Nov 17

Today’s News 17th November 2022

  • Techno-Authoritarianism Is Here To Stay: China & The Deep State Have Joined Forces
    Techno-Authoritarianism Is Here To Stay: China & The Deep State Have Joined Forces

    Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back.”

    – Senator Frank Church

    The votes are in.

    No matter who runs for office, no matter who controls the White House, Senate or the House of Representatives now or in the future, “we the people” have already lost.

    We have lost because the future of this nation is being forged beyond the reach of our laws, elections and borders by techno-authoritarian powers with no regard for individuality, privacy or freedom.

    The fate of America is being made in China, our role model for all things dystopian.

    An economic and political powerhouse that owns more of America’s debt than any other country and is buying up American businesses across the spectrum, China is a vicious totalitarian regime that routinely employs censorship, surveillance, and brutal police state tactics to intimidate its populace, maintain its power, and expand the largesse of its corporate elite.

    Where China goes, the United States eventually follows. This way lies outright tyranny.

    Censorship. China’s censorship machine is straight out of Orwell’s 1984 with government agencies and corporations working together to limit the populace’s freedom of expression. Just a few years ago, in fact, China banned the use of the word “disagree,” as well as references to George Orwell’s novels Animal Farm and 1984. Government agencies routinely harass and intimidate anyone seen as non-compliant. Activists are frequently penalized for gathering in public places and charged criminally with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” China has also gone to great lengths to muzzle journalists reporting on corruption or human rights abuses.

    Surveillance. COVID-19 brought China’s Orwellian surveillance out of the shadows and gave China the perfect excuse for unleashing the full force of its expansive and sophisticated surveillance and data collection powers on its citizenry and the rest of the world. Thermal scanners using artificial intelligence (AI) were installed at train stations in major cities to assess body temperatures and identify anyone with a fever. Facial recognition cameras and cell phone carriers tracked people’s movements constantly, reporting in real time to data centers that could be accessed by government agents and employers alike. And coded color alerts (red, yellow and green) sorted people into health categories that corresponded to the amount of freedom of movement they’re allowed: “Green code, travel freely. Red or yellow, report immediately.”

    Social media credit scores. Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, the Chinese surveillance state had already been hard at work tracking its citizens through the use of some 200 million security cameras installed nationwide. Equipped with facial recognition technology, the cameras allow authorities to track so-called criminal acts, such as jaywalking, which factor into a person’s social credit score. Social media credit scores assigned to Chinese individuals and businesses categorize them on whether or not they are “good” citizens. A “citizen score” determines one’s place in society based on one’s loyalty to the government. A real-name system—which requires people to use government-issued ID cards to buy mobile sims, obtain social media accounts, take a train, board a plane, or even buy groceries—coupled with social media credit scores ensures that those blacklisted as “unworthy” are banned from accessing financial markets, buying real estate or travelling by air or train. Among the activities that can get you labeled unworthy are taking reserved seats on trains or allegedly causing trouble in hospitals.

    Safe, smart cities. Having pioneered the development of so-called “safe” smart cities, China is exporting worldwide the high-tech communities in which residents are monitored round the clock, their every action under constant surveillance, and every device is connected to a central brain operated by artificial intelligence. As privacy expert Vincent Mosco concludes, “The benefit from smart cities clearly goes to the authorities who are able to use the promise of the modern, high-tech city to extend and deepen surveillance. It also goes to the big tech companies who profit first from building the smart city infrastructure and secondly by commodifying the entire smart city space. Citizens gain some operational efficiency but at great cost to their liberty.”

    Digital currency. China has already adopted a government-issued digital currency, which not only allows it to surveil and seize people’s financial transactions, but can also work in tandem with its social credit score system to punish individuals for moral lapses and social transgressions (and reward them for adhering to government-sanctioned behavior). As China expert Akram Keram wrote for The Washington Post, “With digital yuan, the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] will have direct control over and access to the financial lives of individuals, without the need to strong-arm intermediary financial entities. In a digital-yuan-consumed society, the government easily could suspend the digital wallets of dissidents and human rights activists.”

    Digital authoritarianism will redefine what it means to be free in almost every aspect of our lives. Again, we must look to China to understand what awaits us. As Human Rights Watch analyst Maya Wang explains: “Chinese authorities use technology to control the population all over the country in subtler but still powerful ways. The central bank is adopting digital currency, which will allow Beijing to surveil—and control—people’s financial transactions. China is building so-called safe cities, which integrate data from intrusive surveillance systems to predict and prevent everything from fires to natural disasters and political dissent. The government believes that these intrusions, together with administrative actions, such as denying blacklisted people access to services, will nudge people toward ‘positive behaviors,’ including greater compliance with government policies and healthy habits such as exercising.”

    AI surveillance. In much the same way that Chinese products have infiltrated almost every market worldwide and altered consumer dynamics, China is now exporting its “authoritarian tech” to governments worldwide ostensibly in an effort to spread its brand of totalitarianism worldwide. In fact, both China and the United States have led the way in supplying the rest of the world with AI surveillance, sometimes at a subsidized rate. In the hands of tyrants and benevolent dictators alike, AI surveillance is the ultimate means of repression and control, especially through the use of smart city/safe city platforms, facial recognition systems, and predictive policing. These technologies are also being used by violent extremist groups, as well as sex, child, drug, and arms traffickers for their own nefarious purposes.

    While countries with authoritarian regimes have been eager to adopt AI surveillance, as the Carnegie Endowment’s research makes clear, liberal democracies are also “aggressively using AI tools to police borders, apprehend potential criminals, monitor citizens for bad behavior, and pull out suspected terrorists from crowds.” Moreover, it’s easy to see how the China model for internet control has been integrated into the American police state’s efforts to flush out so-called anti-government, domestic extremists. This is how totalitarianism conquers the world.

    Secret police. According to recent reports, China has planted more than 54 secret police forces in 25 cities around the world, including the United States, as part of their efforts to track and threaten dissidents and deport them back to China for prosecution. The campaign to surveil, intimidate and punish ex-patriates living abroad engaging in dissent has been dubbed Operation Fox Hunt. As one human rights agency noted, “The message from the [Chinese] ministry of foreign affairs – that you are not safe anywhere, that we can find you and that we can get to you – is very effective.”

    Police brutality. Not much has changed about China’s brutal crackdown on protesters in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Chinese policing remains brutal, excessive and inflexible, now with the added power of the surveillance state behind it.

    Intimidation tactics. China has mastered the art of intimidation tactics, threatening activists, their families and their livelihood should they fail to comply with the government’s dictates. As one activist explained, “There have been telephone calls in the middle of the night that family members won’t find work if you don’t cooperate with the government, or that your parents’ phone number will be posted online and they’ll be harassed. Or with Uyghurs, that the rest of your family will be put in camps.”

    Disappearance, brainwashing and torture. Those who fail to fall in line with China’s dictates are often made to disappear, arrested in the dead of night and imprisoned in Orwellian re-education camps. China has built more than 400 of these internment camps in recent years to detain people for offenses that run the gamut from challenging the government to so-called religious crimes such as owning a Qur’an or abstaining from eating pork. As the Guardian reports, “abuses include detailed arbitrary detentions, torture and medical neglect in the detention camps and coercive birth control.”

    China’s global influence, its technological reach, its quest for world domination, and its rigid demand for compliance are pushing us towards a world in chains.

    Through its growing stranglehold on surveillance technology, China has erected the world’s first digital totalitarian state, and in the process, has made itself a model for aspiring dictators everywhere.

    What too many fail to recognize, however, is that China and the American Deep State have joined forces.

    As I make clear in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this is fascism hiding behind a thin veneer of open government and populist elections.

    For all intents and purposes, we have become the embodiment of what Philip K. Dick feared when he wrote The Man in the High Castle, a vision of an alternate universe in which the Axis powers defeat the Allies in World War II, and “fascism has not simply conquered America. It has insinuated itself, with disturbing ease, into America’s DNA.”

    Yet while Dick’s vision of a world in which totalitarianism has been normalized is chilling, our growing reality of a world in which the Deep State is not merely entrenched but has gone global is downright terrifying.

    Our national flag may not boast the red and white stripes with a swastika on a field of blue as depicted in The Man in the High Castle, but be warned: we are no less occupied.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/16/2022 – 23:40

  • "Seismic Unrest Burbling" Under World's Largest Active Volcano In Hawaii
    “Seismic Unrest Burbling” Under World’s Largest Active Volcano In Hawaii

    United States Geological Survey data shows earthquake swarms continue around the world’s largest active volcano, Mauna Loa, on the Big Island of Hawaii. Such unrest could be a precursor to an eruption not seen in decades. 

    In the 24 hours ending Tuesday, at least 50 quakes measuring 3.0 magnitude or below rattled Mauna Loa. Geologists are worried the quakes are signs magma churns underneath the volcano could spark an eruption, though there are no signs of anything imminent. 

    Here’s USGS’ latest update: 

    Mauna Loa continues to be in a state of heightened unrest as indicated by increased earthquake activity and inflation of the summit. The current unrest is most likely being driven by renewed input of magma 2–5 miles (3–8 km) beneath Mauna Loa’s summit.

    During the past 24 hours, HVO [Hawaii Volcano Observatory] detected 50 small-magnitude (below M3.0) earthquakes 2–3 miles (2–5 km) below Mokuʻāweoweo caldera and 4–5 miles (6–8 km) beneath the upper-elevation northwest flank of Mauna Loa. Both of these regions have historically been seismically active during periods of unrest on Mauna Loa.

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    This heightened unrest began in mid-Sept. with increased earthquake rates below the Mauna Loa summit. By October, we reported the volcano was placed on red alert. 

    “Geologists say they expect to see more persistent and heightened rate of ground deformation and seismicity before a future eruption,” Fox Weather noted. 

    Mauna Loa is about half of the Hawaii Island landmass. So any eruption would immediately impact residents. There are about 200,000 people on the island. It last erupted in 1984, and lava flows took out homes in under two hours. 

    Swarms of quakes are sometimes the first indications of volcanic reawakening. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/16/2022 – 23:20

  • Escobar: Russia, India, China, Iran – The Quad That Really Matters
    Escobar: Russia, India, China, Iran – The Quad That Really Matters

    Authored by Pepe Escobar,

    Southeast Asia is right at the center of international relations for a whole week viz a viz three consecutive summits: Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Phnom Penh, the Group of Twenty (G20) summit in Bali, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Bangkok.

    Eighteen nations accounting for roughly half of the global economy represented at the first in-person ASEAN summit since the Covid-19 pandemic in Cambodia: the ASEAN 10, Japan, South Korea, China, India, US, Russia, Australia, and New Zealand.

    With characteristic Asian politeness, the summit chair, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen (or “Colombian”, according to the so-called “leader of the free world”), said the plenary meeting was somewhat heated, but the atmosphere was not tense: “Leaders talked in a mature way, no one left.”

    It was up to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to express what was really significant at the end of the summit.

    While praising the “inclusive, open, equal structure of security and cooperation at ASEAN”, Lavrov stressed how Europe and NATO “want to militarize the region in order to contain Russia and China’s interests in the Indo-Pacific.”

    A manifestation of this policy is how “AUKUS is openly aiming at confrontation in the South China Sea,” he said.

    Lavrov also stressed how the West, via the NATO military alliance, is accepting ASEAN “only nominally” while promoting a completely “unclear” agenda.

    What’s clear though is how NATO “has moved towards Russian borders several times and now declared at the Madrid summit that they have taken global responsibility.”

    This leads us to the clincher: “NATO is moving their line of defense to the South China Sea.” And, Lavrov added, Beijing holds the same assessment.

    Here, concisely, is the open “secret” of our current geopolitical incandescence. Washington’s number one priority is the containment of China. That implies blocking the EU from getting closer to the key Eurasia drivers  – China, Russia, and Iran – engaged in building the world’s largest free trade/connectivity environment.

    Adding to the decades-long hybrid war against Iran, the infinite weaponizing of the Ukrainian black hole fits into the initial stages of the battle.

    For the Empire, Iran cannot profit from becoming a provider of cheap, quality energy to the EU. And in parallel, Russia must be cut off from the EU. The next step is to force the EU to cut itself off from China.

    All that fits into the wildest, warped Straussian/neo-con wet dreams: to attack China, by emboldening Taiwan, first Russia must be weakened, via the instrumentalization (and destruction) of Ukraine.

    And all along the scenario, Europe simply has no agency.

    Putin, Raeisi and the Erdogan track

    Real life across key Eurasia nodes reveals a completely different picture. Take the relaxed get-together in Tehran between Russia’s top security official Nikolai Patrushev and his Iranian counterpart Ali Shamkhani last week.

    They discussed not only security matters but also serious business – as in turbo-charged trade.

    The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) will sign a $40 billion deal next month with Gazprom, bypassing US sanctions, and encompassing the development of two gas fields and six oilfields, swaps in natural gas and oil products, LNG projects, and the construction of gas pipelines.

    Immediately after the Patrushev-Shamkhani meeting, President Putin called President Ebrahim Raeisi to keep up the “interaction in politics, trade and the economy, including transport and logistics,” according to the Kremlin.

    Iranian president reportedly more than “welcomed” the “strengthening” of Moscow-Tehran ties.

    Patrushev unequivocally supported Tehran over the latest color revolution adventure perpetrated under the framework of the Empire’s endless hybrid war.

    Iran and the EAEU are negotiating a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in parallel to the swap deals with Russian oil. Soon, SWIFT may be completely bypassed. The whole Global South is watching.

    Simultaneous to Putin’s phone call, Turkiye’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan – conducting his own diplomatic overdrive, and just back from a summit of Turkic nations in Samarkand – stressed that the US and the collective West are attacking Russia “almost without limits”.

    Erdogan made it clear that Russia is a “powerful” state and commended its “great resistance”.

    The response came exactly 24 hours later. Turkish intelligence cut to the chase, pointing out that the terrorist bombing in the perpetually busy Istiklal pedestrian street in Istanbul was designed in Kobane in northern Syria, which essentially responds to the US.

    That constitutes a de-facto act of war and may unleash serious consequences, including a profound revision of Turkiye’s presence inside NATO.

    Iran’s multi-track strategy

    A Russia-Iran strategic alliance manifests itself practically as a historical inevitability. It recalls the time when the erstwhile USSR helped Iran militarily via North Korea, after an enforced US/Europe blockade.

    Putin and Raeisi are taking it to the next level. Moscow and Tehran are developing a joint strategy to defeat the weaponization of sanctions by the collective West.

    Iran, after all, has an absolutely stellar record of smashing variants of “maximum pressure” to bits. Also, it is now linked to a strategic nuclear umbrella offered by the “RICs” in BRICS (Russia, India, China).

    So, Tehran may now plan to develop its massive economic potential within the framework of BRI, SCO, INSTC, the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), and the Russian-led Greater Eurasia Partnership.

    Moscow’s game is pure sophistication: engaging in a high-level strategic oil alliance with Saudi Arabia while deepening its strategic partnership with Iran.

    Immediately after Patrushev’s visit, Tehran announced the development of an indigenously built hypersonic ballistic missile, quite similar to the Russian KH-47 M2 Khinzal.

    And the other significant news was connectivity-wise: the completion of part of a railway from strategic Chabahar Port to the border with Turkmenistan. That means imminent direct rail connectivity to the Central Asian, Russian and Chinese spheres.

    Add to it the predominant role of OPEC+, the development of BRICS+, and the pan-Eurasian drive to pricing trade, insurance, security, investments in the ruble, yuan, rial, etc.

    There’s also the fact that Tehran could not care less about the endless collective West procrastination on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as Iran nuclear deal: what really matters now is the deepening relationship with the “RICs” in BRICS.

    Tehran refused to sign a tampered-with EU draft nuclear deal in Vienna. Brussels was enraged; no Iranian oil will “save” Europe, replacing Russian oil under a nonsensical cap to be imposed next month.

    And Washington was enraged because it was betting on internal tensions to split OPEC.

    Considering all of the above, no wonder US ‘Think Tankland’ is behaving like a bunch of headless chickens.

    The queue to join BRICS

    During the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Samarkand last September, it was already tacit to all players how the Empire is cannibalizing its closest allies.

    And how, simultaneously, the shrinking NATO-sphere is turning inwards, with a focus on The Enemy Within, relentlessly corralling average citizens to march in lockstep behind total compliance with a two-pronged war – hybrid and otherwise – against imperial peer competitors Russia and China.

    Now compare it with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Samarkand presenting China and Russia, together, as the top “responsible global powers” bent on securing the emergence of multipolarity.

    Samarkand also reaffirmed the strategic political partnership between Russia and India (Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called it an unbreakable friendship).

    That was corroborated by the meeting between Lavrov and his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar last week in Moscow.

    Lavrov praised the strategic partnership in every crucial area – politics, trade and economics, investment, and technology, as well as “closely coordinated actions” at the UN Security Council, BRICS, SCO and the G20.

    On BRICS, crucially, Lavrov confirmed that “over a dozen countries” are lining up for membership, including Iran: “We expect the work on coordinating the criteria and principles that should underlie BRICS expansion to not take much time”.

    But first, the five members need to analyze the ground-breaking repercussions of an expanded BRICS+.

    Once again: contrast. What is the EU’s “response” to these developments? Coming up with yet another sanctions package against Iran, targeting officials and entities “connected with security affairs” as well as companies, for their alleged “violence and repressions”.

    “Diplomacy”, collective West-style, barely registers as bullying.

    Back to the real economy – as in the gas front – the national interests of Russia, Iran and Turkiye are increasingly intertwined; and that is bound to influence developments in Syria, Iraq, and Libya, and will be a key factor to facilitate Erdogan’s re-election next year.

    As it stands, Riyadh for all practical purposes has performed a stunning 180-degree maneuver against Washington via OPEC+. That may signify, even in a twisted way, the onset of a process of unification of Arab interests, guided by Moscow.

    Stranger things have happened in modern history.

    Now appears to be the time for the Arab world to be finally ready to join the Quad that really matters: Russia, India, China, and Iran.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/16/2022 – 23:00

  • Wray Refuses To Say If FBI Had Sources 'Dressed As Trump Supporters' On January 6
    Wray Refuses To Say If FBI Had Sources ‘Dressed As Trump Supporters’ On January 6

    FBI Director Christopher Wray refused to say whether the agency had confidential informants mixed among Trump supporters during the Jan. 6, 2021 capitol riot.

    “Did the FBI have confidential human sources embedded within the Jan. 6 protesters on Jan. 6 of 2021?” Rep. Clay Higgins asked Wray on Tuesday.

    “As I’m sure you can appreciate, I have to be very careful about what I can say, about when we do and do not, and where we have and have not used confidential human sources,” Wray replied, adding “But to the extent there’s a suggestion, for example, that the FBI’s confidential human sources or FBI employees in someway instigated or orchestrated Jan 6th, that’s categorically false.”

    Higgins then asked, “Did you have confidential human sources dressed as Trump supporters inside the Capitol on January 6th prior to the doors being opened?”

    Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) questions FBI Director Christopher Wray in Washington on Nov. 15, 2022. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    To which Wray pushed back, “Again, I have to be very careful about what I can say.”

    “It should be a no!” Higgins interjected. “Can you not tell the American people: ‘no, we did not have confidential human sources dressed as Trump sources positioned inside the Capitol on January the 6th?”

    To which Wray replied: “You should not read anything into my decision not to share information about confidential human sources.”

    More via The Epoch Times,

    Higgins’s time to question Wray and other Biden administration officials then expired. He did not get to ask more questions later, and no other members pursued the line of questioning further.

    Wray, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and National Counterterrorism Center Director Christine Abizaid testified before the House Homeland Security Committee on Capitol Hill.

    The FBI has never confirmed having confidential sources or undercover agents among the crowd on Jan. 6 but court filings indicate that a number of sources were embedded with the Oath Keepers and other groups whose members took part in the Capitol breach.

    Questioned on the matter in 2021, then-FBI official Jill Sanborn said she could not answer.

    Officials have also not answered questions about videos that show doors being opened on Jan. 6, enabling people to enter the Capitol.

    Later in the hearing, Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) said she was concerned about people thinking the FBI “is a political tool” and asked Wray to “explain in your words why they should trust their federal law enforcement.”

    Wray said that he hears from people outside the FBI that the FBI “does the right thing in the right way” and that he would “stack our workforce up against anywhere in the world, anytime.”

    “And the Americans should have deep confidence in those people. And I will add that when it comes to perceptions of the FBI, that the number of Americans all across this country applying to be special agents in the FBI, has been going up, up significantly over the past three years. At a time when, as I hear all the time, law enforcement all over this country is having the opposite experience. And I think that speaks very well of Americans in every state represented on this committee.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/16/2022 – 22:40

  • Sheriffs Refuse To Enforce Democrat-Controlled State's New Gun Law
    Sheriffs Refuse To Enforce Democrat-Controlled State’s New Gun Law

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Several sheriffs in Oregon said they will not enforce the state’s new gun law that places a limit on magazine capacity, arguing that the provision violates the Constitution’s Second Amendment.

    A California-legal AR-15 style rifle is displayed for sale at the Crossroads of the West Gun Show at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, Calif., on June 5, 2021. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

    Oregon voters approved Measure 114, also known as the Reduction of Gun Violence Act, during the Nov. 8 midterm elections. The rule, among other restrictions, outlaws magazines that hold more than 10 rounds—similar to rules that have been implemented in New York, California, and other Democrat-controlled states.

    Several county sheriffs have publicly announced they won’t enforce the law or parts of the law.

    “The biggest thing is this does absolutely nothing to address the problem,” Sheriff Cody Bowen of Union County told Fox News on Tuesday. “The problem that we have is not… magazine capacity. It’s not background checks. It’s a problem with mental health awareness. It’s a problem with behavior health illness.”

    Bowen added that “society as a whole is a bigger problem rather than saying that, you know, the guns are killing people.” Union County, which is sparsely populated, is located in northeastern Oregon near the Idaho border.

    “There’s just no way possible for us to enforce that and nor would I simply because it’s an infringement on our Second Amendment, you know, our right to keep and bear arms,” he said, adding that it won’t reduce shootings in the state.

    Malheur County Sheriff Brian Wolfe stated that he won’t enforce the magazine limit.

    “I don’t think this is superseding anything. I don’t believe that I am superseding state law by not enforcing it. Anybody in law enforcement, including the state police, including the governor, has to pick and choose what laws they are going to be able to enforce,” he told local media.

    Linn County Sheriff Michelle Duncan wrote on Nov. 9 in a Facebook post that she wants “to send a clear message to Linn County residents that the Linn County Sheriff’s Office is NOT going to be enforcing magazine capacity limits.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/16/2022 – 22:20

  • Chuck Schumer Calls For Amnesty For Illegals Because Americans Are 'Not Reproducing'
    Chuck Schumer Calls For Amnesty For Illegals Because Americans Are ‘Not Reproducing’

    It’s a classic argument used ten years ago when European officials called for open borders and the acceptance of a mass injection of Islamic immigrants into the region – The idea that westerners are not having enough babies to support population replacement, and thus, open borders must be established. 

    Chuck Schumer is promoting the same concept for the US, with calls for amnesty for 11 million+ illegals.  Americans aren’t reproducing anymore, according to Schumer, and so immigration is the only answer.

    There are many problems with this nonsensical philosophy, with the most obvious being that population replacement from non-western countries that do not respect western values leads to cultural destruction.  As we have seen with the exponential rise in crime and instability within European countries where immigrants are most concentrated (like Sweden), there are often consequences to open borders. 

    The EU has desperately tried to deny the rising threat and has even commissioned multiple studies in an attempt to debunk the idea, but you can’t tell a population they are not experiencing more crime after migrants overrun their neighborhoods when they are witnessing the crime daily.  In many cases, European governments have even sought to cover up migrant crimes, refusing to prosecute because this would be an admission of the failure of open border policies.

    This behavior has been cited as one of the primary reasons for the rise of “right wing” parties in Europe in the past few years, after decades of socialist dominance.  Immigration without review and without vetting makes no sense, and it is a policy pushed onto western countries by ideologues while almost every other nation in the world maintains restrictions. 

    Why is the west expected to embrace open borders while other cultures and countries are not?

    It should be noted that Democrats have become outraged after buses filled with illegal immigrants were sent to major leftist cities including New York and Washington DC, with the mayors of those cities declaring a state of emergency and asking for federal intervention and the National Guard.  Major Democrat controlled cities can’t handle the influx of a mere 10,000 to 15,000 migrants, let alone millions; hardly proof that mass immigration is good for the economy. 

    Amnesty promoters often argue that they only want citizenship for illegals that have been in the US for years.  However, amnesty for those people encourages the increased migration of others.  The cycle never ends, with the US border now facing record numbers of illegals under the Biden Administration.

    Furthermore, if Democrats are worried about inflation and population decline, then why do they continue to defend abortion?  The best way to shore up the US population would be to stop the use of abortion as a convenient form of birth control for people that don’t want to take the pill or use a condom.  The two policies contradict because the Democrats do not care about the economy, nor do they care about population replacement.  What they care about is transplanting millions of immigrants into the US, most of which come from socialist countries, and using them as a voting bloc to secure power for generations to come.  

    Not only that, but one could argue that leftists also want the destruction of western culture because it harbors ideals of freedom that do not exist in most other cultures.  With the west invaded and our principles diluted, our freedoms will be easier to eliminate and our system easier to supplant and replace.     

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/16/2022 – 22:00

  • Short-Covers Unwind One Of The Most-Crowded Trades
    Short-Covers Unwind One Of The Most-Crowded Trades

    By Ye Xie, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and analyst

    The recovery of Chinese assets has been fast and furious. It was mainly driven by short-covering, according to Morgan Stanley. Now that peak pessimism has been pared and positioning is less lopsided, the easy part of the rally may be behind us. Improving data and a successful retreat from Covid Zero are needed to keep the momentum going.

    Bank of America’s latest fund-manager survey shows investors saw shorting Chinese equities as the second-most crowded trade after long-dollar positions. The survey was conducted between Nov. 4 and Nov. 10, sandwiched between the party congress that disappointed investors and the official confirmation of the fine-tuning of the Covid policy.

    The crowded positioning suggests short-covering may be one of the drivers that pushed the MSCI China Index up 26% this month, after Beijing loosened Covid restrictions and stepped up the support for the housing market. Indeed, Morgan Stanley’s quant analysts found evidence supporting the theory. Strategists including Gilbert Wong wrote:

    Regional hedge funds were covering short positions from the YTD high levels of short interest, while some hedge fund managers in China were building tactical long positions again to chase the rally. 

    They believe the rally would be prolonged into year-end amid rising expectation of various fundamental improvements – e.g., Covid-zero relaxation and a temporary easing of geopolitical tensions. Thus, the most shorted stocks were leading the covering flows, resulting in the rally of low-quality and unprofitable tech plays.

    What’s more interesting is that the rally has been so quick that trading signals for trend-following strategies have flipped from short to long, according to the strategists. “Their algorithms have to trade on a reversal basis in the near term to minimize drawdown risk,” Wong wrote.

    That shift in expectations is also captured by Bank of America’s survey of Asian investors. A net 26% of investors said they’d overweight China, up from 14% in the October survey. The overweight is more than any other places in the region.

    Make no mistake: The nascent optimism is more tactical than structural. A whopping 80% of the survey respondents said that the China equity market is in a “structural de-rating process.”

    In other words, don’t overstay the party.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/16/2022 – 21:40

  • SpaceX Attempting To Raise Funding At $150 Billion Valuation
    SpaceX Attempting To Raise Funding At $150 Billion Valuation

    Well, that’s one way to try and help alleviate a cash crunch at your empire…

    SpaceX is reportedly attempting to raise a funding round that values the space exploration company at a whopping $150 billion, multiple reports, including one from Bloomberg, on Tuesday confirmed. 

    The report cited “people familiar with the matter” and people “asking not to be identified discussing confidential information”. The valuation is a boost from the $125 billion the company sported earlier this year. 

    Terms have not yet been finalized and could change, Bloomberg noted.

    Shares are being talked about at $85 each, which is up from $70 price that the company last funded itself at. It looks as though employees will be able to sell into the funding round, as, well, Bloomberg noted:

    “Investors may buy new shares in SpaceX at the same time employees sell via a private placement, or tender offer, at the same valuation…”

    Elon Musk responded to the report on Tuesday, calling it “false” on Twitter, without offering up additional details as to why the report was incorrect. SpaceX didn’t respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment before they published. 

    The news will come as welcome to the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, who are early investors in SpaceX. The pension fund was most recently in the news for getting caught up in the FTX implosion to the tune of $95 million. Perhaps they can offload some SpaceX shares to try and offset the carnage in crypto…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/16/2022 – 21:20

  • Yes, 3D-Printed Steaks Are A Thing
    Yes, 3D-Printed Steaks Are A Thing

    Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,

    Believe it or not, 3d printed meat may soon be on its way to a store near you. Reuters recently reported that Israel’s Redefine Meat has struck a partnership with importer Giraudi Meats to drive the distribution of its ‘New Meat’ steak cuts produced on 3D printers. At this time, they will be targeting the European market.

    Redefine hopes to reach thousands of restaurants by the end of next year with its plant-based whole cuts of alternative meat. Their product, which mimics meat, or as they say, flank steak, is a mix of soy and pea protein, chickpeas, beetroot, nutritional yeasts, and coconut fat.

    The Israeli company has been working with about 150 restaurants in Israel, they say the whole cuts they offer will broaden the appeal of alternative meat products. These, up until now, have mostly been limited to ground-beef dishes, including hamburgers and sausages.

    Is This What We Want?

    As the larger cuts of alternative meat which are more complicated to produce evolve, companies are gearing up to meet the demand which could reach $140 billion by 2029, according to Barclays. This would account for about 10% of the world’s market for meat.

    “We’re scaling up the capacity. Every batch that we make is five times larger than the previous batch. So we’re changing … the machines, the flow and we’re also changing the product attributes.” Redefine Meat’s CEO Eshchar Ben-Shitrit said.

    To be clear, Redefine Meat, is not the only company moving in the direction of what some of us see as “fake meat.” In fact, competition in this sector is growing, players include California’s Beyond Meat (BYND.O) and Impossible Foods as well as Spain’s Novameat, and Israel’s Aleph Farms, which is developing a method to cultivate meat in the lab from cow cells.

    Adding New Meaning To, Where’s The Beef?

    It is likely that if Europe does not reject this concoction, it will soon reach our shores. To many Americans and other people across the world, this will most likely be viewed as an abomination pushed upon us by climate change activists that see cattle as harming the environment. 

    This move to produce food in ways foreign to nature can also be framed as proof that mankind is moving further from its roots and off into some strange bizarre future.

    This is certainly not something our ancestors would not have seen coming.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/16/2022 – 21:00

  • Did SBF Buy Puff-Piece Propaganda?
    Did SBF Buy Puff-Piece Propaganda?

    As FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried faces extradition to the USA following his fund’s commingled asset implosion, one might be a bit confused about the gravity of the situation given recent press coverage.

    For example, the NY Times on Monday published a cowering puff-piece which mentioned exactly none of the major accusations against the well-connected Democrat mega-donor.

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    Months before his firm imploded, Vox penned a slobbering review of SBF’s “Effective Altruism” program, painting him as a benevolent crime-fighter in his efforts to help ensure Joe Biden won the 2020 US election.

    But his motivations aren’t those of an ordinary Democratic donor — Bankman-Fried told Goldstein that fighting Trump was less about promoting Democrats than ensuring “sane governance” in the US, which could have “massive, massive, ripple effects on what the future looks like.” -Vox

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsFast forward to Tuesday, when Vox proclaimed that SBF’s support of Democratic candidates to the tune of $40 million, second only to George Soros, is “massively overstated” and essentially no big deal.

    And what do we have here? SBF gave millions to corporate media outlets according to Tablet, and noted by @balajis, who suggests that it may have been done with “stolen customer funds.”

    Over the past two years, Bankman-Fried cultivated the media lavishly, if not carefully. Drawing on what then seemed like an unlimited pool of cash, SBF (as we’ll call the mythologized version of the real person) dispersed investments, advertising dollars, sponsorships, and donations to key news outlets—including ProPublica, Vox, Semafor, and The Intercept—with extraordinary effectiveness. -Tablet

    And while some of said outlets (Semafor, and The Intercept for example) covered FTX without obvious bias, recent pieces from Vox suggest the investment has paid off in spades.

    On Wednesday, Vox must have realized how dumb they looked – leading to Vox’s Dylan Matthews (who oddly took the “Vox” reference out of his Twitter bio earlier today) dumping what appears to be incriminating texts with another Vox journo.

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    An interesting analogy…

    And while the NY Times wasn’t on the list of outlets that received money, perhaps SBF’s deep-rooted establishment connections have something to do with it.

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/16/2022 – 20:40

  • The Road To Totalitarianism (Revisited)
    The Road To Totalitarianism (Revisited)

    Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

    It feels like it’s finally over, doesn’t it, the whole “apocalyptic pandemic” thing? I mean, really, really over this time. Not like all those other times when you thought it was over, but it wasn’t over, and was like the end of those Alien movies, where it seems like Ridley has finally escaped, but the alien is hiding out in the shuttle, or the escape pod, or Ridley’s intestinal tract.

    But this time doesn’t feel like that. This time it feels like it’s really, really over. Go out and take a look around. Hardly anyone is wearing masks anymore (except where masks are mandatory) or being coerced into submitting to “vaccinations” (except where “vaccination” is mandatory), and the hordes of hate-drunk New Normal fanatics who demanded that “the Unvaccinated” be segregated, censored, fired from their jobs, and otherwise demonized and persecuted, have all fallen silent (except for those who haven’t).

    Everything is back to normal, right?

    Wrong. Everything is not back to normal. Everything is absolutely New Normal. What is over is the “shock-and-awe” phase, which was never meant to go on forever. It was always only meant to get us here.

    Where, you’re probably asking, is “here”? “Here” is a place where the new official ideology has been firmly established as our new “reality,” woven into the fabric of normal everyday life. No, not everywhere, just everywhere that matters. (Do you really think the global-capitalist ruling classes care what people in Lakeland, Florida, Elk River, Idaho, or some village in Sicily believe about “reality”?) Yes, most government restrictions have been lifted, mainly because they are no longer necessary, but in centers of power throughout the West, in political, corporate, and cultural spheres, in academia, the mainstream media, and so on, the New Normal has become “reality,” or, in other words, “just the way it is,” which is the ultimate goal of every ideology.

    For example, I just happened upon this “important COVID-19 information,” which you need to be aware of (and strictly adhere to) if you want to attend a performance at this Off-Broadway theater in New York City, where “everything is back to normal.”

    I could pull up countless further examples, but I don’t want to waste your time. At this point, it isn’t the mask and “vaccination” mandates themselves that are important. They are simply the symbols and rituals of the new official ideology, an ideology that has divided societies into two irreconcilable categories of people: (1) those who are prepared to conform their beliefs to the official narrative of the day, no matter how blatantly ridiculous it is, and otherwise click heels and follow the orders of the global-capitalist ruling establishment, no matter how destructive and fascistic they may be; and (2) those who are not prepared to do that.

    Let’s go ahead and call them “Normals” and “Deviants.” I think you know which one you are.

    This division of society into two opposing and irreconcilable classes of people cuts across and supersedes old political lines. There are Normals and Deviants on both the Left and the Right. The global-capitalist ruling establishment couldn’t care less whether you are a “progressive,” or a “conservative,” or a “libertarian,” or an “anarchist,” or whatever you call yourself. What they care about is whether you’re a Normal or a Deviant. What they care about is whether you will follow orders. What they care about is whether you are conforming your perceptions and behavior and thinking to their new “reality” … the hegemonic global-capitalist “reality” that has been gradually evolving for the last 30 years and is now entering its totalitarian stage.

    I’ve been writing about the evolution of global capitalism in my essays since 2016 — and since the early 1990s in my stage plays — so I’m not going to reiterate the whole story here. Readers who have just tuned into my political satire and commentary during the last two years can go back and read the essays in Trumpocalypse (2016-2017) and The War on Populism (2018-2019).

    The short version is, back in 2016, GloboCap was rolling along, destabilizing, restructuring, and privatizing the planet that it came into sole unchallenged possession of when the Soviet Union finally collapsed, and everything was hunky-dory, and then along came Brexit, Donald Trump, and the whole “populist” and neo-nationalist rebellion against globalism throughout the West. So, GloboCap needed to deal with that, which is what is has been doing for last six years … yes, the last six — not just two and a half — years.

    The War on Dissent didn’t start with Covid and it isn’t going to end with Covid. GloboCap (or “the Corporatocracy” if you prefer) has been delegitimizing, demonizing, and disappearing dissent and increasingly imposing ideological uniformity on Western society since 2016. The New Normal is just the latest stage of it. Once it gets done quashing this “populist” rebellion and imposing ideological uniformity on urban society throughout the West, it will go back to destabilizing, restructuring, and privatizing the rest of the world, which is what it was doing with the “War on Terror” (and other “democracy”-promoting projects) from 2001 to 2016.

    The goal of this global Gleichschaltung campaign is the goal of every totalitarian system, i.e., to render any and all deviance from its official ideology pathological. The nature of the deviance does not matter. The official ideology does not matter. (GloboCap has no fixed ideology. It can abruptly change its official “reality” from day to day, as we have experienced recently). What matters is one’s willingness or unwillingness to conform to whatever the official “reality” is, regardless of how ridiculous it is, and how many times it has been disproved, and sometimes even acknowledged as fiction by the very authorities who nonetheless continue to assert its “reality.”

    I’ll give you one more concrete example.

    After I happened upon the “Covid restrictions” (i.e., the social-segregation system) still being enforced by that Off-Broadway theater, I stumbled upon this article in Current Affairs about the oracle Yuval Noah Harari, the writer of which article mentions in passing that somewhere between 6 million and 12 million people have “died of Covid,” as if this were a fact, a fact that no one in their right mind would question. Which it is, officially, in our new “reality,” despite the fact (i.e., the actual fact) that — as even the “health authorities” have admitted — anyone who died of anything in a hospital after testing positive was recorded as a “Covid-19 death.”

    This is how “reality” (i.e., official “reality,” consensus “reality”) is manufactured and policed.

    It is manufactured and policed, not only by the media, corporations, governments, and non-governmental governing entities, but also (and, ultimately, more effectively) by the constant repetition of official narratives as unquestionable axiomatic facts.

    In our brave new totalitarian global-capitalist “reality,” anyone who questions or challenges such “facts” immediately renders oneself a “Deviant” and is excommunicated from “Normal” society. Seriously, just for fun, try to get a job at a corporation, or a university, or a part in a movie or a Broadway play, or a book deal, or a research grant, etc., while being honest about your beliefs about Covid. Or, if you’re a “respectable” journalist, you know, with literary and public-speaking agents, and book deals, and personal managers, and so on, go ahead, report the facts (i.e., the actual facts, which you know are there, but which you have been avoiding like the plague for the last two years), and watch your career get violently sucked down the drain like a turd in an airplane toilet.

    That last bit was meant for “urban professionals,” who still have careers, or are aspiring to careers, or are otherwise still invested in remaining members in good standing of “Normal” society, i.e., not you folks in Florida and Idaho, or my fellow literary and artistic “Deviants.”

    We have pretty much burned our bridges at this point. Unless you’re prepared to mindfuck yourself, and gaslight yourself, and confess, and convert, there’s no going back to “normal” society (which we couldn’t go back to anyway, on account of how it doesn’t exist anymore).

    I realize that a lot of folks have probably been looking forward to that … to the day when the Normals finally “wake up” and face the facts, and truth prevails, and we return to something resembling normality. It’s not going to happen. We’re not going back. The Normals are never going to “wake up.” Because they’re not asleep. They’re not hypnotized. They’re not going to “come to their senses” one day and take responsibility for the damage they have done. Sure, they will apologize for their “mistakes,” and admit that possibly they “overreacted,” but the official narrative of the Covid pandemic and the new “reality” it has ushered into being will remain in force, and they will defend both with their lives.

    Or, rather, they will defend both with our lives.

    If you think I’m being hyperbolic, well, consider the epithets GloboCap has conditioned the Normals to use to demonize us … “conspiracy theorist,” “science denier,” “insurrectionist,” “extremist,” “violent domestic terrorist.” None of which signify a political ideology or any political or critical position whatsoever. They signify deviation from the norm. Any type of deviation from the norm. They are tactical terms, devoid of meaning, designed to erase the political character of the diverse opposition to global-capitalism (or “globalism,” if you are touchy about the word “capitalism”), to lump us all into one big bucket of “deviance.”

    It is usually not a very good omen when nations — or totally unaccountable, supranational global-power systems — suddenly break out the “deviance bucket.” It is usually a sign that things are going to get ugly, ugly in a totalitarian fashion, which is precisely what has been happening for the past six years.

    Back in July of 2021, at the height of the fascistic New Normal hate frenzy, with the military enforcing “Covid restrictions,” a global segregation system being implemented, and people threatening to decapitate me for refusing to get “vaccinated,” I published a piece called The Road to Totalitarianism. We are still on that road. Both the Normals and we Deviants. We’ve been on that road for quite some time, longer than most of us probably realize. The weather has improved, slightly. The scenery out the window has changed. The destination has not. I haven’t seen any exits. Let me know if you do, will you?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/16/2022 – 20:20

  • Second GOP Mega-Donor Talks Greasy About Trump
    Second GOP Mega-Donor Talks Greasy About Trump

    While Donald Trump has a ‘massive war chest’ built through donations from smaller donors around the country, and wide support from allies in congress such as Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA) and Andy Biggs (R-AZ), a second GOP billionaire donor has come out against the former president, who formally announced a 2024 run on Tuesday night.

    Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman

    After Citadel founder Ken Griffin on Monday labeled Trump a “three-time loser,” who he hoped wouldn’t run in 2024, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman announced he would not back the former president’s latest run, despite Trump naming him chair of the now-defunct Strategic and Policy Forum.

    “America does better when its leaders are rooted in today and tomorrow, not today and yesterday,” Schwarzman said in a statement. “It is time for the Republican Party to turn to a new generation of leaders and I intend to support one of them in the presidential primaries.”

    It is unclear how much the rejection of big GOP donors hurts Trump, however. Trump was successful in 2016 without major party backers and appeals to his base with a populist message. 

    Griffin never gave to Trump. And Schwarzman didn’t support him until he was already president, giving $344,400 in Dec. 2017 to a committee that supported Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee. In all, Schwarzman gave $3.7 million to committees that supported Trump. –Bloomberg

    Of note, Griffin never gave to Trump – and Schwarzman was a latecomer in his support, waiting till Trump was already president to give $344,400 in Dec. 2017 to a committee that supported Trump and the RNC (ultimately giving $3.7 million to committees that supported the former president).

    According to the report, Trump’s rejection by two conservative billionaires ‘could give cover to elected officials who are still deciding who to back.’

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/16/2022 – 20:00

  • After FTX Implosion, It's Time To End Bitcoin's Dysfunctional Relationship With Crypto
    After FTX Implosion, It’s Time To End Bitcoin’s Dysfunctional Relationship With Crypto

    Authored by Tim Niemeyer, via BitcoinMagazine.com,

    “Bitcoiners are trapped in a dysfunctional relationship with crypto and we want out!”

    – Michael Saylor

    Amidst the carnage of the FTX drama, a moment of clarity illuminated the Twittersphere. Michael Saylor’s words were the signal in the noise resulting from the dysfunctional trainwreck unaffectionately known as “crypto”. Before we can truly appreciate his insights, we should first meditate on what makes this relationship dysfunctional or, in the context of couples therapy, a toxic relationship.

    While many in the cryptocurrency industry were happily going about their life viewing their relationship with money (trust, commitment, support, etc.) in a positive light, they were ignoring the warning signs that their relationship was anything but healthy. Sure, all good relationships have their ups and downs. Disagreements happen, but overall you share common goals and trust the other to have your best interests at heart. There’s a certain level of expectation that your partner will support you, communicate openly and honestly, and refrain from controlling behaviors. Life this way is freeing and you’re generally able to flourish.

    But what if one side doesn’t have your best interests at heart? What if they are dishonest? What if there becomes a pattern of disrespect? What if they ignore your needs? Sure, you can hope for change, but you still feel drained, stressed, anxious, or depressed. Eventually, you want out. Your need for a positive, healthy relationship overwhelms the comfort of the known, current relationship. The first step is admitting there’s a problem. Acknowledging signs of a toxic relationship are necessary.

    SIGNS OF A TOXIC RELATIONSHIP

    Photo by Girl with red hat on Unsplash

    In regards to our relationship with money, support may be displayed in many ways. One way we support each other is through the ability to trust that our counterpart has our best interests at heart. The overwhelming problem with the cryptocurrency sphere (defined here as everything other than Bitcoin) is that it’s still largely based on an expectation of trust. Whether it’s FTX, Celsius, LUNA or the countless other scams and Ponzis that are sewn into the fabric of the cryptocurrency industry, it’s clear that having centralized entities controlling your value requires you trust the fallible seamstresses and their incentives. It’s like the trust fall; an exercise in which one person lets him- or herself fall without trying to stop it, relying on their friend(s) to catch them. How many times do you allow yourself to fall to the ground before you lose trust?

    These recent fallouts in crypto continue to illuminate the inherent dishonesty in its DNA. Investors are deceived into a false sense of security in the relationship; it’s a form of dishonest communication based on non-transparency and the over-leveraged nature of exchanges. Allowing humans to control money allows controlling behaviors to be coded into the system, which leads to growing resentment in the relationship … The relationship is further strained when the toxic side puts their needs ahead of your own. The needs of some CEOs often incentivize them into leveraging the customers’ trust to benefit their gain. This display of negative financial behaviors is becoming all too common in the cryptocurrency industry (again, non-Bitcoin-only entities). At some point, as my father would say, we need to separate the wheat from the chaff.

    STEPS TO FIX A TOXIC RELATIONSHIP

    Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash

    The first step is to accept responsibility. Not that you caused the situation per se, but that you acknowledge the situation you’re in and begin advocating for yourself. This can be done by investing in yourself. In the context of this article, that investment is education in Bitcoin as well as understanding the unintended consequences of adopting a “digital fiat” mindset present throughout the altcoin and centralized exchange industries. Once we shift from blaming to understanding, we allow ourselves to begin healing. The pain resulting from the recent developments will linger for a while, but it is our responsibility to not dwell on the past but move forward with compassion. The next step in the journey to healing is allowing yourself to be vulnerable again. This can be attained by sharing your self-love with others; calmly and clearly explaining the benefits of Bitcoin, self-custody and proof of reserves to friends and family.

    People recovering from a toxic relationship can benefit from finding support. It is the opinion of the author that Bitcoiners should be that support structure. It’s ironic that many Bitcoiners are known as the toxic ones when they are the ones trying to illuminate the toxicity inherent in the ecosystem. That being said, an “I told you so,” doesn’t assist in the healing process. This is the moment where we must rise above and lead with compassion. We should hold space in our heart and allow others the time to heal and change.

    There will be many who do not recover from a toxic relationship of this magnitude. While we can continue to educate from a place of humility, we must remember that, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” Everyone will ultimately heal in their own way at their own pace. Some may never learn. We’ve probably all had a friend who’s jumped from one toxic relationship to another. As much as you may want to help, they need to first choose to help themselves. Even more, some people will continue to “Tinder around” with unhealthy cryptocurrency relationships. That’s their prerogative. If a friend of ours wants to be part of the hookup culture, that’s on them. They have to deal with the consequences of STDs and the like.

    Regardless of the actions of certain exchanges or crypto in general, we must continue to espouse the benefits of Bitcoin in a positive light. Tell them how truth is born from trustlessness. Demonstrate how actual decentralization leads to pure democracy. Illuminate how immutability and permissionless systems allow for a free-flowing, cooperative society. Michael Saylor acutely recognized the toxicity we are allowing to proliferate through the perceived connection to crypto. We must choose to move forward towards a bitcoin standard for ourselves, our friends and family, and, ultimately, for society to flourish.

    [ZH: Tl:dr:… ]

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/16/2022 – 19:40

  • Democrats Flip Gubernatorial Seats
    Democrats Flip Gubernatorial Seats

    With the announcement of Katie Hobbs’ win in the gubernatorial race in Arizona, the Democratic Party has officially picked up three governor seats in the 2022 midterms, while the Republicans took over one governorship from Democrats.

    New Democratic governors will also start their terms next year in Maryland and Massachusetts. In Nevada, Republican Joe Lombardo prevailed over the Democratic incumbent in the race to the governor’s mansion. All Democratic flips have been open-seat races.

    As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, the net gain of two governorships for Democrats is unusual as the president’s party tends to lose rather than win gubernatorial election. At the end of last year, Democrats had only held on to 22 governorships when including then-governor-elect, Republican Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, whose term started in January 2022. Virginia’s had been the second governorship in a U.S. state passing over to a Republican since the election of Joe Biden in late 2020. Montana switched up its alliance at the same time when it elected Republican Greg Gianforte to the highest office in the state – the first Republican to serve as governor since 2005.

    Infographic: Democrats Flip Gubernatorial Seats | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Which party wins the most governorships normally follows an anticyclical pattern but this year’s midterm election bucks this trend.

    After Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, Republicans started to gain the upper hand in gubernatorial elections starting in 2009 and creating a record 34 Republican governors at the end of Obama’s second term in 2017. Likewise, most governors in the U.S. were Democrats during the second term of the Bush presidency (2005-2008) and most were Republicans during Bill Clinton’s time in office (1993-2001). The shorter presidency of Donald Trump didn’t have the same effect on gubernatorial races. Even though his party lost seven governor seats between 2017 and 2020, for example in Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois, Republican governors remained in the majority throughout Trump’s term.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/16/2022 – 19:20

  • New Online Tool Maps Out 867 US Military Bases Worldwide
    New Online Tool Maps Out 867 US Military Bases Worldwide

    Authored by David Swanson via AntiWar.com,

    World Beyond War has launched a new online tool that allows the user to view a globe pock-marked with 867 U.S. military bases in countries other than the United States, and to zoom in for a satellite view of and detailed information on each base. The tool also allows filtering the map or list of bases by country, government type, opening date, number of personnel, or acres of land occupied.

    This visual database was researched and developed by World Beyond War to help journalists, activists, researchers, and individual readers understand the immense problem of excessive preparation for war, which inevitably leads to international bullying, meddling, threats, escalation, and mass atrocity. By illustrating the extent of the US empire of military outposts, World Beyond War hopes to call attention to the wider problem of war preparations.

    The United States of America, unlike any other nation, maintains this massive network of foreign military installations around the world. How was this created and how is it continued? Some of these physical installations are on land occupied as spoils of war.

    Most are maintained through collaborations with governments, many of them brutal and oppressive governments benefiting from the bases’ presence. In many cases, human beings were displaced to make room for these military installations, often depriving people of farmland, adding huge amounts of pollution to local water systems and the air, and existing as an unwelcome presence.

    US bases in foreign lands often raise geopolitical tensions, support undemocratic regimes, and serve as a recruiting tool for militant groups opposed to the US presence and the governments its presence bolsters. In other cases, foreign bases have made it easier for the United States to launch and execute disastrous wars, including those in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya.

    Across the political spectrum and even within the US military there is growing recognition that many overseas bases should have been closed decades ago, but bureaucratic inertia and misguided political interests have kept them open. Estimates of the yearly cost to the US of its foreign military bases range from $100 – 250 billion. Thanks to davidvine.net for the variety of information included in this tool.

    View a video overview the new interactive tool:

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/16/2022 – 19:00

  • "Paralyzing Snowfall" Could "Cripple" Buffalo With Feet Of Snow
    “Paralyzing Snowfall” Could “Cripple” Buffalo With Feet Of Snow

    The National Weather Service warned “paralyzing snowfall” will blanket parts of western and northern New York. Folks living in the cities of Buffalo and Watertown could be using yardsticks by the end of the weekend to measure the snow. 

    Lake-effect snow warnings have already been posted from Watertown to Buffalo-Niagara Falls to Erie, Pennsylvania, to northeastern Ohio. 

    “This will be the start of a prolonged lake-effect snow event which will likely include paralyzing snowfall for the Buffalo and Watertown areas late this week through the weekend,” NWS wrote in a Wednesday morning note. 

    NWS’ use of words such as “crippling” and “paralyzing” to describe the lake-effect snowstorm’s potential is very ominous. 

    Liz Jurkowski, a meteorologist at NWS’ Buffalo office, told NYTimes that NWS’ use of words is “very rare.” 

    “We usually don’t pull these terms out except for historic events,” Jurkowski said. 

    Snow begins Wednesday night and will continue through Saturday for Buffalo and Watertown. These areas could see between 1 and 3 feet of snow. Here’s more on possible snow totals via FOX Forecast Center:

    The highest totals will likely be centered directly over the Buffalo and Watertown metro areas because of the nearly stationary bands of snow from Thursday night through Friday night. Between 1 and 3 feet of snow is expected to pile up by Sunday afternoon, with localized amounts of up to 4 feet not ruled out.

    Jurkowski said residents in Buffalo and Watertown could expect “thundersnow” and high snowfall rates. Maybe now is the time to buy supplies and hunker down. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/16/2022 – 18:40

  • Fauci's Pandemic Leadership Needs To Be Investigated: Dr. Scott Atlas
    Fauci’s Pandemic Leadership Needs To Be Investigated: Dr. Scott Atlas

    Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times,

    Former White House COVID-19 adviser Dr. Scott Atlas sees multiple reasons for an investigation into Dr. Anthony Fauci, the outgoing director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

    Such a probe has been discussed as Republicans inch closer to a House majority that would grant them subpoena powers. Some Republican lawmakers have accused Fauci of playing a role in misleading the public about the origins of COVID-19 and supporting pandemic mandates they describe as draconian.

    While Atlas, a vocal critic of the NIAID head, is “very skeptical” that an investigation like this could get away from politics or the perception of it being political, he thinks it’s warranted. Fauci’s changing stance on certain COVID-19 policies needs to be put under the spotlight, Atlas recently said on EpochTV’s “Newsmakers.”

    “The real, clear public airing of exactly what happened needs to be done,” said Atlas, a senior fellow in health care policy at the Hoover Institution and contributor to The Epoch Times.

    “I personally am very skeptical that a political investigation, no matter who does it, is going to be done without politics, or if it’s going to be perceived as nonpolitical. I don’t trust people in government at all. They don’t deserve to be trusted, to be objective.

    “What was the motivation to flip flop multiple times with policy?”

    His question was referring to Fauci’s changing stance on pandemic school closures that drew criticism in late 2020.

    Scott Atlas (L), a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany arrive ahead of President Donald Trump for a press conference at the White House in Washington on Aug. 12, 2020. (Andrew Harnik/AP Photo, File)

    He further questioned if there had been any “cover-up” of funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Fauci’s division, citing the awards to the Wuhan Institute of Virology through the New York nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance as an example.

    EcoHealth Alliance, which continues to receive millions of dollars in grants from the NIH, was subjected to scrutiny by multiple federal agencies over its partnership with the Wuhan lab. The Office of Investigations of the Department of Health and Human Services in late 2020 briefly opened a probe over alleged “major fraud against the United States.” The probe was closed in January 2021, according to internal documents, which had the reasons for the closure redacted. The allegation states that “the COVID-19 virus was generated in … China with the assistance of an NIH Grant.”

    Beginning in 2014, EcoHealth was the recipient of a $3.7 million grant to study bat coronaviruses in China. That grant was renewed through 2019 but suspended in 2020 because of compliance concerns. In August, the NIH ended the funding from the grant for the Wuhan facility after the lab at least twice rejected NIH’s request for lab notebooks and original files from the research.

    “We cannot have illegal research being funded outside the country by American science” avoiding or circumventing the rules, Atlas said.

    “These leadership positions come with massive responsibility. It’s not a game to be in charge of things. You’re not supposed to use it to circumvent rules. You’re not supposed to set up power, friends in the media to cover for you. No, you need to at least answer the questions in front of the American people.”

    By the same token, Atlas also called for the Chinese regime to answer for its coverup of the initial outbreak, as well as its role in possibly causing the pandemic.

    Besides a delayed admission of the outbreak’s severity to the world during the pandemic’s early days—behavior that Atlas called “unacceptable”—Beijing had “blocked real investigations” and “destroyed evidence of what happened,” he said.

    “Of course they need to be held accountable,” he said.

    “It needs to be done, though, by a government and multiple governments that actually have the credibility and ethical focus to do that, and I think that that remains to be seen.”

    Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the ranking Republican member of the House Oversight Committee, has vowed to summon Fauci in a planned probe of the origins of COVID-19 should the Republicans win the House.

    “Why did Dr. Fauci lie for so long about American tax dollars through EcoHealth Alliance going to fund gain-of-function research? Why did he lie about gain-of-function research being done in the Wuhan lab? Why were we even in the Wuhan lab? There are so many questions that the Americans deserve answers to,” Comer recently told the “Capitol Report” program of NTD News, a sister media of The Epoch Times.

    “The American people deserve answers and anyone that was involved in any type of cover-up should be held accountable.”

    Representatives for NIAID didn’t respond to a query from The Epoch Times by press time.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/16/2022 – 18:20

  • Housing Affordability Worsens As Homeownership Out Of Reach For Anyone Making Under $100k
    Housing Affordability Worsens As Homeownership Out Of Reach For Anyone Making Under $100k

    The US housing affordability crisis continues to worsen as mortgage rates skyrocket to two-decade highs while the cost of an average home is still at bubbly levels. Financing costs are through the roof, and anyone earning less than $100,000 has been priced out of homeownership. 

    A new report via real estate brokerage firm Redfin Corp. found that in October, the average buyer needed to earn $107,281 to afford the monthly mortgage payment of a median-priced home, up a whopping 46% from a year ago of $73,668. 

    Considering there have been a record 19 consecutive months of negative real wage growth, most of which have been under President Biden’s tenure, many prospective homebuyers have likely given up and are now renting (or back in their parent’s basement). 

    “Affordability challenges are a major reason why home sales have slowed so dramatically over the last few months,” Redfin said in the report.

    What’s made the affordability crisis worse is the Federal Reserve’s most aggressive interest rate hiking in decades to quell inflation has sent the 30-year fixed mortgage above 7% within the last several quarters. 

    This has caused a ‘payment shock’ as elevated rates, high home prices, and faltering wage growth have priced out millions of Americans. 

    According to the National Association of Realtors, today’s souring homebuying environment has been described as the ‘worst in decades’. 

    None of this should surprise readers since we first stated in March that soaring interest rates would significantly challenge housing affordability. 

    Today, we see the “Death Of The American Dream And Home Ownership.” And what’s the result: you’ll rent and own nothing… Well, that’s a very similar statement from the World Economic Forum: by 2030, “you’ll own nothing, and you’ll (still) be happy. 

    More importantly, all of this suggests home prices could be on the cusp of a major downturn. 

    We suspect 2023 will be a tumultuous year for the housing market until the Fed pivots.

    … And we almost forgot that a Bloomberg OP-ED earlier this year said anyone earning less than $300k should eat lentils. 

    …

    Ty
    Wed, 11/16/2022 – 18:00

  • Ron Paul: A Tale Of Two Midterms
    Ron Paul: A Tale Of Two Midterms

    Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

    Those searching for an explanation of why there was no “red wave” giving Republicans huge gains in Congress in this year’s midterm election should compare this year’s election with the midterm election of 2010. In 2010, Republicans gained a net 63 House seats. While Republicans then did not gain control of the US Senate, they did gain six Senate seats.

    These Republican victories in 2010 were propelled by the Tea Party and the liberty movement. These movements became prominent during the waning days of the Bush administration. The liberty movement was advanced by grassroots supporters of my 2008 presidential campaign. The liberty movement’s focus was, and is, on restoring constitutional government in all areas, ending our interventionist foreign policy, and changing our monetary policy by auditing and ending the Federal Reserve and legalizing alternative currencies. Early on, the Tea Party largely focused on opposition to the 2008 bank bailouts.

    There was overlap between the liberty movement and the Tea Party as many members of both groups fought for auditing and ending the Fed, ending bailouts, and preventing Congress from passing Obamacare.

    Many Republican candidates in 2010 appealed to Tea Party voters by not just promising to repeal Obamacare. They also promised to work to restore limited, constitutional, fiscally responsible government in all areas. In contrast, in 2022 the average Republican candidate offered little in the way of a substantive agenda. In fact, few Republicans called for reversing President Biden’s massive spending increases, much less for restoring the federal government to its constitutional limitations. Despite the controversy over new critical race theory and transgender related policies in government schools, there has not been a renewed push to shut down the Department of Education.

    Many Republican candidates in the 2022 midterm election also failed to make an issue out of their Democratic opponents’ support for mask and vaccine mandates and other instances of covid tyranny. Those who did oppose the covid tyranny, such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and my son Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, won landslide victories.

    The Tea Party’s success in forcing the Republican Party to focus on a more pro-liberty, limited government agenda was short lived. Soon after the 2010 election, the Republican establishment returned to its big spending ways. Spending and debt continued to rise under President Trump and a Republican Congress. Republicans even failed to deliver on their signature promise: repealing Obamacare.

    The 2010 midterm election showed that people will respond to candidates offering serious pro-liberty ideas and policies. However, the Tea Party’s rise and fall also shows the danger facing ideological movements that become too close with one political party. These movements will start pulling their punches when one of “our team” begins casting bad votes. The argument goes that we must support big government Republicans or we get REALLY big government Democrats.

    Fortunately, the liberty movement has remained committed to principles. As the failure of the welfare-warfare state to deliver peace and property — and the failure of the Federal Reserve to fulfill its mandate of ensuring stable prices and low unemployment — become clear, more Americans will join the liberty movement. Support for the liberty movement will accelerate when the inevitable economic meltdown occurs. This meltdown will be precipitated by a collapse in the dollar’s value and the rejection of the dollar’s world reserve currency status. It will bring the end of the welfare-warfare state and the fiat money system. Hopefully, the liberty movement will ensure the welfare-warfare state and fiat money system are replaced by a return to limited constitutional government, individual liberty, and peace.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/16/2022 – 17:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Nov 16

Today’s News 16th November 2022

  • Poland Missile Strike May Have Come From Ukraine Self-Defense: US Officials
    Poland Missile Strike May Have Come From Ukraine Self-Defense: US Officials

    Update (0017ET): The missile that struck Poland may have been fired by Ukrainian forces at an incoming Russian missile, AP reports, citing three unidentified US officials.

    [K]ey questions around the circumstances of the missile launch remained amid the confusion caused by a blistering series of Russian airstrikes across the nearby border in Ukraine, none larger than who fired it. Russia denied any involvement in the Poland blast.

    Three U.S. officials said preliminary assessments suggested the missile was fired by Ukrainian forces at an incoming Russian one amid the crushing salvo against Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure Tuesday. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. -AP

    The Associated Press also points out that the above assessment, in addition to President Biden’s comments that it was “unlikely” the missile was fired from Russia, contradicts information earlier Tuesday from a senior US intelligence official who told AP “that Russian missiles crossed into Poland.”

    So it was a ‘stray’ missile after all?

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    *  *  *

    Update (2100ET): So much for Russia almost starting World War 3 (even if under the guise of a false flag). As we noted earlier (see below), even pro-Ukraine accounts noted that the S-300 SAM that fell in Poland was a Ukrainian one. And while Biden will never admit that Ukraine nearly started war with Poland (as much as the deep state via its AP connections or the Ukraine president would have wanted Russia to get the blame), moments ago Biden explicitly said that based on preliminary information, it is “unlikely” that the rocket strike in Poland originated in Russia. Oops.

    “There is plenty of information to contest that. I don’t want to say until we completely investigate. It’s unlikely in the minds of [sic] the trajectory that it was fired from Russia. But we’ll see.”

    So if it was not fired by Russia, where was it fired from?

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    Here are the highlights from Biden’s briefing:

    • Says he briefed NATO, G7 members on his talks with Poland
    • Leaders have agreed to support investing to figure out exactly what happened
    • Leaders will then determine next steps after finding out what ahppened
    • Russia continues to escalate its attacks in Ukraine
    • There is preliminary information that contests whether Poland incident was due to a missile fired from Russia
    • Based on the trajectory its unlikely the missile was fired from Russia

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    Guess that “conspiracy theory” was actually fact…

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    And with that Ukraine, and its western sponsors, will be busy for the next few hours de-escalating and memory-holing events from today which nearly sparked NATO to trigger Article 5 and launch a nuclear war against Russia.

    * * *

    Update(1920ET): Polish President Andrzej Duda is seeking to calm the public, and has issued a statement saying there’s as yet no definite evidence of who fired missile that fell in Poland. But he did say that a state of heightened readiness has been introduced for all Polish services, including the police, firefighters, border guards, according to breaking international reports.

    Duda further said the military is increasing the monitoring of national airspace as investigators are still working to establish the causes of the explosion. He urged all Poles to remain. He added that “there are no indications that today’s incident would be repeated.”

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    Earlier Warsaw announced a “Russia made” missile landed on the border village of Przewodów, and Poland’s Foreign Ministry said it has summoned the Russian ambassador for a meeting. However, it should be noted that Ukraine’s anti-air defense arsenal has always been “Russia made” – especially its S-300 systems. Poland’s statement is interesting in that it did not say “Russia launched” missile, leaving the question of the missile’s origins open. 

    All of the above points in the direction that this was actually a projectile fired by Ukraine, as some of our coverage below suggested.

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    President Biden sent a condolence message for the two lives lost to Poland’s Duda…

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    * * * 

    Update(1715ET): Despite the alarmist talk all afternoon that NATO could invoke the Article 5 collective defense treaty over the alleged Russian rocket attack on a border town, the result of the Polish government national security emergency meeting is going in the opposite direction, and it seems there won’t be escalation today. 

    Polish govt spokesman Piotr Mueller said Poland has agreed to “increase its military readiness” – though crucially still admitted “It was not clear what caused the explosion in the southeastern town of Hrubieszów.” Russia has vehemently denied it was behind the explosions which killed two people. So instead of Article 5, Warsaw is merely talking the much lesser known Article 4. Article 4 requires “consultations” when a NATO member is threatened.

    NATO AMASSADORS TO MEET ON WEDNESDAY AT REQUEST OF POLAND ON BASIS OF ALLIANCE’S ARTICLE 4 – TWO EUROPEAN DIPLOMATS SAY

    “A moment ago it was decided to increase the readiness of some military units in Poland and other uniformed services,” Mueller told reporters in a press briefing. Across Ukraine and as far west as Lviv, Russian airstrikes pummeled Ukraine’s energy infrastructure on Tuesday. The Hill reports after a terrifying day for Ukraine, “Russia’s widespread missile attack on Ukraine – firing what Zelensky said was 90 missiles – was aimed primarily at the country’s electrical infrastructure following an embarrassing Kremlin retreat from the key Ukrainian city of Kherson.”

    It is entirely possible that amid this large barrage of rockets, which also triggered Ukraine’s anti-air defense measures, an errant projectile strayed into NATO member Poland’s territory. Polish Senate Advisor Marcin Zaborowski said late in the day that if indeed it was accidental, Moscow should immediately apologize. So far the Kremlin has denounced the reports as a “deliberate provocation” – suggesting that Ukraine’s backers are seeking to draw NATO into escalation. 

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    NATO Article 4 involves the following: 

    All NATO decisions are made by consensus, after discussion and consultation among member countries. Consultation between member states is therefore at the heart of NATO since Allies are able to exchange views and information, and discuss issues prior to reaching agreement and taking action.

    As for the Ukrainian government reaction, it was somewhat predictable, with President Zelensky calling it a “really significant escalation” in the war while demanding “action” from the West.

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    “Hitting NATO territory with missiles… This is a Russian missile attack on collective security! This is a really significant escalation. Action is needed,” Zelensky said his Tuesday night video address. He said it is “only a matter of time before Russian terror goes further.”

    Unconfirmed video purporting to show the strike aftermath on the Polish side of the border was aired on a Polish TV station:

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    Meanwhile, a highly respected weapons tracker social media account that’s generally seen as sympathetic to the Ukrainian side has broken ranks, suggesting what landed on the Polish town was a Ukrainian anti-air missile…

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    With the narrative quickly changing, and available photographic evidence from the impact site now coming under broader scrutiny, Ukraine officials are in damage control…

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    * * *

    Update(1500ET): Russia has issued its first statements in the wake of conflicting reporting concerning the suspected missile attack on Polish territory, just across the border with Ukraine. Russia is calling the reports a “deliberate provocation” and is denying that its forces have aimed any missiles near the Ukraine-Poland border, per Interfax news. 

    The Russian Defense Ministry issued a statement saying it has not taken part in “strikes against targets near the Ukrainian-Polish border” using “Russian weapons” – as is being alleged by Polish sources. The Russian statement further said it’s Warsaw’s attempt to escalate the situation. The Pentagon has meanwhile said it can’t corroborate the reports at this early stage but is gathering more information. A Pentagon spokesman vowed the US stands ready to “defend every inch of NATO territory.”

    According to Polish radio broadcaster Radio Zet, local reports have said what hit Przewowo is most likely the remains of a rocket shot down by Ukraine’s armed forces. But there are conflicting and many unconfirmed claims still circulating. The US State Dept. said, “We are working with the Polish government to collect information and assess what happened.” It also called the reports “incredibly concerning.” 

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    Below is the full Russian statement in response: 

    Russia’s defence ministry has denied reports that Russian missiles hit Polish territory, describing them as “a deliberate provocation aimed at escalating the situation”.

    “No strikes on targets near the Ukrainian-Polish state border were made by Russian means of destruction,” it said in a statement.

    Wreckage reportedly found at the scene “has nothing to do with Russian weapons”, it added.

    Meanwhile “Article 5” is trending on Twitter.

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    * * *

    Are we about to test Art Cashin’s thesis that you should never bet on the end of the world (i.e. sell stocks as the ICBMs start flying). As a reminder:

    Art Cashin, the dean of the NYSE floor, told a story on Tuesday at Barry Ritholtz’s Big Picture conference in midtown that illustrated this point perfectly. It was in the days before the Cuban missile crisis. Mr. Cashin was a young trader. One day a rumor mushroomed that the Russians had launched their missiles. World War III was starting. Mr. Cashin ran across the street to find the best trader he knew – who was in a bar having a drink. Mr. Cashin ran in breathlessly, hardly able to talk.

    “Stop,” the trader said. “Have a drink. Explain everything.” After hearing all the information, the trader had one order: “Buy. Don’t sell. Buy.”

    “Why?” Mr. Cashin wondered.

    “Because if you’re wrong, the trade’ll never clear. We’ll all be dead.”

    Well, moments ago futures ignored the venerable market strategist’s words and tumbled after a report from Polish Radio ZET according to which two stray rockets fell in the town of Przewodów on the border of NATO-member Poland with Ukraine (while unreported, the prevailing assumption is that the rockets are Russian).

    The Associated Press is also confirming, citing a senior US intelligence official who says two people were killed by the missiles. However, the Pentagon followed by saying it cannot corroborate the reports at this time. Stocks quickly reversed higher on the headline.

    And Polish sources are reporting – albeit emphasizing the report is still unofficial – that Polish military planes have been scrambled out of the airport near Tomaszów Lubelski. “The Polish Air Force took fighter jets into the air from the Tomaszow-Lubelski airfield in the Lublin Voivodeship,” the local reports say.

    Location of the missile strikes on the Polish border town.

    The rockets reportedly hit the grain dryers, leading to two casualties. The police, the prosecutor’s office and the army are on site.

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    And as Bloomberg also confirms, Polish Prime Minister Morawiecki has convened an urgent meeting of the Committee of the Council of Ministers for National Security. Hungarian PM Viktor Orban has also reportedly convened a national defense council meeting.

    Estonia has meanwhile issued a statement saying it is “ready to defend every inch of NATO territory, We’re in full solidarity with our close ally Poland,” according to its ministry of foreign affairs.

    The news has sent futures tumbling.

    And further on the news: 

    US DEFENSE STOCKS JUMP TO SESSION HIGHS; NORTHROP UP 5%

    It will be amusing when reputable news sources deny the whole thing but for now, stocks are dumping and are red on the day after soaring more than 2% earlier.

    Hours earlier in the day Ukrainian authorities were reporting a series of fresh missile attack on the capital, and rare airstrikes in Western regions as well, including the city of Lviv. 

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

    This resulted in new emergency power outages across various cities effected. 

    Meanwhile, NATO’s collective defense article is trending on Twitter, which is never a good sign…

     

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/16/2022 – 00:31

  • Republican Congressman Confirms He’ll Challenge McCarthy For House Speaker
    Republican Congressman Confirms He’ll Challenge McCarthy For House Speaker

    Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) questions Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as he testifies before the House Judicary Committee at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C., on April 28, 2022. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

    Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said on Monday night that he plans to challenge House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) when the GOP conference convenes on Tuesday to choose its nominee to be speaker of the House.

    “We have a new paradigm here, and I think the country wants a different direction from the House of Representatives,” Biggs told Newsmax. “And it’s a new world, and, yes, I’m going to be nominated tomorrow to the position of speaker of the House.”

    After unexpected midterm results, Republicans who were hoping to win larger gains in Congress have indicated there is a need to call for new leadership.

    Biggs said voters in Republican constituencies were urging their representatives to change direction, noting his decision wasn’t about McCarthy but “about the institutional direction and trajectory.”

    “And that’s where we’re going to see if we have enough people who agree that we need to change the trajectory of this place and open it up so people can represent their constituency in a more open and transparent manner,” Biggs said.

    Biggs had previously indicated a lack of confidence in McCarthy’s ability to lead, noting that he’s “backpedaled on things like impeachment,” which Biggs said “indicates a willingness to be weakening the oversight authority that we need to have and the leverage points we need to have in order to deal with a Democrat president.”

    (L-R) Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) talks with Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) during a forum titled House Rules and Process Changes for the 118th Congress at FreedowmWorks headquarters in Washington, DC, on Nov. 14, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    ‘I’m Not Voting for Him’: Gaetz

    Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) on Monday said he won’t vote for McCarthy, and he’s certain many others won’t either.

    “I’m making my announcement, which is that I’m not voting for Kevin McCarthy. I’m not voting for him tomorrow, I’m not voting for him on the floor,” Gaetz told “The Charlie Kirk Show.”

    “And I am certain that there is a critical mass of people who hold my precise view, and so the sooner we can sort of dispense with the notion that Kevin is gonna be speaker, then we can get to the important work of actually looking at who are the people that Brian Fitzpatrick and Matt Gaetz can agree on.”

    On Nov. 12, Gaetz took to Twitter to remind voters that McCarthy defended Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and said former President Donald Trump should resign after the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

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    Gaetz noted that “a lot of the establishment Republicans” are in denial believing that McCarthy can still become speaker. However, he said there’s enough Republicans who’d “rather be waterboarded by Liz Cheney than vote for Kevin McCarthy for speaker of the House.”

    “I think there’s a real desire to have fresh faces, new leadership, new ideas, and to turn a new page so that we can get to the important work that we promised the American people that we can get to,” he added.

    Biggs said Gaetz’ arguments were his opinion and that voters had also been telling their Republican representatives that change in leadership was needed.

    Biggs acknowledged Gaetz’ reasons for not voting for McCarthy but said there were other reasons led by constituents as well.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/15/2022 – 23:30

  • NASA's Massive Moon Rocket 'Go' For Launch
    NASA’s Massive Moon Rocket ‘Go’ For Launch

    After three delays, NASA confirmed a new launch window for the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, an uncrewed Orion spacecraft, for Wednesday morning. 

    The Artemis 1 rocket launch was scrubbed in late August (read: here) and early September (read: here) due to a liquid hydrogen leak at an interface between the SLS and mobile launcher at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 

    NASA appears comfortable with the next launch attempt, with a two-hour window beginning at 0104 ET Wednesday. 

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    If the launch goes to plan, it will be the first flight of the SLS and send the unmanned Orion Spacecraft around the moon. 

    “I feel good headed into this attempt on the 16th,” Mike Sarafin, Artemis mission manager at NASA headquarters in Washington, said during a press briefing on Sunday. 

    “The team is moving forward as one unit,” Sarafin added. “We’ve just got some work to do.”

    Besides prior leak mishaps, NASA outlined Hurricane Ian also delayed timelines. 

    “Engineers previously rolled the rocket back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) Sept. 26 ahead of Hurricane Ian and after waving off two previous launch attempts Aug. 29 due to a faulty temperature sensor, and Sept. 4 due to a liquid hydrogen leak at an interface between the rocket and mobile launcher. Prior to rolling back to the VAB, teams successfully repaired the leak and demonstrated updated tanking procedures. While in the VAB, teams performed standard maintenance to repair minor damage to the foam and cork on the thermal protection system and recharge or replace batteries throughout the system.”

    If all goes well, the Artemis 2 mission could propel four astronauts on a flyby mission around the moon in 2024. Then by 2025, Artemis 3 mission would allow for the first crewed moon landing on the moon. 

    Watch Launch Live Here:

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/15/2022 – 23:00

  • Retail Sales Preview: Boost From California's Stimmy Checks
    Retail Sales Preview: Boost From California’s Stimmy Checks

    Following big misses in CPI and PPI data, tomorrow’s retail sales should come in line to slightly stronger than expected by consensus. That’s because real-time card spending data, as measured by BAC aggregated credit and debit cards, was a solid +3.1% year-over-year on a per household (HH) basis in October, and rose 0.5% month-over-month.

    As a result, BofA’s economists forecast a solid 0.6% m/m increase in the Census Bureau’s ex-auto retail sales figure in October, just above the consensus estimate.

    Alas, as has been the case in recent months, much of this retail sales strength will be driven by inflation, namely a pickup in gas spending (due to higher gasoline prices)…

    … and restaurant spending.

    Therefore, BofA expects a smaller 0.3% m/m pickup in core control sales (retail sales ex autos, gas, building materials and restaurants) in October

    As BofA further notes, two special factors appear to have boosted spending in October.

    • First, there was another round of Prime Day and related promotions last month, in addition to the usual annual July event. This likely contributed to the strong increase in online retail spending in October (+1.5% m/m).
    • Second, and as we observed above, California (CA) distributed one-off (anti-inflation) stimulus payments last month. Ex-auto retail spending in CA significantly outpaced the rest of the country in October, after lagging in four of the previous five months. CA accounts for about one-seventh of the national economy, so the stimulus checks could move the needle on national spending aggregates.

    As an aside, the Census Bureau’s retail sales report for September did not mention any impact from Hurricane Ian, whereas the BofA card data showed a 0.2-0.3% headwind to ex-auto retail sales. Therefore it is likely that the Census Bureau will enact downward revisions to the September data. Such revisions could support stronger m/m retail sales growth in October by creating favorable base effects.

    Finally, we shift away from BofA, and present a summary of what JPMorgan economist Michael Feroli expects tomorrow:

    We believe that nominal retail sales jumped 1.3% in October. Unit auto sales surged between September and October and we think this suggests that related retail sales picked up noticeably as well—we forecast that sales at motor vehicle and parts dealers jumped 6.0% in October. We also think that price increases boosted sales at gasoline stations in October and we estimate that related nominal sales rose 1.2% that month. Our Chase card data signal a strong gain for food services sales in October along with a decline in sales of the important control group, although we are fading these signals somewhat given recent noticeable deviations between the signals from the card data and the official figures reported by the Census Bureau. We estimate that food services sales increased 1.1% in October while control retail sales—the total excluding food services, autos, gasoline, and building materials—were basically unchanged that month relative to September.

    More in the full note available to pro subs.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/15/2022 – 22:38

  • Cruz Criticizes McConnell For 'Abandoning' Blake Masters In Arizona Senate Race
    Cruz Criticizes McConnell For ‘Abandoning’ Blake Masters In Arizona Senate Race

    Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) gives a speech to Republican supporters during a rally outside the offices of Mark Alford, Republican candidate for Missouri’s 4th Congressional District in Raymore, Mo., on Oct. 14, 2022. (Kyle Rivas/Getty Images)

    Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Republicans missed a “generational opportunity” to retake Congress in the midterm elections, and criticized Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for placing personal politics above the party’s best interests.

    “We had an extraordinary opportunity. We had a generational opportunity. This should have been a fundamental landslide election,” Cruz said on his podcast “Verdict with Ted Cruz” on Nov. 14.

    Cruz added: “We should have won the House and the Senate. We should have a 30, 40, 50-vote majority in the House. We should have 53, 54, 55 Republicans in the Senate.”

    Republicans lost control of the Senate after suffering losses in Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. The GOP is still expected to gain control of the House, though with only a slim majority.

    After several races were called Monday night, Republicans are one seat away from the 218-seat majority needed to take control of the House. There are 13 uncalled races left.

    Cruz criticized McConnell for the failure of the Republicans to win Arizona’s Senate race with GOP candidate Blake Masters.

    “Mitch McConnell pulled the money out of Arizona. We could have won Arizona. We nearly won Arizona. And abandoning Blake Masters was indefensible,” Cruz said.

    Republican U.S. senatorial candidate Blake Masters speaks during his election night watch party in Chandler, Arizona, on Aug. 2, 2022. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

    The Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), a political action committee with close ties to McConnell, slashed millions in campaign spending for the Arizona Senate race in the weeks leading up to the Nov. 8 election.

    Cruz explained that SLF’s decision was made because Masters had said he would not support McConnell as leader in the next Congress.

    “Because Masters said he would vote against Mitch McConnell. And so Mitch would rather be leader than have a Republican majority. If there’s a Republican who can win who’s not going to support Mitch, the truth of the matter is he’d rather the Democrat win,” Cruz said.

    During the Arizona Republican primary, Masters called for McConnell to be replaced as GOP leader, saying he would support Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) or Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) for the position.

    “I’ll tell Mitch this to his face,” Masters said during a Republican primary debate in June. “He’s not bad at everything. He’s good at judges. He’s good at blocking Democrats. You know what he’s not good at? Legislating.”

    On election eve, Masters told The Wall Street Journal he would support a conservative challenger to McConnell if elected, telling the outlet that “we need new leadership” in the Senate.

    Had McConnell directed the millions he spent supporting incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) in Alaska’s Senate race to Arizona, Cruz said “Blake Masters probably would have won and we would be on the road to a Republican majority.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/15/2022 – 22:30

  • LA Port Head Says October Was 'Quietest' Month Since 2009
    LA Port Head Says October Was ‘Quietest’ Month Since 2009

    About a year ago, there was a massive queue outside two of America’s biggest ports, located on the West Coast. Now, the ports are coming to a crawl during the peaking shipping season, ahead of the busiest shopping period of the year. 

    There’s no longer a massive amount of container ships outside the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, which handle 40% of all cargo containers entering the country. 

    According to Gene Seroka, head of the Port of Los Angeles, the backlog has all but dissipated. In an online briefing, he said the Port of LA had the quietest October since 2009. 

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    Together, LA and Long Beach are the main seaport gateway into the US economy from China. The quietest October since the GFC is sign retailers and manufacturers have slowed or stopped ordering from overseas due to either high inventories or collapsing demand. 

    Seroka’s comment Tuesday is another piece to the puzzle of an emerging global slowdown: 

    We predict in May that an inventory glut, i.e., the reverse bullwhip effect, would cool the booming freight market. It’s peak shipping season — retailers have already canceled overseas orders as freight companies reduce shipping capacity ahead of Black Friday and Christmas. 

    Companies across the board are bloated with inventories. This can be shown in the inventory-to-sales ratio, reaching multi-decade highs — forcing importers to reduce shipments from overseas suppliers. 

    As importers are stuck with inventory, they have reduced orders, which has led to a plunge in container spot rates. Even to the extent that major shipping companies are canceling sails. 

    Some of the largest shipping companies, such as US shipper FedEx and Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S have parked planes and canceled sails as economic storm clouds gather worldwide. 

    And as world trade stumbles, another problem has emerged: a massive container glut at ports. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/15/2022 – 22:00

  • Arizona Prayer Rally Under Surveillance As Members Gather In 'Free Speech Zone'
    Arizona Prayer Rally Under Surveillance As Members Gather In ‘Free Speech Zone’

    Authored by Allan Stein via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Republican pastor Jerone Davison addresses a prayer rally outside the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix, Ariz., on Nov. 14, 2022, under the watchful eye of sheriff’s deputies. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    PHOENIX, Ariz.—Angie Russo chuckled at the clear blue urban sky over Phoenix and said, “You see the drones? We got drones.”

    One law enforcement camera drone was visible, buzzing overhead in a stationary position.

    Russo then noticed two armed police officers in body armor positioned atop the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center (MCTEC).

    Another pair were on the building across the street, watching her location with binoculars.

    Conservative Republican activist Angie Russo (R) dances with a participant at a prayer rally outside the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix, Ariz., on Nov. 14, 2022. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    “We got snipers—because we’re dangerous. Can’t you see how dangerous we are?” Russo said jokingly.

    At 1 p.m., Russo was among the first to arrive at a prayer rally outside the fortified perimeter of the county’s main tabulation center on Nov. 14.

    That the gathering took place inside an official “free speech zone” didn’t sit well with Russo, who thought it “ridiculous.”

    “I live in America. Everywhere is free speech,” she said.

    Participants at a prayer rally outside the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center on offered prayers for a fair and accurate vote tally on Nov. 14, 2022. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    And the heavy show of law enforcement and surveillance?

    Intimidating, Russo told The Epoch Times.

    “Unfortunately, this is how they treat you. If you’re an American who believes in the Constitution and free speech, this is what you get.”

    “If you’re not hiding something, why would you do this? I don’t usually barricade something I’m not hiding, you know what I’m saying?”

    ‘Zero Confidence’

    Inside the facility, ballot workers continued their slow, laborious tallying of ballots though a clear winner in the race for Arizona governor remained in doubt Monday afternoon.

    However, NBC News projected Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs would defeat Republican Kari Lake in Arizona’s race for governor, 50.4 percent to 49.6 percent, hours later.

    “Do I have faith [in the process]?” Russo said. “At this point, you’d have to prove that an election is legitimate. I won’t believe it unless I have proof—so no. I have zero confidence in our elections.”

    A woman holds an Arizona “Gadsden Flag” during a post-election prayer rally in Phoenix on Nov. 14, 2022. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    All Michelle Dillard, a conservative Republican from Mesa, said she wanted was “legitimate results,” given widespread reports of ballot tabulator machine failure on election day.

    “Everybody talks about voter suppression all the time,” Dillard told The Epoch Times at the prayer rally. “Voter suppression is super long lines. The morning polls are when people are on their way to work. They can’t stay and wait around for them to fix a printer.

    “These people are going on election day to vote in person for a reason. They were disenfranchised. Turned away. Many people did not vote.”

    “It’s worse than it was back in 2020,” said Gage, a Maricopa County poll worker at the prayer rally, who said both tabulators at his precinct center stopped working during early voting.

    He said he saw many voters step out of line and leave out of frustration.

    “They had to go. They didn’t have time to stand and wait any longer,” Gage told The Epoch Times.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/15/2022 – 21:35

  • Get Woke, Go Broke: Disney To Lay Off Employees After Billions In Operating Losses
    Get Woke, Go Broke: Disney To Lay Off Employees After Billions In Operating Losses

    The company that once defined family entertainment is going from media giant to epic failure, suffering over $1.4 billion in streaming losses and a stock drop of around 39% for the year.  And, it would appear that these financial declines are inevitably leading to employee layoffs.

    Disney has put a freeze on hiring, it is limited employee travel and is also reviewing workers for efficiency with plans to introduce cuts as a means to make the company “more nimble.”  CEO Bob Chapek noted in a leaked memo to senior staff:

    “As we work through this evaluation process, we will look at every avenue of operations and labor to find savings, and we do anticipate some staff reductions as part of this review.

    …I am fully aware this will be a difficult process for many of you and your teams. We are going to have to make tough and uncomfortable decisions.”

    Chapek mentions in the same memo the problem of “macroeconomic factors” out of Disney’s control.  He does not, however, mention his habit of bending the knee and groveling to woke activists, attempting to sabotage Florida’s anti-grooming legislation for public schools, or the company’s steady supply of content that pushes far-left narratives. 

    It is not so much the “macroeconomic factors out of Disney’s control” that are causing the conglomerate’s downfall.  Rather, it is all the factors within their control, including their refusal to produce content that consumers actually want.  American audiences are done with leftist propaganda in their films and television and are now actively researching and avoiding any content that promotes woke ideology and social justice talking points.  After around five years of consumers withholding their money, Disney is finally starting to feel the pain.

    This is what happens when a company markets its products to a tiny minority of leftist activists and LGBT fanatics, most of whom have very little money to spend anyway.  Specifically, parents are concerned with Disney’s “family entertainment” evolving to focus on LGBT characters, being that LGBT concepts are purely sexual in nature and far outside of the understanding of the average child.  Highlighting the obscure sexuality of characters within a children’s production is a bizarre notion.       

    Furthermore, the company’s hostility towards Florida’s Parental Rights In Education bill, which makes it illegal for public school teachers to groom young children with sexualized concepts and gender ideology, raises questions among consumers about Disney’s agenda in entertainment.

    It is therefore no surprise that the company is now floundering, with a vast array of politically motivated box office bombs and streaming disasters that struggle to bring in even moderate viewership.  Though they will never openly admit it, ultimately, Disney proves yet again that going woke also means going broke.       

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/15/2022 – 21:00

  • Watch Live: Trump Announces 2024 Run For President
    Watch Live: Trump Announces 2024 Run For President

    Former President Donald Trump has formally filed a statement of candidacy for a 2024 presidential bid, and will make an announcement live Tuesday night.

    According to polls, he will immediately become the front-runner for the Republican nomination despite last week’s lack of a “red wave” during the midterm election – after which Democrats held the Senate and lost the House by a much smaller-than-anticipated number.

    Watch live:

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/15/2022 – 20:25

  • Biden On Democrats' Effort To Codify Roe v. Wade: 'I Don’t Think There’s Enough Votes'
    Biden On Democrats’ Effort To Codify Roe v. Wade: ‘I Don’t Think There’s Enough Votes’

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

    US President Joe Biden holds a press conference on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Nusa Dua on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, Nov. 14, 2022. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

    Democrats probably won’t be able to pass federal legislation codifying the struck-down Roe v. Wade abortion protections, President Joe Biden said on Nov. 14.

    “I don’t think there’s enough votes to codify, unless something happens unusual in the House,” Biden said at a press conference while traveling in Asia.

    While control of the U.S. House of Representatives is still undetermined because some states have struggled to count votes in a timely manner, Democrats have already lost a number of seats and are likely to be in the minority.

    “I think we’re going to get very close in the House. But I don’t—I think it’s going to be very close, but I don’t think we’re going to make it,” Biden added.

    The Supreme Court in June struck down Roe, the 1973 decision that concluded access to abortion was a constitutional right, and an associated ruling called Planned Parenthood v. Casey that also barred states from imposing some restrictions on abortions.

    Since then, Biden and other Democrats have repeatedly said they want to approve and sign into law a bill that would not only codify Roe but expand abortion protections beyond what they were with Roe.

    The Democrat-controlled House in July passed the measure, although Democrats lacked enough support in the Senate, which had already rejected the legislation.

    Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who opposed the legislation because it went further than Roe, joined Republicans in voting against the measure.

    Meanwhile, several Republican senators, including Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), have sometimes voted for pro-abortion legislation but they voted against the bill earlier this year.

    Biden claimed over the summer that Democrats only needed a few more votes in the upper chamber to codify Roe.

    “We need two additional pro-choice senators and a pro-choice House to codify Roe as federal law. Your vote can make that a reality,” he said, as he condemned the Supreme Court for its decision that struck down Roe.

    “The fastest way to restore Roe is to pass a national law codifying Roe, which I will sign immediately upon its passage at my desk,” he also said.

    On Nov. 14, Biden also said that he thought the midterms showed “the strength and resilience of the American democracy” and championed voters largely rejecting candidates who have questioned election results.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/15/2022 – 20:10

  • NBC Pushes 'Tripledemic' Fear Mongering – Claims Children At Risk During The Holidays
    NBC Pushes ‘Tripledemic’ Fear Mongering – Claims Children At Risk During The Holidays

    Why can’t leftists and the mainstream media let go of the pandemic, accept that it is over and move on?  There are a number of reasons, but much of it can be explained by the psychological drivers within the mind of the average progressive.

    Leftists are often defined by their addiction to fear.  For them, fear is a powerful tool, a great motivator for organization and a means to manipulate large groups into conformity with an agenda that would normally take many years or decades to accomplish otherwise.  The hype surrounding covid is just one example – We can also see the political left’s love affair with fear in their obsession with “systemic racism” (which does not exist), or their rantings on the “climate crisis” (which does not exist).

    Fear is a path to control over others and society at large and tends to be a tool used by weak people who cannot assert their ideologies through force of arms.  It is also a great way to excite a population into mob impulses; a way to use large mindless crowds as a political weapon.  

    On the individual level, leftists like to live in the midst of constant crisis.  For them, crisis creates meaning in their otherwise meaningless existence. The typical mindless leftist drone subsisting day-to-day without producing anything of value, often without marriage, without children and without a greater purpose,  is going to be desperate to feel as though they are a part of something.  They are looking for anything to make life more interesting; they don’t create value in their own lives, they have to search for it outside of themselves and live vicariously through events and vast groups and governments.  

    They are part of the hive, and the accomplishments of the hive are their accomplishments as well.  

    The covid pandemic was one of those moments in history where this collectivist mentality could be justified and all the worst impulses of narcissists and authoritarians and micro-managing control freaks could be put on display without much criticism.  It was all being done for the “greater good”, you see.  If the covid virus had been an actual large scale mortal threat no one would have been more happy than leftists.  

    Instead, they got a minimal threat with a 0.23% median Infection Fatality Rate.  Covid was not the crisis they were hoping for, and not as useful in asserting dominance as they had originally envisioned.  Still, the dream lives on.  This is why we continue to see corporate media outlets pumping out not only covid fear, but also fear of any old viruses we have been dealing with for generations. 

    NBC is spearheading the latest fear narrative with the threat of the “Tripledemic”, a supposed spike in cases involving covid, the flu and a respiratory illness called RSV.  Not surprisingly, the outlet is making the risks to children the focus of their propaganda.  This makes perfect sense give the fact that covid was a non-issue for younger people, and leftists have learned over the past two years that fear is far more effective if the danger involves children.

    NBC goes on to suggest that letting unvaccinated people near children should be avoided and that vaccines are the best option for protection.  What their “medical expert” does not mention is that there is no vaccine for RSV and covid vaccination for kids is pointless.  But why is NBC trying to tie covid together with the flu and RSV?  

    First, because the public at large no longer sees covid as a reason to isolate, nor a reason to spurn their unvaccinated relatives.  So, they need to now lump covid in with a host of other diseases in order to maintain a sense of urgency.  

    Second, and perhaps most importantly, is that Big Pharma companies like Moderna are currently promoting the release of a new type of vaccine that combines a flu shot with an RSV and covid immunization.  It’s not a coincidence that the mainstream media is suddenly hyping a “Tripledemic” of those same diseases.     

    In other words, if you want to get a flu shot you would also have to take a new mRNA RSV shot and covid shot at the same time.  A problem to note is that Moderna is attempting to introduce this new vaccine product without the extensive clinical trials necessary to ensure safety.  No surprises there. 

    The establishment is seeking to make the existence of viruses a perpetual crisis that requires steady injections of new mRNA technology to stay safe, and leftists are eating up the propaganda.  Yes, it’s about money for companies like Moderna, but it’s also about control.  When people are separated from their families due to vaccination status and worried about their children’s health they are more likely to submit to untested treatments and also unconstitutional rules.  Fear is the fuel that keeps leftist movements alive.        

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/15/2022 – 19:45

  • US, Japan To Start Large-Scale War Games On Heels Of Xi-Biden Meeting
    US, Japan To Start Large-Scale War Games On Heels Of Xi-Biden Meeting

    Authored by Kyle Anzalone & Connor Freeman via The Libertarian Institute,

    The US and Japan are set to kick off large-scale joint war games on Thursday. The military drills will involve over 35,000 troops and take place just days after President Joe Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping aimed at lowering tensions.

    The war games, dubbed “Keen Sword 23,” will run for three days. The military drills come as Japan is increasingly worried about China’s growing presence in the region. The exercises simulate the defense of Tokunoshima Island, located in the East China Sea. Biden’s administration has previously pledged the U.S. will defend Japan’s claims to the East China Sea’s disputed Senkaku Islands. The Senkaku Islands are also claimed by Beijing and Taipei.

    US Navy file image

    Military activity in the region has spiked in recent months. Chinese warplanes have carried out unprecedented drills in the waters surrounding Taiwan after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei in August.

    “Keen Sword 23” will see 26,000 Japanese troops join 10,000 American soldiers. Some Canadian, British and Australian forces will also participate. Voice of America – a US government-funded outlet – reports 370 aircraft and 30 ships will be mobilized.

    The war games are taking place in the wake of Biden’s meeting with the Chinese president. At the meeting, Biden declared Washington will “continue to compete vigorously” with Beijing. Though, he said that the competition should not “veer into conflict and underscored that the United States and China must manage the competition responsibly and maintain open lines of communication.”

