• Why China's Marriage Crisis Is An Existential Threat To The Country
  Why China’s Marriage Crisis Is An Existential Threat To The Country

  Authored by John Mac Ghlionn via The Epoch Times,

  President Xi Jinping recently vowed to launch comprehensive initiatives to address China’s rapidly declining birth rate.

  

  Behind the bombastic rhetoric, however, there lies a truly sobering fact: new policies probably won’t be enough to arrest China’s demographic decline. Here’s why.

  In China, a hyper-traditional society, having a child out of wedlock is still frowned upon. Childbearing and childrearing are synonymous with marriage. Last year, the communist nation saw marriage rates hit a 35-year low. The sharp drop in marital vows comes at the same time China faces an impending demographic crisis. 2021 saw 7.6 million marriage registrations, the fewest since 1986. With falling birth rates and a rapidly aging population, China faces problems that are very much existential in nature.

  In truth, China’s marriage crisis has been an issue for the best part of a decade. In the space of six years, between 2013 and 2019, the number of Chinese citizens getting married fell from 23.8 million to 13.9 million, a 41 percent drop. Of course, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ill-advised one-child policy, which was in place for 35 years (1980–2015), has resulted in far fewer people of marriageable age. The policy resulted in 400 million fewer babies being born.

  

  Medical staff takes care of a newborn baby at a hospital in Fuyang in China’s eastern Anhui province, on Jan. 19, 2019. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

  China has also witnessed “changing attitudes to marriage, especially among young women who are becoming more educated and financially independent,” according to CNN. Due to “widespread workplace discrimination” and “patriarchal traditions,” an increasing number of women are saying no to marriage.

  Some readers, I’m sure, will roll their eyes at the “patriarchal traditions” bit. If you happen to be one of them, I don’t blame you. I have been highly critical of the ways in which the “p word” has been weaponized and demonized by many individuals in the United States and beyond. However, patriarchal traditions look a little different in China than, say, the United States or the UK. The Chinese, we’re told, have a rather controversial saying: “If you don’t beat your wife every three days, she’ll start tearing up roof tiles.” A quarter of Chinese women are victims of domestic violence. Every 7.4 seconds a wife is beaten by her husband. As is clear to see, Chinese women can be forgiven for having second thoughts about marriage, especially if they were raised in an abusive household.

  Besides the violence, there’s also another reason why fewer Chinese people are deciding to walk down the aisle. China is an incredibly expensive place to live. According to Mercer’s Cost of Living Index 2022, six of the biggest Chinese cities—Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Qingdao, and Nanjing—are among the top 10 most expensive cities on the Asian continent. Meanwhile, Hong Kong, more or less controlled by Beijing, is the most expensive city in the world. Not surprisingly, more Hong Kongers are saying no to marriage and no to starting a family. If one is struggling to pay rent, having a child is probably the last thing on their mind.

  So what, some will say, cities in the United States, UK, and Western Europe are also ridiculously expensive to live in. Yes, they are. But China’s GDP per capita is less than $10,000. This places the country between the Balkan nation of Montenegro and Botswana, located in southern Africa. The United States, on the other hand, has a GDP per capita of $69,000.

  

  A man walks in front of a housing complex by Chinese property developer Evergrande in Beijing on Oct. 21, 2021. (Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images)

  For years, we have heard so much about China’s impressive GDP growth. At the same time, however, we have heard very little about its less-than-impressive GDP per capita.

  What’s my point?

  There are at least 90 million people currently working in Chinese factories. In a year, they can expect to earn roughly 55,000 RMB (less than $8,000). Even those working in more prestigious positions struggle to make more than $16,000 per year. By 2035, China’s GDP per capita is expected to be $28,700. Try getting married, paying rent, buying necessities, and starting a family on $28,700.

  Moreover, it’s particularly difficult to start a family (or do anything of value) when you can’t find a job. Right now, China’s youth unemployment is close to 20 percent (8.1 percent in the United States (pdf)). Of course, China’s marriage problem isn’t exactly unique. Other countries around the world, including the United States, are also experiencing their own marriage-related issues. However, the size of the problem facing China and the CCP is, for lack of a better word, gigantic—especially now that its economy appears to be going down the proverbial lavatory.

  Analysts at The Lowy institute, a Sydney-based think tank, insist that, even with “continued broad policy success,” China’s “annual economic growth will slow to about 3% by 2030 and 2% by 2040.” China’s economy, we’re told, appears to be suffering from a crisis in confidence among consumers. Is it any surprise? The average Chinese citizen, be they 25 or 75, is struggling to survive.

  In an effort to address the marriage crisis, there’s always the chance that the CCP could use its cruel social credit system to punish adults who refuse to get married and start a family. The CCP might take inspiration from Russia, its close ally, where couples are currently being offered financial incentives to get married and have children. But, commonsense tells us that it will take a lot more than one-off payments and tax subsidies to solve China’s marriage situation, a problem that is fast becoming existential in nature. Money is a necessity, but it’s no substitute for genuine desire. Today, for reasons already explained, very few Chinese have any desire to get married. As the country becomes older and less efficient, expect the flame of desire to become even more faint.

  …

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/06/2022 – 23:30

• Late Season Tropical Threat Emerges, Gov. DeSantis Warns "Floridians To Be Prepared"
  Late Season Tropical Threat Emerges, Gov. DeSantis Warns “Floridians To Be Prepared”

  The end of November marks the close of the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season. There are a little more than three weeks left in the season, and AccuWeather forecasters say a tropical threat has emerged just north of the Caribbean and could strengthen into a storm next week, with Florida in the crosshairs.

  A low-pressure system developed on Saturday just south of Puerto Rico. By Sunday, the system, dubbed Invest 98L, moved North of Puerto Rico and has an 80% chance of developing into a subtropical or tropical depression over the next two days. It has a 90% chance of developing over the next five days.

  

  AccuWeather forecasters warn, “this tropical rainstorm will become better organized and likely become a tropical storm as it takes a winding track toward the Bahamas and storm-weary Florida.” If it develops into a tropical storm in the Atlantic basin, it will be named “Nicole.” 

  AccuWeather storm track modeling shows the system is on a westward path and could make landfall in South Florida in the second half of the week. 

  

  Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state officials told Floridians to be prepared for potential tropical impacts. 

  “I encourage all Floridians to be prepared and make a plan in the event a storm impacts Florida.

   “We will continue to monitor the path and trajectory of Invest 98L and we remain in constant contact with all state and local government partners,” DeSantis said.

  The exact landfall timing and location are uncertain but could affect many Floridians still recovering from Hurricane Ian in September. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/06/2022 – 23:00

• The Unforgivable Request For Shamnesty
  The Unforgivable Request For Shamnesty

  Authored by Thomas Buckley via ‘The Point’ Substack,

  The morning after is never pleasant… and it shouldn’t be!

  

  It’s about 11 a.m.  The brain activates but you’re not quite sure you can open your eyes.

  You experience what Homer Simpson described as “that sweet couple of seconds before I remember why I’m sleeping on the lawn.”

  You feel around and breathe a sigh of relief that you are still indoors, slowly open one eye, see your spouse glaring at you and it all floods back.  You had too much fun last night.

  Thoughts race – how much did I…? it couldn’t have been that bad, could it…?  Oh wait, maybe there was that thing…was there?

  You shut your eye while remaining extremely aware of your spouse’s foot tapping menacingly on the bedroom floor, trying desperately to immediately recall the previous evening’s proceedings.  At first, the part of your brain that evolved to ensure self-preservation kicks in and you momentarily convince yourself you were actually rather restrained…

  – but then reality crashes in and you open your eyes again, look down, wonder how that stain got on your tie even before realizing that your wore it to bed,  You put on your most sheepish face, look up, say “Honey, I…” and are immediately cut off by the most disgusted and disappointed “I cannot believe you sometimes!” you have ever heard in your life.

  The next few days are rough – you remain a bit too heavy-footed to properly slink around the house, you hunt for a can of soup because you know with absolute certainty your spouse is not going to be cooking anytime soon, you gobble Advil, and you wonder which is worse – the hangover or the nearly lethal tension hovering in the house.

  After a day or so, you start to work your way back to normal – a bit.  You haven’t really done that before, mostly, you tell yourself it was just a party and – even though you admit to overdoing it – everyone was pretty well lubricated (you finally remember that really off-color joke your neighbor told and you know – you think – you didn’t say anything that bad,) and you vow – to yourself first and only after you have worked out the speech in your head – to your spouse that it will never happen again (even though you both know it very well could.)

  And then – in an effort to get yourself completely off the hook for your bad behavior –  you write an article for The Atlantic entitled “Let’s Declare a Drunken Party Amnesty.”

  And you have the self-satisfied gall of the recently repentant to think “well, that’s over and we should never discuss it ever again because that would be rude of you.”

  That’s not how this works.

  The actions taken by Dr. Emily Oster – who had the astonishing temerity to write the “Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty” piece  and her many many over-credentialed, under-educated power mad brethren over the past 30 months cannot be given a pass.

  What happened during the pandemic was obviously more than a one-off drunken party moment.  Having tee many martoonis does not compare to the whirlwind of destruction the COVID reaction caused.

  Massive educational degradation.  Economic devastation, by both the lockdowns and now the continuing fiscal nightmare plaguing the nation caused by continuing federal over-reaction.  The critical damage to the development of children’s social skills through hyper-masking and fear-mongering.  The obliteration of the public’s trust in institutions due to their incompetence and deceitfulness during the pandemic.  The massive erosion of civil liberties.  The direct hardships caused by vaccination mandates, etc. under the false claim of helping one’s neighbor.  The explosion of the growth of Wall Street built on the destruction of Main Street.  The clear separation of society into two camps – those who could easily prosper during the pandemic and those whose lives were completely upended.  The demonization of anyone daring to ask even basic questions about the efficacy of the response, be it the vaccines themselves, the closure of public schools, the origin of the virus, or the absurdity of the useless public theater that made up much of the program.  The fissures created throughout society and the harm caused by guillotined relationships amongst family and friends.  The slanders and career chaos endured by prominent actual experts (see the Great Barrington Declaration) and just plain reasonable people like Jennifer Sey – https://nypost.com/2022/10/24/former-levis-top-exec-reveals-how-woke-mobs-took-over-corporations/ –  for daring to offer different approaches, approaches – such as focusing on the most vulnerable –  that had been tested and succeeded before. 

  And still a million people died.

  And now Oster asks if everyone would just please move on and forget about it?

  Oster kept her job.  Oster got famous.  The pandemic was good for Oster.

  The pandemic was also good for bureaucrats, multi-nationals, putative experts, the mindless media, and internet scolds.  It was good for woke adults who want to remain children, it was good for the national security-industrial complex, it was good for hiding behind, it was good for expanding societal power.

  It was not good for people.

  There are other aspects to consider when mulling over the request as well.

  • First, this amnesty idea was wholly predictable, though when I did so I assumed it would entail at least a modicum of shame – see here:

  • Second, the politics – for the Democrats –  of the request are incredibly stupid.  Placing the misery of the pandemic front and center a week before the mid-term election is beyond a bad idea and is only made the more amazing – and offensive – that it was done purposefully and in the context of demanding a free pass.  The fearlessly narcissistic arrogance of the bubble people knows no bounds – see here:

  • Third, as for the “we really didn’t know but we meant well so we’re all good, right?” aspect of the argument, that is a repellent lie.  Oster and her merry band of pandemicists knew full well (at least after the first few months) exactly what was happening, exactly the collateral damage being caused was and still actively decided to continue to push the false and destructive narrative of the response.  It strongly appears that the reason for the aggressive ignorance was wholly about power, fame, money, societal purchase, doubling down on mistakes so as not to have to admit error, and buying into (and burnishing) their own image as the nation’s saviors.

  It cannot be forgotten that until this moment  – except for Fauci, due to his deadly bungling of the emergence of AIDS – 99 percent of the people who suddenly, like Oster, became experts and got to be on television and publicly worshiped and given real actual power for the first time in their lives were – outside of their narrow fields – utter nobodies.  Being the all-praised, almighty center of attention feels good and that is a feeling you will do anything to keep going.

  Just the mind-warping act of asking for amnesty shows that nothing has been learned by Oster and her ilk and they will, if given the chance, do it all again exactly they way they did it this time.

  Amnesty is pretending something never happened – this episode in our history must never be forgotten if we are to preserve our nation.

  Amnesty will not – it cannot – be given. 

  And please do not ask again.

  *  *  *

  The Point is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/06/2022 – 22:30

• Biden Admits The Truth: "No More Oil Drilling" As Energy Stocks Set To Soar
  Biden Admits The Truth: “No More Oil Drilling” As Energy Stocks Set To Soar

  It has been a great year for energy stocks as the chart below clearly reveals…

  

  … and it will be an even better year (and decade) for energy stocks.

  Why? Not because of what Goldman trader Michael Sullivan wrote last week explaining why Energy has (finally) become everyone’s favorite sector (more than two years after we first told our readers to go balls to the wall long XOM):

  “Energy continues to lead. When oil is up. When oil is down. When yields are up, or when they are down. When the US is threatening Windfall Profits Taxes or considering limits on product exports. Whether the market is hiding in defensives or shifting to more offensive positioning … maybe energy equities are leading because the market sees a pretty good set-up for oil: (1) US SPR release rate is slowing; (2) EU sanctions on Russian sea borne crude are expected to start in Dec; (3) we are passing peak refining maintenance and at the onset of winter — both of which should drive a sequential increase in demand; (4) distillate inventories are extremely low and subject to upside risks, link; (5) a Fed pivot would likely support inflows into commodities — implying a weaker dollar — every 10% move in the dollar is about 300k/d to oil demand on an annual basis.”

  It’s not because of what One River CIO Eric Peters wrote in his latest weekend note:

  “The UN forecasts that world population will pass eight billion next week,” said the energy executive. “One billion of us lack proper access to energy,” she continued. “And we are currently consuming 100mm barrels of oil per day.” That is double what it was 50yrs ago (still rising 1.5% per year). The IEA predicts consumption of 125mm barrels per day by mid-century if the current mix of policies continues. “India’s population will surpass China’s next year,” she said. India GDP per capita is $2,500 (China is $14,340). India is striving to catch up. “In the decades ahead, 90% of the world population will demand more energy.”

  It’s because of what Joe Biden let slip just two days before the midterms, namely what everyone always knew would be the pinnacle of catastrophic US energy policy under the democrats: “no more drilling”

  BREAKING: Two days before the midterm elections, Joe Biden clearly states he is for “no more [oil] drilling.” pic.twitter.com/2F9hZNOwMt

  — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 7, 2022

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

  As Michael Shellenberger so poignantly noted, for months, President Joe Biden and members of his cabinet have claimed that they are no obstacle to expanded oil and gas production in the United States.

  On June 21 Biden said, “This idea that they don’t have oil to drill and to bring up is simply not true. This piece of the Republicans talking about Biden shutting down fields is wrong.”

  On June 22, Biden said, I know my Republican friends claim, we’re not producing enough oil and I’m limiting oil production. Quite frankly, that’s nonsense.”

  And on November 2, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm tweeted, “Disinfo about @POTUS’ energy agenda is being used to scare/mislead Americans while industry cashes in. The facts are clear: This Admin outpaced the previous Admin on crude oil production + oil/gas well approvals while also making historic investments in a clean energy transition.”

  But tonight, Biden has effectively admitted that he, Energy Secretary Granholm, and others in his administration have been lying. 

  I have documented the lies Biden has told about his energy policy for the last five months. Others have as well. The Wall Street Journal reported in September that Biden had leased fewer acres of public land and waters offshore for oil and gas drilling than any other administration since World War II.

  

  Granholm tweeted out a Politico article that noted that Biden administration regulators approved oil and gas wells more quickly than the Trump administration did during its first 21 months in office.

  But the story was misleading because those approvals were entirely for drilling on private and state land, which are outside of the administration’s control, something Politico acknowledged 12 paragraphs into its article.

  Biden’s quote, which is on par with his “outrageous” coal plant closure comments, hardly needs more commentary but we will note that it comes just days after the White House unveiled its “brilliantly cunning” plan of promising energy execs that it would buy all the oil they had to sell at $72 to refill the SPR that Biden single-handedly drained to crush US energy companies. Maybe the same oil execs will be just a little skeptical when it comes to anything that comes out of this old man’s mouth going forward.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/06/2022 – 22:00

• "It's Not Looking Good" – Martin Armstrong Warns There May Not Be A 2024 Election
  “It’s Not Looking Good” – Martin Armstrong Warns There May Not Be A 2024 Election

  Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

  Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong says, “The cheating in the midterm election next week is going to be so great that it is almost impossible to make a prediction. . . . In a fair midterm election, the Republicans would win the House and the Senate.”

  

  So, what does his Socrates program see for next week?  Armstrong, says, “It’s going to be tight, and the Republicans have a shot at taking the House.  Technically, they should take the House and the Senate.  I am just not sure.  The corruption is so bad, it’s crazy. ..”

  “Pennsylvania sent out hundreds of thousands of ballots to people who are not documented or even American.  I’ve gotten emails from people in Canada, they are getting mail-in ballots.  They mailed them to Canada…

  Where this ends up, who knows?  It’s just so corrupt, it is over the top.  It doesn’t matter who wins.  Nobody is going to accept this thing, and that is the problem.”

  The cheating is going to be so in your face President Trump may not even be able to run for President two years from now.  Armstrong contends, “We may not even have an election in 2024…”

  “It is not looking very good, and it’s probably because this election is not going to be accepted. 

  When it is so over-the-top corrupt, what do you do for the next one? 

  The United States will not exist after 2032.  After 2028 and 2029, we are going to have to redesign a government from scratch.  America is being destroyed. 

  Republics always end in absolute corruption.  We just saw the same thing happen in Brazil.  They staged a major effort to take Bolsonaro out…

  This is a worldwide effort.  They had to get rid of Trump.  The other one who stood in their way is Bolsonaro.  Then there is Putin (Russia) and Xi Jinping (China).  I think you are going to have historians look back at this 50 years from now, and they will call this period ‘The Climate Change Wars’…

  They are trying to take down as much oil energy capacity as possible.”

  Armstrong is still seeing very strong signals on domestic violence everywhere.  Armstrong explains, “Our computer is showing it’s going to be a rocket launch for volatility and civil unrest next year.”

  Armstrong also contends there will be a major loss of confidence in government around the world.  That means gold will start having big demand from big money.  Armstrong also predicts,

  “The whole monetary system as we know it is collapsing.  That was what the bond crisis in the UK was about.”

  There is much more in the 1-hour and 7-minute interview for 11.5.22.

  Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with Martin Armstrong, cycle expert and author of the new book “The Plot to Seize Russia, Manufacturing World War III.” Armstrong is giving the book away if you attend in-person the “2022 World Economic Conference” in Orlando, FL, next weekend.

  To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

  There is some free information, analysis and articles on ArmstrongEconomics.com. Armstrong’s book, “The Plot to Seize Russia, Manufacturing World War III,” will be given away if you sign up for the “In-Person” conference below.  There will be a book buying link posted soon on ArmstrongEconomics.com, so be on the lookout for it. For tickets to Armstrong’s “2022 World Economic Conference” in Orlando, FL, November 11, 12, and 13, click here.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/06/2022 – 21:30

• Hedge Fund CIO: "My Best Guess Is That Something Like $300/Barrel Oil Eventually Ends This Cycle"
  Hedge Fund CIO: “My Best Guess Is That Something Like $300/Barrel Oil Eventually Ends This Cycle”

  By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

  “Wanna know what would make Biggie’s job easy?” barked Biggie Too, slipping into 3rd person like a warm bath. “On Valentine’s Day, non-farm payrolls is -250k, unemployment is above 4%, Powell says enough is enough, the S&P 500 troughs at 3300, and up we go,” bellowed Biggie, Chief Global Strategist for one of Wall Street’s Too-Big-To-Fail affairs. “The end of the bear market gets given to Biggie, wrapped up in a red bow.” Then Biggie went quiet. Agitating himself. “But Biggie doesn’t get gifts. Not for Valentine’s Day. Not for Christmas. Biggie doesn’t even get damn birthday cards.”

  “Biggie is not going to get a signal we got a big low,” said Too. “Biggie is going to get a continuation of a series of lows next year, and it’s going be horrible, just horrible,” he said, not sounding terribly upset about it if I’m being honest. “And somewhere in the middle of it, something is going to break. It always does. Always.” We’ve seen the warning signs bubbling up. The UK pension LDI debacle. “You don’t hike rates this fast and not break something big. It’s coming,” said Biggie. “And listen, you’ll know when to trade the Fed pivot. It’ll be after everyone has given up on the Fed pivot.”  

  MMT

  “The Fed and almost everyone else misunderstands how interest rates affect the economy,” said Warren Mosler, father of MMT. “Higher rates increase interest payments on gov’t debt, and these dollars get pumped into the economy,” he said. US GDP is roughly $25trln. US national debt held by the public is currently $24trln. If the average interest rate on this debt is 1%, the gov’t will pay $240bln in interest. If overnight rates stay high and the average rate on our debt stock rises to 4%, the government will pay $1trln per year. That’s ~4% of GDP.

  “The gov’t currently increases the deficit to pay interest on its debt, so higher interest rates increase the deficit and money in the system, and this lifts inflation,” continued Mossler. “If a gov’t wants to reduce demand, which I’m not saying is the problem, it should cut interest rates to 0% (keep them there forever), raise taxes, and/or cut federal spending. Lifting interest rates is the opposite of what it should do,” he said. “And raising rates pays interest only to the people in society who already have assets. It is the equivalent of Universal Basic Income for rich people.”

  “The rate hikes have sustained earnings but shifted them from the high multiple stocks into low multiple names,” explained Mosler. “The effect is a one-time decline in overall market capitalization for stocks as a whole, but once we adjust to this shift, the market heads higher to reflect the rising inflation brought on by the Fed,” he said. “Stocks will then be a good inflation hedge until something breaks.” In each cycle, something snaps. “You never know what it will be, but my best guess is that something like $300/barrel oil eventually ends this cycle.”

  

  “As for policy rates, it looks like the Fed will get rates to 5% or so,” said Mosler. “Inflation bumps around between 3%-6%,” he said.  “The federal deficit moves up toward 8%. Interest costs are quickly going to 3% of that and then headed higher still. Nominal GDP is probably in the range of 5%-6%,” said Mosler. “The rising amounts of money flowing into the economy from deficit spending, including things like student loan forgiveness, 8%-9% social security inflation adjustments, and infrastructure spending keeps inflation and nominal growth high. And stocks like nominal growth.” 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/06/2022 – 20:30

• Apple Cuts Outlook For iPhone Shipments Again, This Time Due To Chinese Lockdowns
  Apple Cuts Outlook For iPhone Shipments Again, This Time Due To Chinese Lockdowns

  For the 2nd time in the past month, and just days after its “not all that bad” earnings presentation which helped AAPL be the only GAMMA stock not to tank after reporting Q3 earnings, late on Sunday Apple said shipments of its newest premium iPhones will be lower than previously expected after China lockdowns affected operations at a supplier’s factory.

  In a brief, tersely worded statement, Apple said that it continues to see strong demand for the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max models but the neverending Chinese lockdowns – which have long ago become just a scapegoat for the Chinese economic implosion – mean “customers will experience longer wait times to receive their new products.” Also, on its website, the company said that deliveries of iPhone 14 Pro handsets are currently listed for late November or early December.

  Here is the full statement…

  COVID-19 restrictions have temporarily impacted the primary iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max assembly facility located in Zhengzhou, China. The facility is currently operating at significantly reduced capacity. As we have done throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we are prioritizing the health and safety of the workers in our supply chain.

  We continue to see strong demand for iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max models. However, we now expect lower iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max shipments than we previously anticipated and customers will experience longer wait times to receive their new products.

  We are working closely with our supplier to return to normal production levels while ensuring the health and safety of every worker.

  … which company shareholders will wonder why none of this was discussed a little over a week ago when the company reported earnings; to be sure, there was zero mentions of China issues on the earnings call yet anyone following the company knew that it would have to guide down in the future. The only surprise is that the future was just one week later.

  Commenting on the release, Knowledge Vital’s Adam Crisafuli said that it was “so vague it almost makes us think the main intended audience was the Chinese government, not investors .. an indirect way for them to express their displeasure with the lack of change.”  Then again, we doubt China cares what Apple thinks.

  The abrupt move by the Chinese government last Wednesday to lock down the Zhengzhou area that includes a Hon Hai Precision Industry iPhone assembly plant until Nov. 9 is expected to further disrupt a factory already grappling with an on-site coronavirus outbreak, worker exodus and enforced quarantine.

  Apple said the facility is operating at “significantly reduced capacity,” while Hon Hai, the main listed arm of Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group, noted in a separate statement that it’s lowering its fourth-quarter outlook to factor in the lockdown.

  “Foxconn is now working with the government in concerted effort to stamp out the pandemic and resume production to its full capacity as quickly as possible,” the Taiwanese company said in a statement.

  In the latest Chinese covid-linked hysteria, the local government has ordered people and vehicles off the streets except for medical or other essential reasons, a prohibition that threatens to cut off the flow of additional workers and components needed to rev up production ahead of the holiday-season crush.

  At what point does it become obvious to everyone that Xi is just using the Wuhan fugitive to cover up for the ongoing Chinese economic implosion.

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 7, 2022

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

  The disruption comes at a crucial time for Apple, which launched the iPhone 14 during an unprecedented slump in global electronics demand. While faring better than other smartphone makers, it’s backed off plans to increase production of its new iPhones this year after an anticipated surge in demand failed to materialize, Bloomberg reported previously. Apple reported better-than-expected results but warned of a holiday slowdown.

  As Bloomberg reminds us, Apple didn’t provide a specific revenue forecast for the current quarter, continuing an approach it adopted at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. But analysts estimate sales of about $128 billion, which would be an all-time record. That forecast is now in serious jeopardy, and futures have reacted appropriately, with Eminis sliding as much as 1.1% in early trading but have since made up nearly half the initial drop.

  Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Apple has yet to unveil major layoffs. Instead, in the face of slowing growth, Apple has paused hiring for many jobs outside of research and development, an extension of its current plan to reduce budgets heading into next year.

  Meanwhile, Foxconn’s plant continues to operate within a “closed loop,” or a self-contained bubble that limits contact with the outside world. That is keeping some production going. Apple said on Sunday it is working closely with its supplier to return to “normal production levels while ensuring the health and safety of every worker.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/06/2022 – 20:00

• "The Political Pressure On Powell Has Started With Unemployment Rising Just 0.2% To 3.7%"
  “The Political Pressure On Powell Has Started With Unemployment Rising Just 0.2% To 3.7%”

  By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

  “I am deeply troubled by the Federal Reserve’s rapid series of super-sized interest rate hikes, which may inflict unnecessary pain on millions of individuals and families while sending the economy into a devastating recession,” wrote Chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee in a public letter to Fed Chairman Powell.

  “This week’s Federal Open Market Committee decision marks the fourth consecutive mega rate hike by the Fed, resulting in the highest federal funds rate since before the 2008 global financial crisis and the fastest set of rate hikes by the Fed in four decades. Enough is enough,” continued Maxine Waters.

  And this level of political pressure has started with unemployment rising just 0.2% to 3.7%.

  * * *

  “The last thing I’ll say is that I would want people to understand our commitment to getting this done and to not making the mistake of not doing enough or the mistake of withdrawing our strong policy and doing that too soon,” said America’s central bank chief, speaking to journalists, having just hiked interest rates another 75bps.

  “I control those messages,” explained Jay Powell.

  “That’s my job.”

  And indeed, it is. In 1977, Congress set the Federal Reserve’s goals: maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.

  Our politicians did not tell central bankers how to achieve these goals. Neither did they quantify how much short-term pain they would be willing to bear in the pursuit of this mandate, nor did they make clear over what time horizon they would measure success.

  And naturally, in such an infinitely complex system, there is no singular way to achieve these sensible goals. So, we appoint central bankers we believe will have the judgement required to navigate the labyrinth. But of course, the maze is always changing. So the Fed strategies must adapt to our present circumstances.

  What worked during globalization and peace is now largely obsolete. That’s obvious. But what is not yet clear is how the actions of our central bankers and politicians are eroding our collective faith in the value of money.  In recent decades, central bankers and politicians grew increasingly aggressive in rescuing speculators from financial folly. Then Covid happened. And they created more money than anyone could possibly imagine. Presto. Magic. Everyone got something.

  Now we’re forgiving student debt. Newsweek just reported 63% of Americans support federal inflation relief payments. This is before politicians fund vital projects in the decade ahead: military, infrastructure, environment, inequality.

  And now Powell’s job is to navigate a labyrinth, unlike any in American history, in a quest to restore meaning to money.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/06/2022 – 19:30

• PTSD-Stricken Progressives Flee Austin Over "Too Many Republicans"
  PTSD-Stricken Progressives Flee Austin Over “Too Many Republicans”

  Progressives who have descended upon Austin, Texas in recent years are starting to reverse course amid a state-wide shift towards conservatism, NY Mag reports.

  

  “It was easy to just be in Never Neverland, floating with a bunch of other transplants having a good time,” said John Stettin, who relocated from Dallas to Austin five years ago and is now leaving for Massachusetts because of ‘too many Republicans,’ as one friend described the situation during Stettin’s going-away party.

  Austin has been a predominantly Democratic city full of ‘liberal expats’ who seek progressive politics and an urban lifestyle ‘at a red-state cost-of-living discount,’ according to the report.

  Then the pandemic hit – and mean Governor Greg Abbott banned municipalities – including Austin – from implementing various COVID measures, such as mask mandates. Then, Abbott codified permitless carry into law and, according to liberals, ‘further restricted voting access.’

  Then, this past February, Abbott ordered child abuse investigations into parents of trans children – who, according to the report, began fleeing texas months ago.

  “I’ve always said, ‘I’m gonna stay and fight until they try to take my kids away,;” said ‘Karen’ (name withheld), who has a trans child and says she did not want to risk being separated from her children. Karen has ‘fled from Austin to Portland, Oregon,’ causing her Republican father to ‘burst into tears.’

  Karen says she has PTSD and survivor’s guilt for not staying behind.

  By June, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Texas was 10 months into implementing an abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest, and a $10,000 reward for informants.

  The overturning of Roe seemed to remove the last obstacle in the state’s march to the far right, which is likely to be cemented in the upcoming election where Beto O’Rourke is way behind Abbott. While the Democratic mayor and the liberal city council institute token measures such as decriminalizing abortion, it’s cold comfort. One 25-year-old woman said she had her tubes tied, fearing the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy. One couple may relocate to the Northeast to carry out their pregnancy. Some job candidates are refusing to relocate. At Stettin’s party, his friend Jeff swiped open his phone to a note entitled “New Austin Cities” — a list of places that are what Austin used to be to him before he moved here from New York. It read, “Pittsburgh, Durham, Boise, Columbus, Jackson Hole, Chattanooga. Factors: Climate change, demographics, economy, location, taxes, nature, weather.” He plans to stick it out at least for now. “Global warming in the next ten years,” he said. “That’s gonna be fucking real.” -NY Mag

  “It’s like how a frog boils one degree at a time,” said Stettin. “They trigger-banned all abortion and they’re offering a bounty! What more do you need if you are a remotely liberal person to get the fuck out of here?”

  “At least if I’m going to get into an argument with a guy in Boston, he’s probably not carrying an AR-15 in his trunk,” he said, referring to his upcoming move.

  Good call John?

  

  That said, while liberals are leaving Austin, it was ranked the fastest-growing metro in the US in February, which has seen its population grow by 33% over the past decade thanks to the draw of ‘hippie-cowboy capital’ tech jobs.

  In the past year, rents in Austin have soared over 20%, while the media home price rose around the same percent over the same period, with companies such as Tesla acting as a primary driver of migration with the construction of a $1.1 billion “gigafactory” nearby.

  If you thought the blue exodus was big now, just wait until after midterms…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/06/2022 – 19:00

• National Guard Cybersecurity Units Activated In 14 States Ahead Of Midterm Elections: Reports
  National Guard Cybersecurity Units Activated In 14 States Ahead Of Midterm Elections: Reports

  Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times,

  Cybersecurity units from the National Guard will be activated in 14 U.S. states to help counter any threats to election officials’ networks ahead of, during, and after the upcoming Nov. 8 midterm elections, according to reports.

  The 14 include battleground states Arizona, Iowa, and Pennsylvania, as well as Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, North Carolina, New Mexico, New York, Washington, and West Virginia, reported Politico.

  Brig. Gen. Gent Welsh, the commander of the Washington Air National Guard, said at a virtual media briefing on Nov. 4 that not every state is doing it but states that are activating these units “have invested in cyber talent and cyber missions for years,” according to outlet Statescoop, which reports on technology-related news in government.

  “If you don’t have a cyber unit in your state you’re not in a good position to help them protect elections,” Welsh said.

  He added that the National Guard’s participation in election cybersecurity activities “does add an air of credibility to what’s out there,” noting that the National Guard “is still one of the most trusted institutions in the United States.”

  

  ‘As Secure Elections as Possible’

  The plan comes after eight states received support from cyber units in the National Guard during the primary elections that took place earlier this year.

  According to the outlets, there are 38 dedicated cyber units within the Air and Army National Guard across the United States that work to help state and local officials on cyber-related issues such as network assessments and risk mitigation. The cyber units collectively comprise over 2,200 personnel.

  “Our goal is to make sure we have as secure elections as possible. We are at the really beginning stages of this,” said Air Force Maj. Gen. Rich Neely, head of the Illinois National Guard, reported Statescoop.

  National Guard officials will receive security updates from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in their work to support the midterms, Politico reported.

  According to its website, CISA was created in 2018 under the Trump administration to work with government and industry partners to defend against current and predicted threats to cyber and physical infrastructure, including election infrastructure.

  No Indication of Potential Election Infrastructure Disruption: CISA Director

  CISA Director Jen Easterly has repeatedly said she doesn’t expect any major disruptions to the midterms. Most recently, on Nov. 1, at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Easterly said that there is “no information credible or specific about efforts to disrupt or compromise” election infrastructure and that she was “very confident that we have done everything we can to make election infrastructure as secure and as resilient as possible.”

  Air Force Maj. Gen. Rich Neely, head of the Illinois National Guard, said that he and his team are “not expecting to see anything.”

  “But much like we did after Jan. 6, if the Guard’s called in, the Guard responds as needed,” he said, reported Statescoop.

  “We’re not expecting anything with what we’re seeing.”

  Army Major General M. Todd Hunt, the adjutant general of the North Carolina National Guard, said at the media briefing on Nov. 4 that his state has a joint cyber mission center that will facilitate communication between the state’s cyber unit, its departments of Information Technology and Emergency Management, as well as federal contacts from CISA, the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI.

  According to the outlets, Hunt said there will be 25 National Guard members on duty in the cyber unit for North Carolina on Election Day, up from the usual core team of 10. The extra members will include federal and emergency management partners.

  “We will surge during the election to ensure that we have 24-hour coverage throughout this whole process,” Hunt said, per Politico. “We are citizen soldiers, we live in this state, and we do have a vested interest in our state elections as well as our federal elections.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/06/2022 – 18:30

• "I'm Selling My Blood To Eat, I Have No Choice": Biden Inflation Crushes Americans
  “I’m Selling My Blood To Eat, I Have No Choice”: Biden Inflation Crushes Americans

  Gas, groceries, electricity, and rent — the price of everything has soared to four-decade highs under the Biden administration. Household finances are under severe pressure as wage growth fails to outpace inflation for 18 months, leading many folks to find a second job. Even holding two jobs isn’t enough to sustain the cost-of-living crisis, as some are finding the nearest plasma clinic to donate blood to earn extra cash. 

  Cashe Lewis, 31, of Denver, Colorado, works multiple jobs and is trying to find a third job due to rising shelter inflation. She told The Guardian she works six days a week, sometimes more than 16 hours per day, just to pay the bills. 

  “I’m exhausted all the time … on the one day I have off a week, I donate plasma for extra money. I’m literally selling my blood to eat because I have no choice,” Lewis said. 

  She said many of her “friends and family work multiple jobs” as inflation makes “nothing affordable and the roadblocks set up to keep people in the cycle of poverty benefit the most wealthy members of our society.” 

  Lewis said: “We aren’t living, we’re barely surviving, and we have no choice but to keep doing it.”

  More Americans than ever are working multiple jobs as inflation wipes out real wage growth.

  

  Real wage growth has been negative for 18 consecutive months. 

  

  The personal savings rate has tumbled to multi-decade lows at 3.1%, just shy of the record low of 3.0%…

  

  And some experts are concerned about the pace of growth in consumer credit as debt loads for households soar as their wages can’t cover added costs of food, shelter, and energy. 

  But according to MSNBC’s Joy Reid, her latest comments claim that Americans were oblivious to inflation until conservative political candidates started talking about it.

  Reid’s suggestion insinuates that the public was comfortably unaware of the inflationary/stagflationary crisis and could have stayed that way had it not been for those meddling Republicans and their refusal to use the “common tongue” on the campaign trail. In other words, she believes the average voter is stupid.

  Voters aren’t stupid, and they’re going to vote with their depleted wallets on Tuesday. A recent poll found that most Americans (over 90%) now rate inflation and the economic decline as their top worry going into the midterm elections. 

  And it’s not just Lewis who has sold her blood plasma to feed her family. Many others like her are scouring the internet for where they can donate plasma for money. 

  

  Over the summer, Fox 35 Orlando published a story titled “More people donating plasma to earn extra money amid inflation, rising costs.” They interviewed Dan Hernandez, the director of Octapharma Plasma in Orlando, who said, “We have countless people coming into our facilities saying it’s really hard to make ends meet.” 

  Hernandez said the number of people donating has doubled in the last year, coinciding with the inflation spike in the economy. 

  “Inflation. Everybody who comes here obviously they talk to us, and they tell us that it’s difficult to make ends meet,” he said.

  The general public knows that working multiple jobs, barely affording to live while making frequent stops at the plasma clinic just to put food on the table isn’t normal. At least polling data shows many are awakening to Biden’s failed policies have made their lives worse. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/06/2022 – 18:00

• What We Knew In The Early Days Of COVID
  What We Knew In The Early Days Of COVID

  Via The Brownstone Institute,

  The claim is now everywhere:

  • We had to lock down because we just didn’t know about this virus.

  • It was all very confusing and we had to play it safe.

  • We had no other option because we just had no clarity about what we were dealing with.

  • The precautionary principle dictated the unprecedented actions. 

  

  Actually, the precautionary principle goes both directions.

  It also dictates that we not enact policies that we know for sure would wreck lives and liberties. They did it anyway, without sufficient knowledge that the measures would achieve any positive good. 

  We approach the third year and people have forgotten that all the harms of lockdowns were strongly warned about by many voices in many venues. In addition, the virus was much better understood back then and openly discussed. We knew for certain that the panic and fear were being wildly overblown.

  Below follows resources assembled by the ‘Robber Baron‘ and many others who write for the Brownstone Institute. These citations from newspapers, magazines, academic journals and interviews, with many respected voices, show that we certainly knew tremendous amounts in the early days.

  All the warnings and information were readily available to anyone paying attention.

  • 2019: WHO Global Influenza Programme recommends against lockdowns and masks

  • Sept 2019: Johns Hopkins pandemic preparedness study recommends against lockdowns

  • Jan 24: Doctor warns that mass quarantine won’t work and will devastate society

  • Jan 30: Obama health adviser says stop panicking

  • Feb 5: Fauci says there’s no asymptomatic spread

  • Feb 28: Fauci says this is more akin to flu than something more deadly

  • Mar: 81% of Chinese Covid cases are mild

  • Mar 1: Sweden: No effective measure to let healthy school children stay at home 

  • Mar 2: Discussion on how Covid IFR was likely much lower than predicted

  • Mar 2: 800 public health scientists warn against lockdowns, quartantines, restrictions

  • Mar 3: Article on why masks are impractical

  • Mar 3: Berkeley doctor indicates masks are not helpful in preventing Covid

  • Mar 4: Doctor says Covid not nearly as deadly as feared

  • Mar 4: Your doctor is not panicking and neither should you

  • Mar 6: Doctor talking about unnecessary panic over Covid 

  • Mar 9: Article on how Covid is only really dangerous to the elderly 

  • Mar 12: Chief medical officer saying people shouldn’t wear masks

  • Mar 13: Review found severe mental health problems from prolonged quarantine

  • Mar 15: Medical organisation says stopping elective surgeries is unnecessary and dangerous

  • Mar 17: Warning of financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric

  • Mar 19: Article about Covid overaction and its issues

  • Mar 25: Data about the health impacts of crushing the economy

  • Mar 26: Early evidence of hospitals inaccurately listing Covid as cause of death

  • Mar 26: Early data show we’re overreacting to Covid

  • Mar 28: Predictions about the harms of lockdowns: Drugs, Suicide, and Crime

  • Mar 28: Guardian outlines rise in domestic abuse throughout the world

  • Mar 30: Study showing children are not the primary spreader of Covid 

  • Apr 1: Article saying masks offer little to no advantage outside of hospital settings

  • Apr 3: An overview on the dangers of lockdowns 

  • Apr 4: Warning of the harm in delaying non-Covid medical procedures

  • Apr 4: Research showing the seasonality of Coronaviruses

  • Apr 6: U.N. warns about domestic violence surge

  • Apr 6: Piece on domestic abuse during lockdown

  • Apr 7: Study from China finds of 7,324 COVID-19 cases only two transmissions occurred outdoors

  • Apr 7: Piece on the mental health cost of the lockdown on kids

  • Apr 8: Research showing school lockdowns aren’t helpful and cause great harm

  • Apr 13: More confirmation about domestic abuse rising due to lockdowns

  • Apr 14: Children are very unlikely to contract Covid

  • Apr 15: Barely any transmission from outdoor activities

  • Apr 15: Different approaches by countries have little impact on Covid deaths

  • Apr 15: Molecular Biologist suggests the cure is worse than the disease

  • Apr 16: UN overview about the poverty/death that will come from lockdowns

  • Apr 16: CDC mask study concludes that masks don’t work

  • Apr 17: Info on how damaging cancelled procedures are

  • Apr 20: Oxford professor says cases in U.K. peaked before lockdown 

  • Apr 22: Potential for 60,000 cancer deaths due to lack of screening/treatment

  • Apr 23: The harm lockdowns are having on people with heart conditions

  • Apr 24: Data on the mental health toll of lockdowns

  • Apr 24: Study showing school closings are the least cost-effective pandemic policy

  • Apr 27: The rise of domestic abuse during lockdowns

  • Apr 28: Increasing child abuse is a side effect of Covid lockdowns

  • Apr 29: Cancer deaths could increase by 20% due to lockdown

  • Apr 30: Santa Clara seroprevalence study shows high prevalence

  • May 1: Indications from Europe that lockdowns are ineffective

  We certainly live in an age of short attention span but many these signs and warnings came weeks or months before the world locked down and they chronicled the damage as it was happening.

