next generation not this one.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 03/05/2023 – 14:25

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