    The Chinese Defense ministry recently said that if the U.S. military desires to resume regular communication between the two countries, Washington must “respect China’s interests and major concerns, and remove the negative factors that impede the development of ties.” According to China’s Foreign Ministry, echoing this sentiment, Xi told Biden “the Taiwan question” is the “the very core of China’s core interests, the bedrock of the political foundation of China-US relations, and the first red line that must not be crossed.”

    Location of joint drills: Tokunoshima Island, via Google Maps

    Since taking office, Biden has escalated tensions with China to unprecedented levels. Last year, Biden’s military flew more than 2,000 sorties of spy planes in the South China Sea, East China Sea, and Yellow Sea. The number of U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups deployed to the South China Sea nearly doubled.

    High level delegations of US officials and members of Congress regularly visit Taiwan, while Biden has repeatedly said the US has a defense commitment to the island, defying the One-China Policy. Washington seeks to turn Taiwan into a “weapons depot,” U.S. troops are openly deployed to the island training local forces, and American warships transit the Taiwan strait on a near monthly basis.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/15/2022 – 19:20

  • "Invasion Clause" Triggered In Texas As Migrants Overwhelm Border
    “Invasion Clause” Triggered In Texas As Migrants Overwhelm Border

    Texas Governor Greg Abbott has invoked the state’s “Invasion Clauses” to take measures against a record-setting influx of migrants who are illegally crossing the border.

    “I invoked the Invasion Clauses of the U.S. & Texas Constitutions to fully authorize Texas to take unprecedented measures to defend our state against an invasion,” Abbott tweeted Tuesday morning.

    As part of the action, Abbott plans to;

    • Deploy the National Guard to safeguard the border, and to repel and turn back immigrants trying to cross the border illegally
    • Deploy the Texas Dept. of Public Safety (DPS) to arrest and return immigrants to the border who crossed illegally, and to arrest illegal immigrants for criminal activity;
    • Build a wall in multiple counties on the border;
    • Deploy gun boats;
    • Designate Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations;
    • Enter into a compact with other states to secure the border;
    • Enter into agreements with foreign powers to enhance border security;
    • Provide resources for border counties to increase their efforts to respond to the “border invasion.”

    As Breitbart News notes;

    The move by the Texas governor comes after back-to-back record years of migrant border apprehensions following changes in policies by the Biden administration. Official reports from U.S. Customs and Border Protection show the apprehension of more than 2.2 million migrants in the just ended Fiscal Year 2022 and nearly 1.7 million in Fiscal Year 2021. During the last full year of the Trump administration agents apprehended only 400,000 migrants.

    Nearly two-thirds of migrant apprehensions occur in the five Texas-based Border Patrol sectors, according to reports from CBP. This amounts to 1.26 million migrants in FY22.

    The governor’s order on Tuesday represents the next step in an increasing response to the lack of action by the federal government to secure the U.S.-Mexico border — particularly in Texas.

    “Since President Biden took office over a year ago, his dangerous open border policies have created an ongoing crisis along our southern border, with a 61-year record-high of illegal immigrants surging into our state smuggled by the cartels, along with deadly drugs like fentanyl, weapons, and other contraband,” Governor Abbott’s spokesperson Renae Eze told Breitbart in April. “Texas border communities and local officials are overwhelmed and overrun by the historic levels of illegal crossings, and President Biden has turned a blind eye to their suffering.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/15/2022 – 18:55

  • Biden Unveils $37BN More In Emergency Ukraine Aid On Heels Of Polish Border 'Attack'
    Biden Unveils $37BN More In Emergency Ukraine Aid On Heels Of Polish Border ‘Attack’

    At the close of a wild roller-coaster of a day following the alleged “Russian missile attack” on a Polish border town, and despite little to nothing in the way of official confirmation of just what happened or whodunnit, and urgent phone calls flying between Western heads of state pledging “solidarity” – it’s perfect timing for the US to shovel out another nearly $40 billion to Ukraine…

    “President Joe Biden is asking Congress to provide more than $37 billion in emergency aid to Ukraine, a massive infusion of cash that could help support the nation as Russian forces suffer battlefield losses in their nine-month-old invasion,” Reuters is reporting late in the day. 

    Biden unveiled the proposed massive aid infusion while at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia. It was also announced just as President Biden held a phone call with Poland’s President Andrzej Duda following the explosion in the village of Przewodów.

    Biden offered Poland “full U.S support for and assistance with Poland’s investigation” and “reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to NATO,” according to a call readout. The two leaders also vowed to remain in “close touch to determine appropriate next steps as the investigation proceeds.”

    According to a breakdown of the fresh aid proposed for Ukraine, it includes “$21.7 billion for military, intelligence and other defense support, $14.5 billion in humanitarian aid and to help keep the Ukrainian government functioning, $900 million for health care and support services for Ukrainians living in the U.S. and $626 million for nuclear security support to Ukraine and for modernizing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.”

    This follows Ukraine’s President Zelensky urging more, more, more weapons and funding, especially missiles, artillery shells, and anti-air defense systems. 

    According to more from Reuters, “Shalanda Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said that more than three-fourths of the $40 billion approved by Congress earlier this year for Ukraine has already been disbursed or committed.”

    The precise figure of what the Biden administration is now asking anew totals $37.7 billion in support. 

    While there likely won’t be an invoking of Article 5 over Tuesday’s events, whatever bottlenecks that currently exist in terms of getting Ukraine more defense aid is likely to be loosened up after this.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/15/2022 – 18:30

  • Planned Amazon Layoffs Could Hamper E-Commerce, Logistics
    Planned Amazon Layoffs Could Hamper E-Commerce, Logistics

    By Jack Daleo of FreightWaves

    Twitter, Meta and now Amazon are engaging in mass layoffs as the tech industry contends with a massive downturn.

    According to a Monday report in The New York Times, the e-commerce giant is planning the largest layoff in company history, cutting around 10,000 jobs. The cuts, people familiar with the matter told the Times, will mainly focus on the company’s devices organization, which houses the company’s struggling Alexa business.

    But sources said that Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is also planning major cuts to its retail division, which is responsible for online shopping, physical retail and a chunk of the firm’s logistics operations. Hourly workers, who make up the bulk of the company’s workforce, will not be impacted.

    Amazon did not immediately respond to Modern Shipper’s request for comment.

    The layoffs were not necessarily unexpected for Amazon, which has ceased hiring in several segments since September. That includes a freeze on more than 10,000 open roles in the retail business as well as a monthslong freeze on corporate hiring.

    The marketplace has also repeatedly scaled back its logistics operations in recent months, delaying or closing more than 60 warehouses and scrapping services like free Whole Foods delivery and its Scout home delivery robot as it contends with slowing e-commerce growth.

    What is surprising, though, is that the planned layoffs would come right as peak season kicks off.

    Typically, companies like Amazon ramp up seasonal hiring to meet the increased demand that comes with the holidays. But between April and September, the Times reports, Amazon lost about 80,000 people primarily to attrition. (Turnover rates in the company’s warehouses routinely top 100%.)

    That’s not unusual for Amazon, at least in recent years, and the company said it plans to bring on the same number of seasonal workers this year as it did last year.

    Still, the fact that all of this is happening shortly before the holiday season is a not-so-subtle signal that Amazon and newly minted CEO Andy Jassy are firmly in cost-cutting mode as the company attempts to rebound from a disappointing third quarter.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/15/2022 – 18:05

  • Relationship Among FTX, Ukraine, And Democrats Sparks Speculation
    Relationship Among FTX, Ukraine, And Democrats Sparks Speculation

    Authored by Andrew Moran via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Samuel Bankman-Fried, founder and then-CEO of FTX, testifies during a Senate Committee hearing about Examining Digital Assets: Risks, Regulation, and Innovation, on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Feb. 9, 2022. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

    Is there a questionable relationship between Sam Bankman-Fried’s bankrupt FTX, Ukraine, and the Democrats? In the aftermath of the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange, new questions are being raised surrounding these connections, from crypto partnerships to the billionaire’s contributions to Democrats.

    But is there something behind the curtain or was it a group of young people in over their heads?

    It All Begins with ‘Aid for Ukraine’

    In March, the Ukrainian government established a crypto donations website, allowing Kyiv to convert digital token contributions into fiat money that would be deposited at the National Bank of Ukraine. The Ukraine government maintained a goal of $200 million. By October, it had raised more than $60 million.

    The contributed funds have been used to purchase everything needed for the war effort, such as digital rifle scopes, medical supplies, field rations, fuel, military clothing, and other critical items.

    The initiative, known as “Aid for Ukraine,” garnered the support of FTX, staking outfit Everstake, and Ukraine’s Kuna exchange. It has been powered by the Ministry of Digital Transformation.

    “At the onset of the conflict in Ukraine, FTX felt the need to provide assistance in any way it could. By setting up payment rails and facilitating the conversion of crypto donations into fiat currency, we have given the Central Bank of Ukraine the ability to deliver aid and resources to the people who need it most,” Bankman-Fried said in a statement in March. “We are grateful for the opportunity to work with Sergey [Vasylchuk] and the Everstake team as they continue to work tirelessly in helping Ukrainians as they suffer from this conflict.”

    Days after the launch of the Ukraine–FTX collaboration, U.S. President Joe Biden announced an extra $800 million in security assistance to Ukraine, bringing the total contribution to $2 billion since the start of the administration. In total, it’s estimated that the United States has given more than $60 billion to Kyiv.

    While it’s unclear if reports that Ukrainian officials have invested in FTX are accurate, many are seeking an explanation as to whether Ukrainian officials have used funds delivered to Kyiv through FTX to funnel money to Democratic campaigns.

    Bankman-Fried’s Donations to Democrats

    Bankman-Fried was the second-largest Democratic donor for the 2021–22 cycle, donating $39.8 million. This was behind George Soros’s total donations of $128 million. Bankman-Fried gave the most amount of money to the Protect Our Future PAC, a group that “endorsed Democratic candidates such as Peter Welch, who won his bid to become Vermont’s next senator, and Robert J. Menendez of New Jersey, who secured a House seat,” according to Fortune. But this past summer, Bankman-Fried suggested that he could’ve spent $1 billion on the midterm elections to support the Democrats, although he stepped away from this proposition.

    In the first half of 2022, he contributed $865,000 to the Democratic National Committee, $66,500 to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, and $250,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

    In addition, Bankman-Fried made multiple visits to the White House. According to White House visitor logs, he met with White House counselor Steve Ricchetti on April 22 and May 12. The FTX founder also met with Charlotte Butash, a policy adviser to the White House deputy chief of staff, on May 13.

    Mark Wetjen, the head of policy and regulatory strategy at FTX, who served as a commissioner on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) under former President Barack Obama, also attended some of the meetings.

    Visitor logs also show that Bankman-Fried’s younger brother, Gabe, made visits to the White House on March 7 and May 13. His first appointment was with Nathaly Maurice, special assistant to the president and director of partnerships at the White House. His second visit was with Butash.

    Gabe had previously worked as a Capitol Hill staffer and is the founder and director of Guarding Against Pandemics.

    Bankman-Fried has been open about his attempts to influence public policymaking, explaining that he’s championing crypto regulations, including legislation that would codify licensure for crypto assets. The bill, the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act of 2022, was proposed by Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) in August. A key aspect of the legislative pursuit is that it would allocate crypto regulatory power to the CFTC. Bankman-Fried donated $5,800 to Stabenow’s campaign in February.

    “One in five Americans have used or traded digital assets—but these markets lack the transparency and accountability that they expect from our financial system. Too often, this puts Americans’ hard-earned money at risk,” Stabenow said in a statement. “That’s why we are closing regulatory gaps and requiring that these markets operate under straightforward rules that protect customers and keep our financial system safe.”

    So everything that has transpired between Bankman-Fried, FTX, Ukraine, and the Democrats has raised some eyebrows. Billionaire CEO Elon Musk is also intrigued by the latest developments.

    “Was FTX being used to launder money for the Democratic Party?” a Twitter user asked.

    Musk replied, “A question worth asking.”

    Alex Bornyakov, the deputy minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, took to Twitter on Nov. 14 to dismiss this “narrative.”

    “A fundraising crypto foundation @_AidForUkraine used @FTX_Official to convert crypto donations into fiat in March,” he tweeted. “Ukraine’s gov never invested any funds into FTX. The whole narrative that Ukraine allegedly invested in FTX, who donated money to Democrats is nonsense, frankly.”

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    Corruption or Incompetence?

    Is there truth to any of the speculation that Ukraine funneled money to Biden through FTX or that there was anything iniquitous in the Ukraine-FTX partnership?

    A cryptocurrency expert, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Epoch Times that there isn’t much credence to the suggestions. Although Bankman-Fried was a significant Democratic donor, the downfall of FTX was because of mismanagement, poor decision-making, and a lack of experience and corporate controls. It was an enormous financial firm that was run by 20-somethings.

    The other factor was that FTX’s assets were denominated in volatile cryptocurrencies, and many of these tokens’ valuations crashed in 2022. FTX’s balance sheet, which was obtained by the Financial Times, shows that its assets were comprised of joke coins or unreliable tokens, including TRUMPLOSE, the Brazilian Digital Token, Oxygen (OXY), and FTT (FTX’s native coin).

    In recent months, FTX has been acquiring troubled assets throughout the crypto and tech industries. In May, Bankman-Fried revealed a 7.6 percent stake in Robinhood, but the value had tumbled by more than 5 percent since the purchase.

    It has been a year of turmoil for a wide array of crypto firms, such as Coinbase, crypto lending firm Celsius, BlockFi, and Singapore-based crypto trading platform Three Arrows Capital—which Bankman-Fried bailed out with a $750 million credit line.

    “We’re willing to do a somewhat bad deal here if that’s what it takes to sort of stabilize things and protect customers,” he said in June.

    The FTX scandal will likely have a domino effect in the sector. BlockFi, a crypto lender, revealed that it had large exposure to FTX. The Wall Street Journal also reported that BlockFi is exploring a bankruptcy filing, citing people familiar with the matter.

    There’s growing concern that Gate.io and Crypto.com could be the next two giants in the crypto ecosystem to experience financial troubles.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/15/2022 – 17:40

  • Zelensky Issues 10-Point Plan To End War In G20 Virtual Address
    Zelensky Issues 10-Point Plan To End War In G20 Virtual Address

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quick to reject what he called “unrealistic and inadequate” terms for future peace talks put forward by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday.

    Zelensky had addressed the G20 summit in Bali via video link earlier in the day, in which he presented a 10-point peace plan to end the war. Key features of the plan include withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukrainian territory, the assurance of nuclear safety, food security including the ability to freely export, and an “all for all” prisoner swap.

    FM Lavrov, who is representing Russa in Bali in President Putin’s stead, was in attendance for Zelensky’s video address, reportedly having remained in his seat for the duration. Lavrov later confirmed to reporters that he listened to the whole thing, which marks at least a “start” in terms of the potential for a future negotiated settlement.

    Russian FM Sergei Lavrov attends the first working session of the G20 leaders’ summit, via AFP.

    Lavrov responded to the peace terms, saying “I reminded him [Macron] that all the problems are on the Ukrainian side, which categorically refuses any negotiations and puts forward terms that are obviously unrealistic and inadequate,” as quoted in AFP. Addressing accusations that it is Moscow that remains unwilling to enter talks, Lavrov said, “If anyone is refusing, it is Ukraine. The longer it refuses, the more difficult it will be to reach an agreement.”

    The Kremlin has also previously pointed the finger at the US and UK for at every turn pushing Kiev away from meaningful ceasefire talks. 

    Below is the “10-point peace plan” which was presented by Zelensky before the G20 on Tuesday:

    1. Radiation and nuclear safety
    2. Food security
    3. Energy security
    4. Release of prisoners and deportees
    5. Implementation of the UN Charter
    6. Withdrawal of Russian troops and cessation of hostilities
    7. Justice
    8. Ecocide and the protection of the environment
    9. Prevention of escalation
    10. Confirmation of the end of the war

    Despite talking “peace” – Zelensky throughout the speech took repeat swipes at Russia, for example mocking Putin’s absence at Bali by calling it the “G19 summit”.  

    Via Ukrainska Pravda

    Zelensky further charged that Moscow has continued making nuclear threats and that its forces have turned the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant into “a radioactive bomb that can explode at any moment.”

    Despite each side remaining further entrenched in their corners and unwilling to compromise, and at a moment Ukraine has maintained the momentum of its counteroffensive by taking Kherson, Zelensky’s 10-point plan does at least represent an opening of sorts, given just a couple months ago there wasn’t so much as discussion or possibility of a “peace plan”.

    Crucially, noticeably absent from Zelensky’s peace plan was his prior demands of accelerated entry to NATO…

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    Currently, the idea of a diplomatic solution is also being debated in Washington, so this perhaps represents an inching forward on the possibility of future negotiated settlement. 

    Responsible Statecraft observes of Zelensky’s speech, “A possible diplomatic shift in the war in Ukraine may have gone largely unnoticed when Kiev appeared to signal that it might be willing to give up its aspiration to become a member of NATO. Or at least downgrading its urgency.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/15/2022 – 17:15

  • Supply Hell: Wait Times For Tesla Model 3 And Model Y Just Evaporated Down To One Week, At Minimum
    Supply Hell: Wait Times For Tesla Model 3 And Model Y Just Evaporated Down To One Week, At Minimum

    In what we’re sure is a sign of incredible demand (or at least, that’s what we’ll probably be told by the company), Tesla is slashing the minimum wait times on its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles. 

    The company’s website reflected the changes on Tuesday after Tesla “added to its electric vehicle inventory in Shanghai at its fastest pace ever in October”, Reuters reported on Tuesday morning, citing data from China Merchants Bank International.

    The inventory build comes at a time when global auto companies are “bracing for a downturn” as monetary policy conditions globally are slowly grinding the gears of many economies to a crawl. 

    Tesla’s deliveries in China for October were down sequentially from the month prior and the news comes just days after the idea was floated in financial media about whether or not Tesla could export vehicles from Shanghai to the United States. 

    Recall, about three weeks ago, Tesla cut the price of some of its cars in China, first raising suspicions about a potential lack of demand days after Musk said the company would continue robust production regardless of whether or not the global economy slipped into recession. 

    At the time, Tesla slashed the price of its Model 3 and Model Y to 265,900 Chinese yuan ($36,615) from 279,900 yuan and to 288,900 yuan versus the previous price of 316,900 yuan.

    The cuts offset price hikes that took place earlier in the year, which came as a result of higher input costs. “China is experiencing a recession of sorts,” CEO Musk said at the end of October.

    The week prior, on a company conference call, Musk had said: “To be frank, we’re very pedal to the metal come rain or shine. We are not reducing our production in any meaningful way, recession or not recession.”

    “The public at large realizes that world’s moving towards electric vehicles, and it’s foolish to buy a new gasoline car at this point because the residual value of that gasoline car is going to be very low. So, we’re in a very good spot.”

    “I wouldn’t say it’s recession-proof but it’s recession-resilient, because basically the people of Earth have made the decision in large part to move away from gasoline cars,” he added.

    Well now it’s starting to look as though Tesla may have more vehicles on its hands than it knows what to do with…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/15/2022 – 16:50

  • Americans To See Highest Thanksgiving Gasoline Prices Ever
    Americans To See Highest Thanksgiving Gasoline Prices Ever

    By Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com

    This year’s average U.S. gasoline prices on Thanksgiving are expected to be at their highest level ever for the holiday and beat the previous record from Thanksgiving of 2012, according to estimates from fuel-savings app GasBuddy.

    Despite the record-high average gasoline prices, 20% more Americans plan to travel by car for the holiday weekend, compared to 2021, especially after Covid precautions have significantly eased compared to the previous two years, according to GasBuddy.  

    Moreover, gasoline prices have dropped a lot from the record highs in June.

    Per GasBuddy estimates, the national average is projected to stand at $3.68 a gallon on Thanksgiving Day – nearly 30 cents higher than last year and over 20 cents higher than the previous record of $3.44/gal set in 2012.  

    The number of Americans traveling over the Thanksgiving weekend this year is up from 32% last year to 38%, a nearly 20% rise, according to GasBuddy’s Thanksgiving survey. A total of 21% said they had chosen not to drive due to high fuel prices.

    Most respondents in the survey indicated they would travel less than an hour away.

    “While 21% say high fuel prices are impacting their travel, surprisingly fewer are citing high gas prices this year (46% vs. 51% in 2021) for impacting their travel plans,” GasBuddy said.

    The majority of respondents traveling for Thanksgiving, 73%, will not be crossing state lines to do so.

    “It has been a dizzying year at the pump, with motorists likely feeling nauseous not from the eggnog, but from the roller coaster ride at the pump with record gasoline prices earlier this year, which have fallen significantly since mid-summer,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.

    “Americans, however, are proving that while we’ll openly complain about high gas prices, most of us aren’t deterred from taking to the highways to observe Thanksgiving with those that matter most to us, especially as precautions from the pandemic have eased.”

    On Monday, De Haan said he expected that in the next ten days, the national average price of gasoline would fall to its lowest level since March. The number of states with below-$3 average gas prices will rise to 5 by the end of the month, he added.   

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/15/2022 – 16:25

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Nov 15

Today’s News 15th November 2022

  • Ukraine Seeks 'Israel-Like' Arms Industry To Produce NATO-Caliber Weapons
    Ukraine Seeks ‘Israel-Like’ Arms Industry To Produce NATO-Caliber Weapons

    Authored by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute,

    Kiev is planning a buildup of its weapons industry to produce more sophisticated arms, with Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov saying government takeovers of several companies will help Kiev to create an “army of drones” and other NATO-caliber weapons. The defense chief noted that growing military ties between Kiev and the West makes Ukraine a de facto NATO partner.

    In an interview on Thursday, Reznikov told reporters Kiev was seeking to replicate Tel Aviv’s defense industry. “We are trying to be like Israel – more independent during the next years,” he said.

    Ukrainian troops fire a mortar at an undisclosed location in Ukraine. Source: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

    The defense head argued that Israel’s advanced defense industry helps it maintain its sovereignty, adding “I think the best answer [can be seen] in Israel … developing their national industry for their armed forces. It made them independent.”

    Ukraine has received tens of billions in security assistance from the US and its global partners. “We understood that [by] using Soviet weapon systems … we are not independent. And it is better to have new systems with new ammunition of a NATO standard,” Reznikov went on.

    On Friday, Reuters reported additional details of Kiev’s plans for its weapons industry. Reznikov said Ukraine was already in the process of making an “army of drones” and was looking at manufacturing NATO-caliber artillery. The official also said Ukraine needs to develop drone jamming capabilities, as well as unmanned vehicles for the air, land and sea.

    Kiev’s plans to upgrade its defense sector could face several challenges given the complications of wartime. In recent months, the Kremlin has proven its ability to bypass Ukraine’s air defenses and has severely damaged the country’s electric grid. Additionally, Kiev has already passed a 2023 budget with a $38 billion deficit.

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    It’s unclear how the Kremlin would respond if Ukraine were to produce NATO standard weapons. While Moscow repeatedly voiced concerns that Kiev could someday host NATO weapons before it invaded Ukraine last winter, Reznikov insisted his country’s ties with the North Atlantic bloc would continue regardless.

    “It doesn’t matter when we become a member of the NATO alliance de jure. We have become a NATO partner de facto right now,” Reznikov said. “That’s why we need to develop our military industry together.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/14/2022 – 23:30

  • Doug Mastriano Concedes Pennsylvania Governor’s Race To Democrat Josh Shapiro
    Doug Mastriano Concedes Pennsylvania Governor’s Race To Democrat Josh Shapiro

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

    Pennsylvania Republican nominee for governor, Doug Mastriano on the campaign trail in 2022. (Courtesy Mastriano Campaign)

    The Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano, has conceded the race to his Democratic opponent Josh Shapiro. on Sunday, while calling for election results to be counted faster.

    In a statement posted to Twitter, Mastriano, who former President Donald Trump endorsed, said the results of the midterm elections had not gone the way Republicans had hoped and “fought so hard for.”

    “In all, we received votes from almost 2.2 million Pennsylvanians, and I thank every one of you, from the bottom of my heart,” he said.

    Shapiro was projected as the winner in the race for governor late on election night by NBC News. The Associated Press also called the race in favor of Shapiro on election night, when Shapiro had 54.42 percent of the vote, or 2,571,668 votes, and Mastriano 43.74 percent. As of Sunday, Shapiro has 56.3 percent of the vote compared to Mastriano’s 41.9 percent.

    “We gave this race everything we have,” Mastriano said. “Difficult to accept as the results are, there is no right course but to concede, which I do, and I look to the challenges ahead. Josh Shapiro will be our next governor, and I ask everyone to give him the opportunity to lead and pray that he leads well.”

    Mastriano’s statement comes nearly five days after NBC’s initial projection.

    He retired as a Colonel in November 2017 following 30 years of active-duty service and was elected to serve as a Pennsylvania senator by District 33 two years later in 2019.

    Democratic gubernatorial nominee Josh Shapiro gives a victory speech to supporters at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center in Oaks, Pa., on Nov. 8, 2022. (Mark Makela/Getty Images)

    Campaign Promises

    Mastriano’s campaign had focused largely on election integrity, protecting the Second Amendment rights of Americans, and securing the border amid a mass immigration crisis that has led to an increase of fentanyl being snuck across the southern border.

    The rise in fentanyl transportation across the border is now claiming the lives of Pennsylvanians each and every day, according to Mastriano’s campaign website.

    As a state senator, Mastriano introduced Tyler’s Law, which targets drug dealers who push fentanyl resulting in a fatal overdose, resulting in a mandatory minimum 25-year sentence upon conviction.

    Mastriano also supported a complete ban on abortions and was vocal in his opposition to vaccine mandates and draconian COVID restrictions.

    In contrast, Shapiro, the state’s two-term elected attorney general, had vowed to protect Pennsylvanians’ access to abortions, including protecting the state’s existing 24-week law. He has also focused his campaign on tackling the fentanyl crisis and overhauling the state’s criminal justice system.

    As attorney general, Shapiro had spoken out against Trump’s claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

    In a statement on Sunday, the Democrat thanked Pennsylvanians for giving him “the honor of a lifetime to give me the chance to serve you as Pennsylvania’s next Governor.”

    “While my name was on the ballot, it was always your rights on the line,” Shapiro wrote. “I believe this Governor’s race was a test for each of us to decide what kind of Commonwealth and what kind of country that we want to live in. It was a test of whether or not we valued our rights and freedoms, and whether we believed in opportunity for all Pennsylvanians.”

    “I humbly write to you as your Governor-elect knowing that you met this moment,” he said.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/14/2022 – 23:00

  • Senator Cotton Vs. Progressive Foreign Policy
    Senator Cotton Vs. Progressive Foreign Policy

    Authored by Peter Berkowitz via RealClear Wire,

    Responsible foreign policy in a free and democratic nation-state is a matter of balance. Interest and principle; the logic of geopolitics and the sway of tradition, faith, and political ideology; force of arms and diplomatic finesse; national interest and alliances; spheres of influence and the laws binding all nations; necessity and justice – these and more must be constantly combined and reconciled to meet the demands of the moment and long-term strategic objectives. The Biden administration has thrown this combining and reconciling out of whack.

    Despite President Trump’s bluster and bravado, his administration transmitted to the Biden administration a variety of foreign-policy accomplishments. Foremost among them was reorientation of U.S. diplomacy around the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party to American freedom and prosperity and to the nation’s interest in preserving a free and open international order.

    In addition, the Trump administration revived the Quad – Japan, India, and Australia, along with the United States – to advance shared interests in the Indo-Pacific. It withdrew from the Iran deal, which omitted reliable mechanisms for monitoring Tehran’s nuclear programs and put the terrorism-exporting Islamic republic on a clear timetable to join the nuclear club. It brokered the Abraham Accords, inaugurating a new era of comity between Israel and Arab nations. It persuaded several NATO partners to meet – or come closer to fulfilling – their agreed-upon obligations to fund the alliance. It fostered U.S. self-reliance by encouraging development of domestic oil and natural gas. And it reasserted control over America’s southern border, substantially reducing the influx of illegal immigrants.

    Biden and his team laudably followed the Trump administration in breaking with decades of engagement with China by recognizing that the CCP acts as a strategic competitor determined to reshape the world order to suit the party’s authoritarian convictions. But Biden’s diplomacy has left America in a weaker position than the one his White House inherited.

    The Biden administration opened the southern border, producing record numbers of non-citizens illegally entering the country and permitting the importation of deadly drugs. It restricted production of domestic oil and natural gas, which enriched oil-and-gas-rich Russia and increased European dependence on Vladimir Putin; then, when U.S. gasoline prices predictably skyrocketed, the Biden administration went hat in hand to Venezuela and Saudi Arabia (despite during the 2020 campaign Biden scorning the Kingdom as a “pariah”) pleading for them to pump more oil. It entreated Iran to conclude a second nuclear deal which, like the first, would lack adequate monitoring procedures and provide Tehran tens of billions of dollars in relief while allowing the ayatollahs to continue to develop ballistic missiles and foment terror and sectarian strife throughout the region. It strained to pronounce the words “Abraham Accords” let alone celebrate the historic agreements. And the Biden administration’s calamitously ill-conceived withdrawal from Afghanistan cast doubt in friends’ minds about America’s competence and trustworthiness and emboldened adversaries to surmise that the United States need not be feared.

    To the United States’ detriment, Biden administration foreign policy reflects the spirit and duplicates the consequences of Obama administration foreign policy. To take one example, in August 2013, in the Syrian civil war, President Bashar al-Assad attacked adversaries with the chemical agent sarin. Instead of enforcing his openly declared red line – and decades after the Soviet Union’s expulsions from the region – Obama invited Moscow back into the Levant to preside over removal of Assad’s chemical weapons. Six months later, on February 20, 2014, Putin invaded Ukraine. Similarly, on February 24, 2022 – almost exactly eight years later and six months after President Biden’s August 2021 Afghanistan debacle – Putin again invaded Ukraine. By misjudging foes and leaving friends high and dry, the Obama and Biden administrations dishonored the nation, encouraged aggression, and eroded world order.

    The continuities between the two Democratic administrations are not a matter of bad luck, overpowering events, or impersonal and irresistible forces, argues Sen. Tom Cotton. In “Only the Strong: Reversing the Left’s Plot to Sabotage American Power,” Cotton (an old friend whom I’ve known since his undergraduate days at Harvard) contends that the method to the messes made by Presidents Obama and Biden stems from their progressive convictions and dispositions. With characteristic forthrightness, shrewdness, and tenacity, he sets forth a devastating indictment of the progressive mindset in foreign affairs. He also provides a blistering critique of the deleterious policy choices and ham-handed execution of military operations and diplomacy to which, for more than half a century, progressivism has disposed Democratic presidents. His goal is “to reclaim the tradition of American strength.”

    Cotton knows full well that over the last half century conservatives, too, have made costly foreign-policy errors. But his analysis, informed by serious study of American political ideas and institutions, reveals a crucial difference: Whereas conservatives go wrong when they depart from their principles, which derive from the American founding, progressives do damage by acting on their principles, which repudiate the Founders’ wisdom.

    Cotton contrasts the Founders’ sobriety to progressives’ utopianism. The Founders “built America on eternal principles and timeless truths” rooted in a realistic assessment of human nature. They knew that human beings were unequal in many respects and prone to selfishness and shortsightedness but also inclined to cooperate to achieve common goods and, when put to the test, capable of self-sacrifice and nobility. The Founders embraced the Declaration of Independence’s self-evident truths: Human beings are equally endowed with natural and unalienable rights; government’s chief purpose is to secure these rights; and just power derives from the consent of the governed and is limited by what is necessary and proper to secure citizens’ rights.

    Progressivism arose in the late 19th century and early 20th century in opposition to the Founders’ ideas about human nature and government. Progressives tended to deny that human nature served as a moral guide and political standard. Instead, they supposed that science and enlightenment could steadily perfect human beings, and they placed their faith in a theory of history as ineluctably impelling humanity towards peace, prosperity, and happiness. Owing to the elites’ moral improvement and intellectual refinement coupled with the people’s persisting backwardness, progressives argued, government must be expanded beyond the Constitution’s obsolete limits to enable officials to instruct and improve ordinary voters.

    Opinions about human nature and government shape accounts of America’s dealings with other nations. The Founders, Cotton stresses, fashioned a “hard-nosed” foreign policy that made a priority in a dangerous world of ensuring the American people’s safety, freedom, and prosperity. The flux of circumstance, the Founders readily acknowledged, compelled prudent statesmen to adjust policies to achieve America’s abiding national interests. President Reagan’s diplomacy, culminating in the U.S.-led victory in the Cold War, epitomizes, for Cotton, a foreign policy that secures American freedom and prosperity through a blend of principle, competence, and courage.

    In line with the belief that history drives humanity’s unification and perfection, progressive foreign policy tended to put the international community first. Progressives appealed to a transnational corps of supposedly disinterested technocrats, diplomats, and judges to overcome great-power politics and make war obsolete by crafting rules, regulations, and agreements that knit together all peoples and nations in a global society under unified government.

    In practice, argues Cotton, the progressive sensibility issues in dithering and inconstancy, overestimation of America’s persuasive powers, underestimation of adversaries’ ruthlessness, and aversion to use of American military force. The senator chronicles the high price paid by the nation – and military men and women in particular – for progressive heedlessness and irresoluteness. His “brutally frank” examination covers President Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs; President Johnson and the Vietnam War; President Carter and the Iran hostage crisis; President Clinton and Somalia; President Obama and Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan as well as Syria and Iran; and President Biden and Afghanistan and Iran.

    To secure anew the American people’s freedom and prosperity, Cotton argues, we must recover the Founders’ wisdom, rebuild the military, strengthen the southern border, achieve energy independence, distinguish friends – including non-democratic ones – from foes, maintain our global network of partners, and gear up to prevail in the strategic competition launched by China.

    “Only the strong,” Cotton concludes, “can defend a city on a hill.” This stirring image does not mean that the patriotic warrior’s grit, discipline, and courage alone secure justice.

    Fidelity to America’s founding principles and the finest in its constitutional traditions obliges America also to educate its young people in, rather than against, constitutional democracy. Such fidelity fosters the political cohesiveness that enables partisans of many stripes to recognize one another as fellow citizens. And it disposes a responsible U.S. foreign policy to champion human rights while respecting the harsh realities of world affairs and the diversity of other peoples and nations.

    Striking the right balance is the fullest and truest expression of national strength.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/14/2022 – 22:00

  • Ugly Chinese Data Dump Misses Across The Board, Pushing Futures Higher On Stimmy Hopes
    Ugly Chinese Data Dump Misses Across The Board, Pushing Futures Higher On Stimmy Hopes

    Instead of delaying the largely meaningless GDP print, maybe Xi should have instructed his henchmen to push back on the latest retail sales/industrial production data dump which was once again confirmed that China’s economy is a walking, tocking timebomb.

    In short, everything missed:

    • October Retail sales -0.5% Y/Y, missing exp. +0.7%
    • October Industrial Output +5.0% Y/Y, missing exp. +5.3%
    • Jan-Oct Fixed Investment 5.8%, missing exp. 5.9%
    • Jan-Oct. residential property sales -28.2% y/y vs -28.6% in Jan.-Sept.
    • Oct jobless rate 5.5% vs 5.5% in Sept.

    And visually:

    Some more details: retail sales missed by 1.1 standard deviations, and industrial production by 0.6 standard deviations; fixed asset investment which reflects government efforts to stimulate the economy was the closest to consensus. Property investment missed by 0.9 standard deviations, and remains in deep contraction for the year. Unemployment met consensus for 5.5%.

    While stocks initially slid on the news, futures traded up to session highs as the across the board miss – similar to last week’s US CPI – was seen as encouraging for equities and negative for yuan on the expectation that these numbers could spark further easing. Also, recall that the latest Chinese CPI and PPI data showed that China is now in outright deflation, meaning the bar for further easing is getting lower by the day, especially since the post congress environment seems focused on economic revival.

    To be sure, as Bloomberg notes, policy, especially monetary, still has a lot to do — note that the total social financing data last week registered a 2.5 standard deviation miss versus consensus, the biggest shortfall since April.

    One final quick note: Beijing was quick to blame the dismal economic data on the latest round of covid outbreaks and resulting lockdowns, which is precisely why Xi continues to use Covid Zero as a “justification” for every economic miss, and why as long as China’s economy continues to stagnate – mostly due to the ongoing collapse in housing and property markets – the covid zero scapegoat will remain to divert attention from the real source of economic devastation – the bursting of the housing bubble.

    And yet, with China’s massive population becoming increasingly angry at the relentless lockdowns, the latest property “rescue package” which just passed this weekend, was right in time to allow China to miraculously exit its “national covid nightmare” some time in Q1 2023.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/14/2022 – 21:31

  • Biden’s Climate Change Policies Work More In China’s Interest: Ex-NSA Officer
    Biden’s Climate Change Policies Work More In China’s Interest: Ex-NSA Officer

    Authored by Venus Upadhayaya and Tiffany Meier via The Epoch Times,

    Hundreds of climate protesters walk from Times Square to New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s office to demand more action against climate change in New York City on Nov. 13, 2021. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

    The Biden administration’s focus on climate change can be geopolitically hazardous as green policies can shift power into the hands of China, which has monopolized the supply chain of rare minerals required in the production of renewable energy technology, said Steve Yates, former deputy national security adviser at the White House from 2001–05, in an interview with The Epoch Times’ sister media NTD Television on Nov. 10.

    “I don’t think they found a sustainable path toward the goal they see. Certainly, it has shifted a lot of power towards China. And China has not proven willing to work with them on this either,” said Yates who’s also a senior fellow at the China Policy Initiative Chair of America First Policy Initiative.

    China is the largest investor in renewable energy in the world, domestically and abroad. Five of the world’s six largest solar-module manufacturing companies and the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturer are also owned by China, according to a 2017 report from World Resources Institute. China’s Tainqi Lithium is one of the largest manufacturers of lithium-ion batteries, an important component of electric vehicle batteries.

    U.S. policy on climate change hasn’t reduced China’s stakes in the renewable energy market and its near monopoly over the supply chain of rare earth minerals considered indispensable for renewable energy technology production. The latter has been considered a foreign policy challenge for the United States because of its own dependence on China’s rare earth supply chain.

    Yates said the Biden administration should not make policies that support China’s interest in the renewable energy market and should urgently work to catch up by first using the resources it is endowed within the country.

    The U.S. Senate, which remains intensely divided on climate change policies, approved its first international climate change treaty in three decades on Sept. 21 when it approved a 2016 agreement to phase down refrigerant chemicals that are among the worst pollutants.

    By doing so, the United States joined other 136 nations and the European Union in approving the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol that promises to cut down on refrigerant chemicals by 80 percent in the next three decades.

    The legislation is aimed at jumpstarting U.S. solar manufacturing, however, Cullen S. Hendrix, a senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics said in an analysis that the agreement doesn’t secure U.S. solar supply chains from China, which control 70–80 percent of the global production.

    “[The bill] would help close the gap in solar module production but would leave the United States dependent on China for critical links in the supply chain. This dependence needs to be addressed. The current situation is a significant source of US strategic vulnerability,” said Hendrix.

    The Celukan Bawang 2 power plant in Singaraja on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali on Oct. 29, 2020. (Sonny Tumbelaka/AFP via Getty Images)

    Economic Destruction

    Yates called the administration’s focus on climate change a “problematic proposition” and said it can destroy the American economy even before the climate delivers disasters, because the green policies can increase fuel prices and likely become the cause of massive inflation.

    “And that’s hard on households,” said Yates. “So hopefully, they will sober up and come back to work with Americans and more broadly in this hemisphere, to do things ourselves without having to rely on them [China].”

    The situation requires that the Biden administration think and act differently, he said.

    “Part of it means focusing with renewed vigor on our own hemisphere, there’s a lot that we could be doing with countries like Brazil or other parts of our hemisphere. And other parts of the world,” he said adding that rather than depending on China’s “carnivorous market,” the United States should also support countries in Asia and Africa to work with the other free world nations to undo China’s monopoly.

    Ironically, the promises China made on climate change go far beyond the tenure of any Chinese leader as well as beyond the commitment bindings by other nations, according to Yates.

    “And so while the United States and Europe might set these bold goals of having a net zero impact by 2030, or 2035, China’s is like 2060. And beyond! So even when they’re making a promise, it’s so far off, that it can’t really be taken seriously,” he said adding that all this while China has continued to be a leading polluter globally.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/14/2022 – 21:00

  • US Health System Cash Reserves Plummet
    US Health System Cash Reserves Plummet

    By Laura Dyrda of Becker Hospital Review

    Cash reserves, an important indicator of financial stability, are dropping for hospitals and health systems across the U.S.

    Both large and small health systems are affected by rising labor and supply costs while reimbursement remains low. St. Louis-based Ascension reported days cash on hand dropped from 336 at the end of the 2021 fiscal year to 259 as of June 30, 2022, the end of the fiscal year. The system also reported accounts receivable increased three days from 47.3 in 2021 to 50.3 in 2022 because commercial payers were slow, especially in large dollar claims.

    Trinity Health, based in Livonia, Mich., also reported days cash on hand dropped to 211 in fiscal year 2022, ending June 30, compared to 254 days at the end of 2021. Trinity attributed the 43-day decrease in cash on hand to “investment losses and the recoupment of the majority of the Medicare cash advances.”

    Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health reported days cash on hand decreased by 69 days in the last year. The 140-hospital health system reported 245 days cash on hand at the 2021 fiscal year’s end June 30, and 176 days for 2022.

    Lehigh Valley Health Network in Allentown, Pa., said unfavorable trends in the capital market led to investment losses and a drop in days cash on hand from 216 to 150 days in the 2022 fiscal year ending June 30. The health system also had a scheduled repayment of $191.1 million in advance Medicare dollars as well as $25 million in deferred payroll tax payments.

    Philadelphia-based Thomas Jefferson University reported cash on hand for clinical operations dropped by 10.9 days in just the last quarter due to nonoperating investment losses and repaying government advances, which equaled about five days cash on hand. The health system reported 158.5 days cash on hand as of Sept. 30.

    While the large health systems’ days cash on hand are dropping, they still have deep reserves. Smaller hospitals and health systems are in a more dire situation. Doylestown (Pa.) Hospital reported as of Sept. 30 the system had 81 days cash on hand, and Moody’s downgraded the hospital in June after the days cash on hand dropped below 100.

    Kaweah Health in Visalia, Calif., saw reserves plummet since the pandemic began from 130 to 84 days cash on hand. Gary Herbst, CEO of Kaweah Health, blamed lost elective procedures, high labor costs, inflation and more for the system’s financial issues.

    “The COVID-19 pandemic, and its aftermath, have brought District hospitals to the brink of financial collapse,” Mr. Herbst wrote in an open letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom published in the Visalia Times Delta. He asked Mr. Newsom to provide additional funding for public district hospitals. “Without your help, it will soon be virtually impossible for Medi-Cal patients to receive anything but emergency medical care in the State of California.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/14/2022 – 20:35

  • When Protecting Criminals’ Rights Comes At The Expense Of Victims
    When Protecting Criminals’ Rights Comes At The Expense Of Victims

    Authored by Nikki Goeser & John R. Lott Jr. via RealClear Wire,

    It took four years and nine months before Nicolas Cruz was finally sentenced for the murder of seventeen people in the horrific Parkland massacre.

    So much of the legal system focuses on fairness to the criminal; but the damage to the victims and their families as they wait for trial is tremendous. Those who have to testify or give victim impact statements must continually think about what they will say at trial. There is also uncertainty about the verdict and whether the murderer will be punished.

    In the Parkland case, the victims were denied the closure of Cruz receiving the death penalty. 

    We have seen the consequences of trial delays firsthand. Nikki Goeser, the co-author here, helplessly witnessed her husband, Ben, murdered in front of her by her stalker on April 2, 2009. The murderer had long been obsessed with her. Nor was there any doubt about who the murderer was. Hank Wise shot her husband to death in front of 50 witnesses and was filmed on a restaurant’s security video. Incredibly, Nikki is still dealing with the legal fallout from that case. The murderer has continued stalking her, and a new trial, originally scheduled for the third attempt on Nov. 8, now won’t occur until January 2023.

    There was no doubt that he had carefully planned the murder in advance.

    The night before the murder, he had posted on social media: 

    Predator vs. Prey. I know who you are, run. Where will you work where I can’t find you? At home, at dinner, in your sleep, every f***ing waking moment. This is going to be very painful. You’ve pissed me off now. You are about to see my bad side. What kind of life do you have now?! You are forever un-forgiven.

    In the stalker’s truck in the restaurant parking lot the night of Ben’s murder, police found two more guns (a shotgun and rifle), ammo, a baseball bat, binoculars, gloves, rope, and a knife.

    This was a clear-cut case. But the trial was delayed several times and didn’t happen until three years later, on April 9, 2012. Nikki knew she would have to testify. As each trial date approached, she had to prepare herself and relive the horrifying events.

    Victims worry about whether they will do a good job. What will the defense attorney do to them? Nikki couldn’t put it behind her. We know the nightmares that she had to live through. Nightmares that she has continued to live with to this day.

    Unfortunately, the murderer didn’t get the punishment he deserved. He didn’t get the death penalty or even a life sentence. The death penalty is available in Tennessee, but the district attorney in Davidson County opposed using it. Despite all the evidence of premeditation and planning, the liberal judge reduced the sentence to second degree murder. 

    The murderer is still obsessed with Nikki, and she fears his release. He had her lawyer’s address and had been sending her letters before his 2012 trial. Nikki begged the prosecutors and others to stop him, but they didn’t help, so she told her lawyer to stop telling her about the letters. Then, in October 2019, when she researched her book “Stalked and Defenseless,” she reached out to her lawyer and discovered that the murderer had sent many more love letters from prison – including Valentine Day and Christmas Cards.

    She also discovered that the Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC) had awarded the murderer three and a half years of early release/good behavior credits even while he continued stalking her from prison.

    When Nikki approached TDOC about revoking those credits, we were both told they would do nothing because they didn’t want to upset the “prisoner rights groups.” 

    We tried a two-pronged strategy. We paid lawyers over $12,000 to help convince prosecutors and police to bring stalking charges. We also spent over $14,000 publicizing her book with the hope that the publicity would help generate prosecutors’ interest and get TDOC to do the right thing. 

    Hiring lawyers got us nowhere. Being on national news shows also didn’t do the trick. Few people have the contacts or resources we have, but it seemed hopeless despite all our efforts. Finally, a federal prosecutor got involved when a local television news show in Nashville (WSMV-TV) carried Nikki’s story in July 2020, shortly before the statute of limitations was to expire.

    But it has been over three years since she learned of this stalking. A trial scheduled for Nov. 8 is delayed for a fourth time until some still-to-be–determined date in January. Again, these delays take an emotional toll. Nikki must again mentally prepare herself for testifying, reliving her fears and dealing with nightmares in stressful anticipation of trial, only to have the trial delayed again.

    Part of the delay has been due to the murderer claiming insanity. His lawyer claims he is too obsessed with her to be responsible for his actions. His defense during the murder trial was that he had delusional disorder and erotomania, the delusional belief that their target of obsession loves them and that there is a relationship. The murderer has also made threatening comments about what will happen if Nikki finds another person in her life. Understandably, Nikki is extremely fearful about his future release, knowing what he has already proven he is capable of.

    It has been thirteen years since Nikki’s stalker murdered her husband. Yet, she still lives with that horror. Trial delays may occasionally help to ensure a fair trial for the criminal, but they always put victims and their families through hell over and over again. With so many people becoming victims of crime these days, we need to realize that the damage to victims often lasts many years after the crime.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/14/2022 – 20:10

  • Jeff Bezos Hands Dolly Parton $100 Million To Distribute Among Charities
    Jeff Bezos Hands Dolly Parton $100 Million To Distribute Among Charities

    Jeff Bezos may force his warehouse employees to pee in bottles, but when it comes to making headlines for charitable giving, the Amazon founder has scored an optics win – handing $100 million to 76-year-old country music star Dolly Parton as part of the ‘Bezos Courage and Civility award.’

    The award recognizes “leaders who aim high, find solutions and who always do it with civility,” who are then tasked with distributing the $100 million to charities of their choosing, according to Bezos’ girlfriend Lauren Sanchez.

    “The woman you’re about to meet embodies these ideals so thoroughly. She gives with her heart. What she’s done for kids, literacy and so many other things is just incredible,” Bezos said before presenting the award to Parton.

    “When people are in a position to help, you should help, and I know that I’ve always said I try to put my money where my heart is. I will do my best to do good things with this money,” Parton said in response to the award.

    More via The Epoch Times,

    Bezos began handing out the award in 2021. On Twitter, the world’s second-wealthiest person said Parton joined activist Van Jones, who served as founding CEO of the REFORM Alliance and Dream Corps, and chef and humanitarian Jose Andres, who established World Central Kitchen, which provides food in the immediate aftermath of disasters, as recipients.

    ‘No Child Should Ever Have to Suffer’

    Parton is no stranger to charitable donations, having donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University’s Medical Center (VUMC) in Nashville for pediatric infectious disease research earlier this year.

    The donation was used in part to help aid research into COVID-19 and diagnosing and treating infections in children with cancer.

    “I love all children. No child should ever have to suffer, and I’m willing to do my part to try and keep as many of them as I can as healthy and safe as possible,” Parton said in a statement at the time.

    The singer-songwriter made a previous $1 million gift to VUMC in April 2020 in honor of her longtime friend, Dr. Naji Abumrad, to help aid researchers in finding a cure for COVID-19.

    Parton has also donated to a number of other charitable organizations including the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes, Save the Music Foundation, the Boot Campaign, and Cancer Research UK. She has also worked with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to raise awareness and help stop dog owners from chaining up the animals and leaving them outside.

    Additionally, Parton herself has also founded multiple charities, including the Dollywood Foundation, which was founded in 1988 and under which the Imagination Library program was established. That program spans over five countries and gifts over 1 million free books each month to children around the world.

    The singer was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame earlier this month after previously declining the invitation, admitting she felt that she “hadn’t earned the right.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/14/2022 – 19:45

  • A Shocking Defense Of Crypto From JPMorgan: "The FTX Collapse Will Be A Massive Ramp For Institutional Adoption"
    A Shocking Defense Of Crypto From JPMorgan: “The FTX Collapse Will Be A Massive Ramp For Institutional Adoption”

    With many commentators mistakenly equating one person’s record-breaking fraud – namely SBF hubris that he has full immunity from prosecution just because he is a prominent democrat donor – with the failings of the entire crypto space (odd how nobody said Jon Corzine bringing MF Global down with his fraud exposed the failings of fiat currencies) over the past 24 hours we have seen two very unexpected voices speaking out in defense of cryptocurrencies.

    The first comes from Deutsche Bank which notes that just one year ago, in November 2021, the price of one Bitcoin exceeded $65,000, hitting an all time high, whereas just last week, Bitcoin hit a two-year low at just below $16,000 and the FTX crypto exchange deal collapsed.

    But while DB’s Marion Laboure writes that investors have suffered significant losses, she also believes “this second “crypto winter” will be a net positive because the FTX collapse will edge the crypto ecosystem closer to the established financial sector.” Specifically, the DB analyst writes that the FTX crash spotlighted well-known structural issues in the crypto ecosystem: “insufficient reserves, conflict of interest, a lack of regulation and transparency, and unreliable data.” And as a result of the FTX collapse, “market concentration is greater than ever, with Binance being the biggest winner.”

    The German bank goes on to note that “every time a major player in the crypto industry fails, the ecosystem suffers a confidence crisis. There are significant consumer and retail losses, but so far there is no systemic risk. However, this confidence crisis requires crypto investors to trust in the “Tinkerbell Effect” even more; in other words, the value of a crypto asset will depend entirely on what people believe it is worth.”

    Tthe Deutsche strategist concludes that “as we have seen, crypto assets are high-risk products that can cause massive personal losses. For this reason, we continue to argue that regulators should quickly require crypto companies to comply with the rules imposed on traditional investment products. This would restrict crypto companies from fishing for financially illiterate consumers while governments develop overarching regulatory frameworks. The need is urgent. Several factors have aligned to create a potentially dismal situation for average consumers who may be susceptible to misleading information.”

    A more surprising defense of crypto came from JPMorgan crypto analyst Steven Alexopoulos, who – just hours after JPM’s Nick Panigirtzoglou said that he expects more contagion and more liquidations as a result of the FTX collapse – wrote that far from being the death knell of the crypto sector, “the collapse of FTX a Painful Step Back but Might Prove to be the Catalyst that Moves Crypto Two Steps Forward.” Below we excerpt from the JPM note (available to pro subs in the usual place).

    With FTX emerging earlier this year as a white knight, bailing out troubled crypto-related companies, the news of FTX itself collapsing this week sent shockwaves through the crypto markets. While this is certainly a major short-term setback, we see the widely publicized collapse of FTX as potentially dramatically accelerating the timeline to which crypto-related regulation will be ushered in (similar to new banking regulation which followed the GFC).

    As a result, we see the news surrounding FTX as one step back, but one that could prove to be the catalyst to move the crypto economy two steps forward (further unlocking the utility value of blockchain). In fact, we see the establishment of a regulatory framework as the needed catalyst to massively ramp the institutional adoption of crypto.

    And the punchline which we have been making ever since the news of the FTX collapse first broke:

    Moreover, while the news of the collapse of FTX is empowering crypto skeptics, we would point out that all of the recent collapses in the crypto ecosystem have been from centralized players and not from decentralized protocols.

    How long before Jamie Dimon, who five years ago infamously warned he would fire any employee who was caught trading bitcoin before capitulating and making crypto a focal point of his bank’s growth, and who now is certainly taking advantage of the crash in crypto to accumulate aggressively having learned his lessons from the first time, becomes one of the most vocal evangelists of digital currencies?

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/14/2022 – 19:44

  • Trump Says McConnell 'Blew The Midterms'
    Trump Says McConnell ‘Blew The Midterms’

    Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Former President Donald Trump arrives for a “Save America” rally ahead of the midterm elections at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Latrobe, Pa., on Nov. 5, 2022. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)

    Former President Donald Trump on Nov. 13 blamed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) after Democrats secured control of the Senate after winning races in Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.

    “It’s Mitch McConnell’s fault,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Spending money to defeat great Republican candidates instead of backing Blake Masters and others was a big mistake. Giving 4 Trillion Dollars to the Radical Left for the Green New Deal, not Infrastructure, was an even bigger mistake.”

    “He blew the Midterms, and everyone despises him and his otherwise lovely wife, Coco Chow!” Trump added, referring to former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.

    Trump-endorsed tech entrepreneur Blake Masters lost to incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) in Arizona’s Senate race by more than 127,000 votes, or about 5.3 percent.

    Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) at a press conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on July 26, 2022. (Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images)

    The Democrats will have at least 50 seats, after Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) won reelection by defeating Republican challenger Adam Laxalt in Nevada’s Senate race. So far, only one Senate seat has flipped, with Democrat Lt. Gov. John Fetterman defeating Republican candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania’s Senate race. Fetterman will replace retiring Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.).

    The Georgia Senate race remains undecided, with a runoff election scheduled for December after neither Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) nor Republican Herschel Walker secured more than 50 percent of the vote.

    The GOP is still in the position to retake control of the House. Republicans have 212 seats and Democrats have 201, according to data from Decision Desk, which The Epoch Times uses in its Election 2022 map. It requires 218 seats to take control of the lower chamber of Congress.

    In a separate Truth Social post earlier on Sunday, Trump shared an article titled “After Epic Failure, Growing Chorus Of Senators Signals It’s Time For McConnell To Go,” which argues that McConnell must be removed from the Senate Republican leadership.

    “Agree with this 100%!” Trump wrote, referring to the article. “Mitch McConnell is a disaster for the Republican Party and the Country.

    “He should have improved Infrastructure to fix it, not the Green New Deal, wrapped up like Infrastructure. He gave the Democrats 4 Trillion Dollars to throw out the window, and backed bad candidates like Lisa Murkowski,” Trump added.

    The Federalist article, published on Nov. 11, said McConnell “sabotaged Republicans in the 2022 midterms” by “pulling spending from competitive GOP candidates such as Blake Masters” and spending money against Kelly Tshibaka in Alaska.

    Trump-endorsed Tshibaka, a Republican who was a former Alaska Department of Administration Commissioner, has a 1.38-percent-lead (pdf) over incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). The winner has not been declared.

    Senate Republicans are reportedly scheduled to hold leadership elections on Nov. 16. However, some are calling for the vote to be delayed until after the Senate runoff election in Georgia is completed.

    “Think about it – if we hold leadership elections on Wednesday, there’d be more campaigning done in a high-school class president election than in the most deliberative body in the world,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) wrote on Twitter. “It is absurd. These elections need to be delayed.”

    “It makes no sense for Senate to have leadership elections before GA runoff,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wrote on Twitter. “We don’t yet know whether we’ll have a majority & Herschel Walker deserves a say in our leadership.

    “Critically, we need to hear a specific plan for the next 2 yrs from any candidate for leadership,” Cruz wrote.

    Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Senator-elect Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) have already said that Republicans need new Senate leadership. However, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) told CBS News on Sunday that he will back McConnell as Senate GOP leader.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/14/2022 – 19:20

  • Here Is What Warren Buffett Bought And Sold In Q3
    Here Is What Warren Buffett Bought And Sold In Q3

    It’s 13F season and while we will have a comprehensive summary of what hedge funds did in Q3 (which ended 45 days ago) – though we have already discussed on several occasions that using real-time data, hedge funds massively derisked after suffering staggering losses in Q2 and Q3 – we start our reporting with what Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway did.

    Which actually wasn’t all that much: the reported value of Berkshire’s long-only equity portfolio declined modestly from $300BN to $296BN, with only modest underlying changes. Here are the most notable ones:

    • Added a new position in Taiwan Semiconductor (it just made the top 10 with at $4.1 billion as of Sept 30); and much smaller positions in Louisiana Pacific ($297 million) and Jefferies ($12.8 million).
    • Exited one position: what was formerly a $180 million stake in STORE Capital
    • Added to holdings in Chevron, Occidental, Paramount, Calenese, and RH:
      • Occidental: 35.8 million shares, up 23% to 194.4 million valued at $11.9 billion, representing 21% of shares outstanding
      • Chevron Corp.: 3.92 million, up 2.4% to 165.4 million valued at $23.8 billion, representing 8.4% of shares outstanding
      • RH: 190,000, up 8.8% to 2.36 million valued at $580.7 million, representing 9.9% of shares outstanding
      • Paramount Global Class B: 12.8 million, up 16% to 91.2 million valued at $1.74 billion, representing 15% of shares outstanding
      • Celanese Corp.: 553,469, up 6% to 9.71 million valued at $877.2 million, representing 9% of shares outstanding
    • Trimmed holdings in Activision, US Bancorp, BofNY Mellon, Kroger, and General Motors:
      • U.S. Bancorp: 42 million shares, down 35% to 77.8 million valued at $3.14 billion, representing 5.2% of shares outstanding
      • Activision Blizzard Inc.: 8.26 million, down 12% to 60.1 million valued at $4.47 billion, representing 7.7% of shares outstanding
      • Bank of New York Mellon Corp.: 10.1 million, down 14% to 62.2 million valued at $2.4 billion, representing 7.7% of shares outstanding
      • Kroger Co.: 2.17 million, down 4.1% to 50.3 million valued at $2.2 billion, representing 7% of shares outstanding
      • General Motors Co.: 2.88 million, down 5.4% to 50 million valued at $1.6 billion, representing 3.4% of shares outstanding

    Berkshire’s largest position remains Apple at 894.8 million shares of $123.7 billion as of Sept 30. Other top 5 holdings are:

    • Bank of America Corp.: unchanged at 1.01 billion valued at $30.5 billion
    • Chevron Corp.: up 3.92 million, to 165.4 million valued at $23.8 billion, representing 8.4% of shares outstanding
    • Coca-Cola Co.: unchanged at 400 million valued at $22.4 billion
    • American Express Co.: unchanged at 151.6 million valued at $20.5 billion

    Full details of all Berkshire Q3 moves can be found in the table below.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/14/2022 – 18:52

  • Tech Breakthrough Could Slash Fertilizer Emissions
    Tech Breakthrough Could Slash Fertilizer Emissions

    By Brian Westenhaus of OilPrice.com

    Tokyo Institute of Technology researchers have developed a metal nitride catalyst containing an active metal (Ni) on a lanthanum nitride support that is stable in presence of moisture. The goal is to cut the energy requirements of the Haber-Bosch process, which converts nitrogen and hydrogen to ammonia. Plus, since the catalyst doesn’t contain ruthenium, it presents an inexpensive option for reducing the carbon footprint of ammonia production.

    The research report has been published in Angewandte Chemie. The Haber-Bosch process, which is commonly used to synthesize ammonia (NH3)-the foundation for synthetic nitrogen fertilizers-by combining hydrogen (H2) and nitrogen (N2) over catalysts at high pressures and temperatures, is one of the most important scientific discoveries that has helped improve crop yields and increase food production globally.

    However, the process requires high fossil fuel energy inputs due to its requirements of high temperatures and pressure. Hydrogen used for this process is produced from natural gas (mainly methane). This hydrogen-producing process is energy-consuming and accompanies huge emission of carbon dioxide.

    To overcome these issues, various catalysts have been developed to allow the reaction to proceed under milder conditions using hydrogen produced by water electrolysis via renewable energy. Among them are nitride-based catalysts that contain active metal nanoparticles like nickel and cobalt (Ni, Co) loaded on lanthanum nitride (LaN) supports. In these catalysts, both the support and the active metal are involved in the production of NH3. The active metal splits the H2 while the LaN support contains nitrogen vacancies and nitrogen atoms in its crystal structure that adsorb and activate nitrogen (N2).

    While these catalysts are inexpensive (since they avoid using ruthenium, which is costly), their catalytic performance is degraded in the presence of moisture, with the LaN support transforming into lanthanum hydroxide (La(OH)3).

    The researchers from China and Japan led by Professor Hideo Hosono from the Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), Japan, have developed a chemically stable catalyst that is stable in the presence of moisture. Taking inspiration from stable rare-earth compounds containing chemical bonds between a rare-earth metal (in this case, La) and a metal, they incorporated aluminum atoms into the LaN structure and synthesized a chemically stable La3AlN support containing La-Al bonds that prevent lanthanum atoms from reacting with moisture.

    Prof Hosono explained the La-Al-N support along with the active metals, such as nickel and cobalt (Ni, Co), was able to produce NH3 at rates similar to that with conventional metal nitride catalysts and could maintain a stable production when fed with nitrogen gas-containing moisture. “The Ni- or Co-loaded La-Al-N catalysts showed no distinct degradation following exposure to 3.5% moisture,” said Prof. Hosono.

    While the Al atoms stabilized the support, the lattice nitrogen and nitrogen defects present in the doped support enabled the synthesis of ammonia in a manner similar to the conventional active metal/rare-earth metal nitride catalysts. “Lattice nitrogen as well as nitrogen vacancy in La-Al-N play a key role in N2 adsorption, with the La-Al-N support and the active metal Ni being responsible for N2 and H2 absorption and activation, respectively,” added Prof. Hosono.

    The Haber-Bosch process is an energy-intensive chemical reaction, accounting for about 1 % of global annual carbon dioxide emissions. While alternative environmentally friendly approaches for NH3 production are being investigated, introducing inexpensive catalysts could provide immediate benefits by allowing the process to operate under milder conditions.

    ***

    The Haber-Bosch process might just lock back up more CO2 in plant growth than the process produces.

    Then the ammonia business has lately been immensely profitable. That and the past decade has seen ammonia for fertilizer increase about 10 fold in price.

    It’s enough to make almost everyone hope this technology will scale up commercially and not fall into the clutches of the fertilizer barons.

    It will be interesting to see which technology prevails. Splitting water isn’t energy free but neither is splitting hydrogen from the methane of natural gas.

    If this technology isn’t disappeared, we might finally find out.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/14/2022 – 18:30

  • Ukraine Backs UN Vote To Send Israel To International Court While Begging For Arms
    Ukraine Backs UN Vote To Send Israel To International Court While Begging For Arms

    Despite Ukraine for months essentially begging the Israeli government to supply it with lethal weapons amid the Russian invasion, Ukraine voted at the UN to send Israel to the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ).

    The UN resolution was voted on in the General Assembly on Friday, and it urged an international investigation into Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands, as well as “annexation” activities and alleged human rights abuses against Palestinians. Ukraine’s representative registered a “yes” vote, and the resolution will now proceed to the next stage (a Generally Assembly plenary, likely next month), given it passed with 98 countries in favor, 17 countries opposed and 52 abstentions.

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    Israel was livid following the vote, and summoned the Ukrainian ambassador to issue a formal rebuke and reprimand.

    “Ukraine’s support of the UN resolution ‘Israeli Practices’, denying Jewish ties to Temple Mount and calling for ICJ advisory opinion is extremely disappointing,” Israeli envoy Michael Brodsky stated. “Supporting anti-Israeli initiatives in the UN doesn’t help to build trust”.

    The United States of course voted against the draft resolution, while interestingly both Russia and Ukraine voted in favor. 

    The UN vote is deeply awkward and somewhat embarrassing timing for Ukraine given President Zelensky has recently lashed out publicly against Israel for refusing to send its Iron Dome anti-air defense system.

    In October, Zelensky said in a virtual speech to a conference organized by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “Isn’t it time for your state to choose who you are with as well?” In addressing Israeli decision-makers, he then charged that in refusing to send arms Israel is turning “a blind eye to Russian terror”.

    Interestingly, some top officials within the Ukrainian government are also expressing their embarrassment: 

    Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s personal aide, Alexey Arestovych, said Sunday that Ukraine’s recent support of a United Nations resolution against Israel was “a grave mistake.”

    In an online livestream, the close aide to the Ukrainian premier said “Ukraine’s foreign ministry’s position was illogical and unacceptable.”

    “We’re teaming up with Russia and Iran who are attacking us, and distancing ourselves from Israel — which we want as an ally,” Aristovich said.

    “Ukraine must at least abstain from such votes,” he added.

    Israeli ambassador Michael Brodsky slammed Ukraine’s vote as “extremely disappointing”: Getty Images

    Certainly Israel is now going to be much less willing to even contemplate sending lethal arms to the Ukrainians, even despite pressure from the White House to do more than just humanitarian or non-lethal aid.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/14/2022 – 18:05

  • Russia Price Cap Could Threaten India's Oil Supplies
    Russia Price Cap Could Threaten India’s Oil Supplies

    By John Kemp, senior market analyst at Reuters

    India would be one of the countries most exposed if Russia refuses to sell crude oil at the capped price under proposed sanctions to be imposed by the United States and the European Union.  In 2021, India was the world’s third-largest crude importer (214 million tonnes) after China (526 million tonnes) and the United States (305 million tonnes) (“Statistical review of world energy”, BP, 2022).

    India and China rely on imports by tanker from the Middle East, Russia and other regions, in contrast to the United States, which receives most of its imports by pipeline from neighbouring Canada.

    India’s domestic crude and condensate production has been stuck at 30-40 million tonnes per year for the last two decades, data from India’s Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas shows.

    By contrast, domestic petroleum consumption has doubled to 202 million tonnes in 2021 from 103 million tonnes in 2002 (“Snapshot of India’s oil and gas data”, Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell, Nov. 10).

    In the first ten months of 2022, India consumed a seasonal record 182 million tonnes, surpassing the previous peak of 178 million in 2019, before the pandemic.

    As a lower-middle income country experiencing rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, India’s consumption is growing fast but its consumers are very sensitive to both price changes and the economic cycle.
     
    Consumption has been growing by around 7% per year in the last 12 months, though there were signs of a possible slowdown to around half that rate in October.

    Voracious Oil Intake

    India’s refinery crude processing capacity increased to 251 million tonnes per year in 2021 from 115 million tonnes per year in 2002, and the country has emerged as a major exporter of refined products.

    In 2022, India has become a big buyer of Russia’s crude following that country’s invasion of Ukraine and sanctions imposed on its exports in response by the United States, European Union and their allies.

    India and China have absorbed additional crude and products imports from Russia, allowing the United States and the European Union to take more crude and fuels from non-sanctioned sources.

    Because of its import dependence and price-sensitive consumers, India would be extremely vulnerable should Russia retaliate by refusing to sell crude and fuels at the capped price.

    The resulting shortfall in physical crude supplies and surge in prices for both crude and fuels would hit refiners and domestic consumers hard.

    Selling the Price Cap

    U.S. and EU policymakers have said repeatedly they will set the cap at a level to ensure Russia continues exporting and any halt or reduction to exports would be irrational.

    In remarks on Nov. 11 on a a visit to New Delhi, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the price cap would work in India’s interest by giving it extra leverage to purchase Russian crude at deep discounts.

    Russian oil “is going to be selling at bargain prices and we’re happy to have India get that bargain”, Yellen told reporters (“India can buy as much Russian oil as it wants, outside price cap, Yellen says”, Reuters, Nov.11).

    Yellen has become the chief advocate for the price cap concept as the Biden administration attempts to sell the idea to sceptical oil buyers and governments in Asia.

    India is also an increasingly important diplomatic partner as the United States develops an “Indo-Pacific strategy” to counter China, so the U.S. administration has been anxious to allay fears about the price cap’s impact.

    In recent months, the U.S. administration has walked back plans for an ambitious and strictly enforced price cap given concerns about the impact on prices, inflation and the economy at home and in importers like India.

    Remarks in the last few weeks have suggested the administration will declare the cap a success if there is any reduction in oil prices received by Russia, whether deals are done under the cap or not.

    Further SPR Releases

    In contrast to the United States and China, India has limited strategic oil reserves to protect itself from any interruption of imports.

    Ultimately, if there is any disruption to Russia’s petroleum exports, the United States will have to ensure India’s refineries remain supplied by releasing more barrels from its own Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).

    Even after recent drawdowns, the SPR contains 396 million barrels of crude, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, equivalent to roughly 50-55 million tonnes, at standard conversion rates.

    The reserve is a fixed stock so it cannot replace the flow of Russia petroleum exports indefinitely, and the crude left in the reserve is not a particularly good match for Russia’s export grades.

    But further SPR releases could buy policymakers and India’s refiners time and are likely in the event Russia retaliates against the price cap.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/14/2022 – 17:40

  • FedEx Freight To Begin Driver Furloughs Next Month
    FedEx Freight To Begin Driver Furloughs Next Month

    By Mark Solomon of FreightWaves

    FedEx Freight, the less-than-truckload arm of FedEx Corp. and the nation’s largest LTL carrier, said Saturday it will furlough an undetermined number of drivers starting in early December.

    The furloughs are scheduled to last about 90 days, during which time affected workers will continue to receive health benefits and will be allowed to file for unemployment benefits in their respective states of residence. Some eligible employees will be offered permanent transfer opportunities to other markets that have hiring needs, the unit said in a statement.

    The furloughs are expected to affect a small number of drivers, and not all facilities will be targeted, said Miranda Yarbro, a FedEx Freight spokesperson. The furloughs will be voluntary, Yarbro added.

    “Because of our previous experience with furlough and with the incentives we are offering, we are expecting employees to volunteer to meet the business need,” Yarbro said in an email.

    The unit employs about 45,000 people. It was not immediately clear how many drivers it employs.

    The action was taken in response to slowing macroeconomic conditions that have impacted LTL demand in recent weeks, the unit said. The LTL segment, which has shown very strong growth coming out of the pandemic, has seen volumes level off recently due to economic uncertainty caused by high inflation and recession concerns.

    FedEx Freight has been the best performer of FedEx’s three transport business units. Its two larger units, FedEx Express and FedEx Ground, have been hurt by high costs and slower-than-expected demand. FedEx Freight, by contrast, has focused on profitable growth and has been willing to shed unprofitable tonnage to achieve that goal.

    In its fiscal 2023 first quarter, which ended Aug. 31, FedEx Freight’s operating income increased 67%. The gains were driven by actions to improve shipment yields, as well as the positive impact of higher fuel surcharges, the parent reported.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/14/2022 – 17:15

  • Russians With Dual Citizenship Can Now Be Drafted, New Putin Decree Says
    Russians With Dual Citizenship Can Now Be Drafted, New Putin Decree Says

    On Monday Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree which further seeks to address reported manpower shortages due to the war in Ukraine and after the prior controversial ‘partial mobilization’ order. 

    For the first time, Russians who hold dual citizenship are allowed to be drafted, according to the new decree. This changes the longstanding law stating that dual nationals were exempt from conscription. 

    “Nationals of any country can continue to serve in the Russian army under a contract in the ranks of soldiers, sailors, sergeants and foremen, so long as the individual isn’t under investigation, convicted or has a conviction that hasn’t been expunged, similar to the rules that apply to Russian citizens, according to the decree,” WSJ writes.

    This will mark the first time that dual-national Russians can potentially drafted going back to a 1999 regulation. The wording of the law suggests Americans or Israelis, or dual citizens of any other countries who previously warned of this possibility could face conscription.

    While this could possibly target a minority of Russians holding dual citizens from Western countries, the decree appears aimed primarily at tapping citizens hailing from border and regional countries. 

    “According to some military observers the easing of the citizenship regulations are primarily aimed at nationals from countries in Russia’s near abroad, such as in Central Asia, whose citizens saturate the migrant-worker labor force in Russia,” the WSJ report continues.

    Russia is commonly estimated to have at least half-a-million people claiming dual citizenship. However, many may have fled the country in the weeks after Putin’s September 21st partial mobilization order. 

    According to a recent report in The Moscow Times, many of the hundreds of thousands of Russians who initially fled on fears of being drafted and sent to Ukraine have returned home due to work and economic stability factors. 

    “Draft-age men who left Russia in fear of being sent to fight in Ukraine are returning home after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced an end to the country’s chaotic mobilization that swept hundreds of thousands into the Armed Forces,” The Moscow Times wrote. “After the initial rush to get out of the country spurred by rumors of border closures, many found themselves facing the tough reality of trying to make ends meet in an unfamiliar city.”

    That September order saw some 700,000 Russian young men flee the country within the weeks following, the Kremlin earlier admitted. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/14/2022 – 16:50

  • 'Dangerous': Expert Pans Move To Donate Guns, Armored Vehicles To Pro-Beijing Solomons Leader
    ‘Dangerous’: Expert Pans Move To Donate Guns, Armored Vehicles To Pro-Beijing Solomons Leader

    Authored by Daniel Y. Teng via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    An image of armoured police vehicles gifted to the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force under by the Australian Defence Force during a gifting ceremony in Honiara, Solomon Islands on Nov. 2, 2022. (Courtesy of the Australian Federal Police)

    The Australian Labor government’s decision to gift weapons and armoured vehicles to the Solomons government has been branded “ill-conceived and dangerous” by Pacific expert Cleo Paskal, saying the move is pushing the country one step closer towards civil war.

    On Nov. 2, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) delivered training and around $1.3 million (US$740,000) worth of equipment to the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIPF).

    In a gifting ceremony, the RSIPF delivered 13 armoured police vehicles and 60 Daniels Defense MK18 rifles, according to an AFP statement.

    Four vehicles will be part of a new Mobile Protection Unit that will provide the RSIPF with a “high-visibility presence” in the community and manage any “security threats and incidents” to critical infrastructure.

    An image of Daniels Defence MK18 rifles gifted to the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force under by the Australian Defence Force during a gifting ceremony in Honiara, Solomon Islands on Nov. 2, 2022. (Courtesy of the Australian Federal Police)

    An image of an armoured police vehicle gifted to the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force by the Australian Defence Force during a gifting ceremony in Honiara, Solomon Islands, on Nov. 2, 2022. (Courtesy of the Australian Federal Police)

    The move drew a sharp response from the leader of the Solomon Islands’ opposition, Matthew Wale.

    “Sucking up to [Prime Minister] Soga and trying to out-compete China! For use, where, and when?” he wrote on Twitter.

    Keeping the Solomons ‘Safe’

    Clinton Smith, acting commander of the AFP, said the package helped keep communities “safe and secure.”

    “The AFP is proud to be the Solomon Islands’ security partner of choice and will continue to work closely with RSIPF officers to ensure they are trained and equipped to provide the Solomon Islands community with an efficient, modern police force,” he said in a statement.

    While Australia’s High Commissioner Lachlan Strahan said, the handover was another landmark in the ongoing security arrangement between both countries.

    “We have been with each other through thick and thin. As Prime Minister Sogavare has said, our partnership is based on our shared duty to ensure that our region remains peaceful, prosperous, and stable,” he said.

    Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare standing next to Australian High Commissioner Lachlan Strahan along with members of the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force and Australian Defence Force during a gifting ceremony in Honiara, Solomon Islands, on Nov. 2, 2022. (Courtesy of the Australian Federal Police)

    An image of armoured police vehicles gifted to the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force under by the Australian Defence Force during a gifting ceremony in Honiara, Solomon Islands on Nov. 2, 2022. (Courtesy of the Australian Federal Police)

    The rearmament of the RSIPF first started in 2013 with a commitment from Australia to rearm a “limited number of officers” to ensure the RSIPF was able to deal with criminal threats. The latest move is Phase Two of the rearmament program.

    Beijing was quick to respond, with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announcing a further donation—on top of existing commitments—of two water cannon trucks and other vehicles to the RSIPF.

    Solomons PM Playing Both Sides

    Beijing has ramped up bilateral ties with Solomon Islands Prime Minister Sogavare since his government decided to cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan for Beijing in 2019.

    Since then, Sogavare has moved steadily to shore up power and deepen relations with the CCP.

    In August 2021, Sogavare gave “grants” to 39 of 50 MPs in the national parliament—enough to change the Constitution—using money from a Beijing-backed slush fund.

    In April 2022, Sogavare signed a security pact with Beijing that would allow the CCP to station troops, weapons, and naval ships in the country.

    Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese meets with the Prime Minister of Solomon Islands, Manasseh Sogavar,e in Canberra, Australia, on Oct. 6, 2022. (Martin Ollman/Getty Images)

    In September, the prime minister managed to secure enough votes to delay the country’s federal election—an election he may lose—claiming the government did not have enough resources to host the 2023 Pacific Games and run a national vote simultaneously.

    “For over a year, he’s been making major moves to show he has no intention of holding an election he will lose and that he is arming himself for the civil war that will result, with the help of his patron China and, inexplicably, Australia,” said Cleo Paskal, Pacific expert and non-resident fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, in an email to The Epoch Times.

    The Australian Labor government has continued a “soft power” offensive—concurrent to similar efforts by the U.S. Biden administration—to win over the Sogavare government, including an SB$100 million pledge to fund the Pacific Games, delivering more regional aid, and now, offering more weaponry.

    “Canberra is in an elite capture race with China that it will lose,” she added. “It’s not going to be able to bribe more, send more weapons, and give international cover to someone who seems on track to kill his fellow citizens. That’s China’s thing, not Australia’s (one hopes).”

    Paskal has long warned that Sogavare plans to trigger some form of civil unrest that will allow his government to deploy the military to consolidate power and delay elections inevitably—a move that has long-term benefits for Beijing.

    Make Peace, Not War

    However, Paskal noted Australia has the ability to use other means to win the influence war in the Pacific.

    “Australia has a very good alternative—fight with ‘peacefare’—China and its authoritarian proxies hate when people come together and build stability from the ground up. That’s exactly what finally enacting the 2000 Townsville Peace Agreement would accomplish,” Paskal said.

    The Townsville Peace Agreement was a roadmap that ended an ongoing civil war in the region and laid the foundation for the future of the country. However, several key steps in the Agreement have yet to be implemented.

    Other suggestions around peacefare include expanding Australia and New Zealand’s migrant worker schemes to ease travel to-and-from the Pacific nations while opening up vast employment opportunities.

    “This alternative future for Australia and New Zealand with our Pacific family would hold a mirror up to the model developing in Honiara under Sogavare and his Beijing backers,” wrote Michael Shoebridge, director of Strategic Analysis Australia, in The Australian newspaper.

    “And it would also end Australia’s decades of failed security and aid-centred assistance to the Pacific, replacing it with a path that is sustainable.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/14/2022 – 16:25

  • Technical Rally Runs Out Of Gas Despite Dovish Drawl From Fed's #2
    Technical Rally Runs Out Of Gas Despite Dovish Drawl From Fed’s #2

    Over the weekend, we said that with earnings season over, with the lower than expected CPI print in the rearview mirror, and with 4 weeks to go until the next FOMC where just a payrolls report (which may well be the first negative print since the wu-flu) looms, risk has collapsed, and as the following chart from Piper Sandler’s Danny Kirsch shows, the 1-week stradle in the SPX has been slashed in half, and now anticipates just over 2.1% in price movement over the next week, the lowest in almost three months.

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

    So with fundamentals now largely irrelevant for the next several weeks, what are traders to do? Why listen to Fed speakers, even if they contradict each other as today’s price action demonstrated so amply when first Fed Governor Christopher Waller spooked markets late on Sunday with his hawkish take that policymakers had “a ways to go” before ending interest-rate hikes, before his superior, the Fed’s #2 and vice chair, Lael Brainard, took the mic and whispered soothing words of dovishness, which immediately stopped the selling and sparked a rally that sent the S&P not only above 4,000 but to the highest level in the past two months, before stocks lost steam in the last hour of trading…

    … and the Dow Jones pulled back as it was just shy, or less than 2%, from entering a new bull market from the October lows.

    Looking beneath the surface, it was another day where energy outperformed…

    … while most other sectors lagged.

    Elsewhere, after a record two-day surge in Goldman’s most shorted basket, today’s the most shorted names dropped…

    … with low-momentum stocks suffering a similar fate, and undoing some of their striking gains from last week.

     On the other side of the trade, the chart below shows that high-momentum L/S funds suffered their 2nd worst 2-Day drop in the past 20 years according to Morgan Stanley.

    Turning to other asset classes, after plunging last week, and being closed on Friday for Veteran’s day, cash Treasuries went nowhere on Monday …

    … as did the dollar which was flat after suffering one of the biggest 2-day drops on record last week.

    Finally, here is a chart of the one asset class that everyone is looking at and which prompted the last hour selling: namely cryptos, which were hammered to session lows just minutes before stocks were also hit, and while it remains unclear what prompted the selling – rumor of another exchange run, rumor of another blow up, rumor, rumor, rumor – it is unmistakable that any time cryptos sneeze (and plunge) they drag the rest of the financial world with them.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/14/2022 – 16:02

  • Jeff Bezos Promises To Give Away Most Of His Fortune To Charity
    Jeff Bezos Promises To Give Away Most Of His Fortune To Charity

    Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the fourth richest person in the world, intends to give away most of his fortune during his lifetime. 

    In an interview with CNN’s Chloe Melas on Saturday at Bezo’s mansion in Washington, DC, speaking alongside his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, he said the bulk of his fortune would go to fighting climate change and unifying humanity. 

    Melas asked if he intends to donate most of his wealth within his lifetime, and Bezos replied: “Yeah, I do.”

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

    “But the couple’s biggest challenge may be figuring out how to distribute Bezos’ vast fortune. Bezos declined to identify a specific percentage or to provide concrete details on where it would likely be spent,” CNN said. 

    Maybe Bezos wouldn’t commit to a specific figure because, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, his net worth has collapsed by 25.6% year-to-date due to a 40% plunge in Amazon shares this year. As of Friday, Bezos is worth $123.9 billion. 

    Bezos’ wealth is mostly tied up in Amazon stock.

    The 20-minute interview covered many topics, from Bezos’ views on politics to economic turmoil to his space venture where Sanchez plans to visit low-Earth orbit. 

    Bezos has committed $10 billion over the decade, or about 8% of his current net worth, to the Bezos Earth Fund, which Sanchez co-chairs. 

    “The hard part is figuring out how to do it in a levered way,” he said, implying that even as he gives away his billions, he is still looking to maximize his return. “It’s not easy. Building Amazon was not easy. It took a lot of hard work, a bunch of very smart teammates, hard-working teammates, and I’m finding — and I think Lauren is finding the same thing — that charity, philanthropy, is very similar.”

    “There are a bunch of ways that I think you could do ineffective things, too,” he added. “So you have to think about it carefully and you have to have brilliant people on the team.”

    The latest recipient of the billionaire’s money via Bezos Courage and Civility Award, an annual award distributed by Bezos, was country music legend Dolly Parton, who received $100 to donate as she pleases. 

    Oh… and there’s this. 

     So is the giving all about saving the planet and helping humanity, or is it just a giant tax shield? 

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

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/14/2022 – 15:45

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Nov 14

Today’s News 14th November 2022

  • Fair Elections Are The Underpinning Of A Free Society: Retired Marine Reserve Colonel
    Fair Elections Are The Underpinning Of A Free Society: Retired Marine Reserve Colonel

    Authored by Beth Brelje via The Epoch Times,

    Election integrity was paramount on Jan. 30, 2005, when Iraq held its first free election in years to choose an entirely new National Assembly. Retired Marine Reserve Colonel Frank Ryan, today a Republican state representative in the Pennsylvania House, had been called out of retirement and was responsible for pulling together election security with the interim Iraqi government.

    It was important that voting was simple for citizens and that they had confidence in the results.

    People waiting to vote in Baghdad, Iraq, in 2005. (Frank Ryan)

    Ryan was one of the few Americans permitted at Iraqi polling places. He attended the Iraqi government meeting when they were counting the ballots that election night.

    “They did a tremendous job of making sure that they had a bipartisan group of people monitoring the counting of the ballots,” Ryan said.

    “And by the way, we got the electoral results done the same day. Just saying.”

    In the end, some people were disappointed their candidate didn’t win, but there were not accusations of fraud, Ryan said, because the election had a robust system of controls.

    “We worked with the Deputy Minister of National Security, and the Multinational Force Iraq, to make sure that we had all the polling places covered,” Ryan told The Epoch Times.

    “We had the rules of engagement relative to the counting of the ballots. We had tremendous security of all the ballots. We knew how many were issued at the polling places. We had complete control. And then obviously, the ultimate control was the dye on the finger to determine that you’ve already voted.”

    Frank Ryan in Baghdad, Iraq, in 2005. (Frank Ryan)

    Voting was risky. The insurgency, al-Qaeda, said they were going to kill anyone who voted. There was no mail-in balloting, yet nearly 75 percent of Iraqis showed up in person to vote.

    Each voter dipped their finger in purple ink, a stain to prevent people from voting twice. A group of women in their 70s stood together, Ryan recalls, and they held their ink-stained index fingers up. “They were showing that they weren’t going to be intimidated.”

    The night before the election, a rocket hit the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, killing two Americans who worked there and wounding five others.

    “One of the deputy ministers in national security called me up the morning of the election, and he was crying. I said, ‘Are you OK?’ and he said, ‘Today, my mother voted freely for the first time in her life. I wanted you to thank the American people for the sacrifices that they’ve done for the Iraqi people so that we can be free. And please tell those families that their children did not die in vain.’ And I started to cry, to think it meant that much to him.”

    The dye on their hands was not going to come off in a day, Ryan said. It was going to be there for a while.

    “They knew they could be executed for it, and they didn’t care. Voting meant that much to them.”

    The privilege of voting and trust in the results cannot be taken for granted.

    “The entire framework of our nation as a republic is based upon trust that people have in the system, that the elections are fair and secure,” Ryan said.

    Leaving Office to Get Things Done

    As a state representative, Ryan, who is also a certified public accountant, has worked on legislation to improve election controls and build voter trust. With Republican Rep. Seth Grove, he worked on Pennsylvania House Bill 1300 in 2021, an election reform bill vetoed by Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf.

    This year, Ryan announced his retirement at the end of his term in December. But he is not done working on election security.

    “I think I can have a bigger impact on public policy outside of the legislature, than from within it,” Ryan said, adding that it is a sad truth that it is hard for legislators to get things done.

    “I intend to work specifically on election security and internal controls, and the elimination of property taxes for schools.”

    Ryan believes he can better mobilize public support around these issues as a private citizen.

    “Even the Democrats I’ve talked to want safe and secure elections,” Ryan said.

    “Democrats and Republicans want to get this fixed, but sometimes they get pressure from their leadership who are being leaned on by outside influences or special interest groups.” Ryan is writing a book about this issue. “It’s going to be about how special interest groups control the agenda in Harrisburg and in D.C.”

    When he thinks about election reform, Ryan looks at issues through the lens of his accounting experience.

    He would like to see reconciliation by the precinct, comparing the number of voters to the number of ballots cast, and details defining each extra ballot.

    It is expected that every county will have a surplus, Ryan explained. If a voter makes a mistake, their ballot is voided, and they are given a new one. Now that voter accounts for two ballots. This should be tracked. The legislation Wolf vetoed called for this and other types of audit mechanisms. Each county handles elections a little differently, he says, and there should be some uniform guidelines for how things are done. He also believes voters should be required to show identification.

    “There are too many flaws in the processes,” Ryan said.

    “If the elections are not close, everybody’s got full faith and confidence in those results. Like there’s no doubt in my mind that Fetterman won. I’m not happy about it. People didn’t ask me if I was happy about the results. But I do believe they were accurate. But if you were to tell me the race was within 20,000 votes, I wouldn’t be able to make that same assertion.”

    That is why election security processes must be reformed, he said.

    “I accept the results because I believe that it was the will of the people,” Ryan said. “And that’s my responsibility, to make sure that the election systems accurately reflect the will of the people. That’s the constitutional provisions that I swore to uphold when I became a United States Marine on Dec. 18, 1969.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/14/2022 – 00:00

  • Journalism Tops List Of 'Most Regretted' College Majors
    Journalism Tops List Of ‘Most Regretted’ College Majors

    A whopping 87% of Journalism majors say they regret their decision, and would pick a different major if they could, according to CNBC, citing a ZipRecruiter survey of more than 1,500 college graduates who were looking for a job.

    Taylor Lorenz cries over invasion of privacy

    The aspiring corporate media propagandists were followed by Sociology and Liberal Arts majors at 72% each, and communications majors at 64%.

    “When we graduate, reality hits,” said ZipRecruiter head economist, Sinem Buber, adding “When you are barely managing to pay your bills, your paycheck might become more important.”

    On average, 44% of all job seekers with college degrees regret their field of study. 

    The poll comes months after a Reuters survey found that trust in the mainstream media is evaporating.

    It comes down to money

    According to “The College Payoff,” a report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, bachelor’s degree holders typically earn 84% more than those with just a high school diploma, however of course, career path matters.

    When broken down by areas of study, however, the difference is striking. Students who pursue a major specifically in science, technology, engineering and math — collectively known as STEM disciplines — are projected to earn the most overall.

    In addition to STEM, health and business majors are among the highest-paying, leading to average annual wages that are higher at the entry level and significantly greater over the course of a career compared with liberal arts and humanities majors, the Georgetown Center found. -CNBC

    What are the least regretted majors?

    Computer and information sciences, criminology, engineering, nursing, and health.

    According to Buber, “Pay is still most important,” but “Job security is now becoming more important. That happens whenever we have the fear of a recession.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 11/13/2022 – 23:30

  • "FTX Isn't The Canary In The Coal-Mine, FTX Is The Coal-Mine… & It Just Collapsed"
    “FTX Isn’t The Canary In The Coal-Mine, FTX Is The Coal-Mine… & It Just Collapsed”

    Via SchiffGold.com,

    Bitcoin Hodlers: Time is Running Out to Convert Nothing into Something

    Three key takeaways:

    1. For weeks, the Bitcoin market has looked propped up by the whales, especially after the recent FTX disaster.

    2. Bitcoin hodlers should strongly consider moving into gold, silver, or at least Ether.

    3. Full disclosure, I have a complicated relationship with Crypto.

    An Artificial Market

    I have specifically avoided writing about Bitcoin despite having strong opinions on the subject. Bitcoin is a very hot topic, and most people have already made up their minds. In short, I think it has zero value but that argument has been made many times before so I couldn’t add anything new to the conversation.

    Full disclosure, I have been in the Crypto market since 2013 and am net positive. That said, given recent market events, I cannot sit by in good conscience without giving fair warning. This is not a Bitcoin is worthless analysis, this is a wake-up call to push people to ask what is keeping this market from imploding. FTX isn’t the canary in the coal mine (that was Celsius, or one of the other firms that crashed this year). FTX is the coal mine, and it just collapsed.

    I think the data shows that this market is being propped up by whales. If the dam breaks it could send markets crashing. Back on Oct 31, before anything happened with FTX, I texted a close friend:

    My new theory is that the whales are not trying to pump the price anymore. Instead, they are trying to stabilize the price to win back institutional investors. I have never seen bitcoin price volatility so low over a 6 month stretch in 10 years. It just totally stopped moving after an epic collapse back in June. No bounce, no continuation, no nothing. Just super tight price range even while the stock market has continued falling.

    I was led to this thinking after watching Bitcoin crash in June to ~19k and then just hold. It spent the next few months consolidating while the bond and stock markets went into turmoil. See the chart below with the simple price of SPY overlaid on top of Bitcoin since 2021. You may notice how steady the orange line has been since June 21, directly after the Bitcoin crash below $20k.

    Figure: 1 SPY vs BTC

    Let’s compare the 30-day rolling annualized standard deviation between Bitcoin and the SPY. This chart shows the difference in volatility between Bitcoin and SPY. Notice how it has been collapsing in recent months, and Bitcoin was actually less volatile than the S&P for a brief period in October. Since when is Bitcoin less volatile than the S&P 500? That has quickly reversed since the FTX fiasco.

    Figure: 2 Volatility/Standard Deviation

    However, while price volatility is falling, trade volume is not. The next chart is the 30-day rolling average trade volume of Bitcoin compared to the price. Once again you can notice a misalignment. As volume was steadily increasing over the last several months, the price stayed in a tight range.

    Figure: 3 Price and Volume

    Usually, large changes in volume are accompanied by large moves in price. But in this case, volume was moving up steadily while the price stayed nearly flat. How and why was this happening?

    As I alluded to above in my text to a friend, this looked like an artificial market. The market nearly collapsed back in June and then just flatlined near 20k. That doesn’t happen, especially in Bitcoin. After this past week though, I am now convinced this market is being artificially propped up. After all, 27% of the market is dominated by a super minority of less than 0.01%. They have a major vested interest in keeping this market inflated. I think the increased volume against stable price action is from whales defending the price and painting the tape.

    I won’t rehash what happened with FTX this week (there are 1,000s of articles explaining the epic collapse). Instead, I will just highlight that this is a MAJOR event in the Crypto space. To Crypto, this would be like 3 Enron happenings all at once, or Enron and Madoff happening in the same weekend. This is catastrophic on every level, but the price of Bitcoin only fell by about 20%. What?!?

    In the stock market over the past several weeks, companies have been reporting disappointing earnings at a frequent clip. Each company has been absolutely punished for it. Some have fallen 20% or more in a single day which is extremely rare. These are bad earnings for major corporations that still have revenue. Yet Bitcoin has its Enron + Madoff moment and the price of Bitcoin drops by the same ~20%?

    No way! I am not buying it!

    Step back and think about this for just a moment. Take another look at the charts above that show how the price volatility collapsed despite steadily increasing trade volume. Most importantly, look at the recent massive spike in trade volume from FTX and the relatively minor price drop. For any mathematicians who might be claiming scale and relative impact are not properly reflected, take a look at the same chart on log scale below.

    Figure: 4 Price and Volume on Log Scale

    Okay, this looks a little bit more reasonable… until you remember that this was Enron + Madoff! No. I am sorry, but no. The price should be down 50-70% after this event. I am convinced it will be. Think about how much Crypto money just went up in smoke. Think about the confidence lost.

    Everyone keeps saying that Crypto winters come and go, and so will this one. But will the summer ever be as bright for Bitcoin? Each winter has been followed by a bigger hype train than the last one. How can the next hype train be bigger than the last one? You had EVERYTHING going for it last year. The price was screaming higher, hype was at a fever pitch, Superbowl ads, celebrity endorsements. Everything!

    When this Crypto winter breaks, Bitcoin won’t recover to new all-time highs without being artificially pumped up. Who is entering the market on the next rebound that wasn’t already in the market? Institutional investors have abandoned ship and the whales are left trying to stem the tide.

    Want more proof that institutional investors have left? Take a look at the GBTC Premium/Discount chart.

    Figure: 5 GBTC Premium and Discount

    This is easy money for institutions. If you want Bitcoin exposure, you can get exposure at a 42% discount. Why is this arbitrage not closing? Let’s make this a little fancier and adjust the price of Bitcoin by the premium/discount of GBTC.

    Figure: 6 GBTC Implied Price

    Notice something? Right now, GBTC is implying that the fair market price of Bitcoin is under $10k. So, who is right here? I am betting on the smart money that is unwilling to buy GBTC at a whopping 47% discount.

    I get it. Bitcoin is like a religion for some people. HODL, laser eyes, Michael Saylor, blah blah. But sometimes something is just so obvious you have to get your head out of the sand. If you want true independence from the banking system and you want to reduce counterparty risk, then buy physical gold and silver. Unlike GBTC, the smart money is pillaging the Comex vaults right now while institutional investors are also paying a hefty premium for silver.

    Let me guess, you still want Crypto exposure to maybe get the moonshot event. Triple up or more. Okay fine, at least buy something of value like Ether. It at least has some value. Probably not $1,200, but definitely greater than $0. It also has potential and versatility.