  Why all this came to be completely ignored remains the burning question. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/06/2022 – 17:30

• Meta Reportedly Readying To Fire 1000s This Week
  Meta Reportedly Readying To Fire 1000s This Week

  Just over a week ago, Meta CFO Dave Wehner confidently stated that the not-so-giant tech firm will basically freeze headcount and limit new hiring…

  Our pace of hiring slowed in the third quarter, consistent with our previously-stated plans. We added 3,700 net new hires in Q3, down from our Q2 net additions of 5,700 despite Q3 typically being a seasonally stronger hiring period. We expect hiring to slow dramatically going forward and to hold headcount roughly flat next year relative to current levels…

  We are making significant changes across the board to operate more efficiently. We are holding some teams flat in terms of headcount, shrinking others and investing headcount growth only in our highest priorities. As a result, we expect headcount at the end of 2023 will be approximately in-line with third quarter 2022 levels.

  At the time, we were a little surprised (given the scale of the losses)…

  In a normal world METHA would announce 20% layoffs after the close

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 27, 2022

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

  With the shares down 36% since then (and is down over 70% this year), something has apparently changed extremely fast.

  

  The Wall Street Journal reports that, according to people familiar with the matter, Meta is planning to begin large-scale layoffs this week.

  As of the last earnings, Meta had over 87,000 employees (and has never seen a quarterly decline in headcount in its 18 year history)…

  

  The WSJ sources say that layoffs are expected to affect many thousands of employees and an announcement is planned to come as soon as Wednesday, with company officials having already told employees to cancel non-essential travel beginning this week.

  While smaller on a percentage basis than the cuts at Twitter Inc. this past week, which hit about half of that company’s staff, the number of Meta employees expected to lose their jobs could be the largest to date at a major technology corporation in a year that has seen a tech industry retrenchment.

  Meta is far from alone…

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  As a reminder, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees at a companywide meeting at the end of June:

  “Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here.”

  It seems he has found his people.

  None of this should come as a surprise to ZeroHedge readers since we have been warning of a post-Midterm collapse in payrolls.

  Everything had to be held together ahead of the election in the “strong as hell” economy...

  

  But then…

  Sherrod Brown letter confirms after Midterms we get -250K payrolls report, perhaps as soon as December

  Need scapegoat

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 25, 2022

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

  …and given the letters from various high-ranking Democratic Party officials, we know who the scapegoat for this collapse will be…

  

  But what happens next to Zuck?

  Prediction: This ass kicking wont break Zuck — it will make Zuck.

  He will RIF, reduce R&D spend, RIF again possibly, and start buying back stock with juiced FCF https://t.co/QsokdRorQ1 pic.twitter.com/u3ZTdeTIyX

  — @jason (@Jason) November 6, 2022

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

  Given the outcry at Elon Musk’s decision to cut ‘less productive’ Twitter employees (while losing millions every day), we wonder how long before those that #LearnedToCode will need to transition and #LearnToBarista and their voting bloc will turn on one of their greatest funders.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/06/2022 – 17:00

• "When True Democracy Goes Away, People Get Hurt": Obama Joins Mantra That Democracy Is At Risk If GOP Wins
  “When True Democracy Goes Away, People Get Hurt”: Obama Joins Mantra That Democracy Is At Risk If GOP Wins

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  Former President Barack Obama continued the Democratic campaign theme this week in arguing that democracy is in danger if Republicans prevail in the midterm elections. I have a new column out this weekend addressing the over-the-top rhetoric coming from Democratic politicians and pundits. However, the former president’s speech was revealing as he cited the very arguments made by Democrats  . . . as attacks on democracy.  Obama did not go as far as some but he also seemed to channel the dire warnings of the imminent collapse of our democracy if the Republicans should prevail in the elections.

  Obama remains one of the most impressive speakers of our time. With the unpopularity of President Joe Biden, candidates are relying heavily on Obama for good reason. His standard stump speech is still heads and shoulders above most other politicians.

  Yet, the speech below was notable in the arguments that Obama warns voters not to heed.

  “I understand that democracy might not seem like a top priority right now. Especially when it doesn’t seem like the results always work for you. When you don’t see enough progress on issues that matter to you and your family. Sometimes progress is slow. But we have seen throughout history and we’re seeing right now what happens when you give up on democracy.”

  It was a curious argument given the effort of many in the party to pack the Supreme Court and push censorship on social media.

  Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, has declared the Supreme Court illegitimate and has called to pack the Court for rending opinions against “widely held public opinion.”

  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., even questioned the institution’s value: “How much does the current structure benefit us? And I don’t think it does.” She has now demanded the impeachment of Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch based on the entirely false claim that they lied under oath in their confirmation hearings. After the Dobbs decision, Ocasio-Cortez demanded “there must be consequences” for the Court.

  Elie Mystal (past writer for Above the Law and the Nation) called the Constitution “trash.” Some law professors want to “reclaim America from Constitutionalism.”

  Obama added that you see the threat to democracy “in countries where the government tells you what books you can and cannot read.” Yet, many on the left are seeking to preserve censorship by surrogate on social media and seeking to prevent the publication of books by those with whom they disagree, including a book by Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. With corporate censorship threatened, many leaders like Hillary Clinton are turning to good old-fashioned state censorship.

  Indeed, President Joe Biden has questioned how citizens will know the truth without censors framing what the truth is on social media and the Internet.

  Obama ended this discussion with the same ominous warnings heard from other Democratic politicians and pundits:  “when true democracy goes away, people get hurt.”

  Various pundits have been pushing the vote-Democratic-or-die mantra. On MSNBC, historian Michael Beschloss on MSNBC declared a Republican win could lead not only to the end of history books and democracy but lead to the killing of our children. That was then followed by another MSNBC interview with actor and Director Rob Reiner who claimed that Republicans “are willing to kill, literally kill, to get the power . . .  this might be the last election we have in a democracy.”

  It is language that is not just demagoguery but dangerous. It is meant to spread fear in citizens and make them believe that our constitutional system is about to fail. We have the most successful constitutional system in the history of the world. It has weathered every storm and will weather our current political divisions. What kills democracy are self-inflicted wounds caused by those who cast doubts about our safety or demonize their opponents as enemies of the state.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/06/2022 – 16:30

• Morgan Stanley's 3 Keys Takeaways For Investors From Election Week In America
  Morgan Stanley’s 3 Keys Takeaways For Investors From Election Week In America

  By Michael Zezas and Seth Carpenter, strategists at Morgan Stanley

  On Tuesday, Americans will cast their ballot for members of Congress. Well…most Americans will. Many will have already voted by mail, meaning that, as in 2020, investors may have to wait days to know with certainty who will control Congress. Given the axiom that markets hate uncertainty, here are our three key takeaways to help investors to cope with the lack of clarity that election week in America will bring:

  1. Concerned about near-term market volatility? Higher volatility more likely results from a better-than-expected night for Democrats than for Republicans. Outcomes that meet expectations typically do not move markets a lot. And judging from recent levels and trends in both polls and prediction markets, Republicans are expected to win a majority in at least one chamber of Congress. Against that backdrop, it is important to note that we do not see a Republican win as leading to policies that on their own would be important market catalysts in any direction. Conversely, Democrats’ expanding their majorities in Congress would buck the expectations set by polls and prediction markets. That outcome would also undercut the notion that inflation is an electoral liability for the Democrats. Investors could see this result as freeing the party from the political and legislative constraints that kept Congress from enacting some of the fiscally expansionary policies that were part of President Biden’s original ‘Build Back Better’ agenda. Hence, markets could assign a higher probability to further fiscal expansion, with Congress and the Fed effectively pulling in opposite directions on inflation. The short-term implications for markets could be higher Treasury yields and a stronger dollar, reflecting the potential for a higher peak federal funds rate.

  2. A Republican ‘win’ may not create near-term market volatility, but does introduce situational risks for 2023. Benign neglect is often the outcome for a split government in the US, but not always. Following the 2010 midterm elections, gridlock led to protracted debt limit standoffs and government shutdowns. The resolution to one such standoff was the Budget Control Act of 2011, which implemented contractionary fiscal policy while the economy was still weak. Indeed, when the legislation was passed in August of that year, the unemployment rate stood at 9%. The result was weaker growth and a slower economic recovery, which partially explains why the liftoff of the fed funds rate was delayed until 2015 and unfolded gradually thereafter. At present, Republican leadership is signaling its intent to deploy the same tactics if the party wins majorities. While markets could easily dismiss these negotiations as political theater, as they have in recent years amid solid economic conditions, if the economic outlook sours in 2023 in unexpected ways, the specter of the Budget Control Act could weigh on markets.

  3. Beware premature conclusions on election night. As in 2020, the increased use of vote by mail means the early reported vote tallies may not be a good indicator of who is winning, especially in races expected to be close. What we saw in 2020 and in other elections is that mail-in ballots were cast more often by Democrats than Republicans, and in many jurisdictions were counted after in-person voting. That means early reported results should look favorable to Republicans, but as in 2020, leads can vanish over time. Consider the Pennsylvania Senate race. Assuming mail-in ballots are cast in the same proportions and with the same party skew as they were in 2020, we estimate that the Republican candidate could win the in-person vote by 29% and still lose after all ballots are counted. Hence, we will need to reserve judgement, perhaps for days, on which party seems poised to control Congress. If you’re looking to cut through this noise and assess whether early results are consistent with a good outcome for Democrats or Republicans, check out our ‘Blue Shift’ interactive tool.

  And as always, our ultimate piece of advice for those who don’t like political uncertainty…vote!

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/06/2022 – 15:30

• "I Heard A Big Bang": California Man Believes Meteorite Destroyed His Home
  “I Heard A Big Bang”: California Man Believes Meteorite Destroyed His Home

  On Friday, dozens of people across Northern California witnessed a bright ball of light tumbling from the night sky. Several captured the phenomenon on camera, while one man believes the final destination of that bright light, which could be a meteorite, destroyed his home. 

  “I heard a big bang,” Nevada County resident Dustin Procita told local news KCRA’s Michelle Bandur. 

  Procita said after that loud noise, he “started to smell smoke. I went onto my porch and it was completely engulfed in flames.”

  

  Bandur spoke with Josh Miller, captain of Penn Valley Fire Department, who said a call came in around 7:30 pm local time for a structure fire. It took firefighters several hours to combat the flames. 

  Friday at 7:26 pm, CAL FIRE responded with Penn Valley FPD to a Residential Structure Fire near Lake Englebright. E2354 arrived first reporting a well involved trailer and vehicle, with no threat to vegetation. The fire was contained, committing resources for approx. 4 hours. pic.twitter.com/WPfjtZcLj8

  — CAL FIRE Nevada-Yuba-Placer Unit (@CALFIRENEU) November 5, 2022

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

  “It appears the bright ball of light captured on car and home videos landed in the middle of nowhere. Procita believes it was a meteor that landed on his house,” Bandur said. 

  Anyone else just see this crazy flash light up the sky? Captured by my dashcam in El Dorado Hills, CA. pic.twitter.com/4BlzOB5ISD

  — Derek Schnell (@DerekKCRA) November 5, 2022

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

  Miller told the reporter: “Everyone I talked to said it was a flaming ball falling from the sky and landed in that general area” of Procita’s home. He said those who observed the fireball in the night sky tracked it to the incident area. 

  “I had one individual tell me about it first and I put it in the back of my mind but then more people — 2, 3, 4 — started coming in and talking about it,” he said.

  

  At the same time, the Southern Taurids meteor shower was at its peak in the region. Miller said it could take at least a week or more to determine the cause of the fire. 

  Wonder if the homeowner has meteorite insurance? 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/06/2022 – 15:00

• 5.5 Million Illegal Aliens Crossed US Border Since Biden Took Office: Report
  5.5 Million Illegal Aliens Crossed US Border Since Biden Took Office: Report

  Authored by Tom Ozimek and Steve Lance via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The total number of people who have entered the United States illegally since President Joe Biden took office has climbed to 5.5 million, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

  

  Dan Stein, president of FAIR, shared the stark number during a recent interview on NTD’s “Capitol Report” program, which followed a recent announcement by the Biden administration that nearly 2.8 million illegal border crossers were stopped in the fiscal year ended in September, a record high.

  U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) disclosed the figures in a recent operational update that brought the total official number of illegal border crossers to around 4.4 million since Biden took office.

  Stein said FAIR arrived at the 5.5 million figure by adding to the 4.4 million an estimated 1.1 million who managed to evade capture and entered the United States undetected.

  “It’s pretty straightforward,” Stein said of the estimate. “There are typical projections that are confirmed by Census data of people who just run around—they call them ‘gotaways’—who enter without inspection, then disappear.”

  “If you look at the entire period, it’s about 5.5 million since Biden took office,” adding that FAIR projections estimate the cost to taxpayers to be $20 billion.

  Stein blamed the Biden administration for dismantling Trump-era “deterrence strategies” along the border for the surge.

  The White House did not immediately return a request for comment on the figures Stein cited.

  CBP said that a surge in migration from Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua in September brought the number of illegal crossings to the highest level ever recorded in a fiscal year.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/06/2022 – 14:30

• Biden Press Secretary Under Fire For 'Mega MAGA Republican' Comment
  Biden Press Secretary Under Fire For ‘Mega MAGA Republican’ Comment

  A government watchdog group has filed a complaint against White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, alleging that she violated the Hatch Act when she made comments about “Mega MAGA Republican” officials.

  

  In a Nov. 3 complaint, Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) told the US Office of Special Counsel (OSC) that Jean-Pierre violated the federal law that limits the political activities of federal employees, when she said during a Nov. press conference, “Unfortunately, we have seen mega MAGA Republican officials who don’t believe in the rule of law,” adding “They refuse to accept the results of free and fair elections, and they fan the flames of political violence through what they praise and what they refuse to condemn.”

  Jean-Pierre: “Democracy is under assault and we cannot pretend otherwise… Mega MAGA Republican officials…don’t believe in the rule of law. They refuse to accept the results of elections and they fan the flames of political violence.”pic.twitter.com/6v8k7GbJrw

  — Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) November 2, 2022

  PPT director Michael Chamberlain said the comments were “disparaging President Biden’s political opponents,” adding that her statements “were clearly made in her role as an employee of the White House and appear to be political in nature, seeking the defeat of her political opponents in the Republican party in the upcoming general election less than a week away on November 8.”

  As The Epoch Times further notes;

  The watchdog group is asking the OSC to “promptly investigate Ms. Jean-Pierre’s conduct as a potential Hatch Act violation based on her use of her official position to advocate for the defeat of a political party.”

  “We request that you promptly investigate these potential violations and immediately intervene to ensure that the government officials do not abuse their official authority in an attempt to influence the results of the impending 2022 general election.”

  “The comments appear to be clearly designed to influence voters in next week’s election,” Chamberlain said in a separate statement. “A quick and complete investigation into these statements would be a good first step in helping to restore the American public’s trust in its government.”

  PPT in a release said that Jean-Pierre’s statement is an “attempt to sway an election” and is a “direct violation of the Hatch Act’s prohibition” against government employees using their office to influence an election.

  The group alleges that her statement cannot be attributed to “an insufficient knowledge of the restrictions of the Hatch Act,” in part because her predecessor, Jen Psaki, and White House Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, have previously been found in violation of the same federal law. Furthermore, Jean-Pierre herself “has on several occasions cited the Hatch Act as justification for avoiding responding to queries from the press corps,” PPT noted.

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  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/06/2022 – 14:00

• Haley Joel Osment For Fed Chair
  Haley Joel Osment For Fed Chair

  By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

  Haley Joel Osment for Fed Chair

  Maybe I’m the one who is “seeing dead people” as I’ve had my share of mistakes recently, but given Powell’s take on inflation, I think that he is the one “seeing dead people,” so Haley might be a good candidate.

  As much as I’d like to rant and rave about Friday’s wild market gyrations, the growth of trading in daily expiration stock options, flows into TQQQ and ARKK, and my new “favorite” ETF DBMF (managed futures), that will have to wait until the week starts.

  Today, we focus on inflation and (most importantly) jobs as we’ve hammered home the inflation story a lot lately. Some of this follows directly from Let Them Eat Expectations and Powell & The Fed (link).

  Inflation

  Let’s start this section with the bold statement that I would rent my house for two years to anyone who would pay me what the average of three credible realtors thought we could get at this time last year! However, I am not sure how well that will go over with my wife if someone takes me up on that offer. In any case, the input for rent in CPI is just ludicrously off-market. We’ve compared real world/timely rent numbers with owners’ equivalent rent in several recent pieces:

  • OER Seems Crazy

  • Inflation Dumpster Dive which also digs into commodity inflation, autos, and inventories.

  • More Inflation Dumpster Diving as I couldn’t stay out of the dumpster, and found more on rents, autos, and inventories!

  As you can tell, autos, big ticket items, inventories, and commodities have also been themes in our “inflation questions.” We won’t spend any more time on those. Instead, we will try to address (more thoroughly) the questions about the job market that we are receiving.

  Jobs Will Be the Absolutely Last Thing to Crack in This Cycle

  My view is that:

  • We will see signs of a slowdown that will give the market hope that we can get a soft landing. This will re-start the “everything” rally (which fell apart after 2:30 pm on Wednesday), but started to claw its way back to life on Friday.

  • Then we will have the fear of a serious, deep, and longer-term recession.

  The second phase would include big hits to employment. While employment is almost always the last bit of economic data to roll over, it will be even slower to react this time around!

  Companies have spent the better part of the last 2 years finding it extremely difficult to hire employees! Arguably it has never been so difficult to hire employees. Even with pay, better benefits, and accommodative work schedules nothing seemed to help! So, here we are, with signs of weakness in the economy, uncertainty over the future (from so many perspectives), and even a few negative employment headlines. However, layoffs remain low and hiring seems solid. Why would we expect anything different?

  While we all make mistakes, we rarely make the same mistake twice as we tend to overcompensate (*cough* transitory *cough cough*). HR departments will be particularly reluctant to use layoffs in the first, second, or even third round of cost cuts! The inability to hire is too fresh in our minds and no-one wants to be caught in the situation where we get some sort of “softish” landing and need to hire people who were just let go. Starting conditions matter and the starting point of this slowdown is that labor is more protected than ever before – therefore weakness will show up in the labor market even later than usual. We could also see some discrepancies between large companies (that can afford to carry marginally useful workers) and small businesses (who don’t have that luxury).

  By the time that we see the data hit the employment statistics, it will be too late to do anything (and we should be at least starting to see a serious risk-off move).

  Questions Around the Jobs Data

  For rent, autos, and a few other things, I’m firmly in the camp that someone at the Fed is “seeing dead people.” For jobs, the data isn’t bad and that doesn’t surprise me because employment will be the last shoe to drop.

  Having said that, there are some things about the job market that deserve attention.

  • In Friday’s NFP Instant Reaction (link), we highlighted a few issues that don’t necessarily show extreme strength in the job market: wages, participation rate, and the large difference between the Household and Establishment Surveys (even considering relative accuracy).
    • Since we sent that, we’ve had numerous discussions about whether the Establishment is picking up the aforementioned possibility that large corporations are more reluctant than small companies to let go of employees at this stage. It also could be possible that people who know that they are being laid off report themselves as not working while the companies have yet to fill out the paperwork or are still paying severance. These are just few discussion points around this large deviation (2.3 million jobs since March).

      
       

    • We live in a world of “adjustments” to all of our data. I’m told that employment numbers tend to get revised down later than other numbers as the economy weakens (though I haven’t tried to verify that). But we did get 455,000 jobs created by the “birth/death” model in the October 2022 report, which was more than the 363,000 similar jobs calculated in the 2021 report. That seems a bit odd, as I’d be surprised if more people were creating businesses in October 2022 compared to October 2021. The overall jobs number last year was about 400k better than this year’s, so why is the birth/death model better? Anyways, something to think about.

  In Let Them Eat Expectations we explore the JOLTs report and come up with some questions that warrant further discussion and may account for why it seemed “to good to be true”. For example, since internet job sites have grown, the gap between jobs and hirings has been increasing which may explain why payroll numbers (even the good elements) weren’t as frothy as one might have expected from September’s JOLTs report (it is also a month old when it’s released).

  Jobs – Bottom Line

  I’m certainly seeing some “dead people” in the jobs data. Maybe I’m looking too closely, but it is easier to paint a less rosy job story than the consensus headlines are portraying.

  More importantly, we should not take much solace in the employment data as it will be the absolutely last part of the economy to roll over and by then, it will be too late! We will be Wile E. Coyote realizing that we are standing on air!

  Markets – Bottom Line

  I want to believe in the everything rally, but the Fed will likely push back and considering how painful the 36 hours after the press conference were, I’m embarrassed to even suggest that.

  Having said that, we have 6 weeks of economic data, we’ve made it through the bulk of earnings, and we get some seasonality in our favor. Buybacks are also in the headlines (rather than earnings), and we have a real shot that the Fed is now data dependent rather than on some pre-ordained path!

  Finally, my view remains that regardless of who wins what this week in the midterms, we will see more attention on the economy (at the expense of inflation fighting) and more steps towards coming to some sort of peaceful arrangement with Russia and Ukraine.

  Good luck and if you are in part of the country enjoying unseasonably great weather, enjoy it with some live people as “seeing dead people” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be!

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/06/2022 – 13:30

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• China Shows Off Stealth Fighter Jet In First Public Ground Display
  China Shows Off Stealth Fighter Jet In First Public Ground Display

  Twitter is flooded with tweets showing what appears to be China’s first public ground viewing of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s stealth fighter jet. 

  State-owned media outlet China Daily reported, “this is the time for J-20s, one of the world’s most advanced fighter jets, to appear in front of the public on the ground” at the 14th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Guangdong province’s Zhuhai on Saturday afternoon. 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  Cool…The J-20 was shown in public for the first time!https://t.co/jUeJ21BeJW pic.twitter.com/reho5KwWA3

  — 彩云香江 (@louischeung_hk) November 5, 2022

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  The latest news: Four J-20s came to the China Air Show and performed a flight show. Two of them landed. The J-20 will be displayed on the ground for the first time. pic.twitter.com/Sb392A07wE

  — 彩云香江 (@louischeung_hk) November 5, 2022

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  進行起飛檢查的J-20 pic.twitter.com/UhLyBno6R0

  — 乐子壬1号机 (@kt396) November 5, 2022

  “The stealth plane had carried out several flight performances at previous Zhuhai Airshows and had flown in military parades, but have never been close to the public out of consideration for confidentiality,” China Daily said.  

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  Air Show 2022 in Zhuhai🇨🇳
  PLAAF 2x J-20 Leaving for Further Exercises After Ground Display.
  Very Beautiful Imagery of J-20 Powered by WS-10C Yet EOTS Gets Covered pic.twitter.com/ZMGwGUqULp

  — David Wang (@Nickatgreat1220) November 5, 2022

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  🇨🇳PLAAF J-20 Has Landed for Zhuhai Air Show 2022
  Jet Stationary Display this Year? pic.twitter.com/EYuvzKmf6k

  — David Wang (@Nickatgreat1220) November 5, 2022

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  #J20 Aircraft Footage at the #ZhuhaiAirShow2022. pic.twitter.com/VzoCs2DgFu

  — International Defence Analysis (@Defence_IDA) November 5, 2022

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  The J-20 is China’s first stealth combat aircraft that made its maiden flight in 2011 and was officially declassified in 2016. It was deployed by the PLAA Air Force in 2017, becoming the third stealth fighter jet in the world to enter service after US F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II. In 2020, Russia’s Sukhoi Su-57 entered service with the Russian Aerospace Forces. 

  Global powers are locked in an arms race to procure fifth-generation fighters and hypersonic weapons as threats of the next conflict increase by the month. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/05/2022 – 23:00

• Why Is The Left So Afraid Of Twitter?
  Why Is The Left So Afraid Of Twitter?

  Authored by Alan Dershowitz via The Gatestone Institute,

  A campaign is currently underway by left-wing organizations and politicians to demand that Twitter, now owned by Elon Musk, continue its practice of censoring hate speech and other “objectionable” postings.

  

  A letter sent to Twitter’s top 20 advertisers, signed by 40 activist organizations, including the NAACP, the Center for American Progress, GLAAD and the Global Project Against Hate and extremism, contained the following veiled threat:

  “We, the undersigned organizations call on you to notify Musk and publicly commit that you will cease all advertising on Twitter globally if he follows through on his plans to undermine brand safety and community standards, including gutting content moderation.”

  This means that Musk must not roll back what Twitter has on the books now, and commit to enforcing the existing rules. In other words, Twitter advertisers have been asked to boycott Twitter unless it continues to censor.

  Decades ago, during the height of McCarthyism, it was the hard right that demanded censorship, while the left insisted that the marketplace of ideas should be left open to all forms of speech.

  As Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1801:

  “[W]e have nothing to fear from the demoralizing of some if others are left free to demonstrate their errors, and especially the law stands ready to punish the first criminal act produced by false reasoning. These are safer correctives than the conscience of a judge.”

  Jefferson’s distrust of “the conscience of a judge” would probably be even greater if the censors were the CEOs of companies that rely on advertisers for their profits.

  At a time of growing division, hostility and violence, it is understandable to look to censorship as the easy solution to a difficult problem. But censorship requires censors, and once censors are given the ability to pick and choose what the public will hear, this slippery slope moves us away from freedom and toward repression.

  I certainly do not like the kind of anti-Semitic hate speech that is pervasive on many of today’s internet platforms and I am the recipient of these emails and tweets on an almost daily basis. Free speech is not free. The old expression that “sticks and stone may break my bones, but names will never hurt me” is false. Names hurt me, my family and others. But that is not the issue. The issue is whether in an open society we must endure these pains in order to avoid being in even great pains of selective censorship.

  The Framers of the First Amendment chose to endure the pain of too much speech over the dangers of speech controlled by the government. But Twitter is not the government. Neither is Facebook or YouTube. They are giant media companies that dominate and control the flow of speech throughout the world. And the dangers of putting control of those flows in the hands of invisible elitist censors threatens to undercut our most important freedom.

  This is the most important free speech issue that will be faced during the remainder of the 21st century: whether to tolerate untrammeled and sometimes even dangerous freedom of speech or to demand private censorship of the kind that the government could not impose.

  Some have proposed that we treat giant social media companies like “common carriers,” such as railroads and telegraph companies. But under the First Amendment, placing controls over public speech is different from regulating travel and even personal telegraph communications.

  One manifestation of the divisiveness of our nation is that complex issues of this kind are rarely debated dispassionately and intelligently. Instead, people are forced to choose sides: are you for Musk or against him? Are you for controls on internet speech or against it? The first casualty of divisive extremism is nuance. And it is nuance that is sorely needed with regard to this issue of internet censorship.

  Let nuanced proposals be offered and discussed. Let us not rush to judgment about so important and complex issues.

  And most important, let free speech not become weaponized as a partisan issue.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/05/2022 – 22:30

• The Celestial Zoo: Mapping The Objects In Our Universe
  The Celestial Zoo: Mapping The Objects In Our Universe

  Humans have been observing the universe for thousands of years.

  And, as Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang details below, while we haven’t figured out all the answers quite yet, we’ve made some remarkable discoveries when it comes to learning about outer space.

  What are some of the most notable observations that scientists have discovered so far? This map of outer space by Pablo Carlos Budassi highlights more than 200 celestial objects in our universe and provides details and facts about each one.

  

  The Types of Celestial Objects Mapped

  To create this graphic, Budassi used a combination of logarithmic astronomical maps from Princeton University, as well as images from NASA.

  The visualization highlights 216 different celestial objects that are color-coded and organized into five overarching categories:

  • Moons and Asteroids

  • Planets

  • Galaxies

  • Star System

  • Great Scales/Superclusters

  At the center of the map is the Sun, which is the largest object in our Solar System. According to NASA, the Sun’s volume is equivalent to 1.3 million Earths. The Sun is the powerhouse of life here on Earth—its energy provides our planet with a mild, warm climate that keeps us alive, keeping the Earth from becoming a frozen rock.

  While the Sun is the only star in the Solar System, there is a neighboring star system called Alpha Centauri that’s approximately 4.37 light-years away. It’s made up of three stars—Proxima Centauri, Alpha Centauri A, and Alpha Centauri B.

  Proxima Centauri, as the Latin name indicates, is the closest of the three to Earth and has an Earth-sized planet in its habitable zone.

  The Life of a Star

  In a star’s early stages, it’s powered by hydrogen. However, when its hydrogen stores are depleted, some stars are able to fuse helium or even heavier elements.

  Stars similar to the size of the Sun will grow, cool down, and eventually transform into a red giant. The Sun has about 5,000 million more years before it reaches its red giant stage, but when that happens, it will likely expand to the point where it swallows up the Earth.

  While stars emit energy for years, it’s important to note that they don’t shine for eternity. Their exact life span depends on their size, with bigger stars burning out faster than their smaller counterparts.

  But as light from distant objects millions of light-years away takes a long time to reach us here on Earth, the largest of stars shine for hundreds of millions of years after they die.

  Just How Big is Our Universe?

  Some experts believe that the universe is infinite, while others argue that we can’t yet know for certain because current measurements aren’t accurate enough.

  However, scientists believe that our observable universe extends about 46 billion light-years in every direction, giving it a diameter of roughly 93 billion light-years.

  But just how much of the universe extends beyond what we can see? We may never find out.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/05/2022 – 22:00

• Escobar: Berlin Goes To Beijing – The Real Deal
  Escobar: Berlin Goes To Beijing – The Real Deal

  Authored by Pepe Escobar,

  The Scholz caravan went to Beijing to lay down the preparatory steps for working out a peace deal with Russia, with China as privileged messenger…

  

  With his inimitable flair for economic analysis steeped in historical depth, Professor Michael Hudson’s latest essay, originally written for a German audience, presents a stunning parallel between the Crusades and the current “rules-based international order” imposed by the Hegemon.

  Professor Hudson details how the Papacy in Rome managed to lock up unipolar control over secular realms (rings a bell?) when the game was all about Papal precedence over kings, above all the German Holy Roman Emperors. As we know, half in jest, the Empire was not exactly Holy, nor German (perhaps a little Roman), and not even an Empire.

  A clause in the Papal Dictates provided the Pope with the authority to excommunicate whomever was “not at peace with the Roman Church.” Hudson sharply notes how US sanctions are the modern equivalent of excommunication.

  Arguably there are Top Two dates in the whole process.

  The first one would be the Third Ecumenical Council of 435: this is when only Rome (italics mine) was attributed universal authority (italics mine). Alexandria and Antioch, for instance, were limited to regional authority within the Roman Empire.

  The other top date is 1054 – when Rome and Constantinople split for good. That is, the Roman Catholic Church split from Orthodoxy, which leads us to Russia, and Moscow as The Third Rome – and the centuries-old animosity of “the West” against Russia.

  A State of Martial Law

  Professor Hudson then delves on the trip by “Liver Sausage” Chancellor Scholz’s delegation to China this week to “demand that it dismantle its public sector and stops subsidizing its economy, or else Germany and Europe will impose sanctions on trade with China.”

  Well, in fact this happens to be just childish wishful thinking, expressed by the German Council on Foreign Relations in a piece published on the Financial Times (the Japanese-owned platform in the City of London). The Council, as correctly described by Hudson, is “the neoliberal ‘libertarian’ arm of NATO demanding German de-industrialization and dependency” on the US.

  So the FT, predictably, is printing NATO wet dreams.

  Context is essential. German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in a keynote speech at Bellevue Castle, has all but admitted that Berlin is broke: “An era of headwinds is beginning for Germany – difficult, difficult years are coming for us. Germany is in the deepest crisis since reunification.”

  Yet schizophrenia, once again, reigns supreme, as Steinmeier, after a ridiculous stunt in Kiev – complete with posing as a unwitting actor huddled in a bunker – announced an extra handout: two more MARS multiple rocket launchers and four Panzerhaubitze 2000 howitzers to be delivered to the Ukrainians.

  So even if the “world” economy – actually the EU – is so fragilized that member-states cannot help Kiev anymore without harming their own populations, and the EU is on the verge of a catastrophic energy crisis, fighting for “our values” in Country 404 trumps it all.

  The Big Picture context is also key. Andrea Zhok, Professor of Ethical Philosophy at the University of Milan, has taken Giorgio Agamben’s “State of Exception” concept to new heights.

  Zhok proposes that the zombified collective West is now completely subjugated to a “State of Martial Law” – where a Forever War ethos is the ultimate priority for rarified global elites.

  Every other variable – from trans-humanism to depopulation and even cancel culture – is subordinated to the State of Martial Law, and is basically inessential. The only thing that matters is exercising absolute, raw control.

  Berlin – Moscow – Beijing

  Solid German business sources completely contradict the “message” delivered by the German Council on Foreign Relations on the trip to China.

  According to these sources, the Scholz caravan went to Beijing to essentially lay down the preparatory steps for working out a peace deal with Russia, with China as privileged messenger.

  This is – literally – as explosive, geopolitically and geoeconomically, as it gets. As I pointed out in one of my previous columns, Berlin and Moscow were keeping a secret communication back channel – via business interlocutors – right to the minute the usual suspects, in desperation, decided to blow up the Nord Streams.

  Cue to the now notorious SMS from Liz Truss’s iPhone to Little Tony Blinken, one minute after the explosions: “It’s done.”

  There’s more: the Scholz caravan may be trying to start a long and convoluted process of eventually replacing the US with China as a key ally. One should never forget that the top BRI trade/connectivity terminal in the EU is Germany (the Ruhr valley).

  According to one of the sources, “if this effort is successful, then Germany, China and Russia can ally themselves together and drive the US out of Europe.”

  Another source provided the cherry on the cake: “Olaf Scholz is being accompanied on this trip by German industrialists who actually control Germany and are not going to sit back watching themselves being destroyed.”

  Moscow knows very well what the imperial aim is when it comes to the EU reduced to the role of totally dominated – and deindustrialized – vassal, exercising zero sovereignty. The back channels after all are not lying in tatters on the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Additionally, China has not provided any hint that its massive trade with Germany and the EU is about to vanish.

  Scholz himself, one day before his caravan hit Beijing, stressed to Chinese media that Germany has no intention of decoupling from China, and there’s nothing to justify “the calls by some to isolate China.”

  In parallel, Xi Jinping and the new Politburo are very much aware of the Kremlin position, reiterated again and again: we always remain open for negotiations, as long as Washington finally decides to talk about the end of unlimited NATO expansion drenched in Russophobia.

  So to negotiate means the Empire signing on the dotted line of the document it has received from Moscow on December 1st, 2021, focused on “indivisibility of security”. Otherwise there’s nothing to negotiate.

  And when we have Pentagon lobbyist Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin advising the Ukrainians on the record to advance on Kherson, it’s even more crystal clear there’s nothing to negotiate.

  So could this all be the foundation stone of the Berlin-Moscow-Beijing trans-Eurasia geopolitical/geoeconomic corridor? That will mean Bye Bye Empire. Once again: it ain’t over till the fat lady goes Gotterdammerung.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/05/2022 – 21:30

• 2022 Midterms: How Many Americans Have Voted Early?
  2022 Midterms: How Many Americans Have Voted Early?

  According to the United States Elections Project, at least 32 million people had cast their ballots as of November 2 for the midterm elections.

  Of those, as Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, roughly 13 million people voted in person nationwide, while more than 17 million returned their ballot by mail.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Fewer votes have been cast so far this year than in 2018, when the last midterms were held. Then, a total of 39 million ballots were counted, according to the U.S. Elections Project. However, this year’s figures will likely rise further before Election Day itself, since a total of 57 million mail ballots had initially been requested.

  As Statista’s chart above shows, the early voting wave has been highest in the states that have the biggest populations. Texas has led the way with nearly 3.8 million votes, followed by California with 3.4 million and Florida with 3.3 million.

  The U.S. Elections Project found that in terms of demographics, 44.2 percent of early voters were Democrats, versus 33.5 percent Republicans, and 22.3 percent independents.

  The over 65 year olds currently make up the biggest group at 46.2 percent of early voters nationwide, followed by 40.3 percent aged 41-65. Women also make up the slightly larger share at 54 percent, versus men at 44.8 percent.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/05/2022 – 21:00

• US To Station More Nuke-Capable Assets In Korea
  US To Station More Nuke-Capable Assets In Korea

  Authored by Kyle Anzalone via AntiWar.com,

  The White House has authorized employing strategic assets in South Korea more frequently. The announcement comes as Pyongyang, Seoul and Washington conduct unprecedented aerial war games. At a news conference with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup, Lee stated Austin pledged to set up deployments of nuclear-capable weapons. He said the US promised, “to effectively respond to any DPRK provocation by employing US strategic assets to the level equivalent to constant deployment through increasing the frequency and intensity of strategic asset deployment in and around the Korean Peninsula.”

  Austin expressed the deployments would not be permanent but rotate in and out. “No new deployment of strategic assets on a permanent basis, but you’ll see assets move in and out on a routine basis,” the defense chief said.

  

  Austin stated the strategic deployments will extend beyond the Korean Peninsula. “What we’re doing together not only to – on a bilateral basis, but also with our allies in Japan,” Austin said. Washington, Seoul and Tokyo signed a trilateral defense agreement on the sidelines of the NATO summit in June. Pyongyang denounced the agreement as a NATO-like alliance in the Pacific.

  The news conference came after the US and South Korea announced it was extending their largest-ever aerial war games. The military drills, dubbed Vigilant Storm 23, include 240 US and South Korean aircraft. Initially, the exercises were scheduled to run for five days but have now been extended by a day.

  Before Vigilant Storm 23 kicked off, North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un slammed the drills as a rehearsal for invasion and promised a “powerful” response if Seoul and Washington went through with the exercises. On Wednesday, Pyongyang fired 23 short-range ballistic missiles, a single-day record. One missile was fired near the maritime border for the first time since the partition. South Korea responded by firing three air-to-surface missiles into waters north of the inter-Korean maritime border.

  North Korea followed the flurry of missiles by launching an intercontinental ballistic missile on Thursday. Seoul believes the ICBM failed in-flight. On Friday, North Korea carried out large-scale aerial maneuvers. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that 180 North Korean warplanes were detected in various areas inland and along the country’s eastern and western coasts. Seoul noted the warplanes did not approach the inter-Korean border.

  In response, South Korea scrambled 80 warplanes, including F-35s. The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said it was “maintaining a firm readiness posture for further provocations.” Military activity on the Korean Peninsula is at a multi-year high. Pyongyang has carried out a record number of missile tests this year. Washington and Seoul have returned to live-fire war games.

  A diplomatic solution currently seems impossible. Austin and Lee reiterated Washington and Seoul’s position that Pyongyang must agree to give up its nuclear arsenal. Kim signed a new law in September that says North Korea will not denuclearize until the US does.

  Kim views his nuclear weapons as the only effective deterrent against Washington-based regime change. The White House says it seeks a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. However, Austin threatened to use nuclear weapons against North Korea at the press conference. Last week, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said Washington was prepared to deploy its nukes to defend Seoul.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/05/2022 – 20:30

• US Space Plane Orbits Earth For 900 Consecutive Days With Mysterious Payloads
  US Space Plane Orbits Earth For 900 Consecutive Days With Mysterious Payloads

  U.S. Space Force’s robotic X-37B space plane keeps extending its flight-duration record, orbiting around the Earth for 900 days, according to Space.com. 

  The reusable space plane designed and built by Boeing is flying its sixth mission, known as Orbital Test Vehicle-6 or OTV-6, which was initially launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on May 17, 2020. It remains unclear when the top-secret mission will end. 

  On Jul. 7, Boeing Space tweeted the X-37 “has set another endurance record — as it has on every mission since it first launched in 2010.” 

  

  Many of OTV-6’s experiments and activities are classified. But some experimental payloads have been made public, such as the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s Photovoltaic Radio-frequency Antenna Module, a small device that converts solar power into radio frequency microwave energy. 

  Space.com expands 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.”

  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. 

  

  Boeing boasts the X-37B as “one of the world’s newest and most advanced re-entry spacecraft.” It can operate anywhere from 150 to 500 miles in altitudes and de-orbit with landing capabilities. 

  “While there are rumors or theories that the X-37B might be a testbed for orbital weapons or could be used to capture adversary satellites, experts doubt these claims, arguing that the plane is far too small and not maneuverable enough to be used for these roles,” Space.com said. 

  It’s anybody’s guess when the top-secret space plane will return to Earth. Here’s a list of the previous flights:

  • OTV-1: launched on Apr. 22, 2010 and landed on Dec. 3, 2010, spending over 224 days in orbit.
  • OTV-2: launched on Mar. 5, 2011 and landed on Jun. 16, 2012, spending over 468 days in orbit.
  • OTV-3: launched on Dec. 11, 2012 and landed on Oct. 17, 2014, spending over 674 days in orbit.
  • OTV-4: launched on May 20, 2015 and landed on May 7, 2015, spending nearly 718 days in orbit.
  • OTV-5: launched on Sept. 7, 2017 and landed on Oct. 27, 2019, spending nearly 780 days in orbit.

  Meanwhile, Space Force detected last week that China’s secretive reusable spaceplane released a mystery object in orbit. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/05/2022 – 20:00

• Crickets… Illinois Professor Publishes Racist Attacks Against Herschel Walker With No Outcry From Faculty Or Media
  Crickets… Illinois Professor Publishes Racist Attacks Against Herschel Walker With No Outcry From Faculty Or Media

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  Professor Sundiata Cha-Jua, a prominent history and African-American studies professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is under fire after using racist slurs to describe Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker. While the racist attack has drawn criticism on conservative sites, there has been no opposing statement or protest at the university. The media has also been largely quiet. The contrast to past controversies involving conservative faculty members again raises the concern over a double standard applied by colleges and universities as well as the media. Thus far, the response to the use of racist slurs or tropes against Republicans has been the familiar sound of crickets.

  Cha-Jua wrote in The News-Gazette Walker is “incompetent, subliterate and coonish.”

  

  Recently, Walker was subjected to a racist attack on MSNBC by regular guest (and writer for Above the Law and the Nation) Elie Mystal. MSNBC never apologized to Walker or affirmed its opposition to such racist commentary.

  The column was an attack on Black Republicans who Cha-Jua refers to as “MAGA Black White supremacists.”

  The column seems to follow a pattern among Democratic politicians in attacking Black and Hispanic voters who are shifting over to the GOP. President Biden was ridiculed for declaring “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

  Likewise, minority members have been opposed by minority caucuses or campaign funds controlled by Democrats. For example, Republican Jennifer-Ruth Green has attracted national attention in a surprisingly competitive race against an incumbent Democratic Rep. Frank Mrvan. The race has Democrats so worried that the Congressional Black Caucus took the controversial step of backing her white opponent despite a stated purpose of being “a non-partisan body made up of African American members of Congress” committed to achieving “access to Black Americans and other marginalized communities.”GOP Rep. Mayra Flores was barred from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.The media has also shown the same open hostility or bias. Notably, the Huffington Post recently wrote a column celebrating the surge of Muslim Americans in the midterms as a candidates but omitted the Muslim American running to be the next senator from Pennsylvania (arguably the highest of these races): Dr. Mehmet Oz.  The column titled “American Muslims In The Midterms Aren’t Long-Shot Candidates Anymore,” simply does not include the Republican among the notable Muslims seeking public office.

  In his highly offensive column, Chu-Jua compares a Black Republican candidate Terence Stuber to a slave serving white masters: “And like the incompetent, subliterate and coonish Herschel Walker, Stuber reiterates ‘massa’ Trump’s talking points.” Stuber is running for Champaign County Clerk.

  The lack of any protest or statement at the university is another example of how such controversies are handled when they involve faculty on the left as opposed to right. There are relatively few conservative or Republican faculty at most universities today, but the response to any such controversial statements is often immediate and overwhelming.

  I have defended faculty who have made similarly disturbing comments “detonating white people,” abolish white people, denouncing police, calling for Republicans to suffer,  strangling police officers, celebrating the death of conservatives, calling for the killing of Trump supporters, supporting the murder of conservative protesters and other outrageous statements. I also defended the free speech rights of University of Rhode Island professor Erik Loomis, who defended the murder of a conservative protester and said that he saw “nothing wrong” with such acts of violence. (Loomis was later made Director of Graduate Studies of History at Rhode Island).

  Even when faculty engage in hateful acts on campus, however, there is a notable difference in how universities respond depending on the viewpoint. At the University of California campus, professors actually rallied around a professor who physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display.

  When these controversies arose, faculty rallied behind the free speech rights of the professors. That support was far more muted or absent when conservative faculty have found themselves at the center of controversies. The recent suspension of Ilya Shapiro is a good example. Other faculty have had to go to court to defend their free speech rights. One professor was suspended for being seen at a controversial protest.

  I would defend Cha-Jua’s right to speak despite his offensive rhetoric in any effort to fire him. Yet, such language should be condemned. A professor used openly racist slurs to attack African Americans running for office and the silence from the university and the faculty at Illinois is perfectly deafening. The contrast in these cases is glaring and chilling. The professors and pundits who have written hair-triggered columns or tweets are notably silent when the racist attack is directed against Black Republicans or conservatives.

  The response explains the sense of fear and intimidation for some faculty in speaking out on campuses. There is a general view that a conservative or dissenting faculty member will be given little quarter or protection in any controversy. Given the relatively small number of openly conservative  or Republican professors left on many faculties, the chilling effect is perfectly glacial.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/05/2022 – 19:30

• Xi's Eviction Of Hu From Communist Congress Supports Reform Agenda
  Xi’s Eviction Of Hu From Communist Congress Supports Reform Agenda

  Last month’s Chinese Communist Party’s National Congress brought a moment of high visual drama, when former president Hu Jintao was suddenly escorted by ushers from the carefully-scripted proceedings, as current President Xi Jinping looked on.

  The former Chinese leader Hu Jintao was abruptly escorted out of a highly choreographed meeting of the Communist Party elite.

  We deconstructed the footage. Here’s what the videos show: https://t.co/MFy7lqtFFa pic.twitter.com/RQxHvxvXie

  — The New York Times (@nytimes) October 28, 2022

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

  State media said 79-year-old Hu was “not feeling well,” but a close analysis of the video by The New York Times seems to indicate that, as he was being removed, other officials were trying to prevent him from seeing a document that listed the new members of the powerful Central Committee, which was about to be announced. 

  While Hu dominated headlines, he wasn’t the only official to nudged away from the center of power: Hu Jintao’s protege, 59-year-old Hu Chunhua, was demoted from the Politburo Standing Committee. He’d long been considered as a potential future Chinese leader. 

  The standing committee is now dominated by Xi loyalists, leaving China-watchers debating over what it portends for the future of Chinese governance and foreign policy — and tensions over Taiwan.

  Some have interpreted it to mean Xi is angling for perpetual leadership of the country. However, Nikkei Asia‘s Ken Moriyasu, is skeptical: “China is not North Korea. It is hard for a politician like Xi, with little to show in terms of achievements, to stay atop the country for so long.”

  Moriyasu likewise doubts that Xi’s maneuvering portends an invasion of Taiwan. Rather, he think Xi has some unpopular policies in mind, and wants a team around him that will see those policies through the controversies that accompany them. 

  “That’s a reform cabinet in disguise. It’s a common prosperity cabinet,” Lauren Johnston, associate professor of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, tells Moriyasu.  

  Common prosperity is a term Xi uses to encapsulate a policy agenda focused on reducing income inequality, writes Moriyasu: 

  At an August 2021 meeting of the party’s committee for financial and economic affairs, Xi spoke of raising the pay of low-income groups, promoting fairness, making regional development more balanced and stressing people-centered growth. 

  Any governmental emphasis on ending income inequality carries an implicit threat to reduce higher incomes, either via taxation or outright caps. Xi’s rhetoric implies he’d like to use both avenues. He’s promised to “reasonably regulate excessively high incomes and encourage high-income people and enterprises to return more to society.” 

  “Xi wants young, hardworking people to be able to get somewhere as the middle class, getting a job, buying a home. If 85% of a youth’s wages is going to rent,” Johnston says, “it’s not sustainable.”

  

  Li Qiang has emerged as Xi’s number-two. He’d previously demonstrated his loyalty to Xi by strictly carrying out Xi’s draconian zero-Covid policies as party chief of Shanghai. “Li Qiang showed himself willing to take on the rich elites in China’s richest city,” says Johnston.

  The same resilience will be essential when Xi goes after “excessively high incomes.” Worries over such an agenda have already taken a toll on Shanghai stocks. 

  Between the Biden administration’s assault on China’s semiconductor market to high youth unemployment, real estate woes and the lingering effects of zero-Covid policies on the Chinese economy, the five years between now and the next Chinese Communist Congress will be challenging for Xi, according to Zhu Jianrong, a professor at Toyo Gakuen University in Tokyo.

  “Xi now has his back against the wall. He got his team and will now have to deliver,” says Zhu. Otherwise, a fourth term as party chair will be unlikely. 

  Zhu says a war over Taiwan doesn’t make sense in the context of Xi’s broader agenda: 

  “The unification of Taiwan and the effort to build a modern socialist country contradict each other. The goal is to win without fighting. China will prioritize catching up with the U.S. in overall national power while avoiding a full-front conflict until then at all costs. It’s a new version of Deng Xiaoping’s ‘biding time’ strategy.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/05/2022 – 19:00

• Beating Back The Jungle Of Red Tape
  Beating Back The Jungle Of Red Tape

  Authored by Ron Shultis via RealClear Wire,

  Besides “tax increase,” few terms rile up Americans more than “red tape.” Like a vine or weed that spreads out of control, red tape conjures up visions of a fast- and ever-growing jungle of rigid, excessive, and bureaucratic regulations that bring action grinding to a halt. And these regulations have consequences: The average regulatory cost for a new business in its first year is more than $83,000. Here in Tennessee, it would take an individual spending 40 hours a week eleven weeks to read all of Tennessee’s 114,000-plus regulations, totaling more than eight million words. These regulations ensnare businesses and individuals and deprive us of our freedoms and future prosperity. State leaders must implement broad regulatory reform to ensure no Tennessean suffers from backbreaking regulations and better unleash the state’s economy. 

  

  A regulatory reform agenda will include many layers of improvements. First, make it easier to “count” the number and cost of current regulations. Fortunately, a recently passed law will require all bureaucracies to report by the end of 2023 and every eight years afterwards a list of every regulation on the books. 

  From there, state lawmakers should seek to “cap” either the total number or cost of regulations. In Wisconsin, the legislature can require an independent economist to calculate the cost of proposed regulations on businesses and another review after the fact to confirm estimates to cap the impact of regulations on the economy. Ideally, the cap is lower than the current total, forcing leaders to “cut” those that are too onerous or outdated. For the best example of how reducing regulatory burdens can unleash our economy, look to our neighbors in the north: After a poor economic decade in the 1990s, the Canadian province of British Columbia decided to try something drastic. Starting in 2001, for every new proposed regulation, bureaucracies had to repeal at least one regulation — with the goal of reducing regulatory requirements by one-third within three years. The province exceeded that goal, cutting regulations by roughly half. The result was that the province’s economy transformed from lagging Canada’s as a whole to its fastest growing province since 2002.

  After adopting a “count, cap, and cut” approach, state policymakers should provide tools to create more regulatory flexibility. Currently few options exist for those just seeking clarity if their business is subject to certain regulations. If an innovative small business wants some guidance on whether regulations apply to them or not, they often must hire legal counsel and go before an administrative law judge, an intimidating process for most. To solve this problem, regulators should be empowered to issue no-action letters (NALs). NALs allow an agency to state that it will not punish a business owner or person if they engage in some action. Without a similar tool, regulators often can only punish a new company who can then appeal to begin the process of working with them. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. NALs provide additional tools to regulators to provide the clarity and flexibility people need, especially businesses in a highly innovative world.

  Finally, to prevent regulations from ever growing out of hand again, the burden to prove the necessity of new regulations should be on the government. Currently, the burden typically falls on Tennesseans in court to prove a regulation is unduly onerous. If the government is going to impose costs on Tennesseans, it should be on them to prove that the regulation is necessary to protect the public. 

  Reforming regulations does make news headlines like tax cuts or recruiting new businesses with taxpayer money. However, if Tennessee lawmakers wish to engage in broad regulatory reform, they will be rewarded. The example of British Columbia shows that while regulatory reform is unlikely to grab headlines, it can transform economies in just a few short years. A holistic regulatory reform agenda will include many layers but with a three-tiered approach, first “counting, capping, and cutting” then providing more flexibility, and then finally shifting the burden of proving new regulations to where it belongs our state’s leaders can beat back the jungle of red tape and unleash prosperity for Tennesseans like never before.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/05/2022 – 18:30

• Why Are Fact-Checkers Ignoring False Statements On School Closures?
  Why Are Fact-Checkers Ignoring False Statements On School Closures?

  Authored by Chandler Lasch via RealClearPolitics.com,

  With each new report on the effects of pandemic-era school closures on American children, the story only seems to get worse…

  

  In September, the Associated Press reported that, according to a study from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), “Math and reading scores for America’s 9-year-olds fell dramatically during the first two years of the pandemic … Reading scores saw their largest decrease in 30 years, while math scores had their first decrease in the history of the testing regimen behind the study.”

  On October 24, data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often called the “nation’s report card,” shed more light on the abysmal declines. According to the AP, “Across the country, math scores saw their largest decreases ever. Reading scores dropped to 1992 levels. Nearly four in 10 eighth graders failed to grasp basic math concepts. Not a single state saw a notable improvement in their average test scores, with some simply treading water at best.”

  “It is a serious wakeup call for us all,” Peggy Carr of the NCES told AP reporter Collin Binkley.

  “In NAEP, when we experience a 1- or 2-point decline, we’re talking about it as a significant impact on a student’s achievement. In math, we experienced an 8-point decline—historic for this assessment.”

  As Derek Thompson of The Atlantic noted, several studies have tied falling test scores to school closures, including a 2022 paper published by the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research. The authors concluded: “It seems that the shifts to remote or hybrid instruction during 2020-21 had profound consequences for student achievement. In districts that went remote, achievement growth was lower for all subgroups, but especially for students attending high-poverty schools. In areas that remained in person, there were still modest losses in achievement, but there was no widening of gaps between high and low-poverty schools in math (and less widening in reading.)”

  In addition, the effects of school closures on students extend beyond falling test scores and lost learning. They include social isolation, loss of motivation, adverse mental health symptoms, and a lack of resources for students with disabilities, not to mention the high economic costs and other burdens placed on parents.

  With all this data comes the need to analyze school-closure policies and, for those responsible, to answer criticism. But as some officials have issued misleading and false statements about their roles in the pandemic response, a question arises: Where are the fact-checkers?

  After the September report from the NCES, a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, “What is the administration going to do about this severe learning loss, and does the administration shoulder any blame for not pushing schools to reopen sooner?”

  Jean-Pierre blamed Republicans for the slow reopening of schools.

  “[Reopening schools] was the work of this president and that was the work of Democrats in spite of Republicans not voting for the American Rescue Plan, [of] which $130 billion went to school[s] to have the ventilation, to be able to have the tutoring and the teachers, and be able to hire more teachers,” she said.

  “And that was because of the work this administration did.”

  But it was Democrats, not Republicans, who led the charge to keep schools closed.

  Did any major fact-checkers set the record straight and correct Jean-Pierre’s false statement?

  No.

  Neither Snopes, FactCheck.org, the Washington Post, USA Today, nor Politifact saw fit to address this topic. (PolitiFact has examined only two statements from Jean-Pierre since she was appointed press secretary in May, arguably part of a larger pattern of ignoring her claims.)

  Jean-Pierre is not the only one trying to shift blame about school closures. In an ABC interview, Dr. Anthony Fauci recently claimed, “I ask anybody to go back over the number of times that I’ve said ‘we’ve got to do everything we can to keep the schools open.’ No one plays that clip. They always come back and say, ‘Fauci was responsible for closing schools.’ I had nothing to do [with that].”

  Fauci, who plans to step down later this year from his role as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, should not be held responsible for every decision made to stop in-person learning across the country. But to say that he played no role is a stretch.

  Like many other officials, Fauci changed his opinions on school re-openings over the course of the pandemic. At times he advocated for a return to in-person schooling; at other points he claimed that, while reopening schools was ideal, “what is paramount is the safety and the welfare of the children and of their teachers,” and that schools could safely reopen only when “you have a very, very low level of infection.”

  His advocacy for school closures during his tenure as head of the NAID is evidence enough that he played some role in keeping schools locked down. But mainstream fact-checkers once again failed to acknowledge his false assertion.

  With all the false and misleading claims being made about school closures, fact-checkers have ample opportunity to set things straight. As recently as October 25, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer severely understated the amount of time that students in her state were out of school. In a debate against Republican challenger Tudor Dixon, Whitmer stated, “Mrs. Dixon says that I kept students out longer than any other state. That’s just not true … Kids were out for three months.”

  According to Bridge Michigan, Whitmer later clarified that she was referring to “closures that were the direct result of her or her health department’s orders.” While she shouldn’t be held liable for decisions made at the local level that kept some school districts remote into 2022, she nevertheless misstated the extent to which schools were closed. Fact-checking outlets avoided addressing Whitmer’s dubious assertions, as well as Fauci’s and those of other prominent figures who try to minimize the impact of school closures or their roles in them.

  At times, opinion writers took to task those responsible for school-closure falsehoods when fact-checkers at those same outlets declined to do so. For example, Marc A. Thiessen wrote an op-ed titled “What Fauci got wrong is still costing America’s children,” and Ingrid Jacques criticized American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten’s attempts to distance herself from her own union’s pro-closure policies.

  With the midterms just around the corner, it’s important for parents and other voters to understand who played a role in the pandemic decisions that affected students. And when it came time to provide context and clarity on this issue, fact-checkers shirked their duty.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/05/2022 – 17:30

• Dove Vs. Hawk: The Financial Conditions Index
  Dove Vs. Hawk: The Financial Conditions Index

  What do financial conditions indicate about the economy? What effects do they have on growth?

  From S&P 500 Index returns to the Cboe Volatility Index (VIX) to a range of credit conditions, the Chicago Fed’s Financial Conditions Index looks at whether financial activity is tighter than the historical average—or more accommodative.

  As Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld details below, this Markets in a Minute chart from New York Life Investments compares financial conditions in 2022 to the last 40 years as interest rates rise at the fastest rate in decades.

  

  How Is the Financial Conditions Index Measured?

  First, the Chicago Fed’s Financial Conditions Index takes 105 weighted average indicators of financial activity and organizes them into three main categories.

  Together, the sum of these indicators provide an update on the state of U.S. financial markets.

  

   

  For example, low equity market volatility is associated with lower risk and better financial conditions.

  Credit market factors, such as mortgage spreads and corporate bond yield spreads, indicate the credit conditions of the economy. Credit spreads are the difference in bond yields (returns) of two different debt securities with the same maturity, but with different credit quality.

  In this way, a narrower credit spread often indicates better financial conditions, while a wider credit spread indicates worse conditions. Credit spreads apply to any debt instrument like mortgages or corporate bonds.

  Asset prices, as seen in the S&P 500 Index, are part of the leverage category which measures the state of U.S. debt and equity markets. When the index is declining, it can be associated with tighter conditions.

  Dove vs. Hawk

  Another way to look at the state of financial conditions is through a ‘dovish’ or ‘hawkish’ lens.

  When conditions are more accommodative, they can be seen as more dovish. This is when monetary policy favors lower interest rates to boost economic growth and employment.

  Hawkish conditions, on the other hand, are characterized by tighter monetary policy. This is seen in higher interest rates to control inflation, but typically at the expense of economic growth, spending, and employment.

  The Best of Times & the Worst of Times

  When have the best and worst financial conditions taken place in recent history?

  Following the recession of 1990, interest rates fell after periods of unprecedented highs in the 1980s. This eased the debt burdens for corporations and households, creating some of the most favorable financial conditions in the last several decades.

  Despite the early 1990s being characterized with the most accommodative conditions, the period was marked by slow economic and employment growth.

  Interestingly, it was not until the second half of the decade that growth accelerated, amid low inflation and unemployment. Broadly speaking, an increase in private-sector spending and employment helped drive this growth.

  

  By contrast, the early 1980s saw the worst financial conditions by far. Interest rates hit historic highs to rein in inflation, and financial conditions were strained.

  Historically, tighter financial conditions have been linked to falling asset values and increasing risk premiums. This is the additional return an investor can expect to receive for holding a riskier asset compared to the return from a risk-free asset like a government bond.

  During these conditions, economic activity can slow and the net worth of households and nonfinancial companies could decline amid tightened credit conditions.

  A Closer Look: 2022 In Context

  Against the backdrop of six interest rate hikes and declining equity market performance in 2022, financial markets are facing challenging conditions.

  Given these factors, are conditions more hawkish or accommodative?

  Compared to historical averages, financial markets still fall on the dovish side. Although conditions have slowly become less accommodative from their recent peak in mid-2021, they remain closer to neutral from a long-term perspective.

  Still, corporate bond spreads, key indicators in the Financial Conditions Index, could widen if interest rates and default concerns continue to rise. Higher yields, in tandem with strain on other financial indicators like the VIX and S&P 500 returns, could tilt conditions to become more hawkish looking ahead.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/05/2022 – 17:00

• Luongo: The Oil Nationalization Two-Step
  Luongo: The Oil Nationalization Two-Step

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

  Blood rack, barbed wire
  Politicians’ funeral pyre
  Innocents raped with napalm fire
  Twenty-first century schizoid man

  – King Crimson, “21st Century Schizoid Man”

  You’ve all heard me rant about the “Straussian Two-Step,” which is nothing more than a retread of the Hegelian Dialectic.  

  Here’s the formal definition:

  An interpretive method, originally used to relate specific entities or events to the absolute idea, in which some assertible proposition (thesis ) is necessarily opposed by an equally assertible and apparently contradictory proposition (antithesis ), the mutual contradiction being reconciled on a higher level of truth by a third proposition (synthesis ).

  In modern politics it’s used to create a false reality by asserting something that is partially true (at best) or a truth that you yourself as a person in power created.

  

  In today’s case it’s a manufactured energy crisis across the West.

  In order to see the Straussian Two-Step however you have to work backwards. This process is not an a priori deduction or an exhaustive fit of investigative journalism.

  Rather it is an inductive conclusion based on awareness of the motivations of those in power and seeing how they lead a mass of people to a pre-ordained conclusion. In other words, schizo-posting.

  Thesis

  So, say your goal is to legitimize the state takeover, or advance another step forward the state takeover, of an industry.  Let’s use oil and gas for today’s lesson.

  The first thing you do is manufacture a crisis that will disrupt the supply of the product you want to takeover. In this case, it started with COVID-19, which disrupted far more than just the energy sector.

  More than 2 million barrels per day of refining capacity was lost world wide thanks to COVID-19. Given the current hostility to new refineres (more on this later), those barrels are not coming back.

  Don’t forget, that for a “Straussian Two-Step” this big you will have to brainwash and/or gaslight two entire generations into hating themselves for being rich, wasteful, spoiled, alive or worse, just plain white.

  So, they are already primed to hate all the things at play here — capitalism, Big Oil, Banks, Old White Guys (rich or poor) — and enrage your useful idiots by pushing their already tenuous hold on reality to the literal breaking point.

  “I can’t even….” isn’t the most common phrase uttered on Tik-Tok for nothing.

  That’s the Thesis part.

  So, when the crisis hits thanks to natural gas disruption you forbid buying of from a particular country…

  — Hello, Vlad? We’re in a helluva pickle, would you mind invading Ukraine…? Nyet…? Well, we’ll see about that….

  — MISSING PAGES FROM THE RETURN OF DR. STRANGELOVE WORKING SCRIPT.

  … you demonize not only Vlad but the industry itself for price gouging and preying on the widdle guy during a war.

  There’s a word for this… chutzpah.

  Antithesis

  Predictably, you then allow your fake political opponents …

  [enter Cocaine Mitch from Stage Right]

  … to produce the opposite argument. In this case, the counter is obviously we need free markets to produce oil and gas. The refiners are just responding to the market.

  That fake opposition, of course, also blames Vlad for this crisis to ensure the market’s champion looks not only patriotic but also suitably bought and paid for by Big Oil, Old White Guys, etc.

  Both sides of this argument have now been framed 90 degrees away from the real source of the problem, government intrusion into the flow of oil and gas to your homes.

  This is a crisis that if left solved to human ingenuity and, yes, the studious application of greed, would be over in a matter of weeks as refineries shut down during COVID would come back online, supply chains reorganized etc.

  While the crisis phase would be over quickly, the long term investment cycle set off in refining would take longer to structurally immunize the industry against future supply shocks to accomplish.

  And if you’re daft enough to believe government has any of that investment path mapped out on their whiteboards in their noble service to humanity, I can’t even…

  If I could buy stock in psychoanalysis right now I’d be long AF.

  Prices may not return to normal for years but the market, without intervention by rapacious morons both in government and running them from behind the curtain, would eventually grind the arbitrage out of the fuel industry nearly entirely.

  Guess who wins there folks? That’s right you. But, again, you hate yourself for being, well, yourself.

  Once the crisis is here and the rhetorical groundwork laid after months of repeating these lies about the cause of the crisis — PUTLER DID IT — it’s easy to move the conversation to where you really want it to go.

  Remember the goal. Destroy free markets, nationalize oil and gas.

  This means also preparing the next move to get rid of another aspect of the free market while zeroing in on the current crisis. In this theoretical case, we’re looking at the massive diesel crack spreads of refineries, fueling the perpetual motion machine of Marxism’s inherent envy.

  Moreover, this situation exploded on the eve of a crucial election to put into the mouths of the crisis actors we call colloquially, “Members of Congress.”

  

  Synthesis

  Their solution? Put windfall profit taxes on refiners who are taking advantage of the vulnerable and needy common man. They are evil ‘price gougers’ by accepting the bids from the market for the fruits of their labors which occurred precisely because of artificially inducing a shock to the system.

  In the case of diesel fuel in the US this is clearly a manufactured crisis.  COVID took a lot of refineries in the Northeast (PADD-1) offline.  And given the hostility of the Biden administration and environmentalists to the oil industry as a whole, as I alluded to earlier, those refineries are not coming back online anytime soon.

  Don’t take my word for it, take it from the ones who own the refineries.

  “Building a refinery is a multi-billion dollar investment. It may take a decade. We haven’t had a refinery built in the United States since the 1970s. My personal view is that there will never be another refinery built in the United States.”

  According to Wirth, oil and gas companies would have to weigh the benefits of committing capital ten years out that will need decades to offer a return to shareholders “in a policy environment where governments around the world are saying ‘we don’t want these products to be used in the future’”.

  Why would they? If it were your money would you begin the insane process to build an oil refinery in the US today even with crack spreads at $70+ per barrel? Of course not. By the time you filed the first Environmental Impact Assessment application form the spreads could be back to $20 because it’s politically advantageous for the “Straussian Two-Steppers” to take the pressure off for a few months.

  Government is keeping the market in a supply/demand mismatch on purpose. That’s the only conclusion you can draw. Because if “Biden” wanted to solve this problem he wouldn’t be draining the SPR, he’d be rolling back regulations on refining oil or offering some of that ‘infrastructure money’ to help the industry rebuild post-COVID.

  No matter how committed you are to saving the planet from Climate Change civilization is directly downstream of energy production.

  If he wanted lower gas prices he wouldn’t be trying to expand subsidies to poor people, pandering for their votes, he’d be going to the negotiating table with Putler and working out a mutually unappetizing solution to everyone’s interests in Ukraine.

  High Bid Wins the Prize

  Diesel fuel demand is mostly inelastic, since it’s simply necessary for our daily life. Any supply disruption will cause massive price spikes because people will fall all over themselves bidding up the price of available supply to get what they can.

  This is the one thing morons leftists can’t wrap their head around. Producers aren’t withholding supply and ‘raising prices’ in an open market economy. That’s propaganda. The reality is that consumers bid up the price for everything in demand or withhold those bids when the cost/benefit isn’t in their favor.

  There is no need to control this. The things under supply shock will flow to those who have the means to bid for them and producers get the signal there is money to be made increasing supply. It is this give and take that always alleviates shortages, unless they are not allowed to do so because ‘rules.’

  As the late, great Gary North told us over and over again, “Everything’s for sale, high bid wins.” If you have anyone to blame for higher diesel crack spreads you need only look in a mirror. Because we could have spare refining capacity by now if it weren’t cost prohibitive, even at these prices, to bring the idle plants back on line.

  Remember, everything’s for sale and high bid wins. Everyone does the cost/benefit analysis.

  This is the dynamic at play when I use the term cost-push inflation.  A supply shortage pushes the bids for basic goods up out of necessity and pouring money into the system through government handouts only accelerates this effect.  

  Low cost or free dollars flow to the things people need the most and that is the main source of our inflation today.

  So, when you see the headlines full of scaremongering like the US only has 20 days of diesel fuel left, this undergirds the bids for limited supply.  The futures markets are stripped of their power to coordinate supply over time and producers are stuck being demonized by low quality agitprop from the likes of AOC and Lizzie Slapaho.

  Nationalization: The Next Two-Step

  Windfall profit taxes are already on the way in Germany, 90% of all profits taxed away to the state. Energy production, when that bill passes, will be nationalized in Germany. The end of rational energy pricing will be gone.

  Germany will become another energy subsidizing hellscape like we see all over the world.

  The choice in front of German energy companies now is Uniper’s fate, nationalization through bailout, or remain ‘private’ but on a government-mandated cost-plus business model the profits from which will never outcompete the depreciation curve.

  Today here in the US the Democrats are pushing for outright nationalization of all oil and gas production. That was the goal all along, the thesis. The fake antithesis is the “Drill baby, Drill,” crowd on Capitol Hill, crying crocodile tears over the loss of the Keystone XL pipeline for more than a decade.

  The synthesis this time around will be finally getting through their long-sought after billionaire’s tax in the form of a windfall tax starting with evil Big Oil. Even if they don’t get it, it’s not like they don’t have other things on their to-do lists to get it done.

  They are starting here again because they know no one will seriously consider outright nationalization (the next synthesis) unless there’s a war with Russia…

  *  *  *

  Join my Patreon if you aren’t schizo

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/05/2022 – 16:30

• Is Big Tech Funding Literal Migrant "Roadmaps" To Enter The US From Central America?
  Is Big Tech Funding Literal Migrant “Roadmaps” To Enter The US From Central America?

  The medical aid nonprofit Doctors Without Borders is providing and distributing maps for migrants that show routes through Central America to reach the United States, according to a new report by the Daily Caller.

  And the kicker? The organization providing the maps is funded by “a number of prominent tech companies”. 

  Called “shelters for people on the move” in Spanish, the map lists clinics and aid areas along routes to the U.S. 

  It shows paths that start in Guatemala that lead to the U.S.-Mexico border and lists clinics and shelters along the Mexican border that migrants can stop at during their trip. These clinics and shelters are across the border from major U.S. cities like El Paso, Texas and San Diego, California, the report says. 

  

  Meanwhile, Doctors Without Borders has gotten sizeable donations from companies like Google and Amazon, the report notes. It has also received millions in donations from the foundations of billionaires like Elon Musk and Michael Bloomberg.

  Doctors Without Borders spokeswoman Jessica Brown told The Daily Caller: “As a medical humanitarian organization providing medical and mental health care to people on this migration route, MSF [Médecins Sans Frontières] prints and distributes these maps to ensure that people know where to find shelter and humanitarian assistance and how to access mental health services along the migration route.”

  Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) Director of Government Relations and Communications RJ Hauman concluded: “The fact that an international medical NGO with billions in the bank is making literal roadmaps to guide migrants from Central America to our southern border is not only an affront to its core mission, but a globalist attack on our sovereignty.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/05/2022 – 16:00

• Rickards: A Bodyguard Of Lies
  Rickards: A Bodyguard Of Lies

  Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

  The all-important midterm elections are just one week away. I’ve said a lot about them, and will have more to say about them in the days to come.

  

  But today, I want to talk about something even more important: truth vs. official lies. More specifically, I want to talk about truth and propaganda.

  It’s said that truth is the first casualty of war. And Churchill once said that in wartime, truth is so precious that it needs to be surrounded by a bodyguard of lies.

  That’s why propaganda plays such a large role in modern warfare.

  The fact is wars are conducted in part through lies and propaganda. For example, in the early days of World War I, the British cut the undersea communications cables that ran from Germany to the U.S.

  The British wanted to control the flow of information and issue what we call today “misinformation.” And so they created inflammatory accounts of German atrocities to sway public opinion, like German soldiers skewering Belgian babies on bayonets.

  While there will always be individual acts of atrocity in wartime, these reports were largely propaganda.

  Here in the U.S. itself, President Wilson had special police forces who arrested anyone reporting negative news on the progress of the war. Sound familiar?

  It’s like the social media companies today canceling or censoring anyone who reports that the vaccines don’t work or masks don’t work. The media call it “misinformation” (even though it’s scientifically valid) and move on.

  The same is true with the war in Ukraine. The propaganda machine kicked into overdrive early on.

  Bodyguard of Lies

  The CIA and MI6 leaked a steady stream of anti-Russian lies to prop up morale. These lies were reprinted in warmonger media outlets like The Washington Post, The New York Times and NBC News.

  That means it’s almost impossible for U.S. citizens to get the real story through mainstream media outlets. Still, there is some honest reporting going in if you know where to find it.

  You just have to filter the sources and find those with good pipelines of information (including inside the government) who do not have a hidden agenda and are willing to speak the truth.

  It’s not necessary to rely on Russian sources (the Russians are certainly not above propaganda, although they’re generally more truthful than the U.S. media, believe it or not). There are excellent analyses to be found among Swiss sources, German experts who are not in favor of the war and some on-the-ground reporting from the front lines on specialist websites.

  Get Ready for the Russian Counteroffensive

  Some of the best sources are found among retired U.S. military officers who are experts on warfare, still have good contacts inside the military and intelligence communities, and who consider the war in Ukraine to be highly detrimental to U.S. national security and the economy.

  One top commentator who fits this description is Colonel (Ret.) Douglas Macgregor, who wrote a recent commentary about the war. Macgregor points out that Russia is preparing for a full-scale counterattack to roll-back recent Ukrainian gains near the Donbas and Kherson.

  The Russians have been consolidating their positions: resupplying, mobilizing troops, and preparing for winter warfare at which they excel. It’s just a matter of waiting for the ground to freeze so trucks and armor can maneuver without getting bogged down.

  The attack could come as early as November or December at the latest. Yet, that is not Macgregor’s main concern.

  Is the 101st Airborne Division Being Used as Bait?

  His fear is that the U.S. will double down in the face of this attack and deploy U.S. troops to the battle. The Pentagon recently deployed units of the 101st Airborne Division to Romania, just miles from its border with Ukraine.

  Airborne forces are generally light infantry that lack the firepower of, say, armored units or mechanized infantry.

  But if these forces did get directly involved in the fighting, heavier reinforcements would be on the way. From there, it could be a short step to nuclear war with Russia.

  To some, that might sound unrealistic or even paranoid. They’ll say it’s just scare-mongering. But this is a legitimate possibility, and there’s a real chance of it happening. The fact is, we’ve been on the path of escalation with Russia since 2008 and the tempo of escalation has accelerated since the war began in February.

  All experts on nuclear warfighting agree that if a nuclear war begins, it will be the result of escalation to the point that one side feels it is cornered and has no choice but to use nukes. That point is getting closer by the day.

  Macgregor calls on Congress to stop the White House, but he’s not optimistic that’ll happen.

  Nuclear War? It’s Not the End of the World

  The possibility of nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia is a shocking development after thirty years, during which nuclear weapons and nuclear war between superpowers were almost forgotten.

  What is as disconcerting is the fact that the discussion of nuclear war is casual, almost flippant, and carries none of the seriousness with which the topic was formerly addressed. It also carries no comprehension of the existential consequences and sheer horror that the use of nuclear weapons entails.

  It’s almost as if the warmongers in and around the White House were playing a game of chicken without realizing the other driver had no intention of changing course.

  Now the U.S. elites have started psychological operations (psyops) aimed at Putin with nuclear weapons as the bait. They claim that Putin has threatened to use tactical weapons in Ukraine and possibly other parts of Eastern and Central Europe.

  That’s a lie; Putin never said that.

  When asked, both Putin and Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev said that if attacked, Russia would defend itself by all means necessary, including the possible use of nuclear weapons. That’s not news. That has been Russian or Soviet policy since the early 1950s. It has also been U.S. policy since then. Neither side has ever renounced the first use of nuclear weapons.

  Putin’s expected answer to a question posed has been turned into a threat he never made. This is U.S. and UK propaganda at its worst (and most dangerous). This lie about Putin’s intentions quickly morphed into another psyop about a “false flag” operation.

  That’s when you stage an attack disguised to look like an attack by your enemy in order to justify your own “retaliation,” which you were planning all along. Recently, the narrative that Putin would use nukes or conduct a false flag operation morphed into a related narrative that Putin would use a “dirty bomb.”

  He Said, He Said

  In effect, Putin would detonate a dirty bomb and then blame the Ukrainians and Americans. A dirty bomb is not a nuclear weapon, but it does employ radioactive material wrapped around conventional explosives. When detonated, the radioactive material is dispersed and can poison or kill any people or livestock in the area.

  Not to be outdone, the Russians countered by saying the U.S. or Ukraine would conduct the false flag by detonating a dirty bomb and then blaming the Russians as an excuse to escalate Western involvement in Ukraine.

  At this point, we have both sides warning the other side will conduct a false flag with a dirty bomb in order to justify their own pre-planned escalation. If a dirty bomb does go off, each side will blame the other and the truth will be a casualty of war.

  Meanwhile, a senior Russian foreign ministry official has warned that U.S. satellites, which have been providing critical targeting information to Ukraine’s armed forces, may be “legitimate” targets of Russian forces.

  How would the U.S. respond if Russia starts taking out its satellites? We may soon find out.

  Is Your Portfolio Ready for Nukes?

  By the way, I’m not apologizing for Putin or defending his invasion of Ukraine. I’m just looking at the current situation and objectively analyzing where things could go next, based upon the facts.

  And I’m not making a specific prediction; I’m just giving you a warning because the media doesn’t seem to want to.

  It might seem like an inappropriate question given the potential for widespread death and destruction, but is your portfolio ready for nukes?

  In a nuclear confrontation, stocks and bonds could become worthless as exchanges are closed around the world. At best, they will retain some value as illiquid private equity tokens.

  The best assets in this catastrophic scenario are land, gold, silver, food, water, and heat for your home.

  Nothing else will matter much.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/05/2022 – 15:30

• Joy Reid Says Voters Didn't Know About Inflation Until Republican Politicians "Taught Them" The Word
  Joy Reid Says Voters Didn’t Know About Inflation Until Republican Politicians “Taught Them” The Word

  MSNBC’s Joy Reid has been a veritable gold mine of bad takes, ignorant comments and authoritarian arguments over the past few years. 

  This includes her consistent demand that people without covid vaccines be denied medical care, that they be punished with fines, as well as her baseless assertions that hurricanes are a product of “global warming.” 

  Her latest comments might be her most bizarre yet, with a mind boggling claim that American voters were essentially oblivious to the issue of inflation until conservative political candidates started talking about it.

  This narrative appears to be an extension of a common gas-lighting strategy among Democrats; a way to dismiss the problems Americans most care about in 2022 as overblown. Reid’s suggestion insinuates that the public was comfortably unaware of the inflationary/stagflationary crisis and could have stayed that way had it not been for those meddling Republicans and their refusal to use the “common tongue” on the campaign trail.  In other words, she thinks the average voter is stupid.

  Reid argues that the only people that use the word “inflation” are “journalists and economists” and that it is not a part of the normal lexicon of discussion.  One might point out to Reid, since she seems incapable of grasping simple logic, that Americans have not faced a true inflationary threat since the 1970’s, over 40 years ago.  So, it’s not surprising that inflation was not a term used around every dinner table in the country until today as the threat returns with a vengeance. 

  It should be noted that Joy Reid has covered the inflation crisis on her own show on a number of occasions, which means she also may have contributed to the wider usage of the terminology, not just conservatives.  Here’s Reid hitting the inflation issue over 8 months ago:

  The leftist pundit’s take on the situation is definitely uneducated, as she tries to blame companies as the culprits behind inflation as if they are raising prices artificially.  She ignores the fact that prices also spiked in commodities and raw materials, energy, labor and shipping, which means goods cost much more for producers to manufacture.  It is bottom line inflation that causes the prime bulk of price increases on store shelves, not businesses trying to squeeze extra profits out of consumers. 

  Beyond that, Reid seems to think it’s perfectly acceptable for leftists to put their own spin on the inflation problem as a way to push their political agenda forward, but it’s not okay for conservatives to ring the warning bell because now Democrats are tied inexorably to our country’s economic decline.   It’s the legendary MSNBC double standard all over again.  

  The fact that a majority of Americans are aware of inflation dangers and are talking about them is a good thing.  It shows that the public is paying attention and they are seeking solutions.  Reid’s position is an elitist one, asserting that the general public should remain in the dark, and that such issues should only be entertained among small circles of “professionals” who will let the rest of us know what we should think and when we should think it.         

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/05/2022 – 15:00

• Is Following ESG Criteria Breaking The Law?
  Is Following ESG Criteria Breaking The Law?

  Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  One problem for CEOs who direct their companies to follow the goals of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria is that in doing so, they may be breaking the law. According to legal experts, ESG initiatives can cause companies to break antitrust, civil rights, and Employee Retirement Income Security Agency (ERISA) laws.

  “The way ESG is being implemented is completely antidemocratic, which is to say that they are just flouting laws,” George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicki told The Epoch Times. “They’re flouting democratically elected laws and bringing things about that are often illegal.”

  

  Violation of Antitrust Laws

  According to a report titled “Liability Risks for the ESG Agenda” (pdf), by Washington D.C. law firm Boyden Gray, companies that take part in coordinated actions against other companies or industries could be violating U.S. antitrust laws. The report states, “Federal law prohibits companies from colluding on group boycotts or conspiring to restrain trade, even to advance political or social goals.”