    If it’s me, I still think about value. I wouldn’t pay $500 for a gallon of gas and I wouldn’t pay $10,000 for an ounce of gold (unless hyperinflation hits). So, at $1,200 Ether is probably overpriced. But again, at least it has value. I personally bought in the $150 range and sold too early at around $700.

    Ether is far from perfect or a value investment, but it’s a better option than Bitcoin. Still, anyone who wants to exit the banking system and get value… look at physical precious metals!

    My complicated history with Crypto

    Full disclosure. I have a complex relationship with Crypto. I have made more money in Crypto than gold and silver for sure. I have been bullish and bearish at different times in my life.

    As a Libertarian, I heard about Bitcoin back in 2012 and told myself to spend $2,000 and buy 1,000 BTC, toss half into cold storage, and then trade the other half. Whoops. I forgot to do this because it looked complicated. Then Cyprus happened and Bitcoin shot up to $50. I didn’t want to miss the next move, so I started buying. Had a decent stack at one point. Rode it up to $1,100 and then MtGox crashed and poof went my Bitcoins. I eventually sold the bankruptcy claim to an opportunistic buyer.

    I decided I needed to understand the tech to see if I should buy back in. I read everything. The Bitcoin white paper, articles, wiki pages about hashing, and how blocks are linked together. How computers compete to solve for the nonce with the correct amount of preceding 0s (this is how the algo gets harder). I looked at transactions on the actual Bitcoin blockchain to try and understand it. It started to make sense to me, so when prices came down, I would buy and then sell the rebound. Doesn’t mean I was all-in though. Back in 2020, I wrote:

    I think Blockchain is a vastly overhyped technology. Blockchain removes the need for trust and eliminates counterparty risk, but the cost is enormous. Blockchain is really just a super expensive low-performance database. Not to mention, that there is nothing truly unique in the [Bitcoin] blockchain code, Bitcoin simply has first mover advantage.

    I still stand by this. Blockchain is a database, just really expensive. What makes Bitcoin any different than Litecoin or Bitcoin Cash? Maybe different hashing algos or transaction speeds. But structurally, very little. I bet if you ask most Crypto fanatics, they actually understand very little about the underlying tech. There is nothing about Bitcoin that makes it special except that it came first. When you factor in the cost to mine, Bitcoin actually has a negative value.

    Ethereum is different. It wants to be Web 3.0 and wants to be the world computer. Maybe it will get there, maybe it won’t. But it has a lot better chance of being worth more than $0 in 10 years. Do you know what will definitely be worth more than $0 in 10 years, 100 years, and 1,000 years? Physical gold and silver. Not a futures contract or an ETF necessarily, but physical metal you can hold in your hand.

    If you are still in Bitcoin, then you are betting and hoping for the whales to continue propping up this market. But there is an avalanche of selling coming. As I said, FTX isn’t the canary in the coal mine (that was Celsius, or one of the other firms that crashed this year). FTX is the coal mine, and it just collapsed. Somehow you can still trade BTC for almost $17,000. That’s an extraordinary amount given what just happened.

    If you are still hodling, I encourage you to reconsider. Buy something of actual value with that money like physical gold and silver.

    There is no counterparty risk, no concern over trust, and no risk of a hacker or losing your keys. It is the best form of insurance against the turmoil that lies ahead.

    If you really want Crypto exposure, at least consider Ether. Even if it is overpriced, it is worth something greater than $0.

    Bitcoin is worth whatever the whales can force it to be worth, but one day soon, they might lose the capital needed to manipulate the price higher or even just keep it from crashing.

    As we learned with FTX, things look fine up until the very moment they are not. And then billions can be lost in a very short time.

    How much do you trust the Bitcoin whales to keep this market afloat?

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 11/13/2022 – 23:00

  • X-37B Space Plane Lands In Florida After Top-Secret 908-Day Orbital Mission
    X-37B Space Plane Lands In Florida After Top-Secret 908-Day Orbital Mission

    The US Space Force’s Boeing X-37B unmanned, reusable space plane successfully deorbited after a record-breaking orbital mission around Earth and landed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility on Saturday. 

    The robotic X-37B landed at 0533 ET after spending 908 days in orbit — more than four months longer than the previous mission. 

     It’s the sixth Orbital Test Vehicle mission (OTV-6) with top-secret payloads that military researchers were testing in low-Earth orbit.

    Even though most of the payloads are classified, some have been made public, such as the US Naval Research Laboratory’s Photovoltaic Radio-frequency Antenna Module, a small device that converts solar power into radio frequency microwave energy. 

    Space.com expanded more on the non-classified experiments and technologies being tested:

    “Technologies being tested in the X-37B program include advanced guidance, navigation and control, thermal protection systems, avionics, high temperature structures and seals, conformal reusable insulation, lightweight electromechanical flight systems, advanced propulsion systems, advanced materials and autonomous orbital flight, re-entry and landing.”

    Task & Purpose has speculated some of the mysterious payloads could be “testing surveillance systems to experiments on putting satellites in lower orbits.”

    After the space plane landed, Jim Chilton, senior vice president at Boeing Space and Launch, wrote:

    “With the service module added, this was the most we’ve ever carried to orbit on the X-37B, and we’re proud to have been able to prove out this new and flexible capability for the government and its industry partners.” 

    Space Force stated that “NASA scientists will leverage data collected after the materials have spent 900+ days in orbit and compare observed effects to ground simulations, validating and improving the precision of space environment models.” 

    “The X-37B continues to push the boundaries of experimentation, enabled by an elite government and industry team behind the scenes.

    “The ability to conduct on-orbit experiments and bring them home safely for in-depth analysis on the ground has proven valuable for the Department of the Air Force and scientific community. The addition of the service module on OTV-6 allowed us to host more experiments than ever before,” Lt. Col. Joseph Fritschen, DAF Rapid Capabilities Office’s X-37B Program Director, said. 

    The X-37B is similar to the retired space shuttle, although the space plane is a fraction of the size, coming in at 29 feet in length and 9.5 feet high, with a wingspan of 15 feet. 

    Here’s a list of the prior X-37 B’s top-secret missions in low-Earth obit:

    There are rumors the X-37B might be a testbed for space weapons or could be used to capture adversary satellites… 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 11/13/2022 – 22:30

  • It Isn't Cognitive Dissonance; It's Doublethink
    It Isn’t Cognitive Dissonance; It’s Doublethink

    Authored by Thorsteinn Siglaugsson  via ‘From Symptoms to Causes’ Substack,

    Cognitive dissonance is when people feel discomfort due to discrepancies in their own thoughts or beliefs.

    As an example, someone who takes pride in being honest, feels such discomfort when he tells a lie.

    Another example of cognitive dissonance is the discomfort felt by members of a cult when they seek to explain how the end of the world was postponed, as their apocalyptic prophecy did not come true.

    The term was in fact coined by psychologist Leon Festinger in his studies of such cults in the 1950s.

    The opposite of cognitive dissonance is doublethink, a word that first appeared in George Orwell’s 1984.

    Doublethink is the ability to accept two contradictory beliefs at the same time, while being totally unaware of the contradiction. In Orwell’s own words:

    To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word—doublethink—involved the use of doublethink.

    This morning I saw an excellent example of this on someone’s Facebook wall (translated by FB from the Icelandic, so not perfect):

    Tertullian, one of the church fathers, born in the late second century, made the following observation regarding the birth, death and resurrection of Christ:

    Natus est Dei Filius, non pudet, quia pudendum est;
    et mortuus est Dei Filius, prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est;
    et sepultus resurrexit, certum est, quia impossibile.

    In English:

    “The Son of God was born: there is no shame, because it is shameful.
    And the Son of God died: it is wholly credible, because it is unsound.
    And, buried, He rose again: it is certain, because it is impossible.”

    Here, the contradiction is religious; only God can contradict himself, the absurd is allowed only to God; we mere mortals are bound by the rules of nature and the rules of logic. The only exemption is that through profound religious experience we can transcend the rules of logic and believe the absurd, hence “it is certain, because it is impossible.”

    Does doublespeak have a religious dimension then?

    Has the person who believes two contradictory statements at the same time in some way transcended reason, and entered into a religious dimension? Or has he simply lost his mind?

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 11/13/2022 – 22:00

  • What Will Break First As The Fed Continues To Tighten: Financial Giants Duke It Out
    What Will Break First As The Fed Continues To Tighten: Financial Giants Duke It Out

    One week ago, in its latest and quite apocalyptic note which was a must-read for every finance professional (and is still available to pro subs), Elliott Management not only previewed the dire endgame of this monetary experiment, and for those who missed it here it is again…

    … the Fed has never raised rates into a struggling economy, as it is now doing. What level of rates will occasion a crash? Or will it be some combination of a melee factor and rates? We can’t know. A crash would certainly put a strong damper on consumer and producer prices. Will they just keep raising rates until the economy does crash? Central bankers actually say that they are aiming for a soft landing. But they are not puppeteers. They do not have the control that they profess to have. Whether there is a soft landing or a “hard” landing (crash) is completely unknown at present.

    As one final example, policymakers state their determination to tame inflation, but QE has not truly reversed. Mortgages on central-bank balance sheets are not being sold. They are raising interest rates like crazy, and the natural way for inflation to go from 10% to 2% is through a serious recession. There is still $30 trillion on central banks’ balance sheets. So what happens when the recession is in full force? Do the central bank balance sheets go to $50 trillion?

    The world is on the path to hyperinflation, which is the direct route to global societal collapse and civil or international strife. It is not baked, but that is the path that we are treading. Uplifting, right

    …  the hedge fund with nearly 50 years of capital markets experience also laid out a list of triggers that could “break” the market and lead to the next crash, including:

    • Banks and other lenders are starting to be forced to recognize large losses on bridge financings and loans;
    • Leveraged holders of mortgage-backed securities, and structured-debt products and CLOs, may be facing substantial markdowns;
    • Liquidity in rates and credit markets has been dramatically reduced;
    • Leveraged private equity will be under severe stress in the event of a meaningful recession; and
    • Housing unaffordability has taken the largest and quickest jump in history (the combination of the 45% rise in home prices from 2019 through 2022 and the extraordinary and rapid rise in interest rates).

    A “market break” is, of course, a topic that has been near and dear to our heart ever since we first predicted in January that the Fed’s rate hikes will inevitably lead to something snapping.

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

    And while last week’s near-record market meltup on hopes that the CPI miss means the Fed will slowdown and/or pivot, we still have a lot of rate hikes and tightening pain to go, meaning that the odds of something big “breaking” remain dangerously high. So high in fact that Goldman’s research team, after coming out with a laughable (in retrospect) S&P500 target of 5,100 exactly one year ago, has become outright apocalyptic on stocks (if there was one reason to turn bullish on stocks, that’s it), and in its most read report last week, asks “What Could Break?” as a result of central bank tightening.

    While Goldman does cover a lot of potential trigger point in the full report (which we recommend all pro subs read), we focus on the summary from Goldman editor Allison Nathan who partitions the findings into several core sections as follows:

    Although the market apparently took comfort from October’s better-than-expected US CPI print, with inflation still far above target, it’s clear that the major central banks’ inflation fight is far from over. The aggressive policy tightening so far—and still in the pipe—has raised concerns about what could break in a global financial system that has grown accustomed to low rates. Which financial stability risks are worth watching, whether policymakers have the tools to effectively manage those risks, and if they could prompt central banks to slow or even pause the pace of tightening, is Top of Mind.

    We first speak with Jeremy Stein, Professor at Harvard University, who was a vocal advocate of the view that monetary policy should be implemented with financial stability in mind during his tenure on the Fed’s Board of Governors in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Despite this long-held view, he argues that the still-acute inflation problem the US faces today means that “the Fed’s only option is to continue to make inflation its number one policy priority for now.” That said, he warns that financial instability risks should not be discounted, and that the Fed’s ability to address those risks is probably more limited than the market expects and than in past episodes of stress. That’s not only because actions to quell stability risks—the so-called “Fed put”—would almost certainly run counter to the prevailing monetary policy goal of slaying inflation, but also because we can’t assume that the tools that addressed past crises—such as the emergency credit facilities implemented at the beginning of the pandemic—could be employed today.

    Vítor Constâncio, former Vice President of the ECB, has historically taken the opposite view of Stein—arguing that monetary policy should not respond to financial stability concerns—a view he stands by today even as the ECB now formally includes financial stability considerations in its policy decisions. But given that both the Fed and the ECB are already approaching the expected peak in policy rates, he expects the current hiking cycle to end before significant financial stability concerns arise that could force a recalibration of monetary policy. However, he worries about the potential effects of quantitative tightening (QT), especially in the Euro area, where incentives for banks to repay their TLTRO loans early will likely lead to an already sizable reduction in the ECB’s balance sheet even before the ECB embarks on formal QT. That said, he believes Euro area policymakers have all the tools they need nowadays to avoid a repeat of the 2010 sovereign bond crisis.

    But GS European rates strategists George Cole and Simon Freycenet are less sure that financial stability risks won’t affect monetary policy in Europe. In their view, concerns about rate-sensitive debt in both the Euro area and the UK constrain the ECB and BoE compared to the Fed in their inflation fight, likely leading to a more cautious approach from both.   These risks, they say, may force an implicitly higher tolerance for inflation in Europe, although Stein and Constâncio believe that the US could potentially be headed in a similar direction as well.

    * * *

    So which risks—outside of a monetary policy mistake in itself—are worth watching? On both Stein and Constâncio’s lists is illiquidity in the US Treasury and other sovereign bond markets. Praveen Korapaty, GS Chief Interest Rates Strategist, explains why cracks in the plumbing of the market’s microstructure have appeared: a surge in outstanding sovereign debt that has far outpaced intermediation capacity mainly owing to post-GFC regulations that discourage market-making in these securities. Although Stein says that these issues are easily fixable, unless and until they are, Korapaty argues that the Fed and other major central banks may be increasingly forced to use their balance sheets to maintain orderly market functioning rather than to conduct monetary policy.

    Constâncio and Stein are also concerned about the asset-liability mismatches of mutual funds, and especially of open-end bond funds, that have the potential to trigger asset fire sales in times of stress. This structural fragility was on full display in the US in early 2020 and never went away, Stein says, because the Fed bailed out these funds, but may not be able to do so the next time around. They are also worried about mounting pressure on sovereign and corporate borrowers in Emerging Market (EM) economies and beyond, especially, as Stein notes, given the sharp appreciation of the Dollar—a vulnerability that will likely persist according to GS FX strategists Kamakshya Trivedi and Sid Bhushan, who make the case that Dollar appreciation has further room to run.

    Indeed, although GS FX strategist Karen Reichgott Fishman finds that FX intervention by many EM central banks (and the BoJ) has slowed the pace of domestic currency depreciation against the Dollar—if not prevented it—GS FX and EM strategists Ian Tomb and Teresa Alves point out that several Frontier economies are already in the midst of classic EM crises precipitated by a Dollar funding squeeze. That said, most major EMs have proven relatively resilient to these stresses, and globally-systemic EM risks appear low, in their view.

    Even beyond EM, corporate borrowers are worth keeping an eye on, according to GS credit strategists Lotfi Karoui and Vinay Viswanathan. They argue that while fundamentals are still healthy for these borrowers, companies that have issued floating-rate leveraged loans, as well as commercial real estate (CRE) borrowers, are vulnerable to a higher-for-longer cost of funding shock. But they believe the risk of this shock threatening financial stability is lower than in past cycles.

    And what about perhaps the most obvious place to look— pension funds—given that they were at the epicenter of the
    most recent stress episode     that arguably increased market focus on financial breakages in the first place? GSAM strategists Ed Francis, Matthew Maciaszek, and Michael Moran explain the recent pressure in the UK pension fund industry and why a similar crisis is less likely to repeat elsewhere, which Freycenet generally agrees with.

    Finally, GS global economists Daan Struyven and Devesh Kodnani take a survey approach to assess the above—and other—financial stability risks that GS research analysts are watching. But, after all this discussion and monitoring of known risks, perhaps the biggest risks of all remain the “unknown unknowns” that we aren’t watching at all.

    To summarize, the most likely market “fracture points” according to Goldman are, or should be familiar to regular ZH readers as we have discussed many if not all of these repeatedly in recent months, and include:

    • Treasury (il)liquidity
    • Asset-liability mismatches of open-end mutual bond funds
    • EM and Frontier economy crises spiraling out of control as a result of the record dollar short squeeze
    • Corporate borrower weakness, especially among those who have exposure to floating rates
    • Pension funds

    Below we excerpt some more from the Goldman report, and specifically the interview with former Fed governor Jeremy Stein:

    Allison Nathan: One area of concern seems to be Treasury market liquidity. Is that concern warranted?

    Jeremy Stein: Yes; the spike in Treasury market volatility in March 2020 proved that concerns over market liquidity are warranted. But the Fed could at least partially address this vulnerability with some relatively simple fixes. For example, the supplementary leverage ratio, which is a risk-insensitive capital requirement imposed on systemically important banks in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), was unhelpful in the March 2020 episode, because it discourages banks from making markets in Treasury securities. The Fed could easily adjust this requirement so that it serves its intended purpose of acting as a backstop rather than as a primary binding constraint on market-making, and do so without weakening overall capital in the banking system by making a compensating adjustment in the risk-based requirements so that capital in the system remains the same.

    The Fed could also make its standing repo facility—which lends against Treasury securities as collateral—accessible to a larger set of financial market participants beyond banks and primary dealers. If access to the facility was expanded to allow any hedge fund, mutual fund, etc. to bring Treasuries to the Fed and get cash at a moment’s notice, the asset fire sales that characterized the March 2020 stress episode may not have occurred to the same extent. I have heard some express the view that such broader access could create a moral hazard problem, but what is the bigger problem—lending against Treasury collateral, or, as recently occurred in the UK, getting cornered into buying a lot of Treasuries at a time when you’re supposed to be tightening monetary policy?

    * * *

    Allison Nathan: What other financial stability risks are worth watching?

    Jeremy Stein: I continue to worry about the open-end bond fund complex, which the Fed basically bailed out in March 2020 by creating credit facilities that had a very powerful effect in stemming the large outflows and liquidations of assets from these funds at the time. While that was absolutely the right thing to do, it prevented us from learning more about the real fragility of some of these funds and created a moral hazard problem—credit spreads tightened, and business went on as usual with very little—if any—change in the underlying structure of these funds.

    I also worry that the sharp appreciation of the Dollar resulting from the Fed’s aggressive rate hikes is putting stress on pockets of the financial system. Corporates in many Emerging Markets borrow in dollars, which can be an inexpensive source of funding but puts substantial pressure on these economies when the Dollar strengthens. Many of these countries are relatively small, so the trade spillovers may turn out to be limited, but the bigger risk is that cracks in the financial system could emerge—when loans go bad, what banks are overexposed to these borrowers? Japan is also a potential source of concern in this context. Its debt-to-GDP is running at more than 200%, with much of that debt effectively rolling on an overnight basis given the effect of their massive QE on consolidated debt maturity. That’s not a problem when interest rates are at zero, but if Japan begins to import inflation given global inflation trends and the strength of the Dollar, and the BoJ must start fighting inflation, this could become quite problematic. Many countries are facing the same issue, but Japan is an extreme case that bears watching.

    Next, for the visual learners, a primer on US financial instability…

    … and also Euro area.

    There is much more in the full note, including Goldman’s take on FX interventions (they buy time, and “central banks will likely continue to conduct FX interventions over the near term as the Dollar continues to strengthen”), on when the US Dollar will peak, an assessment of the risk of a funding shock, can the UK pension fund crisis repeat and where, how long can the ECB and BOE keep fighting inflation with both economies now in recession, what the risk is in “risk free” rates, and more.

    As noted above, all professional subscribers are encouraged to read the full note available in the usual place.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 11/13/2022 – 21:44

  • Washington Attempts To Bully India Into Cutting Ties With Russia
    Washington Attempts To Bully India Into Cutting Ties With Russia

    Authored by Conor Gallagher via NakedCapitalism.com,

    For months the US has repeatedly tried to coerce India into cutting ties with Russia, thereby abandoning its national interests. New Delhi, however, continues to spurn American attempts to subject its economy to Washington’s dictates.

    The latest fuss concerns the G7 price cap on Russian oil and EU and UK bans on shipping and related services for Russian crude. India continues to have no interest in joining the US-led initiative as it gets a steep discount on oil from Russia and wants to maintain the relationship with a long-time strategic partner. Indian Foreign Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar was just in Moscow on Nov. 8 to discuss continued sales of oil. From the South China Morning Post:

    India’s foreign minister hailed New Delhi’s “strong and steady” relationship with Moscow on Tuesday, during his first visit there since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

    Subrahmanyam Jaishankar also declared India’s intention to continue to buy Russian oil, again disregarding the US appeal to allies and partners to isolate Russia from the global markets.

    The G-7 plans are likely to send oil prices higher (despite US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen claiming the opposite) and reduce tanker availability, both of which will threaten India’s energy security and hurt its economy as India is the third-largest consumer and importer of oil worldwide.

    Russia has said it will not sell to any countries that participate in the price cap scheme, and Jaishankar has repeatedly stated that India cannot afford to buy oil at high prices – at least not without undermining its economic growth, which is forecast to be 6.1 percent in 2023, the fastest-growing major economy in the world. According to Energy Intelligence:

    Russia emerged as India’s top crude supplier in October, shipping over 900,000 barrels per day or roughly a fifth of India’s demand. The two countries’ biggest concern is ensuring that Russian oil continues to flow after the Dec. 5 EU and UK bans and related G7 price cap.

    But despite Jaishankar’s bullish stance in Moscow, India’s state refiners have not placed orders for crude lifting beyond Dec. 5 due to uncertainties about whether shipping and insurance will be available, Energy Intelligence understands. And a recent attempt by an Indian buyer to use the price cap in negotiations with a Russian seller prompted the latter to abandon the deal, market sources said.

    The ongoing lack of clarity on the G-7 could be by design. Russian oil exports have already begun to dip, and Bruce Paulsen, a sanctions expert and partner at law firm Seward & Kissel, told American Shipper, “ If guidance on [price cap] compliance doesn’t come soon, some industry players may sit on the sidelines until they can determine that shipments under the price cap are safe.”

    The US, in a neat sleight of hand, quit pressuring India to adhere to the price cap, and Yellen now says Washington is “happy” for New Delhi to continue buying as much Russian oil as it wants, including at prices above a G7-imposed price cap. But there are just a few caveats: India wouldn’t be able to use western insurance, finance, or maritime services to transport the oil.

    “Russia is going to find it very difficult to continue shipping as much oil as they have done when the EU stops buying Russian oil,” Yellen told Reuters on Friday. “They’re going to be heavily in search of buyers, and many buyers are reliant on Western services.”

    More from Energy Intelligence on why this amounts to a de facto price cap:

    Indian refiners have the capacity to soak up another 600,000 b/d of Russian crude, provided it outcompetes the staple Mideast grades that are the lifeline of the country’s 5 million b/d refining base. But the availability of shipping and insurance — and payment channels — is key. From Dec. 5, tankers and shipping insurance linked to EU and G7 countries — which dominate oil shipping globally — will be barred from trading Russian crude unless those volumes are sold under the price cap, as yet undetermined.

    About 90% of India’s liquids trade is shipped by foreign tankers, presenting challenges, independent energy analyst Narendra Taneja said. Insurance does not appear as problematic, and analysts say that Russian and Chinese firms can handle it.

    This could leave Russia reliant on a shadow fleet of older tankers with opaque ownership that do not transact in dollars. According to Freight Waves:

    Brokerage Braemar reported that 33 tankers previously handling Iranian or Venezuelan exports have carried Russian exports since April, mostly to China and secondarily to India.

    Braemar defined the dark fleet as tankers that have carried Iranian or Venezuelan crude at least once in the past year. It put the current total at 240 tankers, mostly smaller and midsized, with 74% 19 years or older. Eighty of those vessels are very large crude carriers (VLCCs, tankers that carry 2 million barrels) that won’t fit in Russian ports but could be used for ship-to-ship transfers for Russian cargoes.

    If the entire dark fleet switched to Russian service and were as efficient as the “mainstream fleet,” it would be more than enough to keep Russian exports flowing, but “vessels engaged in illicit trading are highly inefficient,” Braemar emphasized.

    At the same time Washington is pressuring New Delhi to comply with the price cap, it is importing from India more vacuum gasoil, which is mostly used at refineries to produce other products such as gasoline and diesel. From Reuters:

    Russia used to be a key VGO supplier to U.S. refiners before the Ukraine war broke out.

    “Given that the U.S. is not buying Russian oil, they are looking for any and all alternatives,” said Roslan Khasawneh, senior fuel oil analyst at Vortexa…

    U.S. and EU sanctions do not apply to refined products produced from Russian crude exported from a third country as they are not of Russian origin. In India, refiners boosted imports of discounted Russian oil to 793,000 barrels per day between April and October, up from just 38,000 bpd in the same period a year ago, trade data showed.

    India joins a list of countries – including Saudi Arabia, Serbia, and Turkey – that are causing heads to explode in Washington for refusing to be bullied into submission.

    This all must be coming as a shock in Washington as its Indo-Pacific strategy in recent years has always included a “like-minded” India helping to counter China and do the US’ bidding in southeast Asia. The possibility that India might pursue its own national interests didn’t seem to factor into the strategy.

    The tension over the Russian price cap is just the latest in a series of disagreements between New Delhi and Washington. US sanctions on Iran’s oil exports deprive India of cheap Iranian oil, and force it to buy more expensive US energy exports. India is now the largest oil export destination for the US.

    Similar to the way Washington is arming Greece and Cyprus in an effort to bully Turkey into breaking off its friendly ties with Russia, the US is doing the same in Pakistan to pressure India. The US has begun to accommodate Pakistan again after the ouster of former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan, who blames his loss of power in a no-confidence vote on the US.

    In September, the U.S. State Department enraged India when it approved a $450 million deal to upgrade Pakistan’s F-16 fleet. Shortly after, the US ambassador to Pakistan created more tension during a visit to the Pakistani-held part of Kashmir, which he called by its Pakistani name instead of the United Nations-approved name “Pakistan-administered Kashmir.”

    On Nov. 8 US State Department spokesman Ned Price lectured India on what are in its best interests:

    We’ve also been clear that now is not the time for business as usual with Russia, and it’s incumbent on countries around the world to do what they can to lessen those economic ties with Russia. That’s something that’s in the collective interest, but it’s also in the bilateral interest of countries around the world to end and certainly over the course of time to wean their dependence on Russian energy. There have been a number of countries that have learned the hard way of the fact that Russia is not a reliable source of energy. Russia is not a reliable supplier of security assistance. Russia is far from reliable in any realm. So it is not only in the interest of Ukraine, it is not only in the interest of the region, of the collective interests that India decrease its dependence on Russia over time, but it’s also in India’s own bilateral interest, given what we’ve seen from Russia.

    We’ll have to wait and see if the Indian people get the message because as of now the opposite is true.  India’s Observer Research Foundation released poll results on Nov. 2 that showed that 43 percent of Indians regarded Russia as their country’s most reliable partner, which was far ahead of the US at 27 percent.

    Washington would be hard pressed to explain how New Delhi scaling back its economic ties with Russia would be a good thing for India.

    Fuelled by a surge in import of oil and fertilizers, India’s bilateral trade with Russia has soared to an all-time high of $18.2 billion over the April-August period of this financial year, according to the latest data available with the Department of Commerce. That makes Russia India’s seventh biggest trading partner — up from its 25th position last year. The US, China, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Indonesia remain ahead of Russia.

    India, Iran, and Russia have also spent the past twenty years developing the International North-South Transport Corridor to increase trade between the countries, and it took on increased importance with the western sanctions on Moscow. From The LoadStar:

    RZD Logistics, a subsidiary of Russian railway monopoly RZD, has begun regular container train services from Moscow to Iran to serve growing trade with India by transloading.

    This is aimed at maximizing use of the alternative International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a Central Asia cross-border multimodal freight network helping the two strategic partners work around supply chain challenges created by western sanctions on Russia.

    The inland-ocean leg involves an estimated transit time of 35 days, compared with about 40 with previous traditional shipping, according to industry sources.

     

    In much the same way that US heavy-handedness is backfiring elsewhere, the pressure applied on India seems to only be encouraging New Delhi to find a way around the dollar. The Loadstar adds that the Reserve Bank of India is also implementing new regulatory guidelines to help exporters settle shipments in rupees, instead of US dollars that had run into sanctions-related bottlenecks:

     

    The Federation of Indian Export Organizations has also been pressing government leaders to extend the alternative currency method beyond Russian markets.

    “While the Russia-Ukraine war is a setback to our exports in the short run, we are looking to increase our exports to Russia once the rupee payment mechanism gets operationalised,” FIEO noted.

    While India has been benefitting from the discounted Russian crude, it also wants to maintain good ties with Moscow to avoid pushing Russia closer to China and potentially Pakistan, India’s biggest rivals in Asia.

    Pakistan is also now asking the Russian Trade Ministry to introduce a currency swap arrangement to strengthen economic ties between the two countries.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 11/13/2022 – 21:00

  • Self-Described Sex Symbol AOC Is "Absolutely" Afraid For Her Life
    Self-Described Sex Symbol AOC Is “Absolutely” Afraid For Her Life

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who insisted last year that “deranged sexual frustrations” underpin a “Republican fixation on me,” and who said she ‘thought she was going to die’ during the January 6 Capitol riot – despite being in a building across the street from the actual Capitol that day, now says she is “absolutely” afraid for her life.

    “I hesitate to walk my dog,” the 33-year-old New York congresswoman told CNN‘s Chris Wallace, adding that the attack on Paul Pelosi has only heightened her concern.

    When asked if she thinks her life is in danger, she replied: “Absolutely, I felt that my life has been in danger since the moment that I won my primary election in 2018,” adding “And it became especially intensified when I was first brought into Congress in 2019.”

    “It means when I wake up in the morning, I hesitate to walk my dog. It means when I come home, I have to ask my fiancé to come out to where my car is to walk me just from my car to my front door,” she continued, adding “It means that there’s just – a general disposition where you kind of feel like there’s almost a static electricity around you.”

    “And you’re just always just looking around, your head is just on a swivel, going to a restaurant, walking down the street.”I actually believe that it very much shaped my political decisions because I started to feel … that it was possible that I may not see the end of the year,” adding “I said I don’t know if I have time so I need to be as robust and urgent as possible to say what I need to say.”

    When asked if she still thinks the job is worth it, she replied: “

    She didn’t seen too afraid in July when she pretended to be handcuffed during a Roe vs. Wade protest.

     

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 11/13/2022 – 20:30

  • Exxon Mobil Makes First Oil Discovery In Angola In 20 Years
    Exxon Mobil Makes First Oil Discovery In Angola In 20 Years

    By Alex Kimani of OilPrice.com

    Over the past five years, the United States’ largest independent oil and gas company, Exxon Mobil, has mostly focused its exploratory activities in South America.

    Last month, the oil major announced that it had made two new discoveries at the Sailfin-1 and Yarrow-1 wells in the Stabroek block offshore Guyana, potentially adding more barrels to one of the most closely watched new oil discoveries. ExxonMobil has now made more than 30 discoveries on the block since 2015, and has ramped up offshore development and production at a pace that far exceeds the industry average.

    In contrast, Exxon’s exploits in Africa have been few and far between, with its last discovery on the continent coming nearly two decades ago. But Exxon has now announced that it has, together with its partners, discovered hydrocarbons in Block 15 off Angola in the Bavuca South prospect. This was the block’s 18th discovery, but the first since 2003. According to Exxon, the Valaris DS-9 drillship drilled the Bavuca South-1 well 365 km northwest from the coast at Luanda in 1,100 m (3,608 ft) of water, encountering 30 m (98 ft) of good-quality, hydrocarbon-bearing sandstone. Exxon owns a 36% interest in the block, with BP Exploration Angola (24%), ENI Angola Exploration (18%), Equinor Angola Block 15 (12%) and Sonangol P&P (10%) being its partners.

    Africa’s Oil & Gas Opportunities

    The last big fossil fuel discovery on the continent dates back to 2010 after Texas-based Anadarko Corp. (now a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum Corp.) and Italian energy giant Eni S.p.A. (NYSE: E) discovered approximately 180 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves, equivalent to ~29 billion barrels of oil, in Mozambique’s supergiant offshore basin of Rovuma, immediately catapulting the South African nation to a potential global LNG superpower. As you might expect, there was a stampede by oil and gas majors including ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies (NYSE: TTE), Shell (NYSE: SHEL), and China National Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: SNP)) coming in to stake their claims.  

    Unfortunately, widespread terrorism and the growing menace of piracy have constantly held back progress with Mozambique fast joining the league of African nations grappling with a ‘resource curse.’ The security crisis in the northern region of Cabo Delgado had displaced hundreds of thousands of people, created a humanitarian crisis and even forced TotalEnergies to declare force majeure on its massive natural gas investment in the country.But the tides have now turned, and Mozambique has managed to get its act together just in time. The country is now poised to ship its first cargo of liquefied natural gas (LNG) overseas in November at a time when Europe is desperately trying to cut energy ties with Russia. Experts have estimated that Mozambique can earn in excess of $100B from its natural gas assets over the next 30 years.

    BP has already inked a deal to buy all of the output from Eni’s $7 billion Coral-Sul project–capable of producing 3.4 million metric tons of LNG per year–for the next 20 years. Meanwhile, TotalEnergies has announced plans to resume its massive $20 billion project toward the end of the year, with the terminal expected to churn out 13.1 million tons of LNG annually. In addition, ExxonMobil says it will make a final decision for an even larger project in the near future. Meanwhile, the European Union has planned a five-fold increase in financial support to $15 million to fight militants near Mozambique’s gas projects. The EU has already pledged to provide the country’s army with an additional 45 million euros ($45 million) of financial support, and has so far given a SADC mission in the country 2.9 million euros of funding.

    On its part, Mozambique has laid out plans to set up a sovereign wealth fund toward the end of 2022, with 50% of the fund’s revenues to be reinjected into the fund while the remaining 50% will go to the government’s budget during the first 20 years of LNG production. Mozambique has the potential to move up the ladder and become a middle-income nation over the next two decades if it plays its cards right.

    Vijaya Ramachandran, director for energy and development at the Breakthrough Institute, says Germany and Europe should look to Africa, if they are serious about achieving energy security. Ramachandran notes that the continent is endowed with substantial natural gas reserves and new discoveries in the process of being tapped. Very little of Africa’s gas has been exploited, either for domestic consumption or export.

    Algeria is already an established major gas producer with substantial untapped reserves and is connected to Spain with several undersea pipelines. Germany and the EU are already working to expand pipeline capacity connecting Spain with France, from where more Algerian gas could flow to Germany and elsewhere. Libyan gas fields are connected by pipeline to Italy. In both Algeria and Libya, Europe should urgently help tap new fields and increase gas production. New pipelines under discussion currently focus on the Eastern Mediterranean Pipeline Project, which would bring gas from Israel’s offshore gas fields to Europe.

    But the biggest African sources lie south of the Sahara–including Nigeria, which has about a third of the continent’s reserves, and Tanzania. Senegal has recently discovered major offshore fields. 

    Ramachandra says Europe should not ignore these opportunities. For instance, the proposed Trans-Saharan pipeline will bring gas from Nigeria to Algeria via Niger. If the project is completed, the new pipeline will connect to the existing Trans-Mediterranean, Maghreb-Europe, Medgaz, and Galsi pipelines that supply Europe from transmission hubs on Algeria’s Mediterranean coast. The Trans-Saharan pipeline would be more than 2,500 miles long and could supply as much as 30 billion cubic meters of Nigerian gas to Europe per year–equivalent to about two-thirds of Germany’s 2021 imports from Russia (For comparison purposes, the Yamal-Europe pipeline, one of the major routes for Russian gas to Europe, is 2,607-mile-long). On its part, Nigeria is enthusiastic about exporting some of its 200 trillion-cubic-foot reserves of gas, with Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo arguing in favor of natural gas’ critical role, both as a relatively clean transition fuel and as a driver of economic development and foreign exchange earner.

    Unfortunately, the Trans-Saharan pipeline will likely take a decade or more to complete, and LNG shipments to Europe would bring quicker relief.

    Unfortunately, Europe’s biggest gas importer, Germany, has not built a single LNG import terminal as part of its  policy to make the country dependent on Russian gas and in turn make Russia more dependent on Germany. But there’s hope: Berlin has already renounced its old ways and says it will now build LNG infrastructure. 

    Luckily for Germany and other stranded EU nations, Ramachandran says LNG loading ports can be built reasonably quickly in Africa, with the Greater Tortue Ahmeyin field, an offshore gas deposit straddling the maritime border between Senegal and Mauritania, a prime example. When the field comes online next year, it will place the two west African nations among Africa’s top gas producers. Floating liquefaction plants above the offshore gas field produce, liquefy, store, and transfer the gas to LNG tankers that ship it directly to importing countries. While the initial production from this field will be small, it is slated to double in a few years, and the field sits within a larger basin of natural gas with substantially greater reserves.

    Elsewhere in Africa, too, gas production will continue to expand as projects in Tanzania, Mozambique, and other countries come online in the next few years.

    Developing a gas pipeline as big as the Trans-Saharan pipeline will likely present many challenges as it runs through regions plagued by conflict and insurgency. But these kinds of projects could alleviate Europe’s energy crisis while also helping Africa to develop and integrate economically.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 11/13/2022 – 20:00

  • Dozens Of Children Worked Slaughterhouse Graveyard Shifts According To Labor Department
    Dozens Of Children Worked Slaughterhouse Graveyard Shifts According To Labor Department

    A top sanitation company has been accused of employing at least 31 children to clean the killing floors of slaughterhouses during graveyard shifts – one as young as 13, according to the Department of Labor.

    PSSI employees at the Grand Island JBS plant.U.S. Department of Labor

    The company, Packers Sanitation Services, or PSSI (owned by Blackstone), is contracted to work at meatpacking facilities and slaughterhouses across the country. According to court documents filed Wednesday, the children were allegedly employed at three facilities in Nebraska and Minnesota, NBC News reports.

    The company employs over 17,000 employees at more than 700 locations across the country, according to PSSI’s website.

    The investigation found that minors cleaned the killing floors and various machines — including meat and bone cutting saws and a grinding machine — during the graveyard shifts, according to the complaint.

    PSSI employed at least a dozen 17-year-olds across the three slaughterhouses, fourteen 16-year-olds, three 15-year-olds, one 14-year-old and one 13-year-old, the complaint said. -NBC News

    According to the complaint, an Aug. 24 investigation was launched after law enforcement officials were tipped off that the company may be employing children. Search warrants were executed at two plants owned by food processor JBS USA in Grand Island, Nebraska and Worthington, Minnesota – and at a poultry processing plant in Minnesota.

    If true, the practice would violate the Fair Labor Standards Act, which prohibits employers from “oppressive child labor,” as well as minors from working in any type of hazardous employment, reads the complaint, which asks the Federal District Court of Nebraska to issue a temporary restraining order as well as a nationwide preliminary injunction against the company to stop it from employing minors while the Labor Department investigates.

    Initial evidence indicates the company may also employ more kids under similar conditions at 400 other sites across the country, in addition to the 31 minors employed at three sites that investigators already confirmed, according to the complaint.

    The court partially granted the Department of Labor’s request in a Thursday filing. That order requires PSSI to “immediately cease and refrain from employing oppressive child labor” and comply with the Department of Labor’s investigation. -NBC News

    According to PSSI, the company “has an absolute company-wide prohibition against the employment of anyone under the age of 18 and zero tolerance for any violation of that policy —period,” with a spokesperson adding that the company mandates the use of the federal E-Verify system when it comes to new hires, “as well as extensive training, document verification, biometrics, and multiple layers of audits.”

    “While rogue individuals could of course seek to engage in fraud or identity theft, we are confident in our company’s strict compliance policies and will defend ourselves vigorously against these claims.”

    Company executives were reportedly “surprised” by the filing, after PSSI says it “has been cooperating with their inquiry, producing extensive documents and responses.”

    Interviews with the kids — which were conducted in Spanish, their first language, according to the complaint — revealed that several children began their shifts at the facilities at 11 p.m. and worked until 5, 6 or 7 a.m. Some worked up to six or seven days a week.

    School records showed that one 14-year-old, who worked at the Grand Island facility from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. five to six days a week, from December 2021 to this past April, fell asleep in class and missed school after suffering injuries from chemical burns. At least two other minors also suffered chemical burns, the complaint states. -NBC News

    “While Wage and Hour is continuing to pour over records to identify such children, it is slow, painstaking work. Yet, the children working overnight on the kill floor of these slaughterhouses cannot wait,” states the complaint.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 11/13/2022 – 19:30

  • "We're Facing The Collapse Of Everything" – Michael Snyder Warns Of "The End-Times"
    “We’re Facing The Collapse Of Everything” – Michael Snyder Warns Of “The End-Times”

    Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

    Journalist and popular author Michael Snyder says in his new book we are in “End Times.”  Few Christians would disagree.  So, where are we and what are we facing? 

    Snyder explains, “I believe we are living at the very end of a timeline.  I believe Jesus is coming back soon… The Bible describes the End Times, the time just before Jesus comes back, as the most chaotic in all of human history.  In fact, Jesus told us there has never been a time like this before, and there will never be a time like this again.  Things are eventually going to get so bad that it is going to be the worst times in all of human history.  I also believe it will be the best time for the people of God.  There is no other time in human history that I would have rather lived than right now… God put you here, if you are watching, here for a reason.  God put you here with a purpose and a destiny and a job for your to do.  If you understand that, you will be really excited about the future, even though things will be chaotic and wild. . . . Jesus said the time just before his return there would be wars and rumors of wars.  A couple of years ago, I came on your program and wrote a book and said there is going to be a war with Russia.  At the time, nobody was thinking about a war with Russia.  People told me, Michael you are crazy.  Of course, now we have a war with Russia. . . . We are getting dangerously close to a nuclear conflict.”

    Snyder also mentions war with China, war between North and South Korea and war between Iran and Israel that are all boiling up right now, all at the same time.

    Snyder also brings up starvation and famines talked about in the Bible that also point to “End Times.”  Snyder explains,

    “There have been droughts in different areas in the past.  We are seeing tremendous droughts affecting agricultural production all over the northern hemisphere.  Meanwhile, in Ukraine, the bread basket of the world, we have seen agricultural products restricted because of war with Russia.  We have this perfect storm for agricultural production.

    Meanwhile, we have an energy crisis that is worse than any of us have ever seen.  It continues to get worse.  The price of natural gas has gone haywire because of this war between Russia and NATO.  Now, two thirds of all fertilizer production have already been shut down in Europe because the price of natural gas, and that is going to affect agricultural production next year. People need to realize that if we could not use fertilizer at all, we could not feed about half the world.  Half the world would instantly starve if there was no fertilizer used.  So, what we are facing is big-time global food shortages in 2023. . . . It’s going to be even worse even beyond that.  These things are going to intensify.”

    On the economy, Snyder thinks the Fed will keep raising rates, and the real estate market will tank even further along with the economy.  Snyder predicts,

    “I don’t think the so-called pivot is close… I think they are going to keep raising rates for now, and that is really bad news for real estate and for the economy because the economy is already being crushed right now.  We are already seeing a massive slowdown all over the economy. . . .I think the Federal Reserve is determined to get inflation down, but eventually they will be forced to pivot sometime in 2023.”

    Snyder also says, “Basically, we are facing the collapse of everything…”

    ”  We are already seeing mass extinctions all over the globe.  One study showed 32,000 species has declined by 69% over the last 50 years.  So, we are already seeing mass extinctions, and they are going to accelerate in the years ahead.  Natural disasters, wars and rumors of wars, pestilences and all the things we have been talking about are going to combine and create this perfect storm.  People will see their lives crumble.  Their lives, careers, what they planned for their future, their lives are going to crumble.  People are going to plunge into depression and despair, and they are going to see no hope.  Society will melt down all around them, and they won’t see any hope for the future.  If you want hope for the future, you need God.  You need the Lord Jesus Christ, not just to get you through what we are facing . . . but what we have in the end.  I read the book, and we win in the end.  We get to be with Jesus for all of eternity, and that is a really long time.  That is the most important thing beyond physical preparation.”

    In closing, Snyder says, “Jesus warned us about all these things in advance so we wouldn’t be afraid.  We can look forward with courage.  Yes, bad things will happen, but it is when times are the darkest the greatest heroes are needed.  In the years that are coming, you have the chance to be a light and make a difference.  If you wanted to live in Biblical times, you are going to have that opportunity.  You are going to have a chance to do a tremendous amount of good in this world if you understand what is happening and be prepared in advance if you take advantage of this, that you rise up and be the people God created you to be.”

    There is much more in the 43-minute interview.

    Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Michael Snyder, author of the new book “End Times.” 

    *  *  *

    To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

    Besides TheEconomicCollapseblog.com, Michael Snyder has another free website:  TheMostImportantNews.com. Michael Snyder has also published six popular books. The latest is called “End Times” You can find all of Michael Snyder’s books by clicking here.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 11/13/2022 – 19:00

  • Goldman, TS Lombard Confirm Fed Inflation Target Hike Now Inevitable
    Goldman, TS Lombard Confirm Fed Inflation Target Hike Now Inevitable

    For much of the past year (and certainly at the time, more than a year ago, when the so-called experts, central bankers and macrotourists were still yapping about “transitory inflation” and other things they were wrong about and do not understand), we were warning that at some point the Fed will realize that it is simply impossible to contain supply-driven inflation through stubborn rate hikes which instead would lead to a dire alternative – millions in mass layoffs and newly unemployed workers – and will revise its 2% inflation target higher, a move which will send every risk asset, from high-beta trash and meme stonks, to blue-chip icons, to bitcoin and cryptos, limit up.

    To remind readers of this coming phase shift, we most recently warned in June that “at some point Fed will concede it has no control over supply. That’s when we will start getting leaks of raising the inflation target“…

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    Well, it turns out that we were right, and not just about the coming mass layoffs…

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    … but also about the inflation target leaks. But first, lets back up a bit.

    A little over one year after nobody expected the Fed would be hiking rates like a drunken sailor until some time in late 2023 or 2024, it has now become fashionable to not only predict that the Fed will keep hiking rates at every FOMC meeting and at the fastest pace since the near-hyperinflation of the 1980s, but that the central bank will somehow manage to avoid a hard landing (i.e., the hiking cycle won’t end in a recession or depression), even though every single Fed tightening cycle since 1913 has ended in disaster.

    An example of this was the statement by former Fed vice chair (and PIMCO’s “twice-revolving door”) Rich Clarida, who told CNBC that “failure is not an option for Jay Powell,” adding that “I think they’re going to 4% hell or high water. Until inflation comes down a lot, the Fed is really a single mandate central bank.”

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    Of course, if one could hike rates in a vacuum that could work – after all, Clarida himself, who admits he got this year’s soaring inflation dead wrong when he was still a daytrading god and part oft he Fed in 2021, said that the Fed may as well have just one mandate, namely to tame inflation. But what so few seem to recall is that the Fed is “hiking to spark a recession“, or as CNBC’s Steve Liesman put it, there is no such thing as “immaculate rate hikes” meaning that rate hikes have dire tradeoffs in other sectors of the economy. In other words, if the Fed’s intention is to spark a recession, it will spark a recession… leading to millions of Americans losing their jobs, something which even Elizabeth Warren appears to have grasped.

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    Yet due to the recency bias of Biden’s trillions in stimmies, and a world where workers – whether working form home or the office – have virtually all the leverage, few today can conceive of a world where inflation is zero or negative and is instead replaced with millions in unemployed workers, an outcome which one could (or rather should) say is even worse for the ruling democrats than roaring inflation. At least, with runaway prices, most people have a job and their wages are rising (at least nominally, if not in real terms).

    However, the higher rates rise, the closer we get to that inevitable moment when the BLS – unable to kick the can any longer – admits what has been obvious to so many for months: the US is facing a labor crisis of epic proportions with millions and millions of mass layoffs. And for those to whom it is not yet obvious, we urge readers to re-read a WSJ op-ed published two months ago by none other than Jason Furman, who was Obama top Economic Adviser from 2013-2017 and currently economic policy professor at Harvard.

    In “Inflation and the Scariest Economics Paper of 2022“, Furman summarized a paper written by Johns Hopkins macroeconomist Larry Ball with co-authors Daniel Leigh and Prachi Mishra of the International Monetary Fund released by the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, whose conclusion is as follows: “To bring price increases down to 2%, we may need to tolerate unemployment of 6.5% for two years.“

    In other words, just as we said, inflation – much of which is supply-driven, which the Fed can do nothing about – will force the Fed to crush the economy by keeping rates for much longer, the result of which will be many millions in unemployed workers, or as Furman puts it, the paper “shows why the Federal Reserve will likely need to maintain its war on inflation, even if unemployment continues to rise.”

    What is more remarkable about Furman’s read of the economist paper is that in addition to its primary theme (the lack of labor slack, or labor tightness, is responsible for some 3.4% of underlying inflation in July 2022), the paper admits precisely what we have been saying all along – that the Fed can’t control supply-side variables:

    The paper also argues, convincingly in my view, for a different measure of underlying inflation. Fluctuations in energy and food prices are generally due to factors outside the control of macroeconomic policy makers. Geopolitics and weather have elevated the inflation rate in recent years. Plunging gasoline prices are temporarily lowering the inflation rate now. That’s why economists since the 1970s have focused on “core” inflation, which excludes food and energy.

    But food and energy aren’t the only things people buy that are subject to supply-side volatility. Prices of new and used cars, for example, have gyrated over the past two years for reasons that are mostly unrelated to the strength of the overall economy. Both regular and core inflation are based on taking averages of price increases and can be distorted by large changes in outlier categories. The median inflation rate calculated by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland drops outliers to remove these distortions.

    According to Furman, median inflation – which is a statistically better measure of the underlying inflation that policy makers can actually control – is well above the Fed’s preferred headline inflation print and still shows little signs of moderating and has run at a 6.3% annual rate in the last three months. But the “scariest” part of the new paper, Furman reveals, is when the authors use their model to forecast the unemployment rate that would be needed to bring inflation down to the Fed’s 2% target. He explains why this is so scary:

    The authors present a range of scenarios, so I ran their model using my own assumptions…  Under these assumptions, which are more optimistic than the authors’ midpoint scenario, if the unemployment rate follows the Federal Open Market Committee’s median economic projection from June that the unemployment will rise to only 4.1%, then the inflation rate will still be about 4% at the end of 2025. To get the inflation rate to the Fed’s target of 2% by then would require an average unemployment rate of about 6.5% in 2023 and 2024.

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    Where is unemployment now: it’s 3.7% (6.059 million unemployed workers vs 164.753 million civilian labor force). This matters, because according to one of the most erudite economist Democrats, by the end of the Biden admin in 2024, the unemployment will have to soar to 6.5% for inflation to plunge to the Fed’s historical target of 2.0%

    What does this mean in absolute numbers? Assuming a modest increase in the US labor force, a 6.5% unemployment rate in 2024 would translate into no less than 10.8 million unemployed workers, an 80% increase from the 6 million today!

    Still think that politicians – and especially Democrats – will sit quietly and blindly ignore how high the Fed is hiking rates if it means that to normalize inflation back to 2% it means nearly doubling the number of unemployed Americans (and a crushing recession to boot). Spoiler alert: no, they won’t, and this may be one of the very rare occasions when Elizabeth Warren is actually right to worry about what the coming mass layoff wave means for Democrats… and the 2024 presidential election.

    So what should the Fed do? Well, according to Furman, the Fed has four options:

    1. First, place more emphasis on the ratio of job openings to unemployment and median inflation as it assesses the tightness of labor markets and the underlying rate of inflation.
    2. Second, the new paper shows how much easier it will be to tackle inflation if expectations remain under control. The Fed should follow up on Chairman Jerome Powell’s tough talk at Jackson Hole with meaningful action such as a 75-basis-point increase at the next meeting.
    3. Third, be prepared to accept the unemployment rate rising above 5% if inflation is still out of control.

    While we doubt #3 is actionable, what is more remarkable is Furman’s final proposal: it’s the one that, like the Dude’s proverbial rug, ties the room together and sets the stage for what is coming:

    Finally, stabilizing at a 3% inflation rate is probably healthier for the economy than stabilizing at 2%—so while fighting inflation should be the central bank’s only focus today, at some point the Fed should reassess the meaning of victory in that struggle.

    And just in case his WSJ proves too complicated for some mainstream experts and economists, here it is in truncated, twitter format:

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    And there you have it: remember what we said on June 21: “At some point Fed will concede it has no control over supply. That’s when we will start getting leaks of raising the inflation target.” Well… there it is.

    We first brought all this up more than two months ago, on Sept 10, and said “that while mainstream economists and the market may require quite a few months to grasp what is coming, it is the only way out of a crisis of commodities – as Zoltan Pozsar has repeatedly and correctly put it – and which central banks have no control over, and thus will have to move not only the goalposts but the entire football field to avoid a social revolt or something even scarier.”

    * * *

    Well, it’s now a “few months” later, and we are delighted to note that our June 21 prediction that “At some point Fed will concede it has no control over supply. That’s when we will start getting leaks of raising the inflation target” is becoming more and more accurate by the day.

    Consider the November 4 note from TS Lombard chief strategist Steven Blitz discussing “October US Employment” (available to pro subscribers in the usual place), in which contrary to widespread consensus (especially after the weaker than expected CPI print), Blitz says that the Fed remains on pace for a 75bps rate hike.

    But while we will let readers parse his logic for why the dovish view is due for another disappointment, we will highlight his concluding paragraph in which he makes precisely the point we h

    In the end, a recession is pretty much baked in by what the Fed has done, signalled, and will do. The overall imbalance between the supply and demand for labor is too much of a driver of inflation, through wages and, in turn, services ex shelter, for the Fed to stop now and say they have done enough. Powell, in fact, was very clear there is much more to do. This does not negate the  fact that the coming downcycle will greatly impact those that AIT [average inflation targeting] was seeking to protect and are only just getting closer to even in terms of employment. None of this changes the Fed’s coming actions, what this coming hit to employment does mean is that the political cycle for the Fed is about to get a lot hotter – from all sides. This is one reason why I have long believed, as have many others, that the Fed ultimately bails and raises the inflation target to 3%. Powell does not have the same license to keep unemployment high and real growth low for an extended period as did Volcker (more so in retrospect than at the time). My guess is, Powell knows that.

    Much more in the full must-read note available to pro subs.

    But while the opinions of Furman and Blitz are notable, they are hardly (with all due respect) critical thought-leaders for US policy. Goldman Sachs, on the other hand, is. Which is why we were shocked when the vampire squid this weekend approached the topic aggressively, making it clear that an inflation target increase is no longer a matter of if but when.

    While pro subscriber have access to the full note, we will excerpt some of the big highlights below, confirming that the debate about the coming inflation target raise is in its advanced stages:

    The inflation target level debate

    In the past few months, markets have been gyrating wildly, with views bifurcating along the paths of soft vs hard landing expectations for 2023. The moderation in the October core inflation print is an important landmark as it reduces the risk of the most adverse sticky and high inflation (6-10%) scenario which leaves the G10 central banks no other option but to crush demand.

    How does 3.5-5% inflation allow for policy scenario optionality? Given that most would agree that a fast reduction in inflation to 2% is unlikely we can now have a debate whether raising the G10 inflation target to the 3-4% range is more optimal for reasons of maintaining employment levels or public debt sustainability than the 2% goal which would not be possible if inflation was sticky in the 6-10% range. (see “To keep unemployment low, central banks should plan to raise inflation target” by J Gagnon).

    The premise of this debate (and we mean debate by market participants and not, or at least not yet, by central bankers) is that the shift in the global supply curve to the right (de-globalization / underinvestment / tariffs and sanctions) has probably moved the saddle point of the supply curve defining the inflation level at potential output from 2% to the 3.5-5% range. (see diagram on slide 3).

    If this is the case, slowing the economy to potential will not satisfy the 2% inflation target. As the supply curve flattens at negative output gap levels, the output and social cost of bringing inflation to 2% increases disproportionately, creating the political context for the inflation target level revision debate.

    Goldman next lays out the dilemma facing politicians and central banks in no uncertain terms: keep the inflation target unchanged and suffer economic and market devastation, or raise it and enjoy another (however brief) Golden Age. Take a wild guess which option politicians whose careers are measured in “next four year” increments will pick:

    Our very stylized global macro financial framework sees scope for a significant divergence in the growth/inflation/fiscal outcomes in 2023 based on the level of the front end real rates (1y fwd rate futures – 5y BEI) which will be defined by the G10 central banks’ adherence to or departure from the 2% inflation target. If front end real rates are significantly lower from here (ie G10 CBs signal a pause in Q1-23, and break-evens go up meaningfully with the CBs remaining on hold) we see:

    • real growth rebounding,
    • G10 inflation moderating to 3.5-5.0 range allowing for ongoing fiscal consolidation and
    • reduction in public debt/GDP levels,
    • equities rallying,
    • weaker dollar,
    • credit spreads tightening and capital flows returning to EM assets

    If front end real rates keep tightening from here (G10 CBs keep hiking until the 2% core inflation looks clearly within reach with the first indication being much higher Fed dots for 2023 in Dec) we see:

    • real growth collapsing in H1-23,
    • inflation reaching but also possibly undershooting the 2% target and the fiscal position deteriorating with public debt / GDP ratios going higher.
    • The current challenging environment for risky assets will persist in this environment until policy turns for recession stabilization.

    There’s more in the full must-read GS note (also available to pro subs), but that, in a nutshell, is the simple choice that is now being actively discussed behind closed doors at various G7/G20 and BIS/Tower of Basel meetings until the inevitable decision is made.

    Professional subs can find much more on this arguably most important for the future of market topic here and here.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 11/13/2022 – 18:30

  • "Hints Of Many Crises – Lehman, Enron, MF Global – But No Lender Of Last Resort… Like Banking In The Late-1800s"
    “Hints Of Many Crises – Lehman, Enron, MF Global – But No Lender Of Last Resort… Like Banking In The Late-1800s”

    By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

    “Keep me posted when anything material pops up,” I told our team, scanning Twitter feeds for developments in the unfolding FTX drama, everything moving fast. “This is unlike anything I’ve seen in my 33yrs of doing this,” I said. “It has hints of many crises – Lehman, Enron, Madoff, MF Global – but moving at light speed with no lender of last resort. It’s like banking in the late-1800s.” We had no exposure to FTX or its token FTT, avoiding each for different reasons, intuitive/qualitative/quantitative risk management at work.

    “This smells like the kind of thing that happens toward the bottom. Near the end. This is the kind of catalyst that ushers in the capitulation, the flush, that then leads to the next stage we’ve been building for: the first regulated market cycle in digital assets.”

    * * *

    “There was no way US policymakers were going to relax regulation to accommodate new technology,” said The Chairman, repeating advice he’s shared for a couple years, helping guide me through the innovation maze.

    “If you want to introduce new technology into financial markets, you need to start with the premise that it performs the regulatory functions at least as well as the current technology,” he continued. FTX was imploding in the Bahamas, the crypto market’s third largest exchange collapsing in on itself, crypto markets in free fall.

    “And only with that condition satisfied will you be able to capture the efficiencies these new technologies represent.” Creative destruction sounds great in a sentence, though less so when you live it, and this makes navigating change so interesting, worthy, profitable.

    “With the FTX crisis following the Three Arrows collapse, Celsius, Luna and the others, this perspective will become a regulatory reality,” said The Chairman. “And the question for the industry and the regulators today is how do we transition from where we now are to a place where tokenization is consistent with the fundamental principles of sound financial regulation,” he said. “Those principles are:

    1. liquidity transformation needs prudential regulation

    2. customer assets need to be segregated and accessible, and

    3. leverage of all forms needs to be limited and commensurate with liquidity in times of stress

    “And it is fundamental that you can’t sell financial products to retail customers on a caveat emptor basis; transparency and a level informational playing field are necessary,” the Chairman added.

    “The US has a choice now, and there is only one to make. Regulators must incrementally accommodate crypto products, making way for the products, actors, and services that comply with these fundamental principles while keeping out the others. Identifying what is in and what is out has been bogged down in semantics and in the search for regulatory gaps,” he said.

    “The key financial regulators should collectively move forward with the identification of compliant and non-compliant products as well as paths to compliance for those that can get there. And wherever the US draws the line, people will be disappointed. That’s okay. That’s part of bringing discipline to activities that are out of step. What’s not okay is to do nothing and cede many of the opportunities that crypto represents to our competitors and adversaries, while subjecting our retail investors to the risk.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 11/13/2022 – 18:00

  • Bang Bros Offers Miami Heat $10 Million For Stadium Naming Rights After FTX Collapse
    Bang Bros Offers Miami Heat $10 Million For Stadium Naming Rights After FTX Collapse

    The Miami Heat “terminated” all business relations with the bankrupted FTX crypto exchange, despite signing a two-decade $135 million deal last year to name the sports stadium “FTX Arena.” The team announced Friday they’re searching for a new stadium sponsorship partner, while the adult company “Bang Bros” tweeted out their offer to name the area “Bang Bros Center (The BBC)” still stands. 

    “The reports about FTX and its affiliates are extremely disappointing,” Miami Heat tweeted out in a statement, adding, “Miami-Dade County and the Miami HEAT are immediately taking action to terminate our business relationships with FTX. We will be working together to find a new naming rights partner for the arena.”

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

    With the stadium naming rights in the air, Bang Bros tweeted its $10 million offer for the naming rights still stands. 

    In a tweet, the adult film company posted two images of the stadium, one with “Bankrupt” across the top picture that also said “OOOPS!” And right below it, a photoshopped Bang Bros’ logo was placed on top of the stadium, with a caption that read, “BUT HEY! OUR OFFER STANDS! … WE PROMISE LESS PEOPLE WILL GET F@$%ED!”

    In another tweet, the company said their “offer still stands to buy the naming rights” of the stadium.

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

    Bang Bros, based out of Miami, tried to purchase the stadium’s naming rights in 2019. Here’s what they said in a tweet back then:

    “We’ve officially Submitted our $10,000,000 bid for the naming rights to the Miami Heat Arena. We wish to thank American Airlines for their past support of the HEAT. We intend to change the name to the BangBros Center aka ‘The BBC.'”

    Twitter users had a field day with Bang Bros’ tweets:

    “Well BangBros arena it is smh this is where we are in the movie Idiocracy thx a lot @SBF_FTX a reality star for president, was the beginning of this alternate time, I think & it appears it can actually keep getting worse this is crypto 2022 god damn who would thunk it in 2013,” one Twitter user said. 

    “After the fraud and disaster that was FTX, they should accept this,” another person said. 

    “Should’ve gone with Bang Bros back in 2019. Everyone knew FTX was a house of cards. Bang Bros won’t be filing for bankruptcy any time soon,” someone else said. 

    “This only has a chance of happening because its Florida,” a Twitter user said.  

     

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 11/13/2022 – 17:30

  • "Please Tell Me What I'm Missing Here": Swalwell Appears To Embrace Medical & Legal Malpractice Over Parental Rights
    “Please Tell Me What I’m Missing Here”: Swalwell Appears To Embrace Medical & Legal Malpractice Over Parental Rights

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Parental rights are becoming one of the defining issues for 2024. Building from Glenn Youngkin’s 2021 gubernatorial victory in Virginia, school boards races and educational initiatives have become some of the most fiercely contested areas on local and state ballots. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Cal.) weighed in this week into the area with a curious attack on parents demanding more say in the education of their children.

    The California Democrat insisted that it is akin to “Putting patients in charge of their own surgeries? Clients in charge of their own trials?” These were curious analogies to draw since patients and clients are in charge of the key decisions in their surgeries and trials. What Rep. Swalwell is missing is called informed consent.

    Swalwell is a lawyer with a degree from the University of Maryland Law School.

    He took to Twitter to lash out against parents who dare challenge aspects of the education of their children. The tweet came in response to South Carolina GOP Sen. Tim Scott saying that Republicans intend to put “parents back in charge of their kids’ education.” Swalwell declared such a notion to be ridiculous:

    “Please tell me what I’m missing here. What are we doing next? Putting patients in charge of their own surgeries? Clients in charge of their own trials? When did we stop trusting experts. … This is so stupid.”

    As a threshold matter, it is important to note that parents have always had a say in the education of their children. School boards are invested with the authority to dictate changes in curriculum and teaching policies.

    Indeed, in Meyer v. Nebraska (1925), the Court struck down a state law prohibiting instruction in German. In the decision, it stressed that parental roles in the education of their children was an essential part of the protections under the Constitution’s Due Process Clause: the right “to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”

    Putting that historical and constitutional context aside, Rep. Swalwell is equally mistaken in his analogies to the medical and legal professions. In reality, patients and clients do control major decisions over their cases. Since he asked for assistance, let’s deal with each in turn.

    Patients and Medical Consent

    From the outset, the argument that patients do not make the key decisions on their own medical care is a bit incongruous given Swalwell’s support for abortion rights without any limits. (Swalwell was widely criticized for a campaign commercial showing a women being arrested at a restaurant by police with guns drawn under suspicion of having an abortion). While women clearly consult with doctors, the whole premise of “my body, my choice” is that these decisions are left to women, not the doctors or the state.

    Parents are asking for consent in the basic goals, material, and methods used the education of their children.

    American torts have long required consent in torts. Indeed, what Swalwell seemed to suggest would be battery for doctors to make the key decisions over surgical goals or purposes. Indeed, even when doctors secured consent to operate on one ear, it was still considered battery when they decided in the operation to address the other ear in the best interests of the patient. Mohr v. Williams, 104 N.W. 12 (Minn. 1905).

    In Canterbury v. Spence, 464 F.2d 772, 784, the court observed:

    “Nor can we ignore the fact that to bind the disclosure obligation to medical usage is to arrogate the decision on revelation to the physician alone. Respect for the patient’s right of self-determination on particular therapy demands a standard set by law for physicians rather than one which physicians may or may not impose upon themselves.”

    Thus, doctors in the United States do have to secure the consent of patients in what they intend to do in surgeries or other medical procedures. (There are narrow exceptions such things as “substituted consent” or  emergencies that do not apply here).

    Ironically, California has one of the strongest patient-based consent rules. As the California Supreme Court stated in Cobbs v. Grant, 8 Cal. 3d 229 (1972):

    “Unlimited discretion in the physician is irreconcilable with the basic right of the patient to make the ultimate informed decision regarding the course of treatment to which he knowledgeably consents to be subjected.

    A medical doctor, being the expert, appreciates the risks inherent in the procedure he is prescribing, the risks of a decision not to undergo the treatment, and the probability of a successful outcome of the treatment. But once this information has been disclosed, that aspect of the doctor’s expert function has been performed. The weighing of these risks against the individual subjective fears and hopes of the patient is not an expert skill. Such evaluation and decision is a nonmedical judgment reserved to the patient alone.”

    While obviously a patient cannot direct an operation itself, the doctor is expected to explain and secure the consent of the patient in what a surgery will attempt and how it will be accomplished. That is precisely what parents are demanding in looking at the subjects and books being taught in school. Moreover, that is precisely the role of school boards, which has historically exercised concurrent authority over the schools with the teachers hired under the school board-approved budgets.

    Clients and Legal Consent

    Swalwell is also wrong on suggesting that clients are not in charge of their own trials. Not only must attorneys secure the consent of their clients on what will be argued in trial but they can be removed by their clients for failure to adequately represent their interests. It would be malpractice for a lawyer to tell a client, as suggested by Swalwell, that they do not control the major decisions in their own cases.

    Ironically, the informed consent rule in the law has been traced to its rise in the medical profession. It was adopted by bars to give clients the right to direct their own legal affairs. MODEL RULES OF PROF’L CONDUCT r. 1.7 cmt. 18. “Informed consent” is a defined term in the Model Rules. See id. r. 1.0(e) (defining “informed consent” as the “agreement by a person to a proposed course of conduct after the lawyer has communicated adequate information and explanation about the material risks of and reasonably available alternatives to the proposed course of conduct”).

    Obviously, lawyers must follow their own ethical and professional judgment in trials and tactical choices are generally left up to the lawyers. However, the main arguments and objectives of the trial remain for the client to decide. As one court explained in Metrick v. Chatz, 639 N.E.2d 198, 653-54 (Ill. App. Ct. 1994):

    “An attorney’s liability for failing to advise a client of the foreseeable risks attendant to a given course of legal action is not predicated upon the impropriety of the recommended course of action; rather, it is predicated upon the client’s exposure to a risk that the client did not knowingly and voluntarily assume. Consequently, to establish the element of proximate cause, it is necessary for the client to both plead and prove that had the undisclosed risk been known, he or she would not have accepted the risk and consented to the recommended course of action.”

    Much like the claim of parents, clients demand the right to reject a plan for trial and the arguments or means to be used at trial. This right of consent is ongoing and can be exercised at any point in the litigation.

    Informed Consent

    Of course, the key to informed consent is that parents are giving the information needed to secure their consent. School districts have been resisting such disclosures and pushing back on parental opposition to major curriculum or policy decisions.

    I have previously stated my opposition to micromanaging classrooms. However, in public education, citizens vote to elect board members to be accountable for educational priorities and policies. In private education, citizens vote with their tuition dollars as well as through school boards. Most of these controversies involve major educational policies ranging from transgender participation on teams to the lesson plans viewed by many as extreme or political. Those policies go to the issues of educational priorities that have historically been subject to school board authority.

    In other words, “what is missing here” is that Rep. Swalwell’s interpretation could constitute both medical and legal malpractice. It may also constitute political malpractice as both parties now careen toward the 2024 elections.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 11/13/2022 – 17:00

  • Chappelle Talks Trump, Kanye, And "Observably Stupid" Herschel Walker In Viral SNL Monologue
    Chappelle Talks Trump, Kanye, And “Observably Stupid” Herschel Walker In Viral SNL Monologue

    Dave Chappelle has once again managed to trigger just about everyone during his opening monologue as host of Saturday Night Live this weekend – including SNL staff members who reportedly extremely unhappy about his appearance.

    Commentary ranged from Kanye West, Jews, and why Donald Trump won the 2016 US election.

    Kicking things off, Chappelle read a note which said: “I denounce antisemitism in all its forms, and I stand with my friends in the Jewish community,” adding “And that, Kanye, is how you buy yourself some time.”

    He then noted how Kanye, who now goes by Ye, ‘lost $1.5 billion in one day’ after speaking against Jews.

    “I learned that there are two words in the English language that you should never say together in sequence. And those words are ‘the’ and ‘Jews,'” said Chappelle, who later said that it’s a game of ‘perception’ – “If they’re black, it’s a gang. If they’re Italian, it’s a mob. If they’re Jewish, it’s a coincidence and you should neeeever speak about it.”

    He then turned his attention to politics, which included saying that Herschel Walker is “observably stupid,” and then explaining why Trump won the 2016 US election.

    “He’s very loved. And the reason he’s loved is because people in Ohio have never seen somebody like him,” said Chappelle, who then described how the billionaire captured hearts and minds by admitting “I know the system is rigged because I use it.”

    Of course, Chappelle then suggested that Trump was colluding with Russia (as opposed to the Obama DOJ, FBI, and Hillary Clinton setting him up), and suggested that Melania Trump “looks like the type of chick that James Bond would smash but not trust.” So he either sold out on that one or is woefully under-informed.

    Unsurprisingly, the left was outraged:

    As for the actual show itself, a “House of the Dragon’ parody appears to have been the most popular:

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 11/13/2022 – 16:55

  • Ghislaine Maxwell Befriends Double-Murderer, Becomes Prison Darling
    Ghislaine Maxwell Befriends Double-Murderer, Becomes Prison Darling

    Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has apparently settled into her new life as inmate #02879-509 at the Federal Correctional Institute in Tallahasse, where she has cultivated a clique of influential inmates who ensure her protection, the Daily Mail reports, citing an inside source.

    Maxwell’s day begins at 5am, when inmates are woken up daily. Before lights out at 9pm she often heads outside for a leisurely walk around the athletics track

    While the notorious madam reportedly threw a tantrums when she arrived – refusing to eat and complaining about how her clothes fit, she appears to be settling in – making friends with notorious double-murderer Narcy Novak, a 65-year-old Florida woman serving life without parole for hiring a hitman to murder her hotelier husband Ben Novak Jr. and his elderly mother Bernice in an attempt to control the family estate.

    Maxwell, 60, also hangs out with con woman Linda Morrow, who helped her plastic surgeon husband scam $44 million out of insurers by classifying cosmetic procedures as medical necessities. After fleeing to Israel, the now-70-year-old Coachella Valley native was deported to the US in 2019 and jailed for 8 years.

    Maxwell is popular figure among her fellow inmates and has even befriended infamous double killer Narcy Novack (left) and con-woman Linda Morrow, sources say 

    “Ghislaine cried a lot when she first arrived. You could hear her yelling that everything was inhumane. She walked around like a zombie, her eyes were always puffy,” said one recently released prisoner. “She sat down next to me in the canteen, took one look at her food and declared “I can’t eat this”, and stormed off.”

    “Now she has some friends and is eating more. She’s bubbly, you see her smiling. She makes a point of saying good morning. You can see she’s visibly more comfortable.”

    Maxwell, who works just six hours a day in the prison library, spends her time strolling around the manicured grounds of the prison, where she’s got daily access to an array of sporting facilities. One Daily Mail journalist spotted Maxwell going for an hour-long jog in the Florida sunshine.

    Maxwell often completes eight to ten laps of the running track before heading to her job at the prison’s library and education center where she works from 7am to 10am

    A typical day for Maxwell begins at 5am, when inmates are woken and served breakfast on a Styrofoam tray – typically grits, oatmeal or toast. She then often does eight to ten laps around the track before heading to the prison’s library and education center, where she works from 7am to 10am.Then, after lunch, she works from noon to 3pm, after which she can swap her standard prison uniform for gray ‘personal athletic clothing’ purchased from the commissary, the Mail reports.

    She spends her free time taking pottery and crochet classes – the latter of which are taught by Novak.

    “She and Linda are learning crochet and cross stitch with Novak. Ghislaine also likes pottery. She’s outside on the track most days but the other ladies generally stay inside,” said the insider, adding “So far there have been no complaints about her. She’s polite, she’s well behaved, she goes to work on time every day.”

    “If you ask her for a book in the library she will find whatever it is you need. The general opinion of her is that she’s a nice lady.”

    Then, before the 9pm lights out, Maxwell will often take a “leisurely walk around the athletics track, where she was photographed this week by DailyMail.com enjoying a twilight stroll.”

    Insiders say Maxwell has used her privileged upbringing to boost her popularity among the 755-strong female population – drawing on her Oxford University education and literary savviness to recommend novels and history books.

    In fact, cell-mates in Unit B South think the British heiress is so smart they recently nominated Maxwell to represent them in a checkers competition – part of an Olympics-style ‘battle of the units’ tournament, held annually.

    ‘There is everything from kickball to hula-hoop but she was selected for the 40 and over checkers,’ dished an insider.

    ‘You want the best players and she has a reputation for being smart. The winning unit gets a really good meal, chicken wings, pizza, that sort of thing. It’s much better than the usual food.

    ‘It’s a big deal. Nobody cares what you’re in for so long as you win.’ -Daily Mail

    Maxwell was originally supposed to serve her 20-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institute (FCI) Danbury, the Connecticut prison that inspired Orange is the New Black, but was instead shipped 1,000 miles south in late July to Florida.

    FCI Tallahasse, where she will spend until July 17, 2037 unless released earlier, is an “elegant, red-brick building behind the rolls of jagged razor wire looks more akin to a high school or college campus,” according to the report.

    FCI Tallahassee, potentially Maxwell’s home until at least July 17, 2037, is surrounded by a maze of 30 ft fences and cameras but the elegant, red-brick building behind the rolls of jagged razor wire looks more akin to a high school or college campus

    According to the report, Maxwell’s friendship with Novak has proven extremely useful, as the double-murderer is the head orderly for the dormitory where the disgraced socialite beds down with 100 other inmates in pods that consist of four ‘cubes’ equipped with bunk beds and no doors.

    “The units are basically like a warehouse so it’s hard to escape from that. But Ghislaine hasn’t been attacked yet and it’s gotten much better lately because she is always with Novak,” said a source. “Novak commands respect, people don’t mess with her. Her, Ghislaine and Linda seem to band together because they are the most high profile prisoners here.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 11/13/2022 – 16:30

  • Morgan Stanley's 2023 Outlook: Growth Cools, Bonds Rule
    Morgan Stanley’s 2023 Outlook: Growth Cools, Bonds Rule

    By Andrew Sheets, Chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley

    We’ll publish our year-ahead outlook later today. In the global economy, my colleague Seth Carpenter and our global economics team see a story of weaker growth, less inflation, and the end of rate hikes.

    Let’s take those in turn.

    Weaker growth is about continued deceleration of the global economy in 2022 into 2023. This slowing has several drivers, including some payback from excessive post-Covid consumer demand and bloated inventories in the retail sector. But the thrust of the slowing is driven by the (lagged) impact of policy tightening. The last 12 months have seen the fastest 12-month increase in the fed funds rate since 1981 and the fastest increase in ECB rates since the establishment of the eurozone.

    Tightening usually works with a lag, and 2023 should be no different. The US barely avoids recession. The UK and eurozone do see recession, thanks to fiscal tightening (UK) and a large energy shock (eurozone). China growth recovers with our expectation that the Covid-zero policy is relaxed in the spring, but the rebound is muted, as deleveraging in the country’s real estate sector remains a challenge.

    Slower growth should (finally) cool inflation. We understand the skepticism, given the persistent surprises this year, but we think that several forces are working to change the narrative:

    1. Global demand should be weaker;

    2. Supply chains are showing much less stress;

    3. Inventories look increasingly elevated, inviting discounting for core goods;

    4. Risk in shelter prices is much more balanced; and

    5. Base effects shift materially (US gas prices are up 11%Y, but will be down 11%Y by March at current prices). US CPI is currently 7.7%Y, but we forecast it to be under 2.0%Y by the end of next year.

    Cooling growth and inflation should lead central banks to pause and assess. They’ve just delivered significant tightening, tightening that works with a considerable lag. As growth and inflation cool, we think that the Fed pauses after a January rate hike at 4.625%, while the ECB pauses in March at 2.50%. EM central banks, which were well out in front of their DM counterparts, see some significant easing, especially in Hungary, Brazil, and Chile.

    Any outlook is uncertain, but that’s especially true this year. We see risks to growth skewed to the downside, driven by more persistent inflation that drives a more forceful policy response. Significant uncertainty also exists around QT; we believe that central banks will show flexibility if it leads to systemic stress, but both central banks and investors are in uncharted waters with a balance sheet reduction of this scale.

    For markets, this presents a very different backdrop. 2022 was marked by resilient growth, high inflation, and hawkish policy. 2023 sees weaker growth, disinflation, and rate hikes end/reverse, all with very different starting valuations. It seems reasonable to think that we’ll see different outcomes, especially in high grade bonds. We forecast US 10-year Treasury yields to end 2023 lower, the US dollar to decline, and the S&P 500 to tread water (with material swings along the way).

    Indeed, we think that high grade bonds, one of the biggest losers of 2022, will be one of the biggest winners of 2023. Real and nominal yields have risen materially across a wide range of high grade markets. Less growth, inflation, and tightening make stable returns more attractive. We see attractive returns through end-2023 in Bunds, BTPs, EUR IG credit, US Treasuries, US IG credit, US municipals, agency MBS, and AAA securitized paper.

    And we think that the ‘income’ theme extends further. Across many of our recommendations we have a bias toward the higher-yielding parts of the market, whether that’s US equities (where we’re overweight staples, healthcare, and utilities) or commodities (where we prefer oil to metals).

    If ’embracing income’ is one key theme, ‘respecting sequencing’ is another. Markets face two great uncertainties for next year – will inflation/tightening moderate, and will growth bottom? We expect clarity on the first before the second. In turn, we generally prefer assets more sensitive to rate uncertainty than those more sensitive to DM growth.

    This should support high grade bonds, which often do well after the last Fed hike regardless of whether a recession follows. But it should also support EM equities and debt. Early to underperform (EM equities peaked in February 2021), we think that they’ll be early to recover, similar to the early 2000s and 2008- 2022 has been a historically bad year for cross-asset returns. Next year won’t be easy, but it should look different.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 11/13/2022 – 16:00

  • Republicans And GOP-Leaning Independents Prefer DeSantis Over Trump In 2024: Poll
    Republicans And GOP-Leaning Independents Prefer DeSantis Over Trump In 2024: Poll

    A new YouGov survey has found that 42% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents would prefer Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over former President Trump as the party’s 2024 presidential nominee.

    Just 35% polled said they would prefer Trump over DeSantis.

    That said, those who consider themselves “strong Republicans” were more likely to support a third Trump run (45%) over the Florida governor, while 43% said they would prefer DeSantis.

    The difference was far more pronounced among the ‘Republican-leaning’ respondents, of which 45% preferred DeSantis vs. 21% for Trump. 38% of those who described themselves as “not very strong Republicans” prefer DeSantis, vs. 31% who picked Trump.

    The poll comes after Trump lashed out at DeSantis following the governor’s resounding midterm victory last week – cementing his position as a top GOP candidate to run against Trump in the 2024 GOP primaries.

    Trump nicknamed DeSantis “Ron DeSanctimonious” during a rally last week, before going further and releasing a statement in which he took credit for DeSantis’ political success.

    The former president then suggested that he could share damaging private information about DeSantis “that won’t be very flattering” if the Florida governor runs in 2024, and that DeSantis is actually a RINO.

    “I think if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly,” said Trump, adding “I know more about him than anybody — other than, perhaps, his wife.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 11/13/2022 – 15:30

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Nov 13

Today’s News 13th November 2022

  • Escobar: Rewiring Eurasia – Mr. Patrushev Goes To Tehran…
    Escobar: Rewiring Eurasia – Mr. Patrushev Goes To Tehran…

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

    The meeting this week between two Eurasian security bosses is a further step toward dusting away the west’s oversized Asian footprint…

    Two guys are hanging out in a cozy room in Tehran with a tantalizing new map of the world in the background.

    Nothing to see here? On the contrary. These two Eurasian security giants are no less than the – unusually relaxed – Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Ali Shamkhani, the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

    And why are they so relaxed? Because the future prospects revolving around the main theme of their conversation – the Russia-Iran strategic partnership – could not be more exciting.

    This was a very serious business affair: an official visit, at the invitation of Shamkhani.

    Patrushev was in Tehran on the exact same day that Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu – following a recommendation from General Sergey Surovikin, the overall commander of the Special Military Operation – ordered a Russian retreat from Kherson.

    Patrushev knew it for days – so he had no problem to step on a plane to take care of business in Tehran. After all, the Kherson drama is part of the Patrushev negotiations with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Ukraine, which have been going on for weeks, with Saudi Arabia as eventual go-between.

    Besides Ukraine, the two discussed “information security, as well as measures to counter interference in the internal affairs of both countries by western special services,” according to a report by Russia’s TASS news agency.

    Both countries, as we know, are particular targets of western information warfare and sabotage, with Iran currently the focus of one of these no-holds-barred, foreign-backed, destabilization campaign.

    Patrushev was officially received by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who went straight to the point: “The cooperation of independent countries is the strongest response to the sanctions and destabilization policies of the US and its allies.”

    Patrushev, for his part, assured Raisi that for the Russian Federation, strategic relations with Iran are essential for Russian national security.

    So that goes way beyond Geranium-2 kamikaze drones – the Russian cousins of the Shahed-136 – wreaking havoc in the Ukrainian battlefield. Which, by the way, elicited a direct mention later on by Shamkhani: “Iran welcomes a peaceful settlement in Ukraine and is in favor of peace based on dialogue between Moscow and Kiev.”

    Patrushev and Shamkhani of course discussed security issues and the proverbial “cooperation in the international arena.” But what may be more significant is that the Russian delegation included officials from several key economic agencies.

    There were no leaks – but that suggests serious economic connectivity remains at the heart of the strategic partnership between the two top sanctioned nations in Eurasia.

    Key in the discussions was the Iranian focus on fast expansion of bilateral trade in national currencies – ruble and rial. That happens to be at the center of the drive by both the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS towards multipolarity. Iran is now a full SCO member – the only West Asian nation to be part of the Asian strategic behemoth – and will apply to become part of BRICS+.

    Have swap, will travel

    The Patrushev-Shamkhani get together happened ahead of the signing, next month, of a whopping $40 billion energy deal with Gazprom, as previously announced by Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mahdi Safari.

    The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) has already clinched an initial $6.5 billion deal. All that revolves around the development of two gas deposits and six oilfields; swaps in natural gas and oil products; LNG projects; and building more gas pipelines.

    Last month, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak announced a swap of 5 million tons of oil and 10 billion cubic meters of gas, to be finished by the end of 2022. And he confirmed that “the amount of Russian investment in Iran’s oil fields will increase.”

    Barter of course is ideal for Moscow and Tehran to jointly bypass interminably problematic sanctions and payment settlement issues – linked to the western financial system. On top of it, Russia and Iran are able to invest in direct trade links via the Caspian Sea.

    At the recent Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, Raisi forcefully proposed that a successful “new Asia” must necessarily develop an endogenous model for independent states.

    As an SCO member, and playing a very important role, alongside Russia and India, in the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), Raisi is positioning Iran in a key vector of multilateralism.

    Since Tehran entered the SCO, cooperation with both Russia and China, predictably, is on overdrive. Patrushev’s visit is part of that process. Tehran is leaving behind decades of Iranophobia and every possible declination of American “maximum pressure” – from sanctions to attempts at color revolution – to dynamically connect across Eurasia.

    BRI, SCO, INSTC

    Iran is a key Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) partner for China’s grand infrastructure project to connect Eurasia via road, sea, and train. In parallel, the multimodal Russian-led INSTC is essential to promote trade between the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia – at the same time solidifying Russia’s presence in the South Caucasus and the Caspian Sea region.

    Iran and India have committed to offer part of Chabahar port in Iran to Central Asian nations, complete with access to exclusive economic zones.

    At the recent SCO summit in Samarkand, both Russia and China made it quite clear – especially for the collective west – that Iran is no longer going to be treated as a pariah state.

    So it is no wonder Iran that is entering a new business era with all members of the SCO under the sign of an emerging financial order being designed mostly by Russia, China and India. As far as strategic partnerships go, the ties between Russia and India (President Narendra Modi called it an unbreakable friendship) is as strong as those between Russia and China. And when it comes to Russia, that’s what Iran is aiming at.

    The Patrushev-Shamkhani strategic meeting will hurl western hysteria to unseen levels – as it completely smashes Iranophobia and Russophobia in one fell swoop. Iran as a close ally is an unparalleled strategic asset for Russia in the drive towards multipolarity.

    Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) are already negotiating a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in parallel to those swaps involving Russian oil. The west’s reliance on the SWIFT banking messaging system hardly makes any difference to Russia and Iran. The Global South is watching it closely, especially in Iran’s neighborhood where oil is commonly traded in US dollars.

    It is starting to become clear to anyone in the west with an IQ above room temperature that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal), in the end, does not matter anymore. Iran’s future is directly connected to the success of three of the BRICS: Russia, China and India. Iran itself may soon become a BRICS+ member.

    There’s more: Iran is even becoming a role model for the Persian Gulf: witness the lengthy queue of regional states aspiring toward gaining SCO membership. The Trumpian “Abraham Accords?” What’s that? BRICS/SCO/BRI is the only way to go in West Asia today.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/12/2022 – 23:20

  • These Are The World's Biggest Employers
    These Are The World’s Biggest Employers

    No company in the world has more employees than Walmart.

    The latest information from the U.S. retail giant put the figure at a massive 2.30 million. Not even the behemoth that is Amazon comes close, despite being in second place with a 1.61 million-strong workforce. As Statista’s Martin Armstrong shows in the inforgraphic below though, there’s one sector that apparently needs even more manpower than retail, and that’s defense.

    Infographic: The World's Biggest Employers | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    At the top of the ranking for the world’s largest employers is India’s Ministry of Defence. Combining active service personnel, reservists and civilian staff, the total headcount comes to 2.99 million – a touch ahead of the United States equivalent, the Department of Defense.

    In China, the People’s Liberation Army (which doesn’t include civilian positions) employs around 2.55 million people.

    The Chinese equivalent of the U.S. Department of Defense, the Central Military Commission may have as many as 6.80 million people in its employment, though that figure was not deemed sufficiently reliable to be included in this list.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/12/2022 – 22:50

  • The Decline of the West: Spengler In Today's World
    The Decline of the West: Spengler In Today’s World

    Authored by Oscar Silva-Valladares via The Ron Paul Institute,

    Timelessness of thought and vision in world politics is a rare mark of grandeur. Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, written a century ago, deserves this distinction as it reads like it was done yesterday.

    The German historian-philosopher wrote in 1922 that the centuries old West-European-American civilization was in permanent and irretrievable decline in all manifestations of life including religion, art, politics, social life, economy and science. For him, the political, social and ideological dimensions of this decline were evident in the failings of the Western political class in both sides of the Atlantic. He saw politicians, mostly based in large cities, consumed by ideology and contempt towards silent majorities and described them as “a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, and deeply contemptuous of the countryman.” Nowadays the Brussels-based European Union (EU) leadership, through their recurring disdain for nation sovereignty, fully befits this definition.

    Spengler believed that decadence in politics means predominance of ideology over action.

    “Men of theory commit a huge mistake in believing that their place is at the head and not in the train of great events” he wrote, unaware about how true this is today as we just saw the fall of UK Prime Minister Truss who sacrificed economics in the altar of ideology. Dogma destroying social cohesion and prosperity is also present in the wrecking of Europe’s manufacturing competitiveness as their politicians forcibly deny cheap Russian energy or when Lilliputian Lithuania picks a fight with China in defence of Taiwan’s “sovereignty.” On the face of these events the German thinker would have repeated his assertion that “the political doctrinaire … always knows what should be done, and yet his activity, once it ceases to be limited to paper, is the least successful and therefore the least valuable in history.”

    When we listen to the German Minister of Economic Affairs Harbeck or his Foreign Affairs counterpart Baerbock lecturing on the primacy of the green agenda or on how Ukraine military support needs to continue regardless of what voters think, we can’t help remembering the writer’s damning query:

    “[have they] any idea whatever of the actualities of world-politics, world-city problems, capitalism, the future of the state, the relation of technics to the course of civilization, Russia, Science?.”

    The “rules-based international order,” that Western axiom born out of post-Cold War euphoria and used to justify US-led hegemonism, reminds us the writer’s aphorism that “nothing is simpler than to make good poverty of ideas by founding a system”. “Even a good idea has little value when enunciated by a solemn ass” comes to mind when we hear the European Commission President von der Leyen or the EU Foreign Affairs Head Borrell repeat the same mantra. “In politics, only its necessity to life decides the eminence of any doctrine,” something that has been forgotten as Europe blindly follows the US in an economic war that is ruining the continent.

    On the East-West confrontation, concerning China, Spengler highlighted Western politicians’ traditional lack of understanding of the main drivers of Chinese thinking which have to do with a 4000-year view of history and of their place in the world, as compared to the Western narrow timeframe absorbed by events that took place since 1500. Western self-contained perception of history negates world’s history, he says, adding that world-history, in the Western eyes, is our world picture and not all mankind’s.

    American exceptionalism, the dangerous notion that US values, political system and history destines it to play the world’s leading role, was questioned when he pointed out that there are as many morals as there are Cultures, no more and no fewer, and that each Culture possesses its own standard, the validity of which begins and ends with it, a statement that explains the need for a multipolar world. As much as has become politically correct to criticize Nietzsche’s ideas after his appropriation by Nazi ideology, Spengler affirmed that Nietzsche’s basic concept of will of power is essential to Western civilization, and this is consistent with the Western belief on the superiority of its values and the need to impose them on other cultures. “Western mankind is under the influence of an immense optical illusion. Everyone demands something of the rest. We say “thou shalt” in the conviction that so-and-so in fact will, can and must be changed or fashioned or arranged conformably to the order, and our belief both in the efficacy of, and in our title to give, such orders is unshakable.”

    Money, politics and the press play an intimate role in Western civilization, declares Spengler. In politics, money “nurses” the democratic process particularly during elections, as is the recurring US case. The press serves him who owns it and it does not spread “free” opinion – it generates it. “What is truth? For the multitude, that which it continually reads and hears.” On freedom of the press, we are reminded that it is permitted to everyone to say what he or she pleases, but the Press is free to take notice of what he or she says or not. The Press can condemn any “truth” to death simply by not undertaking its communication to the world – “a terrible censorship of silence which is all the more potent in that the masses of newspaper readers are absolutely unaware that it exists.”

    Striking parallels exist between today’s poverty in US cities and his observation of Rome at the time of Crassus, who as a real-estate speculator also recalls Donald Trump. In Rome, people are portrayed as living “in appalling misery in the many-storied lodging-houses of dark suburbs”, a misfortune directly linked to the consequences of Roman military expansionism and which suggests current conditions in Detroit, Cleveland or Newark.

    The Decline of the West was first read as the epilogue of World War I, the war that ended all wars. Hopefully it will not be read in today’s world as the introduction of a new calamity.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/12/2022 – 22:20

  • Visualizing India's Population Growth From 2022-2100
    Visualizing India’s Population Growth From 2022-2100

    For years, India has been on track to overtake China as the world’s most populated country.

    In fact, we’ve covered this phenomenon in past articles, back when India was expected to overtake China’s population by the end of the decade.

    However, as Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang notes, according to the UN’s latest population prospects, this takeover is projected to happen sooner than previously expected—as early as next year.

    This graphic by Pablo Alvarez provides an up-to-date chart of India’s population growth projections compared to other countries. Projection data from Our World in Data ranges from 1800 all the way to until 2100.

    Some Historical Context

    For over three centuries, China has had the largest population of any country in the world.

    In the 1800s, China’s population was about 322 million, which was nearly double India’s at the time. And until the mid-20th century, both countries’ populations stayed relatively stable.

    However, in 1949, China’s population started to experience dramatic growth. This occurred after the Chinese Civil War when the People’s Republic of China was first established.

    Around the same time, India’s population had also started to increase. Since both countries were experiencing population booms, the status quo remained the same, and China kept its position as the world’s most populated country.

    China’s baby boom lasted two decades. But by the late 1970s, the Chinese government implemented a one-child policy in an attempt to slow things down and control population growth, out of fear that China was becoming overpopulated.

    The plan worked—according to China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission spokesman Mao Qunan, the government’s efforts ended up reducing the number of births over the years by roughly 400 million.

    China’s Population is Aging Faster Than India’s

    These days, China has one of the most rapidly aging populations in the world. By 2040, it’s expected that 28% of the country’s population will be over the age of 60.

    In contrast, India’s population is relatively young—half of its population is under 30, and only an eighth is over 60.

    Does this mean that India’s GDP will eventually outpace China’s? Not necessarily.

    As quoted in an article published in Business Standard, Madan Sabnavis, Chief Economist of the Bank of Baroda says that India needs to increase its labor participation, as well as general access to education, in order to reap the benefits of its increasing working-age population.

    As of 2022, India’s workforce participation rate sits at 46%, compared to China’s 68%. How will this change in the future?

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/12/2022 – 21:50

  • Are Robots And AI Really Going To Displace All Workers? Probably Not
    Are Robots And AI Really Going To Displace All Workers? Probably Not

    Authored by Robert Blumen via The Mises Institute,

    Among the components of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset are a drastically reduced population and the replacement of human labor with robots and artificial intelligence (AI). The question immediately comes to mind: can robots and AI really make all the stuff for the elites after they have gotten rid of the people?

    Because a plan has been formulated and described does not mean that it is possible to realize. The plan may contradict laws of logic or reality, or assume the existence of resources that do not exist.

    Podcaster and journalist James Delingpole, speaking to investigative journalist Whitney Webb on October 23, 2021, discussed this topic with his guest. I have transcribed several minutes from their conversation, edited for concision:

    Webb: The fourth industrial revolution. One of the main pillars of that is automation and artificial intelligence. We’ve already seen that with corporate behemoths, like Amazon’s efforts to replace human workers with robots. Starbucks is piloting their AI barista with plans to have at least one in most if not all locations…. How long until humans are gone entirely? That’s in a retail setting.

    In the UK Tesco recently joined the cashier less checkout. It’s all done on your phone. You scan when you enter the store. Everything is tied to you, your unique digital identifier with the corporation. You can just walk out of the store. How convenient that you didn’t have to walk by a cashier at all.

    We’re going to see this happen in big ways in manufacturing. Chile is one of the biggest producers of copper in the world. In the northern part of Chile, the economy is driven by mining…. They are automating the mining here [in Chile]. Most of Chile’s middle class in the north work in the mining industry. They are about to all be cut out….

    It’s infinitely more profitable for a corporation to make an initial investment in a robot or an AI algorithm than to continuously pay a worker. Not have to deal with sick pay. There are efforts all over the world to demand better worker benefits. Better hours. Robots are the ultimate worker for a lot of these people because they are not interested in the human equation of things. There is a move to a human-free future coupled with anti-human rhetoric.