  It cites the Sherman Act of 1890, which prohibits “every contract, combination … or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce.” Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote on this subject, commenting that “antitrust laws in general, and the Sherman Act in particular, are the Magna Carta of free enterprise. They are as important to the preservation of economic freedom and our free-enterprise system as the Bill of Rights is to the protection of our fundamental personal freedoms.”

  Hundreds of the world’s largest corporations have signed joint pledges through international clubs such as Climate Action 100+, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), the Net Zero Banking Alliance, the Net Zero Asset Managers Alliance, and others to reduce the use of fossil fuels.

  GFANZ, which includes 550 global corporations as members, states that “all members have independently committed to the goal of net zero by 2050, in addition to setting interim targets for 2030 or earlier and reporting transparently on progress along the way.” GFANZ banking members include Bank of America, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs.

  Climate Action 100+ includes 700 investment companies representing $68 trillion in assets; it also includes 166 companies with a combined market capitalization more than $10 trillion. Among the hundreds of members of Climate Action 100+ are some of the world’s largest and most powerful companies, including Boeing, BP, Caterpillar, Chevron, Dow, Exxon, Ford, Honda, Lockheed Martin, Mercedes, Nestle, Nissan, PepsiCo, Proctor & Gamble, Raytheon, Siemens, Coca Cola, Toyota, United Airlines, American Airlines, Walmart, BlackRock, State Street, Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, PIMCO, and Allianz. It also includes America’s largest state pension funds, such as CalPERS, CalSTRS, New York City Pension Funds, and New York State Common Retirement Fund.

  The Boyden Gray report notes that the argument that ESG advocates make—that companies which follow ESG guidelines are better investments —“relies heavily on bandwagon effects.” In other words, if enough asset managers collaborate to shift their investments toward ESG-compliant companies, the shares of those companies become more valuable; and even more so if governments subsidize industries like wind and solar, while punishing fossil fuel companies.

  Violation of Civil Rights Laws

  Beyond antitrust, another area where ESG may run afoul of America’s laws is where the push for racial and gender equity violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, or national origin. In step with ESG social justice goals, United Airlines announced in April 2021 that it would set racial and gender quotas when hiring pilots.

  The company stated that “our flight deck should reflect the diverse group of people on board our planes every day. That’s why we plan for 50 percent of the 5,000 pilots we train in the next decade to be women or people of color.”

  A number of recent court rulings have underscored the validity of U.S. laws regarding racial discrimination. In June 2021, a federal judge ruled that the Biden administration’s farming grants, which gave preference to racial minorities, were illegal. In a separate case, the courts ruled that COVID-relief grants by the Biden administration that excluded white restaurant owners were also illegal.

  But America’s civil rights laws go beyond government policy to include private industry as well, opening companies up to lawsuits from employees. In August, for example, American Express became the latest company to face an employee lawsuit for racial discrimination. Brian Netzel, a decade-long employee who was fired in 2020 on what he claims are racial grounds, stated in his class-action lawsuit that American Express “gave preferential treatment to individuals for being black and unambiguously signaled to white employees that their race was an impediment to getting ahead in the company.”

  In October 2021, a white male employee was awarded $10 million by a jury that agreed with his claim that he was fired as part of a race-based policy by his employer, Novant Health. After five years of positive work reviews, David Duvall was fired “without warning or cause as part of an intentional campaign to promote diversity in its management ranks; a campaign [Novant] has boasted about publicly,” his suit stated.

  “It’s been well known for decades that quotas are illegal,” Zywicki said. “But when you start looking at things like racial sensitivity training, they’re engaging pretty much in rampant stereotyping, negative stereotyping of certain groups, and they are engaging in rampant preferences for others. All of this runs pretty clearly up against existing civil rights laws.”

  Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs, a component of ESG, are coming under fire, both as mandatory employee training and as hiring criteria.

  It was reported on Nov. 2 that University of North Carolina’s School of Medicine “forces applicants, students, and professors to constantly prove their commitment to the tenets of diversity, equity, and inclusion as a prerequisite to advancement, rather than basing such decisions on merit alone.” This was based on a report by a nonprofit called Do No Harm, which charged that one of UNC’s main criteria for hiring and promotion of teachers was “a positive contribution to DEI efforts.”

  Stanley Goldfarb, the chairman of Do No Harm, stated in a letter to the school that “it is inappropriate to require that candidates for promotion and tenure demonstrate their commitment to a political ideology. Forcing candidates to declare their support for DEI when many undoubtedly oppose it would compel dishonesty.” This report comes amid a case before the U.S. Supreme Court wherein UNC was charged with having unconstitutional race-based admission standards.

  Violation of Fiduciary Laws

  A third area where ESG clashes with U.S. law regards the legal obligation of fund managers and corporate executives to act in good faith and in the best interests of investors and shareholders.

  The Employee Retirement Income Security Act, passed in 1974 to address corruption and misuse of pension money, requires that private pension fund managers invest “solely in the interests of participants and beneficiaries.” It set what is called a “prudent expert” standard of care for fund managers and allows fund beneficiaries to sue managers for failing to uphold this standard.

  While ERISA applies to corporate pension funds, many U.S. states have applied similar language to public pension funds. Currently, 24 states forbid ideological investing for their public pension funds, including ESG.

  An August letter to BlackRock, signed by 19 state attorneys general, for example, charged that BlackRock had a “duty of loyalty” to state pensioners who invested in its funds and that “your actions around promoting net zero, the Paris Agreement, or taking action on climate change indicate rampant violations of this duty, otherwise known as acting with ‘mixed motives.’”

  In response, BlackRock wrote that “one of [its] most critical tasks as a fiduciary investor for our clients is to identify short- and long-term trends in the global economy that may affect our clients’ investments.” The letter states that “governments representing over 90 percent of global GDP have committed to move to net-zero in the coming decades. We believe investors and companies that take a forward-looking position with respect to climate risk … will generate better long-term financial outcomes.”

  State attorneys general disagreed, stating that despite climate-change rhetoric, “governments are not implementing policies to require net zero … In particular, the United States has not implemented net-zero mandates. Despite doing everything in his power at the beginning of his presidency to shut down fossil fuels, even President Biden is appearing to reverse course given the harm his inflationary policies have inflicted on the American people.”

  In October, Swiss bank UBS downgraded the shares of BlackRock, stating that “as [BlackRock’s] performance deteriorates and political risk from ESG has increased, we believe the potential for lost fund mandates and regulatory scrutiny has recently increased.”

  In addition to the risk that ESG asset managers violate their fiduciary duty to investors, there is also the risk that corporate managers violate their duty to act in the best interest of the shareholders of the company.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/05/2022 – 14:30

• Biden Betrayed As CNN, NYT Fact Checkers Set Stage For Downfall
  Biden Betrayed As CNN, NYT Fact Checkers Set Stage For Downfall

  Last week, the New York Times wrote a puff piece which framed President Biden’s numerous gaffes during a Florida rally as ‘verbal fumbling.’

  

  Biden conflated the war in Ukraine with the Iraq war, then lied when he said he got the two confused because his son Beau died in Iraq.

  NEW – Biden: “Inflation is a worldwide problem right now because of a war in Iraq… excuse me, the war in Ukraine. I’m thinking about Iraq because that’s where my son died.” pic.twitter.com/G2QeYUqdHN

  — Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) November 1, 2022

  The same day, the White House was called out by CNN‘s Daniel Dale over a now-deleted tweet claiming “Seniors are getting the biggest increase in their Social Security checks in 10 years through President Biden’s leadership,” when in fact – as Dale noted, “The size of Social Security checks is linked, by law, to inflation. This year’s increase is unusually big because the inflation rate is unusually big.”

  when you’ve lost the “fact checkers”… https://t.co/XKFyvecGx2

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 2, 2022

  And while the White House deleted the Tweet, Biden repeated the claim twice last week. As The Blaze notes;

  • Speaking in Florida on Tuesday, Biden said, “And on my watch, for the first time in 10 years, seniors are getting an increase in their Social Security checks.”
  • Then at a campaign rally, Biden said on Tuesday, “On our watch, for the first time in 10 years, seniors are getting the biggest increase in Social Security checks, period.”

  There’s a lot that’s wrong with that declaration. First of all, this will be the seventh increase in a row. Second, increases are routine because they happen automatically — based on changes to a particular calculation of the Consumer Price Index (CPI-W), and not the actions of the president. 

  What makes Biden’s boast especially preposterous is that it ultimately points to the fact that what’s happened “on his watch” is 40-year-high price inflation.

  

  Fast forward four days, and both CNN and the New York Times have gone scorched earth on Biden, in what appears to be a’ coordinated effort’ to distance mainstream Democrats against a President who’s become an increasing liability with batshit crazy comments, obvious confusion, and several recent sniffings.

  Adding this CNN fact check to the thread. Looks like a coordinated effort.

  Hat tip: @IUTruthtellers and @mindnotforrent https://t.co/rjhg6iMHK0

  — Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) November 5, 2022

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

  There’s a reason Daniel just decided to start doing his job two years in and 4 days before a before an election that effectively ends Biden’s presidency. Try and guess what that is. pic.twitter.com/EIA7YiFmDc

  — Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) November 5, 2022

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

  On Friday, the Times took Biden and his White House to task for a series of false statements about the state of the economy and what Biden has done for it.  

  

  For example, Biden routinely positions himself as an unprecedented cutter of budget deficits, as he did recently in Syracuse:

  “This year the deficit, under our leadership, is falling by $1.4 trillion. Ladies and gentlemen, the largest ever one-year cut in American history on the deficit.” 

  Not so fast, says the Times: 

  Left unsaid was the fact that the deficit was so high in the first place because of pandemic relief spending, including a $1.9 trillion economic aid package the president pushed through Congress in 2021 and which was not renewed. Mr. Biden was in effect claiming credit for not passing another round of emergency assistance.

  What the Times didn’t point out was that Biden and the Democratic Congress have teamed up to significantly increase deficits over the budget horizon, as illustrated by the Manhattan Institute‘s Brian Riedl:   

  

  Fact check leads White House to delete tweet, then the spin begins…

  Hilarity ensued over the Social Security self-own, as Twitter users “added context” that demolished the boast… causing Elon Musk to tweet; “The system is working.” 

  The system is working 🤣

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 2, 2022

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

  After the White House deleted the tweet, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “Look, the tweet was not complete. Usually when we put out a tweet we post it with context, and it did not have that context.”

  “The tweet was not complete. Usually when we put out a tweet we posted with context and it did not have that context.”@PressSec responds to deleted White House tweet that gave President Biden credit for Social Security increases. https://t.co/kLf3TkYg3L pic.twitter.com/4jnchY9XaO

  — The Hill (@thehill) November 3, 2022

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

  What’s particularly damning about the Social Security brag is that, rather than bubbling up in spontaneous Biden remarks — always a nail-biting experience for his team — this was part of a prepared speech. That speaks volumes about the collective economic wisdom of his controllers.  

  The Times also hit Biden for saying — off the cuff — that he pushed student debt forgiveness through Congress, where “I got it passed by a vote or two.” 

  Though many were quick to brand this a “lie,” when you consider he personally instituted debt forgiveness via an executive order that was many months in the making, it’s more likely it was the latest example of his accelerating mental decline.

  Not surprisingly, the Times couldn’t bring itself to explicitly raise that possibility, but did note that Biden’s assertion was “perhaps the most head-scratching” of his false economic statements, as it was “starkly at odds with the reality,” especially when his executive order is now facing multiple court challenges.

  The Times then called out misleading or false communications about economic growth, gas prices and inflation in general. 

  CNN, meanwhile, put out the following piece Saturday morning:

  

  They ding Biden on the Social Security propaganda and lying about corporate taxes.

  Biden repeatedly suggested in speeches in October and early November that a new law he signed in August, the Inflation Reduction Act, will stop the practice of successful corporations paying no federal corporate income tax. Biden made the claim explicitly in a tweet last week: “Let me give you the facts. In 2020, 55 corporations made $40 billion. And they paid zero in federal taxes. My Inflation Reduction Act puts an end to this.”

  But “puts an end to this” is an exaggeration. The Inflation Reduction Act will reduce the number of companies on the list of non-payers, but the law will not eliminate the list entirely.

  That’s because the law’s new 15% alternative corporate minimum tax, on the “book income” companies report to investors, only applies to companies with at least $1 billion in average annual income. (There are lots of nuances; you can read more specifics here.) According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the think tank that in 2021 published the list of 55 large and profitable companies that avoided paying any federal income tax in their previous fiscal year, only 14 of these 55 companies reported having US pre-tax income of at least $1 billion in that year.

  In other words, there will clearly still be some large and profitable corporations paying no federal income tax even after the minimum tax takes effect in 2023. The exact number is not yet known. -CNN

  CNN then called out Biden for lying about the national debt and the deficit, the unemployment rate, his student debt cancellation scheme, gas prices, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and the Trump tax cuts.

  What’s going on here?

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/05/2022 – 14:00

• How The Soviets "Fixed" Inflation, But Wrecked The Economy
  How The Soviets “Fixed” Inflation, But Wrecked The Economy

  Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

  Price inflation and the resulting business cycles are monetary phenomena, and without increases in the money supply—i.e., monetary inflation—there is no price inflation. If the world were a very simple place, we would see this relationship clearly displayed: when the money supply increased, we would also see a general increase in prices soon thereafter. The world, however, is not a very simple place and an economy can include countless factors that can mask, delay, and otherwise obscure the connection between monetary inflation and price inflation. 

  

  For example, monetary policymakers in the US have long benefited from the disinflationary effects of global trade and increasing worker productivity. This means that, for decades, consumers should have seen prices of most goods and services falling. Instead, relentless monetary inflation over the past three decades has resulted in positive price growth that is seemingly mild, and policymakers can claim victory over inflation. Moreover, new money can enter the economy in a variety of ways, often manifesting as asset-price inflation rather than as noticeably high price increases in food or household goods. 

  Governments also have many tools at their disposal to delay or hide the effects of monetary inflation, sometimes for many years. Price controls and subsidies, for example, can obscure the true costs of goods and services for the end consumer. These tactics cause shortages, bubbles, and other problems, but these can often be blamed on “greed” or “capitalism.” 

  One particularly interesting case of how governments can hide price inflation for decades is the Soviet Union. Under the Soviet regime, the money supply—denominated in unbacked fiat money, of course—was continually expanded to increase wages and create the impression of prosperity. This would have led to price inflation quickly, but for the shortage economy and demand-killing government policies endured by the average Soviet citizen. As is so often the case, the regime was able to cover up the effects of inflation for a time, but the policies ultimately proved to be disastrous. 

  Preventing Inflation through State Control of the Economy

  As a regime increases the money supply, demand will generally rise. But rising prices will become acute only if there are actually products and services on which consumers and enterprises can spend their new money. Thus, a regime wishing to avoid price inflation can keep increasing the money supply so long as it also reduces demand by limiting the availability of goods. This prevents improvements in the standard of living, but it can indeed keep down price inflation. 

  This cannot be easily done in a country where the population expects to live under a relatively free economy. In an unhampered or partially interventionist economy, a lack of widespread price controls often means a large number of goods and services will continue to be supplied, albeit at higher prices, in an inflationary environment. But, because the USSR oversees a heavily controlled, command economy, the regime could more easily dictate prices, limit imports, and force consumers to save rather than spend.

  Ultimately, though, by the late 1980s, the regime was forced to “open up” its economy to market forces as a restive population increasingly demanded a standard of living more in line with what existed in the West. However, once the regime ceased controlling prices and savings, prices exploded, government revenues cratered, and the Soviet regime ended its days in an orgy of money printing and hyperinflation. 

  How the Soviet Regime Manipulated Price Inflation

  The fact that the Soviet regime preferred shortages to inflation has its roots in the hyperinflationary history of the Soviet economy. By the middle of the twentieth century, Soviet planners were already well aware of the dangers of hyperinflation. With the end of the czarist regime, and the cessation of the First World War, the new socialist regime took over a country that was already broke and highly dysfunctional. Hyperinflation soon followed. The Bolsheviks attempted to do away with money altogether, but this naturally failed, and a number of monetary reforms followed. By the late 1920s, however, the regime was engaging in widespread price control efforts, including the highly unusual tactic of peacetime rationing. This limited price inflation for many goods and set the stage for the “repressed inflation” that would become a mainstay of the Soviet system for decades. Prices nevertheless began to rise rapidly in many areas, and the Second World War brought on a new wave of price inflation and prices spiraled upward. This was followed by another currency reform—i.e., devaluation—of the Soviet ruble in 1947. Efforts at price controls were redoubled and overall prices actually declined during the 1950s. 

  Throughout much of the 1950s and early sixties, the regime was perennially concerned about price inflation. In fact, Soviet ideology stipulated that inflation did not actually exist in the USSR. As claimed by Vasily Garbuzov, the Soviet Minister of Finance in 1960:

  In the Soviet Union there is not and cannot be any inflation; the possibility of inflation is fully precluded by the very system of planned socialist economy. In our country both wholesale and retail prices are established by the government and, therefore, the purchasing power of the ruble is controlled on a planned basis. …The stability of Soviet currency is guaranteed by the monopoly of currency and the monopoly of foreign trade which is one of the most important advantages of the socialist economic system.

  This is propaganda, of course, but in a sense, Garbuzov was right. A socialist state really could moderate the price effects of monetary inflation by throttling back the standard of living and consumption options whenever it seemed prices were rising.

  This was necessary because the money supply continually expanded as wages rose. In their 1985 study on the Soviet economy, Igor Birman and Roger Clarke wrote: 

  The reason for the excess supply of money is that the state has consistently ‘over-paid’ the population in the form of wages, pensions, stipends etc., which exceed production (plus net imports and minus net exports) of consumer goods at the currently ruling retail prices (fixed by the state). While there has indeed been a steady rise in retail prices (despite the stability of the official index) this has been very far from sufficient to equalise the real effective demand of the population with the available supply of goods. In other words, the state generates excessive purchasing power in the hands of the population.

  In an unhampered economy wages are closely tied to the productivity of workers, so wages would not grow out of proportion to the amount of goods and services available in the economy. In a socialist, economy, however, the price of labor—i.e., wages—were arbitrarily set like all other prices. Wages under socialism are also paid out of the public treasury and can be increased to the liking of the regime itself. This often meant rising wages because higher wages were politically popular. Rising wages potentially created the impression of prosperity, even when the economy wasn’t actually more productive. Also, as Birman and Clarke note

  During the last two decades [i.e., 1965 to 1985] it has pursued the ‘confidence trick’ policy of trying to stimulate productivity by higher money wages without raising the supply of consumer goods by nearly sufficient to translate the increase in money wages into increased real incomes.

  Increasingly, after 1965, the Soviet money supply was out of proportion to the productive capability of the economy. In a relatively free economy, this would quickly lead to price inflation, but the Soviet regime had ways of shifting the economic burden elsewhere. 

  Thus, prices were kept under control not through fiscal disciple, but through price controls. This led to shortages because, if wages were rising while goods prices could not, demand quickly exceeded supply. Soviet citizens often found they had very little to spend their money on, with the result being the long queues and empty store shelves we now associate with the Soviet economy. 

  By this mechanism, the regime can continue to inject new money into the economy but also prevent ordinary people from spending “too much” money and thus ratcheting up consumer prices. The downside, of course, is that the standard of living goes down considerably, as historian Steven Efremov notes: 

  The system of price controls had deleterious effects both for Soviet consumers and for the economy as a whole. … Shortages of most foods led to lower quality diets, and many consumer products that were routinely available in the West, such as telephones, cars, and modern washing machines were amazingly rare in the Soviet Union. Living conditions were less comfortable in many ways, with less housing space per person, no central heating, no air conditioning, and often no sewer connections or hot water. 

  The result was essentially forced savings. Efremov continues: 

  When consumers could not find anything they wanted to buy, many chose to save a portion of their income every year. This effect was cumulative over the years, as unsatisfied demand from each year was carried over to the next and the population’s savings continued to grow.

  In some respects, this was good for the regime because this unspendable savings could also be tapped for buying the government’s debt. But this stored up money—known as the “monetary overhang” increased much more rapidly than did the production of goods and services, and Efremov concludes “the money supply had grown to become many times larger than what was needed for regular circulation.” This would come back to haunt the regime when the economy began to open up and consumers could finally spend the money, causing prices to soar. 

  An additional method of pushing down official inflation numbers was to subsidize consumer goods. Retail price subsidies were introduced in in the Soviet Union in 1965 as part of a major economic reform package. Soviet authorities then began to implement price subsidies of “basic foods such as meat, milk, bread, sausages, sugar, and butter.”1 The purpose was to keep prices stable. These subsidies survived subsequent economic reform efforts and became a larger and larger part of the economy heading into the 1980s, with government spending rapidly increasing to push down prices through subsidies.

  Spending Rises and the Economy Stagnates 

  None of this worked to actually help the Soviet standard of living. 

  To combat the effects of monetary expansion and falling standards of living, the Soviet regime perennially attempted to increase production to narrow the gap between money growth and productivity growth. Due to the impossibility of economic calculation under socialism, however, Soviet central planning could not coordinate goods and capital efficiently, and the productivity of workers stagnated. 

  Another result was further declines in government revenue. Although taxes were levied and some revenue could be collected on imports, government monopolies—i.e., government-owned enterprises—controlling a variety of goods and services produced much of the income the regime relied on. These enterprises could theoretically increase revenues with increased output, but output often stagnated as wages—i.e., production costs—rose.

  Government budgets thus increased alongside falling revenue. Byung-Yeon Kim notes, for example, that “retail price subsidies … rose from 4 per cent of state budget expenditure in 1965 to 20 per cent in the late 1980s.”2 

  Yet, the availability of consumer goods certainly did not keep up. Rather, consumer had few places to spend their money and “the share of forced savings in total monetary savings increased from 9 per cent in 1965 to 42 per cent in 1989.”3

  Measured by the prevalence of shortages, it is clear the Soviet economy was in a state of stagnation by the late 70s. Shortages became even worse. Kim concludes: 

  Consumer market conditions in the official retail network deteriorated rapidly in the years 1965-78. This is most likely to have been caused by stable consumer prices faced with rising consumer purchasing power. Even though the rapid deterioration halted during the period 1979-83, this was not sufficient to restore equilibrium. Further worsening of consumer market conditions occurred after 1984. In particular, shortages in the consumer market intensified significantly in 1989 because household money income increased much faster than the availability of consumer goods.4

  The wage increases continued with little positive effect. Throughout the 1980s, Soviet state-owned enterprises raised wages in an attempt to create a “wealth effect” and to placate dissatisfied workers. Yet, with few goods available to buy, rising wages ceased to be much of an inducement to harder work. Birman and Clarke note that after a time, rising wages “become ineffective—additional unspendable money is no longer an incentive to work harder or more productively.” Worker productivity suffered. This problem only accelerated as the decade wore on and, as Igor Filatochev and Roy Bradshaw note, “wages increas[ed] four times faster than labour productivity throughout 1989 and 1990.”

  The 1980s: A Time of Growing Deficits and Money Printing 

  All of this spending on wages and subsidies combined to create conditions under which government deficits rose, leading for even greater monetary expansion. Kim concludes:

  Although the budget deficit was officially recorded only from 1985 onwards, many reliable Soviet and western sources have maintained that a sizable deficit already existed well before the 1980s.5

  Up until the 1970s, there had been a connection between revenues and spending to the point that deficits were manageable. As time went on, borrowing to address deficits became increasingly expensive for the regime, and printing money—above and beyond the need for wages—was increasingly viewed as a way out:

  [P]rinting of money began well before the late 1980s, that is, from 1977 onwards, and tended to increase during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Overall, the Soviet budget tended to destabilize the consumer market, at least after 1977, by putting money into circulation. In particular, a sharp increase in printing money in the late 1980s suggests that the Soviet economy was then on the verge of collapse.6

  Amount of Deficit Financed by Printing Money

  

  Source: Byung-Yeon Kim, “Causes of Repressed Inflation in the Soviet Consumer Market, 1965-1989: Retail Price Subsidies, the Siphoning Effect, and the Budget Deficit,” The Economic History Review 55, no. 1 (Feb. 2002): 121

  Hyperinflation Sets In 

  By the late 1980s, the Soviet economy was already primed for price inflation, yet so-called repressed inflation continued to be a sizable factor pushing down official inflation rates until the mid 1980s. With the advent of perestroika and some limited promarket reforms, Soviet citizens were increasingly able to purchase more goods and import more goods. Decades of forced saving led to runaway inflation as shortages became less acute in many cases. That “monetary overhang” came out of savings accounts and drove price inflation to disastrous heights. 

  It took some time for the official numbers to catch up with reality. The regime’s official numbers had long understated even the moderate levels of price inflation in earlier periods, but after the mid-80s, the gap between official inflation and estimated real inflation grew considerably. Efremov summarizes the divergence, noting that in 1988 official inflation was 0.6 percent but 6 percent in the real marketplace. By 1989, official inflation was 2 percent, but it was really 8 percent. In 1990, it was 5.3 percent, but really 20 percent. And then the wheels started to really come off in 1991, with 96.3 “official” inflation that was really 200 percent. 

  The Soviet Union collapsed shortly thereafter, and the new regime did not issue falsified inflation numbers anymore. Instead, the real inflation rate in 1992 was estimated to be more than 2,300 percent. Hyperinflation continued for three more years until the old Soviet ruble finally ceased to exist.

  A Socialist Guide to Lowering Price Inflation

  The Soviet experience provides an example of how expanding the money supply forces a choice. In response, an inflationist regime can commit to reining in monetary inflation to tackle rising prices. Or, a regime can “solve” an inflation problem by destroying demand via price controls and shortages.  The latter choice requires lowering the standard of living and gradually reducing consumer choices again and again. Yet, even this draconian option fails to prevent hyperinflation in the end.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/05/2022 – 13:30

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• Could Voting Out Anti-Gun Politicians Next Week Secure The Second Amendment?
  Could Voting Out Anti-Gun Politicians Next Week Secure The Second Amendment?

  Submitted by Erich Pratt, the Senior Vice President of Gun Owners for America.,

  This past year, America saw all sorts of headlines with a Second Amendment connection. From the Bruen decision at the Supreme Court and states passing more gun control in its wake, to the mass murders in Uvalde and Buffalo that prompted poorly crafted and openly unconstitutional legislation from Congress, there was a lot to digest.  

  Now as we approach election day next week, the debate over guns will play out in the ballot box, and we are confident which way America will go. 

  Despite the Bruen precedent, which is already having ripple effects on unconstitutional gun laws across the country, anti-gun legislators in both parties and at every level of government are doubling-down or even compromising away your rights because a vocal minority demands they “do something.” This phrase, while emotionally compelling, has unfortunately also led to bad policy, like the Cornyn-Murphy gun control package passed in late June.  

  Think about it. Just 48 hours after the Bruen decision, President Biden signed a major gun control package into law that, among other provisions, now relegates adults aged 18-21 to being second class citizens. Nothing could be more frustrating, especially with the edict that had just come from the Supreme Court – but hey, the Senate negotiators couldn’t let that get in their way. 

  Then we have Governor Hochul in New York, who teamed up with her legislature to quickly pass a highly restrictive concealed carry law – only after their previous (and less restrictive) law was overturned by our nation’s highest court!  

  

  In neighboring New Jersey, legislators are poised to go even further, by requiring individuals to obtain liability insurance to carry firearms! These policies will not stand judicial muster, just look at the comments from Judge Suddaby in our suit against the New York’s new concealed carry restrictions. Or look to Winchester, Virginia, where GOA won in court against a local ordinance that prohibited carry in many public locations, or Philadelphia where we secured a permanent injunction against the anti-gun Mayor’s latest gun grab in less than a week.   

  Frustratingly, at a time when crime is spiking across our country and sits atop voters’ minds, anti-gunners appear more focused on ensuring their constituents have no means to effectively protect themselves. In Congress, Senators from some of the most pro-gun states in the country sold your rights down the river. Voters are demanding one thing and their representatives are doing the opposite.  

  While the courts are a viable option, voting out anti-gun politicians is a much swifter alternative. Thankfully, We the People will soon have our say again, and it appears all but guaranteed that the Second Amendment will be more favored come January in both Washington and across the states. 

  Like we warned the anti-gun crowd after the Bruen decision, come into compliance and ensure our constitutional rights are protected, or we (or the voters) will force you to.  

  *   *   *

  Gun Owners for America, the only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 23:40

• Meanwhile In London…
  Meanwhile In London…

  Here’s something you don’t see every day…

  In a bizarre moment caught on video, two giant Christmas baubles bounced down London’s Tottenham Court Road this week after being swept by high winds, as passing cars attempt to avoid them…

  They are reportedly part of an art installation by artist Tom Shannon which was due to remain on display in St Giles’ Square.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 23:20

• Whitney: The One Chart That Explains Everything
  Whitney: The One Chart That Explains Everything

  Authored by Mike Whitney,

  Look at the chart below. The chart explains everything.

  

  It explains why Washington is so worried about China’s explosive growth. It explains why the US continues to hector China on the issues of Taiwan and the South China Sea. It explains why Washington sends congressional delegations to Taiwan in defiance of Beijing’s explicit requests. It explains why the Pentagon continues to send US warships through the Taiwan Strait and ship massive amounts of lethal weaponry to Taipei. It explains why Washington is creating anti-China coalitions in Asia that are aimed at encircling and provoking Beijing. It explains why the Biden administration is stepping up its trade war on China, imposing onerous economic sanctions on its businesses, and banning critical high-tech semi-conductors that are “are essential not just… for virtually every aspect of modern society, from electronic products and transport to the design and production of all manner of goods.” It explains why China has been singled-out in the US National Security Strategy (NSS) as “the only competitor with both the intent and, increasingly, the capability to reshape the international order.” It explains why Washington now regards China as its biggest and most formidable strategic adversary that must be isolated, demonized and defeated.

  The chart above explains everything, not just the hostile diplomatic jabs that are designed to discredit and humiliate China, but also the openly belligerent policies that are aimed at Russia as well. People need to understand this. They need to see what is really going on so they can put events in their proper geopolitical context.

  And what “context” is that?

  The context of a Third World War; a war that was thoroughly-planned, instigated and (now) prosecuted by Washington and Washington’s proxies. That’s what’s really going on. The increasingly violent conflagrations we see cropping-up in Ukraine and Asia are not the result of “Russian aggression” or “evil Putin”. No. They are the actualization of a sinister geopolitical strategy to quash China’s meteoric rise and preserve America’s dominant role in the world order. Can there be any doubt about that?

  No. None.

  This is why we are experiencing the redivision of the world into warring blocs. This is why we are seeing the roll back of 30 years of Globalization and massive suppyline disruption. And this is why Europe has been thrust headlong into frigid darkness and forced deindustrialisation. All of these suicidal policies were concocted for one purpose and one purpose alone, to maintain America’s exalted spot in the global system. That is why all of humanity is presently embroiled in a Third World War; a war that is designed to prevent China from becoming the world’s biggest economy; a war that is designed to preserve US global primacy. Check out this excerpt from an article at the World Socialist Web Site:

  An October 19 Financial Times article by Edward Luce, entitled “Containing China is Biden’s explicit goal,” sounded the following alarm: “Imagine that a superpower declared war on a great power and nobody noticed. Joe Biden this month launched a full-blown economic war on China—all but committing the US to stopping its rise—and for the most part, Americans did not react.

  “To be sure, there is Russia’s war on Ukraine and inflation at home to preoccupy attention. But history is likely to record Biden’s move as the moment when US-China rivalry came out of the closet.”

  Moreover, last week, a top Biden administration official indicated that the US was preparing new bans on China in key hi-tech areas. Speaking at the Center for a New American Security, Alan Estevez, the under-secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security, was asked if the US would ban China from accessing quantum information science, biotechnology, artificial intelligence software or advanced algorithms. Estevez admitted that this was already being actively discussed. “Will we end up doing something in those areas? If I was a betting person, I would put down money on that,” he said….

  Luce concluded his Financial Times article cited above by declaring: “Will Biden’s gamble work? I’m not relishing the prospect of finding out. For better or worse, the world has just changed with a whimper not a bang. Let us hope it stays that way.”…(“Biden’s technology war against China”, World Socialist Web Site)

  Once again, look at the chart. What does it tell you?

  The first thing it tells you is that the hostilities we see in Ukraine (and eventually Taiwan), can be traced back to a fundamental shift in the global economy. China is growing stronger. It’s on a path to overtake the United States economy within the decade. And with growth, come certain benefits. As the world’s biggest economy, China will naturally become Asia’s regional hegemon. And, as Asia’s regional hegemon it will be able “to settle regional disputes in its own favor and to de-legitimize U.S. regional and global leadership.”

  Can you see the problem here?

  For nearly two decades, the US has oriented its foreign policy around a “rebalancing of forces” strategy called the “pivot to Asia”. In short, the US intends to be the dominant player in the world’s most populous and prosperous region, Asia. Can you see how China’s rise derails Washington’s plan for the future?

  The United States is not going to let this happen without a fight. Washington is not going to let China muscle-it-out of the markets that it plans to dominate. That’s not going to happen. And if you think that’s going to happen, you’d better think again. The United States will go to war to avoid a scenario in which the US plays “second fiddle” to China. In fact, the foreign policy establishment has already decided that the US will engage China militarily for that very objective.

  So, our thesis is simple; we think WW3 has already begun. That’s all we’re saying. The ructions we see in Ukraine are merely the first salvo in a Third World War that has already triggered an unprecedented energy crisis, massive worldwide food insecurity, a catastrophic break-down in global supply lines, widespread and out-of-control inflation, the steady reemergence of extreme nationalism, and the redivision of the world into warring blocs. What more proof do you need?

  And it’s all economic. The origins of this conflict can all be traced back to the seismic changes in the global economy, the rise of China and the unavoidable decline of the United States. It is a case of one empire replacing the other. Naturally, a transition of this magnitude is going to generate tectonic changes in global distribution of power. And along with those changes will come more flashpoints, more devastation, and the looming prospect of nuclear war. And this is precisely how things are playing out.

  So, how does the chart explain what is happening in Ukraine?

  Washington’s proxy war in Ukraine is actually aimed at China not Russia. Russia is not a peer competitor and Russia does not have the economic wherewithal to displace the United States in the global order. NordStream, however, did pose a significant risk to the US by greatly strengthening Moscow’s economic relations with the EU and particularly with Europe’s industrial powerhouse, Germany. The Moscow-Berlin alliance—which was mutually beneficial and key to German prosperity—had to be sabotaged to prevent further economic integration that would have drawn the continents closer together into the world’s biggest free trade zone. Washington had to stop that in order to preserve its economic stranglehold on Europe and defend the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Even so, no one expected the US to blow up the pipeline itself in—what appears to be—the greatest act of industrial terrorism in history. That was truly shocking.

  In essence, Washington sees Russia as an obstacle to its “pivot” plan to encircle, isolate and weaken China. But Russia is not the greatest threat to US global primacy; not even close. That designation belongs to China.

  The Third World War is being waged to contain China not Russia. What the war in Ukraine suggests is that—among foreign policy elites—there is general agreement that, The road to Beijing goes through Moscow. That appears to be the consensus view. In other words, US powerbrokers want to weaken Russia in order to spread US military bases across Asia. Ultimately, the military will be called upon to enforce Washington’s economic rule over its new Asian subjects. If that day ever comes.

  We think it is extremely unlikely that Washington’s ambitious plan will succeed, but we have no doubt that it will be implemented all the same. Tens of millions of people are likely to die in a desperate attempt to turn-back the clock to the fleeting ‘unipolar moment’ and the equally short-lived American Century. It is a tragedy beyond comprehension.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 23:00

• Getting Away With Murder In The US?
  Getting Away With Murder In The US?

  The share of murders going unsolved is on the rise in the United States, according to the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS).

  As Statista’s Anna Fleck details in the chart below, 2020 saw a record low of only 54.4 percent of the country’s homicide cases cleared – or an estimated 9,836 out of 21,570 crimes. Due to data reporting delays, this is the latest available data.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  A case is “cleared” when either it is solved and the suspected killer has been arrested and formally charged or when the case has been deemed an “exception”, which means the assailant cannot be arrested, whether that’s because they are already dead, imprisoned elsewhere, or for another reason.

  The sudden drop in 2020 can partly be attributed to the fact that homicides saw a nearly 30 percent increase that year, according to the FBI’s 2020 Uniform Crime Report, which meant police and sheriff’s departments were overwhelmed with cases.

  The longer downward trend, however, is likely the result of a number of reasons.

  For instance, analysts argue that data collection in the 1960s and 1970s is not fully reliable and so their clearance levels are likely exaggerated.

  Meanwhile, more recently, a decline in police trust and willingness to work with law enforcement are also possible factors.

  Jeff Asher, a crime analyst, explains in an interview with The Atlantic, that the rise in gun violence is a main contributor to the trend. Since guns can be shot from further away, gunshot homicides tend to be more difficult to solve.

  “The nature of murder in America is changing in ways that we don’t really talk about enough”, he explains.

  “You’ve got a bunch of cities where firearms make up 80 to 90 percent of murders today. That is the main driver. Guns make murders much harder to solve, and it leads to lower clearance rates everywhere.”

  Judge the source on that last one…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 22:40

• Macleod: The Great Global Unwind Begins, Part 2
  Macleod: The Great Global Unwind Begins, Part 2

  Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

  With price inflation rising out of control and interest rates rising strongly, the trading environment for commercial banks has fundamentally changed. With bad debts looming and bond prices in entrenched downtrends, procrastination is now the enemy of bankers.

  We are at the beginning of The Great Unwind, and this article elaborates on my first article for Goldmoney on the subject published here. 

  The imperative for bankers to respond to these conditions overrides all other matters if their businesses are to survive these changed conditions. We are entering a cyclical downdraft of the bank credit cycle which promises to be cataclysmic. And the monetary policy planners at the central banks can do nothing to stop it.

  After outlining the scale of the problems faced by each global systemically important bank, this article looks at the future for the $600 trillion derivatives mountain.

  It was born out of the long-term decline in interest rates from the mid-eighties, which ended last year. It is almost entirely distributed through banks and shadow banks.

  The question to address is, what is the future for the derivative mountain, now that the long-term trend for falling interest rates is over? And what are the economic consequences?

  

  If it’s you in the hot seat…

  Imagine, for a moment, that you are the CEO of a commercial bank involved in lending to businesses and with profit centres acting in a range of financial activities. As CEO, you are answerable to the board of directors for the bank’s performance, and ultimately the bank’s shareholders for maintaining and advancing the value of their shares. 

  Furthermore, let us set this imaginary exercise in the present. These are the issues that should keep you awake at night:

  • In common with your competitors, the ratio of your balance sheet assets to total equity is almost the highest in the history of the bank, in many cases for other banks over twenty times leaveraged.

  • Official inflation, measured by the CPI is about ten per cent, and producer prices are rising somewhat faster. Your central bank expects a return to the 2% target in two- or three-years’ time. But your contacts at the central bank have privately admitted to you that they cannot imagine the circumstances where this would be true without a deep recession.

  • Bond yields are rising, and losses are beginning to impact on the bank’s investments. The bank has relatively little direct exposure to corporate bonds and equities, but they are commonly held as collateral against customer loans.

  • How are higher interest rates impacting the quality of the bank’s loan book? The bank supported its business customers through the covid pandemic, which increased the indebtedness of them all. This exposes the bank to excessive default risk if rates rise further.

  • The mortgage loan book has been a profitable business for decades. But the bank is beginning to see a material rise in delinquencies. If loan guarantees are not forthcoming from government agencies, the bank may have to shut this activity down.

  • What impact will higher interest rates have on the bank’s derivative exposure? What are the counterparty risks in derivative chains? Derivatives that involve inadequately capitalised counterparties should perhaps be sold on, or where the bank has the option to do so, closed down.

  The underlying problem is that the conditions that led to the bank becoming increasingly involved in diversified activities, such as investment banking, trading, and investment management have now changed. Since financial deregulation in the 1980s, the bank has expanded into these profitable areas. The whole industry moved from dealing in credit into generating fee income. The growth in fee income can be directly related to the long-term trend of falling interest rates, which apart from interruptions such as the dot-com excesses and the Lehman crisis, stimulated growth in corporate finance, underwriting, investment management, and trading in financial securities. The expansion of these activities in turn led to a massive expansion of derivative markets, with new instruments being devised, such as credit default and interest rate swaps.

  If, and this is really what should worry you, the long-term trend of falling global interest rates has ended and is now set to be reversed, not just temporarily but for the rest of the decade and perhaps beyond, then the reasons justifying the bank’s expansion away from its core lending business have come to an end. As CEO, how do you unwind the deep-rooted departmental interests, and keep the shareholders onside?

  It is time for the whole executive to be urgently involved in a wide-ranging debate about how serious these threats might be and where you should take actions to protect the bank’s shareholders’ interests. Given the high level of balance sheet leverage, the bank’s survival is at stake if you act indecisively or too slowly. You are facing head-on the unpleasant prospect of The Great Unwind.

  Balance sheet ratios

  There are two ratios that concern bankers. The first is the relationship between liquid and illiquid assets with respect to sources of balance sheet funding. These are set by regulators through Basel regulations, now in their third iteration. Banks are required to submit details of their balance sheets periodically to bank regulators in accordance with the net stable funding requirement formula as set out in Basel III.

  The second ratio is of less importance to regulators, which is the relationship between Tier 1 capital and the total balance sheet, which Basel regulations simply states that the maximum leverage ratio is for Tier 1 capital to not be less than 3% of the bank’s balance sheet assets. Put another way, subject to certain conditions, a bank can theoretically leverage its assets to equity as much as thirty-three times. But it should be noted that within that leverage ratio, a bank is permitted to net off certain classifications of credit, reducing its apparent balance sheet size. The following are examples of hidden forms of balance sheet assets and liabilities:

  • Security financing transactions, which include repos and other derivatives, can be netted off where they are between the same counterparty and maturity. For a true accounting picture, a bank balance sheet should reflect credit and debt obligations on both sides of its balance sheet until they are extinguished.

  • Long and short credit derivatives can be netted so long as there is no maturity mismatch. Again, the full obligations should be reflected on both sides of the balance sheet. And valuation methods give banks enormous wriggle room, an issue which regulators are unable to properly address.

  • Off-balance sheet items are only partially recognised through standardised credit conversion factors. Where a bank has off-balance sheet activities, they should be properly reflected in its accounts.

  Therefore, true bank balance sheet leverage can be considerably greater than a bank complying with Basel regulations will declare in its audited accounts. But while conforming with Basel regulations, the board of a bank has a primary duty, often forgotten even by some directors, to their shareholders.

  It is changes in the ratio between a bank’s assets and its shareholders’ equity which drive the cycle of bank credit expansion and contraction, which in turn drives the business cycle. 

  While they have a specific expertise in assessing lending risk, bankers are human. When they perceive lending risk to decline, they increase the quantity of credit offered, recorded as assets on their bank balance sheets, without increasing shareholders’ equity. Their confidence is synchronised through individual banks’ market intelligence and commonly available information concerning lending conditions. What few bankers realise is that it is expansion of their cohort lending which creates the very confidence in the lending conditions being observed. 

  The benefit to the bank is enhanced by expanding the ratio of total balance sheet assets to shareholders’ equity. A gross lending margin of two per cent becomes 20% for the shareholders on a balance sheet ten-times leveraged. However, this depends on margins being maintained, which, when banks compete with each other for lending business, is unlikely. Furthermore, the trend for declining rates over the decades due to the policies of the monetary authorities has led to a general increase in shareholder leverage as banking cohorts try to maintain profitability on slimming margins.

  We all know that this recently reached an extreme position, with unnaturally negative interest rates imposed by central banks principally in Japan, the Eurozone, and Switzerland. In response to heavily compressed rate margins, the large commercial banks in the Eurozone were leveraging up through repos to gear up the slimmest of lending margins. The European repo market has been rolling over in excess of €9 trillion in all currencies with euros the largest component by far. 

  For these reasons, the most highly leveraged G-SIBs (global systemically important banks) are in the Eurozone and Japan. Table 1 below shows their balance sheet leverage from highest to lowest (the third column), and the price to book rating upon which the market values this leverage risk. Share prices were as of last weekend.

  

  With the Eurozone’s and Japan’s G-SIBs heading the list of most highly leveraged banks, the question before us is now that interest rates are rising, how will these banks adjust their balance sheet ratios to more normal levels, which are probably in the region of eight to ten times or even less? True balance sheet gearing in all cases is likely to be far, far higher principally because of the accounting treatment of derivative obligations. These are the banks leading involvement in repos, have significant derivative positions, have netted out foreign exchange, commodity, and credit derivatives, and have only partially reflected off-balance sheet obligations through standardised credit conversion factors. 

  In general terms, in the new interest rate environment banks are almost certain to restrict counterparty risk by reducing their exposure to other banks for two reasons. Firstly, contracting balance sheets throughout the banking industry enhance systemic risk significantly, and a significant number of the banks in Table 1 are highly likely to fail. And secondly, as a cohort bankers are motivated to act the same way for the same reasons at the same time, even for banks without derivative exposure. The contraction and consequences of interbank obligations should not be ignored.

  The problems of rising inflation, interest rates, and bond yields

  After decades of minimal price inflation, central banks were caught unawares when consumer prices started to rise and continued to do so. Initially, they said it was transient. When they were laughed at, they then merely pushed back their forecasts of consumer price inflation returning to the 2% target back a year. The chart below, of the current UK’s Office for Budget Responsibility forecast is typical. It is due to be updated on 17 November, but it is a racing certainty that the OBS will still expect it to return to 2%, a little further delayed. To admit otherwise is to acknowledge a complete failure of monetary policy.

  

  The US Congressional Budget Office is similarly unrealistically optimistic about the outlook for consumer price inflation. The illustration below is lifted from the CBO’s website.

  

  But with consumer prices already rising in the US, UK, and Europe at a 10% clip and likely to go higher in the coming months, the interest rate disconnection is substantial and can only be bridged with interest rates doubling or even tripling from current levels. Even if they only double, business plans for all manufacturers and service providers will go out of the window. And with that catastrophe, bad debts for the banks will simply soar.

  The effect on financial securities will be no less devastating. While banks generally limit their bond exposure to shorter maturities — typically bills and bonds maturing in less than a year — it is likely that banks in the Eurozone and Japan will have some exposure to longer maturities. They might have some exposure to corporate bonds and collateralised debt obligations as well, which will be at risk from rising interest rates. This is not to be ignored, and the evidence of a downturn in credit availability for corporates is already evident in loan officer surveys. Our next chart, of US banking sentiment towards corporate borrowers confirms that credit contraction for non-financial borrowers is already underway.

  

  Clearly, bank credit is set to contract mightily, and together with higher interest rates it is likely to lead to escalating non-performing loans, insolvencies, and rising unemployment. These conditions are likely to develop before interest rates can properly reflect the debasement of the major currencies, reflected in the rise in consumer prices.

  Economists commonly assume that the developing recession will restrict consumer demand, leading to an amelioration of the consumer price inflation problem. Furthermore, some supply chains are beginning to flow again, particularly with respect to computer chips. But before we can consider how a fall in demand affects prices, we should remember that the initial market effect of contracting bank credit is always to drive interest rates higher, due to accelerating credit demand arising from lost sales and accumulating inventories while banks are trying to reduce their credit obligations. 

  Since almost all recorded transactions that make up GDP are settled with bank credit, its contraction will reduce GDP as well. The extent to which this is the case cannot be mechanically predicted. However, since bank balance sheets are very highly leveraged and rising interest rates will force a severe credit contraction, the effect will not be trivial. If a banker is to retain control over non-performing write-offs, he must not delay in reducing his exposure.

  It is for this reason that the cycle of bank credit is like a saw-tooth series of gradual increases followed by sharp declines. And the more exaggerated the increase, the more catastrophic the decline.

  Mortgage loan books

  It turns out that the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2007-2009 was little more than a blip in the growth of bank lending for residential property ownership. But America with Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac is different from other jurisdictions, where banks have become highly active originators in the mortgage business.

  With old memories of ruinous interest rates, borrowers have consistently gone for fixed rate mortgages in preference to floating rates. Some 80% of residential mortgages in the UK are fixed rate for between two and five years before they are reset. Until recently, to opt for fixed rates was the wrong decision. Banks have profited mightily, not by simply lending long and borrowing short, but by covering fixed rate offers with interest rate swaps allowing a healthy turn for the bank, with early termination expenses covered by penalties for the borrower.

  For a bank, the beauty of this business lies in the transaction size and minimal administration. And with house prices continually rising, the collateral has been secure. But this has now changed dramatically, with mortgage rates soaring and house prices turning lower. The previous lucky minority who opted for floating rates find they face an enhanced risk of repossession of their homes. And interest rates have probably only started to increase.

  From a banker’s point of view, this is turning into a very bad business. Payment defaults are certain to increase rapidly; not just for those on floating rates, but with the majority of borrowers on two- and three- fixed rate deals which are maturing at a rapid rate. A two-year fixed rate of less than two per cent faces renewal at over three times that. And no banker wants the bad publicity of foreclosing on homeowners and their families in droves, “who through no fault of their own” face eviction.

  In any event, when homeowners in large numbers face eviction, the lenders have the problem more than the homeowners. It is both politically and practicably impossible for lenders to evict families in large numbers and put their homes up for sale. Apart from anything else, residential property values would collapse under the combined weight of higher borrowing costs (if mortgages are still available) and an increasing supply of liquidated housing stocks. Look no further than what happened to property prices in cities like Atlanta in 2007-2010, as the liar-loans were unwound. All that happens from the bank’s point of view is that even solvent borrowers would be pushed deeply into negative equity.

  The difficulties in managing these politically toxic issues will not be the only problem facing bankers. Existing fixed-rate mortgages have been covered through credit default swaps, which are only as good as a bank’s counterparties. If, say, a British bank has a highly leveraged Eurozone bank as its counterparty, it will soon be thinking about counterparty risk in a more focused way. Where it can, it should seek to novate these obligations with more secure counterparties. But that comes with costs.

  In a rising interest rate environment, this easy-come business will not be easy-go.

  Wider derivative considerations

  According to the Bank for International Settlements, OTC derivative market interests in the global banking system amounted to $600 trillion equivalent of notional amounts outstanding last December.[i] Being based on only seventy dealers in twelve countries reporting to their respective central banks, the statistics are not the whole picture, capturing an estimated 94% on average of their wider triannual survey covering an additional thirty nations.

  To this can be added a further $40 trillion in regulated futures and options markets, in which banks play a major counterparty role. To give an idea of the sheer scale of these activities, global GDP is estimated at roughly $100 trillion.

  The credit nature of OTC derivatives is poorly understood, and therefore widely ignored by commentators. Nevertheless, these are credit obligations which are only extinguished after the terms of the individual derivative contracts have been satisfied. But being purely financial, they differ from a contract which has on one side the delivery of goods or a service, and on the other a settlement invariably in bank credit. A financial transaction, be it a forward settlement, a swap, or an option exercise, involves both debt and credit obligations. And since debt is synonymous with credit because one always balances the other in both parties’ books, until a financial obligation is settled there is twice the notional credit involved. 

  The simplest example to take is deferred settlements, such as foreign exchange forwards. In these cases, there are two parts to the contract: there is the initial agreement, under whose terms there may or may not be a partial margin payment due immediately, and the second part is satisfaction of the entire contract by its completion.

  At a notional $104 trillion — the BIS’s figure for mid-2021— foreign exchange contracts are the second largest segment of the $600 trillion OTC total. Ten per cent of that $104 trillion are options. According to the BIS’s triannual survey, only 84% of foreign exchange contracts are captured in the semi-annual statistics, so a truer figure is $124 trillion.

  By maturity, they split 80% up to a year, 15% one to five years, and the rest over five years. Therefore, these are not a simple case of next day settlement, but credit obligations of material duration.

  The status of options is different from forward settlements, being initial settlements for a transaction that might not eventually take place. The buyer of the option has no further credit obligation other than the initial payment of a premium to the seller of the option. But the latter party does have a continuing credit obligation which is not in his power to extinguish before it finally matures. Because all foreign exchange contracts on the BIS’s statistics represent only one side of foreign exchange contracts, the whole amount of $124 trillion are definitely credit, the majority of which, only excluding options, is duplicated by matching credit obligations for the other counterparties. Therefore, total foreign exchange derivative credit in trillions is double notional amounts outstanding less one side of notional options. This amounts to $236 trillion.

  According to the BIS, the gross market value of this credit is $2.548 trillion. The BIS defines gross market value as “the sum of the absolute values of all outstanding derivatives contracts with either positive or negative replacement values evaluated at market prices prevailing on the settlement date”. In other words, to the extent to which the banking system is counterparty to these OTC derivatives, in total their balance sheets will reflect this figure, and not actual credit obligations, which are almost a hundred times greater.

  It is in this context that counterparty risk must be considered. Counterparty risk is a wager that delivery of a credit obligation might not occur, and the relevant figure with respect to foreign exchange commitments alone for assessing it is $236 trillion. As an indication of the scale of these credit obligations, the BIS reports that the total of global bank credit to the non-financial sector amounted to $226.3 trillion at the date of its latest derivative statistics, similar to the scale of foreign exchange derivative credit on its own.[ii]

  In round figure terms, all other OTC derivatives in the BIS statistics total about five times the recorded foreign exchange total. They include in the BIS’s notional amounts:

  • Interest rate contracts — $475.2 trillion

  • Equity-linked contracts —$7.28 trillion

  • Commodity contract — $2.22 trillion

  • Credit derivatives — $9.06 trillion

  • Credit default swaps — $8.80 trillion

  • Not otherwise classified — $337 billion.

  Interest rate derivatives in rising rates

  Interest rate derivatives make up the vast bulk of all OTC derivatives, with the notional contract amount of interest rate swaps totalling $397.11 trillion, and forward rate agreements adding a further $39.44 trillion. A swap is a financial derivative in which two parties agree to exchange payment streams based on a specified notional amount for a specified period. And a forward rate agreement is a contract in which the rate to be paid or received on a specific obligation is for a set period of time, beginning at some time in the future.

  What concerns us here are the consequences of a rising trend of interest rates for the values of these contracts. FRAs might continue thrive if interest rate relationships along yield curves permit. But an environment of rising counterparty risk might be a hurdle too high for participating banks to overcome. A far more important consideration is the future for interest rate swaps.

  Unlike the foreign exchange contracts described above, interest rate swap notional amounts are not bank credit obligations. The credit commitments of both parties are only for the income streams on a notional amount. An originator, usually a bank, funds a fixed interest stream from a floating rate, rather than the other way round.

  A clue to the relationship between the gross market value of these contracts and interest rates is illustrated below, which is of interest rate swaps only originated in US dollars.

  

  The chart confirms what we would expect: that major falls in the Fed funds rate stimulate the gross market value of interest rate swaps; and increases in the funds rate correspondingly leads to falls in their gross value. From this, we confirm that declining interest rates lead to profits for banks taking floating rates and offering fixed rates. This is the protection that customers from the gamut of pension funds to homeowners seek from higher rates. While over the long-term interest rates were declining, interest rate swaps were a profitable form of insurance product for the banks to offer. And we can now see that with sharply rising interest rates, not only will these profits vanish, but the banks are bound to exit this market entirely.

  This is the heart of The Great Unwind. It will be a surprise to observers to see the BIS’s OTC derivative statistics collapse as interest rates rise further. Existing contracts with time to run can be closed down by buying out counterparties, entering offsetting swaps, selling the swap to another party, or entering an option on offsetting swaps. But these solutions to a bank withdrawing from interest rate swap obligations will be very costly, if available at all, as the entire banking cohort attempts to depart from this market. 

  Undoubtedly, large losses will result, threatening the entire global banking network through enhanced systemic risk.

  Derivatives and the Bretton Woods III meme

  That we are entering an entirely new banking and financial environment was originally put forward by a Credit Suisse analyst, Zoltan Pozsar, earlier this year. Pozsar argued that since the ending of Bretton Woods, a new financial era had dominated financial markets, which he described as Bretton Woods II. He contended that the trend for lower interest rates has now ended, that global supply chains will be repatriated, and that the era of the petrodollar is over. Instead, Bretton Woods III will be the era of commodity-based currencies.

  Driving his argument was the imposition of currency sanctions against Russia. In his 3 March article, he posed the question: is the OTC commodity derivatives market the gorilla in the room?[iii] His concern was over margin calls faced by producers and others in the physical commodity business hedging physical product by carrying short positions in the futures markets. As if on cue, Trafigura, the big commodities trader, had to be refinanced within weeks of Pozsar’s note having received massive margin calls on its OTC positions.[iv]

  Since Pozsar’s note, Saudi Arabia has signalled the death of the petrodollar by aligning itself with the Russia-China axis, and is scheduled to join the BRICS organisation next year. Members of the Eurasian Economic Union are planning a new trade settlement currency, said to be linked at least partly to commodities. And Moscow is setting up a new gold exchange to handle Russian and other nations’ refined gold, which will almost certainly adopt China’s 99.99% gold kilo standard.

  Undoubtedly, the movement towards commodity-linked currencies, the decline of the dollar’s hegemony, and of western financial markets will have a major impact on commercial banking. One wonders how many of the banks weaned on financial activities can make the transition back to traditional lending. And if global supply chains are a thing of the past, will they be prepared to provide the credit for investment in replacement component production in the advanced economies?

  As a subset of commodity derivatives, the London Bullion Markets’ forward contracts were estimated to be $781bn on 31 December 2021, of which gold forwards and swaps represented $528bn. At that date, this was the equivalent of 8,975 tonnes compared with 1,595 tonnes in the main gold contract on Comex — a ratio of 5.6 to one

  

  The other side of the LBMA banks’ derivative positions is unallocated customer accounts, originally devised and expanded as a means of diverting demand for gold that would have otherwise driven up the price of bullion. The trend towards increasing quantities of paper bullion relative to the physical is likely to be reversed, because suppression of the gold price is now leading to accelerating demand for physical bullion. 

  While Keynesian hedge fund managers claim that higher interest rates are bad for the gold price, rising interest rates are bound to render derivative trading unprofitable for banks which find themselves both short of derivatives, and technically short to their unallocated bullion account holders. As quickly as the London bullion market developed in the 1980s, it is likely to diminish as interest rates increase.

  Economic consequences of contracting bank credit

  Today, the priority for commercial banks is to reduce their balance sheets to more normal conservative levels in their shareholders’ interests. Without considering secondary factors, the likely consequences of a severe credit contraction for the nominal GDP statistic could be to reduce it by a third or more in major jurisdictions. Realistically, central banks will have no option but to finance the losses of tax revenue and the increased welfare burdens falling on their government’s shoulders. The expansion of central bank currency and credit will replace the contraction of commercial bank credit.

  Empirical evidence suggests that a population is more alert to the inflationary implications of central bank credit expanding than that of commercial bank credit. Essentially, if the public deems the currency to be stable, it will respond to higher prices when it is the result of bank credit expansion by moderating their spending. But if the public sees the currency as being unstable, they will vary their spending, and therefore their liquidity reserves accordingly.

  Clearly, the political imperative will be to replace lost commercial bank credit with central bank credit. Nor can we rule out “helicopter drops” in an attempt to stimulate recovery. But having tried these measures during the covid pandemic, the public reaction to central bank debasement in a deep recession is almost certain to be less tolerant. 

  Central banks, which are already ceding control of interest rates to market forces will find they continue to rise as currencies’ purchasing powers continue to quicken their collapse.

  Conclusion

  

  As dealers in credit, banks face the most difficult times in living memory. Austrian economists have long understood that the business cycle is driven by a cycle of bank credit. The root of the credit cycle has been ignored by statist economists and policymakers who respond by suppressing the evidence. This has been going on with increasing intensity since the 1980s, when the Fed under Paul Volcker broke with interest rate suppression to slay the 1970s inflation dragon.

  Since then, the era of pre-Bretton Woods price stability has been replaced by the fiat dollar as the reserve currency, with demand for it engineered by Triffin’s dilemma: balancing the export of dollars through budget and trade deficits with global demand for it. The expansion of derivative markets served to conceal the inflationary effects by shifting the supply of dollar credit into financial markets, away from non-financial activities. This lessened the consequences of currency expansion on the prices of goods and services, allowing the monetary authorities to suppress interest rates without apparent ill effects.

  That period has now ended, and The Great Unwind of all the distortions accumulated over the last four decades has begun. No one in government and central banking circles saw it coming, and they are still in denial.

  Commercial bankers are becoming acutely aware of the dangers to their business models. At the moment, they have only a growing fear of the consequences of interest rates seemingly out of control. Having been protected from free markets by central banks and their regulators, this loss of statist control is immensely worrying for them.

  It is now dawning on commercial bankers that they have been left high and dry, with over-leveraged balance sheets, loan business rapidly souring, loan collateral falling in value, and a derivative merry-go-round about to implode. They must stop pandering to regulators and public opinion, and now protect their shareholders from The Great Unwind by dumping credit obligations as rapidly as possible ahead of the wider banking crowd.

  From banking deregulation in the mid-eighties, it took nearly four decades to get to this point. The Great Unwind might take only as many months. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 22:20

• Dear Liberals, How Many Of These MSM Hoaxes Did You Fall For?
  Dear Liberals, How Many Of These MSM Hoaxes Did You Fall For?

  How many recent mainstream media hoaxes did you fall for? … and/or still believe?

  • Russian collusion

  • Trump called neo-nazis “fine people”

  • Jussie Smollett

  • Bubba Wallace garage pull

  • Covington kids

  • Governor Whitmer kidnapping plot

  • Kavanaugh rape

  • Trump pee tape

  • COVID lab leak was a conspiracy theory

  • Border agents whipped migrants

  • Trump saved nuclear secrets at Mar-a-Lago

  • Steele Dossier

  • Russian bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan

  • Trump said drinking bleach would fight COVID

  • Muslim travel ban

  • Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation

  • Andrew Cuomo best COVID leadership

  • Trump built cages for migrant kids

  • “Austere religious scholar”

  • Trump overfed Koi fish in Japan

  • Build Back Better will pay for itself

  • Trump tax cuts benefited only the rich

  • Cloth masks prevent COVID

  • If you get vaccinated you won’t catch COVID

  • SUV killed parade marchers

  • Trump used teargas to clear a crowd for a bible photo

  • “Don’t Say Gay” was in a bill

  • Putin price hike

  • Ivermectin is a horse dewormer and not for humans

  • “Mostly peaceful” protests

  • Trump overpowered secret service for wheel of “The Beast”

  • Officer Sicknick was murdered by protesters

  • January 6th was an insurrection

  • BYU students hurled racist insults at Duke volleyball player

  • And don’t forget “democracy is under threat…”

  

  h/t The Automatic Earth

  h/t Mitch P.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 22:00

• School Choice Is About To Revolutionize K-12 Education
  School Choice Is About To Revolutionize K-12 Education

  Authored by Brian McGlinchey via starkrealities.substack.com 

  Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, America’s parents have shifted nearly 2 million students from public schools to alternatives that include private schools and home schooling. For public schools, that represents a loss of about 4% of their enrollment.

  Expect the exodus to grow larger, as the United States is undergoing a major change in philosophy regarding publicly-funded K-12 education, away from funding government-run school systems and toward funding individual students—with parents getting to choose where their children learn.

  In June, Arizona put itself at the leading edge of that shift: Every Arizona family can now direct about $7,000 a year per student toward the education solution of their choice. Funds can be used for private schools, home schooling, tutoring and online learning.

  

  Arizona also provides free choice among public schools — rather than being forced into a particular school by neighborhood, parents who prefer public schools can pick whichever one they want, first-come first-served.

  Defenders of the status quo typically characterize school-choice laws as “taking money away” from public schools, recoiling at the very idea that government money would be spent anywhere other than a government institution.

  However, that’s already how the great majority of publicly-funded education and other entitlements work, without uproar.

  “We have Pell Grants for low-income students for higher eduction, we have the Head Start program for pre-K where you can pick public, private, religious or non-religious,” said Corey DeAngelis, a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, on Michael Malice’s “Your Welcome” podcast.

  “We have food stamps where the money goes to the person and you can pick Walmart or Trader Joe’s…it doesn’t go to a residentially-assigned, government-run grocery store. That would be absolutely ridiculous.”

  Meanwhile, those who say school choice programs will drain public schools of huge sums of money are implicitly asserting that, were it not for a system that protects public schools from competition — by granting them a monopoly on the use of public K-12 funds — a great many more parents would send their children elsewhere.

  For decades, public school monopolies have been protected by a particular, self-reinforcing power dynamic:

  • Powerful teacher unions overwhelmingly favor Democratic politicians. Exhibit A: Democrats have received 99.94% of congressional contributions from the American Federation of Teachers in 2022.

  • Democratic politicians protect public school monopolies by opposing voucher and other school choice programs, while relentlessly pushing for increased public school funding

  • Increased funding enables the hiring of more public school staff

  • Larger staffs mean more union dues, enriching teacher unions and increasing their political power…and the cycle repeats

  Today, however, there are large cracks in the foundation of this monopoly-protecting fortress, and the government response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been a big factor.

  With public schools closed to in-person instruction, parents were suddenly much more engaged in their children’s education, and many didn’t like what they were seeing as they observed remote teaching.

  As the pandemic ground on, relentless union opposition to school re-openings, and the insistence on masking children despite the many collateral harms of doing so, made it all too clear to enlightened parents that public teacher unions — and public school boards — can’t be trusted to always put children’s interests first.

  

  Though the government’s destructive responses to the pandemic are now largely behind us, the impact on parent attitudes about public schools is still growing, as a steady stream of reports illuminates the massive learning setbacks experienced by K-12 victims of school shutdowns.

  At the same time, new data shows that students in private schools — which were much more eager to provide in-person instruction — fared significantly better.

  The ongoing culture wars are another reason more people are embracing the idea of funding students rather than systems.

  Parents understandably have strongly differing ideas about what’s appropriate for the classroom. Rather than forcing opposing parents into the same school and having them fight at board meetings about which curriculum will be forced onto everyone, each family should be free to seek out a school arrangement that best matches their own philosophy — and use public money to do so.

  

  Many politicians who oppose school choice are themselves private school products or send their own children to private schools. One of the most notorious such hypocrites is Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren.

  Pandering to teacher unions as a presidential candidate, Warren said she not only wanted to stop school choice programs, but also end federal funding for charter schools and make it harder to open new ones.

  Yet Warren sent her son to private schools — including one on Philadelphia’s wealthy Main Line where total fees today are $42,600. Worse, she actually denied it when confronted about her hypocrisy by a group of black Atlanta activists, who know the worst-performing public schools tend to be in poor, minority communities — and that wealthier people like Warren have the disposable income to afford private schools without using government money.

  Nebraska state senator Justin Wayne, a black Democrat who supports school choice, knows all that too. Wayne told his colleagues he’d vote against school choice if they moved their children to a school in his neighborhood “so we can go through the transformation — that you keep telling my community to wait for — together.”

  BREAKING: Nebraska Senator Justin Wayne (D) again calls out his colleagues for sending their kids to private school while opposing school choice for others. pic.twitter.com/WiXAmcBRN8

  — Corey A. DeAngelis (@DeAngelisCorey) January 11, 2022

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

  Arizona’s 2022 expansion is distinguished from other school-choice experiments by its universality — all children are eligible to use a stipulated amount of state school dollars for education at a public school, private school or home school, regardless of where they live or the incomes of their parents.

  Having witnessed what Arizona has done, activist parents in other states are now pressuring their own legislatures. As they do, they’re backed by polls showing 72% of Americans now support school choice programs, including 82% of Republicans and 68% of Democrats.

  Look for the school choice movement to take a major step forward in 2023 — most impactfully in Texas. The Lone Star State’s public school population is a close second in size to California’s, and nearly double the third largest, which is Florida’s.

  In the wake of Arizona’s school choice expansion, Governor Greg Abbott said he too wants to let parents “send their children to any public school, charter school or private school with state funding following the student,” and the next biennial legislature section starts on Jan. 10.

  While private school enrollments will surge, the rise of school choice will also stimulate a novel education approach that existed before the pandemic but was greatly popularized by it — learning pods.

  When parents were let down by public school closures — with working parents suddenly scrambling to manage day-long supervision of their children — many of them formed collaborative learning pods, where small groups of children would gather at a single home to do schoolwork together and have social interaction.

  Before the pandemic, other parents had already used a pod approach to home-schooling. As school choice programs allow the use of state money to cover the cost of home schooling, look for pods to proliferate.

  Those pods won’t all be led by parents. The concept could turn into an ideal career alternative for public school teachers yearning to break free from public school system bureaucracy.

  Consider the math in Arizona for a former public school teacher who sets out on her own and assembles a pod of 15 children to teach. With parents able to tap up to about $7,000 per student per year for education, that teacher could charge $105,000 for her services with no out-of-pocket expense for the parents. In 2021, public school teacher salaries in Arizona ranged between $40,554 and $68,910.

  Particularly for middle and high schools, where deeper subject-matter knowledge is required, groups of specialist teachers could collaborate to form their own “micro-schools.”

  Of course, when comparing income, teachers will have to factor in expenses and the loss of public school system employee benefits — as well as intangible changes in quality-of-life they realize by leaving a public school system behind.

  Parents will have their own pros and cons to consider, which is one reason why school choice shouldn’t be equated with the wholesale destruction of public schools. Indeed, it’s likely to bring about long-needed improvements — especially when programs like Arizona’s let parents who stay in the public system choose which public school their child attends.

  “Twenty-five of 27 studies suggest that…school-choice competition leads to better outcomes in the public schools,” said DeAngelis. “Why? Because school choice is a rising tide that lifts all boats. Competition works.”

  * * *

  Stark Realities undermines official narratives, demolishes conventional wisdom and exposes fundamental myths across the political spectrum. Read more and subscribe at starkrealities.substack.com

  Stark Realities: Invigoratingly unorthodox perspectives for intellectually honest readers 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 21:40

• Take A Rare Glimpse Inside China's Zero-Covid Madhouse
  Take A Rare Glimpse Inside China’s Zero-Covid Madhouse

  The western world has been given a rare, intimate look inside the confines of a Chinese Covid-19 concentration camp, after Financial Times Shanghai correspondent Thomas Hale was ensnared by the President Xi Jinping’s zero-Covid regime.  

  It’s not that Hale had tested positive. Merely being designated as a “close contact” was enough to sentence him to 10 days of confinement on a secret island camp identified only as “P7.”

  Hale provides a primer on framework of China’s system works: 

  “PCR testing in China is an almost daily ritual and testing booths are common on many street corners. They look vaguely like food stalls, except they’re larger and cube-shaped and a worker inside sits behind Plexiglas cut with two arm holes.

  They are merely the surface machinery of a vast monitoring system. China’s digital Covid pass resembles track-and-trace programmes elsewhere, except it’s mandatory and it works. Using Alipay or WeChat, the country’s two major apps, a QR code is linked to each person’s most recent test results. The code must be scanned to get in anywhere, thereby tracking your location. Green means you can enter; red means you have a problem.”

  Hale’s journey into Covid madness started with an innocent outing at a Shanghai bar. Apparently, someone who’d also been at the bar tested positive. Via the tracking system, the authorities knew Hale had been there too.

  Hale had “won” some kind of terrible lottery: On the day he was in the bar, there were only 18 cases in all of Shanghai that day — a city of 26 million people.

  A few days after his bar outing, authorities called to confirm he’d been at the bar. The next day, a caller from the Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention alerted him that authorities were on their way. Hale was about to be “taken away” — an expression Chinese use when describing the phenomenon.

  Next, a hotel staffer called to say he couldn’t leave, and that the hotel was in lockdown due to his mere presence in it. Then came the men in hazmat suits, who escorted him down a deserted hallway to a staff elevator and out through the cordoned-off hotel entrance. He was directed to board a small bus driven by another man in a hazmat suit. 

  Hale joined the other condemned passengers — none of whom had actually tested positive. His hopes that he’d be taken to a quarantine hotel were dashed. A drive of more than an hour ended on a small road in the middle of a field, with several large buses queued up ahead of his.

  The driver got out, locked the bus behind him and wandered off. A fellow passenger was surprised to hear that Hale was from the UK: “They brought you here? With a foreign passport?” Hours of waiting on the increasingly chilly bus went by, until it finally moved again at 2 am. 

  As he was trudging along to his assigned quarters, a fellow detainee pointed to three rows of wire above the perimeter fences, beyond which were only tall trees. 

  

  Hale’s new home was a box similar to a shipping container, elevated by short stilts. His and every door was monitored by a camera. There was no hot water. 

  “Inside my 196-sq-ft cabin there were two single beds, a kettle, an air-conditioning unit, a desk, a chair, a bowl, two small cloths, one bar of soap, an unopened duvet, a small pillow, a toothbrush, one tube of toothpaste and a roll-up mattress roughly the thickness of an oven glove

  The floor was covered in dust and grime. The whole place shook when you walked around, which I soon stopped noticing. The window was barred, though you could still lean out. There was no shower.

  …The bed was made of an iron frame and six planks of wood, and the mattress was so thin you had to lie completely flat. The bed frame, meanwhile, was impossible to lean against.” 

  

  He was pleasantly surprised, however, to find the internet connection was 24 times speedier than what he had at his hotel. Like Hale, the camp staff were prohibited from leaving or receiving deliveries there. A worker said he earned the equivalent of about $32 a day. 

  

  Hale tried to see if his status as a foreign journalist might spring him from detention. The worker he approached with that question was baffled by the mere premise…but we can’t blame Hale for trying. 

  Hale describes key aspects of daily life in Covid detention: 

  • Every morning, he was awakened by a “lawnmower-like noise,” as an industrial-grade machine sprayed the cabin windows and front steps with disinfectant
  • Around 9 am, two workers came to administer PCR tests. A positive result would have meant being taken to a different type of detention  
  • Meals were delivered at 8 am, noon and 5 pm
  • Hale pursued a strict routine of language study, writing, exercise, music, online chess, and then reading or watching Amazon Prime entertainment

  The routine served him well. Over time, he noticed his neighbors stopped eating breakfast, while some could be heard pacing their shaky boxes at night. 

  He did endure some psychological discomfort, in the form of not knowing when he’d get out. He was originally told seven days but it ended up being 10. 

  Upon his release and return to civilization, Hale savored the hot water of the hotel’s shower and the softness of its bed. When he went out for a celebratory meal, however, he faltered — pacing the street as he contemplated the fact that entering China’s contact-tracing matrix brought the peril of a return to confinement. 

  He settled on takeout from a steak restaurant, where an employee said there’d be no need for his code to be swiped — if he ordered takeout. 

  * * *

  Check out Hale’s full tale at the Financial Times (subscription required) 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 21:20

• Opponents Setting Out Unintended Consequences Of Oregon’s Gun Control Measure
  Opponents Setting Out Unintended Consequences Of Oregon’s Gun Control Measure

  Authored by Scottie Barnes via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  If voters approve a pending ballot measure, Oregon would have the strictest gun laws in the nation—which opponents claim would virtually end the legal sale of firearms in the state.

  

  The “Reduction of Gun Violence Act” (Measure 114) would require a permit to obtain any type of firearm.

  Magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds would be outlawed. Commonly used pump shotguns would be banned. And state police would be required to maintain an electronically searchable, publicly available database of all permit applications.

  Backers of the measure, including a coalition of faith-based leaders and Ceasefire Oregon, say the new restrictions would help prevent guns from getting into the wrong hands, as well as reduce gun homicides, suicides, and trafficking.

  The ballot measure is currently polling at 51 percent.

  But opponents say the measure was poorly written and the explanatory language in the voters’ pamphlet was misleading.

  They argue that the measure would create a bureaucratic nightmare that would only impact law-abiding gun owners, be impossible to comply with, violate the Second Amendment, and put an onerous burden on law enforcement.

  And, though the pamphlet says the “financial impact is ‘indeterminate,” opponents claim it would cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

  “The main problem with the ‘Reduction of Gun Violence Act’ is it doesn’t address violent crime,” Aiobheann Cline, National Rifle Association of Oregon state director wrote. “That’s because it ignores criminals who break the law and instead penalizes law-abiding citizens.”

  “The law fails to mandate sentences for gun-related criminals or put an end to the soft-on-crime policies that have made many Oregon cities into nightmares,” she added.

  The Oregon State Sheriff’s Association (OSSA) cites the burden it would place on financially-strapped law enforcement agencies.

  The measure would enact a law that requires a permit issued by a local law enforcement agency in order to purchase any type of firearm. Applicants would have to pay a fee, be fingerprinted, complete safety training, and pass a criminal background check.

  “This measure will require law enforcement agencies to create and operate a massive permit-to-purchase and training program out of local budgets,” explained OSSA president and Deschutes County Sheriff Shane Nelson in a video message shared on social media.

  “It will move very scarce resources away from protecting our communities to doing background checks and issuing permits at a time when crime is skyrocketing and law enforcement numbers are at their lowest in decades.”

  Leonard Williamson, an Oregon trial attorney who specializes in firearms law and who served on the explanatory statement committee shares OSSA’s concerns.

  “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,” he 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.”

  The permit and training programs also create an unfunded mandate with no enforcement measures, opponents claim.

  “The measure calls upon the Oregon State Police to come up with these [permitting and training] programs, but there’s no consequence if they don’t and there’s no timeframe for coming up with them,” explained H.K. Kahng, an engineer and NRA firearms instructor.

  Nelson said that implementing the measure would cost local law enforcement agencies just over $49 million annually, with expected permit fees covering only $19.5 million. That means local law enforcement would need to shift about $30 million of their budgets to fund the programs.

  Amy Patrick, the policy director for the Oregon Hunters Association, told The Epoch Times that it will take at least two years to set up the permitting system.

  “In the meantime, federal, firearm license, gun sales would cease until purchase permits could be issued, potentially putting gun shops out of business,” she claims.

  In Oregon, the sporting arms and ammunition industry is responsible for 3,668 jobs with an average wage of $59,541 and total economic contribution to the state of $1.78 billion annually, Michael Findlay, the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s director of government affairs told The Epoch Times.

  Loss of that revenue could have a devastating impact on fish and wildlife conservation funding through the Pittman-Robertson Act.

  Enacted in 1937, that act collects an 11 percent federal excise tax on all firearms, ammunition, and archery equipment. Those funds are then remitted to states.

  Oregon is among the top 10 recipients of those funds.

  “Pittman-Robertson funding brought $44 million to Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in the last biennium,” Patrick explained. “Those funds are specifically used for fish and wildlife conservation.”

  A record setting high of more than $1 billion was collected in the past year and has yet to be distributed to the states, Findlay added.

  Those economic contributions to the state budget would cease unless a court grants a legal injunction.

  “I don’t think you’ll find any precedent in U.S. history in which a citizen has to go through so many hoops to exercise Constitutional rights,” Williamson said. “This is the first of its kind and, if it passes, it will wind up in court.”

  Taxpayers will pay for the litigation.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 21:00

• Scholz's China-Appeasing Visit With Xi Triggers Backlash In Europe
  Scholz’s China-Appeasing Visit With Xi Triggers Backlash In Europe

  German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday in Beijing, where the German leader was on the ground for just 11 hours, and he focused his talking points on the war in Ukraine and containing Russian aggression. But looming large was the symbolism and controversial messaging back home of such a high-level visit, Scholz’s first as German chancellor. After all, he arrived with a team of top CEOs by his side. As CNN put it, the message is clear: “business with the world’s second-largest economy must continue”…

  Accompanying Scholz on the whirlwind visit was a “delegation of 12 German industry titans, including the CEOs of Volkswagen (VLKAF), Deutsche Bank (DB), Siemens (SIEGY) and chemicals giant BASF (BASFY), according to a person familiar with the matter. They were expected to meet with Chinese companies behind closed doors,” CNN continued in describing the optics. They also were given a rare exemption to China’s typically strict quarantine and Covid measures for anyone entering the country.

  Scholz’s trip, despite being only a day-long, marked the first time a European head of state has visited China since Russia launched its invasion. It was further Scholz’s first major foreign trip as Germany’s chancellor, and comes just after Xi secured a third term as Communist party secretary and president of China. 

  

  “We are seeing discussions in China tending more towards autonomy and less economic ties. And these views are ones that need discussing,” Scholz told a press briefing in Beijing. The trip was seen as an attempt to maintain cozy relations with China after key pillars of a successful German economic machine evaporated this year – namely cheap energy from Russia and a prior relaxed approach to security spending.

  But as Politico points out, “To his critics, he’s making exactly the same mistakes of overreliance on China as Berlin previously made with Russia.”

  Foremost among them is German Foreign Minister and Greens party member Annalena Baerbock, who didn’t hide her disapproval and discomfort with Scholz’s meeting in stating just ahead of the trip, “The federal chancellor has decided the time of his trip. Now it is crucial to make clear in China the messages that we laid down together in the coalition agreement,” as cited in Der Spiegel newspaper. She and others are piling on pressure for a new, more assertive stance toward China.

  “As is well known, we clearly stated in the coalition agreement that China is our partner on global issues, that we cannot decouple in a globalized world, but that China is also a competitor and increasingly a systemic rival,” said Baerbock. She added: “And that we will base our China policy on this strategic understanding and also align our cooperation with other regions in the world.”

  Seeking to defend himself against such growing criticisms, also as the EU is seeking to put pressure on Beijing to turn more definitively against Russia’s war aims in Ukraine, Scholz wrote in an op-ed this week, “When I travel to Beijing as German chancellor, then I do so also as a European” – suggesting the trip in no way compromised the EU’s united front. 

  However, he acknowledged, “It is here that new centers of power are emerging in a multipolar world, and we aim to establish and expand partnerships with all of them.” And he noted, “Thus, in recent months, we have carried out in-depth coordination at the international level — with close partners such as Japan and Korea, India and Indonesia, and countries in Africa and Latin America too. At the end of next week, I will travel to Southeast Asia and the G20 summit, and while I’m visiting China, Germany’s federal president will be in Japan and Korea.”

  The op-ed just written by Olaf Scholz 🔽 is worth a read.

  Biggest bombshell: “New centers of power are emerging in a multipolar world, and we aim to establish and expand partnerships with all of them”

  👉 New – multipolar – world order is now reality.https://t.co/jSqpagD6MC

  — Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) November 4, 2022

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  Following the Friday meeting with President Xi, Scholz said he urged the Chinese side to remove barriers for closer economic ties: 

  Scholz said he had told Xi that China was becoming “more difficult” for German companies, in terms of market access, the protection of intellectual property and the “interruption of economic relationships” as the country moved towards “autarky”. He said he had told his hosts “how important it is in our view to rectify these imbalances”.

  Scholz later told reporters that he and Xi had discussed what could be done to ensure a “level playing field” for German investors in China. In his press statement, premier Li Keqiang acknowledged Germany and China had “differences” and said these had been discussed. “But we still respect each other,” he said.

  And on the foreign policy front, Scholz urged President Xi Jinping the Beijing must use its “influence” on Moscow to halt the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. “I told President (Xi) that it is important for China to use its influence on Russia,” Scholz said in a statement after the meeting. “Russia must immediately stop the attacks under which the civilian population is suffering daily and withdraw from Ukraine.”