    The substitution of machines for human labor is a process that has been going on since the first industrial revolution. A considerable amount of manufacturing is already done by robots. But does it matter if a machine is a robot or not? Telecommunications switches connect calls that used to be done by telephone operators. We do not identify these machines as robots (perhaps because they do not have a recognizable torso and limbs or perhaps because they perform their work on data rather than physical objects) but the impact on the demand for labor to perform those tasks is the same.

    Contrary to Webb, it is not “infinitely more profitable” for a corporation to use an AI-powered robot in place of a person. Profitability is a calculation that depends on the price of the robot, the productivity of the robot, the wages of the person and the productivity of the human worker.

    The substitution of capital for labor makes economic sense when the cost of the capital goods per unit value of output—including paying for the entire supply chain—is less than the wages of the person that is replaced.

    Yes, workers are paid wages. However, robots and other machines are themselves not free goods. They must be designed, tested, and maintained. They are made of many parts which must be manufactured and transported. The manufacturing process is performed by some combination of people and other machines. The parts are ultimately made from materials that are mostly mined or extracted from the earth, also by men and machines.

    Workers prefer better working conditions over worse. And for machines as well there are optimal working conditions. A truck that is driven on poor roads in bad weather will wear out or break down more quickly. Computers need a carefully tuned environment that is temperature and humidity controlled. Computer servers are housed in a complex capital good known as a “data center.”

    The wages that are required to hire the workers are determined on the labor market, by the various competing uses for each person’s skills. If the cost of the robot is less than the worker, that is only because their labor is more urgently demanded doing something else. There is a greater need for human labor somewhere else in the world.

    AI itself is not inexpensive. Building and running AI requires engineering effort and computing resources such as networks, servers, and storage. AI models are trained by data that must originate with the same human intelligence that the AI is trying to reproduce. If you want to train AI to recognize photographs of cats, someone must have taken the photographs and classified them as cats or “not cats” so that the AI can be validated. If the photos come from security cameras, someone must have installed the cameras.

    After the model is built it must be maintained. AI models do not run perfectly forever. They must be monitored for drift, and it requires a human to determine if the drift is due to an error in the ingestion of data, such as a change in units, or a true change in the customer preferences that the model is trying to extract. In the latter case, the model must be retrained on a new data set.

    Modern computer systems are built with some degree of self-diagnosing and self-repairing abilities. But the automation must punt all but the most straightforward cases into a call for help that brings a human into the process. Humans are necessary to diagnose problems and restore service when something has gone wrong.

    The manufacture of machines such as robots requires a complex structure of production with perhaps tens of thousands of individual parts. Each part must be designed—by a person—manufactured and integrated with the other parts. The integrations, including isolating manufacturing defects, must be tested, and debugged.

    Parts are transported by industries such as shipping and trucking. All of these steps involve combinations of labor and capital goods. It is true that people take sick days, however, machines break, wear out, and, and require repairs. The humans who repair the machines also have kids and take sick days. If you need to send the robot out for service, a mover will pack it up and load it on a truck. Self-driving cars? Maybe someday, but not any day soon.

    Robots and made out of metals, which are mined out of the ground. Mineral deposits are not straightforward to find, to delineate and to mine. The discovery and extraction of mineral resources is a tremendously high-intellect activity. A small number of exploration geologists—many with doctoral degrees in fields such as geology and geophysics—have discovered a disproportionate fraction of mineable mineral deposits. Without labor, where would the metals come from to build the robots?

    Someone like Webb might respond that robots will replace all of these functions as well. And some day, they might. However, the replacement of humans by machines for one task creates a need for labor—with different skills—to operate the machines. That is why we now have jobs for truckers, power plant operators, and machinists instead of wood cutters.

    If miners were replaced with robots—how much labor would be required to build the robots including the entire supply chain, transportation, and the energy used to run them? It’s hard to say but a fraction of the impact would be shifts in the type of employment.

    Has the substitution of capital for human labor over the centuries since the industrial revolution has reduced overall employment? Not so much. We have far more need for labor now because we have accumulated so much capital and require more labor to operate it. The human population has increased—in lockstep with the demand for human labor—because we are so much more productive with our enormous legacy of capital goods that we can support much more population.

    Replacing the most routine and repeatable human labor with machines creates demand for the currently irreplaceable types of labor: creativity and problem-solving skills. It is true that boundaries of what machines can do expands over time. For example, voice recognition, which used to be quite poor, now handles a range of accents much better. However, AI is still at a point where it can at best replicate human learning by observing many samples created by humans. But for anyone who has tried to change their airline ticket by talking to a chat bot, it is clear that AI is at present limited to a standardized set of tasks.

    As we can afford it, out of our accumulated savings, capitalists will continue to invest in robots and other forms of automation to replace workers. When this results in cost savings, that means more output at a lower cost, and a rising standard of living. As certain goods become cheaper to manufacture, workers can demand other, new and different goods and services, which feeds the indirect demand for labor in those industries.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/12/2022 – 21:20

  • Binance Dominates Crypto Exchange Landscape
    Binance Dominates Crypto Exchange Landscape

    Despite crypto evangelists describing the current situation in the cryptocurrency market as just another dip, the phenomenon known as crypto winter has real and possibly lasting consequences for one of the more volatile finance sectors. As Statista’s Florian Zandt details below, since May 2022, 38 companies in the crypto industry have laid off employees, among them crypto exchanges BitMEX and Coinbase, crypto service providers Crypto.com and Blockchain.com as well as NFT marketplace OpenSea.

    Now, 130 companies in the FTX Group owning the crypto exchange FTX have officially filed for bankruptcy due to a liquidity crunch caused by several factors. The chief reasons cited were increased user withdrawals starting November 6 and the revelation that Alameda Research, a company in the FTX Group, had a significant portion of its holdings in FTX’s own FTT coin. Following this discovery, rival company Binance divested its FTT holdings, which caused the coin’s value to fall drastically. According to now-resigned Chief Executive Sam Bankman-Fried, the company would have needed $9.4 billion to stave off collapse. As Statista’s chart shows, the default of FTX could hurt a shaky-kneed crypto industry even further.

    Infographic: Binance Dominates Crypto Exchange Landscape | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    When looking at the year-to-date trading volume on the biggest crypto exchanges as aggregated by analysts at The Block, FTX ranks fourth behind Coinbase and OKX. No single exchange even comes close to Binance’s trade volume though, with transactions amounting to $4.6 trillion between January and November 11. Its market leader position allowed Binance to be one of the first companies offering to bail out FTX, but the deal fell through as quickly as it was announced. “As a result of corporate due diligence, as well as the latest news reports regarding mishandled customer funds and alleged U.S. agency investigations, we have decided that we will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX.com”, the company announced on Twitter on November 9.

    FTX’s scrambling to save its business and cryptocurrency valuations further careening downhill also caused U.S. lawmakers concern with calls for tighter regulations of crypto getting louder. “It is crucial that our financial watchdogs look into what led to FTX’s collapse so we can fully understand the misconduct and abuses that took place,” said Senate Banking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown. U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee chair Debbie Stabenow echoed that sentiment and added: “It is time for Congress to act. The Committee remains committed to advancing the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act to bring necessary safeguards to the digital commodities market.”

    CZ is the king of crypto…

    Given the chart above, let’s hope there’s nothing afoot at Binance.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/12/2022 – 20:50

  • Much Ado About Nothing
    Much Ado About Nothing

    Authored by Todd Hayen via Off-Guardian.org,

    Do any of you think we are over-reacting? I don’t think so, but the sheep-folk certainly do. They claim they are willing to let bygones be bygones and just put it all in the past and get on with life.

    I am sure everyone reading this is aware of the bombshell editorial The Atlantic dropped recently with their amnesty nonsense. I don’t think I have been more livid reading an article since the days of seeing piece after piece about how effective masks are against viral transmission.

    I won’t comment on The Atlantic blather directly here, as there have been many fine responses to it, but wow, what a piece. So typical of a bully trying to pretend he loved his victims all along when he knows he is cornered and about to be punished. One last punch disguised as a kiss.

    I just got back from a little cruise. Major ports were Barcelona, Rome, Florence, Monaco, and a smattering of little French and Italian hideaways. I had mixed feelings about going, but realized that if this tsunami we all see coming a few miles off the shore has the potential of wiping out most travel in the foreseeable future, I figured I might as well get something in before the onslaught.

    It was nice in a lot of ways, as would be expected, but in other ways unusually disconcerting. For one thing, very, very few people had masks, and thus there was a palatable scent in the air of “Covid is a thing of the past.”

    One would think this was a good thing, but instead it exuded a very clear vibe of denial.

    Oddly enough, not wearing masks, and believing Covid to be over, to me is just another example of compliance to authority.

    I know that seems a stretch, but if Covid were real, coupled with the truth that the vaccines do not work, and we were told again and again that there would be no natural herd immunity without a working vaccine, and we still hear of infections rising, variants being created, and hospitals becoming over crowded, why would people think the disease just died and disappeared? The reason is because we were told it was over.

    We were told we suddenly didn’t need masks, that we could party with friends, vaxxed or unvaxxed, that we could gather in huge crowds, get on cruise ships (no one even cared that I was unvaccinated.) We were told what was true, what was real and what to worry or not worry about. And like sheep, most people blindly followed.

    So shouldn’t I be happy? If I were, it would be for all of the wrong reasons. It is true we are all happy when the slave owner puts down the whip. Whip or not, however, we are still slaves.

    I, too, bask in the sun of my controlled freedom—I went on a cruise didn’t I? After two years of not being “allowed to”—so I am just as guilty of this sort of compliance. I am one step closer to truth though; I know this offer of freedom is a tactic, a ploy, and a ruse.

    I’ll take a scrap of bread when it is offered, but I will not succumb to complacency and forgive my master for his cruelty when he behaves, albeit for just a moment, as my friend. Most everyone else seems fine to let bygones be bygones.

    I am not, and I suspect most of you reading this are not as well.

    The great danger I see here in the masses just carrying on in complacent forgiveness is that they are encouraged to stay blind. Surely if they speak out against the atrocities that the world has experienced over the past three years they would quickly be categorized as a trouble maker, a pariah, and a misfit.

    “Just get over it, man, it’s all over.”

    Is it? No, of course not, you and I know that, and it is all still going on in various ways under the covers now, in the dark recesses of the culture: persecutions, continued efforts to vaccinate, and particularly vaccinate children, warnings of an “upcoming dark winter” where restrictions will come back into the mainstream. On and on, you know what I am speaking of.

    However, the mass attitude now, as per The Atlantic piece, is “nothing all that much really happened.”

    No one died unnecessarily due to the Covid response, no one got sick, no one lost their job or their livelihood, no one suffered socially (particularly children wearing masks in school), no one suffered educationally, nothing bad really happened.

    If you are still pissed about all that DID happen, then you are overreacting…much ado about nothing.

    So get over it, forget and forgive.

    Not everyone on the world has read that article, but what I saw in Europe, it seems that most people, at least on physical observation, are basically taking on that attitude.

    It breaks my heart.

    I think about the countless mothers sitting by their children in countless hospitals nurturing them through a totally unprecedented heart incident.

    I think of the countless families standing together at the funeral of a loved one, dead prematurely from a heart attack, blood clotting, or cancer—cause unknown, unless you want to apply the newly created diagnoses, “Sudden Adult Death Syndrome.” What the hell is that?

    A novel disease and now a common cause of death? Easy peasy explanation, eh? I think of the countless numbers of people suffering from a myriad of strange afflictions, which suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

    I think again of countless people having suffered unconscionably, and pointlessly, after losing their jobs, their businesses, their life savings, and their livelihood—the countless children with lower IQs, and those who have suffered social retardation due to the mask mandates, social distancing, and mandatory online teaching at home with no socialization at all.

    I could write 100 pages describing all of this—but most people don’t know, and if they do, don’t care, or just attribute all of this horror to the “cost of living—some are lucky in life, some are not.”

    During my recent cruise not a word was uttered about any of this, thousands of people were encountered walking the streets of Rome, Florence, Barcelona, all laughing, eating, drinking, playing. While just beneath their feet, hidden a foot underground, there are skulls and bones of the fallen—all forgotten, and the perpetrators all forgiven.

    When I was occasionally shaken from my self-induced and compliant vacation reverie, my heart ached talking to all of the young vibrant crewmembers on our ship.

    I would hear of their plans to be married, create families, further their careers and live fully their vibrant lives—followed with the admission that they all had to be vaccinated to get their current jobs on the ship.

    What really lies ahead for these beautiful children of God so innocent and full of life? I would shake my head, “maybe none of this is true, and maybe I am making more of it than it really is. Maybe they are right, and it really wasn’t that bad, just a mistake made here and there that we really could get over. It is all fine…let’s move on.”

    Then a bone cracks under my foot—just a few inches from the surface of awareness—the truth. And I slip back into reality.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/12/2022 – 20:20

  • Eerie Similarities Between Democratic Party And Chinese Communist Party Lingo
    Eerie Similarities Between Democratic Party And Chinese Communist Party Lingo

    Authored by Stu Cvrk via The Epoch Times,

    The brilliant former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was once quoted as saying, “Words have meaning. And their meaning doesn’t change.” That is absolutely true, but the meanings of commonly understood words are frequently corrupted, represented, or obfuscated by nefarious people.

    Both the Chinese Communist Party and the U.S. Democratic Party are masters at obfuscating language to achieve their political objectives. There are even some interesting similarities in certain aspects of messaging by both parties.

    Let us explore the thesis.

    Democracy

    In order to convey a false sense of the legitimacy, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-ruled government Xi Jinping regularly opines about the crackpot term “whole people’s democracy,” which is then endlessly repeated in the echo chamber of state-run Chinese media. The concept is absurd because there is no such thing as genuine democracy in a one-party dictatorship in which only CCP-approved candidates occupy positions across all levels of government.

    The report presented by Xi during the recently concluded 20th National Congress of the CCP included a new slogan that embellishes “whole people’s democracy”: acting for people, relying on people. This is simply more twisted gobbledygook, as the CCP has been “acting for the people” without regard to any democratically-obtained input from the Chinese people since the communist regime took power in 1949.

    Red Guard members wave copies of Chairman Mao’s “Little Red Book” during a parade in Beijing on June 1, 1966. (Jean Vincent/AFP via Getty Images)

    The Democratic Party, too, has an odd definition of democracy. Throughout the 2022 election campaign, one of the key pillars of the Democrats’ election narrative has been the imperative to “save our democracy.” Joe Biden attempted to close the political sale on Nov. 2 in a speech devoted almost entirely to condemning “extreme Republicans” and urging voters to “preserve democracy” by electing Democrats, as reported by the New York Post here.

    Coupled with the continuing Biden administration’s weaponizing of federal agencies against perceived political opponents (e.g., arresting peaceful anti-abortion activists, suppressing political speech, and refocusing on the investigation and prosecution over various “domestic terrorists” like the J6 protestors), Biden’s naked political appeal is akin to the CCP’s ongoing efforts to perpetuate a one-party state. After all, “saving our democracy” is a thinly veiled slogan whose real meaning is to save the Democrats, not the democratic actions of Americans who are poised to sweep the Democratic Party out of political power, as noted here by The Epoch Times.

    Democrats would apparently like to “act for people and rely on people” by encouraging voters to support a one-party Democrat-run state analogous to communist China!

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, alongside House Democrats, holds the CHIPS for America Act, providing domestic semiconductor manufacturers with billions in subsidies to cut reliance on foreign sourcing, after signing it during an enrollment ceremony outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on July 29, 2022. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

    Political Purges

    Xi Jinping completed a political purge of former leader Hu Jintao and his faction of the CCP during the 20th Party Congress. In a shocking display, Hu was frog-marched out of the Congress during an obviously staged event intended to convey to the assembled CCP apparatchiks and the rest of the world that Xi is completely in charge. Besides Xi, the six other standing members of the newly-appointed 20th Politburo are all Xi allies and confidants, as are the members of the new Central Military Commission. Enter the era of complete unanimity of CCP thoughts and deeds, and a return to Mao-style authoritarianism—and a very dangerous time for the Chinese people and the world in general.

    Young Red Guards brandish copies of Chairman Mao’s “Little Red Book” in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution in 1966. The Red Guards rampaged through Chinese towns, terrorizing people, particularly the elderly. (Jean Vincent/AFP via Getty Images)

    Chinese people demonstrate during the “great proletarian Cultural Revolution” in front of the French embassy in Beijing on January 1967. Protesters show symbols of the Revolution such as the portrait of Mao Zedong, banners, and the book “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung.” Since the cultural revolution was launched in May 1966 at Beijing University, Mao’s aim was to recapture power after the failure of the “Great Leap Forward.” The movement was directed against those “Party leaders in authority taking the capitalist road.” (Jean Vincent/AFP via Getty Images)

    A Chinese man stands alone to block a line of tanks heading east on Beijing’s Avenue of Eternal Peace during the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 5, 1989. (Jeff Widener/AP Photo)

    The Democratic Party is deep into conducting its own political purge of the “Republican faction” from the greater U.S. polity: suppress dissent, redesignate political dissenters as “domestic terrorists,” and refocus federal law enforcement on political crimes. The actions involve silencing and canceling the political speech of those who dissent from Democrat political orthodoxy. For example, the Department of Homeland Security has embarked on an “expansive effort” to influence Big Tech and social media giants, as reported here and revealed through analysis of “years of internal DHS memos, emails, and documents—obtained via leaks and an ongoing lawsuit, as well as public documents.”

    Misinformation and disinformation are now apparently what the Democrats and bureaucratic allies deem them to be, despite the public outcry that deep-sixed (at least temporarily) the DHS’s “Disinformation Governance Board” earlier this year. Never mind the First Amendment that protects all political speech. Democrats know better than the Founders did!

    The Biden administration has loosened the definition of “domestic terrorists” to smear, attack, and investigate J6 protestors, those who question the adherence to due process during the 2020 election, and vocal “America First” supporters.

    Several hundred J6 protestors have been pursued vigorously for nearly two years, while thousands of violent antifa and BLM rioters (politically supported by many Democrats, as noted here) have been virtually ignored by the Democrat-controlled DOJ and FBI. The FBI targeted True the Vote after alleged election-related crimes by Chinese-owned Konnech Corporation. And after years of lies about now-dismissed Trump-Russia collusion and other politically-motivated efforts to “get Trump,” the FBI carried out an unprecedented action against a former U.S. president by raiding Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in August.

    An aerial view of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home after FBI agents searched it, in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 15, 2022. (Marco Bello/Reuters)

    The Democrats’ three-pronged effort to suppress dissent, as defined by their own party, target Democrat-defined “domestic terrorists,” and prosecute/harass/raid Democrat political opponents is eerily similar to the CCP’s decades-long campaign to squelch all political resistance against the Chinese communist regime.

    A Brave New World

    The CCP and the Democratic Party each have their own visions of what amount to variations on the dystopian future, as presented in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World in which each party exercises totalitarian control of their respective societies. We must remember, those visions were also marketed with flowery words and slogans that mask reality.

    From the newest amendment to the CCP’s constitution approved during the 20th Party Congress comes the slogan of “advancing the building of an open, inclusive, clean, and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity.” Riiiiiggght. The “shared future” promised by the CCP involves boots on the necks of all dissenters (especially ethnic and religious minorities in China), complete and intrusive social controls to manage the behavior of individual citizens, and arbitrary and punitive measures such as those associated with Xi’s “zero-COVID policy” that continues to destroy businesses and lives.

    The Democratic Party’s vision for America’s future is laid out in their party platform here. Behind the flowery words such as “stronger fairer,” “universal affordable,” and “healing the soul,” a glimpse at that future has already been presented to Americans over the past two years: economic chaos, massive inflation, out-of-control crime, the fentanyl scourge, sexualizing children, and foreign policy incompetence.

    The reality of the Democrats’ future vision for America includes gender affirmation (human experimentation and barbarism), unlimited women’s “healthcare” (infanticide), counting all votes (rigged elections), “free” healthcare (including for the increasing number of illegal aliens), and much, much more. How do the secular Democrats equate all of this damage to “healing the soul” of America?

    The above comparisons between the Chinese Communist Party and the Democratic Party in the United States are similar but not matching—yet. However, what the CCP has managed through 73 years of totalitarian control of communist China gives us a glimpse of the future in the U.S. under long-term Democrat domination and control of the federal government.

    But American voters who understand the true meaning of the words already spoken may have other ideas for our future.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/12/2022 – 19:20

  • Canada Doubles Down On Record Immigration-Driven Population Surge
    Canada Doubles Down On Record Immigration-Driven Population Surge

    Authored by Joe Guzzardi (emphasis ours),

    Canada’s Immigration Minister Sean Fraser recently announced a bold immigration plan that has serious long-term deleterious consequences for the nation’s population growth and environmental degradation.

    Fraser’s goal is, by 2025, to add 1.45 million permanent resident immigrants to address what he and other government officials claim is a critical labor shortage; allegedly 1 million Canadian jobs are unfilled. Fraser said: “Make no mistake. This is a massive increase in economic migration to Canada.” The Minister’s new plan projects a flood of new arrivals that will see 465,000 foreign nationals in 2023, rising to 500,000 in 2025. By comparison, 405,000 permanent residents were admitted last year.

    Fraser’s immigration vision to admit a record-breaking number of immigrants is inspired by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s sentiments. Following his 2019 election wherein he campaigned on more immigration, he followed up with welcoming messages to refugees. Defending his massive immigration increase, Fraser repeated familiar refrains about an aging Canadian population and a low birth rate. Without immigration, Fraser foresees a Canada that won’t have the financial resources to fund schools, hospitals and other services. In short, Fraser used scare tactics to deceive Canada’s citizens.

    Canada’s long-standing commitment to higher immigration levels has created an unprecedented population surge. In 2021, Canada’s population rose to 37 million people, up 5.2 percent from 2016, driven mostly by immigration, according to official government data. Downtowns and distant suburbs of large cities have experienced the largest growth rates.

    Canada added 1.8 million people between 2016 and 2021, with nearly 80 percent of those new residents arriving from across the globe. Research from Statistics Canada (StatsCan) published in its Census 2021 release gives Canada the dubious distinction of being the fastest growing G7 country. Almost 90 percent of new immigrants settled in urban centers, Statscan said, edging up the proportion of Canadians living in large urban centers to 73.7 percent from 73.2 percent five years ago. During the five-year time period studied, Toronto’s population increased 16.1 percent, Montreal, 24.2 percent, and Vancouver, 7.4 percent. The report concluded that Canada continues to urbanize as large city centers benefit most from new arrivals to the country. But not all Canadians would use “benefit” as a descriptor for rapid, uncontrolled population growth.

    Fraser’s plan is so ill-conceived that even the most basic and fundamental need of arriving immigrants – affordable housing – will be an insurmountable challenge. Canada is undergoing a severe housing crisis that has driven home prices out of the range for many buyers. Simply put, more people mean that more homes and more roads that lead to them must be built. And new home development creates urban sprawl.

    Mike Moffatt, executive director of the Smart Prosperity Institute, outlined the crisis that exploding population has wrought for environmentalists. “What [land] isn’t being used for housing is either being used for nature, like the Greenbelt, or for farmlands, – and we’re already losing 175 acres a day in Ontario of farmland to development.”

    Ontario environmentalists like Moffatt are fighting to save its glorious Greenbelt from ever-greater development and sprawl. Today, plans to run a highway through a portion of the belt are advancing.

    Like most environmentalists in Ontario, Moffatt fears that at any time the government could decide to develop “little pieces” of the Greenbelt. Sooner or later, Moffatt fears, those little pieces could add up to great big chunks.

    To be crystal-clear, the new immigrant total will far exceed 1.45 million. New immigrants will grow their existing families and petition certain family members. Princeton University scholars estimated, conservatively, that each migrant petitions three relatives living abroad. Within a generation, the 1.45 million new Canadians could swell to more than 3 million.

    Trudeau and Fraser have concocted an immigration plan that will devastate Canada. Immigration isn’t a one-off. Arriving immigrants need nurturing, a compassionate exercise that often comes at the expense, at least partially, of the native-born population. The Canadian government and the corporate elite are all-in on more immigrants. But, if the population at large knew that the arriving 1.45 million immigrants would more than double during many of their lifetimes and degrade Canada’s natural beauty, it would be staunchly opposed.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/12/2022 – 18:50

  • The Five Biggest Takeaways From This Results Season
    The Five Biggest Takeaways From This Results Season

    By Sagarika Jaisinghani, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and analyst

    This earnings season hasn’t been for the faint-hearted, marked by profit warnings, job cuts and share-price volatility — all while high inflation and dollar strength wreak havoc. The bad news is that worse may be to come.

    S&P 500 companies had the lowest share of profit beats since the first quarter of 2020, according to data from Bloomberg Intelligence, even after expectations were lowered going into the season. Those that missed — such as Alphabet Inc. and FedEx Corp. — were severely punished, while investors rewarded the likes of Intel Corp. for concrete plans to deal with rising costs and an economic downturn.

    “Earnings this quarter were an early hint of what’s to come as we go through an environment of slowing growth,” said Ronald Temple, head of US equity at Lazard Asset Management. “Estimates have started to come down but they don’t yet reflect the economic outlook and need to fall much more.”

    Note: Latest quarter accounts for companies that have reported; excludes Energy, Diversified REITs.

    Even after Thursday’s huge sentiment boost from good inflation news, investors will need to assess how slower growth and rising costs will affect margins going forward, as well as how prepared companies are for a raft of other factors — from staffing to the impact of China’s reopening.

    Here’s what we learned from third-quarter results:

    Margin Squeeze Is Getting Worse

    Data from JPMorgan Chase & Co. showed more pressure on margins this quarter as companies faced higher costs for materials, energy and labor, while slowing consumer demand limited their ability to raise prices.

    With firms including Nike Inc. and appliances maker Whirlpool Corp. issuing profit warnings, Barclays Plc strategists said in a report that management teams in general were now less optimistic about maintaining high margins.

    Analysts have been cutting margin expectations — but some say more is needed. “Input costs should be plateauing, but that won’t be enough to erase the pain for the bottom line” next quarter, said Sophie Lund-Yates, an equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. “It isn’t just costs that are pinching margins, but weaker revenue growth too.”

    Staffing Tops CEO Concerns

    Conference calls showed that executives are facing a staffing headache. Big tech firms are embarking on huge layoffs in a new age of austerity for the industry — but companies in other sectors are struggling to find enough staff in a tight labor market. Wages have also become a pain point as workers contend with soaring living costs.

    Esty Dwek, chief investment officer at Flowbank SA, expects layoffs to spread from tech to other sectors. “Prudence will be the name of the game going forward,” she said.

    China Still a Curveball

    China’s Covid Zero policy continued to have a global impact, with Apple Inc. saying shipments of its latest iPhone models will be lower than previously expected after lockdowns disrupted factories. But as the country relaxes restrictions, investors are counting on a boost to global earnings.

    China generates about 6% of revenue for companies in the Russell 1000 Index, with technology, energy and consumer companies set to benefit the most from a reopening, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. Still, one curveball could come from the impact on inflation as demand for commodities and the yuan rises, strategists warn.

    Europe Set for a Shock

    A sharp increase in energy company profits and euro weakness meant European earnings held up far better than those in the US and emerging markets — but the region may be in for a shock next year.

    Bloomberg Intelligence strategists see Europe’s lead fizzling out as Chinese earnings return to double-digit growth and US profits pick up. Europe will suffer due to a slowdown in energy earnings and as companies and consumers endure a gas crisis this winter.

    Analysts Are Always Too Positive

    While profit estimates for the next couple of years have been coming down, the number and magnitude of misses this quarter showed that analysts were still too cheerful.

    Willem Sels, global chief investment officer of private banking and wealth at HSBC Holdings Plc, said the current outlook for inflation and economic growth suggests no US earnings growth for 2023. With analysts projecting a 6% increase, “estimates are still too optimistic,” he said.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/12/2022 – 18:20

  • Elon Musk Has A Fake Blue Checkmark Problem
    Elon Musk Has A Fake Blue Checkmark Problem

    Among other changes incoming CEO Elon Musk has hastily made at Twitter has been the addition of once “verified” restricted blue checkmarks to the profiles of anyone who ponies up $8 per month for a Twitter Blue subscription.

    This, combined with the ability to change ones display name on Twitter, has led to a deluge of fake accounts for politicians, celebrities and corporations that look extremely close to “official” social media accounts. 

    Before Musk’s takeover, the company had made sure to grant verification status to people that it wanted to ensure could not be impersonated. Now, under Musk’s regime, just the opposite is taking place. 

    Among the confusion are now accounts that appear to be from people like US president George W. Bush, wherein he tweeted offensive messages that were then re-tweeted by a similarly official looking former British prime minister Tony Blair account. 

    Other impersonators included a fake O.J. Simpson account that confessed to the murder of his former wife, and a fake LeBron James account claiming to be asking for a trade from the Los Angeles Lakers. 

    Meanwhile, other users have had trouble changing their names back after Twitter appeared to remove the feature to try and fix the original verification issue. For example, the Financial Post notes that singer Doja Cat “found that she was unable to change her display name back from “christmas” after a new rule came in”.

    “I don’t wanna be Christmas forever @elonmusk please help I’ve made a mistake,” she pleaded with Musk on the platform. 

    In another example, someone impersonating a fake Eli Lilly account appeared to have wiped billions from the company’s market cap after it Tweeted that the company was “excited to announce” that “insulin is free now”.

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

    The company had to step in and correct the record:

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

    Elsewhere on the site, other accounts were impersonating political figures like Sen. Ted Cruz. One account, sporting the name “Ted Cruz” with a blue checkmark, wrote: “The first time I entered my human wife, I said, groaning into her ear, “This is exactly how mother said it would feel”. 

    It elicited a response from a fake Ben Shapiro account.

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

    Entrepreneur Mark Cuban also lodged complaints, namely that “the new system made it harder to filter out notifications”. He said he used the platform to screen out verifications in the past in order to reduce the amount of noise he encountered on the platform. 

    “I just spent too much time muting all the newly purchased checkmark accts in an attempt to make my verified mentions useful again,” Cuban remarked. 

    Elon Musk responded: “It’s working for me. That said, we can definitely make the verified mentions tab more usable.”

    Musk said in response to the issue the company is removing many legacy blue checkmarks and will be adding “official” tags to people’s bios – which would essentially replace the former purpose of the blue checkmark, to validate an account’s validity. 

    Late in the day on Friday, the confusion prompted Sen. Ed Markey to reach out to Twitter for answers “about its new verification and impersonation policies”, according to CNBC. 

    In a letter to Elon Musk, Markey wrote: “Safeguards such as Twitter’s blue checkmark once allowed users to be smart, critical consumers of news and information in Twitter’s global town square. But your Twitter takeover, rapid and haphazard imposition of platform changes, removal of safeguards against disinformation, and firing of large numbers of Twitter employees have accelerated Twitter’s descent into the Wild West of social media.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/12/2022 – 17:50

  • Pakistan "Has No Option But To Ration" Nat Gas Supply This Winter
    Pakistan “Has No Option But To Ration” Nat Gas Supply This Winter

    Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,

    • The energy crisis in Pakistan has deepened this year.

    • Gas supplies available for households will be very limited this winter.

    • Pakistani households will have gas available for three hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon, and three hours in the evening.

    Pakistan has no other option but to ration natural gas supply this winter, with gas provided three times a day for cooking to households, amid acute shortages and a forex crisis in the world’s fifth most populous country, an official from the petroleum ministry told a Parliament panel this week.  

    The energy crisis in Pakistan has deepened this year, and now, natural gas supplies will be very limited for households, according to officials.

    “There would be no gas supply (to household consumers) for 16 hours” a day, Muhammad Mahmood told the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Petroleum, as carried by the local outlet Dawn.  

    Pakistani households will have gas available for three hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon, and three hours in the evening, Mahmood added.

    Pakistan—whose population is the fifth largest in the world after China, India, the United States, and Indonesia—has been experiencing an energy crisis as the country cannot afford to import a lot of energy products at the current high prices. The stronger U.S. dollar and the sky-high LNG prices have worsened the country’s finances, with foreign exchange reserves down in October to their lowest level in three years.

    In April, soaring prices of LNG and coal on the international markets left Pakistan with having to cut electricity supply to households and industry as the country, in a deep political and economic crisis, could not afford to buy more of the expensive fossil fuels.

    This year, Europe has been outbidding Asian customers for LNG supply as it has scrambled to secure gas supply with very low pipeline imports from Russia. High spot rates for LNG have discouraged many buyers and users of the super-chilled fuel in Asia, including in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

    Meanwhile, industry customers across South Asia have turned to fuel oil because of the high prices of natural gas. In Pakistan, oil-fired power generation has surged five-fold this year, Lucy Cullen, Principal Analyst, APAC Gas & LNG Research at Wood Mackenzie, said in September.

    “Demand-side management measures are being implemented, but the situation is likely to worsen,” Cullen added.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/12/2022 – 17:20

  • Sam Bankman-Fried Bought Into Stakeholder Capitalism And Proved It's A Disastrous Ideology
    Sam Bankman-Fried Bought Into Stakeholder Capitalism And Proved It’s A Disastrous Ideology

    While many analysts and economists will be talking for months about the epic downfall of crypto-exchange company FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried, their focus will be primarily on the billions lost, the mismanagement of funds, the fraud inherent in yield farming and the alleged betrayal of investor trust.  This is a tale as old as time and not anything surprising.  What many in the mainstream are missing, though, is Fried’s attachments to the World Economic Foundation, various global elitists and his avid sermonizing of the tenets of “effective altruism”, which are nearly identical to the tenets of Klaus Schwab’s Stakeholder Capitalism agenda.

    The WEF lists FTX as a corporate “partner” and participant, which means the company must meet the globalist organization’s standards for Stakeholder Capitalism, a socialist economic model which deconstructs the Adam Smith and Milton Friedman free market foundation.

    Milton Friedman argued that the only responsibility of business should be growth and profit (within the boundaries of the law) with the shareholders in mind.  The WEF insists that the Friedman philosophy must be abandoned and that the job of wealthy elites and corporations is to use profits as a tool for managing society (the so-called “stakeholders”).  In other words, corporate leaders should become cultural and political leaders fulfilling greater ideological goals, all of them decidedly socialist/Marxist in origin.  

    Stakeholder Capitalism becomes a way to trick the public into investing their faith in corprorate leadership because these companies are no longer simply “in it for the money,” they are in it for the survival of the world and the species, right?  The companies become saviors, not just mercantilists.  That kind of blind faith allows people to be taken advantage of in a big way.  It’s the same kind of faith once applied to kings and monarchies centuries ago, and it usually leads to various forms of feudalism.

    In the WEF’s vision of the future, the average person will “own nothing, have no privacy and be happy about it” while corporate elites in partnership with governments micromanage all production, all distribution and all finance. 

    An ongoing example of the early stages of this model is ESG, a credit system in which loans are given to companies and individuals based on their ESG score, derived from how dedicated they are to globalist causes.  In the near future, if you don’t promote social justice ideology and support establishment climate change claims, then you might not be able to get a loan from the bank for your business.  You might not be able to get a mortgage loan for a new home.  In fact, you might not even be allowed to have a bank account. 

    FTX and Fried heavily relied on investment firms like Blackrock, which is a major component of the spread of ESG.  This may be why FTX regularly announced their devotion to climate and social justice projects, it kept them in the good graces of the ESG overlords. 

    A key component of Stakeholder Capitalism is the need for a digital currency framework, which might explain the WEF’s interest in FTX as a partner.  The move to a cashless society is the next step necessary for the micro-management of the economy and the ability to dole out rewards or punishments based on ESG scoring.  It is an incremental top down implementation of a framework similar to China’s “social credit system.”

    The concept is being sold by the WEF and their corporate partners as way to create “equity” within the economy by incentivizing the redistribution of wealth from the very rich to the very poor and to ‘humanitarian causes.”  It uses access to the banking apparatus and the economy itself as a carrot or a cudgel.  Really, it is the ultimate form of centralization and control posing as a charitable movement for the greater good.  But without the freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail, there can be no greater good.  

    Evidence is mounting that the equity measures involved in Stakeholder Capitalism will actually erase wealth rather than create wealth.  To be sure, it would make the majority of people financially even – Instead of being equally rich, we will all suffer in equal poverty.

    The downfall of FTX and Sam Blankman-Fried illustrates this problem with clarity.  Fried constantly espoused the pie-in-the-sky ideals of Stakeholder Capitalism, engaging in a kind of corporate charity built on socialist guidelines and climate cultism, while at the same time draining client accounts.   

    The FTX profit strategy was based initially on taking advantage of imbalances in international crypto exchange rates; a limited window for a quick cash grab rather than an idea for long term viability. It also relied on the crypto market constantly reinventing the wheel with new branding and marketing to grow demand for technology that the majority of people around the world don’t really need or particularly desire.  

    Fried suggests that his intent all along was to expand capital as a means to give it away to leftist causes.  He donated over $40 million to Democrat campaigns, for example.  The problem was he failed in business while giving away the money of his clients at the same time.  Some people argue that his clients are partly culpable for the losses, but Fried explicitly stated that his company would not use client funds in such a way.  He lied to them, which is not a great feature of a supposed humanitarian.          

    Being 30 years old and naive certainly didn’t help him, but Fried is a perfect example of why corporation leaders have no business being involved in social engineering.  They are not qualified enough nor intelligent enough nor benevolent enough to mold society at large; no one is that wise or experienced.  Beyond that, the Stakeholder Capitalism ideology is rooted in socialist drivel, making FTX a socialist drivel-based company.

    The model is designed to inevitably reduce the standard of living for most people over time rather than improve it.  Fried just showed us how and why.  

    FTX is a petri dish for the disease of Stakeholder Capitalism.  In the end, FTX and Fried are a warning to us all that business should be separate from politics and cultural moderation. They are better off focusing on making money and increasing productivity and innovation; those companies that can’t should be allowed to fail, not be propped up as pillars of social cohesion.  This is the true way to ensure human progress.  In the meantime, the rest of us are much better off without their help and “charitable” oversight.   

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/12/2022 – 16:50

  • FTX Founder Spent $40 Million As Democrat Midterm Megadonor
    FTX Founder Spent $40 Million As Democrat Midterm Megadonor

    Leading up to Sam Bankman-Fried’s spectacular implosion – in which his firm FTX evaporated billions in wealth after the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange allegedly commingled client assets with his trading firm into a liquidity crunch – he became the sixth-largest donor in this year’s midterm election cycle, giving some $40 million to mostly Democratic candidates and causes.

    According to Forbes, Bankman-Fried was second only to George Soros among billionaire donors to Democratic groups during the 2022 midterm election cycle.

    FTX allegedly loaned Alameda Research – a trading firm founded by Bankman-Fried – roughly $10 billion in client assets, which has landed him under federal investigation by the SEC, CTFC, and the Justice Department – the latter of which already had been working on a months-long investigation, according to the Wall Street Journal. The CTFC, meanwhile, is tasked with regulating certain elements of the crypto markets – including digital assets that are as commodities, and crypto exchanges and clearinghouses.

    In late September, Bankman-Fried admitted that his political donations were mostly to Democrats, and Republican recipients were ‘targeted’.

    Spot the rare journalism by host Chuck Todd;

    But it goes much deeper than that

    Bankman-Fried ‘heavily courted’ the CFTC, “and funded several key lawmakers charged with overseeing the agency, pouring cash into their campaign coffers,” as the Daily Caller notes.

    The CFTC is charged with regulating certain elements of the crypto marketplace, including digital assets that are commodities as well as crypto exchanges and clearinghouses. The agency is overseen by the Senate and House Agriculture Committees, with the former tasked with approving CFTC commissioners nominated by the president.

    The former FTX CEO personally donated to the Senate committee’s chairwoman, Democratic Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, contributing over $20,000 to the Stabenow Victory Fund and $5,800 to her campaign for Senate. Bankman-Fried donated roughly $6,000 to the committee’s ranking member, Republican Arkansas Sen. John Boozman, as well, and $5,800 to the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Commodities, Risk Management and Trade, Republican Montana Sen. John Hoeven. -Daily Caller

    Others have connected dots and concluded that FTX may have been a money laundering operation.

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    What’s more, a PAC founded by FTX executive Ryan Salme, American Dream Federal Action, spent over $1 million on Boozman during the 2022 election cycle, as well as more than $1 million on House Agriculture Committee member and Republican Minnesota Rep. Brad Finstad.

    Bankman-Fried also donated $27 million to the Protect Our Future PAC, which primarily works to elect Democrats. It spent over $1 million towards Rep. Shontel Brown (D-OH), a member of the House Agriculture Committee.

    Another donation linked to members of the House Ag committee includes $200,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), headed by Chair Sean Patrick Maloney, and nearly $6,000 to Maloney himsself. He also gave $20,000 to the campaign and victory fund of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), whose father worked for the NXIVM sex cult in the early 2000s, where he made $25,000 per month.

    In addition to his campaign contributions to the lawmakers tasked with CFTC oversight, Bankman-Fried sought closer relations with the agency itself.

    Bankman-Fried personally lobbied for legislation in the Senate Agriculture Committee that would grant the CFTC greater regulatory oversight over the crypto industry, according to Coindesk, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying the CFTC, SEC and members of Congress on the legislation.

    The bill, known as the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act, which would grant the CFTC “jurisdiction to oversee the spot digital commodity market,” was introduced by Stabenow, Boozman, Booker and Republican North Dakota Sen. John Thune, three of whom are beneficiaries of Bankman-Fried’s donations.

    For its lobbying team, FTX hired former Republican Rep. Mike Conaway, longtime chair of the House Agriculture Committee, and committee staffer Scott Graves to lobby lawmakers on crypto-related issues. -Daily Caller

    As a thought experiment, imagine what Bankman-Fried’s financial ‘goodwill’ would have bought the firm if FTX hadn’t divided by zero and imploded.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/12/2022 – 16:30

  • "Your Words Are Violence!": Coulter Cancelled At Cornell
    “Your Words Are Violence!”: Coulter Cancelled At Cornell

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    This week, we saw another incident of protesters shutting down an event to prevent others from hearing opposing views. At an event with commentator and author Ann Coulter, one protester yelled “Your words are violence.” It is the latest example of how some on the left are treating free speech as harm on college campuses. Unlike many other incidents, however, Cornell has stood by the right of the student group, Network of Enlightened Women, to hold the event and pledged to hold students accountable for the cancellation of the speech.

    Students and faculty previously pressured Cornell to cancel Coulter as someone who engages in “hate speech” and declared her speaking on campus as harmful. Cornell stood with free speech. However, the event lasted only 30 minutes until protesters succeeded in shouting down Coulter. 

    One man is shown screaming “we don’t want you to be here, your words are violence… They are threats, you cannot be speaking here. We don’t want your ideas here! Leave! Leave! Your words are violence! Your words are violence!”Two students chanted “no KKK no fascist USA” as they are escorted out by security. Others blared circus music and blew whistles.

    The Cornell Review reported a common tactic: protesters “seemed to be employing a chain tactic, beginning just as soon as the last heckler was removed, so as to continuously speak over Coulter.”

    Joel Malina, vice president for University Relations at Cornell, told Campus Reform.“Eight college-age individuals were removed from the auditorium following Cornell protocols. All Cornell students among the disrupters will be referred for conduct violations.” He also apologized to Coulter.

    Cornell is to be commended for its stance, particularly if it proceeds with appropriate sanctions for these students. The incident also shows the value of limiting these events to faculty and students of Cornell, who are subject to rules protecting free speech and open discourse on campus.

    We have previously discussed the worrisome signs of a rising generation of censors in the country as leaders and writers embrace censorship and blacklisting. The latest chilling poll was released by 2021 College Free Speech Rankings after questioning a huge body of 37,000 students at 159 top-ranked U.S. colleges and universities. It found that sixty-six percent of college students think shouting down a speaker to stop them from speaking is a legitimate form of free speech.  Another 23 percent believe violence can be used to cancel a speech. That is roughly one out of four supporting violence.

    Faculty and editors are now actively supporting modern versions of book-burning with blacklists and bans for those with opposing political views. Others are supporting actual book burning. Columbia Journalism School Dean Steve Coll has denounced the “weaponization” of free speech, which appears to be the use of free speech by those on the right.

    We discussed this issue with regard to a lawsuit against SUNY. It is also discussed in my recent law review article, Jonathan Turley, Harm and Hegemony: The Decline of Free Speech in the United States, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. We have seen how in universities (including state schools) this can turn into a type of “heckler’s veto” where speeches are cancelled in advance or terminated suddenly due to the disruption of protesters.

    This has been an issue of contention with some academics who believe that free speech includes the right to silence others.  Berkeley has been the focus of much concern over the use of a heckler’s veto on our campuses as violent protesters have succeeded in silencing speakers, including a speaker from the ACLU discussing free speech.  Both students and some faculty have maintained the position that they have a right to silence those with whom they disagree and even student newspapers have declared opposing speech to be outside of the protections of free speech.  At another University of California campus, professors actually rallied around a professor who physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display.

    In the meantime, academics and deans have said that there is no free speech protection for offensive or “disingenuous” speech.  CUNY Law Dean Mary Lu Bilek showed how far this trend has gone. When conservative law professor Josh Blackman was stopped from speaking about “the importance of free speech,”  Bilek insisted that disrupting the speech on free speech was free speech. (Bilek later cancelled herself and resigned after she made a single analogy to acting like a “slaveholder” as a self-criticism for failing to achieve equity and reparations for black faculty and students).

    A few years ago, I debated NYU Professor Jeremy Waldron who is a leading voice for speech codes. Waldron insisted that shutting down speakers through heckling is a form of free speech. I disagree. It is the antithesis of free speech and the failure of schools to protect the exercise of free speech is the antithesis of higher education. In most schools, people are not allowed to disrupt events. They are escorted out of such events and told that they can protest outside of the events since others have a right to listen to opposing views. These disruptions however are often planned to continually interrupt speakers until the school authorities step in to cancel the event.

    Recently, we have seen convocations and other important events disrupted by such protesters. Universities will have to take a stand or lose control over their campuses. Students who disrupt classes or events must be held accountable if we are to maintain open and free discourse on our campuses.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/12/2022 – 16:20

  • Shocking Video Shows Plane Collides With B-17 Bomber At Dallas Airshow
    Shocking Video Shows Plane Collides With B-17 Bomber At Dallas Airshow

    Update (1745ET):

    ABC News’ Jeffery Cook tweeted, “six people, all crew members, are feared to be dead after a mid-air collision between two WWII-era airplanes at the Wings Over Dallas airshow today.” 

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    * * * 

    Update (1627ET):

    Both aircraft involved in the mid-air crash were historic military planes. The first, which we noted earlier, was a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. 

    The second is a Bell P-63 Kingcobra. 

    * * * 

    Shocking footage has surfaced on social media of a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress involved in a mid-air collision during the Commemorative Air Force Wings Over Dallas air show on Saturday at the Dallas Executive Airport. 

    Local news WFFA quoted Dallas Fire-Rescue (DFR), who said the crash occurred around 1325 local time.

    WFAA’s Jason Whitely confirmed a B-17 was involved in the mid-air collision, though he said the “other aircraft type uncertain,” adding debris was scattered across Highway 67. 

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    Videos show a smaller plane colliding with the bomber, breaking it in half as it plummeted to the ground in a fiery explosion. 

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    Here are more videos of the crash. 

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    The Federal Aviation Administration has confirmed the crash and released this statement:

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/12/2022 – 15:50

  • So Much For A Boycott: Almost 3 Million World Cup Tickets Already Sold
    So Much For A Boycott: Almost 3 Million World Cup Tickets Already Sold

    The first ever FIFA World Cup to be held in the northern hemisphere’s winter will kick off in the Gulf nation of Qatar on November 20.

    This year’s World Cup has been overshadowed by questions of human rights abuses, with reports that thousands of guest workers have died in the country since it won the right to host the World Cup ten years ago, as well as criticism over the country’s attitudes to gay people.

    Despite this, as Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, the tournament is selling out at a similar rate to those of the past two decades, with nearly 2.9 million tickets having been sold as of mid-October, according to a statement by FIFA President Gianni Infantino.

    Demand for tickets has been highest in Qatar, the United States, Saudi Arabia, England, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, France, Brazil, and Germany.

    According to a Statista survey conducted last year, only a third of respondents worldwide thought that the tournament should not be held in Qatar because of human rights violations.

    Infographic: So Much for a Boycott: Almost 3 Million World Cup Tickets Sold | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    In the UK, Shadow Cabinet Leader Keir Starmer has announced he is boycotting the games.

    A survey conducted by Public First for More in Common, between November 1 and 3, found that of the 2,030 UK respondents, 69 percent supported his decision, while 12 percent disagreed.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/12/2022 – 15:30

  • FTX Held Just $900MM In Liquid Assets Vs $9BN In Liabilities As Video Emerges Confirming Alameda Knew It Was Pilfering Client Funds
    FTX Held Just $900MM In Liquid Assets Vs $9BN In Liabilities As Video Emerges Confirming Alameda Knew It Was Pilfering Client Funds

    On Friday, we first learned courtesy of a mystery twitter account belonging to an anonymous FTX insider, that the now bankrupt crypto exchange held just $900 million in liquid assets (including, among other things, a $7.3 million online bet by Democrat megadonor Sam Bankman-Fried for Trump to lose).

    Source: minigrogu

    Of the $900 million in liquid assets, the largest portion – or roughly half – was in the form of $470mn of Robinhood shares owned by a Bankman-Fried vehicle not listed in Friday’s bankruptcy filing, which included 134 corporate entities. The liquid assets represent just 10% of the total assets (including $5.4BN in semi-liquid and $3.2BN in illiquid) and is a fraction of the $9 billion in liabilities at FTX which will now make their way through bankruptcy court for the next several years.

    The document, which the FT also tracked down on Saturday and discussed here, and which was shared with prospective investors before the bankruptcy, provides a detailed picture of the financial hole in the FTX crypto empire and suggests customers of FTX international may face steep losses on cash and crypto assets they held on the exchange (and speaking of the 134 subs that FTX listed on its bankruptcy filing, the FT notes that the company had incorrectly listing entities it did not own in its initial filing, while as we reported earlier, the exchange suffered an apparent hack on Friday night that drained its balances to zero).

    Aside from the spreadsheet shown above, the FT also noted another spreadsheet which references the $5bn of withdrawals last Sunday – which as everyone knows by know were precipitated by CZ telling the world he would pull his money after the “recent revelations” and sparking a bank run on FTX which the exchange did not have nearly the fund to defend against; the sheet also noted a negative $8bn entry described as “hidden, poorly internally labled ‘fiat@’ account”.

    It is this entry that the prosecution’s case will revolve around, because Bankman-Fried told the Financial Times the $8bn related to funds “accidentally” extended to his trading firm, Alameda (he declined to comment further). Earlier this week, he tweeted that FTX international had $4bn in easily tradable assets when it faced Sunday’s $5bn surge of withdrawals. He has since deleted many of his fraudulent twitter misrepresentations.

    “There were many things I wish I could do differently than I did, but the largest are represented by these two things: the poorly labeled internal bank-related acount [sic], and the size of customer withdrawals during a run on the bank,” the spreadsheet adds.

    Shifting away from assets, in its now irrelevant investment materials, FTX Trading Ltd, the company behind the main international exchange, stated $8.9 billion in liabilities, the biggest portion of which is $5.1 billion of US dollar balances.

    Healthy companies typically have assets that match or exceed their liabilities. The spreadsheet says FTX Trading had a total of $9.4bn of assets, but as it itself suggests, only 10% or so could be made liquid in case of a crisis.

    Indeed, the vast majority of FTX Trading’s recorded assets were re either illiquid venture capital investments or crypto tokens that are not widely traded, according to the spreadsheet, which cautions that the figures “are rough values, and could be slightly off; there is also obviously a chance of typos etc. They also change a bit over time as trades happen.”

    As shown in the spreadsheet above, the company’s biggest asset as of Thursday was $2.1bn worth of a cryptocurrency called Serum. Unfortunately, the market value of Serum was only $86 million on Saturday, according to CoinMarketCap, suggesting FTX’s holdings are a fraction of what was represented if sold into the market.

    And while we now know that the endgame was bankruptcy, the FT reports that according to the latest set of investment materials SBF was seeking to raise $6bn-$10bn including from a convertible preferred stock paying a 10% dividend that could later be converted into common equity in FTX international at a valuation of between $12bn-$15bn. “This is just a lower bound on the terms investors can get,” the materials add.

    What about the liquid assets? Well, the FT report goes on to notes that until Friday afternoon, Bankman-Fried was looking to sell the $472MM of Robinhood shares, the largest liquid asset listed for FTX Trading, in privately negotiated deals he was arranging on the messaging app Signal, according to an FT source. As a reminder, SBF acquired a 7.6% stake in Robinhood in May, a transaction which delayed (but did not halt) the company’s collapse into oblivion. As part of the attempted firesale, Bankman-Fried was entertaining offers at a 20% discount to Robinhood’s VWAP price, or about $9 per share, said an FT source, who ultimately declined to buy due to perceived legal risks.

    But what is remarkable, is that the proceeds from the HOOD stock offering would not have gone to the now bankrupt FTX estate to satisfy prepetition claims; instead the Robinhood shares were held by an Antigua and Barbuda entity called Emergent Fidelity, which is personally controlled by Bankman-Fried, according to US securities filings. Emergent Fidelity is not among the entities listed in Friday’s bankruptcy filing.

    In other words, SBF – who is most certainly on the run at this moment – was hoping to fill up his personal bank account by dumping his HOOD holdings, while giving FTX creditors the finger (again).

    Finally, as we also noted on Friday, the FTX spreadsheet also noted that in addition to the $900mn of “liquid” assets, $5.5bn of “less liquid” assets consisting of crypto tokens, and $3.2bn of illiquid private equity investments…

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    … there was also an obscure $7.3 million bet for “Trump to Lose”. Which is part for the courtse for any Democrat criminal mastermind.

    The good news for the rest of the crypto space: there are no bitcoin assets listed, despite bitcoin liabilities of $1.4BN. That means the company can not dump bitcoin in the open market, and it also means that the odds of continued selling pressure are now far less than previously speculated. Which is far more than one can say for Vlad Tenev whose Robinhood stock is facing a world of pain when it reopens on Monday.

    And while the above will surely be Exhibit A for the prosecution, Exhibit B will be a video meeting in which Alameda Research’s chief executive and senior FTX officials confirm they knew that FTX had lent its customers’ money to Alameda to help it meet its liabilities.

    Citing ‘people familiar with the video’, the WSJ reports that Alameda employees held a video conference late Wednesday Hong Kong time, in which 27-year-old Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison (also known as @carolinecapital) said that she, Bankman-Fried and two other FTX executives, Nishad Singh and Gary Wang, were aware of the decision to send customer funds to Alameda,

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    Singh was FTX’s director of engineering and a former Facebook employee. Wang, who previously worked at Google, was the chief technology officer of FTX and co-founded the exchange with Mr. Bankman-Fried.

    Ellison said on the call that FTX used customer money to help Alameda meet its liabilities, the people said, assuring the 27-year-old teenager-lookalike of a lengthy prison sentence.

    Hilariously, after tweeting out all the incriminating evidence the prosecution will need to slamdunk this case, neither SBF nor Caroline Ellison returned WSJ phone message and an email seeking comment. Singh and Wang didn’t respond to multiple messages seeking comment. Ryne Miller, FTX US’s chief legal officer, declined to comment.

    Of course, by it’s not like they have anything to say that we don’t already know. Well, we take that back. Considering that FTX was instrumental in laundering bitcoin into Ukraine….

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    … we do wonder just how much crypto money-laundering between the US and Ukraine will emerge as a result of the bankruptcy discovery, and how long until we can safely claim that “Sam Bankman didn’t fry himself”?

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/12/2022 – 14:49

  • Silvergate Rises 19% After Hours Friday After Stating It Has No "Loans Or Investments" In FTX
    Silvergate Rises 19% After Hours Friday After Stating It Has No “Loans Or Investments” In FTX

    Like almost every other equity related to crypto over the last week, Silvergate Capital, which we have written about extensively over the last few years, nosedived on the news of FTX’s collapse. 

    The stock has had a triumphant fall from grace, plunging from highs of $160 per share in early 2022 to lows near $26 on Friday before the cash session, as one new headline after another crossed the wires, offering up insight as to just how devastating FTX’s collapse could be for the crypto world.

    But on Friday after hours, the bank cleared the air in terms of its exposure to the FTX blowup, issuing a statement that it had no loans or investments in FTX, but rather that less than 10% of the bank’s deposits were from FTX.

    Alan Lane, Chief Executive Officer of Silvergate, said:

    “In light of recent developments, I want to provide an update on Silvergate’s exposure to FTX. As of September 30, 2022, Silvergate’s total deposits from all digital asset customers totaled $11.9 billion, of which FTX represented less than 10%. Silvergate has no outstanding loans to nor investments in FTX, and FTX is not a custodian for Silvergate’s bitcoin-collateralized SEN Leverage loans. To be clear, our relationship with FTX is limited to deposits.“

    Chart: WSJ

    The company then confirmed that the rest of its leveraged loans and banking infrastructure was safe: “To date, all SEN Leverage loans have continued to perform as expected with zero losses and no forced liquidations. As a reminder, all SEN Leverage loans are collateralized by Bitcoin, and we do not make unsecured loans or collateralize SEN Leverage loans with other digital assets.”

    “Silvergate’s platform was built to support our clients during times of market volatility and transformation, and the SEN has continued to operate as designed and without interruption. As a federally regulated banking institution that is well capitalized, we maintain a strong balance sheet with ample liquidity to support our customers’ needs,” the bank said. 

    It then reminded investors that Lane would participate in a fireside chat at the Oppenheimer Blockchain & Digital Assets Summit on Thursday, November 17, 2022. We’re sure that’ll prove to be an interesting conversation.

    For the time being, however, Silvergate’s statement was able to rein in some of the damage to the company’s stock: after touching $26 pre-market on Friday, the bank closed the day +1.74 at $34.42, before adding another 19.15%, rising to $41.01 in the aftermarket session, after the company released its statement. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/12/2022 – 14:30

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Nov 12

Today’s News 12th November 2022

  • FBI Should Have 14 Days, Not 66 Years, To Produce Seth Rich Information: Lawyer
    FBI Should Have 14 Days, Not 66 Years, To Produce Seth Rich Information: Lawyer

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

    The FBI should only have 14 days, not 66 years, to produce information from Seth Rich’s laptop computer, a lawyer argued in a new court filing.

    FBI Director Christopher Wray speaks during a news conference in Omaha, Neb., on Aug. 10, 2022. (Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo)

    After a U.S. judge ordered the FBI to produce the information, the bureau said that it should not be required to hand it over because of exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). And if the bureau still had to produce the information, government lawyers said it should have 66 years because it needs to review the information and redact certain information.

    Ty Clevenger, the attorney representing Brian Huddleston, the Texas man who sued the FBI over the information, disagreed.

    He told the judge in the new filing that the FBI failed to brief on the exemptions it is now claiming following the judge rejecting an attempt to shield the information because of privacy concerns for Rich’s relatives. That failure means the FBI cannot now rely on the exemptions, Clevenger said.

    “Having failed to raise an issue or brief it in a motion for summary judgment, the movant may not then salvage the issue by raising it in a motion for reconsideration,” he said, citing previous court cases. “In other words, the movant does not get a Mulligan on reconsideration, which is exactly what the FBI seeks here.”

    The bureau says that FOIA exemption 7(D)-3, which enables shielding identifying information of law enforcement personnel, and information provided by the personnel, enables it to keep withholding Rich’s laptop information from Huddleston.

    “In short, the compact disc containing the images of Seth Rich’s personal computer were provided to the FBI by a local law enforcement agency under implied assurances of confidentiality, and thus the FBI properly withheld the compact disc in its entirety pursuant to Exemption 7(D)-3,” government lawyers told the court.

    Another exemption, 7(E)-6, lets the agency keep the information secret, the lawyers said. That exemption enables the withholding of information that would reveal methods law enforcement uses in investigations.

    Clevenger, though, said that neither exemption applies.

    The first doesn’t because the FBI has never provided evidence that the source of the information was given assurance of confidentiality, he said. The second doesn’t because the bureau claims it never reviewed the laptop information.

    “If this is true, then how could the FBI’s investigative or analytical techniques be compromised by revealing the contents of a laptop that it never investigated or analyzed?” Clevenger told the judge.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 11/11/2022 – 23:40

  • LA Turns To A "Mansion Tax" To Try And Solve Its Homelessness Problem
    LA Turns To A “Mansion Tax” To Try And Solve Its Homelessness Problem

    Believe it or not, California thinks it has a solution to the homelessness problem that can be solved with additional taxation! Go figure.

    A new measure in Los Angeles, called Measure ULA, is set to generate $900 million in taxes that will then be used for housing subsidies and tenant protections. The tax is essentially a levy on all property sales of more than $5 million, according to Bloomberg.

    This “mansion tax”, if it passes, will look to “speed new construction and deliver a way out of the city’s spiraling homelessness crisis”, according to Bloomberg. It could generate some $900 million per year to provide infrastructure like affordable homes and tools like counsel for tenants in eviction courts. 

    Laura Raymond, director of the nonprofit Alliance for Community Transit–Los Angeles, told Bloomberg: “This would be the biggest investment in tenant protections in the history of LA.”

    Yes, and it would be another reason on a long list of reasons for Californians to continue their exodus from the state to greener tax pastures like Florida and Texas. 

    She continued: ““We want to make sure that once this has passed, the housing experts, community organizations, community leaders and people who’ve been doing this work for many years are at the forefront of implementation.”

    Meanwhile critics of the bill say it could ultimately wind up causing costs for developers and, subsequently rents, to rise. The city had tried to issue a bond in 2016 to provide the same type of relief, but that measure was “lackluster” in its success, the report says. 

    Bloomberg explains the new tax:

    The current .45% transfer tax for all properties would jump to 4% for sales of more than $5 million, while transactions that top $10 million would garner a tax of 5.5%. It’s a special tax, meaning revenues don’t go into the city’s general fund but rather a dedicated purse. There’s a set-aside of 8% of revenues for an inspector general and oversight staff; the rest goes toward housing. The split for these funds is 70% for affordable housing (construction, subsidies and preservation) and 30% for homelessness prevention (various measures and tenant protections).

    “We’re talking about very, very high-wealth individuals, but even more so large real estate corporations that honestly have not been paying their fair share, and have been making a killing off of this housing market as it is now,” Raymond continued. 

    Affordable housing builders would be obvious beneficiaries from the tax, which will generate $600 million to $1.1 billion per year, bolstering subsidies for such developments.

    Critics of the bill state the obvious: that it will disincentivize developers from building in Los Angeles. But “researchers” at UCLA are skeptical about the disincentives. 

    Shane Phillips, housing initiative project manager for the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and co-author on a series of studies focused on Measure ULA and transfer taxes, offered  up his best “modern monetary theory”-style explanation, telling Bloomberg: “That money has to come from somewhere. It’s not going to come from the buyer or renter. So the place it’s going to come from is the owner of the land from whom the developer buys the property.”

    Raymond concluded: “In the past, we’ve had politicians get behind one solution. Right now we see criminalization of homelessness as being a major focus. That’s where they’ve poured a lot of their energy over the last couple of years, sweeping the streets. This is very different from that type of approach.”

    You can read more about the details of the tax here. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 11/11/2022 – 23:20

  • A Key Date In The Efforts Against An Incoming President
    A Key Date In The Efforts Against An Incoming President

    Authored by Jeff Carlson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Jan. 12, 2017, has proven to be an incredibly important date in American politics.

    Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in Dallas, Texas, on Aug. 6, 2022. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

    It was on this date that Igor Dancehnko’s soon-to-be FBI handler, Kevin Helson, sent an email regarding Danchenko with the heading: “Plan to convert into [confidential human source].” Danchenko, of course, was the primary source for former British spy Christopher Steele’s fictitious dossier on the 2016 Trump presidential campaign.

    It was also on this same day that Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz announced the initiation of a sweeping review into actions taken by the DOJ and FBI in advance of the 2016 election. This probe by Horowitz—either by design or by accident—effectively tied up any outside probes into the FBI’s actions for two years.

    Also, on the same date, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was renewed for the first time.

    Of particular note is the role of late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the events leading up to that day. Without McCain’s silent endorsement and the efforts by Kramer, it’s unlikely the dossier could have been published as a prelude to the events of Jan. 12. Notably, the dossier’s publication coincided with a CNN article declaring that “Intel chiefs presented [candidate Donald] Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him.”

    Just seven days earlier, on Jan. 5, 2017, top intelligence officials, including then-FBI Director James Comey, then-CIA Director John Brennan, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and then-Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) Michael Rogers had briefed outgoing President Barack Obama on the ICA report. Following the official meeting, Comey stayed behind to brief Obama on the dossier. It was at this meeting that Obama stated that he wanted his team to be “mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia” with the incoming Trump administration.

    Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (L) and CIA Director John Brennan chat before testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Feb. 9, 2016. (Molly Riley/AFP/Getty Images)

    The next day, Comey and other officials including Clapper briefed President-elect Trump and his national security team on the Intelligence Community Assessment. During this portion of the meeting, the Steele dossier was mentioned in passing.

    It was here that retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the incoming national security adviser in the Trump administration, asked whether the FBI had dug into Steele’s sub-sources. Flynn’s probing questions may have precipitated his subsequent political demise at the hands of Comey.

    Comey would stay behind after the initial meeting to brief Trump more fully on the dossier. Comey would later tell CNN’s Jake Tapper that he only briefed Trump on the “salacious” parts of the dossier because “that was the part that the leaders of the intelligence community agreed he needed to be told about.” News of the intelligence briefing to Trump was leaked hours later to the media.

    Then on Jan. 12, The New York Times reported on then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s signing of new NSA Rules and the increased latitude of the NSA to share intercepted communications with the Intelligence Community.

    This unprecedented new order significantly relaxed longstanding limits on the dissemination of information gathered by the NSA’s powerful surveillance operations, granting broad latitude to the Intelligence Community with regard to interagency sharing of information. The order had been officially signed into effect on Jan. 3, 2017, by Lynch. As we know with hindsight, leaks from the Intelligence Community would begin in earnest. And those leaks would plague the Trump administration for the next four years.

    Loretta Lynch during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington on Jan. 28, 2015. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

    It was on the same day of Lynch’s signing of the new Executive Order that Schumer made his now infamous statement on NBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” where he said that if “you take on the Intelligence Community they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” Without any trace of irony, Schumer then stated that without the Intelligence Community, the alleged Russian hacking of the 2016 presidential election would never have been discovered. In effect, Schumer was publicly warning the incoming Trump administration to stand down or the Intelligence Community would declare war on it.

    Also on Jan. 12, Flynn’s Dec. 29, 2016, call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak was the subject of an article published by The Washington Post. The article portrayed Flynn as undermining Obama’s Russian sanctions and raised the possibility that Flynn had violated the Logan Act, an obscure, 200-year-old law. Interestingly, it was then-Vice President Joe Biden who first suggested using the Logan Act against Flynn at the Jan. 5 White House meeting with Comey. In 2020, declassified transcripts of Flynn’s call with Kislyak revealed that Flynn never once talked about sanctions.

    It was also on Jan. 12 that James H. Baker, the director of the Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA), suddenly issued a series of charges against Adam Lovinger, a strategic affairs analyst. The timing of these charges is of great importance, as it was on this same day that Flynn, now heading the National Security Council for the Trump administration, officially invited Lovinger to leave the ONA and join the National Security Council as a senior director. Baker filed four separate charges against Lovinger.

    The Pentagon is seen from the air in Washington, U.S., March 3, 2022, more than a week after Russia invaded Ukraine. (Reuters/Joshua Roberts)

    The reason for the targeting of Lovinger appears evident. Lovinger had grown increasingly concerned over the ONA’s use of outside contractors—in particular, those of a prominent FBI source, Stefan Halper. In 2016, Lovinger wrote a series of emails to Baker, who had recently been appointed by Obama’s defense secretary. In October 2016, Lovinger wrote to Baker, identifying Halper as a particular source of contractual concern, writing of “the moral hazard associated with the contracting of Stefan Halper.” Lovinger’s lawyer, Sean Bigley, would later state that Halper was being used “to go out essentially and engage with foreign government officials. As a contractor, that’s totally illegal.”

    Lovinger would continue to criticize the use of outside contractors. In a March 3, 2017, memo, Lovinger noted, “There has never been an external review of these contractors’ research products. … It is now clear that over several decades, the office transferred millions of dollars to inexperienced and unqualified contractors.” On May 1, 2017, Lovinger was notified that his top-secret clearance had been suspended. He was the second Trump official to lose his security clearance. The loss of a security clearance is a significant matter, as it’s a requirement for many senior positions. Lovinger was then directed to leave the National Security Council and return to the Pentagon immediately.

    The target of Lovinger’s complaints, Halper, met with the FBI on Aug. 11 and 12, 2016, shortly after the FBI had formally opened their July 31, 2016, Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign. As it turns out, Halper just so happened to have direct knowledge of two of the three men considered subjects of Crossfire Hurricane—including Page, whom Halper had met with twice during the month of July. Halper would later fashion a meeting in London with Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos, the one person of the three that he didn’t already know. But Halper also fabricated information on another man who was not yet being looked at by the FBI—Flynn.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 11/11/2022 – 23:00

  • The US & China Account For Half The World's Household Wealth
    The US & China Account For Half The World’s Household Wealth

    Measures like GDP are commonly used to understand the overall wealth and size of the economy. However, as Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley details below, while looking at economic output on an annual basis is useful, there are other metrics to consider when evaluating the wealth of a nation.

    Household wealth statistics reveal which country’s citizens are accruing the highest level of money and assets worldwide.

    This visual utilizes data from Credit Suisse’s annual Global Wealth Report to break down the latest estimates for household wealth by country.

    Household Wealth, by Country

    Here’s how the world’s $463 trillion in household wealth is distributed:

    As the table above demonstrates, global household wealth is far from being distributed equally.

    Country-Level Wealth Concentration

    Much of global wealth is concentrated in the biggest economies, with households in China and the U.S. combining to make up half of all personal wealth in the world. This differs slightly from using GDP as a measure, where the U.S. and China make up 24% and 19% of the world economy in nominal terms, respectively.

    Today, just 10 countries account for 75% of total household wealth.

    One of the biggest changes in recent years is the rise of wealth in China. A decade ago, China’s citizens were estimated to hold just 9% of the world’s wealth. That figure has now more than doubled, while median wealth in the country has skyrocketed from $3,111 to $26,752 between 2000 and 2021.

    A Regional Look at Household Wealth

    From a regional standpoint, wealth is equally split three ways, between North America, Asia, and everywhere else.

    In just one decade, Europe’s share of household wealth dropped by eight percentage points, which is due, in part, to the economic momentum of China.

    Surprisingly, the regions of Africa, South America, Oceania, and the Middle East combine only for about 11% of the world’s total household wealth.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 11/11/2022 – 22:40

  • Regardless Of Party, Pro-Gun Candidates Won Their Races This Week
    Regardless Of Party, Pro-Gun Candidates Won Their Races This Week

    Submitted by Alex Madajian, the Federal Affairs Assistant of Gun Owners of America., 

    It did not take long for anti-gun activists in the media to make the claim gun control is a winning issue for Democrats, but only if the glaring problems with that picture are ignored.

    Abortion, record inflation, large amounts of crime, concerns about democracy, and even climate change and healthcare ranked of higher concern for voters than gun policy according to NBC. Additionally, the New York Times reported last month only 1% of likely voters thought guns were the most important problem. No doubt, if guns were the only issue on the ballot, there would be very different results. The fact is, there were too many factors in play for pundits to make the claim people want more gun control. But there were many glaring cases in which pro-gun elected officials were rewarded for strong pro-gun actions.

    Every single governor who signed a Constitutional Carry law, which would allow people to carry a firearm without a permit, won re-election. Brian Kemp won Georgia, Chris Sununu won New Hampshire, Kim Reynolds won Iowa, Kevin Stitt won Oklahoma, Greg Abbott won Texas, and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine also won reelection. All of the aforementioned either signed Constitutional Carry Laws in their current term or a previous term. Additionally, although Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida did not sign Constitutional Carry, he called for such legislation to be sent to him for his signature. If guns really were on the ballot in Florida, then the people of Florida clearly are rewarding him for his pro-gun stance by giving him another term.

    Even the people of Uvalde, who suffered the horrendous tragedy of 19 children and 2 teachers murdered at Robb Elementary School in May of this year by a deranged school shooter, decided to vote more than 60% for Governor Greg Abbot, who again, signed permitless carry into law. In addition, a Republican challenger to the State Senator representing the area, won the Uvalde area by more than 17% and boasts support for the “constitutional right to carry” on his website.

    People who argue guns are not a good issue to run on may claim Congresswoman Lauren Boebert’s narrow race in a supposedly safe Republican district is an example of how proud pro-gun candidates are vulnerable. However, if Representative Boebert’s close margins in a safe red district prove that’s the case, why didn’t that apply to other supposedly “controversial” pro-gun elected officials? Congressman Thomas Massie is also the co-chair of the Second Amendment Caucus with Boebert, yet he won by massive margins. What about Congresswomen Marjorie Taylor Greene? She is no stranger to taking stances on a host of issues that are considered “controversial” by the anti-gun Left, and also makes guns a top issue on which to campaign. Plus, she was outspent by her opponent by nearly $5 million, but she still won by massive margins.

    The best conclusion to make regarding Boebert’s close race is that there were numerous factors involved not having to do with gun policy. Even her opponent didn’t make it an issue, since he never mentions it on his website. When he was asked about it, he expressed a middle-of-the-road opinion by saying “I’m fully supportive of people having [guns]. Let’s make sure people can hunt as freely as they wish, let’s make sure they can do their target practices and recreational gun firing, and let’s make sure people have the ability to carry the pistol on their belt.”

    As it turns out, when Democrats show support for guns, they do fair very well. Perhaps the most egregious anti-Second Amendment piece of legislation put on the floor of the House for a vote was this year’s so-called “Assault Weapons” ban. This ban was far more encompassing than just AR-15s, which would be extreme enough, but would also have banned common items such as Glock handguns. Obviously, opposition to such legislation does not make one a pro-gun hero, but it shows even a few pragmatic Democrats recognize voting for gun bans are a bad idea in tight races. All three Democrat candidates running for reelection in the general who voted against the ban won reelection. Reportedly, two won by nearly 10 points. Democrat Jerad Golden ran in one of the thirteen districts Trump won in 2020 and is projected to win according to the Sun Journal.

    Even gun control organizations like Everytown for Gun Safety don’t act as if their actual mission of gun control is enough of an issue to mobilize voters. The Reload reports they ran ads attacking pro-gun candidate’s stances on irrelevant issues to guns like abortion or the security of the 2020 election. They also spent $1 million to defeat two Secretary of State candidates, which is an office that has nothing to do with gun policy.

    Declaring voters don’t care about their right to defend themselves because Republicans did worse than expected is a projection of desires rather than a report of facts. Many issues were on voters’ minds, but if appreciation for gun control was one of them, then that’s just clearly not reflected by the results.

    *   *   *

    Gun Owners for America, the only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 11/11/2022 – 22:20

  • The Dark Web Price Index 2022
    The Dark Web Price Index 2022

    Did you know that the internet you’re familiar with is only 10% of the total data that makes up the World Wide Web?

    As Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang details below, the rest of the web is hidden from plain sight, and requires special access to view. It’s known as the Deep Web, and nestled far down in the depths of it is a dark, sometimes dangerous place, known as the darknet, or Dark Web.

    This graphic by Enrique Mendoza provides us a glimpse at this shrouded part of the internet, showing us some of the common items that are sold on there, and how much they typically cost.

    A Brief Introduction to the Dark Web

    Before diving in, it’s worth quickly explaining what the Dark Web is, and how people typically gain access to it.

    Unlike the ordinary web (which is also known as the Surface Web), the Dark Web cannot be accessed through a regular browser such as Chrome or Safari. Rather, users need to access it anonymously via a Tor browser.

    Tor, which is short for “The Onion Router,” is a special portal that connects users to Dark Web websites in a complicated way that ultimately protects the user’s identity. This means users can access websites anonymously.

    The Dark Web can be a breeding ground for illegal activity, where people can buy things like contract killings, drugs, malware, and other people’s personal information.

    Product Price Breakdown

    How much is your personal information worth on the Dark Web? This graphic uses data from the 2022 Dark Web Product Price Index to find that out and more.

    This annual report by privacyaffairs.com provides insights into some of the most popular products that are for sale on the Dark Web, such as credit card data, forged documents, and hacked info, and lists the average price of each product.

    While this list is far from exhaustive and not the only measure of Dark Web prices, the report gives us a glimpse into hidden online territory that’s extremely unfamiliar to many of us. Here’s the top 10 most valuable items…

     

    One of the most expensive items included in the dataset is premium malware, which costs about $5,500 per 1,000 installs. While the cost for premium malware is hefty, there are still billions of malware attacks occurring every year causing huge monetary damage.

     

    On the other end of the spectrum are Paypal account details, Netflix logins, or stolen credit card details (complete with a CVV) all available for less than $20.

    How to Protect Your Personal Information

    As the line between the digital and physical realm becomes increasingly blurry, it’s more important than ever to make sure you’re protecting yourself and your personal information from identity theft.

    According to Privacy Affairs, there are several proactive measures you can take to decrease your chances of getting hacked. This includes using a VPN whenever you access public Wi-Fi, using different passwords for different online accounts, and investing in anti-malware software to combat unwanted visitors.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 11/11/2022 – 22:00

  • McCarthy, Biden Disclose What They Discussed In First Call After Midterms
    McCarthy, Biden Disclose What They Discussed In First Call After Midterms

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

    President Joe Biden and the top Republican in the House of Representatives offered slightly different accounts of their first phone call after the midterm elections.

    President Joe Biden, left, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in file images. (Getty Images)

    House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who wants to become the next speaker if Republicans gain the majority, said that Biden congratulated him.

    “He congratulated me, so for anyone who thinks we didn’t win the majority, Joe at least believes we did as well,” McCarthy said on Fox News.

    The race for the House, which the Democrats now hold, is not yet called because of delays in vote counting in multiple states. Republicans had secured 210 seats as of early Nov. 11. A majority is 218 or more.

    Biden, speaking with reporters after McCarthy’s TV appearance, said he did congratulate McCarthy.

    “I congratulated him. I said, ‘If you win the majority, congratulations. But congratulations so far, you’ve made some gains,’” Biden said at the White House in Washington.

    The Democrat also claimed that there’s still hope that Democrats, who have secured just 194 House seats so far, can keep control of the House.

    “It’s still alive. But it’s like drawing an inside straight,” he said.

    Asked for his opinion of McCarthy during a press conference this week, Biden declined to offer much.

    “I think he’s the Republican leader, and I haven’t had much of occasion to talk to him. But I will be talking to him,” Biden said.

    Regardless of the final outcome of the midterms, the president added, he wants to work together with leaders from both parties to “deliver for the American people.”

    McCarthy said Biden called him not only to offer congratulations, but to discuss where they could work together.

    “I said, I will work with anybody that wants to put American first and move us in the right direction,” McCarthy said.”

    He pointed to the poor economy, issues with energy, and the border crisis.

    “I laid this all out to the president and told him, I will work with you if you’re willing to work on these items,’” McCarthy said.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 11/11/2022 – 21:40

  • Corporate America Bombards Black People With Junk Food Ads
    Corporate America Bombards Black People With Junk Food Ads

    A new study reveals corporate America disproportionately targets Black and Hispanic consumers with junk food, such as candy, sugary drinks, snacks, and fast food, more than any other race. 

    The Rudd Center for Food and Policy Health at the University of Connecticut found Black youth and adults were subjected to 21% more junk food ads than their white counterparts. Researchers said corporate America boosted their advertising budgets on Spanish-speaking television stations as a total proportion of their ad budget.

    As the advertising industry drastically changes, companies are embracing celebrities and influencers to promote their products on television and social media. Researchers said advertisers hired celebrities from Black and Hispanic communities to encourage young people of color to purchase junk food. 

    Many of these celebrities are idolized by consumers and will mimic their trends, even if that’s unhealthy eating habits. 

    In the midst of the worst obesity epidemic this nation has ever faced, corporate America employs an army of influencers to bombard people of color with ads for junk food. Data shows nearly 20% of all children are obese, and rates are much higher among children of color: 26.2% of Hispanic children and 24.8% of Black children. This is compared with 16.6% of white children. 

    Here are some of those ads: 

    Eating junk food is linked to a higher risk of obesity, depression, digestive issues, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and early death. Some scientists warn that highly-processed foods should be reclassified as a “drug” because they are as addictive and harmful as cigarettes, according to Daily Mail. 

    People should question the motives behind corporate America disproportionately targeting communities of color with junk food. Perhaps, there’s more to the story than just sales… 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 11/11/2022 – 21:20

  • The Real Story Behind RSV & The So-Called "Tripledemic"
    The Real Story Behind RSV & The So-Called “Tripledemic”

    Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

    MSM sources are now warning of a co-pandemics of flu, RSV and COVID… but is there any reason to be afraid?

    The “tripledemic” is upon us, according to the mainstream media. What is a “tripledemic”, you ask?

    Apparently, it’s when we have simultaneous pandemics of influenza, Covid and RSV at the same time. At least, according to the LA Times:

    A ‘tripledemic’ of flu, RSV and COVID is feared in California

    And the Atlantic:

    What a ‘Tripledemic’ Means for Your Body

    And CBS:

    “Tripledemic” in U.S. could bring deluge of patients to hospitals

    All three stories – and there are many others out there too – hit the same handful of talking points.

    They report that the flu is back after its “mysterious” disappearance during the Covid “pandemic” (the Alantic notes US flu cases reduced by well over 90% and calls it “getting lucky”, the doublethink is unbelievable).

    They also warn that Covid is “still around” or “not over”, or some variation on that them.

    However, the main thrust of the fear is reserved for RSV. Now, you’re all probably more than familiar with “flu”. And you’re definitely tired of hearing about Covid. But RSV could be a new one for you…so let me explain.

    THE VIRUS

    Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is  – according to virus theory – one of the many viruses circulating in the general population at all times. To quote the Mayo Clinic’s website [emphasis added]:

    Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) causes infections of the lungs and respiratory tract. It’s so common that most children have been infected with the virus by age 2. Respiratory syncytial (sin-SISH-ul) virus can also infect adults. In adults and older, healthy children, RSV symptoms are mild and typically mimic the common cold.

    And according to the CDC:

    Almost all children will have had an RSV infection by their second birthday […] Most RSV infections go away on their own in a week or two.

    So, according to official sources, RSV is not serious in the vast majority of cases, and almost all of us have already had it.

    In fact, seeing as the symptoms are both generic and mild, the odds are you have had it multiple times throughout your life and never really known. It’s simply one of the many viruses known to cause what we refer to as “the common cold”.

    THE DECEPTION

    There’s a trick being played here, and as usual in the age of the “pandemic”, it’s a trick of language. The powers that be are exploiting linguistic ambiguity in order to generate fear.

    Across most of the world, we simply refer to “a cold” or “the flu” almost interchangeably to describe the dozen or so respiratory infections we all get throughout our lifetime.

    Most of the time we don’t know what specific virus or bacteria is supposedly the cause, we have no way of finding out and it doesn’t make any difference because the symptoms and treatments are all the same: Cough, fever, headache – bedrest, orange juice and painkillers.

    Now, essentially, the media are taking advantage of that ubiquitous ambiguity by naming something that has always been there but pretending it is something new.

    Here’s a case in point, the Scientific American published this article on November 4th, which headlines:

    RSV Is Surging: What We Know about This Common and Surprisingly Dangerous Virus

    Now, although the headline claims RSV is “surprisingly dangerous”, the article seems to go out of its way to prove the opposite.

    • “the virus is so common that nearly all children have encountered it by their second birthday.”

    • “It’s that ubiquitous,” Flores says. “Even adults are exposed to it repeatedly over time, so we develop some immunity to it.”

    • “In healthy adults and children, though, RSV typically presents as a common cold, with symptoms similar to those caused by other “common cold” viruses, such as rhinovirus, adenovirus and a couple of common coronaviruses.”

    • “For the average person, RSV is little more than a nuisance”

    The article does warn that RSV can be “particularly dangerous for newborn babies and adults older than age 65” and the immunocompromised, but this is true of literally every pathogen . And even then, they go on to add:

    only about 1 to 2 percent of children under six months with RSV need hospitalization (usually for a couple of days), and death is rare.

    This is a tactic we’re all familiar with – it was routine, throughout the Covid narrative, for official voices to tell us to be afraid, whilst simultaneously explaining there was nothing to be afraid of.

    This approach clearly serves some purpose, although I could not say for certain what that may be.

    Regardless, the deception is obvious and clearly deliberate.

    The question is, why?

    THE MOTIVE

    To sum up – there is no reason to fear RSV infection. The media are clear about that themselves, even if they bury it under layers of hysterical headlines.

    It is just one of the many viruses which cause – or are said to cause – cold or flu symptoms, all of which circulate the whole world constantly, especially at this time of year.

    There’s ALWAYS a “tripledemic”, or a quademic or a septemic. The only difference is now they are naming it.

    They are taking the routine and pretending it’s exceptional simply to try and frighten you.

    Why?

    Well, rather predictably, to sell vaccines.

    Yes, you’ll be relieved to know that just as RSV is hitting the headlines for the first time EVER, they’ve also just produced the first ever vaccines against it.

    On November 1st, Vox reported:

    New RSV vaccines are coming. This is very, very good news.

    Which claims:

    After decades of failed efforts to produce an RSV vaccine, several highly effective ones are finally on the verge of approval.

    On the same day, Pfizer announced “positive top-line data” for their new RSV vaccine, with CNN reporting:

    After promising trial results for maternal RSV vaccine, Pfizer says it will seek FDA approval this year

    That’s right, after decades of trying and dozens of failed attempts, the pharmaceutical companies have finally managed to create not just one but multiple effective vaccines against an endemic virus…just as the virus has  hit the headlines.

    Now, this all sounds rather familiar, doesn’t it?

    If you didn’t fall for this last time you don’t need me to warn you.

    If you DID fall for this last time?

    Well, fool you once shame on them, fool you twice…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 11/11/2022 – 21:00

  • Large Piece Of Destroyed Space Shuttle Found On Ocean Floor
    Large Piece Of Destroyed Space Shuttle Found On Ocean Floor

    A large section of the U.S. space shuttle Challenger has been found on the Atlantic Ocean floor, more than 30 years after it exploded shortly after liftoff, killing all seven aboard, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center announced on Thursday. 

    The section remains partially buried, but measures at least 15 feet by 15 feet. Judging by the shape of its thermal tiles, NASA believes this piece is from the belly of the shuttle. 

    Divers working on a History Channel documentary examine the heat tiles of the Challenger space shuttle (History channel via AP)

    The shuttle piece was originally discovered in March, by divers working on a History Channel documentary series about the Bermuda Triangle. They were looking for World War II aircraft wreckage but were startled to find something very different just off Florida’s Cape Canaveral coast. The documentary will debut on Tuesday, Nov. 22. 

    Noting the “modern construction and presence of 8-inch square tiles,” the production team alerted NASA, the agency said in a press release. After studying the video, NASA verified it was from Challenger.   

    Challenger exploded on Jan. 28, 1986, just 73 seconds after liftoff. The last command given to the shuttle was “Challenger, go with throttle up.” 

    A spectacular explosion followed, and then stunned silence from both TV commentators and NASA launch commentator Steve Nesbitt. That silence ended when Nesbitt said, “Flight controllers here looking very carefully at the situation…obviously a major malfunction….we have no downlink.” 

    Evidence points to a grim conclusion: The astronauts likely survived the initial explosion. Among other indicators, study of wreckage found that at least three astronauts switched their emergency oxygen supply on. 

    Since the shuttle was 12 miles up when it exploded, the six NASA crew members and school-teacher Christa McAuliffe may have spent 2 minutes in sheer terror, knowing they were plummeting to certain death. 

    Challenger crew members training in a flight simulator a month before the disaster (Bill Bowers/NASA)

    An investigation found that unexpectedly cold temperatures led to the failure of O-ring seals in the shuttle’s solid rocker booster segment joints. Flight managers approved the launch despite concerns raised by shuttle program employees.  

    Though 118 tons of Challenger’s wreckage have been found so far, that’s still just under half of the total mass that lifted off that day. In 1986, the remains of all seven astronauts were recovered from the shattered wreckage of the crew compartment. As the New York Times reported at the time, the crew compartment was “little more than a pile of rubble on the ocean floor, 8 feet high and 50 feet across.” 

    Despite the huge volume of material that’s still unaccounted for, this is the first new section of the shuttle found since 1996, when two portions of the left wing washed ashore. 

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

     

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 11/11/2022 – 20:40

  • One Veteran's Story: An Orange-Pilled Green Beret
    One Veteran’s Story: An Orange-Pilled Green Beret

    Authored by Adam R. Gebner, a Green Beret and West Point graduate, via Bitcoin Magazine,

    The opinions expressed throughout this piece are mine alone, and in no way reflect official policy or opinions of the U.S. Army or the U.S. Department of Defense. Though I am by no means a writer, I hope that by publishing this, more service members consider working in the Bitcoin industry and Bitcoin companies consider expanding their efforts to hire Veterans. Additionally, I am always learning more about Bitcoin, how it works, and the potential value it may bring to our world. Please let me know where I am off base, thanks!

    Early in my life, I knew I wanted to be a Green Beret officer. Fighting to liberate oppressed people by working by, with, and through local populations was at the core of my motivations to choose this path. I saw the Special Forces’ mission as a cost and risk-efficient way to prevent large-scale conflict while enabling people to defend themselves and secure their own freedom. After graduating from West Point in 2014 and serving with the 173rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne) for three years, I ultimately earned my Green Beret and an opportunity to lead a detachment of America’s Chosen Soldiers. Now that I’ve accomplished what I set out to do with my military career by commanding an “A-team” for two years, I am looking forward to the next mission in my professional life: contributing to the adoption and integration of the best freedom-protecting innovation in modern history — Bitcoin.

    Like so many others, I had a few touch points with Bitcoin before seriously considering the validity of the technology. In 2010, during my first year at West Point, I overheard a few Computer Science majors discussing this “internet money” and I foolishly dismissed it without trying to learn anything else. Then in 2013, when I started learning about investing and economics, I stumbled across bitcoin again. I read a little bit more into it, but not enough to understand how it could replace gold as a sound money system (thanks Peter Schiff…).

    Finally, in the summer of 2017, when I was deployed to the Republic of Georgia, “number-go-up” piqued my curiosity and I made my first attempt at buying some bitcoin. Unfortunately for me, the exchange I used, Coinbase, didn’t accept my orders because even though I had an American driver’s license and a U.S. Passport, I had an Italian phone number and was in the Republic of Georgia which, apparently, was suspicious. I completely missed that bull run, but I finally started to learn more about bitcoin and the potential of this innovation.

    The concepts I learned reading about Austrian economics, personal investing and American history clicked shortly after. My perspective on some of the most persistent problems around the world shifted towards the realization that our global monetary system is corrupt, pricing signals are severely distorted, and the national and global debt is unsustainable. Since then, I have continued to learn about economics, bitcoin, and the growing industry around it, while stacking sats as often as possible.

    This year, I completed my time in command and I had to make a career decision: continue serving in the Army or transition out. Service members, especially those who choose to serve for the standard 20-year career, have my deepest respect. Military life isn’t easy, it requires giving up a wide swath of freedoms, volunteering your life in order to protect national interests and persisting through deep uncertainty. The military profession can provide an honorable career, but for a variety of personal and professional reasons, I am called to do something else. I am inspired and encouraged to find work that contributes to a free and prosperous world, work that creates value for others, work that fixes systemic problems. For me, this means taking my experience leading diverse, cross-functional teams to market with the goal of contributing to the continued success and expansion of Bitcoin.

    For any service member or Veteran who might be reading this, if you want to develop technical skills, take advantage of the Career Skillbridge Program. I am on my way to enrolling in a Vet Tec program, a Veterans Affairs program to train transitioning service members on a variety of in-demand technical skills, like computer programing and data processing. My experience creating models while studying mechanical engineering has helped with the learning curve, as has some experience working through classes on Code Academy. But anyone with an honest desire to learn will be successful. Not every Veteran or member of the Bitcoin industry needs to have these technical skills, however, for those who want to work in product development, or management, I believe having experience with software engineering, computer science or programming is next to essential and will make you much more marketable to bitcoin-focused companies.

    Other vets in the industry have been incredibly helpful. Oftentimes a cold-message over LinkedIn results in an enthusiastic response and a phone call. Veterans currently working with Bitcoin know that as service members leave, they want to continue serving in a principle-based organization, and Bitcoin is arguably the most freedom-preserving industry to work in. For service members on their way out, find people who have already made the switch. They are great sounding boards for your ideas and bump-steering potential career plans. You will only leave the military once (hopefully), talk to as many people as possible who have done it before you and are now working in your targeted industry.

    To me, and many other Veterans, serving in an industry with an inspiring, impactful mission is an essential requirement for a post-military career. Out of all the options, I believe that working in the Bitcoin industry and helping spread the adoption of bitcoin is an excellent fit for the dedicated, principled and team-oriented Veterans looking for their next opportunity to contribute to society. To Bitcoin companies, talk with and hire Veterans. There are many ways to provide transitioning Veterans with trial runs with your company, at no cost to you. I think you will find that Veterans are competent members of your team who will remain dedicated to your mission and their coworkers.

    I see the potential of a civilian career working with Bitcoin as an incredible opportunity to pursue following the end of a highly rewarding period of military service. I am excited to contribute to the growth of the network and adoption of the technology. Despite the FUD and recent global instability, I am optimistic for our future. As a Green Beret who was trained to foment revolutions in pursuit of the expansion of human freedoms, I have high hopes for what Bitcoiners can do for humanity.

    [ZH: Adam’s story was not alone and we thought the following, authored by Luke Groom, a West Point graduate and Army Enginner Officer, offered further insights as to why veterans find bitcoin so compelling.]

    The Constitution was the code which enabled the protocol of America, Land of the Free — and Bitcoin builds upon this freedom.

    Within the Bitcoin community, U.S. military service members are sometimes viewed with suspicion. I don’t know where this suspicion comes from. Maybe the libertarian elements of the community are against things that remind them of Big Government. Maybe Left elements of the community are against things that remind them of guns and violence. Maybe people think we are infiltrating the Bitcoin ranks to secretly further the interests of the Military Industrial Complex. I can only speculate. For me, the transition from service member to Bitcoiner is obvious. I will outline three reasons: freedom, responsibility and code. Throughout, I will refer to “military service members” and “Veterans” interchangeably, because they are the same people, just at different periods of life.

    First, the key value which drives many young men and women to join the military is the same key value that Bitcoin promotes. If you ask someone why they chose to serve in the military, and continue to dig into their answer, somewhere in there is almost always a desire to promote liberty and freedom. At its core, Bitcoin is freedom money. It is free from debasement, free from political influence, free from seigniorage, free from centralization, free from manipulation and free from compulsion. Most people join the military because they value liberty. They value free markets. They want to fight for the “Land of the Free.” Sure, actual results may vary, but the desire is there.

    Consider that we have centrally controlled fiat money, capable of debasement, political influence, theft via seigniorage and manipulated pricing via fixing of interest rates. Consider that fiat money is at least half of essentially every transaction. That means that not only do we not have a free market of money; we don’t have a free market of anything! Imagine the disillusionment of a service member who has dedicated their life to fighting for freedom, only to realize that we live in this unfree, manipulated-market world. Then they learn about Bitcoin. Becoming a Bitcoiner means voting with your energy in favor of free markets and all the freedom that Bitcoin represents. They realize that if they put their energy into Bitcoin, whether their purchasing power goes up or goes down, they are fighting for freedom, just like their inspiration to join the military to begin with.

    Second, most Veterans crave increased personal responsibility. The military is great for teaching young people responsibility. Get up. Make your bed. Exercise. Go to work. Wear the right thing. Be on time. Be reliable. Be accountable. Lead. Follow. Take care of your buddies. The military has built in forcing functions to teach responsibility.

    There comes a time, however, when you want to take the training wheels off. You want to show your personal responsibility without someone looking over your shoulder to make sure you’re doing it right. You want more than five options for your retirement investments. You want to shout, “I’m a peacock, you gotta let me fly!” Bitcoin aligns with that desire. You have to do your own research. You have to take responsibility for custody (or responsibility for counterparty risk). You have to accept the volatility in its conversion rate to fiat. There’s no safety net in the Bitcoin market, and that increased personal responsibility is liberating for many Veterans.