  Scholz reminded the Chinese leader that all major global powers, including the West, had vowed to respect the UN charter and “principles such as sovereignty and territorial integrity,” which is being violated by Russia in Ukraine, according to the statement. 

  The two leaders also talked about the deeply alarming possibility of nuclear escalation, as well as the newly restored but tenuous Ukraine grain export deal. Sholz at a news conference lashed out at the Kremlin, saying “Hunger must not be used as a weapon.” 

  when Xi meets Scholz
  he does not even address him as name or title for the ’greeting‘
  he just said “哎你好 Ah hello”

  pic.twitter.com/QEUT0REVhO

  — 巴丢草 Bad ї ucao (@badiucao) November 4, 2022

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  Chinese state media affirmed that Xi Jinping called on all world powers to “reject the threat of nuclear weapons and advocate against a nuclear war to prevent a crisis on the Eurasian continent” – while leaving his words somewhat vague regarding Russia or Putin and the West’s accusations of nuclear saber-rattling. Both agreed that nuclear threats and potential use related to the Ukraine crisis must be out of the question:

  …Scholz told reporters he was “glad” that he and Xi had “reached an understanding . . . that there can be no escalation through the use of tactical nuclear weapons”.

  “Everyone here in China knows that an escalation of the war would have consequences for us all,” he added. In an earlier statement to the press after the talks, Scholz said he and Xi agreed that “nuclear-threatening gestures are irresponsible and extremely dangerous”.

  Just days prior to Russia’s late February invasion of Ukraine, Beijing and Moscow signed a “no-limits partnership” intended to deep political and economic ties.

  ‼️🇨🇳 Compare how Xi Jinping communicates with a leader he respects and how he communicates with Scholz. #Germany #ChinaScholz pic.twitter.com/YT8UQmJqLT

  — Maimunka News (@MaimunkaNews) November 4, 2022

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  Interestingly, even as Scholz told Xi that Germany supports ‘one China’ rule, he took the opportunity to issue warnings “I have … made it clear that any change in Taiwan’s status quo must be peaceful or by mutual agreement,” Scholz said alongside China’s outgoing premier Li Keqiang at a press event. 

  But then, “Scholz warned China against military intervention in Taiwan and called for the protection of human rights in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, stressing that all United Nations members have agreed to protect the rights of ethnic minorities and so calling for those protections now is not an interference in China’s internal affairs,” according to a US media report on the visit.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 20:40

• Twitter Employees File Lawsuit Over Mass Layoffs
  Twitter Employees File Lawsuit Over Mass Layoffs

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

  Twitter has been sued by multiple staff members over an alleged violation of federal law, with workers claiming they were not given enough notice regarding planned layoffs.

  

  Employees who had worked at Twitter’s offices in San Francisco, California, and Cambridge, Massachusetts filed a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco) on Thursday.

  The lawsuit comes amid reports that Twitter will start laying off staff members from its global workforce of 7,500 employees on Friday morning, following Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform. It is unclear how much of Twitter’s workforce Musk plans to lay off.

  In their lawsuit, plaintiffs, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of themselves and others “similarly situated,” allege that the move amounts to a violation and “anticipated further violation” of the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, as well as the California WARN Act.

  The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act is a U.S. labor law requiring that employers with 100 or more employees provide 60 calendar-day advance notice to employees regarding mass layoffs.

  The California WARN act, short for Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, is slightly more strict. It requires employers to provide workers with at least sixty days’ notice before mass layoffs, although under that law, a mass layoff is defined as “the layoff of 50 or more employees in a 30-day period.”

  Employers who fail to do so may be sued for damages and could be liable for employee back pay and benefits.

  

  No ‘Advanced Written Warning’

  “It has been widely reported that Twitter plans to lay off about 3,700 employees, approximately 50 percent of its total workforce,” plaintiffs wrote in Thursday’s lawsuit, referencing multiple reports regarding the planned layoffs.

  “Twitter began the layoffs with a few employees,” the lawsuit states, alleging that one of the plaintiffs was terminated on Nov. 1 without being provided with “advanced written warning, as required by the federal WARN Act and California WARN Act.”

  The lawsuit also states that three other plaintiffs in the lawsuit were allegedly locked out of their Twitter accounts on Nov. 3, which they “understood to signal that they were being laid off.”

  “Plaintiffs are very concerned that Twitter will continue these layoffs without providing the requisite notice,” the lawsuit noted while stating that Musk’s eclectic vehicle company Tesla also “recently engaged in mass layoffs without notice.”

  That company (Tesla) “attempted to obtain releases from laid-off employees without informing them of their rights under the federal or California WARN Acts. A federal court subsequently ordered the company to provide employees notice of the claims that had been filed on their behalf,” the lawsuit states.

  “Plaintiffs file this action seeking to ensure that Twitter complies with the law and provides the requisite notice or severance payment in connection with the anticipated layoffs and that it not solicit releases of claims of any employees without informing them of the pendency of this action and their right to pursue their claims under the federal or California WARN Act,” plaintiffs wrote.

  Plaintiffs are also seeking immediate injunctive relief, and ask that the court issue a declaratory judgment to prevent Twitter from avoiding the requirements of the WARN Act and the California WARN Act.

  

  Layoffs Will ‘Place Twitter on a Healthy Path’

  “We filed this lawsuit tonight in an attempt the make sure that employees are aware that they should not sign away their rights and that they have an avenue for pursuing their rights,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney who filed Thursday’s complaint, told Bloomberg in an interview.

  “We will now see if he is going to continue to thumb his nose at the laws of this country that protect employees,” Liss-Riordan added, referencing Musk. “It appears that he’s repeating the same playbook of what he did at Tesla.”

  An internal company message shared among Twitter employees this week, which was published in full by Business Insider, informed workers that layoffs will be announced on Friday morning.

  “Team, In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” the message reportedly states.

  “We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is, unfortunately, necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.”

  According to the message, Twitter will temporarily close its offices on Friday, and all badge access will be suspended during the process.

  Earlier this week, billionaire Musk denied a report by The New York Times that he planned to lay off some Twitter employees before Nov. 1, when employees were scheduled to receive stock grants as part of their compensation. However, the businessman has remained tight-lipped regarding how much of Twitter’s workforce he allegedly plans to remove.

  The Epoch Times has contacted attorneys for the plaintiffs and Twitter for comment.

  Caden Pearson contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 20:20

• Don Lemon's New Morning Show Debuts, Immediately Bombs In Ratings
  Don Lemon’s New Morning Show Debuts, Immediately Bombs In Ratings

  We’re not quite sure what new CNN boss Chris Licht was thinking when he finally had his shot to revamp the network and try to save some of its dying credibility. 

  On one hand, he made the savvy move of canning torturous anchors and useless shows, like Brian Stelter’s “Reliable Sources”. On the other hand, he also “rearranged deck chairs” in keeping Don Lemon on the network, but moving him to morning programming.

  Recall, when the decision took place, we wrote about how Lemon had an on-air meltdown about being demoted from his primetime spot to compete with other liberal morning show drivel, including “Morning Joe”.

  And Lemon can’t even do that.

  A new report from the NY Post claims that Lemon’s new show, hosted by him and  Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins “bombed” in its debut. “CNN This Morning” posted just 387,000 viewers, the report says. This compares to “Morning Joe”, which posted 793,000 viewers in the same time period. 

  

  Fox & Friends topped the same spot with 1.5 million viewers.

  As the NY Post reported, “No show across CNN, MSNBC and Fox News ranked lower than Lemon’s program on Tuesday.”

  To add insult to injury, CNN This Morning even failed to reach the 404,000 average viewers of “New Day”, the show it replaced. 

  CNN offered up the following excuse to The Post: “There’s not a morning show on television today that was a ratings success on day one. Reporting on ratings failures or successes of an entirely new program after a single day is absurd and cheap.”

   “That’s not the way this works. We’re entirely focused on developing a smart, compelling and relevant show that’s already having outsized impact. Anyone pushing an alternative narrative knows what a threat this talent lineup is,” they concluded.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 20:00

• Beijing Urges Countries Around South China Sea To 'Jointly Resist' The US
  Beijing Urges Countries Around South China Sea To ‘Jointly Resist’ The US

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has called on other claimants to the South China Sea to “jointly resist” US pressure in the region, The South China Morning Post reported on Thursday.

  China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, and Malaysia all have overlapping claims to the South China Sea. The US has inserted itself into the maritime dispute and formally rejected most of Beijing’s claims in 2020, which has been reaffirmed by the Biden administration.

  

  The US rejected China’s claims under the framework of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), an international treaty that defines the rights of nations to territorial waters. While using UNCLOS to reject Beijing’s claims, the US is not a party to the treaty as it has never been ratified by the Senate.

  “Some countries not only refuse to accede to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea but also concoct the Indo-Pacific strategy to compile exclusive small circles, engage in close provocations at sea, show off forces, endanger the peace and tranquility of the sea. This should be jointly resisted,” Wang said, referring to the US.

  The Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific Strategy was released earlier this year, and the document calls for a greater US presence in the region to counter China with a focus on building alliances and boosting partnerships. Wang has previously said that such an effort could lead to a Ukraine-style “tragedy.”

  Another aspect of the US involvement in the South China Sea dispute is US naval operations in the disputed waters. Since the Obama administration, the US has sailed warships close to Chinese-controlled islands in the waters, raising tensions with Beijing.

  The US has also cited a 2016 international tribunal ruling made under UNCLOS that sided with the Philippines in its maritime dispute with China over claims in the South China Sea. Wang hit out at the ruling on Thursday, calling it “the abuse of arbitration.”

  China has been consistent in issuing ‘resist US hegemony’ messaging over the past number of months:

  We believe more countries will stand up like #China, resolutely resist all kinds of illegal unilateral sanctions, long-arm jurisdiction and political set-up, jointly safeguard international fairness and justice. https://t.co/0818Q3wLlu

  — 曹 毅 CAO Yi أبو وسيم (@CaoYi_MFA) September 27, 2021

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

  The US and the Philippines recently held war games where around 3,500 troops stormed a beach in the South China Sea near a disputed reef. Manila and Washington are treaty allies, and the US has warned China repeatedly that their mutual defense treaty applies to attacks on Philippine vessels in the South China Sea.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 19:40

• GMC Hummer EVs "Sold Out For Two Years," Selling At Auction For Double List Price
  GMC Hummer EVs “Sold Out For Two Years,” Selling At Auction For Double List Price

  The revival of the Hummer brand as GMC’s high-end EV has been a smashing hit. Demand is so high that pickup and SUV models are “sold out for two years or more,” according to the auto blog GM Authority. 

  The Detroit-based automaker has received 90,000 reservations for both versions of the Hummer EV. GM Authority said all new orders had been halted since last month. 

  For reference, GM has only produced 2,570 units of the Hummer EV Pickup as of September 2022, a far-cry from the 90,000 units needed just to meet reservations. 

  However, production has been picking up as of late, as GM produced 700 Hummer EV Pickups in September, which represents almost 30 percent of all units built. 

  In order to meet demand, this growth needs to continue, which will be facilitated by the opening of the first Ultium Cells plant in Ohio. 

  Unfortunately, GM has also announced that Hummer EV production will idled for November as the plant undergoes upgrades to produce future products. — GM Authority

  It’s hard to say whether GM can ramp up supply to meet the orders in 2023. Some of these 1,000 horsepower vehicles have been auctioned off at mindboggling prices in the last several months. 

  

  A Hummer EV sold for a whopping $324,500 at Barrett-Jackson’s Las Vegas event in July. Another sold at Barrett-Jackson in Houston for $225,000 on Oct. 22. Others were recently auctioned off at Bring A Trailer website between $164,000 to $275,000. The list price for the full-size truck is $112,000. 

  

  Supplies of the Hummer EV are set to worsen before they improve, which may keep secondary market prices elevated. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 19:20

• Pennsylvania Taxpayers Have Paid $16 Million For Childhood Sex Reassignment Treatments
  Pennsylvania Taxpayers Have Paid $16 Million For Childhood Sex Reassignment Treatments

  Authored by Beth Brelje via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Switching genders is expensive. But low-income children in Pennsylvania are covered under medical assistance through the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

  

  Pennsylvania taxpayers have unknowingly paid more than $16 million under Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration to fund sex reassignment and gender transition services for children.

  Each year since 2015, when Wolf took office, state spending on childhood sex change treatments has increased, data obtained by the Pennsylvania Family Institute shows.

  In 2015, Pennsylvania paid $78,000 for services related to sex reassignment for children under 18. In 2021, the state spent $3.9 million.

  The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (PA DHS) provided data to the Pennsylvania Family Institute through a Right to Know request seeking records reflecting the amount of money Pennsylvania has spent for minors through CHIP to receive “services related to sex reassignment and transition related services and drugs, from 2015 to present.”

  “This level of state-endorsed harm upon children is reprehensible,” Alexis Sneller of the Pennsylvania Family Institute said in a statement. “While we knew the Wolf administration was funding services related to these irreversible procedures on minors, now seeing the exact numbers–millions spent towards these detrimental acts—is still shocking.”

  Taxpayer Funded Treatments

  The data includes basic codes and descriptions for each treatment, but it’s unclear how many treatments were used for each patient, so the total number of minors who received the medications and procedures is unknown.

  Treatments listed in the data include androgenic agents, which are used in the transition from female to male; and estrogenic agents, which are feminizing hormones powerful enough to cause a male to develop breasts.

  Some girls were given Yuvafem, a vaginal insert tablet used to reduce symptoms of menopause, and Estring, another menopause insert in the form of a flexible ring that continuously releases estrogen. The Estring safety indications include a warning that using the product may increase the chance of developing dementia, and that estrogens should be used at the lowest dose possible and only for as long as needed.

  Many treatments are hormones in the form of gels, creams, patches, and pills normally used for women in menopause and post-menopause. Others are testosterone replacements, normally used in men who don’t make enough on their own.

  All are being prescribed for off-label use.

  “Since no drugs are specifically for sex reassignment or transition related services, pharmacy claims were only included where the recipient had a previous gender identity disorder diagnosis or personal history of sex reassignment diagnosis within the specified service dates,” the PA DHS said in a note included in the answer to the Right to Know request. “Data is limited to recipients aged 18 and younger.”

  The data is from Jan. 1, 2015, to Oct. 21, 2022.

  Homeless Kids Get Gender Treatment

  During a Pennsylvania House Health Committee hearing, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s (CHOP) gender clinic co-founder Nadia Dowshen testified that her clinic receives referrals from foster care and homeless shelters.

  “We’re really getting referrals from a variety of resources,” Dowshen testified. “We’re getting a lot more referrals from institutions and other youth serving professionals working with youth in other capacities, sometimes from within the foster care system, or the mental health system, or through homeless shelters for youth who are in need of support.”

  In another presentation, Dowshen praised Dr. Rachel Levine, calling the former Pennsylvania secretary of health “a wonderful advocate … doing amazing work to make sure young people have coverage of these medications.”

  Levine is a transgender individual who served in Pennsylvania until President Joe Biden appointed Levine as assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Levine is a former professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the Penn State College of Medicine and a longtime advocate of “gender affirming care,” which includes puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and surgeries with life-altering consequences for children and adolescents who want to change their bodies and live as the opposite sex.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 19:00

• China Bans Celebs With 'Lapsed Morals' From Endorsing Products
  China Bans Celebs With ‘Lapsed Morals’ From Endorsing Products

  The Chinese government is now barring celebrities with “lapsed morals” from making product endorsements — and blocking all celebrities from endorsing health, education and financial products. Authorities said the new restrictions are “guided by Xi Jinping thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era.”

  The socio-economic move comes on the heels of the Chinese Communist Parties twice-a-decade congress, in which President Xi Jinping was elected to an unprecedented third team as party chairman and unveiled a new leadership team stacked with loyalists as he further consolidates his power.  

  “The latest clampdown was announced as the Chinese president intensifies his drive to reform social values and youth culture in the world’s most populous country, under the banner of common prosperity’,” reports the Financial Times. 

  “Celebrities should consciously practice socialist core values ​​in their advertising endorsement activities, and endorsement activities should conform to social morals and traditional virtues,” the new regulations say. 

  

  Moving forward, companies are barred from using any celebrity to promote healthcare, medical equipment, baby formula, private tutoring, tobacco products and e-cigarettes. The rules encompass social media, commercials, livestreaming, interviews and other such avenues. 

  Celebrities with “lax morals” are off limits for any product advertising. That includes those who’ve engaged in illegal activities such as drunkenness, drug use, fraud and tax evasion.

  “The media is lax, allowing illegal and immoral stars to participate in advertising endorsements,” said Chinese authorities. “The chaos in the field of advertising endorsements has seriously infringed upon the rights and interests of consumers, disrupted the market order and polluted the social atmosphere, and the people have expressed strong reactions.”

  Last week, Xi urged China’s younger generation to “abandon the finicky lifestyle and complacent attitude.” He did so against the symbolic backdrop of the Hongqi or “red flag” canal — a 44-mile irrigation canal initiated in 1960 during China’s “Great Leap Forward.” Spanning mountains and rocky terrain, it was built by hand with simple tools over the ensuing 9 years. 

  

  “We need to educate people, especially the youths, with the Hongqi canal spirit that China’s socialism is won by hard work, struggles and even sacrifice of lives. This was not only true in the past but also true in the new era,” said Xi. 

  At a time when China is struggling with high youth unemployment, Xi’s remarks are seemingly meant to combat a sort of stagnation that’s setting in among Chinese youth. It’s encapsulated by a recently-popularized phrase in China: “tang ping,” which means “lying flat.” Similar to the American notion of “quiet quitting,” tang ping represents a lifestyle that embraces low expectations for professional and financial success.

  Speaking about the new endorsement regulations, Zhang Guohua, president of a Chinese advertising association, said, “This does not mean that celebrity endorsements will be limited, but everyone will be more cautious, and the artists will be more responsible and self-disciplined.” Speaking of celebrities, he added, “You have such an industry status and influence, so you should be cautious in your words and deeds.” 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 18:40

• Arizona County Sued Over Planned Hand Count of Ballots
  Arizona County Sued Over Planned Hand Count of Ballots

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

  Officials in an Arizona county have been sued over their plan to hand count ballots cast in next week’s midterm election.

  

  The Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans said Cochise County officials are poised to violate the law with the hand count and have asked a state judge to block the plan.

  A.R.S. Section 16-602(F), the plaintiffs said, outlines that hand counts may only be conducted with specific parameters, including counting a sample of no more than 5,000 ballots.

  “Arizona law thus clearly and expressly prohibits county officials from conducting a hand count audit of ballots beyond the limited sample size allowed by statute, let alone all early ballots cast in the election,” they said.

  The plan to count more votes violates the law, according to the suit.

  The Cochise County’s Board of Supervisors, Cochise County Recorder David Stevens, and Cochise County Elections Director Lisa Marra were named as defendants.

  The board’s 2–1 vote in October ran along party lines. Republican Supervisors Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby approved the hand count. Democrat Supervisor Ann English voted against it.

  County lawyers told the board that the hand count would be illegal.

  Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat running for governor, initially said the plan was against the law but later said the board committed to only counting some of the ballots and to delivering the results on time.

  Members of the board said in an Oct. 26 meeting that the hand count would follow state law, but that they interpreted state law as allowing a full hand count in contested races.

  Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, said that an expanded hand count of 100 percent of the ballots is legal, provided the hand count was limited to “five contested statewide and federal races appearing on the 2022 General Election ballot.”

  Board members said at a Nov. 1 special meeting that they were aware of the lawsuit but that it hadn’t been served yet.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 18:20

• Something Has Snapped: Unexplained 2.3 Million Jobs Gap Emerges In Broken Payrolls Report
  Something Has Snapped: Unexplained 2.3 Million Jobs Gap Emerges In Broken Payrolls Report

  A simplistic, superficial take of today’s jobs report would conclude that the red hot jump in nonfarm payrolls indicates a “strong hiring market” (just ignore the jump in the unemployment rate). Nothing could be further from the truth.

  Recall that back in August and September, we showed that a stark divergence had opened between the Household and Establishment surveys that comprise the monthly jobs report, and since March the former has been stagnant while the latter has been rising every single month. In addition to that, full-time jobs were plunging while part-time jobs were soaring.

  Fast forward to today when the inconsistencies not only continue to grow, but in some cases have becoming downright grotesque.

  Consider the following: the closely followed Establishment survey came in above expectations at 261K, above the 195K expected, and down modestly from last month’s upward revised 319K…

  

  … numbers which confirm that at a time when virtually every major tech company is announcing mass layoffs…

  Layoffs announced in the last day:

  – Lyft 13% of workers
  – Opendoor 18%
  – Stripe 14%
  – Chime 12%
  – Twitter 50%
  – Morgan Stanley (% unknown)

  — Genevieve Roch-Decter, CFA (@GRDecter) November 3, 2022

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  … the BLS has a single, political agenda – not to spoil the political climate less than a week ahead of the payrolls by painting a “suboptimal” labor market picture.

  Alas, there is only so much the Department of Labor can hide under the rug because when looking at the abovementioned gap between the Household and Establishment surveys which we have been pounding the table on since the summer, it just blew out by a whopping 589K, the most since June’s 608K, as a result of the 261K increase in the number of nonfarm payrolls (tracked by the Household survey) offset by a perplexing plunge in the number of people actually employed which tumbled by 328K (tracked by Establishment survey).

  

  What is even more perplexing, is that despite the continued rise in nonfarm payrolls, the Household survey continues to telegraph growing weakness, and as of Oct 31, the gap that opened in March has since grown to a whopping 2.3 million “workers” which may or may not exist anywhere besides the spreadsheet model of some BLS political activist!

  

  Showing this another way, there were 158.5 million employed workers in March 2022… and 158.6 million in October 2022 an increase of just 150K, during a period in which the number of payrolls (which as a reminder is the number the market follows) reportedly increased by 2.5 million!

  

  As an aside, it appears this is not the first time the “apolitical” Bureau of Labor Statistics has pulled such a bizarre divergence off: it happened right before Obama’s reelection:

  

  And then again: right before Hillary’s “100% guaranteed election (because one wouldn’t want a soft economy to adversely impact her re-election odds).

  

  It gets better: digging in even deeper into the far more accurate and nuanced Household Survey, we find that the October plunge in Employment was the result of a massive collapse in full-time jobs offset by a modest increase in part-time jobs:

  

  In fact, as shown below, since March, the US has lost 490K full-time employees offset by an almost identical gain of 492K part-time employees, while 126K workers were forced to get more than one job over the same period.

  

  Finally, the cherry on top: the number of Unemployed workers – also tracked by the Household Survey – jumped by 306K, rising to 6.059 million, the highest since February!

  

  So what’s going on here? The simple answer: there has been no change in the number of people actually employed, but due to deterioration in the economy, more people are losing their higher-paying, full-time jobs, and switching into much lower- paying, benefits-free part-time jobs, which also forces many to work more than one job, a rotation which picked up in earnest some time in March and which has only been captured by the Household survey. Meanwhile the Establishment survey plows on ahead with its politically-motivated approximations, seasonal adjustments, and other labor market goalseeking meant to make the Biden admin look good at least until after the midterms .

  And since the Establishment survey is far slower to pick up on the nuances in employment composition, while the Household Survey has gone nowhere since March, the BLS data engineers have been busy goalseeking the Establishment Survey (with the occasional nudge from the White House especially with midterms looming) to make it appear as if the economy is growing strongly, when in reality all they are doing is applying the same erroneous seasonal adjustment factor that gave such a wrong perspective of the labor market in the aftermath of the covid pandemic (until it was all adjusted away a year ago). In other words, while the labor market is already cracking, it will take the BLS several months of veering away from reality before the government bureaucrats accept and admit what is truly taking place.

  As we said back in August, “We expect that “realization” to take place just after the midterms, because the last thing the Biden administration can afford is admit the labor market is crashing in addition to the continued surge in inflation.” We still hold on to this prediction: expect big negative payroll prints as soon as December.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 17:44

• Polls Of Midterm Voters Are Prone To 'Bandwagon Effect,' Are Unreliable: Experts
  Polls Of Midterm Voters Are Prone To ‘Bandwagon Effect,’ Are Unreliable: Experts

  Authored by Michael Washburn via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours)

  Polls of prospective voters, which have been widely cited throughout the 2022 midterm races, are based on flawed methodology, and their use as a tool to achieve the outcome desired by the mainstream media has been conspicuous during this election cycle, political strategists and polling experts have told The Epoch Times.

  

  Whatever limited use polls may have, one of their likely consequences, in the current politicized environment, is the “bandwagon effect.” This describes a phenomenon where the media misuse polls to demoralize political opponents and their supporters and to suggest to undecided voters that they are out of step with majoritarian and mainstream sentiment if they do not get on board with the candidate or candidates whom the polls favor, one expert said. Hence polls favoring candidates whom the media want to win become self-fulfilling prophecies.

  Poll results from such sources such as FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics, along with those in mainstream media outlets such as the New York Times, have consistently favored Democrat candidates in the closely watched Senate and gubernatorial races, though the margins have shrunken since the summer.

  For example, FiveThirtyEight’s latest polling averages for the Pennsylvania Senate race show Democrat John Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, ahead of Donald Trump-endorsed Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz by a slight margin, 46.9 percent to 46 percent, even after an Oct. 25 debate in which Fetterman gave a halting and confused performance that came in for harsh criticism from commentators on both sides of the aisle. On Aug. 10, the same source showed Fetterman with a roughly 12-point lead over Oz, 49.2 percent to 37.3 percent.

  In Georgia’s closely-watched Senate race between Democrat incumbent Raphael Warnock and Trump-endorsed Republican challenger Hershel Walker, FiveThirtyEight’s latest data show a race nearly as tight, with Warnock enjoying 46.7 percent support and Walker 45.4 percent. On July 31, Warnock had a reported three-point lead, 47.2 percent to 44.2 percent.

  

  FiveThirtyEight’s projections are largely aligned with those put forward in mainstream and legacy media organs. On Oct. 31, the New York Times published the findings of a poll that the newspaper undertook in partnership with Siena College.

  According to the poll, Fetterman still commands a marked lead over Oz, 49 percent to 44 percent, the Oct. 25 debate notwithstanding, and Warnock is well ahead of Walker, 49 percent to 46 percent. In Arizona’s intensely followed Senate race, the same poll gives Democrat Mark Kelly a considerable lead over Republican challenger Blake Masters, 51 percent to 45 percent.

  The Dobbs Bump

  Pundits and pollsters who favor Democrats in these races are engaging, to one or another degree, in wishful thinking, believes Lonny Leitner, vice president of the government affairs firm LS2 Group, which has offices in Iowa and Minnesota.

  The bounce in opinion polls that Democrat candidates enjoyed well into the summer and early fall was largely a function of some voters’ wariness over the Supreme Court’s June 24 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, Leitner believes. It is a mistake to construe that short-term reaction as a broad endorsement of Democrat candidates and their views on issues as varied as crime, inflation, border security, the Ukraine crisis, and other issues.

  “I think we are seeing that the Democrats peaked too soon as they got a big bounce this summer shortly after the Supreme Court decision re. Roe v. Wade. Polls show that abortion isn’t even the top-three issue for the majority of Americans when asked. Everything is coming back to inflation, the economy, gas prices, and crime,” Leitner said.

  But a larger mistake made by pollsters is a methodological one, Leitner argued. Often, polls sample a relatively tiny portion of the electorate. The New York Times-Siena College poll cited above is an example. Its results for the Georgia and Arizona races were based on answers given by a reported 604 potential voters in each state, out of total voting-age populations of 8,275,264 and 5,662,328, respectively, and in Pennsylvania, only a reported 620 voters gave their input to the pollsters, out of a voting-age population of 10,018.510.

  These statistically minuscule slivers of the states’ voting-age populations thus cannot be expected to provide reliable samples on which to generalize about the likely outcome of critical races, and the numbers of respondents here are actually at the high end, with many polls sampling four to five hundred prospective voters or even fewer.

  

  Preaching to the Choir

  Another problem, Leitner said, is that polls often sample voters registered with one or another party, which limits still further their pools of respondents and renders their results practically meaningless.

  “People who are looking at polls where the sample is [made up of] registered voters are wasting their time, because those polls are designed to make Democrats look good. People need to focus on polls that have a larger sample, like 1,000 voters, and they need to be ‘likely voters’ versus registered voters,” Leitner said.

  Moreover, polls often fail to take into account the momentum generated by successful candidates in races outside the scope of the polls, which can carry over into the races that the polls do address, the analyst posited. This is particularly the case for independents and voters who have not yet made up their minds.

  “When looking at those polls, you will see that Republican candidates from Oregon to Arizona to North Carolina are getting some wind at their backs largely because the GOP base is coming home and undecided voters who aren’t necessarily Republicans know they don’t want Joe Biden and the Democrats,” he said.

  Leitner sees this spillover effect as potentially playing a decisive role in Georgia, where even polls normally unfavorable to GOP candidates give Governor Brian Kemp a five-point-plus lead over opponent Stacey Abrams. Kemp’s success may help Walker win the Senate contest and tip the balance in that body in favor of the GOP, Leitner suggested.

  In Leitner’s view, this dynamic could play out in reverse in Wisconsin, where the success of GOP senatorial candidate Ron Johnson, who currently enjoys a three-point lead over Democrat Mandela Barnes, may end up helping Republican insurgent Tim Michaels defeat incumbent Democrat Governor Tony Evers.

  Chronic Polling Woes

  The flawed methodology and partisan misuse of polls have led many voters and political observers to doubt their legitimacy or discount them entirely, and the problems that led to wildly inaccurate predictions in the past—such as the New York Times issuing a forecast days before the 2016 election that Hillary Clinton had a 91 percent chance to become president, and Donald Trump only a nine-percent chance—persist to this day, some believe.

  “The pollsters claim they fixed their polling for 2022, but I doubt it. There appears to be a bias towards the Democrats by the major media polls, but we won’t really know until the votes are counted. The thing about polling is that it is an estimation, which is always a bit uncertain. But the major media polls’ errors always seem to favor the Democrats,” Keith Naughton, the principal of Silent Majority Strategies, a political consultancy based in Germantown, Maryland, told The Epoch Times.

  “I think the Democrats could be in for a rude awakening by pinning their hopes on unreliable polls that tell them what they want to hear. Bad polling does not help anyone, it just damages the credibility of the media even more,” he added.

  Mixed Blessings

  Even experts who see the utility of polling in the context of political races acknowledge that there are things that the media could do to improve their methodology, and avoid shunting aside or denying the existence of constituencies that do not fit into their vision.

  “I’m a proponent of polling. I think it’s incumbent on those who study democracy to make a solid effort to ascertain what people think,” Daron Shaw, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Epoch Times.

  “There are people who do it earnestly and do it well. There may be some hacks, but more often than not, you’re talking about people who are credentialed and making a good-faith effort to find out what’s going on,” he added.

  Yet even the most sophisticated methodologies come up against the fact that some constituencies are simply more responsive than others, and it just so happens that some of the prospective voters least likely tell pollsters anything tend to lean Republican, Shaw acknowledged.

  “Scientifically, it’s absolutely solid, but there are enormous challenges to polling effectively in modern contexts,” he said.

  As an example of the difficulties pollsters come up against, Shaw pointed to the constituency that Trump set out to galvanize in 2016 and 2020.

  “Trump and others told us they were going to go out and identify those voters, less well-educated whites, who feel that they’ve been left behind. ‘We’re going to find those voters and register them.’ And people who followed voting in the Upper Midwest said, ‘Good luck,‘” Shaw said.

  But the Trump campaign was aggressive in pitching to these voters, and was successful. “The numbers are fairly indisputable,” he noted.

  These efforts led to a high turnout for Trump in 2016 among blue-collar whites, many of whom, Shaw observed, were part of a constituency that had voted Democrat going back to the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 17:40

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• Russia Threatens Norway With "Final Destruction" Of Relations
  Russia Threatens Norway With “Final Destruction” Of Relations

  Russia has issued new warnings and threats against Norway, a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, for its role in expanding NATO operations in the Arctic region.

  “Oslo is now among the most active supporters of NATO’s involvement in the Arctic,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Wednesday. “We consider such developments near Russian borders as Oslo’s deliberate pursuit of a destructive course toward escalation of tensions in the Euro-Arctic region and the final destruction of Russian-Norwegian relations.”

  Zakharova warned additionally that any future “unfriendly actions will be followed by a timely and adequate response.” The warning comes as Norwegian media and politicians are caught up in denouncing alleged Russian spy plots.

  

  On Monday the Norwegian government grabbed international headlines by issuing a rare ‘high state of alert’ order for its military, specifically citing Russia’s expanding military operations in Ukraine.

  As The Guardian wrote, “Norway is putting its military on a raised level of alert, moving more personnel on to operational duties and enhancing the role of a rapid mobilization force in response to the war in Ukraine – although the prime minister said there was no reason to believe Russia intended to invade.”

  “This is the most severe security situation in several decades,” Norway’s prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre told a news briefing. But he added the key caveat, “There are no indications that Russia is expanding its warfare to other countries, but the increased tensions make us more exposed to threats, intelligence operations and influence campaigns.”

  Interestingly, the raised alert level appears related to ongoing concern over Russian spies potentially compromising sensitive facilities in the country: 

  Several Russian citizens have been detained in Norway in recent weeks, chiefly for being in possession of drones or allegedly photographing subjects covered by a photography ban. Most have since been released.

  European nations have heightened security measures around key energy, internet and power infrastructure after underwater explosions ruptured two natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea built to deliver Russian gas to Germany.

  …The Russian embassy in Oslo has alleged that authorities there have used drone and ship sightings, as well as incidents involving Russians with cameras, to fuel a “spy mania”.

  Tensions with Russia across the Scandinavian region are higher than ever also because of Finland and Sweden’s bids to join NATO. So far it remains that Turkey and Hungary are the final two holdout nations, refusing the fast-track membership, especially as Turkey as accused both Nordic countries of harboring Kurdish “terrorists”. 

  A prosecutor with Norway’s domestic security agency on Friday gave a Russian name for the man who entered the country as a Brazilian but is suspected of spying on state secrets for Russia. https://t.co/idO9yiYE7O

  — CBS News (@CBSNews) October 31, 2022

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  As for Norway, the government late last week slapped new sanctions on top Russian officials and companies. This included at least 30 individuals and seven Russian entities. 

  “Once again we are acting in concert with the EU to impose sanctions on Russia to maintain pressure on the Russian Government and its supporters,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Anniken Huitfeldt told a last Friday press conference.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 02:45

• Hudson: Germany's Position In America's New World Order
  Hudson: Germany’s Position In America’s New World Order

  Authored by Michael Hudson,

  Germany has become an economic satellite of America’s New Cold War with Russia, China and the rest of Eurasia.

  

  Germany and other NATO countries have been told to impose trade and investment sanctions upon themselves that will outlast today’s proxy war in Ukraine. U.S. President Biden and his State Department spokesmen have explained that Ukraine is just the opening arena in a much broader dynamic that is splitting the world into two opposing sets of economic alliances. This global fracture promises to be a ten- or twenty-year struggle to determine whether the world economy will be a unipolar U.S.-centered dollarized economy, or a multipolar, multi-currency world centered on the Eurasian heartland with mixed public/private economies.

  President Biden has characterized this split as being between democracies and autocracies. The terminology is typical Orwellian double-speak. By “democracies” he means the U.S. and allied Western financial oligarchies. Their aim is to shift economic planning out of the hands of elected governments to Wall Street and other financial centers under U.S. control. U.S. diplomats use the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to demand privatization of the world’s infrastructure and dependency on U.S. technology, oil and food exports.

  By “autocracy,” Biden means countries resisting this financialization and privatization takeover. In practice, U.S. rhettoric means promoting its own economic growth and living standards, keeping finance and banking as public utilities. What basically is at issue is whether economies will be planned by banking centers to create financial wealth – by privatizing basic infrastructure, public utilities and social services such as health care into monopolies – or by raising living standards and prosperity by keeping banking and money creation, public health, education, transportation and communications in public hands.

  The country suffering the most “collateral damage” in this global fracture is Germany. As Europe’s most advanced industrial economy, German steel, chemicals, machinery, automotives and other consumer goods are the most highly dependent on imports of Russian gas, oil and metals from aluminum to titanium and palladium. Yet despite two Nord Stream pipelines built to provide Germany with low-priced energy, Germany has been told to cut itself off from Russian gas and de-industrialize. This means the end of its economic preeminence. The key to GDP growth in Germany, as in other countries, is energy consumption per worker.

  These anti-Russian sanctions make today’s New Cold War inherently anti-German. U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has said that Germany should replace low-priced Russian pipeline gas with high-priced U.S. LNG gas. To import this gas, Germany will have to spend over $5 billion quickly to build port capacity to handle LNG tankers. The effect will be to make German industry uncompetitive. Bankruptcies will spread, employment will decline, and Germany’s pro-NATO leaders will impose a chronic depression and falling living standards.

  Most political theory assumes that nations will act in their own self-interest. Otherwise they are satellite countries, not in control of their own fate. Germany is subordinating its industry and living standards to the dictates of U.S. diplomacy and the self-interest of America’s oil and gas sector. It is doing this voluntarily – not because of military force but out of an ideological belief that the world economy should be run by U.S. Cold War planners.

  Sometimes it is easier to understand today’s dynamics by stepping away from one’s own immediate situation to look at historical examples of the kind of political diplomacy that one sees splitting today’s world. The closest parallel that I can find is medieval Europe’s fight by the Roman papacy against German kings – the Holy Roman Emperors – in the 13th century. That conflict split Europe along lines much like those of today. A series of popes excommunicated Frederick II and other German kings and mobilized allies to fight against Germany and its control of southern Italy and Sicily.

  Western antagonism against the East was incited by the Crusades (1095-1291), just as today’s Cold War is a crusade against economies threatening U.S. dominance of the world. The medieval war against Germany was over who should control Christian Europe: the papacy, with the popes becoming worldly emperors, or secular rulers of individual kingdoms by claiming the power to morally legitimize and accept them.

  Medieval Europe’s analogue to America’s New Cold War against China and Russia was the Great Schism in 1054. Demanding unipolar control over Christendom, Leo IX excommunicated the Orthodox Church centered in Constantinople and the entire Christian population that belonged to it. A single bishopric, Rome, cut itself off from the entire Christian world of the time, including the ancient Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Jerusalem.

  This break-away created a political problem for Roman diplomacy: How to hold all the Western European kingdoms under its control and claim the right for financial subsidy from them. That aim required subordinating secular kings to papal religious authority. In 1074, Gregory VII, Hildebrand, announced 27 Papal Dictates outlining the administrative strategy for Rome to lock in its power over Europe.

  These papal demands are strikingly parallel to today’s U.S. diplomacy. In both cases military and worldly interests require a sublimation in the form of an ideological crusading spirit to cement the sense of solidarity that any system of imperial domination requires. The logic is timeless and universal.

  The Papal Dictates were radical in two major ways. First of all, they elevated the bishop of Rome above all other bishoprics, creating the modern papacy. Clause 3 ruled that the pope alone had the power of investiture to appoint bishops or to depose or reinstate them. Reinforcing this, Clause 25 gave the right of appointing (or deposing) bishops to the pope, not to local rulers. And Clause 12 gave the pope the right to depose emperors, following Clause 9, obliging “all princes to kiss the feet of the Pope alone” in order to be deemed legitimate rulers.

  Likewise today, U.S. diplomats claim the right to name who should be recognized as a nation’s head of state. In 1953 they overthrew Iran’s elected leader and replaced him with the Shah’s military dictatorship. That principle gives U.S. diplomats the right to sponsor “color revolutions” for regime-change, such as their sponsorship of Latin American military dictatorships creating client oligarchies to serve U.S. corporate and financial interests. The 2014 coup in Ukraine is just the latest exercise of this U.S. right to appoint and depose leaders.

  More recently, U.S. diplomats have appointed Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s head of state instead of its elected president, and turned over that country’s gold reserves to him. President Biden has insisted that Russia must remove Putin and put a more pro-U.S. leader in his place. This “right” to select heads of state has been a constant in U.S. policy spanning its long history of political meddling in European political affairs since World War II.

  The second radical feature of the Papal Dictates was their exclusion of all ideology and policy that diverged from papal authority. Clause 2 stated that only the Pope could be called “Universal.” Any disagreement was, by definition, heretical. Clause 17 stated that no chapter or book could be considered canonical without papal authority.

  A similar demand as is being made by today’s U.S.-sponsored ideology of financialized and privatized “free markets,” meaning deregulation of government power to shape economies in interests other than those of U.S.-centered financial and corporate elites.

  The demand for universality in today’s New Cold War is cloaked in the language of “democracy.” But the definition of democracy in today’s New Cold War is simply “pro-U.S.,” and specifically neoliberal privatization as the U.S.-sponsored new economic religion. This ethic is deemed to be “science,” as in the quasi-Nobel Memorial Prize in the Economic Sciences. That is the modern euphemism for neoliberal Chicago-School junk economics, IMF austerity programs and tax favoritism for the wealthy.

  The Papal Dictates spelt out a strategy for locking in unipolar control over secular realms. They asserted papal precedence over worldly kings, above all over Germany’s Holy Roman Emperors. Clause 26 gave popes authority to excommunicate whomever was “not at peace with the Roman Church.” That principle implied the concluding Claus 27, enabling the pope to “absolve subjects from their fealty to wicked men.” This encouraged the medieval version of “color revolutions” to bring about regime change.

  What united countries in this solidarity was an antagonism to societies not subject to centralized papal control – the Moslem Infidels who held Jerusalem, and also the French Cathars and anyone else deemed to be a heretic. Above all there was hostility toward regions strong enough to resist papal demands for financial tribute.

  Today’s counterpart to such ideological power to excommunicate heretics resisting demands for obedience and tribute would be the World Trade Organization, World Bank and IMF dictating economic practices and setting “conditionalities” for all member governments to follow, on pain of U.S. sanctions – the modern version of excommunication of countries not accepting U.S. suzerainty. Clause 19 of the Dictates ruled that the pope could be judged by no one – just as today, the United States refuses to subject its actions to rulings by the World Court. Likewise today, U.S. dictates via NATO and other arms (such as the IMF and World Bank) are expected to be followed by U.S. satellites without question. As Margaret Thatcher said of her neoliberal privatization that destroyed Britain’s public sector, There Is No Alternative (TINA).

  My point is to emphasize the analogy with today’s U.S. sanctions against all countries not following its own diplomatic demands. Trade sanctions are a form of excommunication. They reverse the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia’s principle that made each country and its rulers independent from foreign meddling. President Biden characterizes U.S. interference as ensuring his new antithesis between “democracy” and “autocracy.” By democracy he means a client oligarchy under U.S. control, creating financial wealth by reducing living standards for labor, as opposed to mixed public/private economies aiming at promoting living standards and social solidarity.

  As I have mentioned, by excommunicating the Orthodox Church centered in Constantinople and its Christian population, the Great Schism created the fateful religious dividing line that has split “the West” from the East for the past millennium. That split was so important that Vladimir Putin cited it as part of his September 30, 2022 speech describing today’s break away from the U.S. and NATO centered Western economies.

  The 12th and 13th centuries saw Norman conquerors of England, France and other countries, along with German kings, protest repeatedly, be excommunicated repeatedly, yet ultimately succumb to papal demands. It took until the 16th century for Martin Luther, Zwingli and Henry VIII finally to create a Protestant alternative to Rome, making Western Christianity multi-polar.

  Why did it take so long? The answer is that the Crusades provided an organizing ideological gravity. That was the medieval analogy to today’s New Cold War between East and West. The Crusades created a spiritual focus of “moral reform” by mobilizing hatred against “the other” – the Moslem East, and increasingly Jews and European Christian dissenters from Roman control. That was the medieval analogy to today’s neoliberal “free market” doctrines of America’s financial oligarchy and its hostility to China, Russia and other nations not following that ideology. In today’s New Cold War, the West’s neoliberal ideology is mobilizing fear and hatred of “the other,” demonizing nations that follow an independent path as “autocratic regimes.” Outright racism is fostered toward entire peoples, as evident in the Russophobia and Cancel Culture currently sweeping the West.

  Just as Western Christianity’s multi-polar transition required the 16th century’s Protestant alternative, the Eurasian heartland’s break from the bank-centered NATO West must be consolidated by an alternative ideology regarding how to organize mixed public/private economies and their financial infrastructure.

  Medieval churches in the West were drained of their alms and endowments to contribute Peter’s Pence and other subsidy to the papacy for the wars it was fighting against rulers who resisted papal demands. England played the role of major victim that Germany plays today. Enormous English taxes were levied ostensibly to finance the Crusades were diverted to fight Frederick II, Conrad and Manfred in Sicily. That diversion was financed by papal bankers from northern Italy (Lombards and Cahorsins), and became royal debts passed down throughout the economy. England’s barons waged a civil war against Henry II in the 1260s, ending his complicity in sacrificing the economy to papal demands.

  What ended the papacy’s power over other countries was the ending of its war against the East. When the Crusaders lost Acre, the capital of Jerusalem in 1291, the papacy lost its control over Christendom. There was no more “evil” to fight, and the “good” had lost its center of gravity and coherence. In 1307, France’s Philip IV (“the Fair”) seized the Church’s great military banking order’s wealth, that of the Templars in the Paris Temple. Other rulers also nationalized the Templars, and monetary systems were taken out of the hands of the Church. Without a common enemy defined and mobilized by Rome, the papacy lost its unipolar ideological power over Western Europe.

  The modern equivalent to the rejection of the Templars and papal finance would be for countries to withdraw from America’s New Cold War. They would reject the dollar standard and the U.S. banking and financial system. that is happening as more and more countries see Russia and China not as adversaries but as presenting great opportunities for mutual economic advantage.

  The broken promise of mutual gain between Germany and Russia

  The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 promised an end to the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact was disbanded, Germany was reunified, and American diplomats promised an end to NATO, because a Soviet military threat no longer existed. Russian leaders indulged in the hope that, as President Putin expressed it, a new pan-European economy would be created from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Germany in particular was expected to take the lead in investing in Russia and restructuring its industry along more efficient lines. Russia would pay for this technology transfer by supplying gas and oil, along with nickel, aluminum, titanium and palladium.

  There was no anticipation that NATO would be expanded to threaten a New Cold War, much less that it would back Ukraine, recognized as the most corrupt kleptocracy in Europe, into being led by extremist parties identifying themselves by German Nazi insignia.

  How do we explain why the seemingly logical potential of mutual gain between Western Europe and the former Soviet economies turned into a sponsorship of oligarchic kleptocracies. The Nord Stream pipeline’s destruction capsulizes the dynamics in a nutshell. For almost a decade a constant U.S. demand has been for Germany to reject its reliance on Russian energy. These demands were opposed by Gerhardt Schroeder, Angela Merkel and German business leaders. They pointed to the obvious economic logic of mutual trade of German manufactures for Russian raw materials.

  The U.S. problem was how to stop Germany from approving the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Victoria Nuland, President Biden and other U.S. diplomats demonstrated that the way to do that was to incite a hatred of Russia. The New Cold War was framed as a new Crusade. That was how George W. Bush had described America’s attack on Iraq to seize its oil wells. The U.S.-sponsored 2014 coup created a puppet Ukrainian regime that has spent eight years bombing of the Russian-speaking Eastern provinces. NATO thus incited a Russian military response. The incitement was successful, and the desired Russian response was duly labeled an unprovoked atrocity. Its protection of civilians was depicted in the NATO-sponsored media as being so offensive as to deserve the trade and investment sanctions that have been imposed since February. That is what a Crusade means.

  The result is that the world is splitting in two camps: the U.S.-centered NATO, and the emerging Eurasian coalition. One byproduct of this dynamic has been to leave Germany unable to pursue the economic policy of mutually advantageous trade and investment relations with Russia (and perhaps also China). German Chancellor Olaf Sholz is going to China this week to demand that it dismantle is public sector and stops subsidizing its economy, or else Germany and Europe will impose sanctions on trade with China. There is no way that China could meet this ridiculous demand, any more than the United States or any other industrial economy would stop subsidizing their own computer-chip and other key sectors. The German Council on Foreign Relations is a neoliberal “libertarian” arm of NATO demanding German de-industrialization and dependency on the United States for its trade, excluding China, Russia and their allies. This promises to be the final nail in Germany’s economic coffin.

  Another byproduct of America’s New Cold War has been to end any international plan to stem global warming. A keystone of U.S. economic diplomacy is for its oil companies and those of its NATO allies to control the world’s oil and gas supply – that is, to reduce dependence on carbon-based fuels. That is what the NATO war in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine was about. It is not as abstract as “Democracies vs. Autocracies.” It is about the U.S. ability to harm other countries by disrupting their access to energy and other basic needs.

  Without the New Cold War’s “good vs. evil” narrative, U.S. sanctions will lose their raison d’etre in this U.S. attack on environmental protection, and on mutual trade between Western Europe and Russia and China. That is the context for today’s fight in Ukraine, which is to be merely the first step in the anticipated 20 year fight by the US to prevent the world from becoming multipolar. This process, will lock Germany and Europe into dependence on the U.S. supplies of LNG.

  The trick is to try and convince Germany that it is dependent on the United States for its military security. What Germany really needs protection from is the U.S. war against China and Russia that is marginalizing and “Ukrainianizing” Europe.

  There have been no calls by Western governments for a negotiated end to this war, because no war has been declared in Ukraine. The United States does not declare war anywhere, because that would require a Congressional declaration under the U.S. Constitution. So U.S. and NATO armies bomb, organize color revolutions, meddle in domestic politics (rendering the 1648 Westphalia agreements obsolete), and impose the sanctions that are tearing Germany and its European neighbors apart.

  How can negotiations “end” a war that either has no declaration of war, and is a long-term strategy of total unipolar world domination?

  The answer is that no ending can come until an alternative to the present U.S.-centered set of international institutions is replaced. That requires the creation of new institutions reflecting an alternative to the neoliberal bank-centered view that economies should be privatized with central planning by financial centers. Rosa Luxemburg characterized the choice as being between socialism and barbarism. I have sketched out the political dynamics of an alternative in my recent book, The Destiny of Civilization.

  *  *  *

  This paper was presented on November 1, 2022. on the German e-site BraveNewEurope.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/04/2022 – 02:00

• Twitter's "Red Wedding" Moment Arrives As Musk Layoffs Begin
  Twitter’s “Red Wedding” Moment Arrives As Musk Layoffs Begin

  Twitter – long considered a safe space for election-influencing jackboots drunk on their own arrogance – is having its ‘Red Wedding’ moment, as one Employee characterized the widely anticipated mass layoffs following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media giant.

  

  Indeed, with the abruptness of a guillotine, the company’s 7,500 employees were suddenly notified in a Thursday email that the layoffs had begun.

  According to the NY Times, workers were instructed to go home and not come back on Friday as the cuts proceeded.

  “In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global work force,” read the email. “We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.”

  According to previous internal messages and an investor, around half of Twitter’s employees were just laid off – however the final number is unknown. On Wednesday employees circulated a message on Slack that suggested 3,738 people could be fired, but that changes could still be made to the list.

  On Thursday evening, employees posted heart emojis and salutes in their Slack channel.

  The mass layoffs come a little more than a week after Musk completed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter – after which he immediately fired its chief executive and other top managers, while other execs have since resigned or were fired.

  Managers were asked to make lists of employees based on performance.

  Meanwhile, Musk brought over 50 engineers and employees from his other businesses – including Tesla – to assist with the firings.

  The Times then cites some ‘industry’ insider who said there was “nothing visionary or innovative about summarily firing workers by email,” because Musk is firing people with “specialized expertise and de institutional knowledge” before he “even seems to have a basic grasp of the business.”

  Or, he’s completely wrong and Musk’s team of 50 were able to figure out how to fire 3,500 people based on contributions.

  

  For employees, it’s a question of whether they ‘can’ or ‘can’t even.’

  On Wednesday evening, some employees circulated a “Layoff Guide” with tips on corporate surveillance and employment rights. One worker created software to help colleagues download important emails and documents. He was later fired, he said.

  On Thursday, workers got other signals that their workplace was changing. Twitter’s “Days of Rest,” which are monthly days off so employees can rest and recharge, were removed from their calendars, two people with knowledge of the matter said. Some workers also noticed that the employee directory had been taken offline, according to internal chats seen by The Times.

  “Has the red wedding started?” one employee wrote on Slack, a reference to a massacre scene in “Game of Thrones.” Nine minutes later, the company sent the email informing workers of the layoffs. Employees who will keep their jobs would receive a message saying so on their corporate accounts, the message said, while employees being laid off would be notified on their personal accounts.

  As the Times further points out, keeping employees out of the office on Friday means that laid off workers can’t take any items from the company (or sabotage it).

  “To help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data, our offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended,” the email continues.

  Congratulations Twitter, you played yourself.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 23:51

• Orlov: The New Cuban Missile Crisis That Isn't
  Orlov: The New Cuban Missile Crisis That Isn’t

  Authored by Dmitri Orlov,

  The Cuban Missile Crisis is a malicious misnomer. Cuba never had any nuclear missiles; it temporarily played host to some Soviet ones. The crisis started when Americans put their intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Turkey that posed a new threat the Soviet Union, which responded by placing similar missiles in Cuba, evening the score. The Americans flew into a rage but eventually calmed down and withdrew their missiles from Turkey. The Soviets withdrew their missiles from Cuba and the crisis was over. And so it should be called the American Missile Crisis.

  What’s happening now couldn’t be more different. Unless you spent the last few weeks hiding under a rock, you have probably heard that some sort of new nuclear crisis is underway because of “Putin’s nuclear blackmail” or some such. Some people have suffered nervous exhaustion as a result, neglecting their duties and generally letting themselves go. Take former British PM Liz Truss, for instance. The poor silly thing latched on to Putin’s words that “the wind rose can point in any direction” (a factual point about the utter uselessness of tactical nuclear weapons). She then allowed the British economy to go into free-fall while she obsessively tracked the wind direction over the Ukraine. It all ended badly for poor Liz. Don’t be like Liz.

  I am here to tell you that there is nothing going on beyond the usual – the usual Western propaganda fakery, that is.

  

  In particular, this has nothing to do with anything Putin or with anything nuclear. Instead, this is all part of a desperate attempt to compensate for narrative failure, and a failed attempt at that. The problem for the collective West is simply this: 80% of the world’s population has refused to join it in condemning, sanctioning or otherwise punishing Russia, with some very large countries (China, India) either supportive or neutral on the subject.

  Most of the world, including Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, is carefully watching Russia systematically destroy what was by far the largest and most capable NATO-equipped, NATO-commanded army in the world (the Ukrainian army, that is), understanding full well that what is unfolding is Washington’s Waterloo. Some countries (Saudi Arabia, for instance) are so sure of the result that they are already refusing to obey Washington’s dictates. This is a problem, because all the Washingtonians know how to do is impose their will on the world. Treating others as equals or looking for opportunities to negotiate a win-win is simply not part of their core competence—or any of their competence, for that matter. Once defanged, all they know how to do is bark and drool.

  To fix this problem, the narrative-mongers in Washington and Brussels have decided to play the nuclear card and accuse Russia of nuclear blackmail. Meanwhile, all that Russia has done is decimate the Ukrainian army several times over, then accept four former Ukrainian regions into the Russian Federation based on highly conclusive local referenda closely watched by a goodly number of international observers, and then announce that it will defend these regions against foreign attack by all means necessary. These, obviously, include nuclear means, since Russia does have them, and would use them in accordance with its nuclear doctrine, which precludes their first use.

  Meanwhile, the US has no such stipulation in its nuclear doctrine, has actually used nuclear weapons against civilians (in Japan), and has for decades dreamed of developing a nuclear first strike capability that could not be countered. If any country should be judged to be a nuclear threat, it is the US, not Russia… except, as I will explain, the US is no longer much of a nuclear threat either. Putin barely hinted at this, but a mere hint was enough to utterly infuriate the US national defense establishment, whose worst enemy is reality itself. Putin pointed out that at this point Russia has some weapons in its nuclear deterrent arsenal that are superior to that of the West.

  These new weapons, of which more later, guarantee that any nuclear attack on Russia would be a suicidal move. That is, the West has no way of reliably destroying Russia (it is too big and its economic core is too independent and too well defended with air and space defense systems) while Russia can reliably destroy the West (which is not nearly as well defended) but will not do so unless the West attacks first. Unlike back in the old Soviet days, Russia has no missionary zeal; it is happy to sit back and watch the West starve itself (due to a lack of Russian chemical fertilizer) in the dark (due to a lack of Russian oil and gas). All it wants to do is gather the pieces of the shattered Russian world and all the people and lands that the collapse of the USSR abandoned behind some Bolshevik-decreed border. In this situation, the risk of a nuclear war is pretty much zero. Please sit back, take a series of deep breaths and let the good news soak in. Feel the joy.

  But the joy probably won’t last if you listen to craven idiots whose job is to lie to you about “Putin’s nuclear threat.” When, for instance, Jack Philips writes that Moscow has threatened to use… tactical nuclear weapons… in Ukraine to salvage its war there,” he is basically just lying to us, and not once but thrice in the same sentence: Russia did not threaten to use tactical nuclear weapons but instead pointed out their uselessness; and Russia’s special operation is a success. The fact that there is no threat is the main message of this article, but let us briefly digress and describe of Ukrainian victory and Russian defeat look like.

  The Ukraine is victorious in that according to the IMF its GDP is down 35% in 2022; according to its national bank inflation has topped 30% and isn’t slowing down; according to the World Bank next year 55% of Ukrainians will be below the poverty line, subsisting on less than $2.15 per day; according to the Ukraine’s economics minister, unemployment has reached 30%; according to its prime minister, it will be unable to pay pensions and salaries without immediate foreign aid; according to the UN, 20% of the population has left the country and another 33% are internally displaced; according to its energy ministry, it has already lost 40% of its electricity generating capacity. The Ukrainian army is drafting any male up to the age of 60, having run out of reservists, and the casualties it is suffering at the front are nothing short of horrific.

  Meanwhile, Russia is vanquished because according to Reuters the Russian ruble is the strongest currency in the world; according to the Guardian Putin is more powerful and popular than ever; according to its agriculture ministry this year’s grain harvest is over 150 million tonnes, 50 million of which are for export, making Russia the world’s largest grain exporter; according to The Economist, Russia is emerging from recession just as the West is entering recession; and according to Goldman Sachs the index of economic activity in Russia is now higher than in the West. Russia just got done calling up 300 thousand, or 1%, of its trained and experienced reservists, who are now being drilled in the latest NATO-fighting techniques before being sent to the Ukrainian front.

  But let’s not let facts stand in the way of the dominant narrative: the Ukraine has to be winning and Russia has to be losing because otherwise what could possibly cause Russia to become so utterly desperate as to threaten the world with its nuclear weapons? That part is simple; what is less obvious is why Western propagandists are sufficiently desperate to concoct and promulgate the false narrative of “Putin’s nuclear blackmail”?

  The reason for all of this hectic propagandizing is that the collective West cannot hope to survive politically or economically unless Russia is brought to its knees and agrees to exchange its energy and mineral resources freshly minted digits that reside inside computers at Western central banks which can be confiscated at any time and for any reason. The situation is dire: the US is running through its Strategic Petroleum Reserve at breakneck pace, yet facing a shortage of diesel fuel and stubbornly high gasoline prices. It has a massive debt to roll over and expand but can only do so through direct money-printing, driving inflation, already at over 10%, ever higher. Europe is bracing for a harsh winter of ridiculously high energy bills, industry shutdowns and massive unemployment, while the US is not far behind. The fracking bonanza in the US was never quite profitable and now has perhaps a year or two before it is tapped out. Then the dream of US liquefied natural gas replacing Russian pipeline gas in Europe, never a realistic plan, will be dead for good while industry shutdowns spread to the US.

  To avoid this scenario, desperate measures have been applied, and all of them have failed. First there was the plan of sanctions from hell, forcing numerous Western companies to stop shipping product to Russia and doing business there. This has done great harm to Western companies while providing Russia with an opening to steal their market share. What couldn’t be replaced with domestic production has been replaced with “parallel imports” via third countries.

  Next, the West (Europe in particular) curtailed its Russian energy imports through a number of means, from sanctions against Russian tankers, to bans on the use of existing pipeline capacity through the Ukraine and through Poland, to outright terrorist strikes on Russian gas pipelines in the Baltic. An outright ban on Russian oil imports to the European Union is scheduled for December, and it will make the situation predictably worse. The result is that Russia has started shipping oil and gas to its partners in Asia instead, China in particular, and the West is now welcome to compete for this energy on the spot market, while spare supplies last. They won’t. Because of higher prices, Russia is exporting less energy but earning more foreign revenue.

  And so an ingenuous plan was hatched for a nuclear provocation in the Ukraine. The Ukrainians, with some US and British help, were to take an old Soviet-era ballistic missile (a Tochka-U), load it up with nuclear waste from one of the Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, blow it up somewhere in the Chernobyl exclusion zone (which is already contaminated with long-lived radionuclides) and then Western media and diplomatic sources would all wax hysterical and blame it all on Russia in unison, hoping that at least some of the countries around the world that have been refusing to join Western sanctions against Russia would be cajoled into joining them.

  How well did it go? Not at all well, apparently! First, Russian intelligence got the details on the whole operation from an inside source or two or three. This is not surprising, since no self-respecting nuclear engineer would be too excited to take responsibility for such a travesty. Second, Russia’s defense minister Sergei Shoigu, under direct orders from Putin, made phone calls to his counterparts throughout the world, sharing this evidence with them. Third, Russia specifically requested that the IAEA go and investigate the two Ukrainian sites at which the travesty was being concocted. The end result is that the Ukrainians are now hurriedly destroying the evidence and covering their tracks. Considering that every gram of such highly controlled substances must to be inventoried and its every movement logged, this coverup may come to involve some incidents, accidents and force majeur circumstances. A nasty little accident involving a teacup of nuclear waste and a firecracker is not to be ruled out, to be blamed on Russia, of course.

  Meanwhile, in the real world of nuclear superpower standoffs, two interesting events took place. On Thursday, October 20, 2022, the American nuclear sub West Virginia, an Ohio-class sub that carries 24 Trident II ballistic missiles, each of which carries 10 nuclear charges, surfaced in the Arabian Sea and was visited by Michael Kurilla, commander of United States Central Command. I imagine that he lined up the crew on deck, stood before them in navy dress whites, then dropped his pants down and did a little “milk, milk, lemonade, round the corner fudge is made” routine… because he might as well have. The purpose of a nuclear sub is to be stealthy because Russian air defense systems can intercept Trident II missiles especially well if they know where they are coming from. Thus, the act of surfacing and holding parades on deck basically announces to the world that the sub is off-duty for the time being.

  Why would the Americans do this? Is this a clumsy peace gesture, a cryptic act of surrender or a veiled cry for help? Or are they all going senile because whatever Biden has got is infectious? It is hard for us to tell. Whatever it is, the Russians seem unaffected. The Russian nuclear sub Belgorod recently sailed off into the blue, causing a bit of a panic within NATO. It carries a number of the new Poseidon nuclear-powered drone torpedos, which are all about the number 100. Each of them carries a charge of 100 megatons. Poseidons have almost infinite range, move at around 100 km/h at a depth of 1000m (three times deeper than any nuclear sub) and when detonated near an underwater coastal ridge can raise a 100-meter tsunami. Just five of them are sufficient to demolish both coasts of the US and all of Northern Europe. These would be underwater nuclear tests conducted in international waters—antisocial, yes, but not exactly direct nuclear strikes on anyone’s territory, so hardly a casus belli. And the ensuing tsunami? Uh-oh! Oopsie-daisy, sorry about that! Nobody is going to write “in case of tsunami destroy Russia” into the US nuclear doctrine. Best of all, Poseidons can lie in wait for years, surfacing periodically to receive new orders. But if Russia is destroyed they will rise up and destroy the rest of the world world, because “What use is the world if there is no Russia in it?” (V. Putin)

  We can be sure that the Russians won’t launch a nuclear war because it’s risky and they don’t have to take that risk in order to win. We can be sure that the Americans won’t launch one because it would be suicide. And so we can all sit back and relax while the “Putin’s nuclear blackmail” narrative-mongers bark their stupid heads off. As for all those assorted media whores who are scaring people with their nuclear nonsense in order to catch some hype—shame on them!

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 23:40

• Transgender Groups Claim Their Voting Rights Will Be Restricted By State ID Laws
  Transgender Groups Claim Their Voting Rights Will Be Restricted By State ID Laws

  Are voter ID laws an obstacle to transgender people exercising their rights at the ballot box?  Some trans groups and the ACLU argue that this is the case as the midterm elections near.  

  The push against identification at the polls has been aggressive, with Democrats making up the bulk of people in opposition.  A long list of excuses has been presented as to why very simple and straightforward laws requiring ID to vote are a violation of the civil liberties of various minorities.  Notably, Democrats and the ACLU have suggested that such laws are “racist” because minorities often don’t have or are “not capable” of getting a state ID.

  The ACLU argues, for example, that over 25% of blacks and 16% of Hispanics of voting age in the US do not have ID.  This data comes from the GOA and the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law and was collected from 2012-2014, around a decade ago.

  The problem with this argument is that there are no legal obstacles for minorities to get a state ID.  If they don’t have one then it is their fault they are not able to vote.  The only people who would have trouble obtaining an ID are illegal immigrants who are not allowed to vote anyway.  The minority access to ID argument just doesn’t hold water.

  However, not to be defeated, anti-ID groups are turning to a tiny portion of the population that might face legitimate confusion at polling stations because of their appearance – Transgenders.

  Representatives from the ACLU in Tennessee where stricter enforcement of voter ID laws is underway suggest that the act of a trans person having to explain their trans status is humiliating:

  “It’s not just embarrassing, but it’s terrifying to have to do that — to try to read the room and see, like, are they going to kick me out? It can be really dehumanizing to have your whole identity nitpicked just so that you can cast your ballot and have your voice be heard…” Says Henry Seaton, an ACLU advocate.  Seaton is a woman who transitioned in appearance to a man who claims she once had her ID scrutinized in 2016.

  Beyond the apparent embarrassment, trans rights groups also say that ID confusion could potentially lead to people being turned away from the polls, or it could put trans people “at risk” of harassment.  Almost all stats involving trans harassment accounts are collected by trans rights groups with a clear political agenda, so it is difficult to say how serious this threat actually is and how much of it is fantasy.

  “People who might be inclined to harass marginalized voters at the polls are more aware of trans people’s existence,” said Olivia Hunt, the policy director at the National Center for Transgender Equality. “So I expect that we’re going to hear more stories of trans people being harassed, whether by voters, poll workers, poll monitors or other folks who are present during the election.”

     

  Legitimate harassment is illegal regardless of the individual, as are any acts of assault or violence.  Trans people are protected under the same laws as everyone else, but groups like the ACLU claim that this is not enough and separate laws need to be established giving trans people special protections.  This would include making them exempt from voter ID laws.  

  Frankly, this is yet another example of social justice proponents trying to make their problems into the country’s problems.  If a person’s identification does not match their appearance then it is going to be scrutinized whether they are trans, a minority or they are white and straight.  By attempting to change their appearance to look more like the opposite sex, trans people set themselves up for questions when going to vote.  There are dozens of other scenarios where this would also be an issue.  It is not for state governments to cater to every individual case; their job is only to ensure that ballots are secure and that non-citizens don’t vote illegally.

  Since the ACLU and trans rights organizations cannot come up with many examples of trans people being denied the right to vote and only present anecdotal stories of individuals being inconvenienced for five minutes, it’s hard to find justification for an overhaul of state laws preventing voter fraud.

  The more likely explanation for the growing interest in transgender voting is that social justice activists have hit a brick wall when it comes to stopping the spread of ID laws and they are looking for a legal toe hold or weakness in the armor.  Their exploitation of minorities failed, but if voter ID can be challenged using trans people as a foil, then these groups might be able to bring down all ID laws for everyone, including illegal immigrants; the real golden goose for progressive politicians.      

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 23:20

• Pfizer, Audi, Mondelez Join Growing List Of Companies Pausing Ads On Twitter
  Pfizer, Audi, Mondelez Join Growing List Of Companies Pausing Ads On Twitter

  Several years ago, when the “liberal, tolerant” left first decided to cancel Zerohedge , they did so using their two favorite eradication strategies: deplatforming (we were removed from Facebook and Twitter, a death sentence for most websites that depend on media powerhouses for their traffic, luckily we are not one of them) and demonetization (we lost ads hosted by Google, Amazon, and various other platforms, and we also were booted by PayPal, which in retrospect was a lucky outcome). Despite this full-bore effort by the left to silence us, we somehow survived – in large part thanks to our readers who have signed up as subscribers for our premium offering.

  Fast forward to today when it is now the turn of the world’s richest man to go through this same drama.

  In a carbon copy of what happened to us, America’s woke, politically correct corporations are taking aim at Twitter in hopes of starving it of cash, nevermind that its traffic is orders of magnitude greater than such socialist-endorsed, mindnumbingly boring propaganda websites and TV channels as MSNBC, CNN, Vox, The Atlantic and everything else that desperately relies on implicit advertiser subsidies to survive. According to the WSJ, food giant General Mills, Oreo maker Mondelez, pandemic profiteers Pfizer and Volkswagen’s Audi are among a growing list of brands that have “temporarily” paused their Twitter advertising in the wake of the takeover of the company by Elon Musk. General Motors paused its spending on the social-media platform last week.

  

  Kelsey Roemhildt, a spokeswoman for General Mills, whose brands include Cheerios, Bisquick and Häagen-Dazs, confirmed the company has paused Twitter ads. “As always, we will continue to monitor this new direction and evaluate our marketing spend,” she said.

  So, @Pfizer – making billions off of government mandates, liability protection, & often demonstrably false propaganda – pulls ads from Twitter – over, uh, “concerns about disinformation?” #HealthcareFreedom #BeatBigHealthcare

  — Chip Roy (@chiproytx) November 4, 2022

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

  Some advertisers are concerned that Mr. Musk could scale back content moderation, which they worry would lead to an increase in objectionable content on the platform, which should answer Elon Musk’s question what advertisers prefer: free speech or political correctness.

  Advertisers should support:

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 2, 2022

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

  Other advertisers temporarily halting their ads because of the uncertainty at the company as top executives exit and Mr. Musk considers a raft of changes, some of the people said.

  And just in case it’s still unclear, as long as a handful of shrill, ultra-left harpies such as this lunatic manage to outshout everyone else, it will always be free speech that loses, even if that means that advertisers are stuck peddling their wares at places like MSNBC and CNN where most of the audience has zero disposable income as it is entirely reliant on the government for its handouts.

  Several ad buyers say they expect the number of brands pausing Twitter ads to rise. The platform isn’t considered a must-buy for many advertisers, with far larger budgets going to tech giants such as Google and Meta Platforms, they say, and pausing makes sense during the bumpy transition under Musk.

  Additionally, many executives on Madison Avenue are uneasy with the rash of sudden executive departures from Twitter’s advertising sales and marketing units. Among those who have exited are Chief Customer Officer Sarah Personette, Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Berland, and Jean-Philippe Maheu, Twitter’s vice president of global client solutions. Those executives “helped reassure advertisers that their ad dollars were being spent wisely and appropriately on Twitter” according to the Journal. We assume that means that the woke ad agencies were assured that only liberals would be allowed to view their ads.

  Musk has been working to reassure advertisers, both publicly and privately, that the platform will remain a safe place for brands. Since tweeting last week that Twitter “cannot become a free-for-all hellscape,” the billionaire has participated in several meetings and video calls with some of the world’s largest ad companies and blue-chip advertisers, ad executives said.

  On Wednesday, Musk participated in a video call with WPP PLC, the world’s largest ad company, and some of its clients such as Coca-Cola, Unilever PLC and Google, according to people familiar with the meeting. During the meeting, Musk stressed that Twitter would be a safe place for brands, promising to rid the platform of bots and add community-management tools, according to the people.

  He also discussed how he was seeking to segment the content on Twitter so users could customize what shows up in their feeds. That would allow people to have the equivalent of a PG-rated version of the platform, Musk said, and give advertisers the ability to choose which content to be near.

  Somehow we doubt that approach will succeed. Instead, what Musk – and other thought leaders – should do, is show the variance in disposable incomes between those who frequent conservative media outlets, and those which are a magnet for liberals. Something tells us advertisers will be very surprise at who has more purchasing power. Because when you cut out the virtue signaling and the PC bullshit, at the end of the day, an ad is supposed to reach the richest, most willing to buy segment of society. The fact that this has become lost may explains the dismal state of consumer-facing companies in the US today.

  As for Twitter, ironically less ads will only make the user experience that much more enjoyable. For Musk, it will also mean that the website will generate far less cash flow, which means that either he will have to dig deep to keep it funded, or he will have to start charging everyone, not just the bluechecks, for access. Whether that is a viable proposition, remains to be seen.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 23:08

• Elon Musk Reportedly Expands Private Jet Fleet With This $78 Million Gulfstream
  Elon Musk Reportedly Expands Private Jet Fleet With This $78 Million Gulfstream

  Billionaire Elon Musk is reportedly trading up his 2015 Gulfstream G650 private jet for a top-of-the-line Gulfstream G700, Bussiness Insider reported.

  The G700 costs a whopping $78 million and is powered by all-new, high-thrust Rolls-Royce engines that can propel the aircraft to a maximum Mach .925 while cruising at more than 50,000 feet. 

  

  Insider said Musk is expected to take delivery of one of the finest private jets in the world in early 2023. It can fly up to 7,500 nautical miles without refueling, allowing the billionaire to travel non-stop from Austin, Texas (where Tesla Motors is headquartered) to Hong Kong. 

  

  The addition of the new jet shows Musk’s growing desire for Gulfstreams, which would expand his overall fleet of private jets to four. Three would be Gulfstreams, while the Dassault 900B stands out. 

  Billionaires and elites have run into trouble with private jet ownership this year — mainly because of climate change warriors tracking their every movement and posting jet locations on social media. We noted last month that French businessman Bernard Arnault, the owner of the luxury-goods company LVMH, sold his private jet after being fed up with social media tracking his every movement. He said renting private jets solves that issue. 

  We are certain Jack Sweeney, who created the Twitter account “Elon Musk’s Jet” to track the billionaire, will be adding the G700 sometime next year. 

  But with a fleet of four jets, it’s getting more difficult to track the billionaire unless independently verified on the ground that he was in the plane. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 22:40

• Biden Admin Renews Public Health Emergency Over Monkeypox
  Biden Admin Renews Public Health Emergency Over Monkeypox

  Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Biden administration on Wednesday renewed the public health emergency determination for monkeypox.

  

  Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra said in a statement that his decision to renew the public health emergency was “a result of the continued consequences of an outbreak of monkeypox cases across multiple states.” He had consulted with public health officials before renewing the determination.

  The Biden administration first declared monkeypox a public health emergency this year on Aug. 4. It would have expired Wednesday, Nov. 2, if it was not renewed.

  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky previously said the declaration would provide more “access to resources” and will “enable personnel to be deployed to the outbreak” in some areas. The emergency will also “further raise awareness” and encourage testing for monkeypox.

  The latest U.S. renewal of the public health emergency comes after the World Health Organization announced that its emergency committee had likewise determined monkeypox as a global health emergency. The determination was made following a meeting of the committee on Oct. 20.

  As of Wednesday, the CDC has recorded 77,573 monkeypox cases globally and 38 deaths. It has recorded 28,492 cases of monkeypox in the United States, with the death toll at 8.

  Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.), chair of the LGBTQ+ Equality congressional caucus, praised the renewal of the public health emergency determination, saying it will ensure continued support to address the outbreak.

  “Thanks to vaccination efforts across the country, the contraction and spread of MPV has decreased significantly. However, MPV continues to spread and is disproportionately impacting people of color. We must bolster support and resources—including by appropriating sufficient funds—to help these communities and end this outbreak,” Cicilline added.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 22:00

• GOP's Billionaire Donors Dwarf Democrats In Huge Reversal From 2018
  GOP’s Billionaire Donors Dwarf Democrats In Huge Reversal From 2018

  The number of billionaire donors to the GOP has been rapidly increasing vs. previous midterm election cycles – dwarfing the amount Democrats have received from their own Democrat donors (and which is largely due to George Soros).

  

  In particular, Citadel’s Ken Griffin, Blackstone Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Schwarzman and Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison have been ramping up contributions.

  The three men, worth a collective $150 billion, are among the 12 top political donors ahead of the elections, according to the most recent data from OpenSecrets. Of that dozen, 10 are backing Republicans in a big way: They’ve spent a cumulative $338 million, up 250% from the 2018 cycle. –Bloomberg

  And as Bloomberg further notes, this is a trend which extends to the top 100 political donors – among which some $574 million has gone towards Republican candidates and groups – around 45% more than what Democrats have received.

  

  George Soros is of course the largest supporter of Democratic causes with $129 million in donations – nearly double the largest GOP donor Elizabeth & Richard Uihlein. Other GOP whales include Peter Thiel, Jeffrey Yass and Timothy Mellon.

  Several new names appear near the top of this year’s top 100, who combined account for almost 35% of total campaign contributions. Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of crypto exchange FTX, is the second-largest contributor to Democrats, while another FTX executive, Ryan Salame, is backing Republicans. -Bloomberg

  

  “If you look at the people who are giving on the Republican side — Griffin and Schwarzman and the others — they’re all historically Republican donors,” said Chartwell Strategy Group founding partner, David Tamasi. “It’s not like this is their first rodeo with giving. It’s just got more weight behind it.”

  Last week we noted that Democrat donors had all but abandoned Florida.

  • “The Democratic Governors Association spent just $685,000 this election cycle. It gave $14 million to Florida in the past two governor races.
  • Big outside donor money has almost completely dried up. New York billionaire Michael Bloomberg contributed only $1.5 million to Democrats this cycle. He vowed $100 million to Florida in 2020.
  • Democrats have collectively raised $29 million in the four non-federal statewide races. Republicans raised nearly $200 million.” — Politico

  The boost from GOP billionaire donors will give Republicans an advantage in what Bloomberg suggests is a ‘dead-heat race’ to regain control of the Senate, on top of an expected majority win in the House.

  That said, Democrats still top Republicans in terms of overall campaign donations this cycle, outraising Republicans by nearly $191 million in all House and Senate races.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 22:00

• Alleged Pelosi Attacker Confirmed As Illegal Immigrant, Embraced Left- And Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories
  Alleged Pelosi Attacker Confirmed As Illegal Immigrant, Embraced Left- And Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories

  The man who allegedly attacked Paul Pelosi is an illegal immigrant, U.S. officials have confirmed.

  

  “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lodged an immigration detainer on Canadian national David DePape with San Francisco County Jail, Nov. 1, following his Oct. 28 arrest,” the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told The Epoch Times in an email.

  DHS is the parent agency of ICE, which is tasked with removing people who are in the United States illegally.

  Immigration detainers are placed on suspects who are illegal immigrants. They are meant to prevent state or local officials from releasing the suspects.

  If a suspect is due to be released, the detainer means officials hand over the person to federal officials, unless local officials defy the request.

  Adam Lipson, DePape’s public defender, indicated after DePape’s arraignment this week that he was representing an illegal immigrant.

  “He currently has a federal hold so he can’t be released anyway,” Lipson told reporters when asked about the motion for no bail entered by the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.

  Lipson could not be reached for comment.

  “Nobody in America should be victimized by an illegal alien. The illegal alien crime rate here should be exactly 0.0%,” the National Border Patrol Council, the Border Patrol’s union, said in a statement.

  Immigration records show DePape entered the United States in March 2008 as a temporary visitor. Canadians are generally admitted without a visa if they are visiting for business or pleasure and can typically stay in the United States for up to six months.

  Additionally, according to a lawyer who has been in touch with DePape’s former girlfriend, DePape has embraced left-wing and right-wing conspiracy theories.

  

  As Janice Hisle reports at The Epoch Times, the former girlfriend, Oxane “Gypsy” Taub, is herself in a women’s prison for 20 crimes involving a teen boy.

  Taub’s attorney, Christopher Dobbins, told The Epoch Times on Nov. 2 that based on his conversations with Taub the theories about DePape being a right-wing extremist seem to be off base.

  Dobbins thinks DePape tends to believe conspiracy theories in general, whether they’re left-wing or right-wing.

  “He’s all over the place,” Dobbins said.

  Dobbins said he has heard from Taub by phone frequently since news broke that DePape, 42, was arrested in the Oct. 28 breach of the Pelosi mansion in San Francisco. She has expressed a lot of concern for DePape, Dobbins said.

  Taub has been trying to raise funds for DePape’s defense, Dobbins said.

  Statements from Dobbins and a neighbor shed new light on DePape’s unorthodox lifestyle, his apparent homelessness, and his thought processes.

  “Even though he’s probably Public Enemy No. 1 right now,” and DePape and Taub have apparently been estranged for a while, Taub still cares for her ex, Dobbins said.

  She thinks he’s deeply troubled and has serious mental issues, Dobbins said. The two have known each other for many years and both were pictured in San Francisco newspapers in 2013 when they were protesting city ordinances banning public nudity.

  Taub asked Dobbins to defend DePape; Dobbins said he declined the offer, choosing to steer away from a potential conflict of interest involving his representation of Taub.

  Lawyer Contests ‘Fixated’ Claim

  DePape is the father of two of Taub’s three children. A daughter, fathered by another man, is grown; two boys, in their late teens or early adulthood, have been living alone at their mother’s property during her legal troubles, Dobbins said.

  Now 53, Taub is imprisoned near Los Angeles for offenses involving a teen boy, prosecutors said in a news release when a jury convicted her in August 2021.

  Dobbins points out that his client testified in her own defense, and she still asserts that she is innocent. She testified that her actions toward the boy were misinterpreted.

  The teen was a schoolmate of one of her sons, and Taub was convinced the boy was being abused, Dobbins said. She believed she was being helpful to him, as she was repeatedly contacting him after being told to stop, Dobbins said. But “she never touched him,” he declared.

  

  Prosecutors, however, said Taub “became fixated on a 14-year-old boy in 2018,” and committed the offenses.

  That was how the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office put it in a news release.

  Prosecutors issued the release in August 2021 after a jury found Taub guilty of four felonies—attempted child abduction, stalking, and two counts of dissuading a witness—plus 16 misdemeanors: a count of molestation and 15 violations of court orders to stay away from the boy.

  “Over the course of 14 months, she sent him numerous obsessive emails, created blogs directed at him, used his friends to send him messages, and eventually tried to abduct him a few blocks from his school in Berkeley,” the release said. “While the case was pending, Taub also tried to dissuade the victim from testifying.”

  DePape Lived in School Bus

  Dobbins, who was a schoolteacher before he became an attorney 14 years ago, said Taub is one of the most interesting, unusual clients he has ever encountered.

  He described her as a free spirit and a well-intentioned idealist who can be misunderstood. “She is a kind of out-there person, kind of pushing the envelope,” he said, acknowledging that her nudist, bohemian lifestyle irritates her neighbors; he said he had visited the area several times.

  

  Ryan La Coste, who resides near the house where Taub lived in the 1500 block of Woolsey St., Berkeley, Calif., told The Epoch Times that he only saw DePape “in passing,” but he believes DePape sometimes lived in a yellow school bus that is parked at the property.