    Last, every Veteran swears an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. As I’ve gone through law school, I’ve developed a greater appreciation for that document. We live in a polarized country. I’ve seen a lot of that country first-hand, living in Chicago, New York, Missouri, North Carolina and Washington. I’ve lived in the city, the suburbs and small towns. I’ve worked with millionaires and with people without a sat to their name. I’ve shared meals with people who have lost friends fighting overseas and with people who have protested at Army bases. Our citizens look different, sound different and have vastly different values. With citizens who are so dissimilar, what is holding this country together?

    I would argue that the Constitution holds this country together and defines who we are as a nation. The Constitution is less than 5,000 words of code that set-in motion the protocol that is the United States of America. We have since seen that code soft forked in the form of amendments to the Constitution. We have seen layer upon layer of government built on top of that code, in similar ways that layers are being built upon Bitcoin. Some could successfully argue that we have seen the code ignored or misinterpreted beyond recognition. However, this code is at the heart of our country. Every service member swears to support and defend, not a man, not a military industrial complex, but that Constitution. For Veterans who have already sworn to possibly give their lives for the sake of one code, the step to embrace code-based money is natural.

    Finally, my Veterans Day would not be complete without thanking a Veteran or two. Thank you, Anthony Pompliano and Preston Pysh. Without you two, I might still be thinking that Bitcoin was “probably nothing.” Happy Veterans Day.

    [ZH: Finally, before we leave the topic of Veterans and Bitcoin, the following brief excerpt from ‘Captain Sidd’s recent note helps explain why adopting bitcoin on Veterans Day can help put an end to forever wars that unnecessarily risk the lives of U.S. soldiers.]

    Widespread adoption of bitcoin as a monetary unit, in place of fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar, would tightly control or completely eliminate a government’s ability to print money. Just as the gold standard kept U.S. spending largely in check, a bitcoin standard will limit spending on military adventures abroad and costly programs at home. Government programs will need the support of the people to continue receiving funding, or else the increased taxation needed to fund those programs will lead to voting out politicians who support them. The feedback loop of rising spending between government and supported industries — like the arms industry in the U.S. — will largely disappear as public sentiment plays a larger role in allocation of government funds.

    I am hopeful we can achieve a bitcoin standard because doing so does not require us to lobby the very politicians who benefit most from the existing monetary system. Achieving a bitcoin standard only requires that we as individuals and communities continue to adopt bitcoin to a greater degree as a savings tool and monetary medium. If we all hold and transact in bitcoin instead of fiat currencies, the fiat money printer has nobody to suck purchasing power from and the politics of money printing will necessarily reform.

    Let’s honor our military veterans by only putting soldiers into war when absolutely necessary. Our collective and peaceful actions can end the funding source for unaccountable, brutal and life-destroying forever wars.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 11/11/2022 – 20:20

  • What Are The Benefits Of Fusion Energy?
    What Are The Benefits Of Fusion Energy?

    As the world moves towards net-zero emissions, sustainable and affordable power sources are urgently needed by humanity.

    As Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti details below, one of the most promising technologies, fusion, has attracted the attention of governments and private companies like Chevron and Google. In fact, Bloomberg Intelligence has estimated that the fusion market may eventually be valued at $40 trillion.

    In this infographic sponsored by General Fusion, we discuss the benefits of fusion as a clean energy source.

    The Ultimate Source of Energy 

    Fusion powers the sun and the stars, where the immense force of gravity compresses and heats hydrogen plasma, fusing it into helium and releasing enormous amounts of energy. Here on Earth, scientists use isotopes of hydrogen—deuterium and tritium—to power fusion plants.

    Fusion energy offers a wide range of benefits, such as:

    1. Ample resources:

    Both atoms necessary for nuclear fusion are abundant on Earth: deuterium is found in seawater, while tritium can be produced from lithium.

    2. Sustainable

    Energy-dense generation like fusion minimizes land use needs and can replace aging infrastructure like old power plants. 

    3. Clean

    There are no CO₂ or other harmful atmospheric emissions from the fusion process.

    4. Scalable

    With limited expected regulatory burden or export controls, fusion scales effectively with a small land footprint that can be located close to cities.

    5. Safety advantage

    Unlike atomic fission, fusion does not create any long-lived radioactive nuclear waste. Its radiation profile is similar to widely used medical and industrial applications like cyclotrons for cancer treatment.

    6. Reliable

    Fusion energy is on-demand and independent from the weather, making it an excellent option in a dependable portfolio for power generation.

    Commercializing Fusion Energy

    More than 130 countries have now set or are considering a target of reducing emissions to net-zero by 2050. Meanwhile, global energy demand is expected to increase by 47% in the next 30 years.

    While renewables like wind and solar are intermittent and need a baseload source of clean energy to supplement them, fusion, when commercially implemented, could deliver clean, abundant, reliable, and cost-competitive energy. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 11/11/2022 – 20:00

  • "Anti-Democratic" Just Means "Something The Regime Doesn't Like"
    “Anti-Democratic” Just Means “Something The Regime Doesn’t Like”

    Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

    “Democracy” is the new “revolutionary.”

    In the old Marxist regimes, anything that displeased the regime was said to be contrary to “the revolution.” For example, in the Soviet Union, national leaders spoke regularly of how the nation was in the process of “a revolutionary transformation” toward a future idealized communist society. Many years after the actual revolution and coup d’état in Russia following the collapse of tsarist rule, the word “revolution” had “positive connotations and was considered a source of legitimacy in official ideology.”

    “Revolutionary” became a synonym for “a thing we like,” and it’s no surprise that a 1952 Soviet legal manual lists “counterrevolutionary” activities as among the “political crimes … deemed generally dangerous crimes against the order of the state.” Moreover, in the early 1950s, when Mao Zedong launched new efforts to consolidate Communist power, he called the effort a “campaign to suppress counterrevolutionaries.” Other regimes adopted similar practices as well. Fidel Castro’s regime frequently launched investigations and campaigns against “antirevolutionary” dissidents and Ethiopia’s Marxist governments in the 1970s described domestic opponents as guilty of “anti-revolutionary crimes.”

    Anything that was deemed “counterrevolutionary” or “antirevolutionary” was assumed to be an awful thing that was a threat to the reliably vague notion of progress toward the fulfillment of the alleged revolution. The vagueness of the term was, of course, an advantage from the point of view of the regime. Consequently, to be a counterrevolutionary required nothing more than to be guilty of thought crime by subscribing to heterodox views on the current ruling party.

    Thus, to be a counterrevolutionary was simply to be opposed to the regime, regardless of one’s actual ideological views. This is why communist Emma Goldman (a bona fide revolutionary) could be denounced as “antirevolutionary” for expressing doubts about the virtues of the Soviet regime. One’s support for actual revolution was irrelevant, and “antirevolutionary” could simply be defined or redefined as whatever the regime found objectionable at any given time.

    In the year 2022, we find the word “democracy” serving a similar role in political discourse. President Joe Biden has delivered two major speeches this year on how “democracy” will supposedly be abolished if his opponents win. Last week, former president Barack Obama solemnly intoned that if Republicans win in Arizona, “democracy as we know it may not survive.” Indeed, this has become something of a mantra among left-wing politicians and their media allies. One writer at Salon chastised voters for daring to let their votes be influenced by economic concerns when “democracy is under threat.” One New York Times headline bemoaned the apparent reality that voters don’t seem interested in “saving democracy” when it’s supposedly all so clear that “democracy is in peril.”

    So why are so many voters allegedly ready to “trade democracy for cheap gas”? The answer probably lies in the fact that most voters can see what is obvious: the only thing actually in peril is the Left’s version of democracy, which is an anything-goes-including-rampant-voter-fraud model for US elections. Moreover, the Left wants a federal takeover of elections, which in the United States have always been at least moderately decentralized. Instead, the “prodemocracy” camp wants federally enforced election regulations prohibiting limitations on voting for aliens, dead people, and frauds. If the Left does poorly in this election, that’s a lot less likely to happen.

    Any attempt to limit fraud – such as requiring identification for voters is denounced as “anti-democratic.” Indeed, nothing better shows this than the Left’s complaints about the fact that some law enforcement officers have monitored polling places. As one Georgetown University bureaucrat put it, allowing law enforcement personnel to guard ballot boxes might “intimidate” some people, and sends the message that voter fraud actually occurs. This, she tells us, is “abhorrent.” But at the core of this complaint is simply an aversion to the idea that the presence of police might scare some people away from ballot stuffing and other forms of fraud.

    Ironically, by this way of thinking, to be “pro-democracy” is to not care whether the voting process is fraudulent. Thus, just like the term “revolutionary” under the old Communist regimes, the terms “democratic” and “democracy” in the US today cease to have any meaning and really just mean “what our side likes.”

    After all, most reasonable people would conclude that democratic institutions exist whenever there are regular elections and generally universal suffrage for citizens. This is clearly the case in every state of the union. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of countries that the Left calls “democracies”—France, Germany, Iceland, etc.—have voter identification requirements, checks against double voting, and similar means of preventing fraud. In the United States, the Left calls all this “antidemocratic.”

    The actual details of what it means to be prodemocratic or antidemocratic don’t actually matter when it comes to political discourse. The word “democratic” is an emotionally loaded term, and essentially code for “politically legitimate.” All that really matters is to call one’s allies “democratic” and to denounce the other side as “undemocratic.” In America today, to be labeled “democratic” means one has the approval of the ruling regime. Those who are labeled “undemocratic” are those who, like the “counterrevolutionaries” of old, have been deemed—rightly or wrongly—threats to the status quo.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 11/11/2022 – 19:40

  • Foreign-Owned Farms Draining Southwest Aquifers To Feed Cattle Overseas
    Foreign-Owned Farms Draining Southwest Aquifers To Feed Cattle Overseas

    While the American southwest suffers under a worsening drought conditions, foreign-owned farms have been siphoning water from underground aquifers to grow water-thirsty crops like alfalfa, which ultimately end up overseas in order to feed cattle and other foreign livestock.

    “You can’t take water and export it out of the state, there’s laws about that,” Arizona geohydrologist Marvin Glotfelty told CNN. “But you can take ‘virtual’ water and export it; alfalfa, cotton, electricity or anything created in part from the use of water.”

    Residents in Arizona’s La Paz County are particularly frustrated at the area’s ‘huge, foreign-owned farms’ which are taking advantage of lax groundwater laws that give agricultural use the upper hand, allowing farms to pump unlimited water underneath property they own or lease.

    Groundwater gushes into a cement canal near the Fondomonte farm in Vicksburg, Arizona.

    County supervisor Holly Irwin told CNN that getting the state to take action, or even acknowledge, the state’s dwindling water supply has proven a ‘frustrating’ exercise in futility.

    According to Irwin, Middle East agriculture companies “have depleted their [water], that’s why they are here,” adding “That’s what angers people the most. We should be taking care of our own, and we just allow them to come in, purchase property and continue to punch holes in the ground.”

    In fact, 80% of Arizona has no laws governing how much water can be drained by corporate megafarms, nor is their any way to track it, according to the report.

    “The well guys and I have never seen anything like this before,” said longtime resident of Wenden, Arizona, Gary Saiter, who said a UAE-based company, Al Dahra, had been tapping into an underground reservoir which stores water built up over thousands of years.

    [R]ural communities in La Paz County know the water is disappearing beneath their feet.

    Shallow, residential wells in the county started drying up in 2015, local officials say, and deeper municipal well levels have steadily declined. In Salome, local water utility owner Bill Farr told CNN his well – which supplies water to more than 200 customers, including the local schools – is “nearing the end of its useful life.” -CNN

    According to Saiter, water in the town well has been plummeting – with the depth-to-water level dropping from around 100 feet below the surface in the 1950s to around 540 feet in 2022 – far beyond what an average residential well can reach.

    Hay bales are stored at Al Dahra Farms in Wenden.

    The drought-stricken Middle Eastern expansion into the Southwestern US accelerated after a 2018 Saudi Arabian ban on growing water-thirsty crops like alfalfa and hay to feed livestock and cattle, but they have a ‘national pride’ in the Middle East when it comes to their vast dairy operations. 

    “They have all their cows there and they need feeding. That feedstock comes from abroad,” Eckart Woertz, director of the Germany-based GIGA Institute for Middle East Studies, told CNN.

    For example, the Almarai Company, which owns around 10,000 acres of Arizona farmland under subsidiary Fondomonte, is one of the largest Middle Eastern dairy supply companies. It also owns around 3,500 acres in Southern California which uses water from the Colorado River to irrigate crops.

    Woertz said while most of the company’s cattle feed is purchased on the open market, Alamarai took the extra step of buying farmland abroad, as part of a growing trend in foreign-owned farmland in the US. Foreign-owned farmland in the West increased from around 1.25 million acres in 2010 to nearly three million acres in 2020, according to data from the US Department of Agriculture. In the Midwest, foreign-owned farmland has nearly quadrupled.

    …

    In the high desert of Arizona, emerald-green fields stretch for miles alongside dry tumbleweeds and Saguaro cactus.

    The Fondomonte-owned Vicksburg Ranch near Salome is massive. The company spent $47.5 million to buy nearly 10,000 acres of land there in 2014, and it leases additional farmland from the state. -CNN

    “It gives you that sense you’re closer to the source,” said Woertz. “The sense that you own land or lease land somewhere else and have direct bilateral access [to water] gives you a sense of maybe false security.”

    As outgoing state House member Regina Cobb asked CNN, “Why are we allowing a foreign company to come into Arizona – which is drought-stricken right now – and have a sweetheart deal [on leases], when we are trying to conserve as much water as we can?”

    “It boggles my mind.“

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 11/11/2022 – 19:20

  • Candid UN Report Blasts "Outrageous" US Sanctions Harming Syrian Civilians
    Candid UN Report Blasts “Outrageous” US Sanctions Harming Syrian Civilians

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    A UN special rapporteur on Thursday called for the removal of US and other Western sanctions on Syria as they are having a devastating impact on the civilian population and preventing the country from rebuilding after 11 years of war.

    Alena Douhan, a special rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures, made the comments after a 12-day visit to Syria. There she found that sanctions are harming civilians in many ways, including by causing a shortage of medicine and medical equipment.

    “In the current dramatic and still-deteriorating humanitarian situation, as 12 million Syrians grapple with food insecurity, I urge the immediate lifting of all unilateral sanctions that severely harm human rights and prevent any efforts for early recovery, rebuilding, and reconstruction,” Douhan told the UN Security Council.

    US officials have been candid about the fact that the sanctions campaign against Syria is specifically designed to prevent the country from rebuilding. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last year that it is US policy to “oppose the reconstruction of Syria” until there is regime change in Damascus.

    Douhan said that the “catastrophic effects of unilateral sanctions” are impacting people “across all walks of life in the country.”

    She said that 90% of Syria’s civilian population is living in poverty and have limited access to food, water, electricity, shelter, fuel, healthcare, and transportation.

    On top of the sanctions campaign, the US also maintains an occupation force of about 1,000 troops in eastern Syria and backs Kurdish groups in the region, allowing Washington to maintain control of about one-third of the country. The area that the US occupies is where most of Syria’s oil and wheat fields are located, and the US is keeping the vital resources from Damascus.

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    The US also tacitly backs Israeli airstrikes in Syria and occasionally launches some of its own. Despite the dire humanitarian crisis, there’s no sign that the US will change the policy.

    The White House said at the end of October that it has “no plans” to lift the sanctions or end its military occupation in Syria.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 11/11/2022 – 19:00

  • Biden Admin Infighting On Ukraine Policy Goes Public
    Biden Admin Infighting On Ukraine Policy Goes Public

    Fresh reporting in The New York Times points to a fierce internal Biden administration divide over how the US should respond to the Ukraine crisis as winter is closing in and there’s as yet no sign the two sides are anywhere close to ending the fighting.

    Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley is reportedly pressing hard for White House policy to shift toward pressuring Kiev and Moscow to the negotiating table.

    Per the Times report, the top general “has made the case in internal meetings that the Ukrainians have achieved about as much as they could reasonably expect on the battlefield before winter sets in and so they should try to cement their gains at the bargaining table, according to officials informed about the discussions.”

    Via Reuters

    Top Biden foreign policy advisers, however, have said it’s “too soon” and are pushing back against Milley, also as the White House cheers on the continuing significant Ukrainian battlefield gains in and around Kherson in the south.

    They argue that any pause in fighting while efforts to get representatives to the negotiating table, a process which hasn’t been seriously pursued since the opening months of the war, will only benefit pro-Kremlin forces, giving them opportunity to regroup. 

    According to the report, citing those officials pushing back against Milley, “While Mr. Biden’s advisers believe the war will likely be settled through negotiations eventually, officials said, they have concluded that the moment is not ripe and the United States should not be seen as pressuring the Ukrainians to hold back while they have momentum.”

    Biden has lately reiterated that Zelensky and his government are the sole decision-makers when it comes to the timing of negotiations, and the Ukrainian leader recently vowed as a matter of policy enshrined into law that there will be no negotiations while Vladimir Putin is still president of Russia. 

    But the reality is that Washington and ultimately the American taxpayer are funding the Ukrainian counteroffensive to the tune of billions of dollars in weapons and supplies. In Congress, GOP leadership has begun questioning Biden’s “blank check” writing at the expense of ordinary citizens struggling with rising food, fuel, and cost of living. 

    The Times notes that the internal admin schism has grown to the point of spilling over into public discourse: 

    The debate, which the officials described on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss sensitive deliberations, has spilled out into public in recent days as General Milley made public comments hinting at his private advice. “Seize the moment,” he said in a speech in New York on Wednesday.

    Milley followed by telling CNBC on Thursday, “We’ve seen the Ukrainian military fight the Russian military to a standstill.” He then said, “Now, what the future holds is not known with any degree of certainty, but we think there are some possibilities here for some diplomatic solutions.”

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    This prompted subtle pushback from the White House, with national security advisor Jake Sulliven stressing in a press briefing, “The United States is not pressuring Ukraine” – at a moment that more and more headlines are speculating on the possibility of talks. Also looming in the background is the European energy crisis as temperatures begin plummeting going into winter. 

    Ironically, news of this whole debate has emerged a mere couple weeks after House Democratic Progressives led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, and which included AOC, sent a letter to Biden urging the US to get serious about diplomacy. Embarrassingly, they formally retracted the letter and made apologies less then 24 hours later after bipartisan outcry. And yet there’s was essentially the stance of Gen. Milley. While the progressives quickly backed down, the top general doesn’t appear to be.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 11/11/2022 – 18:40

  • The Winners And Losers In A Shift In Control Of Congress
    The Winners And Losers In A Shift In Control Of Congress

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Below is my column in the New York Post on why the self-described “giddy” White House might want to consider the impact of a loss of one or both houses of Congress. While many are still debating who will prevail in contested districts or states, the shift in power could produce its own “winners and losers.” Indeed, the President may find himself as giddy as all get out if he loses control of the House and possibly the Senate.

    Here is the column:

    The midterm elections proved captivating as one followed races district by district throughout the night. The true winners and losers, however, go beyond the individual officeholders.

    Legally, there are both individuals and institutions that could see significant changes with the new division of power in Washington. While the White House was reportedly “giddy and gleeful” with the results, Democrats likely lost the House and could still lose the Senate.

    Despite the rivaling predictions of red waves and blue walls, the night showed what was always abundantly clear: We are still a deeply divided country. Congress will reflect that division in terms of power distribution — and that may be a good thing.

    WINNERS

    Constitutionalism: The last two years have seen frontal assaults on constitutional values ranging from separation of powers to free speech. Democrats applauded, for example, as President Joe Biden unilaterally waived roughly $500 billion in loans owed to the American people. While courts repeatedly found Biden to have violated the Constitution, Congress remained conspicuously silent even as it joined the president in declaring Republicans threats to the Constitution.

    In an August New York Times column, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for our founding charter to be “radically altered” to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.” It’s safe to say voters effectively reclaimed constitutionalism from such extremist voices.

    Once again, voters preferred divided government with a Congress willing and able to challenge a president rather than remain a pure pedestrian in the exercise of governance. There’s now a moving part in Congress that’s been dormant for two years. As those institutional gears engage, checks and balances will again force greater accountability and exposure in the constitutional system.

    The Supreme Court: For two years, the left has targeted the nation’s highest court with calls for packing it. Polls have long showed this movement was contained almost entirely within the far left. Yet attacking the court and its justices was an article of faith for many Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who called for raw court packing. While the attacks are likely to continue, the shift in Congress will put an end to such radical proposals.

    LOSERS

    The media: Outlets, in framing the election, consistently echoed Democrats’ narratives — yet failed to deliver them victory. The media now face the prospect of inquiries that could further erode voter trust. Congressional investigations will likely drill down on the Hunter Biden influence-peddling scandal. The media played an active role in burying that scandal and will face questions of how they could turn a blind eye to globe-spanning corruption that involved millions of dollars from foreign political and intelligence figures. They may also see an investigation into backchannels political and government officials used to enlist surrogates in the media and social media for censorship.

    The Bidens: The election’s biggest loser could be the Biden family. After successfully avoiding any media or congressional scrutiny of their alleged influence peddling, time is up for the Bidens. Despite Attorney General Merrick Garland’s refusal to appoint a special counsel, they will face investigations launched with the full authority of the Oversight Committee. Garland will also confront demands to show the same aggressive prosecution of contempt of Congress when Biden associates are the subject of such referrals.

    All this will add to whatever emerges from Delaware in the long-standing investigation of tax and other allegations against Hunter Biden. With the midterms over, the Justice Department will no longer be bound to avoid filings that might influence the election. Hunter could easily find himself under indictment as Congress ramps up a broad investigation into his foreign dealings.

    There is one group that could be included on lists of both winners and losers: moderates. President Donald Trump pushed candidates that struggled or failed with voters who viewed them as too extreme. For moderates in the Democratic Party, the flipping of long-blue districts and other close races are evidence of a shift in independents and groups like Hispanics away from far-left policies.

    The problem is that so few true moderates remain in Congress. The result is that while the country remains moderate, Congress will again not reflect that broad center.

    The next two years will be anything but predictable. James Madison believed that if you want good government, “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” If that’s true, the good news is there will be no shortage of ambition in the days ahead. But before the White House gets too “giddy” after losing one or both houses of Congress, it should contemplate the prospect of a house of Congress with very different ambitions from those of the president.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 11/11/2022 – 18:20

  • Taibbi: The FBI's Transformation, From National Police To Domestic Spy Agency
    Taibbi: The FBI’s Transformation, From National Police To Domestic Spy Agency

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

    Part one of a series.

    Late on an October morning in a quiet neighborhood near Daytona Beach, Florida. FBI agent Steve Friend sits in his kitchen, fidgeting. He’s a wiry, energetic man, built like a marathoner, not muscled up but exuding fitness, not a sitter. This is not a person meant for desk work, much less staying home all day. But as a whistleblower whose name has been all over media after a complaint about statistical manipulation and other problems in the January 6th investigations, this will be his lot for a while.

    By that morning, the first rush of news stories about Friend’s case already passed. CNN and MSNBC demonized him, Fox hailed him as a hero, but the furor was beginning to die down. What a whistleblower talks about in this inevitable moment will say a lot about his or her motivation. Looking out a window into the stillness of his suburban neighborhood, Friend shook his head.

    “I love my job,” he said, sighing. “I was living my best life as an FBI agent. I was coming home every day, and my kids were my biggest fan club. Like, ‘Daddy, did you put the bad guy in jail?’ And I thought, ‘Man, this is it.’”

    Steve Friend

    It’s not the tone of a disgruntled malcontent, but someone who made a reluctant journey to whistleblower status, beginning with a whirlwind series of events that brought him and his family out of the Midwest to north Florida less than two years ago. He worked a child pornography detail before being transferred to the assignment that would upend his life: investigating J6. The FBI not only took Friend off vital work chasing child predators to pursue questionable investigations of people maybe connected with the Capitol riots (often in some misdemeanor fashion), they used dubious bureaucratic methods he felt put him in an impossible spot.

    Essentially, the FBI made Friend a supervisory agent in cases actually being run by the Washington field office, a trick replicated across the country that made domestic terrorism numbers appear to balloon overnight. Instead of one investigation run out of Washington, the Bureau now had hundreds of “terrorism” cases “opening” in every field office in the country. As a way to manipulate statistics, it was ingenious, but Friend could see it was also trouble.

    As a member of a dying breed of agent raised to focus on making cases and securing convictions, Friend knew putting him nominally in charge of a case he wasn’t really running was a gift to any good defense attorney, should a J6 case ever get to trial.

    “They’re gonna see my name as being the case agent, yet not a single document has my name as doing any work,” Friend says. “Now a defense lawyer can say, ‘Hey, the case agent for this case didn’t perform any work.’ Labeling the case this way would be a big hit to our prosecution.”

    Friend ended up refusing the arrangement, which led to his suspension. He followed procedure, making protected disclosures to superiors and the FBI’s Office of Special Counsel (OSG). He then reported his suspension to Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson and whistleblower-whisperer Chuck Grassley of Iowa. They sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, detailing Friend’s procedural objections, including that “agents are being required to perform investigative actions” they “would not otherwise pursue,” at the direction of the Washington Field Office (WFO).

    When Friend first complained to his Assistant Special Agents in Charge (ASACs — the FBI is an acronym hell worse than the military), he told them, with regard to J6 suspects: “I’m not a Trump voter. I’m not sympathetic to those people.” The message didn’t get through, however, and leaks from the Bureau have almost universally painted him as an insubordinate MAGA conspiracist.

    In fact, most of the press Friend attracted reduced his story to a referendum on the Capitol riots, as if his only complaint was being asked to investigate J6 at all. Big guns were brought out to sell the idea. Former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence-turned-talking-head Frank Figliuzzi blasted Friend on MSNBC as a “self-styled FBI whistleblower” (Figliuzzi, a lawyer, should know better: Friend made protected disclosures by the book and is legally a whistleblower), implying he simply didn’t follow “valid” orders, instead “running to Trump-loving Congressmen” to complain.

    But Friend’s complaint is only partially about J6. His concerns began in his first days in Quantico, and continued across years of watching the Bureau collect intelligence or open cases for non-operational reasons. Whether they involve J6 or not, a consistent theme of his stories is the FBI using its authority to “disrupt” or intimidate targets as an end in itself, as opposed to collecting evidence with the aim of prosecuting.

    One example involved a British doctor who’d been at J6. The suspect was not exactly Pablo Escobar. He did enter the Capitol, but surveillance showed he meekly stayed behind velvet ropes once inside, and under questioning was practically shaking with guilt over having taken a free Capitol tourist brochure as a souvenir. Though he seemed unlikely to be charged, he was booted from his medical practice after being interviewed, and Friend wondered if this even indirectly had been the point.

    “I worried about the process being the punishment,” Friend says. “He lost his job. What does he get from us, if we don’t charge him? ‘Hey, you’re clear? The FBI found no wrongdoing, go pick up the pieces’?”

    In the incident that led to Friend’s suspension, the FBI wanted to execute a SWAT raid on a subject who’d been communicating with the Bureau through an attorney and almost certainly would have come in voluntarily. Or, Friend thought, he could have been picked up in another, less dangerous way. The FBI however wanted a show.

    “We’re gonna hit this house at six o’clock in the morning and throw flash-bangs and knock the door down and drive a Bearcat up on the front lawn,” recalls Friend, who had extensive SWAT experience and even worked the raid of Michigan militia members suspected of plotting to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

    He recounts a detail straight out of the movie Idiocracy: the armored Bearcat vehicles the FBI uses in SWAT raids are fitted with special battering-ram-type devices agents call dongers. (No joke. Washington Field Office agents even nickname their Bearcat accessory “DOJ,” for Dong of Justice). Friend describes the lunacy of a federal posse riding into the suburbs to take a door in one of these phallic tanks. “You’re driving down the road with this long extension pole on the front,” he says, laughing. “And I’m thinking, ‘These things were built by the lowest possible bidder.’”

    He didn’t laugh so much, however, when he started to get the sense the FBI was opening cases, knocking on doors, and using tactics like SWAT for reasons other than operational necessity.

    “I was a little kid and a smart kid in school and I got bullied, bad. That’s one of the reasons I went to law enforcement, and joined the FBI.” He pauses. “My attitude toward the FBI was, ‘You guys are the NFL of police work. You’re supposed to be fighting bullies. I think we might be becoming the bullies here.”

    Though he’s been denounced by pundits and Figliuzzi types as an insurrectionist “sympathizer” with nothing legitimate to say, Friend’s complaints in fact track with those of a number of FBI whistleblowers who came before him. Since 9/11, many complain the FBI is hurtling back in time, toward its darkest days under J. Edgar Hoover, when it was a vast, unchecked domestic political spying operation, swinging under a fig leaf of legitimizing law enforcement activity.

    The Hoover-era FBI plunged into such infamous excess via snooping programs like COINTELPRO — from trying to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr. into suicide to opening intelligence files on as many as 500,000 Americans, including a list of 26,000 “to be rounded up in the event of a national emergency” — that Congress in 1975 was forced to intervene. Led by Idaho Senator Frank Church, a Senate oversight committee uncovered deep rot, finding the FBI secretly went “beyond its law” to “disrupt, discredit and harass groups and individuals.”

    The Church hearings led to reforms that checked the Bureau’s worst instincts, for a time. Now the beast is back. The FBI not only is deep into the domestic spying game again, it’s accrued broad new powers, including authority to collect intelligence on Americans virtually without limit.

    “I would like to think the point of all the intelligence analysis is to create products that are going to help crack a case,” Friend says. “But they’re not. In some cases, there’s no crime. We’re just intelligence, intelligence, intelligence.”

    What does an FBI that stresses intelligence, intelligence, intelligence for its own sake look like, in day-to-day practice? No matter your politics, you’ll probably be shocked.

    Subscribers to TK News can read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 11/11/2022 – 17:40

  • Convicted Elizabeth Holmes Pleads For 'Lenient' 18-Month Sentence At Home
    Convicted Elizabeth Holmes Pleads For ‘Lenient’ 18-Month Sentence At Home

    Elizabeth Holmes was convicted earlier this year of defrauding investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars following the epic demise of Silicon Valley blood-testing company Theranos Inc. Holmes’ lawyer filed a request to the judge for leniency in the sentencing and requested 18 months of home confinement instead of years in prison, reported Bloomberg.

    Ten months after 50 hours of deliberations, the jury of eight men and four women convicted the Theranos founder of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for scamming investors about the innovative technology Theranos allegedly had to revolutionize blood testing with the simple prick of a patient’s finger.

    Her lawyer penned a letter ahead of sentencing next week for US District Judge Edward Davila to overlook her fraudster caricature and instead focus on her as a human being. The memo said she deserved 18 months of home confinement rather than prison. 

    The memo was accompanied by letters from over 130 friends, family, and even Theranos investors, as well as former company employees who described Holmes as a ‘good person.’ 

    Judge Davila has handled her case since the collapse of Theranos after reaching a valuation of $9 billion. Criminal defense lawyers tell Bloomberg that Holmes’ sentencing could send a warning shot to Silicon Valley companies that run on hopes and dreams. 

    Another expert said the sentencing of Holmes is to discourage technology startups that blind investors with hype. Holmes’ request subtracts about 18.5 years from the maximum incarceration period she faces for her convictions, with the memo noting that time would be better spent at home than in prison. 

    “We acknowledge that this may seem a tall order given the public perception of this case,” her lawyers wrote. 

    They added: the judge shouldn’t view Theranos as “a house of cards,” but as the “ambitious, inventive, and indisputably valuable enterprise it was.” 

    “The court’s difficult task is to look beyond those surface-level views when it fashions its sentence,” the letter concluded. 

    Holmes’s memo also expands on her childhood and years at Stanford University. It also touches on life’s traumas detailed in court, such as the rape of Holmes in college. 

    The memo reiterates her ex-boyfriend and a former executive at Theranos, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, of sexual abuse that clouded her judgment. Balwani, 57, was convicted of fraud in July and faces sentencing next month.  

    Holmes’ scheme defrauded media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, former Secretary of Education Betsy Devos, and Walmart’s Walton family for hundreds of millions of dollars. Defrauding the DeVos family of $100 million in one count alone calls for 9-11 years in prison. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 11/11/2022 – 17:20

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Nov 11

Today’s News 11th November 2022

  • The Government Is Still Waging War On America's Military Veterans
    The Government Is Still Waging War On America’s Military Veterans

    Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “For soldiers … coming home is more lethal than being in combat.” 

    – Brené Brown, research professor at the University of Houston

    The U.S. government is still waging war on America’s military veterans.

    Especially veterans who exercise their First Amendment right to speak out against government wrongdoing.

    Consider: we raise our young people on a steady diet of militarism and war, sell them on the idea that defending freedom abroad by serving in the military is their patriotic duty, then when they return home, bruised and battle-scarred and committed to defending their freedoms at home, we often treat them like criminals merely for exercising those rights they risked their lives to defend.

    As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, the government even has a name for its war on America’s veterans: Operation Vigilant Eagle.

    This Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program tracks military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and characterizes them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.”

    Coupled with the DHS’ dual reports on Rightwing and Leftwing “Extremism,” which broadly define extremists as individuals, military veterans and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely,” these tactics bode ill for anyone seen as opposing the government.

    Yet the government is not merely targeting individuals who are voicing their discontent so much as it is taking aim at individuals trained in military warfare.

    Don’t be fooled by the fact that the DHS has gone extremely quiet about Operation Vigilant Eagle.

    Where there’s smoke, there’s bound to be fire.

    And the government’s efforts to target military veterans whose views may be perceived as “anti-government” make clear that something is afoot.

    In recent years, military servicemen and women have found themselves increasingly targeted for surveillance, censorship, threatened with incarceration or involuntary commitment, labeled as extremists and/or mentally ill, and stripped of their Second Amendment rights.

    In light of the government’s efforts to lay the groundwork to weaponize the public’s biomedical data and predict who might pose a threat to public safety based on mental health sensor data (a convenient means by which to penalize certain “unacceptable” social behaviors), encounters with the police could get even more deadly, especially if those involved have a mental illness or disability coupled with a military background.

    Incredibly, as part of a proposal introduced under the Trump Administration, a new government agency HARPA (a healthcare counterpart to the Pentagon’s research and development arm DARPA) will take the lead in identifying and targeting “signs” of mental illness or violent inclinations among the populace by using artificial intelligence to collect data from Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo and Google Home.

    These tactics are not really new.

    Many times throughout history in totalitarian regimes, such governments have declared dissidents mentally ill and unfit for society as a means of rendering them disempowering them.

    For example, government officials in the Cold War-era Soviet Union often used psychiatric hospitals as prisons in order to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally through the use of electric shocks, drugs and various medical procedures.

    This age-old practice by which despotic regimes eliminate their critics or potential adversaries by declaring them mentally ill and locking them up in psychiatric wards for extended periods of time is a common practice in present-day China.

    What is particularly unnerving, however, is how this practice of eliminating or undermining potential critics, including military veterans, is happening with increasing frequency in the United States.

    Remember, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) opened the door for the government to detain as a threat to national security anyone viewed as a troublemaker. According to government guidelines for identifying domestic extremists—a word used interchangeably with terrorists—technically, anyone exercising their First Amendment rights in order to criticize the government qualifies.

    It doesn’t take much anymore to be flagged as potentially anti-government in a government database somewhere—Main Core, for example—that identifies and tracks individuals who aren’t inclined to march in lockstep to the government’s dictates.

    In fact, as the Washington Post reports, communities are being mapped and residents assigned a color-coded threat score—green, yellow or red—so police are forewarned about a person’s potential inclination to be a troublemaker depending on whether they’ve had a career in the military, posted a comment perceived as threatening on Facebook, suffer from a particular medical condition, or know someone who knows someone who might have committed a crime.

    The case of Brandon Raub is a prime example of Operation Vigilant Eagle in action.

    Raub, a 26-year-old decorated Marine, actually found himself interrogated by government agents about his views on government corruption, arrested with no warning, labeled mentally ill for subscribing to so-called “conspiratorial” views about the government, detained against his will in a psych ward for standing by his views, and isolated from his family, friends and attorneys. Within days of Raub being seized and forcibly held in a VA psych ward, news reports started surfacing of other veterans having similar experiences.

    “Oppositional defiance disorder” (ODD) is another diagnosis being used against veterans who challenge the status quo. As journalist Anthony Martin explains, an ODD diagnosis

    “denotes that the person exhibits ‘symptoms’ such as the questioning of authority, the refusal to follow directions, stubbornness, the unwillingness to go along with the crowd, and the practice of disobeying or ignoring orders. Persons may also receive such a label if they are considered free thinkers, nonconformists, or individuals who are suspicious of large, centralized government… At one time the accepted protocol among mental health professionals was to reserve the diagnosis of oppositional defiance disorder for children or adolescents who exhibited uncontrollable defiance toward their parents and teachers.”

    That the government is using the charge of mental illness as the means by which to immobilize (and disarm) these veterans is diabolical. With one stroke of a magistrate’s pen, these veterans are being declared mentally ill, locked away against their will, and stripped of their constitutional rights.

    If it were just being classified as “anti-government,” that would be one thing.

    Unfortunately, anyone with a military background and training is also now being viewed as a heightened security threat by police who are trained to shoot first and ask questions later.

    Feeding this perception of veterans as ticking time bombs in need of intervention, the Justice Department launched a pilot program in 2012 aimed at training SWAT teams to deal with confrontations involving highly trained and often heavily armed combat veterans.

    The result?

    Police encounters with military veterans often escalate very quickly into an explosive and deadly situation, especially when SWAT teams are involved.

    For example, Jose Guerena, a Marine who served in two tours in Iraq, was killed after an Arizona SWAT team kicked open the door of his home during a mistaken drug raid and opened fire. Thinking his home was being invaded by criminals, Guerena told his wife and child to hide in a closet, grabbed a gun and waited in the hallway to confront the intruders. He never fired his weapon. In fact, the safety was still on his gun when he was killed. The SWAT officers, however, not as restrained, fired 70 rounds of ammunition at Guerena—23 of those bullets made contact. Apart from his military background, Guerena had had no prior criminal record, and the police found nothing illegal in his home.

    John Edward Chesney, a 62-year-old Vietnam veteran, was killed by a SWAT team allegedly responding to a call that the Army veteran was standing in his San Diego apartment window waving what looked like a semi-automatic rifle. SWAT officers locked down Chesney’s street, took up positions around his home, and fired 12 rounds into Chesney’s apartment window. It turned out that the gun Chesney reportedly pointed at police from three stories up was a “realistic-looking mock assault rifle.”

    Ramon Hooks’ encounter with a Houston SWAT team did not end as tragically, but it very easily could have. Hooks, a 25-year-old Iraq war veteran, was using an air rifle gun for target practice outside when a Homeland Security Agent, allegedly house shopping in the area, reported him as an active shooter. It wasn’t long before the quiet neighborhood was transformed into a war zone, with dozens of cop cars, an armored vehicle and heavily armed police. Hooks was arrested, his air rifle pellets and toy gun confiscated, and charges filed against him for “criminal mischief.”

    Given the government’s increasing view of veterans as potential domestic terrorists, it makes one think twice about government programs encouraging veterans to include a veterans designation on their drivers’ licenses and ID cards.

    Hailed by politicians as a way to “make it easier for military veterans to access discounts from retailers, restaurants, hotels and vendors across the state,” it will also make it that much easier for the government to identify and target veterans who dare to challenge the status quo.

    Remember: no one is spared in a police state.

    Eventually, as I make clear in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we all suffer the same fate.

    It stands to reason that if the government can’t be bothered to abide by its constitutional mandate to respect the citizenry’s rights—whether it’s the right to be free from government surveillance and censorship, the right to due process and fair hearings, the right to be free from roadside strip searches and militarized police, or the right to peacefully assemble and protest and exercise our right to free speech—then why should anyone expect the government to treat our nation’s veterans with respect and dignity?

    Certainly, veterans have enough physical and psychological war wounds to overcome without adding the government to the mix. Although the U.S. boasts more than 20 million veterans who have served in World War II through the present day, large numbers of veterans are impoverished, unemployed, traumatized mentally and physically, struggling with depression, suicide, and marital stress, homeless, subjected to sub-par treatment at clinics and hospitals, and left to molder while their paperwork piles up within Veterans Administration offices.

    At least 60,000 veterans died by suicide between 2008 and 2017.

    On average, 6,000 veterans kill themselves every year. However, a recent study suggests that the rate of suicide among veterans may be more than double what federal officials report annually.

    The plight of veterans today—and their treatment at the hands of the U.S. government—remains America’s badge of shame.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 11/10/2022 – 23:40

  • OR Gun Control Referendum Nears Goal Line; Iowans Approve Gun Rights Amendment
    OR Gun Control Referendum Nears Goal Line; Iowans Approve Gun Rights Amendment

    Gun rights and gun control advocates were both eyeing two major state gun referendums this week. There may be something for both crowds to cheer about — as Iowans firmly embraced gun rights, while Oregonians may have approved a strict gun control regime in a vote that’s still being tallied.  

    In addition to criminalizing possession of a magazine that can hold more than 10 rounds, Oregon’s “Measure 114” would require a permit to purchase any firearm. To obtain the permit, Oregonians would have to: 

    • Pay a fee that’s expected to be $65

    • Be fingerprinted

    • Pass a criminal background check

    • Complete a safety training course 

    Gun owners’ privacy would be violated:

    “State police would be required to maintain an electronically searchable, publicly available database of all permit applications,” reported The Epoch Times.

    With 72% of the vote counted as this article is written, “Yes” is leading 50.8% to 49.2%. Though most outlets have not indicated a final result, The Oregonian raced to declare the measure’s adoption on Election Night, on the basis that most of the votes left to be counted are from areas favoring the referendum. 

    “Sadly, this blatant assault on the Second Amendment rights of honest citizens narrowly passed — restrictions that include mandatory training, background checks, fingerprinting, and permitting. All of these infringements are completely contrary to the Supreme Court’s Bruen precedent, and ultimately, will be overturned.” Erich Pratt Senior VP, GOA.

    In social media posts on Wednesday, at least two Oregon sheriffs said they’ll defy the measure, either in whole or part: 

    • “This is an infringement on our constitutional rights and will not be enforced by my office!” said Union County Sheriff Cody Bowen in a Facebook post. “Hear this! When it comes to our constitutional rights I’ll fight to the death to defend them. No matter what crazy law comes out of Salem!”

    • “I want to send a clear message to Linn County residents that the Linn County Sheriff’s Office is NOT going to be enforcing magazine capacity limits,” said Sheriff Michelle Duncan.  

    Beyond its imposition of barriers to the exercise of a fundamental human right, the referendum has a Catch-22 built into it, according to Oregon trial attorney Leonard Williamson. 

    “In order to obtain the permit, an applicant would have to show up with a firearm to demonstrate the ability to load, fire, unload, and store the firearm,” Williamson told The Epoch Times. “But you can’t get a firearm without the permit. And under Oregon’s highly restrictive gun storage laws, no one can legally loan a firearm to another. That creates an impassable barrier.”

    There’s another built-in problem: 

    “Firearms dealers will not be able to sell a firearm to anyone without a permit; since the permit system does not exist, all legal firearms sales in the State of Oregon will stop until a permit system is established,” says Klamath County Sheriff Chris Kaber, who opposed the measure.

    He anticipates that, upon a challenge, a federal judge will stay the measure’s enforcement until a permitting process is put in place. 

    On the plus side, the magazine size-restriction has an exception for “current owners/inheritors,” which would seem to shoot a big hole in its enforceability. Sheriff Kaber nonetheless recommends documenting current possession of such magazines, such as with a dated photo. 

    The Firearms Policy Coalition, a frequent litigator against gun control measures, has already promised to challenge Oregon’s scheme:  

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

    The news from the Hawkeye State is much cheerier. Until now, Iowa has been one of only six of states without a constitutional provision safeguarding gun rights. That’s changing, as Iowans approved a constitutional amendment by a lopsided 65% to 35% vote. 

    Iowans for Responsible Gun Laws said “the potential consequences of this amendment’s passage…will be far reaching and dire.”  

    Judge for yourself — here’s the text of the amendment: 

    “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The sovereign state of Iowa affirms and recognizes this right to be a fundamental individual right. Any and all restrictions of this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.”

    The text initially echoes the operative part of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment. With the second sentence, it pointedly counters the flawed notion that gun rights are necessarily limited to current militia service.

    The third sentence explicitly selects the legal standard by which Iowa courts should evaluate challenges to gun control measures. “Strict scrutiny” is the highest standard of review, requiring that a given law be narrowly tailored to further “a compelling governmental interest.” 

    “This is a very high standard,” Iowa Sen. Brad Zaun said when the amendment was advanced by the legislature in 2018. “What this bill is about – let’s put the cards on the table – is judicial activism.”

    Thanks to this summer’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, Iowa’s strict scrutiny provision may be a little redundant. However, like a gun, it’s better to have one and not need it than need one and not have it. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 11/10/2022 – 23:20

  • 'We’re Not Permitted To Make The Connection': Social Worker Shares Aftermath Of COVID Vaccine Injury
    ‘We’re Not Permitted To Make The Connection’: Social Worker Shares Aftermath Of COVID Vaccine Injury

    Authored by Carly Mayberry via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    As a social worker known for her expertise when handling high-stress conflict management cases, Angela Loerzel Swafford figured she’d navigate her own concerns when it came to addressing her employers’ vaccination mandate last fall.

    And she definitely had concerns. 

    (Photo courtesy of Angela Loerzel Swafford)

    Like many hospitals and health systems across the nation during that time, the hospital where the 46-year-old was and is still employed required their health workers to get the jab. But Swafford suffers from a venous malformation, a condition where veins in the body develop in an unusual way. Because the abnormality can increase the risk of developing blood clots and deep vein thrombosis, she was hesitant about getting the COVID jab. 

    Still, worried about the possibility of losing the job she loved, the licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) practicing in both Oregon and Washington, was willing to do what was needed to protect her patients from COVID-19.

    “I love that job,” said Swafford who had always gotten the flu vaccine every year to protect the vulnerable patients she visits in hospice care. “I have this concern about my own safety but I also understand what I need to do to protect the community.”

     “It stops with you,” she added, or so she had always been told.

    No Space for Questions

    Swafford reached out to a few of her health providers, asking which vaccine would be best for her situation. However, she claimed that she didn’t feel supported during her inquiry and decision-making process. 

    “I think there should be space that we can be curious and pause and ask questions,” she said, noting she did express her health concerns but that her employer and health providers didn’t really allow any questions. “I feel that the physicians had a script and I was not heard and was kind of pushed through.”

    Seizure-like Symptoms, Blurred Vision 

    After being one of the last of her cohort of colleagues to receive the first Pfizer shot, what transpired next for Swafford was nothing short of horrifying. 

    Four hours later she started noticing pain in her upper body and difficulty charting her patients. Driving home that night, she lost orientation as to where she was.

    “Taking the exit to my house, I remember it felt like my face was exploding in pinpricks–like I had all of these sharp needle feelings all over my face,” she recalled. “My tongue, lips, and face felt swollen, my vision was blurred and I wasn’t processing information.”

    Once home, the strange sensations were followed by a repeated jerking of her whole body, what she said resembled Tonic-Clonic seizures. She also experienced blurred vision and terrible headaches.

    “The biggest thing was my vision, confusion in my thinking, trying to walk with coordination and dizziness,” she went on. “I couldn’t figure things out.”

    During some neurology psychiatry testing, Swafford said she fell under the two percentile of the people in her peer group when it came to her “processing speed” and “impaired ability to learn new information.”

    “They found I’m not encoding new information–that my processing is really slow,” she explained.

    Ultimately, Swafford was diagnosed with a severe adverse reaction to the mRNA vaccine.

    Now, more than a year later after undergoing numerous lab tests, MRIs, CT scans, and a plethora of visits to healthcare professionals (including neurologists, an epidemiologist, an occupational medicine specialist, a speech therapist, and others), Swafford continues to suffer cognitively, from an abrupt change in her vision and sleep abnormalities. She doesn’t drive because of double vision and a loss of peripheral vision and hasn’t returned to work.

    Doctors: Neurological Side Effects Have Been More Unusual

    Meanwhile, despite cases of myocarditis having made the headlines in terms of adverse reactions to the vaccines, neurological side effects like the ones experienced by Swafford, haven’t gotten the same attention. 

    That, along with what she described as her health providers’ lack of acknowledgment, has been frustrating for both her and her husband.

     “We kept running into providers in every system saying, ‘We’re not permitted to make the connection’ or ‘It doesn’t mean anything until studies support it’ or ‘It doesn’t exist until the scientific community writes about it,” recounted Swafford.

    “One of the saddest things I see is the diagnosis of functional neurologic disorder (FND) lumped together for these patients,” said Dr. Diane Counce, medical director of neurology and neurodiagnostics in Alabama, noting that such a diagnosis makes patients feel like “it’s all in their head.”

    Counce describes Swafford’s symptoms as neurological. 

    Data from the Center for Disease Control’s Vaccine Adverse Reporting System (VAERS) calculated through Oct. 28, 2022, has shown a total of over 37,000 reported neurological symptoms. 

    In terms of neurological symptoms similar to Swafford’s, there have been 4,659 cases of balance disorder, 10,190 cases of migraines, 5,192 seizures, and 573 seizure-like phenomena on VAERS. Also documented among many other neurological incidents were 4,737 cases of visual impairment.

    “When you have a patient like Swafford who within four hours is having symptoms that she’s never experienced before, clearly this is not just a migraine,” added Counce, noting the number of physicians that aren’t willing to take on patients like her or don’t know how to treat such patients. “She’s one of the more severe cases I’ve heard of experiencing multiple things including confusion, headaches, visual, hearing, mood, and behavioral changes.”

    After reviewing Swafford’s case, epidemiologist, professor, and author Daniel Halperin also concluded that as a young, healthy person who experienced these symptoms soon after receiving the shot, the most likely explanation for the health ailments must be vaccine-related. 

    Like many experts, Halperin, who has written myriad peer review education articles and the book, “Facing COVID Without Panic: 12 Common Myths and 12 Lesser Known Facts about the Pandemic: Clearly Explained by an Epidemiologist,” acknowledges that no vaccine is 100 percent safe.

    “Early on, we thought vaccination was important not only to help people be protected from death or severe illness, but also because it could greatly cut down on the transmission of COVID,” Halperin said, noting the common sense approach and the belief that health professionals should get the vaccine not just for themselves but for their patients and others they might be exposed to.

    “Now that we know they don’t actually do very much to prevent transmission, I’m not sure how convincing that argument is anymore,” he added. 

    Prescribing a Vaccine Injury Regimen

    For her part, Counce is working with Swafford and has prescribed a regimen for her that includes intermittent fasting—known to have a strong effect on promoting immune system homeostasis, taking probiotics and certain supplements including vitamin D, resveratrol, melatonin, and omega-3 fatty acids.

    “It’s frustrating we don’t have specific labs to check these things,” Counce added, noting that when she started seeing patients developing negative symptoms from the vaccinations, injuries seemed to be all over the place.

    But, she said when she sees a vaccine-injured patient, she has ruled it down to about five different things that could be going on with their body. These include decreased immunity, autoimmune response, inflammatory/histamine response (similar to Mast Cell Syndrome), fibrin activation causing micro clotting, and amyloidosis (a disease that occurs when a protein called amyloid builds up in organs).

    Counce said it’s been shown by an electron microscope that damage has been done to the cells’ mitochondria, which likely contributes to brain fog and fatigue that patients experience.

    As a neurologist, she reported seeing an increasing number of vaccine-injured patients with personality changes, sleep issues, and nerve and muscle issues, among others.

    “It’s hard to say,” said Counce, who has been treating Swafford for the last month, as to what her prognosis is and if she will ultimately improve or not.

    “All vaccine injuries respond so differently,” said Counce. “This is a brave new world for us.”

    ‘I’m Really Out’

    Meanwhile, Angela Loerzel Swafford and her family wish she could get a “do-over” when it comes to getting that jab.

    “I did the shot to keep everything and more so to protect the community I work in because that’s what they were telling me, but in the end, I lost everything,” she said. “I am not the same.”

    “Angela would like people to understand that there are folks out there that have actually suffered a vaccine injury and it’s totally okay to say ‘Yep, that happened,’” said her husband. “Too many doctors are willing to say ‘There are no studies to support that,’ instead of gathering the evidence.”

    “I think it was either you’re vaccinated and you’re with us or you’re not,” recalled Swafford, regarding the mood at the time. Now, she said, most of her friends don’t know how to be with her because she’s so different from who she once was.

     “It became you’re in or you’re out and I’m really out,” she said.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 11/10/2022 – 23:00

  • Iran Claims It Developed A Hypersonic Missile
    Iran Claims It Developed A Hypersonic Missile

    Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Thursday issued a surprising statement claiming that it has developed a hypersonic missile “capable of penetrating all defense systems,” according to the words of the commander of the IRGC aerospace unit overseeing the project.

    General Amirali Hajizadeh claimed in the statement cited in state-run Fars news agency, “This hypersonic ballistic missile was developed to counter air defense shields.” Hypersonic missiles can reach more than five times the speed of sound, and very few countries in the world possess the capability. Iran is now for the first time claiming to be among them.

    Iran Claims To Have Developed Hypersonic Ballistic Missile

    “It will be able to breach all the systems of anti-missile defense,” said the general, stressing that no anti-air system has yet been developed by any foreign nation which is capable of intercepting them. “This missile, which targets enemy anti-missile systems, represents a great generational leap in the field of missiles,” the IRGC commander added.

    Israel, the US, and the West more broadly is sure to take this as a shocking and dangerous development if confirmed, given already there’s been years of scrutiny placed on Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic missiles programs, amid ongoing threats to Israel especially.

    The only three countries in the world believed to possess hypersonics include the United States, Russia, and China. It remains Russia that is likely most out front in testing its hypersonic arsenal, having touted multiple successful launches and even limited deployment on the Ukrainian battlefield.

    North Korea last year also claimed to have tested a hypersonic missile, though there was little in the way of verification as to how far along its program really is. Some Western analysts think Pyongyang was bluffing, and this could be the current case with Iran as well.

    While there remains cause for skepticism over the new hypersonics claim, in recent years Western defense officials have consistently underestimated Iran’s defense technology sector and capabilities…

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    Iran has within the last year launched ballistic missiles on neighboring Iraq, targeting what it called terrorist militia groups seeking to undermine the state, which had camps hosted in Kurdish areas. Washington has also accused Iran of launching attacks via proxies on Saudi Arabia and the UAE, specifically out of Yemen. “These attacks are a reminder that Iran’s development and proliferation of ballistic missiles pose a serious threat to regional and international security,” the US government said at the time.

    More recently there have been rumors that Iran is supplying ballistic missiles to Russia alongside drones for use in Ukraine. Tehran has vehemently denied it is giving missiles to Moscow, but has just this month belatedly admitted to supplying drones. 

    As for this new claim to possess hypersonic projectiles, if Israel sees any validity in it, Israeli forces could potentially see reason enough to launch preemptive strikes on the Islamic Republic’s missile manufacturing facilities. However, Iran has long tried to conceal aspects of its long-range missile program in deep underground bunkers.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 11/10/2022 – 22:40

  • China Develops 'Back To The Future-Style Hoverboard' Able To Climb 10,000 Feet
    China Develops ‘Back To The Future-Style Hoverboard’ Able To Climb 10,000 Feet

    A Chinese defense contractor is preparing for the first human test flight of a jet-propelled skateboard next year, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported.

    The vertical take-off device, in the shape of Back to the Future II’s Marty McFly’s Mattel Hoverboard, can lift a person weighing up to 220 pounds to an altitude of nearly 10,000 feet. The operator of the skateboard, dubbed “SF-FB-30,” can fly for as long as ten minutes at speeds up to 93 mph. 

    SF-FB-30’s flight control system is powered by artificial intelligence, allowing the operator to maneuver the flying board just like a “skateboard,” the Beijing Institute of Power Machinery, a contractor for China’s space program and hypersonic weapons, wrote in a poster at the International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai, Guangdong, this week. 

    “We are making the fastest progress in China. Our machine is simpler and easier to use than similar projects in other countries,” a Beijing Institute of Power Machinery representative told SCMP.

    The representative said the board’s artificial intelligence could fly itself and haul cargo or even transport a passenger. 

    The institute said the board has defense applications, such as using it to board a hijacked container ship. Besides military use, the board could be used in the civilian world for search and rescue operations, building evacuation, and urban transport. 

    Meanwhile, in the Western world, British soldiers fly around in ‘Iron Man-style’ jetpacks to practice boarding enemy or hijacked vessels.  

    Gravity Industries, a human flight start-up based out of the UK, recently released footage of these jetpacks flying around New York City’s harbor.

    So besides hypersonic weapons, AI drones, and fifth and soon sixth-generation planes, global superpowers are seeking jet-propelled skateboards and jetpacks for new mobility capabilities on the modern battlefield. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 11/10/2022 – 22:00

  • 'Industrial Sabotage': Former Army Pilot Sentenced For Spying For China
    ‘Industrial Sabotage’: Former Army Pilot Sentenced For Spying For China

    Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A former U.S. Army helicopter pilot was sentenced to 20 months in prison this week for spying on behalf of China’s communist regime.

    The crest of the Department of Justice at its headquarters in Washington on May 10, 2021. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

    Shapour Moinian was sentenced on Nov. 7 for his part in accepting thousands of dollars from representatives of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in exchange for providing the regime with classified aviation-related information taken from his defense contractors who employed him.

    “This was industrial espionage, bordering on military espionage. … These were extremely serious offenses against the United States,” said Judge Jeffrey Miller at the sentencing.

    Moinian served in the U.S. Army from 1977 to 2000, according to a Justice Department statement on the sentencing. After his service, he worked for various cleared defense contractors in the United States as well as the Department of Defense itself. “Cleared” means that the contractors were permitted to work on projects involving classified information.

    A man in China who claimed to be a technical recruiter reached out to Moinian in 2017. The man offered Moinian a job consulting for China’s aviation industry and expressed interest in Moinian’s work on classified aviation projects for the U.S. military and intelligence agencies.

    Moinian traveled to Hong Kong to meet with the man, where he agreed to provide information and materials related to multiple aircraft types, either designed or manufactured in the United States. He received between $7,000 and $10,000 in exchange for the information, as well as a cell phone and instructions on how to communicate with his new contacts in China.

    A People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force WZ-7 high-altitude reconnaissance drone is seen a day before the 13th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai, southern China’s Guangdong Province, on Sept. 27, 2021. (Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images)

    According to his plea agreement, Moinian knew that the individuals at that meeting and all subsequent meetings were, in fact, directly employed by the CCP or otherwise directed by CCP authorities.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 11/10/2022 – 21:40

  • Texas Judge Strikes Down Biden's Student-Loan Forgiveness Plan As Unconstitutional
    Texas Judge Strikes Down Biden’s Student-Loan Forgiveness Plan As Unconstitutional

    First two years of lame duck gridlock, now this.

    Late on Thursday, a federal judge in Texas ruled that 80-year-old (ok, fine 79 for another 10 days) President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt was unlawful and must be vacated, delivering a victory to conservative opponents of the program.

    District Judge Mark Pittman, an appointee of former Donald Trump in Fort Worth, ruled in a lawsuit backed by the Job Creators Network Foundation on behalf of two borrowers.

    Pittman in a 26-page ruling wrote that the HEROES Act – a law that provides loan assistance to military personnel and that was relied upon by the Biden administration to enact the relief plan – did not authorize the $400 billion student loan forgiveness program.

    “The Program is thus an unconstitutional exercise of Congress’s legislative power and must be vacated,” Pittman wrote.

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    Biden’s debt relief plan was already temporarily blocked by the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals while it considers a request by six Republican-led states to enjoin it while they appealed the dismissal of their own lawsuit.

    Biden’s plan has been the subject of several lawsuits by conservative state attorneys general and legal groups, though plaintiffs before Thursday had struggled to convince courts they were harmed by it in such a way that they have standing to sue.

    The Congressional Budget Office in September calculated the debt forgiveness would eliminate about $430 billion of the $1.6 trillion in outstanding student debt and that over 40 million people were eligible to benefit.

    The plan, announced in August, calls for forgiving up to $10,000 in student loan debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 per year, or $250,000 for married couples. Borrowers who received Pell Grants to benefit lower-income college students will have up to $20,000 of their debt canceled.

    Of course, the Biden admin won’t let this aggression against socialism stand, and after it wins on appeal at one of the extremely liberal appeals courts across the country, a final decision is going right to the Supremes.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 11/10/2022 – 21:20

  • Chinese Loans Grow Less Than Expected Again, A Reflection Of Weak Loan Demand And A Weak Economy
    Chinese Loans Grow Less Than Expected Again, A Reflection Of Weak Loan Demand And A Weak Economy

    By Iris Pang, Chief Greater China Economist at ING Bank

    The fourth quarter is usually a quiet time for loans and credits, but this set of data for October is just too soft. 

    Overall credit growth was only CNY907.9 billion in October, lower than the previous month’s CNY3530 billion, and less than CNY1617.6 billion a year ago. Among all credit growth, yuan loan growth was CNY615.2 billion, also lower than the previous month’s CNY2470 billion. Outstanding yuan loans grew 11.1% year-on-year, slower than 11% in the previous month and 11.9% during the same month in 2021.

    This indicates that demand for loans was weak in October. Together with PMI and trade data, we believe that there could be a deeper-than-expected slowdown during the month.

    The housing market should still be quiet as mortgage loans, which are a big part of household long-term loans, grew only CNY33.2 billion.

    Yuan loans made up nearly 68% of total new credit in the month of October. Most of the rest were net issuance of corporate and government bonds, which contributed nearly 26% and 31%, respectively, of total new credit. 

    Local government special bonds will raise funds for the 2023 quota in the fourth quarter of this year. The issuance amount for 2023 is likely to be higher than the issuance amount of around CNY4.15 trillion in 2022. We believe funding raised will be used on finishing uncompleted home projects, buying back land from some property developers, infrastructure projects that have already started, and Covid-19-related spending.  

    What will be interesting to find out is how much more local government bond quotas are set for 2023. We believe that both central government and local governments will be key supporters of the economy until there is more relaxation in Covid measures.

    We are still keeping GDP growth at 3.3% for 2022 and USD/CNY at 7.4 by the end of the year.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 11/10/2022 – 21:00

  • Conservative Candidates Take Note – DeSantis Dominated In Florida For These Reasons
    Conservative Candidates Take Note – DeSantis Dominated In Florida For These Reasons

    Many Republicans are experiencing a bittersweet election week with some impressive wins, but not the “red wave” that they were hoping for.  With a Congressional majority looking like a certainty and the Senate up in the air, it’s an overall victory for conservatives but not a slam dunk defense against leftists and Joe Biden.  What we do know is that while there was no red wave, there was certainly no blue wave either.  

    This tells us a few things:  For one, Americans are more entrenched in their political views than ever and they aren’t likely to budge.  When governors like Gretchen Whitmer or Kathy Hochul can win reelection after attempting to impose hardcore authoritarian measures on their constituency during the covid scare, it becomes clear that Democrat voters are too mentally challenged to recognize they are harming themselves.  Maybe those people deserve what they get.

    By extension, conservative voters are far more nuanced.  They aren’t interested in voting for a candidate just because they identify as GOP, they want that candidate to share their values and concerns and take action.  If a candidate doesn’t show courage and stand immovable against establishment agendas, conservatives may just stay home rather than vote for them.  

    For example, in Pennsylvania, John Fetterman managed to defeat Dr. Mehmet Oz despite Fetterman’s brain being scrambled by a stroke during the campaign.  Democrats will vote for ANYONE that will keep their state blue, they even reelected a dead Democrat House candidate in PA (Tony DeLuca).  Meanwhile, Oz avidly promoted the covid mRNA vaccines after pretending to be skeptical of them, and tried to sell his followers on them despite there being many questions of safety and efficacy.  A lot of conservatives fought hard and took considerable risks in defying the mandates, and some felt betrayed by Oz’s apparent truce with Big Pharma.  This may have contributed to his election loss.  

    One Republican that fully dominated during his campaign was Ron DeSantis.  There is no denying that there was a red wave in Florida, which was considered a swing state only a few years ago.  Now, Democrats see the state as a lost cause for the 2024 presidential race with zero chance of retrieval.  DeSantis carried nearly 60% of the vote, with Charlie Crist left with 40%.  DeSantis’ success also helped the majority of other GOP candidates in Florida gain a voter majority, with Republicans winning 20 congressional seats.

     

    Why did DeSantis crush leftists in his state while many other Republicans barely squeezed a win or lost by slim margins?  What did he do that they did not do?  Yes, he’s an incumbent, which helps by allowing the candidate to show what he has already accomplished, but that can be a double edged sword.  What measures did DeSantis accomplish that won over Florida voters en masse and also prevented potential vote count “uncertainty”?  Let’s examine a list:

    Hard Stand Against Woke Politics

    DeSantis never wavered on his stance against woke politics, social justice agendas and far-left ideology.  He never tried to make a deal with leftists or appease them.  In fact, he instituted several measures and supported multiple bills in Florida that prevent woke politics from being taught in public schools.  

    He stopped Critical Race Theory from being implanted into school textbooks.  He prevented sexually driven lessons from being taught and is punishing activist teachers for sexualizing (grooming) children.  He has ended the injection of LGBT and Trans indoctrination for young students.  He also took on one of the largest media corporations in the world, Disney, and punished them for trying to control state politics and impose woke ideology through the company’s massive monetary influence.

    Leftists hate DeSantis for a reason – He has been effective against their tactics and they fear that other red states will follow his lead.  In his victory speech DeSantis proclaimed:  “Florida is where woke goes to die.”

    Hard Stand On Illegal Immigration

    A lot of people including many Democrats said that the strategy of busing illegal migrants from red states to far left cities like New York and Washington DC would fail.  Instead, it has been a resounding success, with Democrats scrambling just to keep their city budgets from imploding under the weight of a mere 10,000 to 15,000 illegals.  

    While Texas gets most of the credit for this action, DeSantis and Florida did one better and sent the migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, the pristine island vacation home of many leftist elitists.  The fact that the people of Matha’s Vineyard put on a fraudulent show by feeding the migrants some cheap lunches and then bused them straight out of town the next day to a camp on a military base was a huge embarrassment for Democrats.  It proved that they can’t live up to their own standards and take care of a handful of migrants while expecting border states to deal with millions per year.  It was a major coup for DeSantis.

    Hard Stand Against Covid Mandates And Vaccine Passports

    The population of Florida is the third largest in the nation, with a high percentage of retirees and seniors citizens.  The amount of pressure on DeSantis by the Federal Government and Biden along with the CDC and Anthony Fauci over the pandemic was immense.  If Florida folded to the mandates, then many red states may have followed suit.  This did not happen.  

    One of the most important characteristics of a great leader is the ability to stand by one’s principles even when the majority of the public or your peers seem to be against you.  When you know you are right based on reason, logic, facts and evidence, never submit or give in.  DeSantis showed this kind of fortitude over the past two years and this most of all is what likely won him another term as governor.    

    Passing Bills For Election Integrity

    DeSantis supported measures which secured Florida’s election integrity and prevented any potential chicanery in the 2022 midterms.  He signed a law strengthening voter identification at the polls.  Mass mailings of ballots, drop boxes and ballot harvesting are now illegal in Florida.  Private financiers are not allowed to administer elections.  He also established the Office of Election Crimes and Security, which monitors election integrity and enforces stiff penalties for anyone caught trying to cheat.

    If these rules were enforced in every state in the country, one might wonder how differently elections might turn out.  Future conservative candidates should take note of DeSantis and his overwhelming victory; it pays to actually defend the values you claim to represent, because conservative voters are not Democrats, they have standards.   

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 11/10/2022 – 20:40

  • Biden Admin Tells Supreme Court To Let House Democrats Have Trump's Taxes
    Biden Admin Tells Supreme Court To Let House Democrats Have Trump’s Taxes

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

    President Joe Biden’s administration is urging the Supreme Court to let House Democrats get access to former President Donald Trump’s tax documents.

    In a 30-page brief filed Nov. 10, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said that earlier rulings finding House Democrats’ request had legitimate legislative intent were correct, and that the nation’s top court should not diverge from them.

    U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, said the request from House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) served a valid legislative purpose because Neal says he will use the returns to examine whether new or adjusted legislation is needed for the IRS program that audits presidents.

    An appeals court later upheld the ruling.

    Trump then lodged an emergency application for a stay to the Supreme Court, which triggered a temporary block on Neal’s panel obtaining the documents.

    Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, entered the stay and asked the government to respond to Trump by Nov. 10 at noon.

    Trump’s lawyers said there is “a fair prospect” that the Supreme Court will stay the lower court rulings and deny the Democrat request, and that without a stay Trump will suffer issues such as a loss of confidentiality.

    Prelogar, a Biden appointee,  argued Trump had not met the bar for a stay, which includes an applicant showing a reasonable probability that four justices will agree to review the appeals court ruling and showing there is a fair prospect that a majority of the court would reverse the ruling.

    Because the appeals court relied on Supreme Court precedent, including Trump v. Mazars, there’s no need for the Supreme Court to review the ruling, Prelogar asserted.

    “The court of appeals’ factbound application of the Mazars factors does not warrant further review. And this case would be a particularly poor vehicle for elaborating on the Mazars analysis,” she said, noting that the two lower courts “each took somewhat different approaches to the separation-of-powers questions presented here, but all of them reached the same conclusion—and none of them regarded the case as particularly close.”

    “The application should be denied,” she added.

    Roberts has not yet indicated whether he will solicit a reply to the brief from Trump’s lawyers.

    Roberts is handling the application because he oversees the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

    He can keep the stay in place or lift it on his own, or choose to refer the matter to the full court for consideration.

    If the stay had not been imposed, the IRS was under orders to transmit Trump documents from tax years 2015 to 2020 to Neal.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 11/10/2022 – 20:20

  • Loan Demand For Mortgage Loans Crashes To Depression Levels
    Loan Demand For Mortgage Loans Crashes To Depression Levels

    In all the chaos over the past few days, we missed the release of the Fed’s latest Senior Loan Officer Survey which came out Monday. The results were striking: as one would expect from an economy in recession (and in some cases, depression), in nearly all categories, banks are reporting both tighter lending standards and sliding demand for new loans…

    … and nowhere more so than in mortgages, both qualifying and otherwise, where demand has collapsed to “depression” levels as a result of the fastest every surge in interest rates.

    While C&I loans are still doing ok, and demand for credit card debt is still near record highs – to be expected at a time when revolving credit debt is soaring at the fastest pace in history, record APRs be damned – it’s only a matter of time before these two core credit categories follow mortgage loan demand into purgatory at which point the US economy will be a complete disaster.

    Here are some more details courtesy of Goldman:

    1. Lending standards for commercial and industrial (C&I) loans tightened in 2022 Q3. 39% of banks on net tightened lending standards for large and medium-market firms (vs. 24% on net in the previous quarter), while the number of banks tightening lending standards for small firms increased to 32% (vs. 22% on net in the previous quarter). 30% of banks on net widened spreads of loan rates over the cost of funds for large firms (vs. 12% on net in the previous quarter), while 25% on net widened spreads for small firms (vs. 13% on net in the previous quarter).
    2. For banks that tightened credit standards or terms for C&I loans or credit lines, all cited a less favorable or more uncertain economic outlook as playing a role; 61% cited reduced tolerance for risk; 59% cited a worsening of industry-specific problems; 39% cited decreased liquidity in the secondary market for these loans; 26% cited less aggressive competition from other lenders; 20% cited a deterioration in their bank’s current or expected capital position; and 20% cited a deterioration in their current or expected liquidity position as playing a role.
    3. Demand for C&I loans from large- and medium-sized firms weakened in Q3. 9% of banks on net reported weaker demand for C&I loans for large and medium-market firms, compared to 24% on net reporting stronger demand in the previous survey. 22% of banks reported weaker demand for C&I loans from small firms, compared to 18% reporting stronger demand the previous quarter.
    4. Standards for commercial real estate (CRE) loans tightened in 2022Q3. 58% (+10pp) of banks on net reported tightening credit standards for construction and land development loans, and 40% (+10pp) on net reported tightening lending standards for loans secured by multifamily residential properties. The number of banks that reported tightening standards for loans secured by non-farm non-residential properties increased to 53% (+11pp). Demand for loans secured by multifamily residential properties, loans secured by nonfarm nonresidential properties, and construction and land development loans all decreased.
    5. Credit standards on mortgage loans tightened somewhat. Standards eased slightly or were basically unchanged for non-jumbo, non-GSE eligible (-3.4pp to -3.4%) and GSE-eligible mortgages (flat at +1.7%). Meanwhile, standards tightened for Qualified Mortgage jumbo (-0.1pp to +5.2%); non-Qualified Mortgage jumbo (+3.8pp to +7.4%); non-Qualified Mortgage non-jumbo (-1.8pp to +3.8%); and subprime residential mortgages (-1.4pp to +11.1%).
    6. Banks’ willingness to make consumer installment loans decreased in Q3 (-7% on net vs. +5% on net previously). The portion of banks tightening credit standards for approving credit card applications increased (+19pp to +19%), and 2% of banks on net tightened standards for auto loans (flat). The portion of banks reporting stronger demand for credit card loans decreased but remained positive (-7pp to +11% on net), while demand for auto loans also declined (-12pp to -28% on net).

    But loan supply and demand aside, the punchline from the survey is that “most banks assigned probabilities between 40 and 80 percent to the likelihood of a recession in the next 12 months, with no bank reporting a probability less than 20 percent. Although banks in general assigned relatively high probabilities to a recession occurring in the next 12 months, most banks reported expecting the recession to be mild to moderate, should one occur. In addition, most foreign banks assigned a probability between 40 and 80 percent that a recession would occur in the next 12 months.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 11/10/2022 – 20:00

  • The Election Won't Change Much In DC. The Real Battle Is Now In The States
    The Election Won’t Change Much In DC. The Real Battle Is Now In The States

    Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

    The votes are still being counted, but one thing is already clear: very little will change in Washington after this election. 

    The House of Representatives will likely be controlled by Republicans, but the majority enjoyed by the GOP in the House will be small. This will provide a veto over some of the worst legislation being pushed by the Biden administration, but history has made it abundantly clear that the GOP is more than willing to compromise and “work with” Democrat administrations rather than simply kill bills.

    As for the US Senate, we’re still waiting on the results in Nevada and Arizona. Georgia is headed to a runoff election. But it’s clear that the Senate will again be close to a 50-50 split. If the GOP manages to eke out a majority, that will help sink some of the worst legislation and some of the worst presidential appointees. But the direction of policy will not fundamentally change. 

    After all, so much of federal policy is now determined by the executive branch that moderate changes in party leadership in Congress will do very little to change the course of the nation’s administrative agencies such as the EPA, the IRS, and the FBI. These agencies have immense power over the daily lives of countless Americans, yet even sizable majorities of so-called conservatives have shown little stomach for doing much to rein in this power. Certainly, the small GOP majority now headed for the House will do little. 

    From Global Warming to Money Printing to Foreign Policy, Expect Little Change

    This all combines to mean we should expect very little change on policies at the federal level. For example, we can expect to keep hearing plenty about the evil of fossil fuels. The administration will continue to press for less drilling for oil and gas, and the war on coal will continue. The administration will continue to issue new edicts for “fighting global warming.” This, of course, will continue to drive up the cost of living. 

    On foreign policy, it was clear nothing much would change short of an overwhelming victory by “America First” types in Congress. That hasn’t happened, so we can expect more of the same foreign interventionism we’re seeing now. The US regime will add to the $65 billion it has already sent to Ukraine, and will continually ratchet up its involvement in the region as with a recent deployment of US troops near the Ukraine border. Even worse, the US will likely continue to flirt with nuclear war, as the Pentagon now has more leeway in using nuclear arms in the regime’s new National Defense Strategy document. The US will not, any time soon, remove the approximately 900 American troops that are currently conducting a regional occupation in Syria. 

    Naturally, as far as social spending goes, we can expect zero change. Under Donald Trump, Republicans signed off on massive new spending increases, and were headed towards approving trillion-dollar deficits even before 2020. With covid, of course, spending exploded even more, and only a small handful of Republicans expressed doubts.  (Trump naturally threw a tantrum about even this small bit of opposition.) The only disagreements we’ll see in Washington in the next two years will be over how exactly to run up the next massive annual deficit. 

    Indeed, if the economy continues to slide as we’re now seeing it do—with thousands of new layoffs coming from the tech sector just this week, and with real estate falling—we can expect a new bipartisan consensus in Washington calling for a wide variety of new “stimulus” programs. Neither party will want to be seen as the party of austerity. 

    The Biggest Changes Will Be at the State Level

    While Washington will keep up with the same disastrous policies, the real change we’ll see will be at the state level. The GOP did not do especially well in this election with state level offices, and the Republicans lost control of legislative chambers in at least Michigan, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. On the other hand, the GOP gained supermajorities in both the house and senate in Florida, plus supermajorities in the state senates of North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Moreover, Nevada’s state house is trending toward the GOP. Republicans still control a majority of statehouses and have even added to the tally of state GOP control in recent cycles prior to 2022. 

    What all this likely means is a continued divergence between places like Washington State, New York State, and California on the one hand, and Florida, Texas, and Ohio on the other. On matters like abortion, schools, immigration, guns, and energy policy, the differences between the two blocs will only continue to grow. Covid helped illustrate the importance of state-level policy and the very different legal environments that actually exist between so-called red states and blue states. This has not been forgotten, and many state policymakers will increasingly see themselves as the last defense against federal power. As one GOP operative put it in Politico: “With minimal gains at the federal level, the Republican power we held and gained last night in the states will be all the more important for stopping Joe Biden’s disastrous agenda.”

    In a column titled “Red states are building a nation within a nation” this was noted by Ronald Brownstein at CNN who clearly disapproves of efforts within red states to separate themselves from federal political trends. He writes: 

    [R]ed states, supported by Republican-appointed judges, are engaging in a multi-front offensive to seize control of national policy even while Democrats hold the White House and nominally control both the House and Senate. The red states are moving social policy sharply to the right within their borders on issues from abortion to LGBTQ rights and classroom censorship, while simultaneously working to hobble the ability of either the federal government or their own largest metro areas to set a different course.

    To a degree unimaginable even a decade ago, this broad offensive increasingly looks like an effort to define a nation within a nation – one operating with a set of rules and policies that diverge from the rest of America more than in almost any previous era.

    Brownstein frames it all as a sinister plot against the Left’s favorite interest groups, and he no doubt exaggerates the magnitude of it all. But he is right that red states’ governments do have the ability to set up obstacles to federal policy. Gone are the days when state governments simply fell into line every time the federal government demanded some new capitulation. One example of this is the recent conflict between the Biden Administration and the Arizona government on the matter of border security. The state government had places shipping containers along the border to form a makeshift wall. The administration demanded their removal. The state refused to move them. 

    National Divorce Is Inevitable

    We should expect more of this type of thing in which state governments simply refuse to play along with federal policy. Democrat-controlled state governments have done this for years, of course, with policies like creating “sanctuary cities” for immigrants or legalizing recreational marijuana. (The latter has not become virtually mainstream thanks to state level resistance.)

    But the fact is that state governments do have the ability to push back against federal policy makers. States can interfere with federal education policy. States can refuse to enforce federal gun laws. States can make their own abortion policy. States can refuse to do what they’re told. 

    Over time, this will serve to further build cultural and legal differences between different states, just as the covid lockdowns and mask mandates made it clear that there were real differences between states. As the differences become more evident, this will even encourage residents to relocate to places that better suit their political preferences. For example, we’re even now hearing that American leftists are leaving the lefty enclave of Austin, Texas. It turns out Austin is in the middle of Texas, and Texas has become too “red” for some people. It’s hard to guess how numerous these cases really are, of course, but relocating for political reasons does appear to be far more meaningful than it used to be. 

    Over time, this will continue to build a real cultural divide that will inevitably lead to de facto political division between these blocs of states. “E pluribus unum” was never more than a political slogan. It’s becoming less convincing every day. “National divorce” will increasingly be evident on the horizon. 

    In the short term, with Washington, DC poised to change so little, policy changes will increasingly come within the context of state governments defining themselves as being either against national elites (as in Florida), or for them (as in California.) This is where the real political action will be. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 11/10/2022 – 19:40

  • Lawyer For Canadian Commission Investigating Trucker Protests Collapses During Proceedings
    Lawyer For Canadian Commission Investigating Trucker Protests Collapses During Proceedings

    Gabriel Poliquin, a lawyer for the Public Order Emergency Commission “investigating” the circumstances that led to Justin Trudeau’s recent use of emergency powers, violently collapsed during commission proceedings with no indication from his family or the Canadian media as to the cause. 

    The Commission is tasked with outlining the legality or illegality of the government’s attempt to use terrorist based laws to put pressure on the mass trucker protests in Ontario. 

    The protesters were using civil disobedience actions against covid mandates and vaccine passports. 

    Trudeau specifically targeted fundraising for the protests, threatening individuals and groups with possible charges of aiding and abetting terrorists, and froze bank accounts of those involved.  The government also tried to confiscate goods and fuel brought to the protesters by sympathetic supporters.

    If history is any indication, such government commissions are generally designed to justify federal trespasses and bury independent investigations before they can take place.

    While it is not known what triggered Poliquin’s collapse during questioning, surely many people will be wondering if he is suffering from a new heart condition featuring myocarditis or blood clotting.           

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 11/10/2022 – 19:20

  • Democracy Wasn't On The Ballot, Extremism Was
    Democracy Wasn’t On The Ballot, Extremism Was

    Authored by Michael Shellenberger,

    Democracy was on the ballot, argued Democrats in the run-up to yesterday’s elections. If voters elected Republican governors and a Republican majority in Congress, Democrats and media pundits warned, we could soon see the end of the American system of republican democracy. Those Republicans who denied the outcome of the 2020 election would use their position to help Donald Trump steal the 2024 election, tear up the Constitution, and install himself as dictator-for-life. Or something.

    But many Democratic candidates have themselves denied the results of past elections. In November 2002, Al Gore said he “would have won” the presidency had all the votes in Florida been counted, even though in 2001 The New York Times conducted a comprehensive review of all uncounted Florida ballots and found that George W. Bush would have won even had the United States Supreme Court allowed a manual recount of the votes to go forward. In 2005, Democratic Senate and House members objected to the certification of Ohio’s electoral college votes for George W. Bush claiming “numerous, serious election irregularities,” while the losing Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, claimed that voters were “denied their right to vote; too many who tried to vote were intimidated.” In 2017, House Democrats objected to the 2016 electoral votes, 67 Democrats boycotted the inauguration claiming his election was “illegitimate” and in 2019, Hillary Clinton said the election was “stolen” from her and that Trump “knows” he stole the election and was “an illegitimate president.”

    It’s true that election denialism is much more widespread among Republicans than it is among Democrats. Where seven Democratic House members objected to the certification of their states’ votes for Trump in 2017, 139 Republican House members and eight Republican senators objected to the certification of their states’ votes for Biden in 2021, notes Cathy Young at The Bulwark. At the state level, 19 Republican attorneys general coordinated with Trump’s legal team to invalidate the results of the vote and involved fraudulent electors sending phony certificates to Washington depicting Trump as the winner. And Trump encouraged a mob of his supporters to storm the Capitol Building on January 6 in an effort to stop the certification of Biden’s election.

    But if Democrats were really so worried that America’s democracy was on the brink of collapse, then why did they help Trump-backed election-denying Republicans defeat their moderate Republican opponents during the primaries? To be sure, it proved to be effective. “All eight Democratic candidates who benefited from the strategy,” notes Reuters, “were projected to win their races as of Wednesday morning.” But if it was a smart strategy in the short term it also undermines the credibility of the claim that Democrats care more about democracy than Republicans. If they did, why would they risk electing election deniers? Why would they put a risky political strategy above protecting American democracy?

    And if Democrats are so concerned about protecting democratic norms, then why did they spend 2016 to 2019 arguing that Trump stole the 2016 election with the help of Vladamir Putin? Not only Democrats but the mainstream news media for nearly three years prosecuted the notion that Trump was a foreign agent. They even awarded themselves Pulitzer Prizes for their misleading reporting. As a result, many Democrats, including most if not all of my progressive friends, still believe that Trump stole the 2016 election with the help of the Russians. They argue that just because Mueller didn’t find conclusive proof that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russians didn’t prove that Trump didn’t conspire with the Russians.

    The most ridiculous element of Democratic election denialism isn’t the notion that Trump accepted help from Russia but rather that the things Russia did to interfere in the 2016 election changed the outcome. Democrats are right to suspect that Trump and his campaign team would have accepted Russian help to become president. Everything about Trump’s past behavior suggests that he would have, and indeed may have, if he felt that doing so would help him and that he would get away with it. Far less plausible is the notion that the things the Russians did, namely spreading fake news articles on social media, and hacking John Podesta’s emails, had much if any impact on voters. The Mueller Report found that the Russians spent $100,000 for 3,500 Facebook advertisements from June 2015 to May 2017, an utterly insignificant sum compared to the $81 million Clinton and Trump spent on Facebook ads. Even most liberal analysts, including Hillary Clinton herself, crediting many factors other than Russian interference for Trump’s 2016 victory.

    Without a doubt, we should fight foreign interference in American elections, reject election denialism, and protect elections from fraud, but we should also recognize that those things aren’t determining factors in what wins or loses elections. Progressives have rightly noted for decades that election fraud is exceedingly rare and, to the extent it occurs, is almost always too small to change an election. But that same argument applies to Russian interference. Democrats can’t, on the one hand, dismiss concerns over election integrity when it comes to collecting ballots and, on the other, hype concerns over election integrity when it comes to $100,000 in Facebook ads.

    The failure of U.S. Capitol Police to prevent January 6 protesters from entering the Capitol building was disturbing, but it hardly constituted a near-coup. There is little reason to believe a secretary of state could change an election’s result for the simple reason that voting is far too closely monitored and decentralized for it to be stolen. “It’s really hard to rig an election in America because it’s so decentralized,” confessed one advocate to The Washington Post.

    It’s true that various means exist for someone to undermine our democratic system. The Electoral Count Act is, say, experts, too vague. A sitting vice president could point to voting irregularities, invoke the 12th Amendment, and let state delegations in the House vote on the manner. A sitting president could declare a national emergency, or the Insurrection Act, rule unilaterally, and deploy the military, without the authorization of Congress, to put down mass protests. And a secretary of state could simply refuse to sign off on election results that she doesn’t like.

    But none of those constitute a significant threat. Even if a rogue secretary of state refused to certify election results, “there are nationwide, built-in protections to stop rogue actors from taking over,” admits The Post, which has done more to exaggerate the threat Trumpism poses to the republic than any other publication. Those protections are other elected officials, like the governor, and the courts. It might make sense to reform the Electoral Count Act, but even if that doesn’t happen, the Supreme Court still exists to play the role of interpreting vague and confusing laws in light of the constitution.

    In truth, state governments are constantly making decisions about elections aimed at favoring one party or another, from 100% mail-in ballots in California, which allow for legal ballot harvesting, to the need to show identification before voting, such as in Georgia. One might argue that such rules undermine democracy, but there are legitimate differences of opinion about what the requirements should be to vote. There are always some barriers to voting if only the work of reading and filling out a ballot and stuffing it into an envelope. Whatever one thinks of such barriers, they are hardly the end of our republic.

    When you read through various articles and reports raising the alarm about the threat to the American republic, most come down to vague concerns about things like “endless audits,” “distrust in results,” and “politicians hacking away at people’s confidence in democracy.” While I agree it’s important for the public to support our democratic system, there’s no evidence that such support is weakening. The widespread belief among many Republicans that the election was stolen from Trump expresses concern about the integrity of our electoral system, not a desire to get rid of it. And even were a president to declare an emergency, or an Insurrection Act that postponed an election, that would hardly constitute the end of the Republic, as new elections would simply be held later.

    In the end, the main concerns most Democrats appear to have about election-denying Republicans center around the behavior of America’s last president. “Trump has never acknowledged defeat,” a friend of mine writes. “Yes — there has been a lot of bitching and moaning on the part of the Democrats, but most importantly, [Al] Gore not only conceded, but he, as vice-president, validated the results of the election, declaring that he lost.”

    The problem, I responded, is that the First Amendment gives people, including former presidents, the right to say all sorts of stupid things. There’s nothing that we can or should do about it. It’s better to just argue over the evidence and, after it’s clear that nobody’s mind is changing, move on.

    But what if a president refused to leave office? The answer is clear: the U.S. Supreme Court would order the U.S. military to remove him. There has been story after story of U.S. military leaders who allegedly refused to do what Trump asked them to do. Whether or not they are true, it’s clear that America’s military leaders continue to see themselves as serving the U.S. Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, over this or that president. Could that change? Could there be a military officer in the future who, in effect, overthrows the government? Of course. But there’s no evidence that such officers exist in any significant number today, much less that their numbers are growing.

    The mirrored obsession of the Right with election fraud and of the Left with election denialism are undermining America’s ability to confront the most important issues facing the country. Extremes on the Left and Right are using false, exaggerated, and hypocritical allegations of fraud and denialism to stoke anger and fear, in a shortsighted effort to attract attention, drive Internet clicks, and mobilize voters.

    The good news is that voters have, as a collective, rejected the extremism of both the Right and Left, and elected a divided government.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 11/10/2022 – 19:00

  • Blizzard Pounds Plains, Midwest; "Polar Vortex" To Unleash Chill Nationwide
    Blizzard Pounds Plains, Midwest; “Polar Vortex” To Unleash Chill Nationwide

    The first blizzard of the 2022-23 winter season is unfolding across the northern Plains and through the upper Midwest today. 

    Parts of North and South Dakota and portions of Montana, Minnesota, and Nebraska are in the storm’s path. Some areas could experience more than a foot of snow and snowfall rates of up to 2 inches per hour. 

    “This will be the first major snowstorm of the season for the northern Plains and the combination of heavy snow, powerful winds and low visibility will result in hazardous travel,” AccuWeather senior meteorologist Brian Wimer said.

    Blizzard warnings have been posted for much of North Dakota and northern Minnesota. 

    Temperatures behind the system will result in much colder weather in the days ahead. US Lower 48 mean temperatures have dove from 58 degrees Fahrenheit earlier this week to a forecasted 39 degrees by November 14. 

    Here’s what meteorologists at private weather forecasting firm BAMWX are saying about the cold bast:

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

    “With strong cold influence from a displaced Polar Vortex, now the question becomes…how long can this pattern last?” BAMWX’s Kirk Hinz tweeted. 

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    Colder temperatures will send heating demand skyrocketing across the country starting this weekend. 

    Increased heating demand could put a bid under natural gas prices. 

    But then again, NatGas prices have slumped this week on the delayed restart of the Freeport LNG export terminal, which would boost US NatGas storage.  

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

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 11/10/2022 – 18:40

  • Bankman-Fried Faces SEC Probe, FTX Assets Frozen By Bahamas Regulator
    Bankman-Fried Faces SEC Probe, FTX Assets Frozen By Bahamas Regulator

    Update (1945ET): Things just went to ’11’ for the Dem darling crypto billionaire as Bloomberg reports that, according to a person familiar with the matter, Sam Bankman-Fried is being investigated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for potential violations of securities rules as the regulator deepens its probe into his crumbling FTX crypto empire.

    The SEC is scrutinizing Bankman-Fried’s involvement in recent moves that helped push FTX into a liquidity crisis, said the person, who asked not to be named discussing the confidential inquiry.

    FTX, the American platform FTX US, and Bankman-Fried’s trading house Alameda Research are already under investigation by the SEC, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday. The Justice Department is also looking into the situation.

    *  *  *

    The Bahamas Securities Commission has frozen the assets of FTX Digital Markets “and related parties” and has appointed a provisional liquidator as the Bahamas securities regulator seeks to place the beleaguered crypto exchange into receivership, i.e. bankruptcy, the agency said in a statement issued late on Thursday.

    The lockdown comes just hours after Sam Bankman-Fried said that he is closing his affiliated trading house at the center of the FTX scandal, Alameda Research, and after FTX said it may halt trading in FTX US, the remote US-based platform which has so far avoided scrutiny.

    An asset freeze was “the prudent course of action” to preserve assets and stabilize the company, the agency said.

    “The commission is aware of public statements suggesting that clients’ assets were mishandled, mismanaged and/or transferred to Alameda Research. Based on the commission’s information, any such actions would have been contrary to normal governance, without client consent and potentially unlawful” it warned

    Meanwhile, while unconfirmed but certainly not unlikely, a rumor emerged on Twitter also late on Thursday that SBF had been arrested on the tarmac at the Bahamas airport.

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    The Bahamas crackdown comes as Japan’s government also ordered FTX.com’s local subsidiary to suspend some operations, saying it has no structure in place to properly offer cryptocurrency exchange services to users.

    And while authorities finally crackdown on the biggest crypto fraud in history, who may or may not have been arrested, investors are starting to count their money, or rather lack thereof.

    Take the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, which said it had “invested” $95 million in Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX International and FTX.US since October 2021. Pension plan initially invested $75 million in two FTX entities Oct. 2021 and made a follow-on investment of $20 million in January in FTX.US

    The fund wanted to gain small-scale exposure to an emerging area in the financial technology sector, it says in a statement
    “Naturally, not all of the investments in this early-stage asset class perform to expectations.”

    The pension fund, realizing that the money is gone… all gone, was quick to add that any financial loss on this investment will have limited impact on the fund. FTX investment represents less than 0.05% of fund’s net assets.

    Late on Thursday we also learned that the FTX-linked loss at Genesis Trading, an institutional crypto market maker, was nearly double, or $175 million “in locked funds” in its FTX account.

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    And speaking of “gone… all gone”, it is ordinary retail investors who poured their life savings into crypto, for whom the stunning demise of FTX.com is a worst-case scenario.

    “I’m done and I think a lot of retail traders are done,” said Christ Keuchkerian, a 36-year-old FTX.com customer in Quebec who works in IT and hadn’t been able to withdraw his funds as of Thursday. “I don’t think at this point I want to put any more money into this.”

    Keuchkerian first started using FTX about a year ago, investing approximately C$4,500 ($3,360) in tokens like Bitcoin and Ether. He considered the platform “too big to fail.” When he heard the Binance deal fell apart, his heart started palpitating.

    “If I’ve learned anything, it’s that centralized exchanges are dead,” he said. “The philosophy behind this movement was great, but the execution has been horrible. The people running the exchanges have been horrible.”

    It’s not just FTX customers who may be hurt by Bankman-Fried’s downfall. The billionaire agreed to bail out Voyager in a $1.4 billion deal in September, as part of his distressed crypto buying spree, but the transaction still hasn’t closed. Voyager declined to comment on the status of the deal on Thursday.

    John Gould, a 45-year-old software developer in Birmingham, Alabama, had about $2,000 in his Voyager account, mostly in altcoins, when the platform froze withdrawals. When FTX first announced it would acquire Voyager’s assets, he was optimistic he would be able to cash out, but he doesn’t think that will happen now.

    “This is a like domino effect,” he said. “It’s definitely shaken my faith in exchanges.”

    As Bloomberg adds, some retail traders who plan to keep investing in crypto say they no longer trust the exchanges and are moving their tokens to offline wallets. Considering that this is precisely what this website and other exchange skeptics have been saying for years is the only proper protocol, one can only say better late than never. If only it didn’t take massive losses to make people realize just what’s at stake.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 11/10/2022 – 18:27

  • "Difficult Times Ahead": Musk Says Twitter Bankruptcy Possible As FTC Expresses "Deep Concern"
    “Difficult Times Ahead”: Musk Says Twitter Bankruptcy Possible As FTC Expresses “Deep Concern”

    Twitter boss Elon Musk told employees at a recent all-hands meeting that the company is losing so much money that “bankruptcy is not out of the question,” according to The Information.

    Twitter, which hasn’t turned a profit since 2019, has seen a “massive drop” in revenue according to Musk, as advertisers step back from spending campaigns.

    Musk also suggested during the meeting that the company’s future depends on the success of the revamped $8 per month Twitter Blue subscription service – which is currently being bombarded by bots, scammers, and impersonators.

    “The reason we’re going hardcore on subscribers is to keep Twitter alive,” Musk said, according to The Information, adding “Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn.“

    Musk also announced that the company’s “work from anywhere” policy is now canceled, telling Platformer “If you can physically make it to an office and you don’t show up, resignation accepted.”

    Banks balking at holding debt?

    As Bloomberg notes, Wall Street banks that lent Musk $13 billion to fund Musk’s buyout have been quietly approaching hedge funds to see if they would be interested in chunks of buyout debt at deeply discounted prices as low as 60 cents on the dollar – which would mark one of the deepest discounts in a decade.

    The lukewarm investor reception shows just how big of an albatross the Twitter debt is becoming for a Morgan Stanley-led cohort that committed to finance Musk’s acquisition of the social-media firm back in April, before credit markets cratered. The seven banks are now saddled with risky loans that they never intended to keep on their books, and face an increasingly uphill battle to minimize losses. -Bloomberg

    In particular, the banks want to unload their $6.5 billion leveraged loan portion of the financing, and if the loans are trading at 60 cents, that implies everything below the secured tranche in the cap structure is impaired (more or less a donut), and the EV on the company is around $8 billion.

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    Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission has sounded the alarm over an exodus of top employees from the social media giant – the latest of whom was the company’s head of moderation and safety, Yoel Roth, who – as a longstanding left-leaning executive, provided some level cover for Musk.

    The government watchdog agency said that it was “tracking the developments at Twitter with deep concern,” and that it’s considering taking action to ensure that the company is complying with a ‘consent order’ which requires the company to comply with certain privacy and security requirements related to allegations of past data misuse.

    Twitter was first put under a consent order in 2011, and it agreed to a new order earlier this year. If the FTC finds Twitter is not complying with that order, it could fine the company hundreds of millions of dollars, potentially damaging the company’s already precarious financial state. -WaPo

    “No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees,” said FTC director of public affairs, Douglas Farrar. “Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them.”

    According to the report, FTC staffers said they were most concerned about the rapid rollout of new features which have yet to undergo full security reviews governed by the FTC consent decree. The agency also objected to Musk requiring staff to work in the office at least 40 hours per week, effective Thursday.

    Former FTC officials warned that the departures of key privacy and security officials, as well as some of Musk’s proposed changes to Twitter products, opened the company to serious regulatory peril. -WaPo

    Employees were not happy in the company’s slack channel following the all-hands meeting.

    “What’s the motivation? Work hard or get fired?” asked one employee.

    “How do you plan to restore totally destroyed trust?” asked another.

    “I am ethically not okay with making the richest person in the world even richer. Also not okay with this alpha dog mentality – it’s already trickling down.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 11/10/2022 – 18:20

  • JPMorgan Warns FTX Collapse Will Spark "Cascade Of Margin Calls"
    JPMorgan Warns FTX Collapse Will Spark “Cascade Of Margin Calls”

    Unlike the high profile crypto-linked blowups earlier this year, JPMorgan believes that there is something different about the ongoing FTX implosion.

    First the bad news: as JPM flows and liquidity strategist Nick Panigirtzoglou writes overnight, “given the size and interlinkages of both FTX and Alameda Research with other entities of the crypto ecosystem including DeFi platforms it looks likely that a new cascade of margin calls, deleveraging and crypto company/platform failures is starting similar to what we saw last May/June following the collapse of Terra.”

    Then again, this is the same Panigirtzoglou who just a few weeks ago was busy praising crypto’s nascent recovery. Nothing like a one-off event to totally U-turn your entire thesis.

    To be sure, that doesn’t mean he is wrong, and this is how he frames the current quandary facing the crypto space –  the $8bn of Alameda Research liabilities reported in the press “is big enough to create a similar wave of deleveraging to that seen following the $20bn Terra USD collapse last May. And similar to what we saw after the collapse of Terra USD, this deleveraging is likely to last for at least a few weeks unless a rescue for Alameda Research and FTX is agreed quickly.”

    Yet what makes this new phase of deleveraging more problematic is that the number of entities with stronger balance sheets able to rescue those with low capital and high leverage is shrinking within the crypto ecosystem. If nothing else, SBF was frequently referred to as the next JPMorgan (not any more). FTX and Alameda Research had emerged last May/June as the main entities with apparently strong balance sheets to rescue weaker and more leveraged entities such as BlockFi, Voyager Digital and Celsius.

    But now that the balance sheet strength of Alameda Research and FTX is under question only a few months after being perceived as strong balance sheet entities, it creates a confidence crisis and reduces the appetite of other crypto companies to come to the rescue.

    What is certain, according to Panigirtzoglou, is that the collapse of Alameda Research/FTX will increase investor and regulatory pressure on crypto entities to disclose more information about their balance sheets, to safeguard client assets, to limit asset concentration and will induce more diligent risk management including management of counterparty risk among crypto market participants.

    Paradoxically, FTX had been preferred over Binance by institutional clients such as hedge funds, so the past days’ events will likely change the way institutional investors interact with exchanges to ensure their assets are protected.

    In this context, JPM notes that it is encouraging that nine exchanges including Binance, Gate.io, KuCoin, Poloniex, Bitget, Huobi, OKX, Deribit and Bybit have issued statements that they would publish their Merkle tree reserve certificates to increase transparency. Merkle trees allow Exchanges to store each user account’s hash value of assets in the leaf nodes of the Merkle tree. Assets on a leaf node can be audited and verified by a third party

    On the positive side, and while it might take several weeks until the current deleveraging cycle peaks, the JPM strategist believes that “the hit to crypto market cap is likely to be smaller than post Terra given previous deleveraging.”

    One metric to quantify the previous deleveraging is shown in the chart below, which depicts JPM’s position proxy for CME bitcoin futures: this position proxy stands close to levels last seen in January 2020 pointing to rather advanced deleveraging.

    The  deleveraging phase that followed the Terra collapse had induced a 50% decline in crypto market cap from around $1.7tr at the beginning of May to a low of $0.86tr by mid-June. With the crypto market cap standing at just above $1tr before the FTX/Alameda Research collapse, JPM’s guess is that the crypto market will find a floor above $500bn in the current deleveraging phase.

    Another way of thinking about the downside from here is the bitcoin production cost which historically acted as a floor for the bitcoin price. At the moment, this production cost stands at $15k but it is likely to revisit the $13k low seen over the summer months. A production cost of $13k implies 25% downside from here which would bring the crypto market cap to a low of $650bn.

    More in the full JPM report available to pro subs in the usual place.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 11/10/2022 – 18:00

  • LA's 'Soros DA' Gets Charges Dropped Against Election Software CEO
    LA’s ‘Soros DA’ Gets Charges Dropped Against Election Software CEO

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

    A judge in California on Nov. 9 dismissed charges against the CEO of an election software firm, who prosecutors had accused of being behind “probably the largest data breach in United States history.”

    Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon speaks at a press conference in Los Angeles on Dec. 8, 2021. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

    The Los Angeles Superior Court judge threw out charges of conspiracy and grand theft by embezzlement of public funds against Eugene Yu, the CEO of Konnech, at the request of Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon.

    Konnech did not respond to a request for comment.

    The office of Gascon, a Democrat, said the request stemmed from potential bias that it did not detail.

    “We are concerned about both the pace of the investigation and the potential bias in the presentation and investigation of the evidence,” Tiffiny Blacknell, a spokeswoman for the office, told The Epoch Times in an email. “As a result, we have decided to ask the court to dismiss the current case, and alert the public in order to ensure transparency.”

    Gary Lincenberg, an attorney representing Yu, said the dismissal shows that his client is innocent.

    “Mr. Yu’s good name was tarnished by false narratives from fringe conspiracy theorists who bragged about enlisting Los Angeles prosecutors to further their political agenda. They have since been found in contempt of court and were imprisoned for their contempt. We are grateful that our judicial system still has checks and balances to guard against their dangerous conduct,” Lincenberg said in a statement to The Epoch Times.

    He was referring to leaders of True the Vote, who were jailed after refusing to identify a person they described as a confidential FBI informant, but released from jail this week after an appeals court overruled the judge who issued the confinement order.

    Konnech sued the leaders, Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips, alleging public comments the pair made defamed Yu, a Chinese-born American citizen, and Yu’s firm.

    Some of the comments aligned with the charging documents against Yu, which alleged in part that he violated the contract Konnech signed with Los Angeles County by storing data on poll workers on servers in China.

    “Under its $2.9 million, five-year contract with the county, Konnech was supposed to securely maintain the data and that only United States citizens and permanent residents have access to it. District Attorney investigators found that in contradiction to the contract, information was stored on servers in the People’s Republic of China,” Gascon’s office said in October.

    Phillips testified in the defamation case that he was “told by L.A. County” that they had accessed the same data he viewed in 2021.

    The charges against Yu were dismissed without prejudice. That means they can be refiled in the future.

    Prosecutors have not ruled out refiling charges.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 11/10/2022 – 17:40

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Nov 10

Today’s News 10th November 2022

  • The WEF’s Stakeholder Capitalism Is Just Global Fascism By Another Name
    The WEF’s Stakeholder Capitalism Is Just Global Fascism By Another Name

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

    The concept of “fascism” was originally entered into the Encyclopedia Italiana by Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile, who stated that “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” Benito Mussolini would later take credit for the quote as if he had written it himself, but it’s important to note because it outlines the primary purpose of the ideology rather than simply throwing the label around at people we don’t like as a dishonest means to undermine their legitimacy.

    Despite the fact that leftists today often attack conservatives as “fascists” because of our desire to protect national boundaries and western heritage, the truth is that all fascism is deeply rooted in leftist philosophies and thinkers.

    Mussolini was a long time socialist, a member of the party who greatly admired Karl Marx. He deviated from the socialists over their desire to remain neutral during WWI, and went on to champion a combination of socialism and nationalism, what we now know as fascism. Adolph Hitler was also a socialist and admirer of Karl Marx, much like Mussolini. It is actually hard to find where Marx, the communists and the fascists actually differ from each other – A deeper sense of nationalism seems to be one of the few points of contention.

    Though Marx saw the existence of nation states as temporary to the proletariat and to the ruling class, he noted that the industrialists were erasing national boundaries anyway. Marx argues in the Communist Manifesto with some optimism:

    “National differences and antagonisms between peoples are already tending to disappear more and more, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, the growth of free trade and a world market, and the increasing uniformity of industrial processes and of corresponding conditions of life.”

    Marx saw the development of corporate power as useful and the next necessary step towards socialism, noting that joint-stock companies (corporations) and the credit system are:

    “The abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production itself.”

    In other words, corporations are viewed as a tool for the eventual transition to a socialist “Utopia” and the death of free markets. Once again, we see there is very little difference in motive between the political left and the fascists. The natural progression of every form of Marxism, communism, socialism, fascism etc. all ultimately lead to a kind of globalist ideology and erasure of cultural separation. The methods might differ slightly but the end result is the same. Some think this is a good thing, but it is actually quite poisonous.

    Globalism requires an overarching social dynamic, a single hive mind, otherwise it cannot survive. If people have the ability to choose or create better options (or different options) for living then globalism loses significance. The existence of choice has to be erased. This is a behavior that the political left has fully embraced and they are more than happy to work hand-in-hand with corporate oligarchs to make their ideal system a reality. Long gone are the days of the anti-corporate progressive – They LOVE corporate dominance, but only if those companies promote and enforce leftist models for society.

    Mussolini’s fascism is at the root of the very corporate governance that leftists applaud and lust after today. They have far more in common with fascists than they realize.

    The new fascism is a re-branded philosophy best represented by something called “Stakeholder Capitalism.” It is a term often used by globalists at the World Economic Forum and the head of the WEF, Klaus Schwab. The media friendly definition of Stakeholder Capitalism is:

    A form of capitalism in which companies do not only optimize short-term profits for shareholders, but seek long term value creation, by taking into account the needs of all their stakeholders, and society at large.

    But who are “all stakeholders” in the opinion of the WEF?

    Well, according to Klaus Schwab they are all of human civilization, now and in the future. In other words, the goal of SHC is for corporate leaders and globalist bureaucracy to take responsibility for the entire world, not just their own employees, shareholders and profits. And such leaders would not be acting as individuals, they would be acting as a collective. In other words, SHC requires all major corporations to act as a single unit with a single purpose and a unified collectivist ideology – An ideological monopoly.

    As Klaus Schwab states:

    “The most important characteristic of the stakeholder model today is that the stakes of our system are now more clearly global. Economies, societies, and the environment are more closely linked to each other now than 50 years ago. The model we present here is therefore fundamentally global in nature, and the two primary stakeholders are as well.

    …What was once seen as externalities in national economic policy making and individual corporate decision making will now need to be incorporated or internalized in the operations of every government, company, community, and individual. The planet is thus the center of the global economic system, and its health should be optimized in the decisions made by all other stakeholders.”

    The SHC concept is deceptive on its very face because it pretends as if corporations will be held accountable by the public within some form of “business democracy,” as if the public will have a vote on what the corporations do. In reality, it will be corporations telling the public what is acceptable to think and do and corporations in conjunction with governments using their power to punish people who do not agree.

    The great magic trick is that these same unified corporations use the shield of “private property” and business rights as a means to control society without repercussions. After all, a primary principle of conservatism and the US constitution is private property rights. So, stepping in to disrupt corporate governance would be violating one of our own beloved ideals. It sounds like a Catch-22, but it’s really not.

    As mentioned above, corporations are at their very core a socialist concept: They are created through government charter, handed legal personhood and given special protections from government. They are NOT free market entities, and Adam Smith, the originator of most free market ideals, stood against corporations as destructive and prone to monopoly.

    As long as they receive protections from government including monetary stimulus and bailouts, corporations should not enjoy the same private property protections as regular businesses do. They are parasitic creations, alien to the natural business world. In a freedom-based society they would be dismantled to prevent authoritarian outcomes.

    Stakeholder Capitalism is also an incredibly arrogant premise because it assumes that corporate leaders have the wisdom or objective intelligence to expand their role beyond business and into social and political spheres. This has already happened in many respects with much chaos created, but open corporate governance is the end game and it is anything but objective or benevolent.

    What are some examples of this kind of corporate/political governance (fascism) in action?

    How about Big Tech social media censorship leaning HEAVILY against conservatives and liberty activists? How about evidence of collusion between Big Tech companies and government, such as the Biden Administration and the DHS working closely with Twitter and Facebook to actively remove voices and viewpoints they don’t like? How about corporate leaders colluding to destroy conservative based social media competitors like Parler?

    How about ESG loans funded by corporate backers such as Blackrock or globalist non-profits like the Rockefeller Foundation?

    If all corporate lenders applied ESG to their loan practices, all individuals and businesses would have to adopt leftist social ideologies and dubious environmental claims in order to have access to credit. ESG is a monetary incentive created by corporate elites to keep all other businesses in line. If it continues, ESG could wipe out political opposition to globalism in the span of a single generation.

    And, what about the Council For Inclusive Capitalism? This is the most blatant expression of open global fascism I have ever seen, with money elites and politicians working in concert with the UN and even religious leaders like Pope Francis. Their goal is to institute a single centralized world governing platform built around the same agendas outlined in ESG and SHC, making corporations members of a new global council which they refer to as “The Guardians.” They aren’t even trying to hide the conspiracy anymore, it’s right out in the open.

    Klaus Schwab takes special care to mention often that global crisis events are the “opportunity” that is needed to push the public into the arms of Stakeholder Capitalism through a nexus point called “The Great Reset.” Meaning, he thinks that widespread fear and desperation must exist (or be engineered) to perpetuate the SHC framework quickly.

    Obviously, the globalists are on a shrinking timeline, though it’s hard to say why. They are tearing off the mask faster in the past two years than they have in the previous decade. More than likely they understand to some degree that if they go too slow the public will have time to mount a defense against them.

    They will conjure all kinds of distractions and scapegoats to prevent liberty minded people from hitting them back. They’ll aim us at Russia, they’ll aim us at China, they’ll aim us at useful idiots among the leftists. They’ll aim Russia, China and the leftists at us. They will try to send us to war, they will call us insurrectionists, they will call us terrorists, they will say we started the whole collapse and that we are to blame for the world’s ills. None of this matters. What matters is that the globalists at the top pay the price for the harm they cause.

    When the head of the snake is removed, only then can we sort out who is to blame; who were the heroes, who were the villains, and who were the idiots. Only then can we rebuild with true freedom in mind.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/09/2022 – 23:40

  • The US And China Lead The Space Race 2.0
    The US And China Lead The Space Race 2.0

    Private space travel is taking off, with around $265 billion having been invested in space startups since 2014. 

    According to Space Capital, almost half of this sum went to companies in the U.S., while another 30 percent was invested in Chinese firms.

    Infographic: The U.S. and China Lead The Space Race 2.0 | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Space 2.0 marks a new wave of space travel. As Statista’s Anna Fleck details below, the boom is primarily being shaped by private companies, including an increasing number of start-ups, which are combining the latest tech innovations with new business models.

    In the past, space travel was financed almost exclusively by the state and operated by a few established companies such as Boeing, Airbus or Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, among others.

    Founded in 2002 by Tesla founder Elon Musk, SpaceX is currently the leading company in terms of number of spacecraft launches. The company is known for a number of projects, including providing supply flights to the International Space Station (ISS), with its first manned flight having docked there at the end of May 2020. SpaceX is also the pioneer of Starlink satellites, which are low orbit satellites intended to provide broadband internet to communities with little or no connectivity. As of August 2022, around 2,800 of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites orbited the earth. This is set to rise to 12,000 in the coming years.

    On September 15, 2021, SpaceX took four space tourists into space for three days, marking the world’s first space mission without a professional astronaut. In the long term, SpaceX plans to colonize Mars.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/09/2022 – 23:20

  • New Chinese Property Support No Match For $456 Billion Hole
    New Chinese Property Support No Match For $456 Billion Hole

    By Ye Xie, Bloomberg markets live reporter and analyst

    Another day, another measure to support the beleaguered Chinese property sector. Developers rallied Wednesday after Beijing expanded a funding program to support debt sales by private companies, including builders.

    It’s a positive that the authorities are doing more to bolster the housing sector. But it’s another bandage that’s unlikely to turn around the market.

    Stocks of developers such as Country Garden Holdings and CIFI Holdings surged after the National Association of Financial Market Institutional Investors widened the bond financing program to about 250 billion yuan ($35 billion) for private companies, including developers.

    The program, first introduced in late-2018, is one of the “three arrows” that the People’s Bank of China uses to help private companies raise capital. The other two channels include bank loans and equity financing.

    In September, Bloomberg reported that policymakers have asked state banks to increase lending to developers to ease their liquidity crunch. After firing the first arrow, Beijing is now pulling the trigger on the second one.

    But as Nomura’s economist Lu Ting pointed out, there are reasons to question the effectiveness of the program. First, new home sales revenue is the largest funding source for developers, far more than any other channels. It accounted for 53% of overall funding for developers last year, compared with 12% from bank loans.

    In the first nine months, new home sales contracted 31%. At this rate, developers’ funding from home sales will fall by 3.3 trillion yuan ($456 billion) this year, according to Nomura’s estimate. That’s too big of a funding hole.

    Secondly, the $35 billion bond financing quota is for all private companies, not just for developers. Builders accounted for 15% of all private bond issuance between 2018 and 2020, before falling to around 9% in 2021, according to Nomura.

    Lastly, developers still need to pay off a large amount of maturing bonds in coming months, with about 30 billion yuan worth of onshore debt due by March. The implication is that even if they can access the bond market, the net fundraising would be limited after paying off the debt.

    All in all, the second arrow is literally more like an arrow, not a bazooka.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/09/2022 – 23:00

  • China Revises Military Doctrine To Focus On Troop Deployments Overseas
    China Revises Military Doctrine To Focus On Troop Deployments Overseas

    The Chinese People’s Liberation Army is expected to undergo continued expansion and modernization following last month’s CCP five-yearly national congress, which made key revisions to the Communist Party constitution. This included changes on the nation’s military posture.

    One of those revisions stated the need to “elevate our people’s armed forces to world-class standards” – according to an addition to the party constitution, as translated in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. This is being seen as aimed at expansion of deployed assets overseas, also following widespread reports within the past year that Beijing is seeking to establish a string of bases on Africa’s Atlantic coast. 

    PLA troops & officers attend opening ceremony of China’s military base in Djibouti in August 2017. AFP/Getty Images.

    The revised constitution included an official explanation published alongside it which stated “Overseas safety and security has become a major issue that we must address” – in particular citing the need for beefed-up counterterror forces to better protect against attacks on Chinese institutes and companies in foreign countries.

    According to further commentary of the changes via the SCMP:

    Drawing on examples from China’s military defeats in the 19th century, it said international politics still followed the “law of the jungle”, with the strong in charge and able to uphold their will. The impact of a lagging military on national security would be fatal, it added.

    It remains that compared to the United States or even Russia, China’s oversees military presence is tiny or almost non-existent. China has had a naval facility which opened in 2017 in Djibouti, long considered its main and lone military base abroad – not counting reports of one or possibly two outposts in Tajikistan, and the string of small bases in China’s backyard, on manmade island-bases in the South China Sea.

    But as Foreign Policy, The Economist, and other Western geopolitical-focused publications have long previewed, China has ambitions for many more, especially in Africa. “Tanzania, Cambodia, and the UAE are on China’s wish list— and now Kiribati, within striking distance of Hawaii,” an FP report stated in summer 2021.

    China’s military ambitions abroad, via The Economist

    Source: The Economist

    This week President Xi Jinping again reaffirmed his commitment to focusing on “preparing for war” with the country’s security “increasingly unstable and uncertain,” according to his latest declaration.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/09/2022 – 22:40

  • Russia's Oil Output Set To Fall By 1.5 Million Bpd In December To 9 Million Barrels
    Russia’s Oil Output Set To Fall By 1.5 Million Bpd In December To 9 Million Barrels

    By Michael Kern of OilPrice.com

    Russia’s oil production could drop to as low as 9 million barrels per day (bpd) in December when the EU embargo on imports of Russian crude oil enters into force, Russian news agency TASS reported on Wednesday, citing analysts at the Energy Development Center. “We expect that production in December will fall by 1.5-1.7 mln barrels per day compared to the June-October average, or 14%,” according to a report from the Energy Development Center cited by TASS.

    The expected sharp drop in Russia’s oil production will lead to a spike in international oil prices, also considering that the OPEC+ group is reducing the target production as of November, the experts said.  

    Russia’s oil production, excluding condensate, for October came in well below its production quota for the month, at just 9.9 million bpd, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said earlier this month.

    Russia’s October production was 1.1 million bpd below its quota of 11 million bpd assigned under the OPEC+ agreement, but mostly in line with Novak’s estimates made last month. 

    For November, Russia’s oil production quota under the OPEC+ pact will drop from 11 million bpd to 10.5 million bpd.

    In October, Russian oil production, including condensate, was 1.47 million tons of oil per day, or 10.78 million bpd. The October production was slightly down from the 10.8 million bpd reported for September 

    However, the production decline could accelerate from November as the EU prepares to introduce an embargo on imports of Russian crude from December 5, Russian business daily Kommersant reported at the end of October, quoting sources familiar with the situation.

    Analysts have estimated that around 2 million bpd-3 million bpd of Russian oil and products may have to find new homes after the EU embargo enters into force. Russia has redirected a large part of its flows eastwards to Asia, but it may not be able to accommodate immediately and find willing buyers for the trade flows previously going to Europe, especially with the ban on services handling Russian oil cargoes unless the oil is sold at or below a certain price cap.  

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/09/2022 – 22:20

  • The Post-Midterms State Of Marijuana Legalization In The US
    The Post-Midterms State Of Marijuana Legalization In The US

    In the 2022 midterm election, Maryland and Missouri have legalized recreational marijuana via the ballot box.

    However, as Katharina Buchholz notes, three similar referendums have been voted down in Arkansas, North Dakota and South Dakota, CNN projects. 

    South Dakota had actually given the recreational and medical use of cannabis the green light in the 2020 elections, but the state’s Supreme Court ruled the ballot measure on recreational weed invalid for technical reasons after a complaint funded by Governor Kristi Noem. The second time around, the referendum is expected to be narrowly defeated.

    As of now, this means that recreational marijuana will be legal in 21 states and the District of Columbia.

    Infographic: The State of Marijuana Legalization in the U.S. | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    After successful ballot measures in the 2020 election, weed became legal in Arizona, New Jersey and Montana. During 2021 and 2022, state legislatures in New York, Virginia, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Connecticut passed bills to legalize marijuana. These recent development have brought recreational cannabis to more East Coast states after the American West had long been the hotbed of legalization efforts. Colorado and Washington were the first states to legalize the drug in 2012.

    While official sales of marijuana can take a while to start as setting up a licensing system for dispensaries usually takes time, possession and consumption are expected to become legal more quickly in the states in question. There are currently 37 states that have medical marijuana laws, including all that allow recreational use.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/09/2022 – 22:00

  • Sequoia Writes Off Entire $210MM FTX Investment; Here Are All The Other Funds That Are Losing Billions In FTX
    Sequoia Writes Off Entire $210MM FTX Investment; Here Are All The Other Funds That Are Losing Billions In FTX

    (Update: 9:00pm ET): Slowly but surely, the humiliated “investors” who do zero homework and merely look at who else has coinvested before they sign the check, are coming out admitting that it’s gone… al gone.

    In a tweet late on Wednesday, venture capital giant Sequoia Capital said had written down the entire value of its stake in FTX, a little over $210 million.

    “We are in the business of taking risk,” Sequoia wrote in a message to investors seen by Bloomberg. “Some investments will surprise to the upside, and some will surprise to the downside.”

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

    A smaller venture fund, Multicoin, told investors Wednesday that about 10% of its assets under management were affected.

    “Unfortunately, we were not able to withdraw all of the Fund’s assets on FTX,” Multicoin wrote in a letter reviewed by Bloomberg.
    A sudden loss of confidence in FTX among customers exposed deep problems with the cryptocurrency exchange. People

    withdrew money and sold off tokens associated with the company, causing a liquidity crunch. A rival, Binance, agreed to buy FTX and then pulled out over concerns with FTX’s financial health.

    * * *

    Now that the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, has walked away from a bailout of world’s second-largest crypto exchange, FTX, but biggest ever crypto fraud – far bigger than MtGOX ever was, here is a list of all the “luminary” investors whose money in FTX is now gone… all gone.

    We start at the top, where we find the “who is who” of clueless momentum chasers, who over the years somehow got confused with credible, diligent investors: we are talking of course about Tiger Global, which is down 55% this year (and is about to be down a whole lot more) and of course the fund that we once dubbed the bubble era’s “short of the century“, SoftBank.

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

    One wonders how much of today’s widespread selling across various asset classes was due to Tiger Global getting margin called and dumping what it can?

    There are more funds, of course: Third Point and Altimeter Capital Management are among hedge funds that recently participated in funding rounds for Sam Bankman-Fried’s once-high-flying crypto exchange. Brevan Howard Asset Management’s Alan Howard, the family office of Paul Tudor Jones and Millennium Management founder Izzy Englander also chipped in as angel investors, alongside celebrities including Gisele Bundchen and Tom Brady.

    There were many others: FTX also attracted capital from the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Iconiq Capital, Insight Partners, Thoma Bravo and Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank.

    Tiger Global and Ontario Teachers’ first invested in FTX in December 2019 in a funding round that valued the company at $8 billion, according to PitchBook data. Both topped up their wagers in October 2021, giving FTX a $25 billion valuation, and did so again in January, the data show. Some of the other firms and individuals backed FTX in July 2021, paying cash to participate in a $1 billion funding round that valued the crypto exchange at $18 billion.

    Prefer bullets? Here is a list of the most prominent investors in FTX courtesy of The Block’s Frank Chaparro:

    • BlackRock
    • Ontario Pension Fund
    • Sequoia
    • Paradigm
    • Tiger Global
    • SoftBank
    • Circle
    • Ribbit
    • Alan Howard
    • Multicoin
    • VanEck
    • Temasek

    Remarkably, as ever more clueless pedigreed investors piled up to fund this fraud of epic proportions, the valuation went super parabolic, and after two early rounds in 2019 and 2020, FTX got its first real outside funding in July 2021 when it pocketed $900MM at a valuation of $18 billion in its Series B round; this was followed by two more rounds, the most notable of which was Series C when ts valuation exploded to a staggering $32 billion. It was around this time that Scam Bankrupt-Fraud started naming sports stadiums, and imagined a world in which FTX would buy Goldman.

    The chart below is the definitive proof that even (or rather especially) the smartest investor do no homework before allocating huge amounts of capital.

    All that seems so long ago now that regulators are investigating whether FTX properly handled customer funds – translation: the firm probably used client funds from its exchange to funds its trading shop, Alameda Research – and the firm’s relationship with other entities Bankman-Fried controls, and concerns raised by Binance executives during their due diligence process could torpedo the deal.

    As a result of FTX collapse, all of the abovenamed investors, among others, are set to lose all of their invested cash, especially with news such as this hitting the tape:

    • *BANKMAN-FRIED TOLD INVESTORS FTX HAS SHORTFALL OF UP TO $8 BLN

    Still, while billions will be lost, nobody will be crushed as much as Bankman-Fried himself, whose personal wealth has collapsed from $16 billion to what may now be a negative number when accounting for his personal debt. Of course, it’s all downhill from there especially once SBF is thrown in prison from stealing billions in client funds in his exchange and using them not even to buy yachts but to make catastrophically bad investments.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/09/2022 – 21:44

  • Video Games May Be Beneficial For The Developing Brain
    Video Games May Be Beneficial For The Developing Brain

    Authored by Ross Pomeroy via RealClearScience.com,

    Video games are often maligned by parents and the media, but a recently published study of 2,217 nine- and ten-year-olds found that kids who played at least 21 hours of video games per week performed better on tests of cognitive performance involving response inhibition and working memory than kids who didn’t play video games at all.

    The research, spearheaded by scientists in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Vermont, is published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

    Video games are everywhere

    In the span of three decades, video games have grown from rare to ubiquitous in modern society. No longer relegated to the realm of nerdom, nearly three-quarters of children aged 2 to 17 play them, whether on computers, consoles, or smartphones, leaving parents to wonder, “How much is the right amount?”

    The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that children over two play no more than one hour of video games on school days and no more than two hours on non-school days.

    More broadly, scientists have explored whether gaming is associated with changes to behavior and cognitive function in kids. Prior research has linked heavy gaming with slightly increased rates of aggression, depression, and violence. At the same time, however, frequent gamers do tend to outperform their peers on various measures of cognitive ability. Research on both behavior and cognitive ability has tended to suffer from small sample sizes, however.

    The new study did not. Thousands of kids, enrolled in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, were separated into two groups: those who played at least 21 hours of video games per week (well over AAP recommendations) and those who played none at all. Participants were challenged with a Stop-Signal Task (SST) — designed to measure inhibition control — in which they were told to work on a simple, rapid-fire task on a computer until a “stop” signal was given. They were also given an N-Back task — a test of working memory — in which they were asked to rapidly recall something that they were previously presented. Both cognitive assessments were completed while subjects sat in an fMRI brain scanner.

    The gamers outperformed the non-gamers by about 5% to 10% on both tasks. Moreover, their brains showed higher activity in regions associated with attention and memory and in frontal brain regions linked to more cognitively demanding tasks.

    While the gamers and non-gamers did not differ on age, BMI, or IQ, the gamers were disproportionately male and had less combined parental income. The income disparity actually adds to the robustness of the finding. Higher parental income is often sharply linked with all sorts of improved child outcomes, from health to behavior to intelligence, so the fact that child gamers from poorer homes tended to cognitively outperform non-gamers from richer ones is certainly interesting.

    Is Tetris the same as Grand Theft Auto?

    The researchers caution that not all video games are likely to be equally beneficial: a violent, first-person shooter is undeniably different than an educational, strategy, or puzzle-solving game, for example. Their study did not tease out which games participants were actually playing. Moreover, they cautioned that the study was merely a snapshot in time, assessing correlation, not causation.

    However, future data releases from the ABCD study group as the participants age should allow the scientists to detect changes in cognitive ability. Will gamers continue to outperform their non-gaming peers, perhaps growing their advantage? Time will tell.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/09/2022 – 21:40

  • CPI Preview: Inflation Is Cooling But Will It Be Enough
    CPI Preview: Inflation Is Cooling But Will It Be Enough

    As discussed earlier, most banks agree that while the midterms are important over the medium and long run, Thursday’s CPI print will be the most important factor to shape the expectations for December FOMC and the market’s near term reaction. Here, courtesy of Newsquawk, is what to look for.

    • Analysts expect headline consumer prices to pick up by 0.6% M/M in October, accelerating from the 0.4% M/M rate in September while the core measure is seen cooling to 0.5% M/M, lower than the 0.6% M/M in September, but a still elevated level vs historical levels.
    • On an annual basis, headline CPI is expected to rise 7.9%, down from 8.2% last month; core CPI sill also slow to 6.5% from 6.6%.
    • The data will be framed in the context of how much progress the Fed is making towards lowering inflation. After the November FOMC meeting, Fed Chair Powell said it was “very premature” to consider pausing or ending the rate hiking cycle, noting that inflation remains well above the Fed’s longer-run goals, with price pressures evident across goods and services. Although longer-term inflation expectations still appear well-anchored, the Fed wants to see inflation coming down decisively, and is prepared to stay the course until the job is done.

    As a reminder, the message from Powell last week was that the Fed is strongly committed to its inflation target of 2%. Powell did, however, allude to a potentially slower pace of rate hikes in December – the statement said the Fed will consider the “cumulative tightening of monetary policy, the lags with which monetary policy affects economic activity and inflation, and economic and financial developments” when determining the pace of future rate increases. Analysts rationalised that with rates in restrictive territory, the Fed can downshift to a slower pace of normalization to assess the impact of the 375bps worth of rate tightening unleashed since March.

    Currently, the market is split in its views about whether the Fed will implement a 50bps or 75bps rate hike in December.

    Accordingly, the market seems to be of the view that if inflation metrics move lower (and traders are keeping an eye on aggregate inflation data, including CPI, PCE, wages metrics within jobs data, consumer inflation expectations via surveys, etc), this gives the Fed cover to downshift to the lower increment. However, if inflation data does not cooperate, then the Fed will prefer the larger sized hike, and potentially an even a higher terminal rate (Powell suggested that the eventual peak Fed Funds Rate Target is above the 4.6% pencilled in within the September projections; money markets see the peak at 5.00-5.25% in Q2 2023).

    Shifting away from the consensus, we next focus on what Goldman’s economists expect from tomorrow’s print. As discussed in the preview from Jan Hatzius (available to pro subs), Goldman expects a below-consensus 0.44% increase in core CPI in October (vs. 0.5% consensus and 0.6% prior), which would lower the year-on-year rate to 6.46% (vs. 6.5% consensus and 6.6% prior).

    The bank expects moderate increases in both food and energy prices to raise headline CPI by 0.49% (vs. 0.6% consensus and 0.4% prior), which would lower the year-on-year rate to 7.8% (vs. 7.9% consensus and 8.2% prior).

    The bank’s research team also highlights 3 key component-level trends this month:

    1) Expect CPI used car prices to catch down (-2.5% in October) to auction price data, which have now plunged substantially from their peak, and just tumbled at the 3rd fastest pace on record.

    2) The small but volatile health insurance component should finally swing from providing a large boost over the past twelve months to providing a large drag over the next twelve months (-3% in October) with the incorporation of new data on health insurer profit margins. The reason is that the CPI incorporates source data on health insurer profitability once per year and feeds them through for the next twelve months. Last year, roughly stable premiums coupled with reduced health care use amidst Covid fears caused profit margins to rise, leading to a year of very strong health insurance inflation (+2.1% in September; +28.2% year-on-year). Now, the rebound in health care use has caused profit margins to fall, which should lead to a year of very negative health insurance inflation (-3% in October; -28% next twelve months). That would cause the contribution to the core from this small component to fall by 65bp over the next year.

    3) Goldman also expects shelter inflation to run hot (rent +0.78%, OER + 0.75%), even though as we discussed extensively, real-time alternative web-based measures of new tenant rent growth have slowed—because continuing tenant rent levels still have a long way to catch up to new tenant market rates. In other words, rent inflation will keep coming in hot even as prices slump outside of excel models.

    Elsewhere, Goldman also expects a 2% pullback in airfares based on timely data and also expects another large increase in the car insurance category (+1.6%), as carriers push through price increases to offset higher repair and replacement costs.

    Going forward, the bank expects monthly core CPI inflation to remain in the 0.3-0.4% range for the next couple of months before edging down to 0.2-0.3% next year. Goldman expects year-over-year core CPI inflation of 6.2% in December 2022, 3.3% in December 2023, and 2.7% in December 2024. The deceleration we expect in 2023 is driven more by goods than services categories. Of course, a sharp recession will unleash deflation much sooner.

    Shifting from Goldman to JPM, this is what its head economist Mike Feroli said in his preview:

    We estimate that the consumer price index (CPI) rose 0.6% in October. Even with this strong increase expected for the month, we think year-ago headline inflation will moderate, from 8.2% in September to a still-robust 7.9% in October. The headline strength should come in part from energy prices, for which we forecast a jump in October following a run of three straight monthly declines. We think that food prices continued to climb into October, but we expect additional moderation in this CPI aggregate (following a very strong run), with the food CPI up 0.6% in the month. Away from food and energy, we forecast that the core CPI rose 0.38% in October, with this measure coming in 6.4%oya (down from 6.6% in September).

    We think that continued firmness in the CPI’s rent measures will drive the expected gain in the core aggregate in October. While we think rental inflation will moderate eventually, we don’t see this happening at this point in time, and we forecast that tenants’ rent rose 0.83% in October while owners’ equivalent rent increased 0.76%.These gains would be a little softer than the reported September changes but still quite firm.

    Away from rent, we expect softer changes in many of the other main CPI components. Auto industry figures point to recent declines in related prices (particularly for used vehicles) and we look for new vehicle prices to be down 0.1% in the October CPI while used vehicle prices fell 2.2%. We also think that airfares declined in October, which would help push the broader public transportation price index down 2.2%. Apparel prices came down a bit in September and we forecast another modest decline in October, with prices down 0.2%. We also think that communication prices will keep trending lower, with a 0.1% move down reported for October.

    We also expect a noticeable downshift in medical care inflation in the CPI, with the BLS set to incorporate an annual update to source data used to estimate health insurance prices. We think overall medical care prices edged up just 0.1% in October, with a near-4% drop in health insurance prices being offset by gains in other related prices on net. This would represent a big shift from the past 12 months, which had monthly gains in medical care prices averaging 0.5% with health insurance prices up about 2% per month. We also look for a fairly modest gain in lodging prices in October, with a 0.3% increase expected to offset a portion of September’s 1.0% decline.

    Turning to the market, in terms of the S&P’s reaction function to the headline CPI YoY print here is framework Goldman’s John Flood is using using:

    • >8.2% S&P loses 3+%
    • 8 – 8.2% S&P loses 1-2%
    • 7.8 – 7.9% S&P gains 0 – 1%
    • <7.8% S&P gains 2+%

    Finally, as discussed earlier, JPM was much more hyperbolic in its CPI market scenario analysis:

    • CPI 8.4% or higher: this would be a move back to July levels of inflation, which we may see on a MoM basis but think Equity investors care most about the Headline YoY level. This would represent the largest differential between actual and estimated in this cycle. SPX would plunge 4.5% – 6%.  Probability 5%
    • 8.1%  – 8.3%: there have been 4x misses of 20bps or more and the SPX fell 1.6%, 2.9%, 40bps, and 4.3% which is a down 2.3% average. The 40bps outlier came when the SPX was ~3820 the day before the print. In the other 3 cases, the SPX was between 3930 and 4000. SPX would drop 2% – 3%. Probability 30%
    • 7.9% – 8.0%: I think bonds, and thus stocks, take this as a small positive since it meets expectations and does not reprice yields higher. Given that we are at the bottom of JPM’s Cash Trading team’s range (3700 – 3900), we may see some covering leading to an uptick in stocks. SPX would rise 1% – 1.5%. Probability 40%
    • 7.7% – 7.9%: this could be similar to the August 10 print which had a dovish beat by 20bps and triggered a 2.1% rally in SPX, 2.8% in NDX, and 2.9% in RTY. Cyclicals, Value Shorts, Momentum Shorts, and ARKK the best performers that day. Given the increased bearishness, the magnitude of move could be larger. SPX higher 2.5% – 3.5%. Probability 20%
    • 7.6% or below: a stepdown in inflation of this magnitude likely pulls the 10Y yield below 4% (currently 4.158%) and triggers a sharp rally in stocks. This may also reset the yield curve lower with terminal rate expectations falling under 5%. SPX higher 5% – 6%. Probability 5%.

    Looking at historical data the past year has seen a decidedly negative reaction to CPI on the day of the report, however when CPI came in below expectations, the SPX is up 0.8%, but down -1.2% when the CPI comes in hotter than expected.

    And while there have been decidedly few CPI misses in the past year, any time they do happen they lead to a powerful 5-day rally, certainly more powerful than the drop when CPI comes in hot.

    As always,all full reports discussed above are available to pro subs.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/09/2022 – 21:30

  • The Deep State Is What Disables Democracy
    The Deep State Is What Disables Democracy

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

    The idea of democracy as it emerged gradually out of the Enlightenment, and drawing on ancient forms in Greece and Rome, is that the people govern themselves. People serve as the main determinants of the rules, laws, and legislation under which they live. They even set the rules concerning what people are allowed to do to themselves and each other using government: such is the point of a constitution.

    In a representative democracy, we elect leaders who represent our interests in the halls of government. Crucially, the main point is not the election or even the right of masses of people to vote. Those are means to an end. The end is self-government, government by and for the people, which came to be seen in republican theory as a crucial feature of freedom itself.

    Many totalitarian societies have figured out over time how to appear to be democratic without actually being so. When I was growing up, we used to laugh about how the Soviet people had a vote. What possibly could that mean or why would it matter in the slightest if the vote only ends up changing the face and name of the marionette on the balcony reading prepared propaganda?

    We as Americans sneered at such a fake democracy. It exists in name only over there, whereas here we have the real thing!

    Or so we thought. Every American must absolutely learn the lesson of these last 31 months.

    They locked us in their homes, closed our churches and schools and businesses, restricted travel, segregated whole cities based on whether a person had taken a medicine like some kind of dystopian movement, wrecked the entire economy, and separated families by force.

    Not one person in this entire country voted for a single one of these things to happen. It was never on the ballot. And for the most part, the elected leaders in this country were not the main actors in this. They gave approval to be sure but mainly because most of them are deeply ignorant, easily led, and deeply scared.

    The main actors were people who were never elected. They were appointed bureaucrats. Most of them cannot be fired. They have permanent jobs with high income and benefits. They have vast power, more power it seems than the politicians and certainly more power than you. Indeed they have awesome power over you. And over everything, to the point that they can say whether you can go to church or not or whether your children can play with friends.

    Not even the courts can act fast enough to control them and stop them from exercising total power over our lives.

    The Deep State has learned that it can announce or wholly fabricate a national emergency and practically put the entire country on a wartime footing wherever it wants. We can tolerate this no longer.

    This permanent and unelected class of rules is called the administrative state, or, more colloquially, the Deep State. It exists at the federal level, the state level, and at the city level. In the COVID crisis, they all worked together out of their own interests. They showed their face and their power. We had never experienced anything like this.

    Their power is not new. It’s been growing for more than 100 years. What was new was the ferocity of the attack and the brazenness of imposition. They went on TV to brag about what they were doing and shame dissidents. Media companies and Big Tech did their best to give them cover and block voices that made rational points.

    In effect, this country became a multivariate dictatorship but the people doing the dictating were mostly not the politicians we elected, though they went along with the whole caper. It was this permanent class of rulers, managers, and specialists who were in charge—people who have never faced the voters and cannot be fired by anyone no matter what.

    This is not a just system. It wrecked this country. We pay the price every day now: rent, gas, groceries, bills, and now job loss. All of this wreckage you see today traces to what they did. It’s why your child is behind in language, math, and reading skills. It’s why your grandmother died alone and no one could attend her funeral. It could be why your friend’s husband died suddenly. It’s why your brother has a crisis-level addiction to liquor, weed, and pills.

    The administrative state waged a war on the country for longer than two years. No politician in the country had the power to stop it. Once Trump greenlighted this mess in March 2020, he was effectively unseated from power and became like the marionettes in foreign countries about whom we used to laugh: talking a good game but ultimately powerless in the face of the real power behind the scenes.

    Now let’s talk about the Red Wave. It is a means, not an end. The question now is: what is to be done. I strongly suggest that all new officeholders take a gander at the Federal Register and search for agencies. What you find is a list of 434 of them. Print it out. Using your brain and a red pen, strike out those that are nonessential—same as these people did with millions of workers.

    Let go of the idea that these agencies can be cut. They need to be abolished. When Elon Musk took over Twitter, he didn’t reduce the hours of the employees who were just taking up space. No, he immediately sent them packing. That day. No more email access. No more Slack access. Gone. Now. The new Congress needs to do this to, let’s say, half of the 434 agencies. Bring down the number to 200. That should be the goal.

    The private sector has gone through massive cutbacks and families too. Government must do the same. And not just for financial and economic reasons. It needs to be done to restore government by the people. Then we need serious changes in the employment status of any federal bureaucrat who remains. If the person is involved in any aspect of policy-making, that person needs to be reclassified as an at-will employee, same as exists in the private sector.

    This is just the beginning. There is another layer of the Deep State that is not employed by government. It lives in the private sector that is well-connected. Think of a person like Scott Gottlieb. You have seen him on TV for 30 months, pontificating about the need to lock down and get the jab. He is a former commissioner of the FDA. He now works for a fancy think tank in Washington, D.C. that is funded by industry and foundations. He also sits on the Pfizer board, which must pay pretty well, so he is, in effect, a lobbyist for Big Pharma who only pretends to be an independent intellectual.

    When Jared Kushner needed advice on how much Trump should lock down the country, his first call was to Gottlieb. Gottlieb told him to be more stringent than Trump wants. That was his one piece of advice: take away as many rights and liberties as you can get away with.

    How does Gottlieb or Bill Gates fit into this deep state structure? They are essential to it. But no one elected them and they don’t even work for government. This is an enormously complicated problem but the solution must be to break up these networks of influence and control. That’s what must happen if we are to restore democracy.

    I just watched a clip of an interview with Gates in which he says that if government rounds you up for quarantine in a stadium, you should have no choice but to go. And so too if government says you have to take this shot, you have no choice. “People act as if they have a choice but they do not,” he says.

    No system of self-government, of government by the people, can exist with this sort of person exercising such power.

    Dealing with the problem of the Deep State has to be the major priority of the new officeholders. It is not enough just to get elected and then celebrate. It means nothing unless there is some agenda, some point, some purpose, some drive, some plan. I’m not really seeing much evidence yet that there is one. We need some focus here now. We might not have another chance.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/09/2022 – 21:00

  • From Riches To Rags: Peloton Co-Founder Starts A Rug Company
    From Riches To Rags: Peloton Co-Founder Starts A Rug Company

    After Peloton’s former CEO and co-founder, John Foley, made a series of demand miscalculations for Peloton bikes during the pandemic and eventually resigned as shares in the company cratered, he’s back in the spotlight with a new venture: direct-to-consumer rug business. 

    Foley’s new company is called “Ernesta.” According to Forbes, he started the custom rug company with two other co-founders from Peloton. 

    Transitioning from slapping an iPad on a bike or treadmill to selling custom rugs seems like an unlikely path for the former billionaire. But maybe after borrowing millions of dollars worth of stock collateralized with Peloton shares and receiving repeated margin calls from Goldman Sachs, the rug business is his best bet to make a rebound. 

    On Monday, Ernesta announced $25 million in venture capital funding. The company is stacked with ex-Peloton managers and is hoping to take a slice of the high-end rug market. 

    Foley told Forbes the company “plans to sell 50 different styles of machine-made, custom-cut rugs in five colors each.” 

    “With Peloton, we didn’t know if it would be a success or not, but I knew that working with good people was a valuable way to spend my time.

    “Rugs might seem like a potentially uninteresting category, but there’s probably at least one in your house. They’re ubiquitous, and people don’t spend a lot of time worrying about them,” Peloton and Ernesta co-founder Hisao Kushi told Forbes. 

    Custom Market Insights released a report in July that showed more than 100 million rugs are sold in the US yearly. The rug market is expected to expand from $18 billion this year to $25 billion by 2030. Foley said for Ernesta to be successful, it needs to capture only a fraction of such volume. 

    “I want to show discipline, I want to show profitability and have a real focus on unit economics,” Foley said

    “Ernesta won’t attempt to vertically integrate its supply chain. Instead, the company will work with business-to-business partners in Georgia to source rolls of carpet in bulk, then cut them to order in a New Jersey warehouse to ship either directly or through logistics partners,” Forbes said. 

    At least Foley can now sell Peloton customers a fancy rug for their bike. What a dramatic shift for the former billionaire … from bikes to rugs. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/09/2022 – 20:40

  • Dershowitz Accuser Says She 'May Have Made A Mistake' As Defamation Suit Is Settled
    Dershowitz Accuser Says She ‘May Have Made A Mistake’ As Defamation Suit Is Settled

    The woman at the center of sexual abuse accusations against former Jeffrey Epstein lawyer Alan Dershowitz has ‘corrected the record,’ and now says she may have been mistaken.

    In addition to dropping her defamation lawsuit against Dershowitz, accuser Virginia Giuffre, formerly Virginia Roberts, made the following statement:

    “I have long believed that I was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein to Alan Dershowitz. However, I was very young at the time, it was a very stressful and traumatic environment, and Mr. Dershowitz has from the beginning consistently denied these allegations,” she said. “I now recognize I may have made a mistake in identifying Mr. Dershowitz.”

    According to both parties, there were no payments involved in the settlement, which also included other related lawsuits.

    Dershowitz notably represented Epstein in his earliest criminal case.

    Giuffre, meanwhile, said that both Epstein and his ‘madam’ Ghislaine Maxwell raped her. She reached a settlement with Epstein in 2009 after he pleaded guilty in Florida to procuring a prostitute under the age of 18.

    Later, Giuffre said Dershowitz raped her six times in three states, as well as the US Virgin Islands at Epstein’s property.

    Dershowitz has maintained his innocence the entire time.

    “As I have said from the beginning, I never had sex with Ms. Giuffre,” he said, adding “I have nevertheless come to believe that at the time she accused me she believed what she said. Ms. Giuffre is to be commended for her courage in now stating publicly that she may have been mistaken about me.”

    At the Epoch Times notes, The settlement also involved Dershowitz’s countersuit against Giuffre, a defamation suit from lawyer David Boies against Dershowitz, and a countersuit from Dershowitz against Boies.

    “I agree with Mr. Dershowitz and Ms. Giuffre that the time has come to end this litigation and move on,” Boies said in a statement. “I know that Alan Dershowitz has suffered greatly from the allegation of sexual abuse—an allegation that he has consistently, and vehemently, denied.”

    Boies had said in a complaint that Dershowitz was trying to “distract attention from his own misconduct” when he launched “a campaign to attack and vilify each of the lawyers who have represented his victims,” including Giuffre.

    Dershowitz, meanwhile, now says his claims that Boies engaged in an extortion plot and tried to induce perjury “were mistaken.”

    Giuffre also accused Prince Andrew of raping her. She had produced a photograph showing her with the prince and Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking and sentenced more recently to 20 years in prison.

    Giuffre’s lawsuit against Prince Andrew was settled in February. The details were not disclosed.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/09/2022 – 20:20

  • World's Top Chipmaker To Build Another US Plant In Arizona
    World’s Top Chipmaker To Build Another US Plant In Arizona

    Currently, US semiconductors are a measly 10% of global production. Most chips are produced in Asia, particularly South Korea and Taiwan, and the Biden administration has pushed the Chips and Science Act to boost development and production domestically. 

    The CHIPS Act earmarks $52 billion to revert a decades-long trend of US production shifting abroad to low-cost labor regions. There was evidence some of this production is being reshored, according to a WSJ report, revealing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest contract chipmaker, is laying the groundwork for a second US factory in Arizona. 

    People familiar with the plans told WSJ that TSMC would soon announce one of the most advanced semiconductor plants just north of Phoenix, Arizona, next to another one of its chip factories. They said the investment in the new plant could be upwards of $12 billion, similar to what was committed in 2020 to build the factory beside it. 

    TSMC is making a big bet on the revival of US semiconductor production after increasing US-China tensions led Washington to pass the CHIPS Act to spur domestic semiconductor manufacturing. 

    “TSMC’s new facility would manufacture so-called 3-nanometer transistors, some of the tiniest and most lightning-fast currently possible,” the people said. 

    In a statement to WSJ on Wednesday, TSMC confirmed it was constructing a building to “potentially” house a second chip plant at its site in Arizona. The statement said it would add more advanced chip capacity there, though a final decision has yet to be announced. 

    The Biden administration’s move to rebuild semiconductor production in the US comes after a massive chip shortage in Asia that caused supply chain snarls for manufacturers of automobiles, electronics, and defense systems. The expansion signifies that reshoring supply chains from China and surrounding countries will ensure secured chip production during wartime. 

    TSMC, whose production plants are based primarily in Taiwan, has begun to diversify over the past year due to invasion threats by China.

    In August, TSMC Chair Mark Liu told CNN that if China were to invade Taiwan and seize the world’s most advanced chip factories, it would cause devastating supply chain disruptions worldwide. 

    Apart from domestic initiatives, the Biden administration has slapped China with export restrictions on advanced chips and curbed the sale of chipmaking equipment. The restrictions attempt to slow advancements in China while buying the US time to rebuild its chip production base.  

    Intel Corp. and memory maker Micron Technology Inc. are also investing in new US chipmaking factories as global supply chains are rejiggered due to national security threats.  

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/09/2022 – 20:00

  • Doug Casey On The WEF's Plan For Mankind And What Comes Next
    Doug Casey On The WEF’s Plan For Mankind And What Comes Next

    Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

    International Man: The World Economic Forum (WEF) describes its mission as the “international organization for public-private cooperation.”

    What do you make of the WEF and the power it wields?

    Doug Casey: “International organization for public-private cooperation” is a code phrase for economic fascism – which is to say, the hand-in-glove melding of the political power of the State with the economic power of corporations.

    Things like the WEF, and other NGOs (non-governmental organizations), institutes, and think tanks, have proliferated in recent years. They’re almost all destructive parasites on productive society.

    Almost all of them are leftist, statist, and collectivist in orientation. They’re typically populated by intellectuals and academics and funded by tax-exempt foundations, usually set up by elderly do-gooders interested in leaving a “legacy.”

    The WEF is by far the most successful of the breed. Instead of just cadging donations so intellectuals could hang around and seem prestigious, in 1971, Klaus Schwab formed a club where the rich and powerful could discuss ideas with other members of the overlord class. Political and financial types could find a philosophical home, disguising the quest for money and power with a patina of benevolence. It’s become an amazingly large and powerful organization. They have roughly 800 full-time employees, most of them very highly paid. They have an annual budget of over $300 million. Their balance sheet indicates that the WEF is worth over $1 billion, funded by major corporations who give it millions of dollars, as do various governments. Most of the world’s political leaders and corporations are members.

    Schwab was very clever to have put together an organization where the richest, most powerful, and most influential people in the world are charged huge amounts to be introduced to each other and talk about how they can become even richer, more powerful, and more influential.

    It seems clear that members of the WEF have to toe the party line or be disinvited. Nobody wants to be excommunicated from the WEF or cut off from association with other rich and powerful people. It’s safe to say that WEF members share a common philosophy, one that’s in line with Schwab’s weltanschauung.

    FWIW, I think it’s wrong for public corporations to make political, charitable, or indeed any kind of contributions. A corporation’s raison d’etre is to generate money for its shareholders, not allow management to play big shot. Managements often like to give away shareholders’ money; it costs them nothing, but they reap the prestige of giving. Better that the money be distributed to shareholders so they can dispose of it as they wish. If that were the case, outfits like the WEF would have a lot less money and power. And wouldn’t be in a position to promote the pernicious ideas it does.

    For instance, it would appear that Klaus Schwab actually originated, or at least popularized, the term “stakeholder.” Stakeholderism believes that business is obligated to treat employees, customers, local residents, and anyone who claims to be affected by business as if they had some right to what a company produces. People who identify as stakeholders easily develop into mooches and leeches. Schwab was also an early supporter of the ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) and DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) movements. And political correctness in general.

    With as much money, power, and influence as the WEF has, it’s easy for them to groom up-and-comers. They created several sub-organizations for people who are under 40 years old—where they can reinforce their beliefs that the world ought to go in a certain way—under the direction of WEF-type people.

    Schwab has to be complimented for having built the WEF from nothing and making himself one of the most powerful people in the world. But the WEF is a dangerous and despicable organization. It’s basically what’s known as a self-licking ice cream cone—it serves no useful purpose but to perpetuate itself and its members.

    International Man: Yuval Noah Harari is a key adviser to the WEF.

    He has risen to fame as reviewers and editors have anointed him as a public intellectual.

    What’s your take on the rise of Harari?

    Doug Casey: Harari is a perfect example of how, when an organization like the WEF gets in the back of somebody, they can make him rich, famous, and influential. These people all feed each other and scratch each other’s backs.

    Harari apparently came from a perfectly average middle-class Israeli family, but I would think that he’s got to be worth at least $50 million, just based upon sales of 30 million copies of his books. He appears to be an ideal court intellectual, living quietly with his husband in a modest suburb of Tel Aviv, promoting the party line.

    International Man: Harari has made several disturbing statements, including:

    “Covid is critical because this is what convinces people to accept, to legitimize, total biometric surveillance.

    We want to stop this pandemic. We need not just to monitor people, we need to monitor what is happening under their skin.

    Governments want to know not just where we go or who we meet. Above all, they want to know what is happening under our skin.”

    What do you think about this?

    Doug Casey: Well, he really wants to transform the world, and it’s kind of clever the way he proposes to do it.

    His book Sapiens, which I read about 10 years ago, is a competent enough summation of how humans evolved over the course of the Pleistocene during the last 2.5 million years. It doesn’t make any cosmic breakthroughs but tells a basically correct story. He explains how technology started to take on a life of its own and how we changed the world. And how technology’s now changing us at the rate of Moore’s Law. Fair enough.

    The problem lies in his projections of how and where humans will evolve over the years to come. In particular, who will guide that evolution. And if things continue advancing at the rate that they are, it’s likely that machines will integrate with humans.

    I see no problem with that. If you voluntarily want to replace body parts with mechanical parts—a new knee, a new heart, be a $6 Million Man—that’s wonderful. Taking it one step further, if you can put a chip in your brain and instantly access all the knowledge on the Internet without going through a computer, that could be even more wonderful, except for the fact the Social Credit System and hackers will have access to your chip.

    The problem is that the WEF people think that they know what’s best for the rest of humanity. And they feel it’s for the good of all that they be closely monitored, controlled, and guided. They’ve made statements to the effect that most people are “useless eaters,” which is probably true at this point. Or it will be once everybody gets a Guaranteed Annual Income—enough to keep them sated with avocado toast and vanilla lattes while they watch cat videos at the local Starbucks. They’d really like to do without superfluous humans and just have the elite calling the shots. Humans that remain would amount to serfs. The WEF have said, “You’ll own nothing and be happy.” They’re very bold.

    It’s very disturbing how they talk about guiding the advance to the next stage of human evolution. As pessimistic as I am about the current state of the world and where it’s going, I still believe in The Ascent of Man— but I believe it can only happen if individual liberty is maximized. From the point of view of personal freedom, Harari is actually talking about regressing to feudal times. Albeit a kinder and gentler version, where wise solons like Klaus and Yuval are in charge.

    As far as I can tell, his values are antithetical to those of Western Civilization. But he’s an effective mouthpiece to convince the hoi polloi that their leaders have their best interests at heart. And I suppose they do. At least the way a farmer has the best interests of his dairy—or beef—cattle at heart.

    International Man: Harari has often described a high-tech totalitarian future where a small elite with access to the latest technology evolves into different beings. At the same time, drugs and video games pacify the masses until their eventual extinction.

    What are your thoughts about this dystopian future? Is it inevitable?

    Doug Casey: Harari projects a certain inevitability to the evolution of technology, and he may actually be right.

    I don’t mind change. Rapid technological progress has been accelerating for the last 10,000 years and, with a little luck, will go hyperbolic with the evolution of nanotechnology, computers, biotech, space exploration, robotics, and artificial intelligence. These are all good things.

    The question is whether these things will be imposed upon humanity or will they be something that individuals can adopt or not as they choose? To me, this is the essential ethical and moral question.

    Harari, and for that matter, the rest of these WEF people, never examine any ethical or moral issues.

    For instance, Harari is very big on transgenderism, which he seems to want to make into a political hobby horse—where it’s not just accepted as a psychological aberration, but is almost imposed on society, whether you like it or not.

    He’s a vegan. I have no problem with being a vegan. It’s just that he wants to impose his views of the correct way to deal with animals (absolutely including humans) on everybody else. He’s certain that he knows what’s best for everybody else.

    I’ve long believed in the arrival of the Singularity, which Ray Kurzweil has discussed in detail. I think it’s a good thing. Technological progress has always been a good thing—whether we’re talking about the invention of gunpowder that allowed the average man to overthrow his medieval rulers, or the printing press, that allowed peasants to access the knowledge of the ruling classes.

    But the problem is that the bad guys usually get control of technology first. The powers-that-be use tech to impose their will upon the little people until the cat gets out of the bag.

    I’m all for the rapid evolution of technology, even though it’s very dangerous because the power-mongers, the bad guys, and the minions of the State usually get it first.

    On the bright side, I suspect that under the influence of Schwab and his muchacho de mantequilla Harari, the WEF will collapse. The snakes in the snake pit will eventually turn on each other. Optimism is warranted because stupid ideas have always come and gone throughout history. Evil is usually vanquished over the long run.

    The WEF is promoting destructive ideas in a dangerous time. If you value free thought, free minds, and free markets, recognize the WEF as an enemy.

    *  *  *

    Sociopaths are drawn to the government and international organizations like the World Economic Forum. They seek power and control over others through coercion, taxation and more. Unfortunately, there’s little any individual can practically do to change the course of these trends in motion. The best you can and should do is to stay informed so that you can protect yourself in the best way possible, and even profit from the situation. New York Times best-selling author Doug Casey and his team just released a guide that will show you exactly how. Click here to download the PDF now.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/09/2022 – 19:40

  • Pennsylvania Reelects Dead Democrat
    Pennsylvania Reelects Dead Democrat

    A Pennsylvania state representative who died in October was reelected during yesterday’s midterm elections, according to the Pennsylvania House Democratic Caucus.

    Anthony “Tony” DeLuca, 85, died Oct. 9 “after a brief battle with lymphoma, a disease he twice previously beat,” the Caucus said in a statement.

    “While we’re incredibly saddened by the loss of Representative Tony DeLuca, we are proud to see the voters continue to show their confidence in him and his commitment to Democratic values by re-electing him posthumously. A special election will follow soon,” said PA House Democrats in a tweet, Fox News reports.

    Challenger Queonia “Zarah” Livingston, who is living, ran a far-left campaign, with her top three priorities listed on her website as; environmental justice, ending the war on drugs and reducing gun violence.

    DeLuca was a resident of Penn Hills for over 60 years. He got his start in politics serving on the Penn Hills Government Study Commission, then five years as a Penn Hills Councilman, followed by two years as Penn Hills Deputy Mayor before running for his legislative seat and defeating the Republican incumbent. -Fox News

    DeLuca had four children, nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

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

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/09/2022 – 19:20

  • Global Energy Driven Inflation May Ease As China Sees Lower Growth
    Global Energy Driven Inflation May Ease As China Sees Lower Growth

    By Simon Watkins of OIlPrice.com

    The key driver of the rising inflation causing economic mayhem across the developed world remains historically elevated oil and gas prices that have been in play since the prospect of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine first came into view, which was in September last year, when the oil price was around US$65 per barrel (pb) of Brent. This rise, when combined with the huge rise in global liquidity caused by the various long-running quantitative easing programs that followed the Great Financial Crisis, have led Western government to embark on a series of dramatic increases in interest rates aimed at capping inflation but which, in themselves, may cause long-lasting economic recessions. One major factor that may serve to mitigate against this, by acting as a drag on oil and gas prices, is the economic outlook of China, which surpassed the U.S. as the largest annual gross crude oil importer in the world in 2017.

    Part of the problem for China’s economy has been the exceptionally negative effects of its ‘zero-Covid’ policy. This policy, personally championed by President Xi Jinping, is based on ultra-tight lockdowns that are introduced across entire cities immediately that a relatively miniscule number of Covid-19 cases are identified. December 2021 had seen a refinement of the zero-Covid strategy to one incorporating the idea of ‘dynamic clearing’, which provided local governments more flexibility in imposing restrictions, allowing daily increases in symptomatic cases to be capped at around 200 on a national basis. It was thought that this number might be increased, given that in the new outbreaks in March this year alone, 184,000 individuals with possible Covid symptoms had been put under medical observation in isolation in the first two weeks of those outbreaks. 

    Optimism arose from comments made by several Chinese agencies about a possible softening up of the zero-Covid rules, and then came the publication in the middle of April of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC) guide that outlined measures for quarantining at home. These would have alleviated the economy-paralysing effects of people having to quarantine at centralised state-run facilities, even if suffering from very mild symptoms or none, having tested positive for Covid-19. These hopes were dashed, though, as, when asked for further clarification of these home-quarantining procedures, the CCDC simply reiterated the previous rules. President Xi then personally reiterated that: “We must adhere to scientific precision, to dynamic zero-Covid…Persistence is victory.” As it now stands, China still does not have an effective vaccine against Covid-19, nor does it have an effective post-infection anti-viral, and it still refuses to buy in such supplies from non-domestic suppliers, despite repeated offers from all major producing countries to make such supplies available to it. 

    The clean sweep of support that President Xi secured at the recent 20th Party Congress to be re-elected as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party for a third term almost certainly means that this zero-Covid policy will not change at all. “China’s commitment to its dynamic clearing COVID strategy remains the strongest headwind to growth, and official statements before and during the Party Congress trumpeted the policy as the most appropriate for the country,” Eugenia Fabon Victorino, head of Asia Strategy for SEB, told OilPrice.com last week. “In 2020, China’s economy managed a swift recovery from the first wave of infections as mobility restrictions succeeded in capping transmissions to a limited number of regions, but the increasingly contagious viral strains have led to a substantial rise in regions reporting daily new cases of COVID,” she added. Indeed, as of just over a week ago, 26 out of 31 regions had seen severe outbreaks that threaten to spear to China’s key commercial cities.

    Another part of the problem for China is the increasingly perilous position of the country’s property sector and, by extension, of its huge hidden debt burden. The collapse of major Chinese real estate developer, Evergrande, earlier this year, under the weight of over US$300 billion in liabilities, heightened concerns that contagion might spread beyond the property sector, crushing demand in China’s offshore bond markets. As highlighted by OilPrice.com at the time, and well before that by then-Fitch analyst, Charlene Chu, China had long been hiding a mountain of debt, used in part to finance its extraordinary economic growth for the 20 or so years since the 1990s. Combined with the corollary bubbles in China’s housing and other asset markets that have been inflating over the past few years, as analysed in depth in my new book on the global oil markets, the situation in China right now is very similar to the one in the West in 2007/08 to which nobody paid attention until there started to be bankruptcies, which then snowballed into the full-blown Great Financial Crisis. “Before the Congress, Beijing announced yet another raft of policy adjustments to boost housing demand,” said SEB’s Victorino. “However, cash-strapped developers continue to default on offshore bond maturities- in fact, the issuer-based offshore default rate among real estate names continues to climb, to 20.4 percent as of September, from 5.2 percent at the end of 2021,” she added.  

    In terms of specific negative ramifications for China’s economic growth, the key Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for factory activity fell unexpectedly in October, to 49.2, a decrease of 0.9 from the previous month, and indicative of an outright contraction. In line with this, China’s crude oil imports for the first three quarters of the year fell 4.3 percent year-on-year to mark the first annual decline for the period since at least 2014. As at the end of the first half of this year, then, the economic outlook for China was already deteriorating more than had previously been expected, with SEB’s Victorino and TS Lombard’s head of China and Asia research, Rory Green, having already downgraded their GDP growth estimates for China earlier in the year, to just 3.5 percent in SEB’s case, and only 2.5 percent in TS Lombard’s.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/09/2022 – 19:00

  • Midterms And Markets: The Good News And The Bad News
    Midterms And Markets: The Good News And The Bad News

    While stocks pummeled today on a toxic cocktail of bad news including the collapse of FTX, and the lack of a red wave, Deutsche Bank had some good news for investors who are now shaking ahead of tomorrow’s CPI print which could deliver the knock out blow should it come in hot.

    So here is the good news: as DB strategist Jim Reid notes, in all 19 post WWII midterm cycles, the S&P 500 has always been higher 12 months after the elections were out of the way. You can see it here.

    Additionally, in Reid’s Nov 8 Chart of the Day, he shows the performance of the S&P 500 through the four year election cycle with Y1 Q1 referring to the inauguration quarter of the new President and midterms being Y2 Q4. As one can see, the three quarters from midterms onwards are historically amongst the strongest quarters however far you go back. Indeed since 1949 they ARE the strongest three. Will history repeat itself? It may well do in the short -term as uncertainty lifts.

    However before investors dump all their money in the stock market in hopes of a guaranteed 12 month return, here is the bad news in the form of a follow up analysis from Reid why we should be very careful about this analysis around midterms and positive markets in the subsequent 12 months.

    The chart below shows the same 4-year presidential cycle as the one shown above, but instead of equity returns this time Deutsche shows the percentage of time in each quarter since 1949 that the US economy has been in recession. For example, Y1 Q1 has seen a recession within it just over 15% of the time over the last 73 years.

    The real jaw dropper though is that over this period a recession has not started in year 3 of the election cycle. There have been legacy recessions that ended in Y3 Q1 but for the other Y3 quarters the graph shows a stunning zero percent. Given that equities tend to bottom on average mid-way through a recession one can see that history would suggest Y3 of the presidential cycle has always had a clear run in a way no other year has.

    The obvious next question is whether there is a reason why Y3 has not seen a recession start during it since 1949. At a push an incumbent president might be more minded to allow a recession in Y1 and Y2 of the presidency to save bullets for the re-election campaign/legacy in Y4 (unless, of course, one is terminally confused about everything like Biden and his puppetmasters). Therefore recession risk might be front loaded in an election cycle (it could also all be completely random).

    If the argument on lack of front-loaded stimulus above has any grounding, you can’t say it about this presidential cycle as the Biden Y1 saw the culmination of the largest stimulus package seen in history with no bullets left to fire now. So much so that the hiking cycle this year has been by far the most aggressive seen in any Y2 of the cycle.

    Which is why this time can be a lot different to history. So, in conclusion, Jim Reid says that “the midterms and subsequent positive equity performance charts that you’re seeing from me and others have to be put in context. Unless of course you think the lack of a Y3 recession through history can be easily explained and is likely to repeat in 2023. If so, please let me know ASAP before I finish my 2023 outlook.”

    More in the full reports available to pro subs in the usual place.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/09/2022 – 18:40

  • India Pledges To Buy More Russian Oil, Mulls Joint Weapons Production
    India Pledges To Buy More Russian Oil, Mulls Joint Weapons Production

    Authored by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute, 

    Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar says his country has no plans to stop importing Russian energy. The statement was made as Western countries plan to roll out price caps on Moscow’s oil exports next month. 

    Jaishankar traveled to Russia to meet his counterpart Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday. At a joint press conference, the Indian diplomat stressed the importance of the New Delhi-Moscow relationship, saying “Russia has been a steady and time-tested partner” and that “any objective evaluation of our relationship over many decades would confirm that it has actually served both our countries very, very well.”

    Image via Russian Foreign Ministry/Twitter

    Since President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February, Washington has led a sanctions campaign aimed at crushing the Russian economy. However, so far, the economic war has largely backfired.

    Rising energy prices in much of the West have led to protests against the sanctions in Europe. Meanwhile, the Russian economy has weathered the Western isolation by selling more oil to China, India and Turkey, despite pressure from the United States to sever their ties with Moscow. Prior to the war, New Delhi imported just 2% of its oil from Moscow. By September, that number had jumped to 23%. 

    US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen devised a scheme to cut Russia’s energy exports by enforcing a price cap on Moscow’s oil. The US announced the cap will take effect December 5 but did not set the value. The price ceiling requires Russia to agree to sell its oil at below market value, though the Kremlin has warned that any country attempting to enforce the measure will simply be cut off from Russian oil. 

    Jaishankar indicated that New Delhi will not institute the price cap and will continue buying Russian oil at the previous rates:

    “As the world’s third-largest consumer of oil and gas, a consumer where the levels of income are not very high, it is our fundamental obligation to ensure that the Indian consumer has the best possible access on the most advantageous terms to international markets,” he said, adding “we have seen that the India-Russia relationship has worked to advantage. If it works to my advantage, I would like to keep that going.”

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

    For his part, Lavrov discussed new potential arms agreements between New Delhi and Moscow, noting that the two officials “discussed in detail the state and prospects of military-technical cooperation, including joint production of modern arms.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/09/2022 – 18:20

  • Beijing Insists On Zero-COVID Policy But Blames Local Governments For Excessive Measures
    Beijing Insists On Zero-COVID Policy But Blames Local Governments For Excessive Measures

    Authored by Mary Hong via The Epoch Times,

    In a press conference on Friday, the Chinese Health Commission insisted the country’s zero-COVID policy is an effective and economic measure for pandemic containment.

    The officials also blamed local governments such as Zhengzhou for unscientific measures that hurt the economy and frustrated the public.

    On Nov. 5, the Health Commission emphasized sticking with the policy to prevent imported cases and recurrence of the domestic cases, and claimed the policy is the “accurate” way to deal with the pandemic.

    Blaming Local Governments

    In answering press questions on complaints posed by the populace during the implementation of the zero-COVID policy, the officials named Zhengzhou, in central China Henan Province, as the city that received the most criticism for its arbitrary travel restrictions and lockdowns.

    Consequently, Zhengzhou officials held a press conference on Nov. 6, apologizing to the public and promising to rectify its measures in containing the virus.

    The manufacturing sector in China has seen the disastrous impact of the arbitrary lockdown imposed by the authorities.

    A resident undergoes a nucleic acid test for COVID-19 in Anyang in central China’s Henan Province on Jan. 26, 2022. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

    On Nov. 2, Zhengzhou imposed a seven-day lockdown for the industrial park where the manufacturer Foxconn is housed.

    Since September, Zhengzhou has been one of the epicenters of viral infection. Positive cases were also reported in the Foxconn factory starting in October.

    Recently, a large number of Foxconn employees fled the factory for fear of infection and a shortage of food and medicine on the factory premises due to the lockdown.

    The Zhengzhou Foxconn location is Apple’s largest iPhone assembly factory in the world.

    According to the 2020 China Top 500 Foreign Trade Research Report by the Statistical Society for Foreign Economic Relations & Trade of China, Zhengzhou Foxconn contributed to 82 percent of Zhengzhou’s total export value in 2019; Zhengzhou Foxconn’s total export volume reached $31.6 billion, the largest contributor to Chinese foreign trade export in 2019; and the import and export volume was second only to two state-owned enterprises, China Petrochemical Corporation and China National Petroleum Corporation.

    On Nov. 6, Apple released a statement saying that the primary iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max assembly facility located in Zhengzhou is currently “operating at significantly reduced capacity.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/09/2022 – 17:40

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Today’s News 9th November 2022

  • Why Society Needs Conspiracy Theories & Conspiracy Theorists
    Why Society Needs Conspiracy Theories & Conspiracy Theorists

    Authored by Dan Fournier via Substack,

    “So do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.”

    – Matthew 10:26

    As this will be a comprehensive article, I’ve decided to split it up into the following sections:

    • Introduction

    • How did the term come about & become a tool for defamation?

    • A German journalist spills the beans

    • Same Playbook, Different War

    • The Council on Foreign Relations conspiracy

    • Conspiracy Theories that turned out to be true

    • Notable Unresolved Conspiracies

    • Conspiracies to Watch

    • Mini-Guide to Investigating Conspiracies

    • Conclusion

    Wernher von Braun walking along the lunar surface on an Apollo set replica during the Atlanta Southeastern Fair, September 5, 1969, credited to United Press International (UPI), image source

    Introduction

    It seems like you can’t catch a news headline or social media post these days without coming across the terms conspiracy theory and conspiracy theorist, or phrases like ‘spreading conspiracies’. One has to wonder: why are they so frequently employed?

    In my most recent published work, I referenced an article from Canada’s National Post which ran with the headline ‘CBSA says it’s investigating border officer spreading COVID conspiracies online.’

    The problem with these kinds of articles is that they are too often merely used as hit pieces to ridicule, degrade, and discredit any individual or group that goes against a certain narrative or disagrees with an author’s (or their publication’s partisanship or funders’) views.

    Moreover, their authors very seldom make specific references or claims as to why they label their targets when using such over-used and over-abused disparaging rhetoric. When this is the case, it leads me to believe that the overall purpose of their pieces is to disparage their targets more than anything else.

    Another recent example of this involves that from the article entitled ‘Network of Syria conspiracy theorists identified – study’ written by Mark Townsend from The Guardian (UK). In the article, the author claimed “journalist Aaron Maté at the Grayzone is said by the report to have overtaken Beeley as the most prolific spreader of disinformation among the 28 conspiracy theorists identified.” Maté had to refute the claim made against him which also involved contacting Townsend by phone. His counter article and the phone conversation appear on his Substack page (see ‘NATO-backed network of Syria dirty war propagandists identified)’ and is definitely an interesting case on how these ploys take place.

    Countless other instances could be cited, but suffice it to say that there is no shortage of them.

    But what is perhaps even more laughable with this phenomenon is the fact that these authors wantonly use these terms without even knowing their true meanings and where they actually originate from.

    Before looking into these, though, we must first and foremost examine the meaning of the word ‘conspiracy’ itself. Oxford defines it as:

    a secret plan by a group of people to do something harmful or illegal

    Conspiracies have been an integral part of humanity ever since people have bonded together in groups for a better chance at survival.

    Lord knows that history is riddled with an abundant supply of conspiracies and we will look at some notable examples later on.

    How did the term come about & become a tool for defamation?

    Though the term ‘conspiracy theorist’ itself dates as far back as the 19th century, it became much more prominent in the years following the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

    Moreover, it’s really in the 1960s where it became more abundant and has taken on a negative connotation. This is in large part because of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States of America.

    The usage of ‘conspiracy theorist’ was principally brought about to discredit any person or outfit that questioned the findings of the Warren Commission regarding the official narrative of the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

    The assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Image source: https://allthatsinteresting.com/famous-assassinations

    As to not be labelled a conspiracy theorist myself, here is some tangible evidence to support my claim that the CIA has been complicit with regards to the usage of the term as a means to disparage and discredit individuals with opposing views to an official narrative. An official DISPATCH (document number 1035-60) dated January 1, 1967 which was declassified and released following a FOIA request got published on the Mary Ferrell Foundation (MFF) website – one which contains nearly 2 million pages of documents, government reports, as well as other materials. The first page of the dispatch appears as follows:

    COUNTERING CRITICISM OF THE WARREN REPORT, NARA Record Number: 104-10009-10022 from the Mary Ferrell Foundation, Dispatch 1035-960, Source: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=53510#relPageId=2

    Firstly, we can notice the term ‘PSYCH’ in the upper-left hand corner of the document which indicates that this relates to Psychological Operations. We can see from the first paragraph that their main concern is about speculation regarding the assassination of President Kennedy and how various writers are questioning the findings of the Warren Commission report. The end of section 2 on the first page states:

    “The aim of this dispatch is to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, …”

    Scrolling down to the second page under section 3 a. appears the following [emphasis added]:

    “To discuss the publicity problem with liaison and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors), pointing out that the Warren Commission made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics are without serious foundation, and that further speculative discussion only plays into the hand of the opposition. Point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists. Urge them to use their influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible speculation.”

    And shortly after under section 3 b., it continues:

    “To employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose.”

    So, there you have it in black and white. The CIA specifically directs the use of their elite contacts which include politicians and editors – presumably of major newspapers and most likely of major broadcasters. Tactics suggested include writing feature articles (to counter the official narrative), writing book reviews – presumably negative ones, and further labelling dissenters as ‘Communist propagandists’ – a term that had much more of an accentuated defamatory effect back then than it does today.

    This raises the obvious question of why the CIA was so seriously concerned about media coverage with regards to the assassination. What’s it to them? Did they have something hide? Where they pressed to do so by the Lyndon Johnson administration? If so, why?

    To dig deeper about what they actually stated in their dispatch, we can ask: who are these “elite contacts” and “propaganda assets” they are referring to?

    American investigative journalist and author Carl Bernstein – famous for his work with Bob Woodward on the Watergate scandal – wrote a rather extensive (25,000-word) exposé entitled ‘THE CIA AND THE MEDIA: How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up’ that was published in Rolling Stone magazine on October 20, 1977, just over a decade after the infamous CIA dispatch was issued. Early on in the mammoth article, Bernstein lists categories in which the Agency (the CIA) partnered with journalists and the press. Two such instances appear as follows:

    “- Editors, publishers and broadcast network executives. The CIAs relationship with most news executives differed fundamentally from those with working reporters and stringers, who were much more subject to direction from the Agency. A few executives—Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times among them—signed secrecy agreements.”

    “- Columnists and commentators. There are perhaps a dozen well known columnists and broadcast commentators whose relationships with the CIA go far beyond those normally maintained between reporters and their sources. They are referred to at the Agency as “known assets” and can be counted on to perform a variety of undercover tasks; they are considered receptive to the Agency’s point of view on various subjects. Three of the most widely read columnists who maintained such ties with the Agency are C.L. Sulzberger of the New York Times, Joseph Alsop, and the late Stewart Alsop, whose column appeared in the New York Herald‑Tribune, the Saturday Evening Post and Newsweek. CIA files contain reports of specific tasks all three undertook.”

    The CIA specifically refers to these widely read columnists as “known assets” they can count upon to perform undercover tasks. They also maintain ‘signed secrecy agreements’ with executives from the New York Times. Lovely!

    Bernstein then lists many well-known newspapers, magazines, and broadcasters used by the CIA and notes their most cherished ones as follows [emphasis added]:

    “By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.”

    Still today, these three media outlets are giants in the publishing, broadcasting, and entertainment industries. And who really knows the extent to which the CIA and other US government agencies still maintain relationships with their editorial and journalistic staff, and possibly many others in the United States and across the world. It would certainly come as no surprise if they did.

    War – and how it is covered by media – is a major recurring theme in all of this and it is no secret that the CIA has left its dirty footprints over many of them since its inception in 1947. This has been highly documented and revealed by whistleblower Kevin Shipp, a former CIA officer, intelligence and counter terrorism expert who held several high-level positions in the organization.

    Finally, the CIA’s reach beyond American borders goes without saying.

    A German journalist spills the beans

    “I was bribed by billionaires. I was bribed by the Americans not to report exactly the truth,” stated Udo Ulfkotte back in a 2014 interview with RT (original report); the late editor and journalist of Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung was quite outspoken in this particular interview.

    Screenshot of the 2014 RT interview with German journalist Udo Ulfkotte

    Ulfkotte explained how the CIA and other US agencies bought journalists across all major German newspapers. He starts the interview with the following revelation [emphasis added]:

    “I’ve been a journalist for about 25 years. And I was educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public. But, seeing right now within the last months how the German and American media tries to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia. This is a point of no return and I’m going to stand up and say it is not right what I have done in the past, to manipulate people, to make propaganda against Russia, and it is not right what my colleagues do and have done in the past because they are bribed to betray the people, not only in Germany, all over Europe.”

    It’s funny how you could almost replace this assertion (from back in 2014) in the context of today’s 2022 Russia-Ukraine war, or as some would call it, a proxy war between NATO/Western Europe/United States and Russia.

    He continued:

    “I was supported by the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA. Why? Because I should be pro- American. I’m fed up with it. I don’t want to do it anymore.”

    ‘Non-official cover’ is a term the German journalist used to describe how he (and other journalists) were essentially working for or helping the intelligence agency, though not in an official capacity, conveniently leaving room for plausible deniability.

    Ulfkotte goes on to explain how the journalists are rewarded by the CIA.

    Statements like these really makes one wonder about the extent to which media outlets all around the world have been infiltrated not only by the CIA, but also by other powerful entities.

    But wait, Ulfkotte dives deeper into other supranational influences that help shape media organizations and their prevailing narratives [emphasis added]:

    “We are still kind of a colony of the Americans. And being a colony, it is very easy to approach young journalists through, what is very important here is, transatlantic organizations. All journalists from really respected and recommended big German newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV stations, they are all members or guests of those big transatlantic organizations. And in these transatlantic organizations, you are approached to be pro-American.”

    Ulfkotte then emphasizes that this phenomenon is even more the case with British journalists due to their special relationship with the US, and the French, to a lesser extent.

    One need not look far to see what he is talking about with regards to these transatlantic organizations than observe the writings and actions of outfits such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Atlantic Council think tank, both focused on American imperialism and interests. While the later is essentially a mouthpiece for NATO, the former holds an unfathomable grasp on Western media.

    Examining the historical and current membership into the Council on Foreign Relations is quite revealing, to say the least. Or, perhaps more fittingly: the elephant in the room. Moreover, the think tank holds tremendous influence through its network of elites and media pundits who are central in shaping U.S. foreign policy and public discourse.

    Back in 2017, an infographic emerged showing the extent of this network and how it possibly ties to the Bilderberger Group and the Trilateral Commission:

    Infographic showing the network of members of the CFR, full-resolution image: https://swprs.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/cfr-media-network-hdv-spr.png

    Comparing current members with past ones, we can easily validate the authenticity of this elitist ilk and deduce that it is highly organized, highly interconnected, and what amounts to a highly influential network of thought leaders & shapers.

    Another infographic from Swiss Policy Research – an independent, nonpartisan and non-profit research group investigating geopolitical propaganda – shows the transatlantic network the German media is subject to:

    Swiss Policy Research – Media in Germany: The transatlantic network, full-resolution image: https://i0.wp.com/swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/netzwerk-medien-deutschland-spr-mt.png?ssl=1

    The data contained in these infographics validates German journalist Udo Ulfkotte’s claims to this effect.

    The infiltration of media, be it by the CIA, other intelligence agencies, or think-tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations or the Atlantic Council, is unmistakably a conspiracy in that their stealthily coordinated efforts control narratives the masses, including government officials, are exposed to on a daily basis.

    Same Playbook, Different War

    With the current war in the Ukraine, we can easily notice how the stances held by these transatlantic institutions are mostly one-sided. Here’s a recent tweet from the Atlantic Council regarding the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war:

    Tweet from the Atlantic Council, Sept. 15, 2022, Source

    The related article begins [emphasis added]:

    “Ukraine’s stunning counteroffensive success in the Kharkiv region has provided conclusive proof that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are more than capable of defeating Russia on the battlefield. Now is the time to end the war by providing Ukraine with everything necessary to consolidate these gains and secure a decisive victory.”

    “Victory requires a coordinated, multifaceted, and long-term approach with economic, diplomatic, humanitarian, and logistical support all needed in order to bolster the Ukrainian transition to NATO-standard weaponry. Above all, this means a full commitment by Ukraine’s partners to increase arms supplies to the country.”

    As you can see, they don’t hide which side they are representing while blatantly calling for NATO and partners to increase arms supplies and weaponry. Accordingly, if this is not an advertisement to further bolster the Military/Security Complex’s coffers, then I don’t know what else to say. That would be for another article altogether that would require its own investigation.

    Another recent tweet and article written by the CFR’s own President, Richard Haass, a Rhodes Scholar, from the Council on Foreign Relations rings the same bell:

    Tweet from the Council on Foreign Relations, also from Sept. 15, 2022, Source

    In it, the CFR President states [emphasis added]:

    “The West, for its part, should continue to provide Ukraine with the quality and quantity of military and economic support it requires. There are strong strategic reasons for doing so, including to deter future aggression by Russia, China, or anyone else.”

    The only difference is that this one makes a specific reference to China – the current frontrunner to be the next boogeyman-du-jour in our Orwellian perpetual state of war which assures gargantuan profits for the Military/Security Complex. But again, I digress, for this is yet for another behemoth of an article that would require an entire team of reporters.

    The extent to which this war has also been propagated on social media is, in itself, a whole other can of worms. Armies of bots, pundits and propagandists (from both sides of the conflict) along with the divided masses all contribute to the digital fog of war in the halls, hyperbolic and echo chambers of platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

    The Council on Foreign Relations conspiracy

    In a book aptly titled ‘None Dare Call It Conspiracy’ by Gary Allen and Larry Abraham published in 1971, the first paragraph of the introduction – written by former U.S. congressman John G. Schmitz reads as follows:

    “The story you are about to read is true. The names have not been changed to protect the guilty. This book may have the effect of changing your life. After reading this book you will never look at national and world events in the same way again.”

    I feel the same way, though I would also highly recommend the book The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve by G. Edward Griffin which focuses on the secretive events that lead to the formation of the private corporation knowns as the US Federal Reserve which has also changed the way I personally view the word.

    Griffin holds the distinguished honorary title of Conspiracy Theorist by the editors of Wikipedia and others. So, he must be doing something right. His claims about how the North American medical establishment essentially got usurped by billionaire interests certainly added credence to this title.

    Speaking of billionaires, a few passages from the book ‘None Dare Call It Conspiracy’ really stand out:

    “The American subsidiary of this conspiracy is called the Council on Foreign Relations and was started by and is still controlled by Leftist international bankers.”

    “According to his grandson John, Jacob Schiff (above), long-time associate of the Rothschilds, financed the Communist Revolution in Russia to the tune of $20 million. According to a report on file with the State Department, his firm, Kuhn loeb and Co. bankrolled the first five year plan for Stalin. Schiff’s partner and relative, Paul Warburg, engineered the establishment of the Federal Reserve System while on the Kuhn Loeb payroll. Schiff’s descendants are active in the Council on Foreign Relations today.”

    And under an old photograph of a building in New York city appears [emphasis added]:

    “Home of the Council on Foreign Relations on 68th St. in New York The admitted goal of the CFR is to abolish the Constitution and replace our ones [sic] independent Republic with a World Government. CFR members have controlled, the last six administrations. Richard Nixon has been a member and has appointed at least 100 CFR members to high positions in his administration.”

    And later on in the book:

    “The C.F.R. has come to be known as “The Establishment,” “the invisible government” and “the Rockefeller foreign office.” This semi-secret organization unquestionably has become the most influential group in America.”

    It’s most interesting to see how these billionaire actors also coincidentally have had a hand in the formation of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Perhaps, G. Edward Griffin was onto something after all.

    A more recent (1988) book provides similar allegations with regards to the CFR by providing a deep dive into the historical roots, connections, and linkages to the war machine of the notorious organization. Its title is ‘The Shadows of Power: The Council on Foreign Relations And The American Decline’ by author James Perloff.

    I will leave it up to the reader to investigate more into this alleged conspiracy, for such an endeavor demands significant time, scrutiny, and attention.

    Conspiracy Theories that turned out to be true

    Though many conspiracies have been proven true over the years, I will merely showcase a few which relate to two recurring themes of this article, namely that of war and media corruption.

    Operation Mockingbird, 1950s+

    In light of the revelations listed earlier in this article, it is perhaps most fitting that we exhibit this particular proven conspiracy, for its overarching implications run far and wide – even in 2022 and beyond.

    In a nutshell, Operation Mockingbird was a large-scale clandestine program of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to manipulate news media for propaganda purposes.

    According to The Black Vault – an online archive that houses over 3 million pages of government documents, Operation Mockingbird was said to be initially organized by Cord Meyer and Allen W. Dulles, later led by Frank Wisner after Dulles became the head of the CIA; and the organization recruited leading American journalists into a network to help present the CIA’s views, including worked to influence foreign media and political campaigns.

    In 1974, The New York Times had published an article by investigative journalist Seymour Hirsh who claimed that the CIA had violated its charter

    In the mid-1970s, the U.S. Congress had become concerned over abuses of the CIA, NSA, and FBI and called a committee (the Church Committee) to look over it.

    As per Everipedia, the final report of the Church Committee covered CIA ties with both foreign and domestic news media. Specifically with regards to the foreign news media, the report concluded that:

    “The CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets.”

    And for domestic media, the report emphasizes the following:

    “Approximately 50 of the [Agency] assets are individual American journalists or employees of U.S. media organizations. Of these, fewer than half are “accredited” by U.S. media organizations … The remaining individuals are non-accredited freelance contributors and media representatives abroad … More than a dozen United States news organizations and commercial publishing houses formerly provided cover for CIA agents abroad. A few of these organizations were unaware that they provided this cover.”

    Apart from the staggering revelations outlined in the two passages above, the term ‘cover’ is of particular interest. German journalist Udo Ulfkotte, mentioned earlier in this article, stated that him and other fellow German journalists were basically operating as ‘non-official cover’, or in a ‘non-official capacity’ for the CIA. In other words, the CIA employed this pretext to cloak itself and adduce plausible deniability.

    Looking at the headlines and overt propaganda coming out of the European mainstream press over the last several years leaves us with little doubt that this operation (or a new version of it) is still alive and kicking.

    Operation Northwoods (re Cuban Missile Crisis) in 1962

    Operation Northwoods was a proposed ‘false flag’ (i.e., a covert/secretive plot intended to deceive) operation against Cuba originating from the U.S. Dept. of Defense calling upon the CIA and other U.S. government operatives to commit acts of terrorism against American civilians and military targets in Guantanamo (Cuba) and blame them on the Cuban government which would serve as a justification for war against the Caribbean island nation.

    The gist of the proposed operation was to hoodwink President John F. Kennedy to declare war against Cuba in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

    For those with a penchant for gripping movie dramas, the 2000 movie Thirteen Days starring Kevin Costner and Bruce Greenwood (as President Kennedy) serves as an absorbing illustration in which the Democrat president was placed in a mental crucible and tested to his limits.

    The declassified document (memorandum for the Secretary of Defense) from 13 March 1962 titled ‘Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (TS)’ lays it bare for all to see.

    Documentarians Aaron and Melissa Dykes produced a top-notch work on this planned conspiracy.

    There are many reasons why I like Truthstream Media’s documentaries. Not only do they produce extremely well-researched works, but they also present them in a clear manner; and sometimes, such as with this particular work, they offer advice to their viewers on how to better educate themselves about world events. Near the start of this documentary, Melissa Dykes states [emphasis added]:

    “We thought we would look at this document for Operation Northwoods, it was declassified, because the problem with people forgetting history or failing to research history or failing to look into history is they forget these things ever happened. And history continues to repeat and people act like they have no idea why.”

    On that, I have to totally agree with Melissa Dykes. In today’s fast-pace society, people are more inclined to play with TikTok on their phones or watch movies than to read books – especially those related to history. It’s one of the main factors that has led to the lack of critical thought and discernment in society.

    Simple explanation of a ‘false flag’ operation. Source: https://www.falseflag.info/about/

    Gulf of Tonkin Incident (Vietnam), 1964

    Everipedia – a blockchain-based online encyclopedia (a better source of information than Wikipedia, in my opinion) prefaces the incident as follows [emphasis added]:

    “The Gulf of Tonkin incident (Vietnamese: Sự kiện Vịnh Bắc Bộ), also known as the Maddox, was an international confrontation that led to the United States engaging more directly in the Vietnam War. It involved one real and one falsely claimed confrontation between ships of North Vietnam and the United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. The original American report blamed North Vietnam for both incidents, but the Pentagon Papers, the memoirs of Robert McNamara, and NSA publications from 2005, proved material misrepresentation by the US government to justify a war against Vietnam.”

    Among all wars fought by Americans, the Vietnam War ranked 4th just after the first two world wars and the U.S. Civil war. It’s economic and human costs epitomized human folly.  

    What is equally nefarious is the deceptive means by which this false flag event, or conspiracy, came about.

    Notable Unresolved Conspiracies

    While there are too many to even contemplate, let us have a look at some of the more controversial ones that still have an impact on society and our way of life.

    September 11 attacks

    Perhaps one of the biggest and most contentious ones is that of the events that relate to what happened on September 11, 2001.

    So much has transpired in the 21 years that have lapsed since the collapse of the World-Trade Center towers in New York City.

    Though a formal investigation has been conducted and published on these events, so many unanswered questions remain as to who exactly was behind it.

    We often hear some talking about this tragic event insisting that it was an ‘inside job’ (i.e., done by powers within the U.S. Government). And for this, they are immediately labelled conspiracy theorists. Actually, in this rare case I agree with the employment of the defamatory designation. For, with an event as complex as this one, one can readily make such a claim; but to back it up with convincing evidence would require an extraordinary enterprise.

    What is perhaps more useful here, though, would be to ask anew some of the most important and unaddressed questions relating to this event. For these questions which are listed below, links are provided for additional context/reference. A good refresher video (WTC7 and 9/11 Truth 14 Years Later: “People Still Want the Truth”) was published by documentarians of Truthstream Media.

    • How is it possible that WTC Tower 7, the 47-story building which was only affected by minor fires, collapse straight down in a free fall defying known laws of physics?

    • Why was the collapse of WTC Tower 7 reported by the BBC 20 minutes before it actually came down?

    • How come no large pieces of aircraft wreckage from United Airlines flight 93 were ever found at the alleged crash site in Stonycreek Township (Shanksville), Pennsylvania?

    • How come no large pieces of aircraft wreckage from American Airlines flight 77 were ever found on the ground near the West wall of the Pentagon?

    • Why was all the rubble and steel (evidence) from the site so swiftly collected (over the objections by fire marshals) and shipped overseas?

    • How was the Patriot Act (effective October 26, 2001) – a fairly long and complex legal document – drafted, reviewed, introduced, and enacted in merely 6 weeks?

    Of course, there are countless other unanswered questions. Perhaps the grander question is: will there ever be a fuller, more transparent official investigation surrounding these attacks?

    Who really killed JFK?

    Despite the findings of the Warren Commission, it remains to be solved as to whom exactly assassinated U.S. President John F. Kennedy since it is proven that a single gunman could not have acted alone per the additional evidence confirmed after the commission’s report.

    Many intelligence documents remained classified – even after 60 years since this tragic event took place in Dallas, Texas.

    Over the years, many have contributed to the investigation that never seems to end. Investigator Jim Garrison was perhaps the most prominent amongst them.

    Moon Landing Controversy

    Wernher von Braun at the lunar landing scene on an Apollo set replica during the Atlanta Southeastern Fair, credited to United Press International (UPI), image source

    The picture above (and the cover picture for this article) may seem as a conspiracy theory in itself, for it is difficult to authenticate and locate the original photograph from UPI. However, it is one that has been properly credited and attributed to the UPI. Accordingly, the cover photograph for this article can be viewed with its original header: 

    Image source

    And the Jacksonville Daily Journal published the photograph in its September 30, 1960 edition:

    Image source

    For those unfamiliar with Werner Von Braun, he was a brilliant aerospace engineer – the brains behind the development of the Saturn rockets used in the Apollo launches.

    Over the past several decades, there has been a lot of debate regarding many aspects of the moon missions. A tremendous amount of money, blood, sweat, and tears have flowed into the Apollo program and other related projects.

    Much pressure had been placed on the U.S. Government to ensure success – especially amidst the backdrop of the Space Race and larger Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

    Over the course of this colossal undertaking, it became apparent that some serious problems and challenges needed to be overcome. Many were overcome, but other major problems persisted.

    A three and a half hour 2017 documentary entitled American Moon (available on YouTube, Brighteon, and Odysee) outlined many of these problems along with a significant amount of anomalies – particularly in the Apollo moon missions. In the lengthy film, they disprove not only the debunkers (those who disprove the deniers) but also some of the deniers themselves regarding their false or flawed claims.

    American Moon is meticulously well documented with original (official) NASA photographs, films, interviews, technical documents, and so forth, and presented in a clear and understandable way for the average Jane or Joe.  

    Over 40 extremely well-formulated questions are presented and addressed to NASA itself as well as the greater debunker community. I have yet to locate a source which addresses all these key points; and this, despite nearly five years having elapsed since the documentary film came out.

    I certainly invite the reader to spend the three and a half hours to view this film; for, after doing so, you will never see the moon landing in the same light.

    I will only cite a few of the key questions that were put forward in this film.

    The first one relates to one of the most critical aspects of space flight, namely that of the dangers of radiation that are present beyond our planet, namely the Van Allen radiation belts. The belts protect our planet from harmful radiation originating from the sun and outer space.

    Van Allen radiation belts, source: NASA

    Here’s a simplified image to get a better idea of the range of these belts from Earth:

    Screenshot from American Moon (at the 01:00:20 mark)

    The problem, here, as pointed out in the film, is that modern scientists, including NASA Orion engineer Kelly Smith for that matter, have explained that no human could penetrate either of the two (inner & outer) belts without being exposed to high-energy radiation and cosmic rays which would biologically cause serious damage, if not death. In the March 1959 edition of Scientific American, the following was noted:

    “The discovery [of the Van Allen radiation belts] is of course troubling to astronauts; somehow the human body will have to be shielded from this radiation, even on a rapid transit through the region.”

    More recently, NASA Orion engineer Kelly Smith stated the following when talking about the Van Allen radiation belts [emphasis added]:

    “We must solve these challenges before we send people through this region of space.”

    In American Moon (around the 01:11:20 mark), NASA astronaut and commander Terry Virts says the following [emphasis added]:

    “The plan that NASA has is to built a rocket called SOS which is a heavy-lift rocket; it’s something much bigger than what we have today. And it will be able to launch the Orion capsule with humans on board … to destinations beyond earth orbit. Right now, we can only fly in earth orbit. That’s the farthest that we can go. This new system that we’re building is gonna allow us to go beyond and hopefully take humans into the solar system to explore. So, the moon, Mars, asteroids, there’s a lot of destinations that we could go to…”

    Further in the film, Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean responded the following when asked about whether he had suffered any ill effects from having passed through the Van Allen belts:

    “No. Now, I’m not sure we went far enough out to encounter the Van Allen radiation belts. Maybe we did.”

    One would think that as a crew member from Apollo 12 – the second mission to land on the moon – he would know about the location and existence of these belts through which he passed through.

    Strange.

    Very strange.

    What is also rather puzzling is the fact that NASA admits they lost the telemetry data related to the Apollo 11 moon mission.

    The Chief Flight Director for the Gemini and Apollo programs Gene Krantz (who was portrayed by Ed Harris in the 1995 film Apollo 13) admitted that NASA had lost the original tapes containing the telemetry data (alternate video link here). When asked by documentary filmmaker Aron Ranen about the tapes, Krantz stated the following:

    “I haven’t seen anything that indicates the telemetry data is even in existence. And, as I said, even if we had it, we don’t have the machines to play it back.”

    Ranen, the creator of the 2005 film Did We Go? then went to NASA’s Goodard Space Center and spoke with archivist Dr. David Williams who further asserted:

    “We’ve been unable to track it down. We don’t know where this telemetry data ended up. And we don’t know what path it may have taken. So, unfortunately I’m afraid I can’t give you much of a clue as to where this data ended up and whether it still exists or not.”

    So, let’s be clear folks here for a minute. The data that recorded what was perhaps the single most important event in human history has completely disappeared. Really? No backup copies have been made? And it would be “impossible” to re-create machines to play it back on?

    Absurd.

    While it is certainly possible that these tapes have indeed disappeared, the whole affair is rather questionable and pitiful, to say the least.

    The American Moon documentary further outlines anomalies related to the lunar module (LEM), telecommunications (between the earth and the moon), photographs & photography, cameras, videos, shadows, cosmic radiation, extreme temperatures, and more.  

    A large part of the documentary focuses on photographs taken and published by NASA. The producer of the documentary hired several top photographers in the world (who worked in the field during that period) to examine and analyze the official photos taken on the surface of the moon.

    These photography experts all pointed out many impossibilities found in them.

    For the most part, they disproved that the photographs could have been taken on the surface of the moon if the only main source of light was emanating from the Sun; they decisively contend that the photographs were produced on a set with artificial lighting. This segment is presented with meticulous detail and analysis which makes it extremely difficult to refute the assertions from the experts.

    A common counter-argument that people have regarding those who claim the moon landings were faked is how could thousands of people be on board with such a hoax without there being any whistleblowers. Firstly, there have been numerous credible whistleblowers who have come out and I will reference one below.

    As for the “thousands of employees” conundrum, the answer is quite simple. These thousands of employees would simply not be aware that this subset (i.e., the moon landings) of the Apollo missions were being deceptively presented. This was the case with the Manhattan Project whereby thousands of people worked on the development of the first atomic bomb without knowing about its ultimate goal. The project was carefully structured for secrecy by means of compartmentalization. Put simply, under compartmentalization, people work in their own respective groups (or, compartments) on specific tasks and are not privy to a lot of data or information about the overall project.

    Accordingly, it would not have been that difficult to structure the NASA project in such a way.

    In an April 12, 2020 confession, Gene Gilmore (born Eugene Reuben Akers), now deceased, appeared in a video (alternate links here, here, and here) disclosed what his father (Cyrus Eugene Akers who was stationed in Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico in 1968) had previously confessed to him on his death bed.

    Mr. Akers senior was in the Military Police for over 20 years and on his death bed in 2002 he made a recording of what he had witnessed.

    Gene’s father told him about project ‘Slam Dunk’ whereby there were two large hangars (at the Cannon Air Force Base) that were connected, dump trucks had delivered sand and stone, and cement powder that was applied on top of all that material to make it look like a lunar landscape.

    The surprised son continued listening to his father state that in front of the airplane hangars was pull framing with large canvas tents that were concealing the inside of the staging area. Inside the staging area, on flat bed trucks was created the lunar lander that was assembled, reassembled back inside the hangars. All of the walls were painted flat black as were the ceilings.

    Cyrus Eugene Akers was sworn to secrecy by the National Security Agency (NSA).

    Gene then recalled that when his father saw the moon landing on television, he cried.

    He said that what he witnessed on TV is exactly what they recorded in that hangar.

    Mr. Akers continued his death bed confession to his son stating that there were 3 guards at the entrance of the hangar and there was a list of 15 people who could enter, no one else was allowed by order of President [Lyndon] Johnson. Gene Gilmore then stated that he had given the list to Bart Sibrel.

    Gene Gilmore then enumerates the specific names of list of 15 people who had special access to the hangars which include President Johnson, Neil Armstrong, Edwin [Buzz] Alden, Werner Von Braun, Gene Krantz, James Webb, Dr. James Van Allen, among others.

    Gilmore continues on with what his father had confided in him. President Johnson was there only for the first day of filming. The filming lasted for 3 days. And then, everything was dismantled to bring the hangars back to their original states.

    Gilmore then states that since 2002, he verified a lot of the information his father had given him – including records from Cannon Air Force base that confirmed the presence of President Johnson and the astronauts at that time as well as the lunar lander. Apparently though, this information was subsequently removed from Cannon’s website.

    Lastly, Gene affirms that his father stated had to tell somebody about the incident before he died because it was too important; but he also warned him not to ever tell anybody.

    Regarding the authenticity of these testimonies, there is always the possibility that they are not entirely truthful. But people seldom lie during death bed confessions. They usually want to get truth off their chests before they meet their maker. The fact that Gene Gilmore instructed Bart Sibrel to only publish his confession after his death also adds credibility to his testimony.

    As recent as Sept. 22, 2022, Lead Stories published a fact check rebuke regarding this confession video. In it, they stated that they had contacted NASA regarding the video and posted their spokesperson’s reply in the article:

    “There is a significant amount of evidence to support NASA landed 12 astronauts on the moon from 1969 to 1972. We collected 842 pounds of moon rocks that have been studied by scientists worldwide for decades. From these rocks, we’ve learned that the moon was once part of the Earth, the moon is about 4.5 billion years old, and that most of the moon’s craters are caused by impact, not volcanism.”

    Anyone with half a brain could tell that this reply is totally unconvincing. Why mention moon rocks? It’s as if the spokesperson thinks this provides tangible evidence of the moon landings. One would also think that NASA would have come up with a much more thoughtful and convincing argument than the absurdity stated above.

    I digress.

    The conclusion of the American Moon documentary shows part of the Apollo 11 astronauts post moon mission press conference. They point out that the three astronauts were totally unenthusiastic.

    They were there to talk about the single most important feat accomplished by human beings and these men could barely crack a smile or convey their joy and enthusiasm about their monumental achievement. This goes without saying that it is all, indeed and utterly, extremely bizarre.

    Moreover, the very apparent levels of stress shown by the astronauts as per their body language at the beginning of the press conference is somewhat mind boggling. Keep in mind that these astronauts are test pilots who have experience handling extremely stressful situations, not to mention having [purportedly] flown an extremely dangerous mission to the moon. So, relatively speaking, simply talking to the public and press about their monumental achievement should not have been so challenging and stressful for these men. Rather, it should have been a cause for celebration and pride. What is the average person to make of this?

    American Moon ends with video clips of Bart Sibrel confronting each of the three Apollo 11 astronauts (Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins) asking them to swear on the Bible that they walked on the moon. All three men displayed very uncomfortable stances and refused. Sibrel even offered $5,000 in cash to charity should Neil Armstrong agree, but he still refused. Buzz Aldrin actually punched Sibrel in the face when the interrogator persisted in his questioning. Even though Sibrel’s approach wasn’t particularly friendly, it remains odd that none of them agreed to do so.  

    As more and more inconsistencies surface regarding the Apollo moon missions along with mounting evidence which contradicts the official narrative, it is probably just a matter of time before NASA becomes obligated to admit what really happened in July of 1969. Undoubtedly, there is a lot at stake.

    Will history books need to be re-written?

    Time will tell.

    Conspiracies to Watch

    As practically all of the conspiracies stated below are highly controversial and subjective in nature, I will merely provide a short summary of each along with key links that provide some initial background information – selected specifically to exhibit why they are considered conspiratorial. Ultimately, it is really up to the readers to investigate them and draw their own conclusions as to the authenticity and legitimacy of their respective stated claims.

    Climate Change

    Though the very hot and contentious issue of ‘Climate Change’, formerly known as ‘Global Warming’, is complex and controversial, we must begin by examining its origins.

    Where did this really originate from? When was it first mentioned and put forward as an existential threat?

    Former Australian politician Ann Bressington shed a bit of light on the issue in a candid speech about Agenda 21 and the Club of Rome a few years ago. In the speech (alternate link) she stated the following [emphasis added]:

    “Ladies and gentlemen, the origins of the environmental movement as we see it began back in 1968 when the Club of Rome was formed. The Club of Rome has been described as a crisis think tank which specialises in crisis creation. The main purpose of this think tank was to formulate a crisis that would unite the world and condition us to the idea of global solutions to local problems. In a document called The First Global Revolution, … it stated: ‘In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.’ …, that’s the origin of global warming ladies and gentlemen.”

    Her statement does indeed check out. On page 115 of the 1991 book entitled The First Global Revolution: A Report by the Council of Rome, you can clearly read the passage under the header ‘The Common Enemy of Humanity is Man’ [emphasis added in red]:

    Excerpt from page 115 of the book The First Global Revolution: A Report by the Council of Rome

    The Club of Rome is still actively involved in activities related to Climate Change. And at first glance it all seems quite legitimate. But the power and influence wielded by its well-connected membership leaves much to be scrutinized.

    Moreover, while the above information doesn’t serve as a smoking gun with regards to an alleged conspiracy, it does demonstrate that powerful and deeply connected think tanks (like with the Council on Foreign Relations mentioned earlier in this article) can influence many key players, including heads of state (even former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, father of the current Prime Minister).

    Credible scientific evidence contrary to the current climate change narrative does exist, yet very seldom appears in the mainstream press, for it goes against the ascribed (and undebatable) “the science is settled” mantra.

    One of these includes the recent (August, 2022) article entitled 1,200 Scientists and Professionals Declare: “There is No Climate Emergency” by The Daily Sceptic which challenges the ‘political fiction’ that humans cause most or all of climate change.

    The article also states that the scale to the opposition to the modern-day belief that the ‘science is settled’ [on Climate Change] is remarkable, even amidst the backdrop of academia which barely ever issues grants for climate research that departs from the political orthodoxy. On a side note, a blunt revelation by the co-founder of The Weather Channel John Coleman offered a rather scathing (and highly entertaining) lecture towards Brian Stelter from CNN a few years back in which he stated that there was no real science behind climate change. Now, back to the article of interest from The Daily Sceptic. It makes reference to a declaration by over 1,200 scientists from all around the world who assert that there is no climate emergency. This declaration is formally known as the ‘World Climate Declaration (WCD)’. Here are a few key excerpts:

    “Climate policy relies on inadequate models

    Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools. They do not only exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases, they also ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.”

    “CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth

    CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. More CO2 is favorable for nature, greening our planet. Additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also profitable for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.”

    “Global warming has not increased natural disasters

    There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent. However, there is ample evidence that CO2mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly.”

    “Climate policy must respect scientific and economic realities

    There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. Go for adaptation instead of mitigation; adaptation works whatever the causes are.”

    It should be obvious – even to a grade school student – that C02 is essential for life on earth and for the healthy functioning of our biological ecosystems. But our mainstream media and academia have been bamboozled and overtaken by powerful interest groups (as is the case in many other institutions such as those of finance and government) to pervert reality and propagate absurdities day in and day out. These compromised media outlets prefer to push the half-baked narratives from the likes of Bill Gates rather than invite real scientists that will challenge the ‘settled’ narratives and pundit talking heads.  

    To be fairer and more objective though, the onus really is on each and every one of us to properly inform ourselves about issues such as climate change. We should be open to listening to those with opposing views and seek the opinions of independents who are not subsidised or funded by special interest groups or who will somehow benefit in spewing pre-packaged, one-size fits all, narratives.

    The origins of SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19)

    No other matter has consumed the collective thought of people from around the world over the last 2+ years than the Covid-19 Pandemic.

    Early on during the pandemic, many had contended that the virus was not of natural origin but was rather one that was altered in a lab setting; and after things had gone afoul, the virus was somehow spread out of the biosafety level 4 lab known as the Wuhan Institute of Virology into the public of the Chinese metropolis, and eventually to the entire world. This was in contrast with the original claim that the virus had originated in a wet market in Wuhan whereby the virus had crossed-over to humans from bats.  

    Those who made the contention that the virus could have been engineered in a lab were immediately dismissed as conspiracy theorists.

    But as more evidence has surfaced regarding a massive coverup by the Chinese government and apparent pre-pandemic linkages between US-funded labs an the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the theory gained traction.

    Anthony Fauci who is the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the leader in the United States regarding the handling of the Covid-19 Pandemic has repeatedly lied (to US Congress) about and denied that any gain-of-function research (specifically, a bat coronavirus research project by EcoHealth Alliance) had taken place under his US government-funded National Institutes of Health (NIH) lab in Wuhan.

    Surfaced letters have shone additional light on the matter demonstrating that funding from NIH to EcoHEalth Alliance did indeed occur.

    In addition, a report from The Intercept following a FOIA request produced 900 pages of materials relating to coronavirus research in China.

    Furthermore, an email letter from Peter Daszak from EcoHealth Alliance dated April 18, 2020, surfaced whereby Daszak thanked Anthony Fauci, the head of the Covid-19 response team, for his [false] public comments regarding the origins of Covid-19.

    News aggregator ZeroHedge ran an article on August 6, 2021 whereby virologist Shi Zhengli (also known as “Bat Lady”) of the Wuhan Institute of Virology – whose lab received US funding to make coronaviruses more infectious to humans – warned that the virus will continue to mutate producing new strains.

    Virologist Shi Zhengli (left), also known as “bat lady” photographed with Peter Daszak (right) from EcoHealth Alliance, source: ZeroHedge and DailyMail

    China expert Matthew Tye who is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and goes by the YouTube handle Laowhy86 produced a very compelling piece (dated April 1, 2020, now with over 2.4 million views) on the source origins of SARS-CoV-2, even hypothesizing about who patient zero for this virus was; namely, Huang Yan Ling an employee of the infamous lab who went missing, along with her profile from the lab’s website.

    The World Health Organization (WHO) who is generously funded by Bill Gates – apart from sovereign nations, he is by far its top donor – is well known to have kowtowed to the Chinese government early on in the pandemic, was eventually compelled to conduct a formal investigation about the origins of the virus.

    Using relevant sources, Summit News reported that the WHO’s chief investigator, Ben Embarek (who also surmised that patient zero was likely a lab worker at the Wuhan Institute of Virology) essentially found nothing of material substance in the probe and was only permitted [by the Chinese government] to mention the possibility of a lab leak without being allowed to probe further. All of this, too, after having visited the lab for a period of only 3 hours.

    In addition, one might find it particularly inappropriate that Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance was chosen as part of the WHO’s investigatory team since he had previously worked in this same lab and given his obvious conflicts of interest in the matter at hand.

    In their defense, it is highly likely that the Chinese government had adequate time to remove any incriminating evidence that could have pointed to the gain of function research about coronaviruses and the inherent lab leak of the virus.

    As a substantial amount of time has elapsed since the Covid-19 pandemic began coupled with the concealment (deliberate or indeliberate) of critical direct and physical evidence regarding the real nature of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, we may never know the true story surrounding its origins.

    Screenshot of John Hopkins University of Medicine’s Worldwide Covid-19 Dashboard, taken Sept. 27, 2022 (Total Cases: 615,673,638; Total Deaths: 6,538,656, Total Vaccine Doses Administered: 12,255,133,258)

    What remains, however, is that it is certainly worthwhile to not let this one drain down the funnel of forgotten history.

    The World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Great Reset

    Though founded in 1971, it is really in the last couple of years that this elitist organization, commonly referred to as the WEF, started to gain attention by the general public (rather than business leaders, politicians, and state leaders) around the world. This is in large part attributable to the increase in the influence and power they have gradually exerted on nations over the years, and particularly since the Covid-19 Pandemic came about.

    In 2020, the WEF embraced the opportunity that this global crisis presented and not let it “go to waste.” And thus, seized it through a series of recommendations and actions which they stated as an opportune moment to “redefine” the world – particularly the traditional economic model into one of what they call ‘stakeholder capitalism’. Hence was born their proposed ambitious action plan known as the ‘Great Reset’.

    Two books accompany this endeavor, namely, the manifesto entitled COVID-19: The Great Reset (2020) written by WEF founder Klaus Schwab, as well as the The Fourth Industrial Revolution (2016). Both serve as blueprints for what the well-connected elitist and quasi-supranational organization wish to impose on global citizens.

    The WEF’s founder Klaus Schwab has been characterised as kind of a Bond villain in the last few years – particularly over social media. A well-researched introduction about Klaus Schwab and the WEF was produced by YouTuber Sorelle Amore.

    While registered as a non-profit organization, the WEF does appear, at prima facie, to be one with benevolent intentions fostering public-private partnerships, that is not entirely the case. Many controversies have surrounded a lot of what has come out of their famous annual meetings referred to as ‘Davos’ which usually take place in the ski-resort town of Davos in Switzerland.

    For instance, many rich elites who’ve paid a hefty membership fee to join the WEF, make it to the annual event in their private jets while they call upon the masses and nation states to curve energy emissions and reduce their carbon footprints. In this year’s Davos meeting, one of their ilk, J. Michael Evans, president of the Alibaba Group, even proposed a new technology to measure one’s carbon footprint, stating [emphasis added]:

    “We’re developing, through technology, an ability for consumers to measure their own carbon footprint. What does that mean? That’s, where are they traveling, how are they traveling, what are they eating, what are they consuming on the platform? … stay tuned, we don’t have it operational yet – but this is something we’re working on.”

    While we all love the environment and want to do our part to protect it, this kind of scheme appears to be nothing less than a proposed taxation scheme targeted to partner governments eager and willing to implement it.

    Other controversial, some would say absurd, proposals have come out of their forums. Promoting the masses to eat bugs (as a high source of protein and great substitute for meat) is actually a thing now with celebrities such as Nicole Kidman helping to spark the trend stating how delicious they are. Insect processing plants, such as the cricket facility from Aspire Food Group in Ontario, are also starting to bolster this nascent industry.

    You would be stunned at witnessing the extent to which this is becoming widespread.

    Some, however, have expressed concerns about how insect-based ingredients are stealthily being added to the food we purchase and how they are not fit for human consumption and possibly even cancerous.

    Tweet indicating that President’s Choice (a leading food provider in Canada) is including insect components in this product, as per the label, purchased at a store in Saskatchewan.

    I suppose we are all going to have to more carefully read the ingredients lists of the foods we purchase.

    Another major concern with regards to the WEF is the amount of power and influence they hold over political officials, including heads of state.

    This became apparent in the recent riots that have occurred in the Netherlands where Dutch farmers have protested in masse against government diktats regarding reducing nitrogen (used in fertilizer) levels and possible farm land appropriation.

    Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte also received criticism regarding the coziness of his ties with the WEF’s boss, Klaus Schwab, and his agendas. In fact, Rutte was blasted in the Dutch legislature by Gideon van Meijeren (MP) for this relationship and complicity in the WEF’s Great Reset (link includes the related video). Rutte responded to the young MP that he didn’t know about the book (COVID-19: The Great Reset) and ridiculed the young MP to “not look too much into these conspiracy theories.”

    In turns out, though, that a close relationship did exist between the Netherlands Mark Rutte and the WEF. Independent information outlet LeLibrePenseur.org (French for ‘The Free thinker’), published secret letters between the two. In a report titled Fuites de Klaus Schwab : lettres secrètes entre le WEF et des membres du gouvernement hollandais dévoilées ! (Klaus Schwab leaks: secret letters between the WEF and members of the Dutch government exposed!), they showcased (what many mainstream Dutch journalists had described as conjecture) how the Rutte government had indeed been subservient to the interests and agendas of the WEF. Following a request from deputy FVD Pepijn van Houwelingen to make public the letters addressed to Dutch cabinet members, it was confirmed that their contributions had helped in the realisation of the Great Reset, essentially bypassing the will of the people through their elected officials.

    While it is not necessarily conspiratorial to create linkages with the WEF, the secretive manner in which it was done is what proves alarming.

    Regarding Canada, Klaus Schwab has repeatedly boasted on how proud he was proud of his army of Young Global Leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Schwab even bragged about how his lieutenants had “penetrated” the Canadian cabinet stating [emphasis added]:

    “What we are very proud of now [is] the young generation like Prime Minister Trudeau, …, that we penetrate the cabinets. So, yesterday I was at a reception for Prime Minister Trudeau and I know that half of his cabinet, or even more than half of his cabinet are actually young global leaders of the world.”

    That is a stunning admission from the leader of the WEF. Canadian opposition MP even inquired about this outside interference on behalf of a constituent of his during a parliamentary session, only to see the Speaker dismiss the question from the MP regarding this claim by provided a ridiculous excuse that the audio and video were “really really bad”. This was swiftly followed by an MP of the ruling party dismissing the question stating that the opposition MP was “promoting disinformation”. Really? I presume he didn’t hear the video in question that clearly stated otherwise. Regardless of the veracity of the claim itself, when an extremely powerful individual from an extremely powerful global organization such as the WEF makes a vivid assertion about who is controlling the Canadian cabinet, it should be taken seriously and further investigated.  

    At the very least, according to True North News, the Trudeau Government gave nearly $3 million to the WEF which raises a cause for suspicion regarding the relationship and its inherent motivations.

    Rigging of the Gold & Silver Markets

    At this point/stage, this is really no longer a conspiracy theory, but more of a conspiracy fact. As a financial author, I have followed the gold and silver markets on a daily basis for the past ten years and have witnessed and documented numerous cases of blatant price fixing – almost exclusively to the down side.

    The main reason for the suppression of gold and silver prices is to maintain the illusion of a strong US dollar; for, if prices of these metals get too elevated it raises alarm bells as to the weakness of an exponentially increasing money supply.

    Here is what I’m talking about:

    Gold smashed down more than $85 during London trading hours on November 9, 2020. Source: Kitco

    It is very typical for the price fixers (see below) to smash the gold price down (they do this by shorting large amounts of paper gold futures contracts) before the open of U.S. markets – either during Asian (Hong Kong) or London trading sessions.

    Former industry insider and highly credible Peter Hambro forthrightly explains how the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the LBMA (London Bullion Market Association) in London, and the COMEX (the largest American commodities and futures exchange) in New York are complicit in the price fixing (almost exclusively to the down side) of gold.

    Over the past several years, precious metals analyst Roman Manly has also conducted extensive and thorough investigative work about the manipulation of gold and silver prices as has the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA).

    Regarding silver, an article entitled A Silver Price Manipulation Primer by Sprott Money and precious metals writer Craig Hemke offers a good introduction about the fixing of silver prices.

    Lastly, we cannot forget the unabashedly, unfiltered, and outspoken Canadian derivatives expert Rob Kirby who passed away earlier this year (a tribute to his work can be seen via YouTube’s Liberty and Finance channel) who has extensively reported on these illegal price fixing activities on various YouTube channels such as Liberty and Finance.

    Mass Censorship & Search Manipulation

    In 2021, Twitter completely banned and censored the sitting U.S. President, Donald J. Trump – who had over 88 million followers on the platform.

    If a Big Tech outfit like Twitter can outlaw a sitting U.S. President, you can rest assured that they can basically ban and memory-hole anyone. And that, they have done so unabatedly in the past several years.

    Google (the largest search engine in the world by far) who owns a slew of other extremely popular applications used by hundreds of millions of people and media platforms such as YouTube, has been known to employ very deceptive practices over the past several years.

    Many of these involve either directly or indirectly censoring websites and completely banning countless channels – particularly conservative and alternative ones – from their YouTube platform, not to mention shadow-banning. In regards to the later, whistleblower Zack Vorhies, a former Senior Software Engineer at Google, stated that the tech giant was a “highly biased political machine”. The former insider took a cache of documents that provided rather revealing information about the inner workings of their search algorithms, establishing a “single point of truth” for news, and preventing another “Trump situation” in 2020, from ever happening again.

    More recently – and quite convincingly, Dr. Robert Epstein, a Senior Research Psychologist from the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology gave an in-depth interview with The Epoch Times’ Jan Jekielek (Robert Epstein: Inside Big Tech’s Manipulation Machine and How to Stop It) revealing in a meticulously documented fashion how Google is indeed politically aligned to the left and how it manipulates the thoughts and minds of their users via “ephemeral experiences”. The April 2022 broadcast and podcast for this interview are definitely worth listening to. By listening to it, you will learn a lot about what exactly happens behind the scenes when you use Google search and its various products and services. Alternatively, you can read or consult Dr. Epstein’s full research paper entitled ‘GOOGLE’S TRIPLE THREAT, To Democracy, Our Children, and Our Minds‘ (51-page PDF) published earlier this year.

    Full research report by Dr. Epstein’s entitled ‘GOOGLE’S TRIPLE THREAT, To Democracy, Our Children, and Our Minds‘ (PDF)

    Slightly after the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, Dr. Epstein had surmised that search engine bias shifted 2-3 million votes in Hillary Clinton’s favor and warned that the number could increase fivefold in the 2020 contest.

    Also back in 2016, it was revealed how Google had censored information about Hillary Clinton’s wrongdoings in their search results compared to other major search engines.

    Whether the call for censoring and shielding Big Tech from scrutiny and legal action comes under the guise of cracking down on misinformation or preserving their censorship power, it nonetheless remains clear that these media behemoths hold tremendous power on the levers of public discourse and the availability of information.

    The Biden Administration has been accused of employing an “army” of officials from multiple government agencies (specifically, the HHS, DHS, CISA, the CDC, NIAID, the Office of the Surgeon General, the Census Bureau, the FDA, the FBI, the State Department, the Treasury Department, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission) to censor information using their contacts in social media. A recent lawsuit – handled by the New Civil Rights Alliance – alleges that very claim. The lawsuit’s plaintiffs’ position begins with their claim and what it seeks [emphasis added]:

    “the Plaintiffs served interrogatories and document requests upon the Government Defendants seeking the identity of federal officials who have been and are communicating with social-media platforms about disinformation, misinformation, malinformation, and/or any censorship or suppression of speech on social media, including the nature and content of those communications.”

    In a recent interview with Joe Rogan, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also openly revealed that he followed the censorship orders from the FBI to suppress information related to Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 election; all this was under the guise of “Russian Disinformation” and the net effect was that Facebook ended up ranking the information further down their newsfeed which could certainly be seen as election interference and/or political partisanship.  

    I have mentioned in my initial post on Substack, that I espouse the notion that, in essence, there really is no such thing as misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation (or even ‘fake news’ for that matter) – for, it is ALL INFORMATION. If the public is not able to firstly access information and then analyse and discern it for themselves (even with regards to the complex issues of our day), then perhaps we have a bigger problem. Namely, that of a dumbed-down populous unable to critically think for themselves without been spoon fed pre-determined, unquestionable, narratives by “authority” figures.

    in a recent interview, author, journalist, senior editor for The New American, and Epoch Times contributor Alex Newman offers are rather insightful view of not just the current state of censorship, but also the worrying trend of the dumbing-down of population through our degrading school system. As one who has worked in the education sector for 35 years, I can certainly agree with his concern that our youth are not adequately being taught critical-thinking skills in our public school system.

    In Canada, the controversial Bill C-11 (an Act to amend the Broadcasting Act) has been passed by Parliament and is awaiting a second reading in the Senate. Though Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated that it would help “oppressed communities” and “strengthen trusted news sources in Canada”, many others contend that if passed as law, it will favor government-approved news organizations who are already (and will continue to) receive nearly hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money, with the CBC reportedly receiving 1.4 billion in 2021 according to the National Post. Dr. Michael Geist, a law professor and Research Chair (in Internet and E-commerce Law) at the University of Ottawa categorized the government’s defence of the bill as “cartoonishly misleading”. The main concern is that this bill could silence freedom-loving content creators, reports mrcTV. Canadian journalist Dan Dicks from Pressfortruth.ca and social media personality Viva Frei (David Freiheit) have criticized the bill (and even its predecessor bill C-10). It remains to be seen if the bill will pass the Senate to become law.

    2020 Election in the United States

    The 2020 Election was one of the most controversial elections in American history. Coverage about the election varied greatly among major networks and news outlets in the country.

    In my opinion, I have found The Epoch Times coverage of the election to be most accurate and independent.

    All publications have bias in their reporting; that is inevitable due also, in large part, to opinion pieces which in today’s polarized society carry a lot of weight. That being said, I still believe that articles from The Epoch Times have been more objective than many others.

    One of their seasoned contributors, Sharyl Atkinson – an investigative journalist who has reported nationally for CBS News, PBS, CNN – ran an viewpoint article on Dec. 22, 2020 titled 2020 Election Screaming Red Flags That Deserved Criminal Inquiry. Though it was an opinion piece, she provided a fair analysis whereby she pointed out the many claims of election irregularities and fraud and how they should have been taken more seriously and investigated upon by government officials and law enforcement agencies. And since they haven’t been taken seriously, the integrity of the election results comes under great scrutiny. Her piece then lists eight examples of “screaming red flags” that should have prompted thorough criminal inquiries.

    Prior to the election, The Epoch Times had unveiled a very comprehensive exposé titled Spygate: The Inside Story Behind the Alleged Plot to Take Down Trump that was very well sourced and referenced. The investigatory work outlined in great detail the concerted plot whereby key members of the CIA, FBI, Department of Justice (DOJ), and officials from the U.S. State Department set up and accused President Trump of colluding with the Russians.

    Various official inquiries such as the very long and costly Special Counsel investigation of 2017-2019 (headed by the very corrupt and compromised Robert Mueller, former Director of the FBI) proved that no foul play had ever occurred between Trump and the Russians.

    What is stated in the previous paragraph is important, for it adds veracity to the claims made about election fraud to the detriment of the incumbent Trump. Why? Because it affirms the motivation by those in power to use the same type of unlawful activities (and collusive partners) to falsify and skew election data.

    Such manipulation of the data, demonstrable by statistical anomalies, (particularly with mail-in ballots) certainly became obvious and apparent during the morning hours following election day when, miraculously, Joe Biden’s numbers soared in key states where Trump was leading. Many outlets had cried afoul to this apparent fraud. Even the head of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) Trey Trainor at the time said he believed there was widespread election fraud.

    In addition, the manner in which Big Tech platforms have shown favoritism – before, during, and after the election – is also to be considered in the disputed election results. It is no secret that Google has not been shy about supporting Democratic candidates such as Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden in the past several years; this has been highly documented – with some examples detailed in this work (above). Twitter has also blatantly censored and terminated accounts belonging to conservatives; a case in point here includes them suspending 2020 election audit accounts for multiple states.

    Dominion Voting Systems were used in many states for the election. And much controversy arose surrounding their reliability and accuracy in counting votes, along with hacking (including foreign) vulnerabilities. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) has pointed out that these could affect voting in multiple states. The state of Pennsylvania is suing Dominion Voting Systems alleging “severe issues” with voting data discovered after the 2020 election. And, more recently, the Biden administration is urging a court not to release a sealed report on Dominion Voting Systems. 

    Lastly, the fact that Joe Biden supposedly received 80 million votes – the most votes won by any presidential candidate in US history (which shatters the 69.5 million votes Barack Obama had received in 2008) – remains highly questionable. Even prior to election night, Biden himself was nowhere nearly as popular as his predecessor, Barack Obama. Perhaps there was a larger portion of the population that went out to vote and wanted to vote for the Democratic party regardless of its leader.

    While there still are ongoing investigations at the state level regarding these voting irregularities, it is highly doubtful that much will come out of them. The whole affair has been greatly politicized which taints the judicial review process and proper accounting of votes for the highly-disputed 2020 election.  

    Aerosol Spraying (Geoengineering)

    Of the many alleged conspiracies worth keeping an eye on, Aerosol Spraying (sometimes referred to as ‘Aerial Discharges’ or ‘chemtrails’) – which fits under the larger umbrella of geoengineering – is one of the most troubling and worrisome ones.

    For those not familiar with the subject, geoengineering generally involves modifying the weather for various purposes such as in climate engineering (e.g., cloud seeding to induce rain over drought-stricken areas) or as weather warfare for military purposes – which dates all the way back to the Eisenhower administration in the United States.

    For at least the past two decades, Dane Wigington has been on a crusade to alert the world about this troubling phenomenon due to its extensive use of harmful chemicals. His website GeoengineeringWatch.org contains a substantial amount of credible evidence regarding the dangerous effects that geoengineering practices have on our climate, environment, and populations. Whistleblower testimonies, government reports, and other evidence presented on the site – including numerous photographs and videos – prove that a lot of activities surrounding geoengineering is intended for nefarious and harmful purposes.

    This is not conspiracy theory, but rather indications of a conspiracy to harm populations through weather modification and jet sprayings – sometimes inadequately referred to as ‘chemtrails’.

    I myself have witnessed this phenomenon of jet sprayings over my region in the province of Quebec since my return to Canada in November of 2021. I never saw these spraying prior to the year 2008 before my departure from the country. Since my return, I’ve been witnessing massive spraying occurring over the skies of my region to the tune of three to five times a week, on average. And each day of spraying emanates from around a dozen or more flight by high-altitude aircraft.

    I’ve personally written to my city, the local airport authority in the city, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Transport Canada and none of them have provided concrete answers to my inquiries and to the nature of this phenomenon in general.

    Both my city and Environment and Climate Change Canada have replied to me that these sprayings are merely commercial passenger aircraft exhaust trails, i.e., condensation trails. Anyone who has taken a high-school level physics course will be able to debunk this ludicrous claim that these sprayings – that stretch over kilometers far and wide and that last hours – are due to condensation vapor trails.

    I had asked Environment and Climate Change Canada if these sprayings could be attributed to weather modification programs, and they replied me that none were in effect in the province of Quebec, but that there was one in effect in the province of Alberta. So, if these are not intended for weather modification purposes, then what are they for?

    My subsequent (and very polite, respectful) email inquiries to these Canadian agencies have been mostly ignored. This leaves me to conclude that they are not being forthcoming about the origins of these sprayings and thus appear to be hiding the facts surrounding them.

    Aerosol sprayings over the greater City of Sherbrooke (Quebec) area on January 30, 2022

    In addition, for this year alone, I have seen many photographs and videos shared online of these sprayings posted by many Canadians located in different provinces.

    In Canada there have been court cases filed regarding aerosol sprayings. Mass sprayings in the Calgary, Alberta region have lead to a mass-tort case that was filed in Federal Court (see related court documents) in 2016 along with a related appeal in 2018 also at the federal level. The appeal further alleges:

    “the ongoing dispersal into Canadian airspace of aerosols that are harmful to the Canadian public and that is polluting to the Canadian environment, and in respect of which aspects of the scientific community have only relatively recently evaluated in the scientific peer-reviewed literature.”

    The court case mentioned above appears to still be ongoing.

    What is particularly worrisome about these aerosol sprayings is that we don’t know exactly what chemicals are being used and dispersed over our skies.

    The team at GeoengineeringWatch.org has produced many excellent explanatory videos and documentaries, along with a cache of documents to inform the public of what these sprayings are really about and what chemicals are found in them. I highly recommend their introductory video Hacking The Planet: The Climate Engineering Reality.

    Evidence collected by GeoengineeringWatch.org has shown that chemicals and metals used in aerosol sprayings have included aluminum, barium, strontium, graphene, among others.

    Home page for GeoengineeringWatch.org

    What is also particularly troubling is that many of these metals and chemicals make their way to ground level from high altitude in the form of nanoparticles – which if breathed in, are tiny enough to penetrate the blood-brain barrier. They are especially harmful to elderly and infant populations whose brains are still in development. In this respect, I highly recommend the work of neurosurgeon Dr. Russell Blaylock who describes the harmful effects these chemicals have on the brain.  

    There is also a lot of evidence that suggests that geoengineering is used to modify the climate and could thus be a significant contributor to climate change, increasingly unstable weather systems, and droughts.   

    Lastly, what I find particularly disappointing as a Canadian is the position, albeit one from several years ago, whereby our very famous David Suzuki – one who I admired very much growing up and watching his show The Nature of Things – pretty much described the phenomenon as conspiracy theory posited by “wacky science deniers” in an article entitled David Suzuki on Chemtrails, Conspiracies fuel climate change denial and belief in chemtrails. There are many false assertions in this poorly formulated article, but here are the key ones [emphasis added]:

    “I recently wrote about geoengineering as a strategy to deal with climate change and carbon dioxide emissions. That drew comments from people who confuse this scientific process with the unscientific theory of “chemtrails””.

    Suzuki’s statement bolded above makes no sense. A theory is a theory. There is nothing unscientific about a theory. A theory is a hypothesis assumed for the sake of investigation which is formulated before science is conducted to verify it.

    He continues with the following later in his article:

    “I’m a scientist, so I look at credible science – and there is none for the existence of chemtrails.”

    “They’re condensation trails, formed when hot, humid air from jet exhaust mixes with colder low-vapour-pressure air.”

    Condensation trails? Condensation trails do not drag on over several kilometers and remain suspended for hours at a time; rather, they usually dissolve within several seconds, or a few minutes at the most.

    As for “credible evidence”, these aerosol sprayings have been highly documented over the past several years.

    So, these are the main arguments and explanations from one of Canada’s most renowned scientists?

    Really?

    Sorry Mr. Suzuki, I respectfully disagree with this very perplexing assertion, for it doesn’t hold water! (pun intended)

    And many of the 297 comments generated from this article are in disagreement with Mr. Suzuki’s assessment.

    Author note: I have contacted Mr. Suzuki by email to provide him with an opportunity to re-assert or update his assertions (especially since several years have elapsed since the article was written) but have not received a reply from him as of publishing time.

    Back to the condensation trails, I have personally filmed and photographed many instances of real condensation trails from commercial airliners including those at high altitude; and for these, the trails completely disappear within no more than a minute or so.

    I even have some that show these alongside other – likely non-commercial – aircraft which produce aerosol sprayings that last for kilometers and persist for much longer periods. And this, of course, under the exact same weather conditions.

    Also, I would invite the skeptics to try to find any photographs or videos prior to the 1960s that have these kinds of criss-cross patterns and lengthy and abnormal cloud dispersions over several kilometers in the sky. There are none that I know of; but if any are found, let me know. The oldest ones that I’ve been able to find appeared in a few episodes of the TV series Little House on the Prairie which began in 1974.

    Wouldn’t a scientist who is genuinely concerned about climate change such as David Suzuki (and all others, for that matter) want to consider all factors (including aerosol dispersions) which may contribute to the degradation of our natural environment?

    Questions that remain regarding this inadequately addressed phenomenon include:

    • What is the purpose of these aerosol sprayings?

    • Who is authorizing them?

    • Who is paying for them?

    • What substances (including chemicals) are they spraying?

    • Why aren’t Environment and Climate Change Canada and Transport Canada providing answers to these questions?

    Mini-Guide to Investigating Conspiracies

    “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” – Thomas Jefferson

    Actually, the header for this section is a bit of a misnomer, for it will comprise a broader range of tools and techniques that will enable individuals to do a better job at discerning and validating information.

    The internet is a vast ocean of information and knowledge. There is a lot to take in and it can all be quite overwhelming – especially when social media is included in the mix.

    Many labels such as ‘fake news’, misinformation, and disinformation have been thrown left and right to hastily characterize the validity of information provided by certain parties.

    Of course, this is very subjective and is influenced by many factors such as different kinds of biases, political affiliations, financial interests, and the like. One must judge what one reads based on its own merits without relying on these labels. In other words, begin by removing any of these labels or preconceived assumptions and tackle the information itself.

    I would recommend reading news and information from different sources – whether it be from mainstream media, alternative media, and everywhere in between. Each article or piece of information is unique, was written by an individual (or a few individuals) and should be treated and evaluated as such. Put another way, each article is like an antique. An antique collector will inspect and examine each piece on its own characteristics and merits. Depending on the qualities and flaws observed, the collector will be able to make an objective evaluation for authentication purposes (i.e., Is it real or fake?) We should use the same approach when encountering a piece of information – particularly if it is of a complex, controversial, or disputable nature.

    Another thing we can do is be wary of buzzwords. By buzzwords, I mean words or phrases like ‘right-wing’, ‘left-wing’, ‘conspiracy theorist’, ‘conservative’, ‘liberal’, ‘MAGA Republican’, ‘anti-vaxxer’, ‘so-called’, ‘quasi’, and ‘pseudo’. Buzzwords are similar to labels and are often used by writers or TV personalities to indirectly (or subliminally) convey a pre-conceived notion about the subject matter of the information piece. Also be aware that buzzwords’ meanings can vary from one geographical region to another, similar to slang. The idea here is to detect their usage and become cognizant that they may be used to sway the reader’s opinion in a certain direction. So, look out for these – especially when reading headlines to articles or social media posts.

    In today’s very polarized and divided society filled with identity politics, blame and labels will be readily cast upon those who don’t “toe the line” (i.e., go along with a certain narrative, or accept the authority or views of a particular group, sometimes under pressure from that group). We’ve seen a heck of a lot of this in the past couple of years with the Covid-19 Pandemic. Prime examples include the likes of “trust the science”, or “he’s an anti-vaxxer”. For the later, the danger here is that such condescending comments or labels assigned to specific people or groups can not only be harmful, but will too often lead to incorrect assumptions about the target. For instance, if someone refuses to take the Covid-19 vaccine, that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s an anti-vaxxer; perhaps, she is willing to take other vaccines, but just not the Covid-19 one. In another prime example we often hear the label “climate change denier” (as with the David Suzuki article referenced earlier) when someone doesn’t (either fully or in part) adhere to the notion of climate change. As this particular topic is very broad and complex, labelling one in such a derogatory fashion proves itself as quite foolish. Writers, TV personalities, news pundits, and social media figures may often attack a person when they cannot invalidate or counter the substance or merits of their claims. Some are very adept at it too which takes the victim by surprise and makes them appear stupid or weak. The trick here, is to not take it personal and let it get to you. Rather, either ignore them, or turn the situation around and ask them to elaborate on the merits of why they disagree with your claim or stance, pressing for facts and evidence to substantiate their assertions.   

    A great question to ask is ‘Cui bono?’ which is Latin for ‘who benefits?’ The phrase originates from the very famous Roman statesman Cicero. Cicero was a brilliant orator, lawyer, philosopher, and politician who lived during the boisterous early years of the Roman Empire when wars, politics, greed, and power dominated the social and political landscapes (as they still do today). One needed to be quite astute in assessing others’ motives based solely on their words and actions. Cicero would often ask this question, cui bono, to better understand the real motivation behind individuals’ or groups’ true intentions. We should do the same, as it seems everyone is out for something to gain. Put simply, we should take some time to question the possible motivations behind what we see, hear, or read.

    The Death of Caesar, 1874 steel engraving by J.C. Armytage after J.L. Gérome

    In similar fashion, we should also follow the money. This is particularly useful when looking at information related to the financial markets as well as political and geopolitical happenings. Similar to the previous tool, it guides us towards the underlying motivation(s) – most often of a financial nature – behind what someone is saying or doing. They may be saying one thing, but doing another through their actions, whether they are investments, supporting political candidates or causes, donating to charity, etc.

    Individuals who have received a classical education often fare much better in how they process information and interact with other people. There are key reasons for this. The first is that in this type of education system, students go through a three-step learning process, or system, which stretches from elementary school to middle-school to high-school. These three learning anchors are: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The grammar part is not of the ‘spelling & grammar’ kind; rather, it relates to how one inputs information from the outside world. The logic part refers to how one processes the information obtained. And the rhetoric part is the culmination – being able to communicate and express oneself persuasively. This third part is quite important. Many of the ills and divisions we see in society today is due to the lack of this particular ability. People are far more likely to debate with one another than to have a civil discussion about it.

    In classical education, which has its roots from the ancient Greek philosophers, students communicate using discourse (dialectic/Socratic method). In other words, they have a conversation and use logic and reason to arrive at truth. This is a much more constructive means than to debate or argue in a back-and-forth manner whereby each party wants to be right and win. If people in today’s society would be more respectful towards one another and accept differences in views and opinion, then we could find areas of common agreement and would thus have more peace and unity, as opposed to hatred and division.

    So, the moral of the story here is that we should make an effort to be polite and respectful towards the views and opinions of others, even if they vary from our own or sound crazy. In doing this, we have a much better chance of making allies and gaining the trust of others. Disagreeing with a person is much different than disagreeing with the contents of what they are saying.

    Lastly, here is one more tool that almost all those who receive a classical education learn about – logical fallacies. A logical fallacy, in its simplest form, is a flawed or weak argument or assertion. They are deceptive or false arguments that may seem stronger than they actually are due to psychological persuasion, but are proven wrong with reasoning and further examination. (source) There are many different types of logical fallacies. An example includes Blind Loyalty:

    “The dangerous fallacy that an argument or action is right simply and solely because a respected leader or source (an expert, parents, one’s own “side,” team or country, one’s boss or commanding officers) say it is right. This is over-reliance on authority, a corrupted argument from ethos that puts loyalty above truth or above one’s own reason and conscience. In this case, a person attempts to justify incorrect, stupid or criminal behavior by whining “That’s what I was told to do,” or “I was just following orders.”

    We’ve seen the Blind Loyalty fallacy a lot during the Covid-19 Pandemic. We’ve been told to ‘trust the science’, certain experts in the medical field, health organizations, and so on. Just because something comes from a given expert or an authoritative organization doesn’t necessarily mean it is correct. I remember when I came back to Quebec, Canada last November, the health pamphlets from the provincial health authority listed zero possible side-effect or risks associated with the Covid-19 vaccines. As all vaccines have inherent risks, this information provided by this respective authoritative source was not right, or completely accurate. Critical information was omitted.

    Guilt by Association is another common logical fallacy. Here, one tries to refute or condemn someone’s standpoint, arguments, or actions by evoking negative sentiments of those with whom they associate with. A classic example of this one came about during President Biden’s controversial speech he gave on Sept. 1, 2022 whereby he rendered a large portion of Americans as dangerous ‘MAGA Republicans’; in other words, he positioned many who consider themselves as Republicans to be Trump supporters and some kind of insurrectionists. In Canada, the mainstream media often associated and labelled those who supported the Freedom Convoy protest movement as far-right extremists.

    Many other logical fallacies are employed by those in the media and across social media. These are flawed arguments or assertions that you need to look out for. You need to be able to first recognize them and then you will be in a better position to defend yourself by addressing them for what they are.

    Conclusion

    So, why does society need conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists? Well, it‘s no secret that we’ve been lied to. We’ve been lied to about a lot. And we are still being lied to on a daily basis. This makes it much harder to get to the truth.

    Knowing more about how conspiracies actually work and how past ones have played out can help us to be more vigilant and question more about our perceived reality. Everything happens in the mind. The better we train our minds, the better we can sift through the rubbish and keep what’s real and authentic while discarding what is not.

    Conspiracy theorists are often labelled and demonized – usually because they have demonstrated the courage to speak out, to point out inconvenient or uncomfortable truths. They may lose the support of friends, family, and employers in the process. But they remain true to themselves and who they are at their very core. Therefore, we should encourage them and even strive to duplicate their courage and assertiveness.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 11/09/2022 – 00:05

  • 'The Big One Is Coming': Top US Military Commander Warns American Capabilities "Sinking"
    ‘The Big One Is Coming’: Top US Military Commander Warns American Capabilities “Sinking”

    A top US military commander has warned that the power of America’s military deterrent is ‘fading’ – and that America might not be adequately prepared for a large-scale military engagement.

    “This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup,” Navy Admiral Charles Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said at a conference last week, according to the WSJ Editorial Board.

    “The big one is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested” for “a long time.”

    According to Richard, things are getting worse.

    “As I assess our level of deterrence against China, the ship is slowly sinking. It is sinking slowly, but it is sinking, as fundamentally they are putting capability in the field faster than we are,” he said, adding “as those curves keep going,” it won’t matter “how good our commanders are, or how good our horses are—we’re not going to have enough of them. And that is a very near-term problem.”

    Note that modifier “near-term.” This is a more urgent vulnerability than most of the political class cares to recognize.

    Adm. Richard noted that America retains an advantage in submarines—“maybe the only true asymmetric advantage we still have”—but even that may erode unless America picks up the pace “getting our maintenance problems fixed, getting new construction going.” Building three Virginia-class fast-attack submarines a year would be a good place to start. -WSJ

    Meanwhile, America was caught flat-footed last year when China tested a hypersonic missile that flew around the world. This means that Beijing can put any US city or facility at risk – perhaps without even being detected.

    U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, right, uses binoculars at the military observation post as she visits the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas in Panmunjom, South Korea, on Sept. 29, 2022. (Leah Millis/AP)

    As the Editorial Board aptly notes; How we lost the hypersonic race to China and Russia deserves hearings in Congress.

    Educating the public about U.S. military weaknesses runs the risk of encouraging adversaries to exploit them. But the greater risk today is slouching ahead in blind complacency until China invades Taiwan or takes some other action that damages U.S. interests or allies because Bejiing thinks the U.S. can do nothing about it. -WSJ

    “We used to know how to move fast, and we have lost the art of that,” said Richard, who says the military talks “about how we are going to mitigate our assumed eventual failure” to keep up when it comes to ballistic subs, bombers or long range weapons.

    “What’s it going to take? Is it money? Is it people? Do you need authorities?“

    Whatever it is, at least someone is speaking out.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/08/2022 – 23:45

  • US To Establish Another New Military Base In Northeast Syria
    US To Establish Another New Military Base In Northeast Syria

    Via The Cradle,

    The US-led international coalition forces operating in northeastern Syria intend to establish a new military base in their controlled areas in the countryside of Raqqa. Local sources said that a convoy of US forces, including several armored military vehicles, arrived in Raqqa city as part of preparations to install a new base in the area.

    On the field, the illegal troops began transferring the logistical equipment and necessary gear to the specified location, coinciding with heavy surveillance drone activity. The US army and international coalition occupy at least 28 declared military sites in Syria, distributed over three provinces, mainly Hasakah (17 sites), Deir Ezzor (nine locations), and Homs (two areas).

    Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

    The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) released photographs showing the construction of a new base near Al-Raqqa Bridge on the Euphrates River, south of the city. The distribution of Washington’s illegal bases resembles the cordon surrounding the sources of oil and gas located east of the Euphrates River, representing most of Syria’s underground wealth.

    The eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor hosts the most strategic military bases, including the al-Omar oil field base – one of the largest in Syria – and the Conoco gas field base, which are regularly subjected to violent shelling by armed groups affiliated with Iran.

    Nonetheless, the daily bombing prompted Washington to send massive military and logistical reinforcements aboard hundreds of trucks that crossed from Iraq into the US bases in Deir Ezzor, Hasakah, and Raqqa.

    According to the SOHR, US troops recently established another military post in Naqara village, just three kilometers from Qamishli in the northeastern province of Hasakah.

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    The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) constantly blocks US military convoys and patrols attempting to move through their checkpoints in multiple locations across the province, forcing them to turn tail. The Syrian authorities accuse the US of smuggling its oil and selling it abroad to deprive the Syrians of it in a flagrant violation of international law.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/08/2022 – 23:25

  • 'Arctic Silk Road' Comes Alive As Russia Sends Oil To China
    ‘Arctic Silk Road’ Comes Alive As Russia Sends Oil To China

    Western energy sanctions against Russia have helped Moscow achieve the second-ever sail of a crude tanker east through the Arctic Circle toward China, a route dubbed ‘Arctic Silk Road,’ that could one day revolutionize energy trade flows from Russia to Asia because it’s about half the time versus Russia’s Baltic ports through the Suez Canal. 

    Vessel tracking data compiled by Bloomberg shows the Vasily Dinkov, a specialized ice-breaking tanker, departed from Murmansk, a city in northwestern Russia, off the Barents Sea, hauling a cargo of crude. The vessel traversed Russia’s northern coast between Oct. 27 – Nov. 4 and entered the Bering Strait, a strait between the Pacific and Arctic Oceans that separates Alaska and Russia, on Nov. 5.

    As of Tuesday morning, the tanker is full speed ahead off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. Its final destination is the Chinese port of Rizhao on Nov. 17.

    “The journey is the shortest passage between Europe and east Asia, taking half the time to reach China from Russia’s Baltic ports than the conventional route through the Suez Canal,” Bloomberg said. 

    Even before the war in Ukraine and the resulting sanctions on Moscow, trade flows were already in the beginning stages of shifting towards the Northern Sea Route. 

    In 2017, we noted, “transit routes through the Arctic will assume a certain level of importance vis-à-vis the global geopolitics of Russia and China.” 

    Visual Capitalist’s Nicholas LePan published a map of all the critical routes and resources in the Arctic in 2019. 

    In early 2020, we detailed how Russia, owner of the world’s largest fleet of icebreakers, can plow through Arctic waters, clearing the way for vessels to traverse the northern routes. 

    And last year, we cited Minister of National Resources and Environment Dmitry Kobylkin, who said cargo shipping in Russia’s northernmost territorial waters would top 80MM tons as early as 2024. 

    However, there are significant logistical hurdles that rely entirely on weather conditions. 

    Richard Matthews, head of research at E.A. Gibson Shipbrokers Ltd. in London, told Bloomberg that the Northern Sea Route is only viable in the warmer period of the year. 

    “It looks unlikely that any significant volumes could be shipped along this route until summer,” Matthews said.

    But Viktor Katona, a lead crude analyst at Kpler, said once spring arrives, the Northern Sea Route will be of “vital prevalence”: 

    “Europe is already sealed off.

    “If they’re not buying, why circumnavigate the entire universe if you can use the Northern Sea Route to get to China in 20 days?” Katona said.

    The first crude shipment across the Northern Sea Route took place in 2019. The second is currently underway. And as Western sanctions against Moscow rejigger global energy supply chains, Russia will have an advantage via the Arctic during warmer periods of the year in sending crude and crude products to Asia in an expedited fashion. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/08/2022 – 23:05

  • Court Orders Release Of 'True The Vote' Leaders From Jail
    Court Orders Release Of ‘True The Vote’ Leaders From Jail

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

    Two leaders of True the Vote organization will be released from jail after an appeals court overruled a judge’s order that they be locked up.

    True the Vote founder and president Catherine Engelbrecht makes a point during a presentation on ballot trafficking at the Arizona statehouse on May 31, 2022. Seated next to her is True the Vote data investigator Gregg Phillips. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

    Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips were ordered released by a panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit late Nov. 6.

    “IT IS ORDERED that Petitioners’ opposed motion for release from detention is GRANTED pending further order of this court,” the panel said in the order, which was obtained by The Epoch Times.

    The panel consisted of Circuit Judges Catharina Haynes, a George W. Bush appointee; Kurt Engelhardt, a Trump appointee; and Andrew Oldham, a Trump appointee.

    Engelbrecht and Phillips were expected to be released on Nov. 7, a spokesman for True the Vote told The Epoch Times via email on Monday morning.

    “They will be released when the paperwork is complete, probably sometime this morning,” the spokesman said.

    Engelbrecht and Phillips were imprisoned on Oct. 31 after U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt, a Reagan appointee, found them in contempt of court for not revealing the identities of people who were with them when information was accessed from Konnech, a Michigan-based election management software company whose founder was recently arrested for allegedly stealing poll worker data and hosting it on servers in China.

    The order for confinement was to be in place until the defendants “fully comply” with an order that they reveal certain information, including the identities, Hoyt said.

    Engelbrecht and Phillips say they passed on information that was legally obtained from Konnech to the FBI. One of their attorneys named one of the individuals in question, Mike Hasson, during an October hearing. But they have declined to share the name of the second person. Both the individuals are FBI informants, Phillips said during one hearing.

    “Those who thought that imprisoning Gregg and I would weaken our resolve have gravely miscalculated. It is stronger than ever,” Engelbrecht said in a statement. “The right to free and fair elections without interference is more important than our own discomforts and even this detention, now reversed by a higher court.”

    “We are profoundly grateful for that. We will continue to protect and defend those who do the vital work of election integrity, and we will make sure that their findings become a matter of public record,” she added.

    The imprisonment order came after Konnech sued True the Vote and its founders for defamation.

    Hoyt entered a temporary restraining order against the defendants, ordering them to return all property and data to Konnech and identify people who were involved in accessing the company’s computers.

    In their filing for release from detention, Engelbrecht and Phillips said that Hoyt’s confinement order “represents a clear abuse of discretion and a manifest miscarriage of justice.”

    “Petitioners pray that this Court enter an Order releasing them from the district court’s draconian order of detention for refusing to identity a federal confidential informant in open court whose identity in any event has no bearing on the merits of this defamation case hinging on competing accounts of alleged historical events,” they added.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/08/2022 – 22:45

  • Lasers Can "Hack" Self-Driving LiDAR Sensors, Creating False "Blind Spots", New Study Reveals
    Lasers Can “Hack” Self-Driving LiDAR Sensors, Creating False “Blind Spots”, New Study Reveals

    In what is likely going to be another thorn in the side of Elon Musk, Tesla and Autopilot, it was revealed in a report last week that many self-driving features in vehicles can be “messed with” using lasers. 

    A brand new study that was put together and uploaded in late October, called “You Can’t See Me: Physical Removal Attacks on LiDAR-based Autonomous Vehicles Driving Frameworks” made the revelation, which was also reported on by Cosmos Magazine. 

    Researchers in the U.S. and Japan found that vehicles could be tricked into not seeing pedestrians (or other objects in their way) using lasers. These cars, which use LiDAR to sense objects around them, send out laser lights and then use the reflection back to judge how far away objects are. 

    The study revealed that a perfectly timed laser shone back into a LiDAR system can create “a blind spot large enough to hide an object like a pedestrian,” according to Cosmos. 

    The study’s abstract says: “While existing attacks on LiDAR-based autonomous driving architectures focus on lowering the confidence score of AV object detection models to induce obstacle misdetection, our research discovers how to leverage laser-based spoofing techniques to selectively remove the LiDAR point cloud data of genuine obstacles at the sensor level before being used as input to the AV perception. The ablation of this critical LiDAR information causes autonomous driving obstacle detectors to fail to identify and locate obstacles and, consequently, induces AVs to make dangerous automatic driving decisions”

    University of Florida cyber security researcher professor Sara Rampazzi commented: “We mimic the LIDAR reflections with our laser to make the sensor discount other reflections that are coming in from genuine obstacles.”

    “The LIDAR is still receiving genuine data from the obstacle, but the data are automatically discarded because our fake reflections are the only one perceived by the sensor,” she continued. 

    Any laser used in this manner would not only have to be perfectly timed, but would have to move with the vehicle, the report says. 

    University of Michigan computer scientist Yulong Cao, co-author of the report, said: “Revealing this liability allows us to build a more reliable system. In our paper, we demonstrate that previous defence strategies aren’t enough, and we propose modifications that should address this weakness.”

    The research will be presented at the 2023 USENIX Security Symposium, the report says. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/08/2022 – 22:25

  • Locomotive Machinists Narrowly Approve Ratification Of Labor Agreement
    Locomotive Machinists Narrowly Approve Ratification Of Labor Agreement

    By Joanna Marsh of FreightWaves

    Members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District 19 narrowly approved the ratification of a labor agreement that has been nearly three years in the making.

    Fifty-two percent voted in favor of accepting the agreement, IAM said Saturday. About 59% of IAM’s membership voted. Overall membership totals about 4,900 workers, who serve as locomotive machinists, roadway mechanists and facility maintenance personnel for the railroads.

    The union, which spoke to FreightWaves this week about the contract negotiation process, said it was “confident that this is the best deal for our members” while acknowledging that the contract didn’t have universal appeal. 

    “Our union recognizes that the agreement wasn’t accepted overwhelmingly, so our team will continue conversing with our members at our rail yards across the nation,” the union said in a statement Saturday. “This agreement is the first step in addressing some of the issues in our industry.”

    IAM also said leadership “worked night and day to communicate the agreement’s benefits and what would happen if it was rejected.”

    “Our fight was able to shine a light on the work-life balance issues as well as the lack of proper paid sick leave. Our union will continue to amplify the deficiencies in the carriers’ sick leave and attendance policies,” IAM said.

    The National Carriers Conference Committee (NCCC), the group representing the freight railroads, said it was pleased with IAM’s voting results.

    “The IAM agreement, like the agreements with six other rail unions that have already ratified, implements the recommendations of Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) No. 250, including the largest wage package in nearly five decades, maintains rail employees’ platinum-level health benefits, and adds an additional day of paid time off for IAM-represented workers,” NCCC said.

    “The successful result announced today follows an initial unsuccessful ratification attempt by the IAM last month. The ratified agreement is consistent with the framework recommended by the PEB,” NCCC continued, noting that this latest agreement followed one that was rejected by IAM’s membership in September. Representatives for IAM and the railroads went back to the negotiating table after that to com up with this latest iteration. 

    According to IAM, the revised ratified agreement will include a cap in healthcare costs and addresses issues related to single-room occupancy and travel expenses and per diem. 

    The agreement also includes plans to conduct a joint study with the railroads on overtime and overtime policies, as well as a “me-too” clause in which IAM would receive the same provisions should there be another agreement that appears to improve upon IAM’s agreement. 

    A new labor agreement for each of the 12 unions has been in the works since January 2020, but negotiations between the unions and the railroads failed to progress. In July, President Joe Biden appointed three independent experts to serve on the PEB, which conducted hearings and received testimony from stakeholders about how the unions and railroads could resolve the impasse. PEB issued its recommendations, which were meant to serve as a jumping-off point for a new contract.

    So far, seven unions have ratified their agreements, while another three still need to vote on whether to ratify their tentative agreements, according to NCCC. Two of the three include the two biggest unions representing train conductors and engineers, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) and the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers-Transportation Division (SMART-TD). 

    Two other unions, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way-Employes Division (BMWED) and the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, recently voted to reject their tentative agreements, and so both are back at the bargaining table with the railroads.

    BMWED could initiate a work stoppage as early as Nov. 19, but that would be before BLET and SMART-TD would have completed voting on their tentative agreements, NCCC said. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/08/2022 – 22:05

  • Sam Bankman "Fried" Nearly All Of His $16 Billion Fortune
    Sam Bankman “Fried” Nearly All Of His $16 Billion Fortune

    Binance’s Changpeng Zhao appears to have cast the death blow on competitor FTX and its “billionaire” founder/CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried. Bankman-Fried’s fall from grace has been one of the more stunning losses of net worth in recent history. Despite there likely being issues under the surface prior to Tuesday, a massive $6 billion in withdrawals forced the company into a liquidity crisis. Its FTT token then crashed before SBF reached out to nemisis Zhao at Binance for a bailout. 

    The situation culminated in all of crypto crashing on Tuesday – including pulling down the entire stock market at points – and Bankman Fried losing a substantial portion of his net worth, according to Bloomberg. In fact, reports say he has lost 94% of his $16 billion fortune. 

    His fortune was $26 billion at its peak, the report says, but the future of it all is now “in doubt”. Now, in a eulogy out Tuesday afternoon, Bloomberg says his fortune “will be annihilated at the hands of his billionaire rival”. Going down with the SBF ship are investors like Softbank’s Vision Fund (of course), Temasek and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. which had $400 million invested in FTX at a $32 billion valuation. 

    SBF had a 53% stake in FTX that was worth about $6.2 billion prior to the week’s events. The other $7.4 billion of his fortune was tied up in Alameda Research, which now appears to be completely insolvent. Bloomberg’s prognosis was bleak, to say the least:

    “The Bloomberg wealth index assumes existing FTX investors, including Bankman-Fried, will be completely wiped out by Binance’s bailout, and that the root of the exchange’s problems stemmed from Alameda. As a result, both FTX and Alameda are given a $1 value. “

    They estimate that SBF’s remaining fortune will be about $1 billion, or a loss of 94%. We’re guessing SBF is going to need some of that remaining $1 billion for legal expenses, too. 

    Competitor Zhao – now at the top of the crypto heap, at least for the time being – had a fortune was as high as $97 billion back in January 2022. 

    Recall, we have followed the FTX/Binance story all day today – you can read our coverage and wrap up of the day’s events here. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/08/2022 – 21:45

  • New York Concealed Carry Law Ruled Unconstitutional Again
    New York Concealed Carry Law Ruled Unconstitutional Again

    Submitted by Gun Owners Of America.,

    Gun Owners of America secured a historic victory in the battle for gun rights on Monday when New York Judge Glenn Suddaby issued a preliminary injunction suspending many parts of New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA). 

    This victory follows Gun Owners of America & Gun Owners Foundation securing a temporary restraining order against the aforementioned CCIA in October, which a federal appeals court then blocked.

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    This ruling enjoins many of the worst provisions of New York’s ignorantly titled “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” such as the “good moral character” clause which allowed licensing officials to not only infringe on applicants Second Amendment rights, but also their First and Fourth Amendment rights by demanding they disclose social media accounts and personal relationships. 

    Judge Suddaby also struck down many of the so-called “sensitive location” gun bans including all places of worship, buses, public parks, and many more.

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    The entire ‘restricted locations’ applying to private property was enjoined, as well.. This law made it so that ALL private property was considered a gun-free zone. To allow concealed carry permit holders to exercise their rights, a private property owner would have been required to prominently display a sign that guns are welcome, the complete opposite of the rest of the country. This was government overreach on private property and was rightfully struck down.

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    GOA’s attorneys of record, Rob Olson and Stephen Stamboulieh, took on an army of anti-gun lawyers to defeat New York in an uphill court battle spanning the past few months.  

    This decision also has national repercussions. New York has been a testing ground for ways to get around the NYSRPA v. Bruen Supreme Court decision since the High Court handed it down in late June. States like New Jersey have passed similar restrictions and have closely watched GOA’s legal challenge to New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act. Some states and localities are even waiting to pass such legislation pending the outcome of GOA’s challenge.

    This victory sends a clear message to those anti-gun states that the courts will overturn unjust laws that infringe on the constitutional rights of American citizens.

    Erich Pratt, GOA’s Senior Vice President, had this to say:

    “Just like we warned politicians after the Bruen decision, fall in line, or we will force you to. We are excited to see Kathy Hochul finally served a plate of humble pie, and we are fully prepared to continue the fight should she again attempt to disarm the citizens of her state at a time when her party’s policies are only escalating the danger that everyday citizens face.” 

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    We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.

    *   *   *

    [ZH: While Gun Owners of America rolled back most ‘sensitive place’ restrictions where people are barred from carrying concealed firearms, there are separate lawsuits concerning Times Square and subways, which weren’t included in this decision.]

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/08/2022 – 21:25

  • A Net 17 Percent Say They Will Spend Less This Holiday Season
    A Net 17 Percent Say They Will Spend Less This Holiday Season

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    17 percent believe they will spend less this year. Many are stressed over gifts and even the Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner…

    Graphic courtesy of Morning Consult

    A Morning Consult offers a First Look at Consumers’ 2022 Holiday Plans

    Key Takeaways 

    • Financial Service: To avoid going into debt this holiday season, consumers are being smarter about budgeting in advance and are more likely to favor a BNPL approach to cover holiday expenses over opening a new credit card. Though shoppers are feeling inflation’s pinch, spending levels will look similar to last year. 

    • Retail and E-Commerce: Consumers will be looking for the best deals and making compromises so they can keep their holiday spending in check. While that may have previously been good for Black Friday retailers, less than half of shoppers plan to to take advantage of the sale event. 

    • Travel and Hospitality: Travelers will need to make tradeoffs to combat cost concerns. Americans are looking forward to holiday travel after two years of scaled-back celebrations, but cost has replaced COVID as an influential factor. To avoid overspending, travelers plan to shorten trips, bunk with relatives and leverage points and rewards to cover costs. 

    • Food and Beverage: Purchasing holiday groceries will be a stressor for some, but most feel excited about celebrations. Despite inflation, most consumers plan on sticking to a consistent foods and drinks budget. Hosts from different generations approach their holiday celebrations differently, an important factor for brands to consider.  

    Stressed Over Groceries 

    Looking for Deals 

    • As a result of inflation, 82% of shoppers say they intend to look for more deals and discounts, while 72% plan to look for less expensive alternatives. 

    • Millennials, the generation most worried about their finances this holiday season, are most likely to seek these lower-cost tradeoffs.  

    56 Percent Plan to Give Gift Cards 

    Gift cards are practical. But cash is even more practical. 

    Regarding gift cards, I wonder “why bother?” 

    You give a gift card and get a gift card. Why not just stop the exchange and say Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays or whatever greeting you prefer?

    OK , if its a targeted gift card to a sporting goods specialty store the money goes to an designated idea. But what if the recipient would rather have something else?

    Things like Harry & David fruit baskets, Omaha Steaks, and numerous cheese shops are ridiculously expensive for what you get. 

    My suggestion, other than gifts for your kids: Just stop. And tell your kids you don’t want anything other than to see them more often if that is indeed the case. 

    Buy Now Pay Later 

    BNPL vs Credit Card 

    I don’t understand this pairing at all. What does difference does a new credit card vs an old one make? 

    OK. For those who carry a balance, the initial purchase on a new card does not have interest for a month.

    But if you are carrying a balance month after month, you are already spending too much. 

    Will You Spend Less or More?

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    Mish Suggestions and Tips

    If you routinely carry a credit card balance, then look in the mirror and admit that you are a sucker. 

    Instead of giving or getting presents pay down your debt.

    BNPL is a trap. You pay in installments, but with few exceptions you will be paying built-in credit fees that may be even worse than credit card fees. 

    Stressed over holiday groceries? Then make lasagna or stuffed shells or something you don’t normally cook to make it special. Jumbo shells stuffed with ricotta cheese and pepperoni bits would probably look special, be very inexpensive, tasty, and provide as many leftovers as you want. 

    Slice and cook the pepperoni first and drain the grease. You can put some pepperoni inside each shell or cover the tops of the shells with pepperoni and a layer of mozzarella cheese. 

    Want another food suggestion? Try Rock Cornish hens stuffed with rice instead of a big turkey. 

    If you are stressed over groceries, then you have to be stressed over everything else as well.

    My number one stress-reducing recommendation is simple: Just stop the gifts except for the kids, and then don’t splurge.

    Other than the kids, only buy what you can afford and would have purchased anyway. Then wrap it up if you want, and give it to yourself tagged from whomever. Then you get exactly what you want, no exchanges necessary. 

    For many, exchanging gifts is a stressful waste of time, energy, and money. So stop!

    But if you can afford to exchange and it makes you happy, then go ahead. Be happy.

    *  *  *

    Like these reports? I hope so, and if you do, please Subscribe to MishTalk Email Alerts.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/08/2022 – 20:45

  • Citadel's Ken Griffin Touts Florida As "Great Environment And Streets Are Safe And Clean"
    Citadel’s Ken Griffin Touts Florida As “Great Environment And Streets Are Safe And Clean”

    Before we dive into the latest comments of Citadel’s billionaire founder, Ken Griffin, praising Florida for all its beauty after he moved his firm from the hellhole of Chicago. We want to remind readers about the events that led to Griffin’s decision. 

    In May, Griffin was becoming increasingly frustrated with the eruption in violent crime across Chicago and Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s inability to solve those issues. 

    At the time, he said, “We’re getting to the point that if things don’t change, we’re gone. Things aren’t changing.” 

    By June, Griffin sent a letter to Citadel employees that he had moved to Florida and that his market-making business, Citadel Securities, would also migrate to Miami. He noted in the letter that he views Florida as a better corporate environment, and though he didn’t specifically cite crime as a factor, company officials said it was a consideration.

    Later that month, Bloomberg reported the new headquarters of Citadel would be at 1201 Brickell Bay Drive. The secret deal to obtain the property closed in April and was shielded from the public by a limited liability company with a Chicago mailing address.  

    In mid-August, CNBC noted Griffin had already spent a billion dollars on Florida real estate. This includes the plot of land for the new headquarters building and a massive estate in Palm Beach. 

    On Monday, Griffin, now Florida’s richest man, spoke with Francis Suarez, Miami’s Republican mayor, who said the real reason he moved his market-making operation and residence to South Florida wasn’t because of taxes but the positive atmosphere, according to Bloomberg. 

    “It’s gonna get me thrown out of here, but taxes weren’t part of our decision to come to Florida.

    “When you’ve got great schools, a great environment and your streets are safe and clean, that’s when you’ve got a place you want to live in and call home.

    “There’s something very special about the government in Florida and their focus on delivering traditional values for the community,” he told Suarez in a conversation. 

    Griffin is one of the most high-profile individuals to pack up his bags and head to a conservative-friendly state after living in a progressive-run city that had social justice reforms backfire and spark even more violent crime. 

    The billionaire isn’t alone. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of everyday Americans have made the same decision to flee imploding liberal-run cities in the last few years because of high taxes and socio-economic collapses. Many have fled to more prosperous and safer conservative-run cities. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/08/2022 – 20:25

  • Oman's Energy Minister: It's Foolish To Assume Renewables Can Meet Global Demand
    Oman’s Energy Minister: It’s Foolish To Assume Renewables Can Meet Global Demand

    Authored by Svetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

    The world’s energy needs will only grow, and it would be “foolish” to think that rising demand can be met with renewables alone, Oman’s Energy Minister Salim Al-Aufi told CNBC on Tuesday.  

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    Energy needs to be affordable and this is the first pillar of energy supply when the energy transition is concerned, the minister said.  

    Oman’s official also defended, again, the OPEC+ decision to reduce the headline target oil production by 2 million barrels per day (bpd) as of this month, saying that the group is proactive in trying to balance the market.

    Al-Aufi also said that he wasn’t surprised by the U.S. blowback after the OPEC+ decision was announced.

    “It was expected,” he told CNBC.

    Referring to the energy transition and renewables, Oman, like many Middle Eastern oil and gas producers, believes that all forms of energy will be needed to meet the world’s growing energy demand in the coming years and decades.

    Back in September, Saudi Aramco’s chief executive Amin Nasser said that years of underinvestment, a lack of a backup plan, and alternatives not ready to step up and replace conventional energy are the real causes of this state of energy insecurity today.

    The world and policymakers need a more credible energy transition plan, which has to recognize that “supplies of ample and affordable conventional energy are still required over the long-term,” Nasser said in a speech at the Schlumberger Digital Forum 2022 in Switzerland. Aramco’s CEO reiterated the long-held view of Saudi Arabia that the world will need oil and gas for the foreseeable future and will need more investment in the industry just to keep supply steady amid declining output from maturing wells, and even more investment to boost production capacity to meet the world’s energy needs.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/08/2022 – 20:05

  • China Cancels Top EU Official's High-Profile Video Address For Ukraine War Comments
    China Cancels Top EU Official’s High-Profile Video Address For Ukraine War Comments

    European Council president Charles Michel was set to deliver an address at the opening day of the China International Import Expo (CIIE) hosted in Shanghai on Friday, but Chinese authorities have pulled the pre-recorded video address in a very brazen act of censorship of a top official and diplomat, Reuters reports.

    “As requested by the Chinese authorities, we had indeed provided a pre-recorded message which was ultimately not shown. We have addressed this through the normal diplomatic channels,” a statement from EC President Michel’s office confirmed. 

    European Council President Charles Michel, via Reuters

    The high-profile speech was likely canceled by Chinese authorities as it was expected to criticize Russia’s war in Ukraine while also provocatively urging the European Union to reduce trade dependency on China.

    What’s more is that he was expected to call on Beijing to pressure Moscow to halt the ongoing attack on Ukraine, and heap criticism of the Russia-China “no-limits” partnership declared just before the war’s start in February. 

    According to statements from diplomatic sources cited in Reuters, the rebuke of Russia was going to be scathing, at an event where President Xi Jinping is to speak as well: 

    Mr Michel’s speech included strong criticism of Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine. “In Europe, we want balance in our trade relations… to avoid over-dependencies,” his speech said, reported Reuters citing the diplomats familiar with what he was to say.

    “This is also true of our trade relations with China.”

    “China has a role in using its influence to stop Russia’s brutal war… through your so-called ‘no-limits’ partnership with Russia,” Mr Michel was to say, referring to a pact announced by Mr Xi and Mr Putin in Beijing before the war began.

    “You, China, can help put an end to this.”

    Xi and Michel are expected to meet in person next week at the G-20 summit in Bali. Biden will also meet with Xi – a moment that will drive headlines, likely overshadowing everything else.

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    But a Sunday report in the South China Morning Post noted that “Beijing has yet to officially confirm either Xi’s attendance at the summit or a meeting with Biden, who will be in Bali from November 13 to 16.”

    If it happens, it will be the first face-to-face meeting with Xi since Biden took office in 2021. According to the US side, via US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, “There’s an awful lot of issues for us to talk to China about. Some issues are fairly contentious and some should be collaborative.” The US confirmed ongoing intense discussions and planning with the Chinese side for the meeting.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/08/2022 – 19:46

  • Election Night Results: FL "Catastrophic" For Dems, Abbot Wins TX, Vance Takes OH
    Election Night Results: FL “Catastrophic” For Dems, Abbot Wins TX, Vance Takes OH

    Polls have now closed in a number of states and while the percentage of votes counted remains low, official media sources have called a number of seats. The Senate remains a tossup, but The House is swinging increasingly likely to the Republicans.

    Asked about what he thinks about the number of prospects he has endorsed in tonight’s race, former President Trump remarked with a smile on his face: 

    “Well, I think if they win, I should get all the credit. If they lose, I should not be blamed at all.”

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    There were 45,920,446 early votes cast in the elections, according to the latest tally by the University of Florida’s United States Elections Project. That includes 20,487,803 in-person early votes and 25,432,643 mail ballots returned.

    If you’re looking for a Democrat bellwether, The NYC Board of Elections says about 1.4 million voters have been to a polling station, that’s down from 2.1 million voters in 2018, but there are still a few hours left to go.

    Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wins her NYC district, the AP says.

    Kemp is leading Abrams in the GA Governor race…

    Abbott dominated Beto in the Texas Governor race…

    NBC has called Ohio for JD Vance

    GA & PA are still too close to call…

     

    Something “odd” happening in PA…

    However, Florida is flashing a even brighter red warning signal for Democrats.

    • Fox, CNN, NBC all projecting Republican Senator Marco Rubio wins re-election in Florida.

    • CBS, NBC projecting GOP Governor Desantis Wins Re-Election in Florida.

    David Plouffe, the former Obama election chief, calls the Florida numbers tonight “catastrophic” – and hugely problematic for Democrats if this keeps up in 2024.

    “In Florida, it’s catastrophic. Obviously, we saw greater urgency in 20 in the presidential race. Let’s remember, Barack Obama won in 2012, basically tied the Cuban vote, got over 77% of Hispanic votes. The Obama coalition in Florida is gone. We have to rebuild it now,”

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    In the Senate:

     

    Source

    In the House:

    Based on their current race projections, Decision Desk HQ says Republicans have an 86% chance of winning a U.S. House majority.

    Republicans have already flipped a seat tonight — in Guam. The island territory elected Republican James Moylan to be its non-voting delegate, according to results from the Guam Election Commission. With all 67 precincts reporting, Moylan won with 52.19% of the vote, beating Democrat Judith T. Pat, who received 47.15%. The last time Guam was represented by a Republican was 1993.

    Source

    As a reminder, Bill Clinton lost 54 House seats in 1994, Barack Obama lost 63 in 2010 and Rabobank forecasts Democrats to lose 75 seats in this election.

    Watch live:

    What time do polls close?

    *  *  *

    Well, you’ve done your patriotic duty to uphold democracy across the union and now all that is left is to sit back and watch the completely error-free results of the Midterm elections quickly roll in as the billions of dollars spent on people and machines to enhance voting integrity and accuracy are shown as being well spent.

    Of course, that’s all ridiculous as the mainstream media and Democrat apparatchiks have already set the narrative that ‘we, the people’ should not expect the results tonight (like Brazil managed?) or in fact any time soon.

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    Around 44 million people had cast their ballots early for the midterm elections as of November 7. Of those, roughly 20 million people voted in person nationwide, while more than 24 million returned their ballot by mail. This is around a 13 percent increase from 2018, when the last midterms were held. Then, a total of 39 million ballots were counted, according to the U.S. Elections Project.

    Infographic: 2022 Midterms: Have More People Voted Early? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Analysts claim that this could be interpreted as a good sign for Democrats, as in past years the party’s followers have been more likely to vote ahead. While even with these figures it is unclear what the midterm results will be, it does show that there is an increase in political engagement in several states. As The Washington Post notes, 2.5 million people had voted in person early on Friday in Georgia this year when early voting ended, far surpassing the 1.9 million who cast their ballot early in 2018.

    It is worth noting that in some states, for example in Vermont and Hawaii, early voting was much higher than in the last midterms because these states changed the law to make it easier to vote early by mail. In 2018, Hawaii moved to all mail-in, which explains the state’s high figures. Vermont in 2021 changed its law to mail out ballots to all active voters without the need to request.

    The U.S. Elections Project was last updated on 7 November, with states showing the latest available data.

    Remember this chart…

    As a reminder, in 2020, 42 states and Washington, D.C., had reported enough results for news organizations to project winners in the presidential race by about 3:00 a.m. Eastern.

    But eight states took longer. Six of them — all but Alaska and Michigan — have competitive Senate races this year that could determine the balance of power in Congress.

    Of course, before we get to what to watch for tonight, we can’t let the elephant in the room go.

    We have seen ‘voting issues’ across multiple states today with 20% of Maricopa County (AZ) machines non-functioning at one point.

    So, don’t hold your breath for any real final answers tonight. However, while there are a handful of key races to watch, we note that Axios details seven bellwethers which will help navigate the results as they drip-drip-drip in tonight to see whether Republicans are gaining a foothold in parts of the country that have long eluded them, for example, and the types of Democrats who can win even when the odds would seem to be stacked against them.

    1. The best early bellwether: Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s (D-Va.) race against Republican Yesli Vega, in the exurbs outside Washington, D.C., will offer a clear early signal of the national political mood.

    • A pragmatic Democrat with a national security background, Spanberger has condemned her party’s left wing early and often On Saturday, she was endorsed by vocal Trump critic Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.).

    • Vega reflects the under-the-radar diversity of the GOP’s recruiting class — a Latina candidate who serves as a county supervisor and has a law enforcement background.

    • Polls close in Virginia early (7 p.m. ET) and the state typically counts ballots quickly. Spanberger’s early victory in 2018 foreshadowed the Democratic wave that year. If Republicans return the favor in 2022, it would be a sign of a wave in the opposite direction.

    2. The most important county: Miami-Dade, Florida.

    • Republicans are confident that Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Marco Rubio will comfortably win their re-elections, but the bigger dynamic to follow is their margin of victory in the state’s most populous, majority-Hispanic county.

    • Miami-Dade County hasn’t voted for a Republican for president since 1988 and hasn’t backed a GOP governor since 2002 (Jeb Bush). Rubio hasn’t won an outright majority in his home county for his Senate races, either.

    • But both have a chance to win in Miami-Dade — result that would signal a GOP landslide and provide rocket fuel for a potential DeSantis presidential campaign.

    3. The Democrat best-positioned to survive a red wave: Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who is still running neck-and-neck against Republican state Sen. Tom Barrett.

    • Even as many Democratic colleagues in bluer territory look awfully vulnerable, Slotkin is holding her own in one of the most expensive House battlegrounds.

    • If Slotkin runs against the tide, she’ll credit Liz Cheney’s endorsement for pushing some suburban swing voters her way. But if Barrett defeats the two-term lawmaker, he’ll be reflective of the new MAGA-aligned Republican majority.

    4. The upset to watch: The New York governor’s race.

    • It’s hard to imagine deep-blue New York electing a Republican governor — especially one who has been closely aligned with former President Trump.

    • But Gov. Kathy Hochul’s tone-deaf reaction to voters concerned about crime is giving Republican Lee Zeldin a fighting chance.

    5. Rare Democratic bright spot: Kansas.

    • Kansas was one of the first signs of a backlash to aggressive abortion restrictions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling this past summer.

    • Even as Democrats are struggling in some deep-blue states, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly is running competitively against Republican state Attorney General Derek Schmidt, according to strategists from both parties.

    • Rep. Sharice Davids (D-Kansas), representing a suburban Kansas City district that Republicans drew to their favor in redistricting, is also in a strong position. A NYT/Siena poll this week showed Davids leading Republican Amanda Adkins by 15 points in a Biden +5 district.

    6. The races that will settle the Mitch McConnell-Rick Scott feud: Arizona and New Hampshire.

    • The cash-flush, McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund decided not to spend in Arizona and pulled out of the New Hampshire race in October. The super PAC’s reason: It was more important to spend in the races that will decide the Senate majority, rather than gambling on candidates who may be general-election liabilities.

    • Scott’s allies, meanwhile, view McConnell as overly cautious and worry Republicans will miss an opportunity to take advantage of the GOP wave in two swing states, even with flawed nominees.

    • If Blake Masters and Don Bolduc win without much establishment help, they’ll likely be thorns in McConnell’s side if he becomes majority leader.

    7. Biggest demographic shift: Working-class Hispanic voters.

    • Republicans are growing bullish that they’ll make significant inroads in Hispanic-heavy parts of the country, where concerns about crime and the economy are creating a wedge against their traditional Democratic affiliation.

    • “Everyone is seeing that the Hispanic districts have been two, three, four clicks to the right compared to their historical performance,” said one GOP official tracking House races. “They’re coming in red hot Republican.”

    • The American Enterprise Institute demographics tracker finds the Democratic congressional margin among Hispanic voters 7-9 points below its 2020 level and 17-19 points below its 2018 level.

    • Key areas to watch for as a sign of the Hispanic shift right: Nevada, the Rio Grande Valley in Texas (where Republicans are hoping to sweep three majority-Hispanic districts), and Colorado’s 8th district, a newly created seat outside Denver.

    Finally, while it sounds odd, Alex Berenson makes an interesting point as to why Democrats should be hoping they get crushed.

    Tactically, they need a loss so big that Uncle Joe has no choice but to announce very quickly that he will not be running in 2024.

    They need a wide open primary that will help them find the next generation of CENTRIST Democrats.

    What they do not need, under any circumstances, is for Biden to limp along until late fall 2023 and then bow to reality, creating a giant mess that will only help those Democrats with super-high name recognition.

    A close loss will not force that reckoning. But a bad one will (I hope). And a saner Democratic Party will be good for everyone.

    Having said all that, we are left thinking, just what do liberal Democrats do, if, in a free and fair election, US voters throw them out and replace them with people our elites routinely equate with fascists and Nazis?

    …and most importantly, who (or what) will get the blame?

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/08/2022 – 19:27

  • World Dollar Hegemony Is Ending (And That May Be A Good Thing)
    World Dollar Hegemony Is Ending (And That May Be A Good Thing)

    Authored by Patrick Barron via The Mises Institute,

    The end of world dollar hegemony is coming and hardly anyone in government is taking notice or even understands what this means. Since the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, the dollar has been the only currency accepted throughout the world for settlement of international trade accounts among nations.

    Prior to 1944, physical gold was used for international settlement. When an exporter in country A sold goods to an importer in country B, country B would pay with its own currency. But country A would have no interest in allowing country B’s currency to build up in its vaults beyond an amount required to settle its own importers’ needs. Thus, country A would demand that country B redeem its own currency in gold. Sometimes country B would ship physical gold to country A. Or perhaps gold held in safekeeping in a third country would be designated as now belonging to country A, a book entry transaction that is more convenient than physical movement.

    The Bretton Woods Agreement and Its Demise

    The Bretton Woods Agreement added the dollar as tantamount to physical gold at $35 per ounce. The reason was simple: at the end of World War II the United States had accumulated a preponderance of gold, due primarily to its role as the “arsenal of democracy.” Thus, central banks could exchange dollars for settlement rather than moving or redesignating the ownership of physical gold. The weakness of this system was that the world had to trust the USA not to create more dollars than it could redeem for gold at $35 per ounce. But central banks always had the option to demand physical gold from the USA and hence ensure that their trust in the measure of $35 per ounce was fully supported.

    After approximately twenty years of this arrangement the market became concerned that the USA was not living up to its obligations. The origin of this concern was centered in France. President Charles de Gaulle himself was a firm proponent of the classical gold standard as was his financial advisor Jacques Rueff. Starting in the late 1960s de Gaulle ordered the Bank of France to redeem 80 percent of its vast dollar reserves for gold. Other central banks followed suit, and a typical bank run developed.

    As USA gold reserves reached critically low levels, President Richard Nixon took the USA off the gold exchange standard, as the system of central bank redemption was called, in the fall of 1971. It did NOT devalue the dollar to gold, which it could have done, and promise to stop dollar expansion. Instead, the USA simply ended dollar redemption for gold, allowing the USA to create as many fiat dollars as the world market would accept.

    It turned out that the world market would accept a lot of fiat dollars. A major reason was that Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer, agreed to demand payment in dollars for its oil, thus creating worldwide demand for dollars.

    The Petrodollar Era Supplants Bretton Woods, but Its End Is Nigh

    This “petrodollar” arrangement is now breaking down, due to the ever-accelerating debasement of the dollar. The cause of the debasement is the unholy alliance of the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, and the US government. The Federal Reserve creates, out of thin air, all the dollars that the government needs to maintain its massive and ever-increasing spending deficit. The monetization of these deficits has led to a loss of dollar purchasing power at an accelerating rate.

    The purpose of explaining all this is to give background to the currently developing situation. For almost eighty years the federal government has been able to spend as much as it desired, knowing that the world either would hold its dollars or that the Fed would monetize whatever the market would not accept—i.e., the Fed would buy the government’s debt itself and (figuratively) print the money it would give to the Treasury. The Fed would then hold the debt on its own balance sheet. The sheer scale of its intervention is shocking. In 2008 the Fed’s balance sheet what slightly under $0.880 trillion. Today it is $8.816 trillion. (See this graph from the Fed’s own website.)

    So, what did the federal government do with all that newly printed money? It spent it on war and welfare, of course. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society welfare state is now firmly entrenched and constantly expanding. The American military has intervened in every corner of the world. It seems that all that is necessary for the USA to intervene militarily is for some local disputant on the other side of the world, with its own incomprehensible historical animosities, to claim that its neighbor is invading its sovereign territory and/or committing atrocities. The American people are whipped into a frenzy of righteousness and off we go to Timbuktu. The result is thousands of dead, billions squandered, and the local situation even worse than before.

    All this mayhem could only be funded by worldwide acceptance of the fiat dollar. But much of the world has had enough. There are several organizations that are cooperating to develop an alternative to the dollar for the settlement of international trade. The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), and the Eurasian Economic Union have formed a working group to develop a commodity based medium of exchange to replace the dollar as the premier means for the settlement of international trade. Goldmoney’s Alasdair Macleod has written extensively about this project. More countries—especially countries currently using the dollar, such as Saudi Arabia—have announced their intensions to join the project. More, many more, will follow Saudi Arabia.

    How to convey the importance of this development to the general public? It all seems complicated and probably years away. Plus, it may not work. That is the purpose of the next part of my article.

    The Magic Checkbook

    Let’s break this down to the individual level, so that everyone can grasp its full meaning. Let us assume that you were handed a checkbook and told that you could write as many checks as you wished in any amount you desired and, most importantly, no one would refuse to take your check, and no one would cash it because the checking account has no money anyway. Whoever receives the check can only pass it along, via ordinary trade, to someone else.

    First, you can see that once this money is created by you, it will never be destroyed. It will continue to grow every time you write a new check. In other words, the money supply will grow according to your propensity to spend. Now let’s assume that when given this magic checkbook, you had been a frugal and responsible person. That’s one of the reasons that you were given it in the first place. For some time, you continued to live frugally, but over the years your self-control breaks down and you start to spend.

    To placate your conscience, you spend some of the money on others—i.e., the poor, the elderly, the disabled, etc. But eventually you succumb to ever increasing DEMANDS for money to compensate the victims of all kinds of disasters. If you don’t send money to the suffering masses, you are condemned by all.

    So, you spend. Then you decide that you should spend money on rehabilitating humanity, exploring the solar system, funding higher education. The DEMANDS for money from your magic checkbook grow and grow. If you try to moderate your spending, you threaten to damage your reputation internationally.

    Things get out of hand. But this isn’t the end of the story. The spending from the magic checkbook has created massive price increases and has funded a class of sycophants, deadbeats, and megalomaniacs. A splinter group decides to spurn accepting checks from the magic checkbook and develop a new medium of exchange. It isn’t easy, and it takes quite a while. There are advances and retrenchments, but eventually honest money reemerges. Now more and more people refuse to accept your checks from the magic checkbook.

    Rise of a Competing Reserve Currency

    This is where the world is headed, because the USA cannot force sovereign nations to accept the dollar, especially if there is another and better choice. The USA has not lived up to its responsibility to protect the purchasing power of the dollar via controlling its supply. Lord Acton’s warning is as important today as ever—i.e., “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

    The new SCO currency will supplant the dollar as the world’s premier reserve currency primarily because it will be backed to a large extent by commodities and it will not be under the control of one sovereign country but a number of sovereign countries, all dedicated to its monetary health in ensuring the free flow of international trade and payments. It will be a loss for the dollar, of course, and for the USA, but frankly, the world will benefit overall.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/08/2022 – 19:25

  • North Korea Angrily Rejects US "Rumor" It's Supplying Russian Forces
    North Korea Angrily Rejects US “Rumor” It’s Supplying Russian Forces

    North Korea on Tuesday again lashed out at the United States, vehemently rejecting accusations that Pyongyang has been supplying artillery ammunition to Russian forces for the war in Ukraine. 

    A statement in KCNA refuted the charge as “groundless” – chalking it up to Washington spreading rumors and propaganda. “Recently, the US is persistently spreading a groundless ‘rumor of arms dealings’ between the DPRK and Russia,” North Korea’s vice director of military foreign affairs of the Ministry of National Defense said.

    Image source: KCNA/AFP

    The statement added that it’s part of an ongoing US “hostile attempt to tarnish the image of the DPRK in the international arena.” Tensions surrounding the divided Korean peninsula are at boiling point over last week’s record number of missile launches out of the north, and joint US-south war drills which were deemed a provocation. 

    “We once again make clear that we have never had ‘arms dealings’ with Russia and that we have no plan to do so in the future,” the statement from Pyongyang added.

    US officials have cited intelligence reports which allege a North Korea to Russia ammo transfer is the latest sign of desperation amid depleting Russian munitions after six months of war in Ukraine.

    Last week, National Security Council official and spokesman John Kirby told CNN, “In September, the (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) publicly denied that it intended to provide ammunition to Russia.”

    “However, our information indicates that the DPRK is covertly supplying Russia’s war in Ukraine with a significant number of artillery shells, while obfuscating the real destination of the arms shipments by trying to make it appear as though they are being sent to countries in the Middle East or North Africa.”

    In the summer into early September, Western media outlets widely reported on accusations that North Korea was shipping weapons to the Russian military, including millions of rockets and artillery shells, which followed earlier unverified claims that Pyongyang said it was willing to send 100,000 of its troops to help Russia in Ukraine.

    While those allegations never saw any level of confirmation, the Pentagon and US intelligence continued harboring suspicions of large covert weapons and munitions shipments. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/08/2022 – 19:05

  • Seniors Feel Cheated As Inflation Dims Their Golden Years
    Seniors Feel Cheated As Inflation Dims Their Golden Years

    Authored by Andrew Moran and Emel Akan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    For close to 47 million Americans, it was the best of times, and it was the worst of times. Indeed, the current cost-of-living crisis devastating millions of seniors nationwide has forced many to look back at the choices they made throughout their prime working years.

    People shop for groceries at a supermarket in Glendale, California January 12, 2022. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

    Did they save and invest enough? Did they clock in enough hours during their career? Could they have put more money aside for a rainy day?

    The last time inflation was this high, Dennis O’Connor, an 82-year-old retiree from Temecula, California, says he and his peers were able to weather the storm of rising prices. Today, however, they have limited options.

    “When the last events occurred 40 years ago, we were employed. The overriding concern is we cannot plan retirement a second time,” he told The Epoch Times. “When you are younger and working you can recover. Retirees will never have that option.”

    Before retirement, O’Connor served as councilman and mayor for City of Oak Forest. He also worked as a senior executive on some of California’s large infrastructure and environmental projects.

    “Like most retirees, we are from the Silent and Boomer generations, and many are children of the Greatest Generation who experienced World War II and the Great Depression,” he said.

    “We were told to save for retirement, don’t depend on Social Security as it may not be there, contribute to a company’s 401(k) or put money away,” he noted.

    Many retirees depend on a fixed income from their pension plans or Social Security checks and their investments and emergency reserves are being imbibed by inflation.

    “Like most of America’s retirees, I am frightened,” O’Connor adds, noting that many seniors have no experience dealing with inflation and recession during retirement.

    Dennis O’Connor at their home in Temecula, Calif., on Oct. 12, 2022. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    He’s especially worried about women from his generation.

    “They had greater challenges because of lower wages, lack of available retirement plans, and the breakdown of the family.”

    In addition, the stock and bond markets have had a rough year, and it could be a while before investors see a recovery in their portfolios. The bear market has led to investment valuations crumbling as much as 20 percent for O’Connor. His aggressive funds have tumbled between 35 and 40 percent.

    According to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, Americans lost $1.4 trillion in their 401(k) accounts and an additional $2 trillion in their individual retirement accounts (IRAs) in the first half of this year.

    Now that the specter of recession clouds over the nation, there is even more uncertainty for the markets.

    “Sadly, I and most retirees thought our futures would be comfortable, but now that is in doubt,” O’Connor said.

    A recent survey by Allianz found that more than half of Americans are being forced to reduce or stop their contributions to their retirement savings. Forty-three percent say they dipped into their savings, while 72 percent of Baby Boomers are concerned that growing living costs would affect their retirement plans.

    Back to Work

    Today’s generation of retirees is now seeing every aspect of their lives dented by broad-based and persistent inflation. Gas prices, grocery store prices, and electricity bills have all increased by double digits this year.

    KT Hundsen—she chose to use a pseudonym to protect her identity—62, lives in a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota. She and her husband of more than three decades led responsible lives. They pay their bills at the end of every month and refrain from carrying debt. The couple paid off their mortgage last summer and saved money while never overspending.

    “We did the very best job we could to prepare for our senior years,” Hundsen told The Epoch Times.

    Her household lives on a few income streams, including Social Security, her husband’s pension, and an annuity that he withdraws a certain amount from each year. The issue is that the income has been less than they anticipated because a cost-of-living adjustment is not attached to the pension.

    Her husband, 67, retired last summer. But the inflationary economy has forced him to return to work as a janitor at church. Although he had intended to work only eight to 10 hours per week, he has doubled his hours to help cover the cost of his wife’s $600-per-month health insurance premium.

    The concept of “unretirement” has gained popularity this year. Like her husband, many older Americans are returning to the workforce or abandoning the concept of retirement altogether. According to data gathered by Bayard Advertising, a recruitment advertising agency, 64 percent of adults between 55 and 64 years of age returned to the workforce this past spring. About one-third of seniors think they will work through the age of 70 or never retire, a study by BlackRock discovered.

    While the extra money has been of tremendous help to the Hundsens, they receive some other perks from the church.

    “If they have an extra gallon of milk, he can bring it home, and then I make cheese with it,” she said.

    She also feels like she should be working, but employment prospects with her credentials are hard to find.

    Meanwhile, in response to growing food costs, Hundsen is making other changes, especially after seeing the steady rise in prices at the supermarket. She usually buys turkey meat, but it was $11.99 a pound at the deli, “so I didn’t buy it.” She is using her garden more often and putting the items in jars for canning.

    “I’m doing more of that than I have ever done before,” she said. “But there are limits to how many adjustments we can make.”

    When property taxes increase, gasoline prices go up, and other month-to-month fixed costs continually climb, everything start to add up.

    Doing Everything Right

    According to estimates from Bloomberg economists, inflation costs have added more than $5,000 a year to the typical family’s budget.

    “I feel kind of gypped because we thought we did everything right,” Hundsen said. “We weren’t extravagant. We didn’t buy too much. We drove our cars for 15 or 20 years. We didn’t do anything fancy. And, I don’t know, it’s kind of stunning.”

    “But I’m sure there are people who are much worse off than we are,” she added.

    According to Clara Del Villar, director of senior initiatives at FreedomWorks Foundation, 40 percent of Americans have no savings in their retirement.

    “So that means during these volatile times and during inflationary times, they do have to go back to work,” she told The Epoch Times. “Their skills may not be up to date. So, you do see them more in Walmart or other big box retail stores.”

    While Hundsen is hopeful conditions will get better, she is not optimistic about all the debt the U.S. government has saddled her two sons and their family with for years to come.

    “There’s no good solution. That will be painful,” Hundsen said. “It’s depressing to think, how will we ever dig ourselves out of that hole?”

    The national debt recently topped $31 trillion, while interest payments were approximately $400 billion last year. In other words, each taxpayer is on the hook for around $248,000 of the debt, and each adult is responsible for nearly $14,000 of the total interest paid.

    The Forgotten Americans

    Although their stories are all too common in this climate, O’Connor feels that retirees are the forgotten ones because their life challenges are not understood by the news commentators, editors, policymakers, and the social media crowd.

    “We have no spokesperson that understands the lack of control retirees are facing,” he said. “We have little margin for error, and how do you put a price tag on so many emotional issues?”

    Dennis O’Connor and his wife Christy O’Connor at their home in Temecula, Calif., on Oct. 12, 2022. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    “It is unfortunate we have media and political leaders that show little interest in our value,” O’Connor added.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/08/2022 – 18:45

  • "Monstrosities": New York Has Started Erecting Thousands Of Giant Gray 5G Towers
    “Monstrosities”: New York Has Started Erecting Thousands Of Giant Gray 5G Towers

    Look around, you can’t miss them.

    Giant ugly new 5G towers are starting to take over New York City and, despite attempting to look futuristic, many can’t help but notice just how much of an eyesore the additions to city streets have become. 

    The columns are gray and color and about 32 feet high, according to a new report by the New York Times, with some dwarfing three story buildings. And they’re popping up with little to no warning. 

    “We were shocked because we had no idea what it was,” one store owner in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn said. Marion Little, who owns Stripper Stain & Supplies, says that his customers and neighbors have asked about it. 

    He told the New York Times: “They’ve been emailing me, calling me weekends, Facebooking me, like, ‘Yo, what’s that?’ and I’m sitting there like, ‘I have no clue.’”

    “I wasn’t even quite sure what it was,” another resident told The Times about a tower popping up in his neighborhood. “The buses turn here. It’s going to be easy to miscalculate and hit the thing,” he said of the tower’s placement at a B26 bus stop.

    “Never have I heard one mention of residents asking for a tower to be placed where we live,” said Democratic liaison for the 57th Assembly District in Fort Greene Renee Collymore. “Before this tower came, I had fine service. What, a call dropped every now and then? So what. You keep going.”

    Another resident in Chinatown called the tower a “monstrosity,” asking “who wants to look at something like that?”

    Chelsea Formica, who lives on the Upper East Side, got a call from her husband about it while she was out: “He was like, ‘Hey, you know, they put something up outside of our window. I’m just laying here on the couch and it’s pretty big.’”

    When she returned home, she was in disbelief: “I was like, ‘Oh, my God,’ freaking out. It’s huge. It’s so big.”

    The towers are part of a deal that New York City has with CityBridge and LinkNYC, who is going to be installing 2,000 of the towers in the city over the next several years. Many of the towers are taking the place of where old payphones used to be. The towers have not been activated yet. 

    Other towers are going to be placed on top of traffic lights and street lamps, according to the report. 

    The Times notes that 90% of the new towers will be in “neighborhoods in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and above 96th Street in Manhattan”. They will provide residents with free access to digital calling and Wi-Fi. Carriers like AT&T and Verizon will also be able to use the towers to compliment existing infrastructure. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/08/2022 – 18:25

  • China's Headlines Increase Risk Of Market Whipsaws
    China’s Headlines Increase Risk Of Market Whipsaws

    By Michael Msika, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and analyst

    There’s no way of knowing how long a full reopening of China could take, but with very few investors fully positioned for such an eventuality, a case is building for those sectors with most at stake such as miners and luxury.

    While China has denied speculation that it is set to shift away from its Covid-zero policy, some encouraging headlines out of the country have still fueled investor interest in industries that potentially have most to gain.

    The European mining sector, one of the most exposed to Chinese demand, is up 8.5% since the start of this month, outperforming the broader market. Luxury stocks have also been strong, with Kering and Swatch both showing advances of nearly 10%. What’s more, none of those industries trimmed any of their gains after China’s denial.

    According to JPMorgan strategists led by Mislav Matejka, sentiment toward the country has already hit “rock-bottom” and should improve from here. They are overweight miners, saying China’s economy is likely bottoming out and policy is set to become more stimulative. Resilient earnings, strong balance sheets and high dividends are other positives, they say.

    The mining sector gets about 27% of revenue from China, according to Goldman Sachs strategists, with Rio Tinto at 57%, Glencore at 40% and Anglo American at 26%. Luxury has about 26% exposure, they say.

    A basket of European stocks with the largest Chinese presence — including a bunch of miners and luxury shares, but also Volkswagen, BMW, HSBC, Infineon, ASML and Adidas — has underperformed the Stoxx 600 by nearly 10% this year, offering further catch-up potential on reopening chatter.

    Barclays strategists led by Emmanuel Cau are less optimistic and remain skeptical that any full reopening is near, pointing to a likely deterioration of the virus situation in winter, and health officials’ reiteration of China’s commitment to its Covid Zero policy. That said, Cau sees such a possibility as “a wild card into 2023” that investors aren’t yet positioned for.

    Chinese stocks halted a recent rally on Tuesday following a jump in Covid infections. The country reported 7,323 new local Covid cases for Monday, the highest daily number since April 30, according to data from the National Health Commission.

    On the longer term, Cau says China reopening would be positive for global growth, commodities, EU and German equities, cyclicals and value, with semiconductors, luxury, autos, chemicals and industrials the most sensitive. Positioning on cyclicals is currently very bearish, with Covid Zero “likely a key reason,” he says.

    Overall, a China reopening would be a boon for Europe, according to Goldman Sachs strategists, who say the Stoxx 600’s explicit sales exposure to China is about 8%, similar to that of the UK and Germany, and more than France, Italy or Spain.

    Still, any policy changes might be incremental before March and markets “may need to lower their expectations,” say Nomura economists including Ting Lu. Beijing is likely to stick to essential parts of Covid Zero for now, and a narrative shift to “living with Covid” may prove challenging, they say.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 11/08/2022 – 18:05

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Nov 08

Today’s News 8th November 2022

  • China Quietly Boost Oil Imports In Preparation For Reopening
    China Quietly Boost Oil Imports In Preparation For Reopening

    Alongside the neverending charade over when/if the Fed will pivot (it will, it just needs to really break the market and the economy first, at which point it will be too late to do anything), a similarly heated – and some would say even more important – discussion surrounds China’s decision to drop its doomed covid zero policy. Here, there has certainly been movement in recent days, with Chinese stocks soaring over the past week amid rampant speculation that Beijing is contemplating easing or rolling back its draconian covid zero restrictions.

    And even though both the local government and skeptical China watchers have repeatedly tried to shoot down any unfounded rumors (based on spurious screengrabs) that China is set to ease its anti-covid measures, a new report from Goldman’s commodity team published late on Monday (and available to pro subscribers), concludes that China has quietly if aggressively ramped up crude imports by more than 2.5m b/d in recent weeks in preparation for an eventual reopening, whose timing Goldman still views as most likely to take place some time in 2Q 2023.

    Here are some more details from the Goldman report tiled appropriately enough “China signals the beginning of the end for lockdowns”:

    • The oil market remains depleted of its main buffers: inventories and spare capacity. Concurrently, the risk of meaningful supply disruptions in Libya, Russia, Iraq, and Iran is currently elevated. As such, the risk distributions around our current oil forecasts are skewed squarely higher given spot demand continues to realize robustly.
    • Nevertheless, positioning in oil and broader commodities are barely above their 2Q20 lows, in part due to concerns on China oil demand – the final significant fundamental downside risk. We believe current lockdowns are subtracting as much as 0.9 mb/d from our Jan-22 expectations.
    • Our China economists believe recent headlines simply mark the start of an multi-month preparation period for reopening, and so have maintained their current base case of 2Q23 reopening, once the winter flu season has passed.

    • Nevertheless, any news around China reopening can drive rallies in oil, even if only muting uncertainty. To this end, China has already ramped up crude oil imports by more than 2.5 mb/d in recent weeks, in preparation for this event, as well as to replenish depleted inventory.

    Goldman also conducts an “Effective Lockdown Index”-based exercise for contextualizing what a more rapid reopening may mean for demand and prices.

    Not surprisingly, it finds that each 5% increase in the China ELI is worth c.0.2 mb/d of oil demand…

    … and that a bull-case early reopening would pose $6/bbl upside risk to the bank’s current $110 Brent 2023 forecasts, while a less-likely full international reopening would amount to almost $15/bbl.

    On the other hand, maintenance of the current status quo for restrictions would instead amount to c.$12/bbl of downside to next year’s forecasts. Consistent with this, the bank also finds the oil market-implied increase in the probability of reopening next year increased by 25% last week.

    Lastly, an additional macro risk to commodity prices this year has been the dollar, which has endured one of the sharpest  appreciations in history.

    Goldman expects the USD TWI to depreciate by up to 3% as China reopens, as Asian economies benefit, and broader markets trade more ‘risk-on’. This could support oil prices an additional $3/bbl.

    Much more in the full Goldman note available to pro subs.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/07/2022 – 23:55

  • Victor Davis Hanson: The Pathetic Democratic Pantheon
    Victor Davis Hanson: The Pathetic Democratic Pantheon

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AmGreatness.com,

    Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi are of no use to the Left in the midterms because it is their radical ideology that was finally enacted and wrecked the country…

    Over the last few months the four icons of the Democratic Party—Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi—have hit the campaign trail. 

    They’ve weighed in on everything from “right-wing violence” and “election denialists” to the now tired “un-American” semi-fascist MAGA voter—and had nothing much to say about inflation, the border, crime, energy, or the Afghanistan debacle. In this, they remind us just how impoverished and calcified is this left-wing pantheon. 

    So why should we take anything they say seriously, given their own records—and especially given their mastery of projecting their own shortcomings upon others as some sort of private exculpation or preemptive political strategy?

    Still Hopin’ and Changin’? 

    Barack Obama this past week has assumed the role of surrogate president. He is storming the country, while Joe Biden mopes at home or visits shrinking blue enclaves so he can claim post facto, “At least I was out there stumping.” 

    Over the last six years, we have become accustomed to Obama’s periodic getaways from one of his three estates. It is always the same. From time to time, he reenters politics to remind us that he did not just cash in on his presidency to become a multi-millionaire. Instead, he is still the Chicago “community activist” of his youth. And so, Obama will not be overshadowed by the Biden crew that is enacting all the crazy things he as president had warned were a bit much even for him. 

    At the funeral of the late John Lewis, Obama turned his eulogy into a political rant. He weighed in on the “racist” filibuster, the “Jim Crow relic” that he desperately sought in vain to use to stop the appointment of Justice Samuel Alito. 

    At campaign stops, he deplores “divisions” that he, more than any modern figure, helped create. The entire left-wing vocabulary of disparagement for the white lower-working classes (e.g., deplorables, dregs, chumps, irredeemables, etc.) got its start with Obama’s putdown of Pennsylvania voters who rejected him in the 2008 primaries as “clingers.” 

    In interviews, Obama suddenly now blasts harsh rhetoric—this from the wannabe tough guy who stole the “The Untouchables” line about bringing a knife to a gun fight. Well before crazy Maxine Waters’ calls to arms, Obama advised his supporters “get in their faces.”

    Still, on the campaign trail, Obama appears not so much animated as stale. It is as if he has been suddenly stirred from a long coma that commenced in 2008. It’s the same old, same old—sleeves rolled up. He still resorts to the scripted outbursts of mock anger. And the nerdy prep school graduate still amateurishly modulates his patois—now policy wonk, now breaking into the Southern African-American pastor accent when an audience needs more preachy authenticity. 

    He still tries to rev up his crowds with the familiar attacks: Republican demons will cut Social Security, the MAGA semi-fascists are captives of Donald Trump (as if the Democrats have not ceded their souls to woke hysterics), the Republican fanatics will all but kill women by denying abortions, and extremists unlike himself are dividing the country. 

    On and on, Obama shouts about social justice. And then he wraps up and must decide to which of his mansions he will fly home (via private jet)—Kalorama, Martha’s Vineyard, Hyde Park, or soon the Waimanalo estate.

    Obama offers no solutions much less hints at his own culpability in his sermons. There is nothing about the open border he helped birth. Nothing about Biden’s failed energy policies now bankrupting the middle class that were simply a reification of his energy secretary Steven Chu’s perverse wishes for European-priced gas (“Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”). 

    There is nothing about Obama’s old boasts about shutting down coal plants and skyrocketing electricity (“Under my plan . . . electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”). 

    Nothing is said about the Skip Gates psychodrama and his blanket stereotyped attack on police, the tossing of his own grandmother under the racial bus, the Trayvon Martin racial editorialization, the Ferguson mythologies, and all his efforts to create a binary nation of oppressors and oppressed, as Obama himself determined who is the victim, who the victimizer.

    Drew Angerer/Getty Images

    The Role Model Pelosi

    After the terrible attack on her husband, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s colleagues are rightly calling for an end to extremist rhetoric. If we are to follow the Democratic clarion call, what might Pelosi herself do to help us to lower the temperature?

    Here are a few modest suggestions. 

    Contrary to press reports, conservatives deplored the attack on Paul Pelosi. They want his attacker behind bars with no bail until his trial date. And if convicted they wish him to serve a long sentence before parole is even considered. Let us dish out a proper punishment to David DePape; one that can serve as a model to all such thugs who do his kind of devilish work daily against the innocent and weak—but unlike him, are usually exempt from punishment.

    Recall that DePape should never have been in the United States. He is an illegal alien who violated his visa and should have had a warrant out for deportation, especially given his prior history of lawlessness. Would that the illegal alien who murdered innocent San Franciscan Kate Steinle had been subject to the likely punishment that now is awaiting DePape.

    So yes, we all must lower the temperature. As speaker of the House, Pelosi can do her part in quieting passions, given half the country are her fellow Americans who do not live in the darkness of lies. She might ask Joe Biden to quit calling them semi-fascists and un-American. 

    Pelosi herself should never again tear up her copy of the state of the union address on national television. In that congressional forum she was attacking the presidency, not just Donald Trump. Half the voters feel as strongly about Joe Biden as she does about Donald Trump. If, as House speaker, Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) were to follow Pelosi’s precedent and rip up the next Biden State of the Union, would Pelosi find that continuation of her precedent conducive to healing the nation’s wounds?

    Pelosi herself should not use any more violent imagery in expressing her anger at a president of the opposite party, much less threaten to use physical violence. 

    When she was asked to clarify what she meant in screaming about Trump (“I hope he comes. I want to punch him out. . . . I’ve been waiting for this . . . I’m going to punch him out, and I’m going to go to jail, and I’m going to be happy.”), she scoffed that she could not follow up on her threat only because Trump would never come to Congress to give her the opportunity. 

    Whatever one thinks of Trump, Pelosi only lowers the bar when she boasts about feloniously striking a president of the United States. 

    That Joe Biden had boasted twice about taking Trump behind the gym to beat him up, and others such as actor Robert DeNiro have echoed such threats (“I’d like to punch him in the face”) was no excuse for her reckless talk. After 2016 it was hard to calibrate all the ways the leftists had shouted ways of slaying Donald Trump—by stabbing, shooting, incineration, or decapitation.

    Pelosi should never again delay legislation aimed at protecting Supreme Court justices from the sort of violence that occurred when Justice Brett Kavanaugh was run out of a restaurant, or anti-abortion protesters swarmed his home, or a would-be assassin showed up at his house. 

    Why was Pelosi so fearful about expediting such added security? Would prompt action have empowered the factual narrative that the chief threat to Supreme Court justices now arises from radical abortion protestors?

    Pelosi might have reminded Democrats to tone down their rhetoric after the near-fatal shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.). After all, the shooter was a highly political, left-wing activist and former Bernie Sanders’ volunteer. But she did no such thing.

    She could have privately reprimanded her own daughter that it was not a funny thing to cheer on the violent attack against Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who suffered broken ribs, a collapsed lung, pneumonia, and had to undergo pulmonary surgery. 

    When the younger Pelosi used her family name to gain traction by tweeting “Rand Paul’s neighbor was right,” (if she had used her married last name would anyone have read it?), it sent the message that there was a sort of happiness on the Left that a political opponent had been a target of violence. The Left is furious at Donald Trump, Jr. for crudely mocking the Pelosi assault, but he unfortunately followed a precedent long set by others.

    Kyle Mazza/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

    She’s Back!

    Hillary Clinton is occasionally asked to weigh in on the midterm campaigns, but never in a swing state or hotly contested race. Her presence, like that of Joe Biden’s, would immediately lose the endorser a critical 1-2 points. 

    Clinton recently warned that the 2024 election likely will be illegitimate due to Republican instigated “voter fraud.” 

    Her outburst can be translated into something like, “The midterm left-wing wipeout may be just a preliminary to a 2024 Democratic disaster.” Hillary preempted Biden who, in his third and latest McCarthyite speech, warned that the “Mega Maga” people are planning devilry years in advance and so, like Hillary, he can now cast doubt on the legitimacy of future elections the Democrats will lose. 

    In truth, no one has done more in the last century to impugn the integrity of U.S. elections than Hillary Clinton. She has questioned the 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections, on the theory that any election Democrats might lose is an “attack on democracy.” 

    Her sins go way beyond feloniously destroying subpoenaed emails and devices or leveraging her New York senatorial run by Bill Clinton’s presidential pardons or using her office to enrich her family’s foundation as in the case of Uranium One. 

    When we return to sane times, historians will assess her 2016 efforts to destroy her opponent, his transition, and his presidency as the greatest election scandal in modern memory. She used three paywalls to hide her efforts to hire foreign national Christopher Steele (who was simultaneously working with the FBI). 

    On spec, she used her own contacts such as Charles Dolan to fabricate a phony hit dossier against her opponent and then to seed it within the media and the Obama bureaucracy to smear Trump.

    Not content with that failed and likely illegal effort, she then declared the duly elected president illegitimate and the 2016 election all but stolen. 

    Her Hollywood friends cut videos begging electors to renounce their constitutional duties, ignore their state tallies, and vote instead for Hillary. Had they gotten their way, the entire federal election system as we know it would have been destroyed.

    Then her surrogate, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, sued to overturn the election. Clinton bragged of joining #TheResistance in mock-heroic terms. As an arch-denialist, she urged Joe Biden under no circumstances to concede to Trump if he lost the 2020 vote. 

    And now she warns us of others who might emulate her own denialism? 

    What does Hillary fear in 2024? That a Trump or DeSantis will hire a Steele-like fraud to fabricate Democrat-Chinese collusion and smear a Democrat nominee? That the loser will not concede as she once urged, or the winner is illegitimate as she once insisted?

    Good Old Joe Is Just Old Joe

    Instead of a list of supposed communists, Joe Biden apparently has a roster of “election denialists” who he says are running for Senate and Congress and whom he fears will win next Tuesday. And he sets the example for others like House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.)—himself a 2004-05 election denialist—who now smears his opponents as Nazis who, he fears, by democratically voting Democrats out of office nationwide will “destroy democracy.” 

    What will Biden not lie about? The death of his son, the circumstances in which his first wife died in a car wreck, the fantasy congressional vote on his student-loan forgiveness scheme? The number of states (Joe says, 54, Obama used to swear there are 57)? The very century we are now in? Where he went to college? 

    Joe, our own Walter Mitty, has variously been a semi-truck driver, an arrested South-African street protestor against apartheid, a surrogate Puerto-Rican child, a black college enrollee, a Ciceronian populist orator, a coal miner’s scion, an honors student, a blue-chip collegiate athlete, a defender against inner-city Corn Poppers, and absolutely ignorant about the Biden family syndicate.

    Recall that a non compos mentis Biden was nominated solely as the thin veneer to a hard Left agenda whose avatars were unelectable. Biden was to feign being the colorless, stand-in “moderate” who would “unify” the fractured country, tone down the Trump rhetoric, and let the Trump record sort of proceed on autopilot. 

    Then when he played out that part and won, the leftist minders in this Faustian bargain took over to push through, on a one-vote senatorial margin, the most radical left-wing agenda in U.S. history. 

    Biden, however, took his role too seriously. He reverted to the mean-spirited, pre-senile blowhard Joe—the obnoxious messenger thus now making the noxious message even more toxic. 

    A retiring, silenced, good old Joe from Scranton was the script, not a doddering, incoherent, ”get off my lawn” old man shouting for the need of socialist policies that were the exact opposite of his previously supposed convictions. 

    The Left got their Biden. And yes, he turned over the reins of government to them. And yes, they got their neo-socialism for two years. And yes, they are destroying America as we knew it. But in doing this, the people had the rare occasion to see fully and experience the nihilist Left. And they are now about to express their loathing for what the Left has wrought. 

    The problem with the ossified Democratic Pantheon is that they are of no use to the Left in the midterms because it is their own radical ideology over the past two years that was finally enacted and wrecked the country. And all the shrieks about abortion, semi-fascists, and democracy dying cannot put back together what they shattered.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/07/2022 – 23:45

  • Cryptos Plunge As FTX-Binance Battle Escalates
    Cryptos Plunge As FTX-Binance Battle Escalates

    Update (1105ET): The price of FTX Token FTT just crashed over 20% after holding support at $22 since the CEO of Alameda Research (FTX hedge fund) offered to buy all Binance’s FTT holdings at that level.

    Earlier this evening, Binance founder CZ responded with a tweet that he ‘will let the market decide’…

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

    And that triggered aggressive selling in FTT…

    This is triggering selling pressure across much of the crypto space as FTX liquidity/contagion fears spread as a bank-run of sorts occurs on assets sitting on the FTX platform.

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

    Solana is being hammered lower since it is part of FTX’s reserves…

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

    As we detailed below, Bankman-Fried denied CZ’s allegations: “A competitor is trying to go after us with false rumors,… FTX is fine. Assets are fine.”

    “FTX has enough to cover all client holdings.

    We don’t invest client assets (even in treasuries).

    We have been processing all withdrawals, and will continue to be.”

    Bitcoin puked below $20,000 on the back of the moves…

    Whether strategic or not, FTX is one of Binance’s largest competitors and in just one day, those comments and Binance’s sale of FTT holdings have started a chain of second and third order effects.

    *  *  *

    As we detailed earlier, new battle of the billionaires is brewing (if not boiling over) among the current kings of crypto as tensions between Binance founder  Zhao “CZ” Changpeng and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried have escalated a war of words on Twitter into actions over CZ’s claims that FTX’s hedge fund’s asset base may not be all it’s cracked up to be.

    The drama began early Sunday morning when FTX’s FTT token suddenly plunged as rumors surfaced that a giant whale with 23 million FTT, probably Binance, might be dumping its tokens.

    FTT trade volume surged to its highest level in more than a year amid the wave of selling pressure…

    Shortly after that initial plunge, Zhao said his company would liquidate its entire FTT holdings in the coming months, on fears that the token might collapse in the same manner as Terra (LUNA) in May 2021.

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

    Binance was an early investor in FTX.

    Zhao referenced “recent revelations that have came to light,” but did not elaborate publicly.

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

    However, his actions come shortly after a Nov 2nd article on CoinDesk that said much the balance sheet of Bankman-Fried’s trading house Alameda Research is comprised of the FTT token.

    Cointelegraph reports that, according to the CoinDesk report, Alameda Research had $14.6 billion on its balance sheet as of June 30, with FTT being the largest holding at $5.8 billion, making up 88% of its net equity. In addition, the firm held $1.2 billion in Solana, $3.37 billion in unidentified cryptocurrency, $2 billion in “equity securities” and other assets.

    On the other hand, Alameda Research reportedly had liabilities worth $8 billion, including $2.2 billion worth of loans collateralized by FTT.

    That, coupled with the firm’s alleged exposure to illiquid altcoins, prompted some analysts to predict its insolvency in the future. 

    “Alameda will never be able to cash in a significant portion of FTT to pay back its debts,” wrote Mike Burgersburg, an independent market analyst, for the Dirty Bubble Media Substack, noting:

    “There are few buyers, and the largest buyer appears to be the very company which Alameda is most closely tied to […] the fair market value of their FTT in the event of large sales would rapidly approach $0.”

    Bankman-Fried responded in a brief tweet thread, saying: “A competitor is trying to go after us with false rumors,… FTX is fine. Assets are fine.”

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    He went on to note that:

    “FTX has enough to cover all client holdings.

    We don’t invest client assets (even in treasuries).

    We have been processing all withdrawals, and will continue to be.

    It’s heavily regulated, even when that slows us down.  We have GAAP audits, with > $1b excess cash.  We have a long history of safeguarding client assets, and that remains true today.

    Concluding with an ‘oilve branch’ perhaps:

    “I’d love it, @cz_binance, if we could work together for the ecosystem.”

    Notably, as Decrypt reports, Zhao’s actions (and the Alameda leaks) follow weeks of criticism directed at FTX’s founder and Chief Executive Sam Bankman-Fried for regulatory proposals he put forth in a blog post which recommended restrictions regarding DeFi. He has since committed to revising his regulatory position.

    While it’s fun to watch billionaire whiz-kids slinging mud at each other, the collateral damage (quite literallY) could be significant for the rest of the crypto universe.

    “Overall, FTT is a relatively illiquid token on open markets, so Binance’s plans to liquidate all FTT tokens they hold is quite a significant market event,”  Clara Medalie, head of research at analytics firm Kaiko, said.

    “Alameda will likely dedicate considerable resources to ensure the price of FTT doesn’t crash.”

    In fact, Alameda’s CEO tweeted that her trading firm’s financial condition is stronger than what was reflected by the balance sheet CoinDesk wrote about. She also offered, in a reply to the Binance CEO’s post, to buy his firm’s FTT token holdings for $22 each.

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

    Nothing to worry about at all…

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

    Nevertheless, the FTX outflows continue…

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

    Overall, as Kaiko concludes, it is clear that FTT market makers are working overtime to maintain the price of FTT, which is down 3% over the past day along with most other cryptocurrencies. Despite a massive surge in selling pressure, there is barely a dent in market depth and only a slight increase in price slippage. Ultimately it may be in all parties’ best interest to engage in an OTC transaction as suggested by Caroline Ellison to limit price impacts, especially considering Binance, FTX, and Alameda all risk large losses should FTTs price fall significantly.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/07/2022 – 23:25

  • Trump Says "Big Announcement" Coming On Nov. 15 Amid Expectations Of Presidential Bid
    Trump Says “Big Announcement” Coming On Nov. 15 Amid Expectations Of Presidential Bid

    Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,

    Former President Donald Trump teased confirmation of his anticipated 2024 president bid to supporters on Monday, revealing he will make a “big announcement” on Nov. 15.

    Trump was in Dayton, Ohio, on Nov. 7, holding a campaign rally for local Republican candidates, particularly J.D. Vance who is seeking the state’s Senate seat. He told supporters that the midterms are a “country-saving election.”

    “Two years ago, we were a great nation and we will be a great nation again,” Trump said.

    “The first step to saving America is winning an epic victory for Republicans tomorrow.”

    Near the end of the rally, Trump hinted that he will seek another bid for the White House in 2024.

    “I’m going to be making a very big announcement on Tuesday, November 15, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida,” Trump said, without elaborating.

    He added, “We want nothing to detract from the importance of tomorrow.

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

    Trump has been hinting that he will make another run for president for months.

    At an Iowa rally on Nov. 3, Trump dropped a strong hint that he would seek reelection.

    “And now, in order to make to make our country successful, and safe, and glorious, I will very, very, very, probably do it again, okay?” Trump said. “Very, very, very probably.”

    The crowd at the rally cheered in response, erupting in chants of “Trump! Trump! Trump!”

    “That’s nice, well, get ready, that’s all I’m telling you, very soon,” Trump said. “Get ready.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/07/2022 – 23:20

  • Are Republicans More Conservative Than Democrats Are Liberal?
    Are Republicans More Conservative Than Democrats Are Liberal?

    The 2022 midterm election is once again characterized by extreme polarization between the parties. As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, despite moderate positions gaining slightly this year, an annual survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs shows that moderates are in the minority in both parties the United States.

    In July, 42 percent of self-described Democrats said they were moderates or conservatives, opposite 58 percent who considered themselves liberals. The gap is even bigger in the Republican Party, where 77 percent identified as conservatives and only 23 percent said of themselves that they were moderates or liberals. According to this survey, this makes Republicans in fact a whole lot more conservative than Democrats are liberal.

    Infographic: Are Republicans More Conservative Than Democrats Are Liberal? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    A height of polarization was reached last year, when 80 percent of Republicans said they were conservatives and the number of liberal Democrats rose to 60 percent. Diving deeper into the data shows that 13 percent of Republicans described themselves as “extremely conservative” in 2022 as opposed to 9 percent of Democrats who considered themselves “extremely liberal”.

    However, considering all respondents across both parties, self-described moderates are the biggest group in the U.S. at 36 percent, followed very closely by 35 percent of conservatives.

    Time will tell if the upcoming election will mirror voter preferences and favor conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats over of middle-of-the road winners. According to FiveThirtyEight, 70 percent of GOP candidates who have said they believed the 2020 elected was rigged are expected or likely to win their races, compared to other Republicans whose odds were put at only 37 percent by the website. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/07/2022 – 23:00

  • FBI Announces "Enhanced" Firearm Background Checks For Young Adults To Start Next Week
    FBI Announces “Enhanced” Firearm Background Checks For Young Adults To Start Next Week

    Submitted by Gun Owners for America.,

    The FBI, through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) has announced that a mandatory wait period for 18–20-year-old legal adults, as enacted by the gun control known as Cornyn-Murphy or the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, will go into effect November 14, 2022.

    Gun Owners of America reported on this issue in October 2022, when the FBI launched their Enhanced Background Checks for 18–20-year-olds in the state of Maine.

    Those under the age of 21 will receive an initial delay that could last about two weeks. This delay is supposedly to allow the FBI to contact local law enforcement and check with state databases to enhance the background check system’s effectiveness. This is nothing but a way to make it more difficult for young adults to own firearms. It’s a mandatory wait period that anti-gunners have now added to a background check system that is broken well beyond repair.

    Parents might not want their children to receive mental healthcare as minors, if it might create an administrative record resulting in the loss or delay of their child’s constitutional rights when they turn 18. Those 17 and under who hunt, play shooting sports, or who wish to own firearms for self-defense as adults may choose to avoid essential mental healthcare in order to retain their right to own and operate firearms. If someone under 18 wants to legally buy a hunting shotgun or a target rifle on their 18th birthday, they may use the consequences of the law as an excuse to not get the mental health care they need. 

    The “enhanced background check” is in fact a mandatory delay or wait period on the purchasing of a firearm for those under 21 years old. Mandatory waiting periods put Americans’ constitutional rights on hold when they may be in the middle of a dangerous situation, whether that be a threat from someone they know, a dangerous period of rioting and looting, or any number of scenarios. Further, allowing local law enforcement tips and hearsay to result in the denial of a constitutional right would truly constitute an arbitrary and unconstitutional gun ban.

    The “enhanced background checks” will include “checks with state databases and local law enforcement.” Since Congress admits that such an enhancement is truly necessary for one category of adults, then will they soon find themselves answering why these delays and “enhancements” do not apply to all other law-abiding people? Further, allowing local law enforcement tips and hearsay to result in the denial of a constitutional right will truly constitute an arbitrary and unconstitutional gun ban.  

    For an example on how firearm purchase delays can be deadly, look no further than the case of Carol Browne of New Jersey. Carol Browne was stabbed to death by a former boyfriend. She had applied for a permit to purchase a pistol on April 21st, 2015, and was murdered on June 3rd, 43 days later, still waiting for approval. New Jersey State law requires that a Firearms Purchaser ID card be issued within 30 days, but often the wait is much longer. Carol’s killer didn’t need a gun, but Carol sure did. And she could still be alive today if arrogant officials had not denied her the right to protect herself.

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    * * *

    We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/07/2022 – 22:40

  • The Trojan Horse Presidency
    The Trojan Horse Presidency

    Authored by Dmitri Orlov,

    The US midterm elections are nigh and, as I happen to be a good and patriotic Russian national, it behooves me to meddle in them. Election-meddling is an example of Russia’s soft power, which is much nicer than Russia’s hard power, so you should be glad that it’s still on offer.

    I am on record saying that “The United States is not a democracy and it doesn’t matter who is president” multiple times in multiple places, and I stand by that statement, which I believe to be a provable statement of fact. Statistics show that there is zero correlation between public preferences and public policy decisions but a strong correlation between business lobby group preferences and pubic policy decisions. Thus the US is not a democracy (rule by the people) but an oligopoly (rule by business groups). From this it follows that it doesn’t matter who is president because both parties of the Democrat-Republican duopoly are owned by the same set of business groups.

    And so it doesn’t matter who is president and your vote means nothing? Granted; but then does it matter WHETHER there is a president? Methinks, it does!

    What if the president is an organo-servo-robot, a senile puppet, backed up by a vice president specifically chosen for being even more feeble-minded? This is an excellent ploy for putting in power an extremist group that is only tangentially related to the usual business lobbies that determine what gets done in Washington. Don’t think of some vast and amorphous “deep state”: executing such a power grab requires tight coordination, some amount of secrecy or, at least, discretion, and, of course, vast sums of money. Think instead of a singularly well-endowed evil oligarch and his multiple minions whom he has carefully groomed and insinuated into positions of power.

    The overall goal of such an extremist group may well go far beyond the usual interests of business lobbies, such as preserving shareholder equity, a wider spot at the federal subsidy trough, knocking down transnational barriers to trade and movement of capital, lower business taxes and so on. These zealots may well have an altogether different view of the future in mind, in which a tiny group of ultra-rich owns everything while the rest of us own nothing but, being made tame and docile through all sorts of medical and technical manipulation, feel happy about this state of affairs… like so many animals in a menagerie… not too many animals, mind you: drastic population reduction is likely a key goal of theirs.

    What might the overall goals of this organization be? It’s not exactly a secret. Here’s a sample, taken from the “Goals 2030” document from the 2018 conference at the Complexity Institute in Santa Fe:

    • No private or personal property.

    • Guaranteed basic income for all who accept this “new normal.”

    • Cash free society; digital money (as a method of social control).

    • Hydrocarbon ratings for states and companies.

    • Tight social controls (via drones, facial recognition, etc.)

    • Rationing of all consumption, including energy and natural resources.

    • Patents on all seed stocks and restrictions on food production for personal use.

    • Almost total elimination of livestock. The remaining population to be fed a vegetarian diet augmented with artificial protein, insects, etc.

    • Population reduction through sterilization and birth control.

    • Enforced vaccination.

    • Ban on alternative forms of medicine.

    • Erasure of sexual (male/female) distinctions.

    • Child sterilization and castration (chemical and/or surgical).

    Some people may recognize in this list various items that have been on offer for some time at the Davos conference and other venues. That famously went nowhere when the perennial Davos maître d’, a Mr. Klaus, if memory serves, teleconferenced in Putin and Xi to ask them whether they’d like to go along with such a plan. The two answered that, no, they have plans of their own that serve the needs of their people. This threw a large wrench into the works.

    The plan (I am guessing) was to use the senile grandpa and his idiot sidekick as a Trojan horse to infest the White House, then use that position to destroy America, and then use America’s rotting corpse as a staging area for launching similar attacks worldwide. But if Putin and Xi, and with them 80% of the world, are having none of it, then what? Fight a war against Russia and China in tandem, and lose it? What then?

    And so they now wait for the inevitable. Russia is done chewing through the original Ukrainian military and its Soviet-era weaponry stockpile and is now halfway through chewing through any remaining Ukrainian raw recruits (old men and children, essentially), plus NATO mercenaries and NATO’s weaponry stockpile, all without breaking a sweat. It is now gradually disabling all public works throughout the Ukrainian territory, much of that work being done using a low-budget artificially intelligent flying chainsaw called Geranium 2. (We Russians like names like that. A 152mm cannon is called Hyacinth B; a 240mm self-propelled mortar is called 2S4 Tulip. Would you like to smell our flowers?)

    The lack of electricity, heat or running water gives the remaining half of the Ukrainian population a very good reason to pack their suitcases and head West. Those 15-20 million additional ornery Ukrainians demanding to be fed and housed will be sure to do wonders for Western morale. This will come at a time when Western restrictions on the import of Russian energy will begin to seriously bite. People won’t be pleased.

    Do you think the not even particularly shadowy oligarch whose minions who are currently running amok in the White House have a plan for dealing with the horrible mess they have created? No, they do not. They are freaking out. Worse yet, they are losing narrative control. The Biden presidency no longer looks real; it looks like what it actually is: a hoax. And if he isn’t real, then who are the cockroaches that have been running amok in the White House these past two years?

    At this point, only a very silly person might think that Biden, who can barely read an entire sentence from a teleprompter without stumbling at least once, keeps shaking hands with ghosts, calling out to dead people in the audience, needs multiple tries to correctly name the country on which he has spent $20 billion, was able to review, never mind write, those 100 presidential orders he has signed, 19 of them during his first week in office.

    Then who did write them and why? Wouldn’t you like to find out? I can’t tell you how to vote, but I can tell you this: in some states (not all) there is a specific way you can vote to make it more likely that we will find out who these cockroaches are. Flushing them out of their hiding places in positions of power and stepping on them would come next.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/07/2022 – 22:00

  • US Wants Official Of Ukrainian Descent As Next NATO Chief
    US Wants Official Of Ukrainian Descent As Next NATO Chief

    A person of Ukrainian descent to fill NATO’s top post? That’s what a recent New York Times report suggested could happen as it detailed “the race is on” to select NATO’s next Secretary General.

    “While the officials cautioned that these are early days, and very often the names that surface first do not survive the bargaining among NATO’s 30 members, they said one prime candidate has surfaced in Washington: Chrystia Freeland, 54, the Canadian-Ukrainian deputy prime minister and finance minister of Canada,” NY Times wrote. 

    Chrystia Freeland, center, to Justin Trudeau’s right in a May visit to Ukraine. Canadian govt. via Twitter

    Freeland has long been seen as Ukraine’s top ally within Canadian political leadership. The Times called her a “prime candidate” in the eyes of Washington insiders to replace NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

    The report described further, “Ms. Freeland, 54, a former journalist (who is married to a reporter for The New York Times), has also been Canada’s foreign minister.” And listed that “Her advantages are considerable: she speaks English, French, Italian, Ukrainian and Russian; she has run complicated ministries; she is good at news conferences and other public appearances; and she would be the first woman and first Canadian ever to run NATO.”

    Russian state media over the last few days has highlighted Freeland’s candidacy for the top NATO spot, strongly hinting that Moscow would see someone of Ukrainian descendancy in the position as somewhat of an intentional and highly symbolic provocation.

    Freeland’s maternal grandparents emigrated from Ukraine to Alberta, Canada in 1939 – though her mother later returned to the family’s homeland and was a well-known figure within the Ukrainian independence movement which sought to undermine Soviet power there.

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    Freeland herself has long been on a Kremlin blacklist, as the Washington D.C.-based think tank Wilson Center describes in a backgrounder: 

    Despite Freeland’s well established international reputation, in 2014 the Alberta-born politician found herself added to the Kremlin’s list of unwelcome visitors. Moscow has always exercised its gatekeeping abilities through territorial and border control, but how did a Canadian civil servant come to be banned from entering Russia?

    The 2014 no-entry list was generated in response to sanctions imposed by both Canada and the United States after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea. Although the list possessed symbolic implications, reminding the international community of Russia’s willingness to respond and reject the West, Freeland’s name is of particular distinction. Her presence on that list was intentional– a decision rooted deeply in Freeland’s family history and her recent past. 

    The Wilson Center profile also included…

    As an undergraduate at Harvard University, Freeland spent a semester abroad in Ukraine, advocating for political and social reform under the Soviet puppet state. As a pro-democracy agitator from 1988-1989, Freeland posed an acute threat to Soviet political order, a threat noted by the KGB. 

    In the wake of the February Russian invasion, Freeland has remained a staunch supporter of Ukraine, and also as a hawk she’s consistently pushed back against Canadian politicians and Western officials who have dared suggested any level of compromise or territorial concessions with Russia for the sake of ceasefire.

    On this front, The New York Times emphasizes, “Where any of the candidates come down on support for Ukraine in the war against Russia will be a critical factor.”

    Screenshot of Freeland attending a 2019 Festival of Ukrainian Culture event in Toronto.

    However, the report further notes that it’s still early in the selection process, with others like Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas or president of Slovakia Zuzana Caputova as other top contenders. Stoltenberg’s term was recently extended to last till the end of September 2023. NYT notes that “Both Washington and Brussels want a conclusion before the next American presidential election in November 2024.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/07/2022 – 21:40

  • LATimes Op-Ed Says Press "Failing Americans' By Treating Both Parties Equally
    LATimes Op-Ed Says Press “Failing Americans’ By Treating Both Parties Equally

    Authored by Eric Utter via American Thinker,

    History professor Robert S. McElvaine recently wrote an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times in which he stated that journalists are “failing Americans” by insisting on treating both political parties equally.  Yes, as we know, there is nothing more dangerous to a representative republic than a free and objective press.

    McElvaine claimed that the United States is in “the final stages of the most critical election for the survival of the American experiment since 1864” and added that journalists bear responsibility for protecting America’s future from “right-wing” extremists.

    He wrote: “America’s future hangs on the defeat of the right-wing extremist authoritarians who have seized the name of Lincoln’s party.  If we lose, news corporations and journalists with a misplaced sense of ‘balance,’ ‘neutrality’ and ‘nonpartisanship’ will bear a considerable share of the blame.”  Down with balance, neutrality, and nonpartisanship!  Screw objectivity!  To hell with equal treatment, justice, fairness, equality, and equity when it comes to “journalists'” duty to the people!  The people don’t know how to think, so the media must tell them what to think…or democracy is doomed!  Mass indoctrination is the last, best hope for democracy!

    McElvaine further ostracized reporters for not adequately attacking conservatives for pushing ideas that are “increasingly reminiscent” of Hitler’s rise to power.  Um, “professor,” if anyone is implicitly threatening to round political opponents up and send them to prison or concentration/labor/re-education camps, it’s far left Democrats.  In fact, they’ve already done that.

    Yet the Nutty Professor soldiered on, saying: “In the final days of this election season, Americans must recognize that the existential struggle we are engaged in now is not just a game.  If the enemies of democracy prevail and take control of either house of Congress in the midterms, there will be no ‘wait till next year.’  They would probably refuse to accept the election of a Democratic president in 2024.  The game would be over, if not permanently, at least for many years.”  Projection!  Democrats refused to accept the election of a Republican president in 2000 and in 2016.

    Bizarrely, McElvaine’s op-ed appeared shortly after a study by the Media Research Center found that Republicans overwhelmingly received more negative coverage from the press than Democrat candidates did in the months leading up to the midterm elections.

    Democrats have spent much of the past few weeks telling us all that democracy will die unless we vote as they tell us to.  

    Oddly, they suddenly now believe there are objective truths.  Two of them, in fact.  One, that MAGA Republicans are evil.  And two, that the rest of us are too stupid to realize this if the news media’s reports are unbiased.

    We get to pick “our truth” when it comes to, say, what sex or gender we claim to be.  But not if we believe it’s problematic to allow an experimental mRNA vaccine/gene therapy into our body — or if we believe that voting for Republicans is in the best interest of ourselves and our nation.  I mean, the “my truth” thing can go only so far, right? 

    Anybody else see a problem with this?  McElvaine’s op-ed is advocating for outright discrimination against one of the two major political parties — including its adherents, who constitute nearly half of the electorate — in the interest of democracy!

    The vast majority of so-called journalists, like the vast majority of so-called professors, are “failing Americans” by trying to convince them that they give a rat’s rear end about democracy…when all they really care about is their own primacy.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/07/2022 – 21:20

  • North Korea: Record Number Of Missile Tests Was 'Practice' To Attack US, South
    North Korea: Record Number Of Missile Tests Was ‘Practice’ To Attack US, South

    North Korea last week fired a missile that crossed over the south’s disputed maritime border for the first time since the division of the Korean peninsula in 1948. On Monday the south’s navy announced it has  “recovered what is presumed to be the debris of the North’s short-range ballistic missile.”

    Also unprecedented is that the missile landed a mere 50 miles from the South Korean coastal city of Ulsa, Yonhap said, coming amid a record number of missile launches within a 24-hour timeframe last Wednesday.

    A recent N.Korean missile launch, via AP

    Pyongyang was reacting to a week of the largest-ever joint US-South Korean military drills, which had a large aerial component of over 200 combined aircraft. The exercises ended on Saturday, and also came as Seoul as well as Washington intelligence officials have been warning allies to expect Kim Jong-Un to conduct a nuclear test at any time.

    On Monday North Korea itself explained the ramped up launches for the first time, directing its rhetoric in the form of new threat aimed at the United States. Pyongyang says the military was “simulating the attack” on US and South Korean targets as a result of the provocative six days of drills. 

    “As part of the countermeasures to smash the continued frenzy of war provocations of the enemy, our army launched to the east sea the super-large multiple launch rocket system, five tactical ballistic missiles of different kinds and 46 long-range missiles of multiple launch rocket system,” state-run KCNA news agency reported of the North Korean military statement.

    Pyongyang further claimed it launched a “special functional warhead paralyzing the operation command system of the enemy” along with the “mobilization of 500 fighters” – in reference to fighter jets. Pentagon officials remain skeptical of this claim of the north deploying 500 jet fighters. 

    US and South Korean officials say they haven’t seen evidence of this “special” warhead that the KCNA statement referenced. The north has vowed to keep up the pressure…

    “The recent corresponding military operations by the Korean People’s Army are a clear answer of (North Korea) that the more persistently the enemies’ provocative military moves continue, the more thoroughly and mercilessly the KPA will counter them,” the General Staff of North Korea’s military said in a statement carried by state media.

    The region has been put on edge over the rapidly increased numbers of tests, especially US-ally Japan: 

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Meanwhile, a joint US-South Korea military statement last week warned as follows in response to Pyongyang’s posturing and rhetroic: “Any nuclear attack against the United States or its allies and partners, including the use of non-strategic nuclear weapons, is unacceptable and will result in the end of the Kim regime.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/07/2022 – 21:00

  • Trump Changes Tune, Tells Florida Supporters To Vote For DeSantis
    Trump Changes Tune, Tells Florida Supporters To Vote For DeSantis

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    After calling Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis “Ron DeSanctimonious” on Saturday night, former President Donald Trump called on his Miami supporters to vote for the Florida GOP governor during the 2022 midterms.

    “With thousands of proud, hard-working American patriots, incredible people–just two days from now, the people of Florida are going to reelect the wonderful, the great, a friend of mine, Marco Rubio to the United States Senate, and you’re going to reelect Ron DeSantis as your governor of the state,” he said at an event while stumping for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). 

    “And you’re going to elect an incredible slate of true MAGA warriors to Congress.”

    U.S. President Donald Trump and Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis hold a COVID-19 and storm preparedness roundtable in Belleair, Fla., on July 31, 2020. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

    Trump drew headlines when he made the quip about DeSantis at a rally for Dr. Mehmet Oz and Doug Mastriano, Republicans who are campaigning for Pennsylvania’s Senate and gubernatorial seats, respectively. DeSantis and his campaign have not responded to Trump’s comment on Saturday.

    DeSantis is facing off against former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, a Democrat, and Rubio, meanwhile, faces Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.).  Recent polls have shown DeSantis is ahead of Crist and have shown that Rubio leads Demings.

    Trump and DeSantis are both widely considered to be the top contenders for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, although DeSantis has not made any indication on whether he intends to run during the 2024 contest. When asked about running for president, DeSantis has consistently said he’s campaigning to keep his position as Florida’s governor.

    His comments Saturday came as he was talking about polling for possible 2024 GOP candidates, which have shown Trump with a significant lead.

    “We’re winning big in the Republican Party for the nomination like nobody’s ever seen before. There it is, Trump at 71 percent, Ron DeSanctimonious at 10 percent,” Trump said in Pennsylvania. “Mike Pence at seven, oh, Mike is doing better than I thought. Liz Cheney there’s no way she’s at 4 percent. There’s no way. There’s no way. But we’re at 71 to 10 to 7 to 4.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/07/2022 – 20:40

  • Philly Home Depot Workers Reject Union In Lopsided Vote
    Philly Home Depot Workers Reject Union In Lopsided Vote

    Workers at a Philadelphia Home Depot store on Saturday night overwhelmingly shot down a drive to unionize the location. It would have become the first fully-unionized Home Depot store. 

    No votes outnumbered yes votes by more than a three-to-one margin. The final tally came in at 165 to 51, according to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which supervised the vote. 

    “We’re happy that the associates at this store voted to continue working directly with the company,” Home Depot spokeswoman Margaret Smith told WHYY. “That connection is important to our culture, and we will continue listening to our associates and making The Home Depot a great place to work and grow.”

    The vote was initiated by a September petition that had 106 signatures out of 266 employees at the Roosevelt Boulevard Home Depot in Northeast Philly. Organizers have filed a complaint with the NLRB alleging that Home Depot managers interfered with their efforts. 

    Lead organizer Vincent Quiles in front of the Northeast Philly Home Depot (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY)

    The Philly Home Depot union push is part of a broader union-organizing surge: Over the first half of 2022, 1,411 American workplaces filed union-organizing petitions with the National Labor Relations Board—the highest mark since 2015. 

    However, the blowout loss is the latest splash of cold water on union activists who’ve been targeting big-chain retailers across the country with mixed success. Last month, employees at an upstate New York Amazon warehouse killed an Amazon Labor Union (ALU) drive by a 2-to-1 margin.

    In April, the ALU scored a headline-making victory, when workers at a Staten Island Amazon processing facility voted to unionize, in a vote where yes votes prevailed 2,654 to 2,131. More than 8,300 were eligible to vote.

    Amazon Labor Union President Chris Smalls (Eric Lee/Bloomberg)

    Amazon filed an objection to the vote, alleging that the NLRB’s Brooklyn office violated labor law by appearing to support the unionization push. In September, the NLRB declared that Amazon “had not met its burden” of establishing that the NLRB had engaged in “objectionable conduct.”  

    The labor skirmishes are getting spicy: Earlier this month, Apple decided to withhold an increase in benefits from employees at its sole unionized store, which is in Towson, Maryland.

    Starbucks has fired similar benefit-withholding shots across the bow of unionization forces, triggering NLRB accusations of unlawful practices. The coffee seller has been perhaps the most visible target of successful retail-unionization attempts, with some 250 stores voting to unionize over the past year.  

     

    Meanwhile, back in Philly, Politico reports the Home Depot story has a strange-bedfellow angle: 

    One top Home Depot executive who works on employment practices at the company is Derek Bottoms, the husband of Keisha Lance Bottoms, director of the Office of Public Engagement in the White House and the former Atlanta mayor, Daniel Lippman reports. 

    The Northeast Philly Home Depot workers clearly saw that unionization has downsides. That’s clear on a macro scale too: Since the start of the pandemic, right-to-work states have added 1.3 million jobs, while union-friendly, non-right-to-work states have lost 1.1 million. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/07/2022 – 20:20

  • Delaware Professor: Doubting Fetterman's Fitness Is Embracing Eugenics
    Delaware Professor: Doubting Fetterman’s Fitness Is Embracing Eugenics

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    On the eve of the midterm elections with Pennsylvania’s Senate race viewed as a dead heat, Democratic candidate John Fetterman declared “I run on Roe v. Wade. I celebrate the demise of Roe v. Wade.” It was obviously a jarring moment for his pro-choice crowd particularly after calling for the codification of Roe. It was an all-too-familiar moment for the candidate who suffered a serious stroke that has impaired his communication and processing skills. However, as we previously discussed, many on the left have swatted back questions concerning Fetterman’s fitness as “ableism.” Now, the Washington Post has run a long column from University of Delaware Professor Jaipreet Virdi declaring that it is not just embracing ableism but eugenics to question Fetterman’s fitness.

    Professor Virdi is an associate professor at the University of Delaware who describes herself as “Deaf & forever a radical.”  She is a prominent and influential voice against discrimination against the deaf.

    There were parts of her column that I thought raised valuable and probative insights, including Virdi’s observation that “disabled people are the ‘original life hackers,’ people who adapt to their circumstances and find their way through the disabled world, by creating new objects and paths that allow them full participation.” She is also right that we need to reevaluate how our expectations might be barriers to those with disabilities. However, she engages in her own sweeping generalizations of those who raise these concerns and tells them that they must “jettison[] eugenics-influenced ideas about disability.”

    Virdi frames her analysis by insisting that Fetterman is just given to “verbal stumbles and pauses.”  The problem is that we do not know if there is more serious cognitive damage. Fetterman has refused to release his medical records despite requests from the media, including newspapers that support him.

    Moreover, Fetterman had this stroke before the primary vote but he and his staff kept the serious impact of the stroke a secret. After he received the nomination, they then largely prevented the media or voters from questioning him and sharply limited his public appearances. They would only agree to one debate and insisted that it occur relatively late in the election after hundreds of thousands voted.

    In other words, we still do not know the extent to which Fetterman can process information and communicate. His sole debate was widely viewed as alarming.

    However, it is the escalation of the rhetoric that is most notable about the Washington Post column. Professor Virdi explains that the doubts raised over Fetterman are reflective of our history with eugenics and view that certain groups are “socially deficient.”

    “As far as eugenicists were concerned, science said that “moral” flaws were hereditary and threatened the health of the nation. This meant that the solution to social problems such as crime, promiscuity and poverty aimed at the institutionalization and sterilization of the “morally degenerate”. As [Sir Francis ] Galton envisioned, human improvement was only possible through consistent, scientific intervention brought about by eugenics: ‘What nature does blindly, slowly, and recklessly, man can do proactively, swiftly, and kindly.’”

    Professor Virdi ties such doubts over the fitness of disabled people to past efforts of sterilization and the view that “controlling human reproduction through better breeding was a must.” She warns the such “at its core, eugenics simply applied a scientific gloss to existing racial, class, and gender prejudices. Immigrants, people with disabilities, and racial and ethnic minorities were among those identified as socially ‘disabled.’”

    As I wrote in the earlier column, there is no reason why a senator cannot be fully effective despite a disability, including the use of such devices as readers.  The problem in Pennsylvania is that the Fetterman campaign has actively prevented efforts to determine if there are more serious cognitive difficulties for Fetterman in processing information.

    In the end, the Fetterman strategy worked in sheltering the candidate from further questioning or debates. The best way to dispel such questions would have been greater interaction with the candidate to show that this was limited, as Professor Virdi suggests, to mere “verbal stumbles and pauses.”  As it stands, voters will largely vote without such information and any doubts are the result of the concerted effort to leave these questions answered.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/07/2022 – 20:00

  • Chinese Exports And Imports Unexpectedly Contract For The First Time Since May 2020
    Chinese Exports And Imports Unexpectedly Contract For The First Time Since May 2020

    As markets debate whether the Fed will follow other central banks with a (soft) pivot, the global economy is going from bad to worse: overnight, the latest Chinese customs data showed that China exports as well as imports unexpectedly contracted simultaneously for the first time since May 2020 as elevated inflation and rising interest rates hurt global demand.

    Chinese exports declined (-0.3% y/y) in October (vs exp +4.5%), the first drop since May 2020 on Covid outbreaks and weak external demand, following a +5.7% increase in September while the implied sequential export growth dropped to -3.8% m/m in October (vs. +0.5% in September).

    Imports fell (-0.7% y/y) following a +0.3% gain in the previous month, while sequentially imports fell 3.5% mom sa non-annualized in October (vs. -1.0% in September).  Import value declined sequentially on the lower prices of metal ores and weaker imports of tech-related products, such as computers and LCD panels. The trade surplus was well below consensus from weaker exports, though the level was slightly higher than September.

    The overall trade surplus slightly widened to a near +$85.15 billion (up from $84.74 billion in September, but below the forecast of $95.97 billion).

    According to Goldman, the export weakness broadened across destinations and products. Import of energy goods accelerated somewhat despite a weak import print. Other than weaker DM demand on tighter financial conditions and the ongoing European energy crisis, the contraction of exports partially came from port operation disruptions due to Covid outbreaks.

    Some more details on China’s trade data from Goldman:

    1. By major export destination, exports weakness broadened in October. The year-over-year growth of exports decelerated across most major trading partners. Among major DM countries, growth of exports to the European Union decelerated the most (-9.0% yoy in October vs. 5.6% in September). Growth of exports to United States decelerated to -12.6% yoy in October (vs. -11.6% in September). Among major EM economies, growth of exports to ASEAN decelerated to 20.3% yoy in October (vs. 29.5% in September), and the implied sequential growth turned negative.

    2. By major export category, export growth moderated across most products. The export growth of tech-related products dropped the most (cellphones and LCD panels, see Exhibit 3).

    Among tech-related products, exports of LCD panels declined 16.2% yoy in October (vs. -6.6% in September), and export growth of cellphones moderated to 7.0% yoy in October (vs. 23.2% in September). Among housing-related products, exports of home appliances fell 25.0% yoy in October (vs. -19.8% in September). Among Covid-related products, exports of computers declined 16.5% yoy in October (vs. -12.6% in September).

    3. Among major import categories, import growth of most energy goods remained solid in October on efforts to ensure energy security, and manufacturing related products rebounded.

    Among energy goods, import growth of crude oil picked up to 43.8% yoy in October (vs. +34.2% in September) with import volume up 14.1% yoy (vs. -2.0% yoy in September). Import growth of coal accelerated somewhat to 2.8% yoy in October (vs. +1.5% in September) with volume up 8.3% yoy (vs. 0.5% yoy in September). Among major metal ores, import values declined on lower prices. For instance, iron ore import value fell 26.8% yoy in October (vs. -38.8% in September) with import volume up 3.7% yoy (vs. +4.3% yoy in September). Among manufacturing related products, import growth of machine tools rebounded significantly in sequential terms (+44% mom sa non-annualized in October).

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/07/2022 – 19:40

  • Top 10 House Races To Watch On Election Night
    Top 10 House Races To Watch On Election Night

    Authored by Dan Berger via The Epoch Times,

    The House of Representatives hangs in the balance on Election Day. The Democrats currently have a 221-212 lead in Congress, with two vacancies, but Republicans appeared poised to take the chamber this year.

    RealClearPolitics gauges 228 seats leaning, likely, or solidly Republican, 174 similarly poised to go Democratic, and 33 as toss-ups. Most of the toss-up seats currently belong to Democrats. If Republicans win the night, as generally predicted, the big question will be how big the “red wave” will be and the size of the GOP’s majority.

    Analysts differ on the key races. This list includes some seen as bellwethers, or areas where outcomes tend to mirror broader trends. The list also includes some races where veteran lawmakers are in a tight race to defend their seats.

    Here’s a list of 10 House races to watch on Election Night on Nov. 8.

    North Carolina State Sen. Wiley Nickel (D) speaks to a crowd after winning the Democratic primary for the 13th congressional district of North Carolina at an election night event May 17, 2022 in Raleigh, North Carolina. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

    North Carolina District 13

    Because it’s in the East and the polls close at 7:30 p.m., this race between Democratic State Sen. Wiley Nickel and young Trump-backed Republican newcomer Bo Hines will yield results early. And its demographics, split between North Carolina’s rural counties and Raleigh’s suburbs, make it useful in analyzing other races in similar districts.

    With rural areas across the country colored red and big cities colored blue, the battle nowadays is in the purple suburbs. During the Trump presidency, suburban voters drifted away from the Republicans. A question to be answered on Tuesday is whether Democrats, helped by issues like abortion, can keep suburbanites in their column or whether Republicans, aided by a bad economy they’ve tied to Biden administration policies, can draw them back.

    Nickel, a veteran Democratic Party politico, served as an advance man for Al Gore in the 1990s and for the White House during Barack Obama’s presidency. He ran for office unsuccessfully in his native California before moving to North Carolina and going to work as a criminal defense attorney.

    Hines, who at 25 would, if elected, become one of the youngest members of Congress, grew up in the Charlotte area. He played football for a year at North Carolina State before transferring to Yale and playing there too.

    Each candidate epitomizes what his party’s voters in North Carolina seek right now, Nickel as relatively moderate and Hines as a Trump-backed conservative.

    “It’s like two districts rolled into one,” Democratic strategist Morgan Jackson of Raleigh said of CD 13 to The Epoch Times. “It’s the closest, most swing race in North Carolina. It’s truly a jump ball.”

    Rep. Cindy Axne (D-Iowa) speaks during news conference discussing the “Shutdown to End All Shutdowns (SEAS) Act” in Washington on Jan. 29, 2019. (Zach Gibson/Getty Images)

    Iowa’s District 3

    This district stretches from Des Moines south and southwest toward Omaha, including Des Moines suburbs, fast-growing exurbs, and rural areas. Democratic incumbent Cindy Axne has won the seat twice without yet reaching 50 percent of the vote. Following redistricting, the area voted narrowly for Donald Trump over Joe Biden in 2020.

    It’s the second most likely tipping point after North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District, analyst Nathaniel Rakich said in a FiveThirtyEight podcast. Rakich said it’s a good seat to watch because it has two reasonably strong candidates, the incumbent Axne and Republican state Senator Zach Nunn. Campaign ads mostly feature national issues, like abortion and crime, rather than local ones.

    “It’s the epitome of an everyday-American, average-Joe Congressional district,” Rakich said on a podcast at his website. “Republicans will have to beat some tough Democratic incumbents to have a majority or at least a sizeable majority.”

    With the addition of Republican-trending rural counties, the district became easier for Republicans than in two previous races against Axne.

    Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) speaks at a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, on May 2, 2017. (Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

    New York’s 17th Congressional District

    This race features the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Sean Patrick Maloney, one of the most influential members of his party and not someone who would be expected to be in a close race in this Hudson Valley district.

    But the GOP is making a late surge in the blue state, led by gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin. His anti-crime message has resonated as New York City residents deal with a wave of sensational crimes in the streets and subways.

    Maloney is a ten-year incumbent in the neighboring 18th District but chose to run in the 17th after redistricting. He has seen his lead against Republican Michael Lawler shrink. The Cook Political Report and Real Clear Politics reclassified the race as a toss-up.

    The Democrats have had to spend more and campaign harder for what was supposed to have been a safe seat. The DCCC spent $605,000 on an ad for Maloney last month, and former President Bill Clinton came to campaign for him.

    Political science professor Shawn Donahue of the University at Buffalo told The Epoch Times this was the race he watched most closely in the state. “Maloney looks particularly vulnerable. The Republicans are throwing money” at a race in a district Joe Biden won by 10 points over Donald Trump in 2020.

    “If Maloney were to lose, he would be the biggest person to lose since Cantor.”

    Eric Cantor of Virginia’s 7th District, the House Majority Leader from 2011 to 2014, lost a primary to economics professor Dave Brat in 2014 and resigned first his leadership position and then his seat.

    “As head of the party’s campaign committee, you’d think you’d have your own race in the bag so you could concentrate on other cases around the country,” Donahue said of Maloney.

    Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) speaks at a press conference on July 20, 2021, in Washington, DC.(Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

    Ohio’s 9th Congressional District

    Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) is the longest-serving woman in House history. If she wins this election over Republican J.R. Majewski, she’ll pass the late Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) as the longest-serving woman in Congress.

    But this district in northwest Ohio, centered on Democratic stronghold Toledo, has, with redistricting, become more challenging for the party. It once stretched along the Lake Erie shoreline to include Democratic parts of the Cleveland area but has lost them while adding Republican-leaning rural areas west of Toledo. The DCCC has identified Kaptur’s seat as vulnerable.

    The Cook Political Report has it leaning Democratic. But Real Clear Politics, which calls it a toss-up, notes that in the 2020 presidential race, voters here favored Donald Trump by almost 3 points over Joe Biden. FiveThirtyEight gives Kaptur a 76 percent chance of winning. Kaptur, 76 and a close Biden ally, was first elected in 1982. Majewski, 42, is an Air Force veteran and nuclear power plant manager.

    John Gibbs a candidate for congress in Michigan’s 3rd Congressional district speaks at a rally hosted by former President Donald Trump near Washington, Mich., on April 2, 2022. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

    Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District

    Republican Rep. Peter Meijer lost his seat in a primary upset to John Gibbs. Gibbs had been a Trump appointee to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, although not confirmed, while Meijer, whose family owns a Michigan-based supercenter chain, was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in the final days of his administration.

    The upset raised the chances this seat might flip to the Democrats, represented by Grand Rapids attorney Hillary Scholten. Real Clear Politics rates this race, in a district Biden carried by 11 points, as a toss-up. Cook’s has it leaning Democratic, and FiveThirtyEight gives Scholten a 57 percent chance of victory.

    Gibbs was one of the Republican candidates supported in the primaries by Democrats who pegged them as extremists and thus easier to beat in November. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spent $435,000 promoting Gibbs over Meijer.

    “We thought (Gibbs) was an easier candidate, and he has proven to be because he’s a nut and he’s too conservative for Western Michigan,” DCCC Chairman Sean Patrick Maloney told CNN’s Jake Tapper, defending the party’s tactics.

    Monica De La Cruz, (R-Texas) believes her progressive opponent’s radical views will not sit well with traditional Hispanic voters. (Photo courtesy of Monica De La Cruz)

    Texas’ 15th Congressional District

    This race in a South Texas district traditionally voting blue is seen as a stark clash of ideology between two Hispanic women, Democrat Michelle Vallejo and Republican Monica De La Cruz.

    The district has been represented by Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat. But after redistricting, he left it open to run in the neighboring 34th district against Republican Rep. Mayra Flores. She made history in June by winning a special election to become the first Republican to represent the area in more than a hundred years.

    Vallejo, a Columbia grad supported by progressives like Elizabeth Warren, wants to make the district more “equitable,” supports abortion, “Medicare for all,” “green energy,” and wants to offer “rights and opportunities” to illegal immigrants.

    De La Cruz, raised by a single mother, put herself through the University of Texas. She is pro-life, favors faith and family, ties Democratic policies to soaring inflation, and supports resuming President Donald Trump’s tough border policies. She’s endorsed by Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. De La Cruz ran well against Gonzalez in 2020, losing by 6,588 votes.

    Hispanics have begun moving toward Republicans recently, upsetting Democratic dependence upon them as part of their base. FiveThirtyEight analyst Galen Druke said in a podcast he’d be watching this race in an 80 percent Hispanic district to see how this trend, with national implications, is evolving.

    A file image of House Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Subcommittee ranking member Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) (C) and Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 25, 2017. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    Georgia’s 2nd Congressional District

    Sanford Bishop has held this seat in southwest Georgia for 30 years since it was drawn as a black majority district. He’s stood out as a moderate who can cross the party aisle and a Democrat who can appeal to white farmers and other rural voters.

    But redistricting has helped the Republicans here, and newcomer Chris West is still in the race. Republicans hope a red wave on Election Night will help the young lawyer and real estate developer upset the Congressional veteran Bishop, the longest-serving member of the Georgia delegation. Bishop’s long record and deep roots in the district could help him hang on to win.

    Real Clear Politics rates the district a toss-up. Two most recent polls of likely voters, one by Insider Advantage and the other by Trafalgar Group, show Bishop up by 3 and 4 points, respectively, both within the margin of error. West’s campaign website says it’s the only competitive race in the Deep South.

    The district includes Columbus and Macon, small towns, farmland, and military bases like Fort Benning. Bishop’s House committee positions in agriculture, military, and veteran affairs have positioned him to serve constituents in those areas.

    Charles Bullock, a University of Georgia political science professor, told The Epoch Times that Bishop had won reelection in the past when the district’s black population dropped as low as 39 percent. It stands after redistricting at 49 percent.

    Marci McCarthy, chairman of the DeKalb County Republican Party in the Atlanta metro area, said lst week that black voters in the state’s rural areas had not had a strong turnout in early voting up to that point.

    Lori Chavez-Deremer, former mayor of Happy Valley, Oregon, is the Republican nominee to represent Oregon’s 5th Congressional District. (Photo courtesy of Lori Chavez-Deremer)

    Oregon’s 5th Congressional District

    For a redrawn district stretching from Portland’s southern suburbs further south and inland, this race might serve as a referendum on the Portland metro area’s progressive politics.

    It’s now an open seat after a moderate Democrat incumbent, Kurt Schrader, lost the primary to progressive candidate Jamie McLeod-Skinner. While Schrader was endorsed by Joe Biden, the very progressive Elizabeth Warren endorsed McLeod-Skinner. The civil servant faces Lori Chavez-Deremer, a Republican and former mayor of the Portland suburb Happy Valley.

    RealClearPolitics rates the race a toss-up. The Cook Political Report classifies it as leaning Republican. Joe Biden won the district by 9 points in 2020.

    Redistricting eliminated coastal areas that favored Schrader. It hasn’t necessarily made the district easier for a Republican, one of Chavez-Deremer’s campaign leaders, Ben Roche, told The Epoch Times. But the political climate on crime, energy, and education may favor Republicans.

    Chavez-Deremer has campaigned as a moderate, someone who, as mayor, worked with both parties to fix civic problems. Roche said that Portland’s suburbs like Happy Valley have seen growing crime attributed to homeless drug addicts from Portland, a trend fed by the city’s progressive policies on homelessness and criminal justice. Portland was a center of BLM disorders in 2020 and of calls to defund the police.

    This undated photo provided by the Christy Smith For Congress campaign shows candidate Christy Smith. (Christy Smith For Congress via AP)

    California’s 27th District

    This district in Los Angeles County has become more difficult for the GOP through redistricting, losing the conservative Simi Valley. The 25th District has covered the area, and Republican Mike Garcia holds that seat. But the new 27th trends Democratic by almost 13 points.

    Garcia will be in his third race against the same opponent, Christy Smith, whom he defeated in 2020’s general election by only 333 votes.

    “It would be a stretch seat for Republicans normally,” the only seat the party holds in Los Angeles County, said FiveThirtyEight editor Maya Sweedler in a podcast where she picked it as a seat of crucial interest. “But if Garcia is running hot on election night, it will be notable for Republicans. I’m curious if Garcia can hang to this.”

    FiveThirtyEight calls Garcia slightly favored, with a 65 percent chance to win. Real Clear Politics says the race leans GOP. The Cook Political Report labels it a toss-up.

    Garcia is a former Navy fighter pilot who then worked for Raytheon. Smith, a former California Assemblywoman, has worked for the U.S. Department of Education.

    Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.), second from left, speaks during a press conference in Washington on Sept. 27, 2019. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District

    Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas, elected in 2018, faces Republican opponent Karoline Leavitt, who is just 25. She worked as an assistant press secretary in the Trump White House and later as director of communications for House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.)

    Trump did not endorse a candidate in the crowded GOP primary but later supported Leavitt with an enthusiastic shout-out on Truth Social.

    FiveThirtyEight terms Pappas as slightly favored to win, with a 65 percent chance of victory. Real Clear Politics, though, says it leans Republican, with it having gone for Trump over Biden by 1 point in 2020. The Cook Political Report calls it a toss-up.

    Pappas, co-chairs the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus. He has campaigned on health care and lowering the cost of prescription drugs and said in a debate that he wants to modernize trucking and shipping regulations to “unkink supply chains.”

    Leavitt told Fox News that she wanted to “really reach out to my generation of voters. . . . I live among them, my friends, my former college roommates, my former colleagues who are really being indoctrinated by the left’s agenda and their messaging. We desperately need strong, conservative, youthful voices on our side of the aisle that are standing up for our country.”

    Like many Republican and Democratic opponents around the country, the two have clashed on abortion, Biden’s economic policies, and the outcome of the 2020 election.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/07/2022 – 19:20

  • The Funeral Business Is Booming (And Not Because Of COVID)
    The Funeral Business Is Booming (And Not Because Of COVID)

    Authored by Alex Berenson via ‘Unreported Truths’ Substack,

    How bad is the rise in mortality?

    So bad funeral companies are starting to worry.

    Today Service Corporation International, the largest for-profit funeral operator in North America, had its quarterly earnings call. SCI had another great quarter, you’ll be pleased to hear! So far in 2022 the company has made almost $500 million in profits – and its stock is up over 15% since last week’s earnings report.

    (Death is your best investment!)

    SCI’s management seems fairly open with investors. For many years, much of the company’s growth came from buying family-run funeral homes as their operators, umm, died out. The underlying funeral business is slow growth and very predictable.

    At least it used to be.

    As Thomas L. Ryan, Service Corporation’s chairman and chief executive, told investors Wednesday morning:

    If you go back in this industry and particularly with SCI, year-to-year you would see the numbers of deaths — probably in one year you may be down 1% or 2%, in the next year you’re up 1% or 2% which you could predict was pretty good accuracy over a year and over a big footprint like ours what was probably going to happen… 2020 comes along, Covid, game-changer, right. We’re having to do at one point of time 20 percent more funerals which is unheard of in a year versus, let’s say, a year or two before.

    So Service Corporation expected that once Covid passed, its business would go back to normal…

    What we would have expected is, why wouldn’t we go back towards, let’s say, a 2019 level, maybe you get a percent or so growth of 2019, I would expect that. So that would be a reasonable level that we think would stabilize. And that’s kind of what we anticipated…

    Only that’s not what has happened.

    What we’re telling you is, the third quarter of this year, we did 15% more calls than we did in the third quarter of 2019. That is not what anybody would have anticipated and that has just a very de minimis amount of Covid deaths [emphasis added] in it.

    Covid is gone. But people keep dying. Why?

    Unsurprisingly, Ryan did not mention mRNA vaccines anywhere. Why would he? Doing so would only make for headaches he and Service Corporation do not need.

    But, earlier in the call, he did point to “more cancer deaths” and more broadly a decline in overall health:

    We believe these excess services are more permanent in nature into a combination of aging demographics, higher risk, less healthy lifestyle developed during the pandemic.

    Ryan also suggested delayed medical care might be an issue.

    These explanations are… strained, at best. Aging demographics are hardly new, and the lockdowns that drove a “less healthy lifestyle” ended as early as mid-2020 in most red states and by early 2021 almost everywhere. Opioids and overdoses generally remain a horrendous crisis, but deaths appear to have peaked in early 2022 and fallen slightly since. And for all the discussion of delays in medical care, hospitals and doctors offices have functioned essentially normally for at least 18 months.

    In any case, the United States is hardly alone in seeing a large and so far unexplained spike in deaths in 2022.

    Countries from Germany to Australia to Taiwan are seeing similar trends.

    They all have something in common. No points for guessing what.

    In any case, Service Corporation is expecting business to stay good for years to come.

    “These trends are hard to reverse quickly,” Ryan said.

    “I hope three, four, five years from now will subside a bit. But I don’t think it’s any time soon.”

    *  *  *

    [ZH: It is not just funeral services companies. Market participants were somewhat stunned when Lincoln Financial announced results last week and shares collapsed over 30% after a shocking, and unexpected, $2.6 billion Q3 loss.

    “A Catastrophe (and Not the Natural Kind),” Wells Fargo Securities analysts said in a note to clients Wednesday night, following the after-market release of earnings by the Pennsylvania life-insurance and annuities company.

    What drove the big loss?

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

    So, we wonder, is that the post-vaxx-new-normal-world-order trade: Short Life Insurers, Long Funeral Service Providers?]

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/07/2022 – 18:40

  • Top Dems Warn Party Seen As 'Extreme' And Driving Inflation
    Top Dems Warn Party Seen As ‘Extreme’ And Driving Inflation

    A center-left think tank backed by some of the most prominent names in Democratic politics, has warned that the Democratic party is viewed as ‘extreme,’ and unconcerned with top issues among voters.

    New polling from Third Way finds that “Despite a roster of GOP candidates who are extreme by any standard, voters see Democrats as just as extreme, as well as far less concerned about the issues that most worry them.“

    A few select quotes via Axios:

    • “Democrats are underwater on issues voters name as their highest priorities, including the economy, immigration, and crime.”
    • “While Democrats maintain a lead on handling certain issues like abortion and climate change, voters also rank these issues as lower priorities.“
    • “[V]oters question whether the party shares essential values like patriotism and the importance of hard work. … Only 43% of voters say Democrats value hard work, compared to 58% for Republicans.”
    • “[E]ven in the areas where Democrats are trusted more [including education], it is not clear that voters are sold on Democrats’ approach or ability to get things done.“
    • “Democrats are benefitting from a perception among voters that Republicans are extreme, but they cannot fully reap the gains of this view, as voters think Democrats are extreme as well.“

    In short, “If Democrats manage to hold on to the House and Senate, it will be in spite of the party brand, not because of it,” reads the Third Way memo regarding the survey.

    When asked which is the most important issue for Congress to prioritize right now, inflation and the economy win out by a wide margin, with 42% selecting it as their top choice. Immigration and the border follows at 11% and protecting abortion rights rounds out the list of issues gaining double digits with 10%. When given two choices, the same priorities rise to the top, with 59% saying inflation and the economy, 30% immigration and the border, and 17% protecting abortion rights.

    When asked which party would do a better job handling each issue, Republicans hold a decisive advantage (54%-36%) on inflation and the economy. A majority of voters (53%) also worry that continued Democratic control of Congress will make inflation worse, while less than a quarter (23%) say the same about Republican control. And 56% say Democrats are not focused enough on the economy, while only 36% say the same about their opponents. -Third Way

    As Axios notes, “Lifelong, respected Democrats are saying the quiet part out loud — that if Republicans have a huge night on Tuesday, as polls are blaring, Democrats must blame “much deeper” problems than simply the “historical trends” that beset the party in power.”

    Of course, this is exactly what James Carville, Bill Maher, and other influential Democrats have been saying for more than a year.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/07/2022 – 18:20

  • Guy Fawkes Night Reminded Us That Bitcoin Is A Modern Vendetta Against The Establishment
    Guy Fawkes Night Reminded Us That Bitcoin Is A Modern Vendetta Against The Establishment

    Authored by Alex Lielacher via BitcoinMagazine.com,

    Bitcoin enables a digital Gunpowder Plot, giving anyone the ability to opt out of establishment control as Guy Fawkes once attempted…

    The Guy Fawkes mask – popularized by the movie “V For Vendetta” – has become a symbol of resistance against the State, worn by anti-government protesters of all factions. Bitcoiners have also picked up the mask, highlighting Bitcoin’s own struggle against the powers that be who control and benefit from the corrupt fiat currency monetary system.

    As we remembered ‘the fifth of November’ this past weekend, here’s a reminder that Bitcoin is more than number-go-up technology. At its core, it’s a monetary revolution that has the potential to change the world forever.

    WHY DOES BRITAIN CELEBRATE THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER?

    “Remember, remember, the fifth of November. Gunpowder, treason, and plot. I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.”

    Ask anyone in the U.K. about Guy Fawkes, and they’ll most likely quote you this poem. The fifth of November is a day when we remember one of the most notorious acts of rebellion against the state on European soil. On November 5, 1605, a group of Roman Catholic Church followers attempted to blow up parliament and kill King James I. The leader of the plot, Robert Catesby, together with his four co-conspirators — Thomas Winter, Thomas Percy, John Wright and the infamous Guy Fawkes — were angered by King James’ refusal to grant more religious toleration to Catholics.

    Through this plot, they hoped that the confusion, which would follow the murder of the king, his ministers and the members of Parliament, would provide an opportunity for the English Catholics to take over the country.

    However, their plan didn’t work.

    They were caught and later hanged for treason. Their action resulted in even more punishment against the Catholic Church. In January 1606, the U.K. Parliament established November 5 as a day of public thanksgiving.

    Today we celebrate November 5 as Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night by lighting bonfires, setting off fireworks and carrying “Guys” through the streets wearing the ever-so-famous Guy Fawkes mask.

    THE CHANGING SYMBOLISM OF THE GUY FAWKES MASK

    The comic and, later, the movie, “V For Vendetta” turned the Guy Fawkes mask into a symbol with many different meanings.

    It’s no longer only memorabilia for the fifth of November, but a symbol against power, corruption and the state apparatus, as well as a means to protect your identity during a time of omnipresent surveillance.

    One of the most obvious symbols of the mask is the uprising against the powers that be.

    Throughout the film “V For Vendetta,” the character V’s identity is never revealed. There was no need to know who he was. The meaning in the graphic novel actually goes a step further and utilizes V’s facelessness to promote anarchy in the hopes of creating a new world order without leaders.

    This vision is one that many protestors or anarchists share as well. Whether they are hacktivist collectives like Anonymous, which is keen to unveil corruption and abuse of power, or protestors against state tyranny in Venezuela, India, Bahrain or Nigeria. Once they put on the mask, they become not only a protestor against power, but also a symbol for others to follow their lead. One person alone with the mask on their face is meaningless, but once a collective puts on the mask, it becomes the symbol against tyranny.

    Obviously, it’s a guard to protect one’s privacy as well, which is why you see so many Guy Fawkes masks at protests. And this blends into online culture as well.

    Satoshi Nakamoto is arguably one of the most famous anonymous activists of the past 20 years. In fact, one of the most portrayed versions of Nakamoto is as someone wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and hoodie. Like V in the movie, it was Nakamoto who launched a vendetta with the financial world.

    They didn’t seek vengeance by hacking the legacy financial system, but rather by creating a system in which everyone is able to transact freely. Once the project was big enough and able to live on its own, Nakamoto left, never to return, thereby nurturing the idea of a movement without any leaders — a leaderless resistance against the fiat monetary system.

    One of the main aspects of Bitcoin is its ability to separate money from the State. This separation is what unites Bitcoiners with protesters on the streets in Venezuela, hacktivists online and Guy Fawkes back in 1605. All of them had or have the goal of dethroning powerful institutions for a better and freer society.

    WHY ANON BITCOINERS WEAR THE GUY FAWKES MASK

    The Guy Fawkes mask is not only a symbol against tyranny but also a shield of protection to hide your identity. And anonymity is a big part of Bitcoin culture.

    Anon Bitcoiners want to protect themselves from the establishment, and the possible repercussions of having their identity linked with a technology that has the potential to topple existing monetary structures that benefit the few in power.

    While Bitcoin is slowly being integrated into the legacy financial system, adding to its legitimacy in the eyes of governments, regulators and big banking, the potential for a ban — as Bitcoin is a way to circumvent the coming central bank digital currency (CBDC) surveillance apparatus — remains a threat.

    History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

    If you look at what happened with gold in the United States in 1933, where citizens were essentially robbed of their gold possessions, it would be foolish to think that similar plans don’t also exist for Bitcoin.

    Now, one could say as long as you have your private keys and secure your wallet in a multisig structure, not much can happen. That might be true for your bitcoin. But the fact that your identity is linked to a potentially soon-to-be-banned technology poses a risk.

    Anons are able to opt out of that dystopia by wearing a metaphorical Guy Fawkes mask and remaining anonymous. They cut off their real-life personas from their online personas, allowing them to continue to remain unlinked to Bitcoin by name.

    Bear in mind, in the future, CBDCs will exist and will likely emerge as the main tool of surveillance for the establishment. That is another reason why the mask became a symbol against the establishment, whether that be in the Bitcoin space or in activist groups like Anonymous.

    All of these different groups are willing to stand up against tyranny by “putting on the mask.”

    Symbols are only effective if enough people stand up for them. A single Guy Fawkes mask is worthless. However, if thousands of people wear them at protests or have them on in their profile pictures online, they’re able to put pressure on the establishment.

    Statements like “Bitcoin is a peaceful revolution” or “Fix the money, fix the world” have the goal of peaceful anarchy or revolution within them. They don’t want to kill or destroy innocent lives. That’s what the establishment is doing with its endless proxy wars. The goal is to inform citizens and give power back to the individual.

    IS BITCOIN THE FIAT MONETARY SYSTEM’S GUNPOWDER PLOT?

    The simple answer to this question is yes, absolutely.

    However, Bitcoiners don’t plan to blow up parliament. Although I am sure there are Bitcoiners living under truly tyrannical state rule who may be working on overthrowing their governments, Bitcoiners want to change the world peacefully, without bloodshed or physical harm to anyone.

    In “V For Vendetta” and the gunpowder plot of 1605, the goal was to topple the existing power structure at all costs. The characters were willing to sacrifice human lives to see the change they envisioned. This is very different from Bitcoin.

    Bitcoin doesn’t need a violent uprising. Bitcoin is the uprising. Bitcoin itself is a peaceful revolution. There is no need to physically occupy Wall Street or hold bank employees hostage in a robbery. All anyone has to do to take part in the Bitcoin revolution is to become part of the Bitcoin network by running a node and spreading awareness of the power that Bitcoin holds to change the world.

    Bitcoin is antifragile, hard to change and secure by design. These qualities are the gunpowder of Bitcoin. There were many attempts to change its fundamentals — the Blocksize Wars, for example — but none of the attackers were successful in their attempts.

    Bitcoin’s core of believers stuck to Nakamoto’s vision, one that is still alive today. Everyone on earth has the opportunity to take part in the Bitcoin network, benefitting from its ability to enable anyone to store, send and receive value without censorship or needing to ask for approval. That’s why the establishment fears it.

    The establishment doesn’t want you to own anything. Its members are the ones telling you what to eat, drink and spend your hard-earned money on. If you don’t obey, it will enforce new rules or shut you off by controlling your bank account. This is why CBDCs are so dangerous, as they can, in theory, give this establishment complete control over all your financial transactions.

    Just by owning and using bitcoin, you don’t have to follow these rules. You have the option to opt out.

    If there is one thing the gunpowder plot or “V For Vendetta” has taught us, it’s the power of collective minds. The establishment is afraid of more public support for Bitcoin because it knows that once we hit a certain threshold, there won’t be any going back.

    The establishment can’t turn Bitcoin off like a server.

    Without realizing it, it has built a monster. It was because of bad financial incentive structures in the past that Nakamoto created Bitcoin. The greed of the establishment was what led us here.

    One by one, from the bottom up, we’ve risen and continue to give people hope, courage and a vision for a better tomorrow.

    REMEMBER, REMEMBER, WHAT BITCOIN COULD REALLY ACCOMPLISH

    In the third act of “V For Vendetta,” the character Evey has overcome her fear of death. She knows there won’t be any going back, and the plotted revolution on the fifth of November is unavoidable, regardless of her own life.

    In the real world, the establishment has gotten to where it is today because it has been able to corrupt the system with fiat money. If it ever needed more, it was able to print it. Up until today, it was somewhat successful. But its time is running out.

    You can only print so much money before it starts inflating away. The result of that rigorous spending is visible now.

    Figureheads like Christine Lagarde of the European Central Bank or Andrew Bailey of the Bank of England don’t know how to stop inflation. They don’t see any other solution but to print more money and to throw more money at the problem. As we know, however, that doesn’t work.

    Bitcoin fixes this.

    Bitcoin’s limited supply, combined with its disinflationary monetary policy, enables holders to protect themselves from the long-term effects of inflation. But that’s not all.

    Bitcoin is also freedom money. It allows anyone in the world to participate in a new monetary system free of the chains of the fiat currency apparatus. No ruler, no regulator and no bank can lock you out of your bitcoin as long as you hold your own keys.

    That is the true power of Bitcoin. It provides us with financial sovereignty and the power to choose our own destiny.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/07/2022 – 18:00

  • Twitter Daily User Growth Hits 'All-Time Highs' During First Week Under Musk
    Twitter Daily User Growth Hits ‘All-Time Highs’ During First Week Under Musk

    While Twitter may be shedding virtue-signaling advertisers (who totally weren’t looking for any reason to trim their ad budgets), daily user growth during the company’s first full week under Elon Musk has hit ‘all-time highs,’ according to an internal document seen by The Verge.

    According to an internal FAQ given to the company’s sales team for use in conversations with advertisers, Twitter’s monetizable daily user (mDAU) has jumped to more than 20%, while “Twitter’s largest market, the US, is growing even more quickly.”

    The company has added more than 15 million mDAUs, “crossing the quarter billion mark” since the end of Q2, when it stopped reporting financials as a public company.

    If those numbers are in line with how Twitter reported metrics when it was public, they imply that the service has yet to see a mass exodus under Musk’s ownership. He tweeted on Sunday that, since his deal to buy Twitter was announced, “user numbers have increased significantly around the world.” Twitter last reported 237.8 million mDAUs and a 16.6 percent yearly growth rate for the second quarter.

    While users may not be fleeing Twitter en masse, advertisers are. In another tweet on Friday, Musk said the company has seen “a massive drop in revenue” due to “activist groups pressuring advertisers.” Reports of a sharp spike in racist and hateful tweets after his takeover initially spooked advertisers, though Twitter said afterward that the influx was due to coordinated “trolling campaigns.” The FAQ for advertisers on Monday says that “levels of hate speech remain within historical norms, representing 0.25% to 0.45% of tweets per day among hundreds of millions.” -The Verge

    Advertisers are reportedly scratching their heads over who to voice complaints with since the resignation of top advertising exec, Sara Personette.

    The FAQ was distributed by 10-year company veteran Alex Josephson, VP of Twitter Next – an internal team tasked with helping brands create campaigns on the social network since 2019. According to Josephson’s post to the sales team, 25% of the organization was affected by last Friday’s mass layoffs, and that “the decision to scale back our presence in select geographies contributed significantly to the sales reductions.”

    Meanwhile, the FAQ addresses the upcoming revamp of the Twitter Blue subscription service which introduces paid verification – saying it will “not affect existing verified accounts at this time,” and that “large brand advertisers who are already verified will now have an additional ‘Official’ label beneath their name upon Twitter Blue’s relaunch this week.”

    Musk was reportedly tossing around a $19.99 monthly price point for blue checks, however after far-left author Stephen King threw a Twitter tantrum, Musk lowered the price to $8 per month – which he’s been tormenting 

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

     

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 11/07/2022 – 17:40

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