  Authorities have said they believe DePape mostly was living in a garage on Shasta Street in Richmond, Calif., for the past two years.

  La Coste said DePape sporadically showed up in the Berkeley neighborhood even after Taub was incarcerated. La Coste believes he most recently saw DePape staying in the bus a couple of months ago.

  La Coste has lived in the neighborhood for five or six years. Right after he moved in, “the problems started immediately” at Taub’s house, he said.

  “Children was setting fires out here. They were dressed in like snorkeling gear and swim trunks, setting fires and smoke was coming into my house,” he said. “So I was like, trying to go tell their mother, not knowing who she was.”

  

  Later that evening, he got a call that was “super-weird,” he said. “They said I threatened to kill her children…and it just got worse and worse from there…it was just kind of like a constant flow of bugging me and disturbing me and trying to pick fights with me.”

  That stopped only after Taub was locked up on the charges involving the young boy. She is eligible for parole in January, court records show.

  La Coste described DePape and a parade of other “characters” coming and going at Taub’s property, “almost like a hippie collective.”

  “They’ve had people camping right here, trying to sell me drugs over the fence,” he said, “And, you know, they’re active nudists; they’re plastered all over the internet.”

  Even Taub’s sons have been known to be “just standing there, naked,” La Coste said, even in front of his 13-year-old niece.

  Psychedelic Experiences?

  La Coste also said he found it strange that Taub was enamored of a psychoactive substance called ibogaine—which she would go to Mexico to obtain and then frequently offered to others, including him.

  Ibogaine is found in the African rainforest shrub known as Tabernanthe Iboga. “It is unlicensed but used in the treatment of drug and alcohol addiction,” according to a 2016 report in the National Library of Medicine. “However, reports of ibogaine’s toxicity are cause for concern.”

  Asked to respond to La Coste’s statements about ibogaine, Dobbins acknowledged that his client testified about the drug during her trial last year, and acknowledged that she tried to offer it to the young man she was hanging around.

  

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 21:40

• October Payrolls Preview: Expect Another Slowdown But Not Enough; Market Scenario Analysis
  October Payrolls Preview: Expect Another Slowdown But Not Enough; Market Scenario Analysis

  It’s only appropriate that one day after we saw a veritable cornucopia of mass layoff announcements…

  Layoffs announced in the last day:

  – Lyft 13% of workers
  – Opendoor 18%
  – Stripe 14%
  – Chime 12%
  – Twitter 50%
  – Morgan Stanley (% unknown)

  — Genevieve Roch-Decter, CFA (@GRDecter) November 3, 2022

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

  … and on the same day that Elon Musk will fire half of Twitter employees, that the Bureau of Lies (sic) and Statistics will come up with the most grotesque “seasonal adjustment” yet, and claim that some 200K jobs were created in the US, or at least that’s what the median Wall Street consensus is; the actual reported number will likely be just fractionally below this estimate to make it seem “credible.” Alas, a representation of the actual US economic reality won’t be available until the first Friday of December, with the midterm elections now in the rearview mirror, when the BLS will have no choice but to aggressively start catching down to what the jobs number is, including aggressive prior revisions (which by then nobody will care about), in a month that will be seen as a watershed “kitchen sinking” of data, and which will furiously reprice the Fed’s hiking intentions and terminal rate.

  But before we get there, we have tomorrow’s payrolls fairy tale to get through: in his preview of what’s in store, Goldman trader John Flood writes “TYVM to Jay Pow for somewhat derisking the jobs print tomorrow. Street is looking for +200k headline print (GIR +225k, last +263k), AHE MoM .3% (GIR .35%, last .35%), U/ E Rate 3.6% (GIR 3.5%, last 3.5%) and Labor Force Participation rate of 62.3% (GIR 62.3%, last 62.3%). We are still FIRMLY in a bad data is good for stocks and vice versa setup here (and will be for the foreseeable future).”

  The Goldman trader also adds that “weaker employment data should lift the S&P more than stronger data will hit it (I would not have said this before yesterday’s developments)”, and provides the following NFP matrix:

  • Goldilocks: <100k headline, AHE 3.6 and Labor Force Participation rate >62.3%. S&P quickly claws back 2+%
  • Worst Case: >300k headline, AHE >.3%, U/E <3.6% and LFP <62.3%. S&P down 1.5% in a straight line but some buyers step in at these levels.
  • Base Case: 175k – 225k headline, AHE .3%, U/E 3.6% and LFP 62.3%. S&P rallies 50 – 100bps.

  A more detailed look of what to expect courtesy of Newsquawk:

  • The rate of payrolls growth is expected to moderate in October, while the jobless rate is expected to rise a little.
  • Goldman estimates non-farm payrolls rose by 225k in October (mom sa), above consensus of +195k but a slowdown from the +263k pace in September.
  • There will be attention on the wages measures; any downside could give the Fed cover to downshift the pace of rate hikes in December.
  • A weak headline could also see calls for the Fed to slow its normalization become louder, as the central bank aggressively tightens policy into restrictive territory to cap inflation, particularly as politicians have an eye on the US midterm elections next week.
  • According to Goldman, labor demand remains elevated despite declining this year, and Big Data indicators generally point to above-consensus payroll gains. The bank also believes the exit of the youth summer workforce weighed on job growth in the September report, and the absence of that headwind argues for a pickup in some low-skill services categories. Generally, job growth tends to pick back up in October when the labor market is tight, as firms frontload autumn and pre-holiday hiring.

  Estimates:

  Consensus expects 200k nonfarm payrolls to be added to the US Economy in October, moderating from the 263k rise seen in September. If the consensus expectation is realized, it would be beneath the three-, six- and 12-month averages (at 372k, 360k, 474k respectively).

  The unemployment rate is seen nudging up by one-tenth of a percentage point, taking it to 3.6%; there will be focus on the participation rate to see whether the rise is a function of returning workers (participation previously fell one-tenth to 32.3%, which helped bring the jobless rate down by two-tenths to 3.5%). The Fed’s September economic projections forecast the unemployment rate would rise to 3.8% by the end of this year, before picking up to 4.4% next year, though the updated projections still see the longer-run unemployment rate at 4.0%.

  Labor Market Proxies: Claims data for the week that coincides with the BLS’ reference period in its establishment survey saw initial jobless claims were ultimately little changed at 212,250k vs 215,750k in the reference week for the September jobs report. Similarly, continuing claims climbed a little between both of those windows, from 1.381mn to 1.388mln. In its flash purchasing managers data series for October, S&P Global said employment was broadly unchanged in the month, though the seasonally adjusted Employment Index was below the neutral 50.0 level for the first time since June 2020, driven by a fall in service sector staffing numbers, while manufacturers registered a slower pace of job creation. The ISM survey is also consistent with that view of a neutral labour market in October, with its manufacturing employment index rising from 48.7 to the neutral 50.0 level (note: the services ISM has not been released at the time this preview is being published). Meanwhile, ADP’s new gauge of national employment – which analysts continue to remain critical of given that it does not forecast the official data with any deal of success – was strong, seeing 239k payrolls added, topping expectations of 195k.

  Wages: Average hourly earnings are seen rising by 0.3% M/M in October, matching the pace from the September report; the annual measure is expected to ease to 4.7% Y/Y from 5.0% – that will be encouraging Fed officials who are lifting rates to combat inflation, particularly since some analysts say that base effects will support the annual measure in October. As a point of reference, the ADP’s data for October said pay growth eased again in October, and the momentum of gains for job changers was ebbing (for these workers, annual pay growth edged down for the third straight month, to 15.2% Y/Y from 15.7% in September); for job stayers, pay gains registered 7.7% in October, in line with recent months. That would be welcome news at Fed HQ, particularly after the recent quarterly Employment Cost Index data, which suggests that pay growth was still accelerating in Q3 by some measures. Meanwhile, average workweek hours are seen unchanged at 34.5hrs.

  Arguing for a stronger-than-expected report:

  • Tight labor markets. When the labor market is tight, job growth tends to slow in September and pick back up in October, as shown in Exhibit 1. The September tendency in part reflects the loss of the summer youth workforce, which in September 2022 contributed -128k to job growth according to the household survey (mom sa). The absence of this headwind argues for a pickup in some low-skill services categories in tomorrow’s report. Additionally, the tight labor market incentivizes firms to frontload autumn and pre-holiday hiring, given the likely difficulty of finding workers in November and December

  

  • Big Data. High-frequency data on the labor market were mixed in October but generally point to strong job growth, with three of the four measures available this month consistent with above-consensus payrolls (see Exhibit 2).

  

  • Job availability. JOLTS job openings rebounded by 0.4mn to 10.7mn workers in September, swinging from below to above the level implied by alternative data (see Exhibit 3). The labor market has likely continued to rebalance at a steady pace, in Goldman’s view. The Conference Board labor differential—the difference between the percent of respondents saying jobs are plentiful and those  saying jobs are hard to get— decreased substantially relative to September but remains at a high level (-5.6pt to +32.5)

  

  • ADP. Private sector employment in the ADP report increased by 239k in October above expectations for 195k.

  Arguing for a weaker-than-expected report:

  • Employer surveys. The employment components of business surveys generally decreased in October. Our services employment survey tracker decreased by 0.7pt to 51.5 and our manufacturing survey employment tracker decreased by 0.2pt to 52.7.
  • Job cuts. Announced layoffs reported by Challenger, Gray & Christmas increased 7.6% month-over-month in October, following a 30.0% increase in September (SA by GS).

  Neutral/mixed factors:

  • Jobless claims. Initial jobless claims decreased during the October payroll month, averaging 212k per week vs. 220k in September. Residual seasonality (i.e., goalseeking) and other so-called “non-economic factors” explain much of the variation in initial claims over the last few months, and according to Goldman, “the overarching message from the jobless claims data is that layoff rates remained very low in Q3. Continuing claims in regular state programs increased 92k from survey week to survey week, although they may also be affected by residual seasonality.”

  Policy Implications: Recent reports indicate that the Fed may downshift to a slower pace of rate hikes from December onwards. However, for that to happen, officials have previously indicated that they would want to see meaningful progress in bringing inflation down. Accordingly, the wages data could be influential for the December debate (the market is currently shooting for 75bps in November, and then 50bps in December). This week, the latest JOLTs data (for September) showed a rise against expectations it would decline, and while that didn’t do much to change the narrative for the November FOMC meeting, expectations of where the eventual terminal rate will be moved hawkishly (the market now sees above 5.0% in May 2023, vs just above 4.8% a week earlier). On the other side of the coin, if the headline begins to show stress (for instance, if it were to come in towards the bottom, or below the 50-300k forecast range), it could reignite concerns regarding the economic slowdown, at a time when the Fed is tightening policy aggressively, which could lead to more calls for the Fed to slow the rate it is normalising policy, particularly from the political community given the US midterm elections next week. (Note: this preview is being published before the November FOMC meeting).

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 21:26

• Destroying Western Values To Defend Western Values
  Destroying Western Values To Defend Western Values

  Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

  So it turns out the US intelligence cartel has been working intimately with online platforms to regulate the “cognitive infrastructure” of the population.

  

  This is according to a new investigative report by The Intercept, based on documents obtained through leaks and an ongoing lawsuit, on the “retooling” of the Department of Homeland Security from an agency focused on counterterrorism to one increasingly focused on fighting “misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation” online.

  While the DHS’s hotly controversial “Disinformation Governance Board” was shut down in response to public outcry, the Intercept report reveals what authors Lee Fang and Ken Klippenstein describe as “an expansive effort by the agency to influence tech platforms” in order to “curb speech it considers dangerous”:

  According to a draft copy of DHS’s Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, DHS’s capstone report outlining the department’s strategy and priorities in the coming years, the department plans to target “inaccurate information” on a wide range of topics, including “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.”

  Docs show Facebook and Twitter closely collaborating w/ Dept of Homeland Security, FBI to police “disinfo.” Plans to expand censorship on topics like withdrawal from Afghanistan, origins of COVID, info that undermines trust in financial institutions. https://t.co/Zb3zmI1dQF

  — Lee Fang (@lhfang) October 31, 2022

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  The report reveals pervasive efforts on the part of the DHS and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), along with the FBI, to push massive online platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to censor content in order to suppress “threats” as broad as fomenting distrust in the US government and US financial institutions.

  “There is also a formalized process for government officials to directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram and request that it be throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook portal that requires a government or law enforcement email to use,” The Intercept reports.

  “Emails between DHS officials, Twitter, and the Center for Internet Security outline the process for such takedown requests during the period leading up to November 2020,” says The Intercept. “Meeting notes show that the tech platforms would be called upon to ‘process reports and provide timely responses, to include the removal of reported misinformation from the platform where possible.’”

  While these government agencies contend that they are not technically forcing these tech platforms to remove content, The Intercept argues that its investigation shows “CISA’s goal is to make platforms more responsive to their suggestions,” while critics argue that “suggestions” from immensely powerful institutions will never be taken as mere suggestions.

  “When the government suggests things, it’s not too hard to pull off the velvet glove, and you get the mail fist,” Michigan State University’s Adam Candeub tells The Intercept. “And I would consider such actions, especially when it’s bureaucratized, as essentially state action and government collusion with the platforms.”

  This is absolutely wild. The government is secretly transforming “national security” agencies into a new Narrative Police.

  “If a foreign government sent these messages,” said the former ACLU president, “there is no doubt we would call it censorship.”

  Read the story: https://t.co/9bMjDKSmcd

  — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 31, 2022

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  The current CISA chief is seen justifying this aggressive government thought policing by creepily referring to the means people use to gather information and form thoughts about the world as “our cognitive infrastructure”:

  Jen Easterly, Biden’s appointed director of CISA, swiftly made it clear that she would continue to shift resources in the agency to combat the spread of dangerous forms of information on social media. “One could argue we’re in the business of critical infrastructure, and the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure, so building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation, I think, is incredibly important,” said Easterly, speaking at a conference in November 2021.

  Another CISA official is seen suggesting the agency launder its manipulations through third party nonprofits “to avoid the appearance of government propaganda”:

  To accomplish these broad goals, the report said, CISA should invest in external research to evaluate the “efficacy of interventions,” specifically with research looking at how alleged disinformation can be countered and how quickly messages spread. Geoff Hale, the director of the Election Security Initiative at CISA, recommended the use of third-party information-sharing nonprofits as a “clearing house for trust information to avoid the appearance of government propaganda.”

  But as a former ACLU president tells The Intercept, if this were happening in any government the US doesn’t like there’d be no qualms about calling it what it is:

  “If a foreign authoritarian government sent these messages,” noted Nadine Strossen, the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union, “there is no doubt we would call it censorship.”

  Indeed, this report is just another example of the way western powers are behaving more and more like the autocracies they claim to despise, all in the name of preserving the values the west purports to uphold. As The Intercept reminds us, this business of the US government assigning itself the responsibility of regulating America’s “cognitive infrastructure” originated with the “allegation that Russian agents had seeded disinformation on Facebook that tipped the 2016 election toward Donald Trump.” To this day that agenda continues to expand into things like plots to censor speech about the war in Ukraine.

  [Thread]

  Hundreds of former agents of a notorious Israeli spying organization are now working in key positions at the world’s biggest tech/comms corporations, including Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

  My new investigation for @MintPressNews: https://t.co/blv2ieGOmS

  — Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) October 31, 2022

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  Other examples of this trend coming out at the same time include Alan MacLeod’s new report with Mintpress News that hundreds of former agents from the notorious Israeli spying organization Unit 8200 are now working in positions of influence at major tech companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon (just the latest in MacLeod’s ongoing documentation of the way intelligence insiders have been increasingly populating the ranks of Silicon Valley platforms), and the revelation that The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté were barred from participating in a Web Summit conference due to pressure from the Ukrainian government.

  We’re destroying western values to defend western values. To win its much-touted struggle of “democracies vs autocracies”, western civilization is becoming more and more autocratic. Censoring more. Trolling more. Propagandizing more. Jailing journalists. Becoming less and less transparent. Manipulating information and people’s understanding of truth.

  We’re told we need to defeat Russia in Ukraine in order to preserve western values of freedom and democracy, and in order to facilitate that aim we’re getting less and less free speech. Less and less free thought. Less and less free press. Less and less democracy.

  I keep thinking of the (fictional) story where during World War II Winston Churchill is advised to cut funding for the arts to boost military funding, and he responds, “Then what are we fighting for?” If we need to sacrifice everything we claim to value in order to fight for those values, what are we fighting for?

  Dissent is becoming less and less tolerated. Public discourse is being more and more aggressively disrupted by the powerful. We’re being shaped into the exact sort of homogeneous, power-serving, tyrannized, propagandized population that our leaders criticize other nations for having.

  Any journalists or press freedom advocates out there care about a US gov’t ally, Ukraine, pressuring a media conference to cancel two journalists? https://t.co/sPwaQAIiTV

  — Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) October 31, 2022

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  If the powerful are becoming more tyrannical in order to fight tyranny, what’s probably actually happening is that they are just tyrants making up excuses to do the thing they’ve always wanted to do.

  As westerners in “liberal democracies” we are told that our society holds free speech, free thought and accountability for the powerful as sacrosanct.

  Our leaders are showing us that this is a lie.

  The problem with “western values” is that the west doesn’t value them.

  In reality, those who best exemplify “western values” as advertised are the ones who are being most aggressively silenced and marginalized by western powers. The real journalists. The dissidents. The skeptics. The free thinkers. The peace activists. Those who refuse to bow down to their rulers.

  Our ongoing descent into tyranny in the name of opposing tyrants calls forth a very simple question: if defeating autocracy requires becoming an autocracy, what’s the point of defeating autocracy?

  *  *  *

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

  Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 21:00

• "Here We Go Again:" Out-Of-Control Chinese Rocket Expected To Crash On Friday
  “Here We Go Again:” Out-Of-Control Chinese Rocket Expected To Crash On Friday

  “Here we go again,” Ted Muelhaupt, a reentry and debris expert at The Aerospace Corporation, told reporters at a press briefing Wednesday. For the fourth time, China’s Long March 5B core stage will make an uncontrolled reentry into Earth’s atmosphere on Friday. 

  The Aerospace Corporation’s latest update on the predicted reentry time of the Long March 5B core stage is for Friday at 1356 ET (early afternoon):

  “Our latest prediction for rocket body reentry is: 04 Nov 2022 17:56 UTC ± 6 hours Reentry will be along one of the ground tracks shown here. It is still too early to determine a meaningful debris footprint.”

  Our latest prediction for #CZ5B rocket body reentry is:
  🚀04 Nov 2022 17:56 UTC ± 6 hours
  Reentry will be along one of the ground tracks shown here. It is still too early to determine a meaningful debris footprint. Follow here for updates: https://t.co/KZZ9Lh2VoU pic.twitter.com/IlnUTP1iX9

  — The Aerospace Corporation (@AerospaceCorp) November 3, 2022

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

  Here’s debris modeling of where the booster could land. 

  

  On Monday, China’s most powerful rocket carried the third and final module for the Chinese Tiangong space station into low-Earth orbit. “Because this core stage lacks the capability to relight its engines for a controlled reentry into a desolate part of the world’s oceans, the rocket could ultimately come back anywhere in the tropics and most of the mid-latitudes of the planet,” Ars Technica said. 

  Muelhaupt noted the individual risk to anyone struck by debris is extremely low:

  “You’re 80,000 times more likely to get hit by lightning,” he said. “Nobody has to alter their lives because of this unless you’re a first responder.”

  Over the last five decades, this booster ranks as the sixth largest uncontrolled reentry. 

  

  On the three previous launches of the Long March 5B booster (2020, 2021, and 2022), the boosters fell back to Earth but did not cause any damage to building structures or injure anyone. 

  It’s anyone’s guess where the booster will land tomorrow. We’re sure US officials will release statements saying how reckless the Chinese are in their space ambitions. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 20:40

• Beauty Pageant's Rejection Of Transgender Women Is Legal, Appeals Court Rules
  Beauty Pageant’s Rejection Of Transgender Women Is Legal, Appeals Court Rules

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

  Miss United States of America is legally able to reject men who claim that they’re women, an appeals court has ruled.

  

  The beauty pageant’s “natural born female” requirement conveys a message and the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment gives the pageant the ability to voice that message and enforce the rule, Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke, a Trump appointee, wrote in a Nov. 2 ruling.

  “Forcing the Pageant to accept Green as a participant would fundamentally alter the Pageant’s expressive message in direct violation of the First Amendment,” VanDyke wrote for the majority of a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

  The ruling was against Anita Noelle Green, a biological male who identifies as transgender and sued Miss United States of America in 2019, alleging the pageant violated an Oregon law called the Oregon Public Accommodations Act (OPAA) by rejecting Green’s application to participate in the pageant.

  The appeals court upheld a 2021 ruling from U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman, a George W. Bush appointee.

  VanDyke was joined by Circuit Judge Carlos Bea, a George W. Bush appointee.

  Circuit Judge Susan Graber, a Clinton appointee, dissented.

  Graber said it wasn’t clear whether the Oregon law applies to the pageant because the law only applies to businesses that have membership policies “so unselective that the organization can fairly be said to offer its services to the public.” The lack of clarity means the district court should have allowed discovery or briefing on the matter, she said.

  “In sum, by assuming that the statute applies to Defendant—an assumption that is not definitively supported by the extant record—the majority risks issuing an unconstitutional advisory opinion and flouts a longstanding tradition of judicial restraint in the federal courts,” Graber argued.

  “Applying our ordinary rule of constitutional avoidance, I would vacate the judgment and remand this case to the district court to determine whether the OPAA applies to Defendant before we address any constitutional concerns regarding the application of the statute.”

  Graber also said the Oregon law “neither improperly compels speech nor violates the owner’s freedom of association.”

  VanDyke authored a concurring opinion to address the dissent, finding that the pageant is protected by the First Amendment from both compelled speech and forced association.

  He referenced a previous Supreme Court ruling that enabled the Boy Scouts to exclude a gay leader because including him would “interfere with the Boy Scouts’ choice not to propound a point of view contrary to its beliefs.”

  “The case before us is not meaningfully distinguishable,” he said. Green identifies as a transgender woman and an activist who has talked about using pageant platforms to deliver a message that runs against Miss United States of America’s beliefs.

  “The Pageant expresses its message through its contestants—both by those who compete and those who ultimately succeed,” VanDyke said. “And the Pageant has actively and consistently enforced its eligibility requirements precisely over a concern about protecting its message. The forced inclusion of a male would therefore directly impact the Pageant’s message in a way fundamentally at odds with the Pageant’s views on womanhood.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 20:20

• 20-Pound Turkeys Will Be In Shorty Supply Ahead Of Thanksgiving, Warns US Gov't
  20-Pound Turkeys Will Be In Shorty Supply Ahead Of Thanksgiving, Warns US Gov’t

  Axios quoted US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who warned in a call with reporters that avian influenza or bird flu continues to wreak havoc on the poultry industry and could result in a massive shortage of big birds at supermarkets ahead of Thanksgiving. 

  Vilsack said finding 20-pound turkeys at supermarkets in some regions across the country could be very challenging. 

  “Some of the turkeys that are being raised right now for Thanksgiving may not have the full amount of time to get to 20 pounds,” he said, while addressing the Biden administration’s concerns on elevated food inflation.  

  Vilsack said supermarkets should be well stocked with turkeys but finding a traditional-size one (15-20 pounds) in the next two weeks will be difficult: “It’s going to be there, maybe smaller, but it’ll be there.”

  

  The primary reason behind tightening supplies of big birds is the surge in avian influenza at commercial farms this year has led to the culling of more than eight million turkeys. In total, including chickens and turkeys, and other birds, 47.7 million birds have been killed across the country this year. 

  Tighter supplies mean consumers can expect to pay $1.47 per pound this holiday season compared with $1.15 last year. On Thursday morning, Walmart released a statement that it would roll back the prices of turkeys to help consumers this holiday season amid the worst inflation in decades.

  On the retailer’s website, turkey prices have been halved. But not all consumers shop at Walmart (or maybe they soon will) and will pay the highest cost ever for Thanksgiving items. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 20:00

• China, Russia, And Iran Seek To Influence 2022 Midterm Elections: Cybersecurity Chief
  China, Russia, And Iran Seek To Influence 2022 Midterm Elections: Cybersecurity Chief

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

  State actors that include China’s communist regime are seeking to influence next week’s U.S. midterm elections, according to the nation’s cybersecurity chief.

  

  China, Iran, and Russia may all seek to influence or otherwise interfere with U.S. democratic processes, according to Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly.

  “We are concerned about Russia and Iran and China trying to influence our elections,” Easterly said during a Nov. 1 talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

  “It’s a significant concern when you think about these adversaries who are trying to sow discord, that are trying to break us apart as Americans and are trying to undermine integrity in our elections.”

  Easterly’s comments follow closely behind several revelations in recent months regarding how hostile foreign powers are attempting to undermine stability in the United States.

  Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said in September that it had disrupted several Chinese and Russian influence operations. Those operations took place on Facebook, Instagram, and Meta competitor Twitter, and appeared largely aimed at increasing political polarization among Americans by spreading false and inflammatory posts about controversial topics including race, abortion, fascism, and gun control.

  Likewise, a report published in October by intelligence firm Recorded Future found that China-based actors were attempting to influence the Nov. 8 midterm elections by undermining confidence in lawmakers who were critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and in the U.S. system of government itself.

  Yet another report by nonprofit Global Witness and the Cybersecurity for Democracy (C4D) team at New York University asserted that social media giant TikTok failed to prevent 90 percent of political ads with misleading or blatantly false election information, even as the company claims it doesn’t allow any political advertising.

  Easterly said the need to maintain strong cyber defenses against such operations is critical, and that the United States would need to be prepared for activity designed to cause instability.

  “It’s not the time to put our shields down,” she said. “We need to be prepared for potential disruptive [and] destructive activity.”

  “That’s what foreign adversaries want. They want to have disruption. They want to sow discord. They love the partisan rancor. They love the tearing apart of America.”

  Easterly, who served 20 years as a U.S. Army officer, said that there were no credible or specific threats to election infrastructure now, but the types of influence operations seen recently could contribute to the growing number of other threats being made against Americans attempting to conduct the elections.

  From physical intimidation to threats to misinformation, Easterly said the threat environment facing everyday Americans who work at the polls is more complex than ever.

  To that end, Easterly said that securing elections is a nonpartisan activity, and Americans need to work together to protect the American way of life by increasing election literacy and ensuring safe and resilient conditions for poll workers.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 19:40

• "Pivotal Moment" – JPMorgan Completes First DeFi Trade On Public Blockchain
  “Pivotal Moment” – JPMorgan Completes First DeFi Trade On Public Blockchain

  Despite Jamie Dimon’s infamous condescension of crypto, banking giant JPMorgan just executed its first-ever cross-border transaction using decentralized finance (DeFi) on a public blockchain.

  

  As Cointelegraph reports, the trade was facilitated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) Project Guardian on Nov. 2 – which was established as part of a pilot program to “explore potential decentralized finance (DeFi) applications in wholesale funding markets.”

  Bloomberg reports that JPMorgan issued tokenized S$100,000 ($71,000) and then traded it for tokenized yen with Tokyo-based banking firm SBI Digital Asset Holdings.

  Singapore’s largest bank – DBS Bank, and business leadership platform Oliver Wyman Forum also took part in the pilot program.

  “Today was the first step to show that we can actually trade on these public networks,” said Tyrone Lobban, head of Blockchain Launch and Onyx Digital Assets at JPMorgan, in an interview.

  “The future is really working toward scaling this pivotal moment.”

  WORLD! J.P. Morgan has executed its 1st *LIVE* trade on public blockchain using DeFi, Tokenized Deposits & Verifiable Credentials, part of @MAS_sg Project Guardian 🙌🚀🔥https://t.co/XI212SG4zg Many world 1sts here, & since this is public ⛓ here’s a transparent🧵on what we did:

  — Ty Lobban (@TyLobban) November 2, 2022

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

  “We clearly see what’s happening in the public domain and we can see how the innovation is creating not only new ways of doing financial transactions, but new types of products as well,” Lobban said, noting that the bank will explore using other blockchain networks over time, he added.

  MAS Chief Fintech Officer Sopnendu Mohanty said the successful test was a “a big step towards enabling more efficient and integrated global financial networks”, and the latest pilot has helped develop the country’s digital asset strategy, adding that:

  “The live pilots led by industry participants demonstrate that with the appropriate guardrails in place, digital assets and decentralized finance have the potential to transform capital markets.”

  While the transaction wasn’t a crypto trade, it used the infrastructure developed by crypto firms: the Polygon blockchain, which makes transactions on the Ethereum blockchain cheaper, and a modified version of Aave, a major DeFi lending project.

  MATIC, a utility and staking token within the Polygon blockchain ecosystem, rose over 18% to $0.985 after the announcements, accompanied by an uptick in daily trading volume.

  

  Additionally, Goldman Sachs is set to unveil a data service created with global index provider MSCI and crypto data firm Coin Metrics that seeks to classify hundreds of digital coins and tokens so institutional investors can make sense of the new asset class.

  “The digital asset ecosystem has really expanded over the last couple of years,” said Anne Marie Darling, head of client strategy for Goldman’s Marquee platform, in an interview with CNBC.

  “We’re trying to create a framework for the digital asset ecosystem that our clients can understand, because they increasingly need to think about performance tracking and risk management in digital assets.”

  It seems the bulge bracket banks are starting to realize there may be ‘another way’. Are they readying themselves for a pivoting Fed’s money flood sending crypto prices soaring as institutional investors seek any haven from the central planners’ inflation?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 19:20

• "If You Believe…"
  “If You Believe…”

  Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

  If you believed they put a man on the moon

  Man on the moon

  If you believe there’s nothing up his sleeve

  Then nothing is cool

  REM – Man on the Moon

  The REM song Man on the Moon, released in 1992, is a haunting melancholy tune, with Andy Kaufmann and his life and death as the focal point. For me, the lyrics always bring me back to the simpler time of my youth, when our antenna TV could get about eight channels, we had one rotary phone, one old used station wagon, lived in a row home, and a family of five could be raised on a truck driver’s income, with a stay-at-home mom.

  

  It’s the references to the Game of Life, Risk, Monopoly, Twister, checkers, and chess, which invoke what we did for fun when we weren’t out riding bikes, playing stick-ball, roller hockey, or touch football in the streets. Were bad things going on in the world? Sure. The Vietnam War, Watergate, gasoline shortages and rationing, stagflation, and a myriad of other damaging challenges confronted the country, just as they always have throughout history.

  One of the supposed historic moments in human history was the moon landing in July 1969, when I was six years old. I remember sitting on the floor in front of the TV and thinking how cool it was and how cool that I was allowed up at 11:00 pm to watch it. Another 600 million people were also watching. At the time, no one questioned what they were watching live on their TVs. It was the penultimate human achievement, with the goal set by JFK during Camelot before he was murdered by his own government, proving our technological superiority to the evil Soviets. To fail in this mission would have been too embarrassing to the leaders of our empire, only two decades into its infancy. I believed the official narrative up until a few years ago.

  I don’t know whether Stanley Kubrick staged the moon landing on a movie set, or some other scenario, but my skepticism is based on something rather mundane. TV technology in 1969 was poor. Picture quality from stations a few miles across town were bad. The moon is 239,000 miles from earth. How could they have landed on the moon and broadcast live video that was as clear as if you were watching a TV show, when surveillance camera video in 2022, 53 years later can’t even reveal who placed those pipe bombs around Washington DC on January 5th, 2020.

  

  The government, their media mouthpieces, and most certainly the plethora of alphabet agencies wielding the real power (CIA, FBI, DHS, etc.) in D.C. created the term “conspiracy theorists” as a way to cover up their diabolical Deep State plots to rule the world from behind the curtain. The CIA coined the term in the wake of the JFK assassination as a method to discredit critical thinking Americans who questioned the validity of the Warren Report and the government cover-up of JFK’s murder by rogue elements of the U.S. government.

  This was not the beginning of manipulation of the public mind by men we have never heard of. As expounded by the master of propaganda, Edward Bernays, the manipulation was already taking place during the 1920s. With the advent of mass media technology, the ability of these malevolent Svengalis to sway the masses towards believing whatever narrative they spin has expanded exponentially.

  “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” – Edward Bernays – Propaganda – 1928

  Many of REM’s songs have a word salad feel to them, but bassist Mike Mills described how singer and lyricist Michael Stipe “came up this beautiful lyric that encompasses doubt, belief, transition, conspiracy and truth”. The title of the song and the lyric “if you believe” are ambiguous and can be interpreted by believers and non-believers. Those referred to as conspiracy theorists, the favorite term of the Deep State acolytes and their legacy media propaganda outlets, feel vindicated by the lyrics, while those who believe everything fed to them by their overlords believe the lyrics are making fun of conspiracy theorists.

  I was twenty-nine years old in 1992, newly married, one year before the birth of our first child, working on getting my MBA at night, trying to move up the corporate ladder, and still ignorant of how the world was run by unseen men functioning as an invisible government.

  I’ve always had a skeptical nature and knew in my teens that JFK was not killed by a lone gunman in the Book Depository building, but the hustle and bustle of life kept me from examining so called “conspiracy theories” on a deeper level. Through the 90s I was busy raising a family, working long hours, paying a mortgage, auto loans, tuition bills, and sports fees for my three boys. There was no time to breathe, let alone examine the truth behind how the world functioned.

  9/11 changed all that. Something didn’t add up. Somehow the 341- page Patriot Act, creating a new agency and numerous new unlawful governmental powers, was supposedly written, and voted on within four weeks of 9/11. Only three Republicans voted against the bill – including Ron Paul, who I had never heard of at the time. The unwarranted invasion of Iraq in 2003 based on lies and propaganda, led by Cheney and Rumsfeld, was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  

  I began to read anti-establishment blogs and investigated the stories being peddled by the government, media, and Wall Street. I started reading articles and books by the likes of Ron Paul and other opponents of neocons, the Fed, the military industrial complex, the Wall Street cabal, propaganda spewing MSM, and the Deep State. I turned myself from a naïve member of the ignorant masses into an anti-government libertarian anarchist, who hasn’t believed a word uttered by any politician, MSM talking head, celebrity, or Wall Street beholden toady in the last sixteen years.

  By early 2008 I was writing articles and sending Op-Eds to my local newspapers. During the summer of 2008 I was writing articles on Seeking Alpha and Financial Sense predicting a banking crisis, financial system meltdown and global recession. Shortly thereafter, Seeking Alpha and Financial Sense began censoring my articles and my “conspiracy theorist” credentials were minted.

  I have believed less and less of what they have been selling as the years have progressed, opening my mind to the likelihood those who control the levers of society do not have my best interests at heart and are solely driven by a carnivorous desire for wealth, power, and control over the masses. I now approach life with an eyes wide open skepticism of everything and everyone. I’m not a pessimist, but a realist who only trusts data I can replicate, facts I can substantiate, and people who make cogent fact-based arguments without a bias influenced by money.

  The world is a scary place and the men constituting the “invisible government”, pulling the strings, and using their limitless wealth to buy off politicians, the media, the entertainment industry, academia, the medical industry, and so called “experts”, are satanically driven by their seemingly insatiable thirst for ruling the world. They believe their ends always justify their means. These sociopathic bastards don’t care how many people they kill or how many lives they financially ruin in their relentless pursuit of mammon. They proclaim themselves to be gods, based on the power they can wield through their ill-gotten wealth. Their arrogance and hubris know no bounds.

  

  We are currently living in an Age of Mass Deceit not seen before in human history. The advent of advanced technology and instant mass media messaging has provided these evil fiends with the means to spin their web of lies and essentially brain wash and /or terrify the ignorant masses into doing whatever they are told. The last few years have proven these psychological propaganda techniques, applied through the use of mass media, bought off politicians and “experts”, and a compliant sheep-like populace dumbed down by decades of government school indoctrination, has essentially destroyed western civilization, with the denouement of global war and depopulation of the planet still playing out.

  As it turns out, “conspiracy theorists” like me and a slew of other critical thinking individuals, have turned out to be right on just about everything we have been saying for the last fourteen or so years. The Deep State acts as if disinformation, as defined by those engineering the false narratives, is a threat to the nation and has colluded with the MSM, Facebook, Twitter, and Google to suppress any alternative viewpoints, censor those who can disprove their narratives, and de-platform anyone who dares question their authority and approved storyline. DHS and the social media tyrants coordinated to throw a presidential election, which is a traitorous act and would be prosecuted in a law-abiding system.

  During the Covid scamdemic, they achieved the goal set by CIA head William Casey in 1981. Everything the American public believed since March 2020 was false. Some people seem to be wakening from their mass psychosis formation stupor, but it may be too late. The damage is done, and the tens of millions of psychologically broken individuals are still malleable material for the Deep State.

  

  We are nothing more than disposable pieces on a game board to those calling the shots and running the show. The game of Risk has taken on a new meaning from what I knew in my youth. There is now a new narrative being spun, where all the tyrants who demanded subservience to all government dictates, lockdowns, masking, social distancing, and being coerced into becoming guinea pigs for an untested, experimental, Big Pharma enriching gene altering therapy disguised and sold as a vaccine under threat of losing your livelihood, want dispensation and forgiveness for their crimes.

  You weren’t allowed to say goodbye to your loved ones or attend their funerals, but the chosen ones dined at extravagant restaurants and allowed liquor stores and Wal-Mart to stay open. Your small business was destroyed, while Amazon made billions.

  These murderous hypocrites killed thousands of seniors by knowingly putting infected patients into old age homes, killed thousands more by putting treatable patients on ventilators and Fauci’s remdesivir, killed thousands more by not allowing safe and effective treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to be prescribed by doctors, and have killed and injured thousands more by forcing a dangerous Big Pharma toxic concoction on tens of millions through threats, mandates and a never ending stream of lies. All for a flu with a miniscule fatality rate for those under 85 years old and not morbidly obese. This was the biggest scam in human history, perpetrated by Gates, Fauci, Schwab and their willing co-conspirator minions in the media, medical industry, and government.

  

  These “experts” seeking forgiveness because they were just caught up in the “hysteria” of the moment weren’t wrong. They were lying from the outset and need to pay dearly for their crimes against humanity. Nuremberg 2.0 is the only thing that will satisfy myself and all the other dissenters who risked their livelihoods by refusing to go along. We were scorned, ridiculed, ostracized, censored, fired, de-platformed, wished dead by the authoritarian minded sheep who demanded compliance, and treated like outcasts by family members who believed the narrative hook, line and sinker.

  I don’t believe. I think. And I don’t forget or forgive these feckless tin pot dictators. They have shown their colors and now that the tide seems to be turning, we must channel our inner Conan the Barbarian. We need to crush our enemies, see them driven before us, and hear the lamentation of their women.

  They pushed their agenda too far and too fast out of desperation, as the financial underpinnings of their fake world order began to strain and crumble. This desperation exposed their blatant lies to a vast array of critical thinkers across the world who have not been deterred in exposing the falsehoods on social media, blogs, and free speech websites. When the truth was censored and suppressed on Youtube, alternatives like Rumble, Bitchute, and Odysee sprung to life. When Facebook and Twitter banned truth tellers, new platforms like Gab and Truth Social were created.

  

  Writers and doctors silenced by social media platforms, like Glenn Greenwald, Alex Berenson, Robert Malone, and many others gravitated to the free speech forum of Substack where they are free to speak the truth and earn money through voluntary subscriptions. If Elon Musk follows through on his promises, Twitter will once again become a free speech forum rather than the social media censorship arm of the Democratic Party and the Deep State.

  I am under no illusions that the Republicans regaining the House and Senate next week will change the direction of the country. It would just be a speed bump temporarily slowing down our descent into the abyss. The Uniparty in DC, where both sides agree 80% of the time on frivolous spending, never ending wars, debasement of our currency, and limiting the rights of citizens, will continue to be funded and controlled by Soros, Gates, and other shady billionaires operating in smoky rooms where your opinions are not sought. The authoritarians will not yield without a fight. This sign in the upscale Capital section of D.C. on Halloween tells you everything you need to know about these brain damaged loons. They remain your enemy.

  

  If you still believe JFK was assassinated by a lone gunman; the official story of what really happened on 9/11; that Epstein killed himself and numerous celebrities, politicians, and financiers aren’t pedophiles; the Federal Reserve isn’t controlled by Wall Street; Klaus Schwab and his WEF acolytes are not trying to Reset the world where you will eat bugs, own nothing, and be happy; Bill Gates is not creating viruses and investing in vaccine makers, while buying up farmland, as part of his dream to decrease the “surplus” population; Soros is not funding the election of communists whose sole purpose is to destroy the cities and states they are running; scientific experts like Fauci are not swayed by the vast amounts of money they are paid by Big Pharma to fake their research and ignore the deaths from these products; Covid was not the weaponization of the annual flu with a billion dollar marketing campaign used to implement government control of the population, which will be expanded during the next engineered crisis; January 6th was an armed insurrection; Putin is literally Hitler and the U.S. did not blow up the Nordstream pipelines while waging a proxy war against Russia; a drug addict nudist from Berkley with a pride flag and BLM flag hanging outside his dilapidated bus is a MAGA underwear terrorist and not a male prostitute picked up by Paul Pelosi; and the Democrats are not cheating again in these 2022 mid-term elections, you are the real conspiracy theorists.

  

  The believers choose to willfully ignore the facts either because they are deliberately obtuse as a mechanism to combat their cognitive dissonance, or they are compensated to support and perpetuate the false narratives of their ruling overlords. I understand my opinions and writings are nothing but a drop in the ocean as this tsunami rush towards our shores. But I will continue to fight for what I believe and will not bend the knee to the malicious forces who hate me and everything I stand for. I urge everyone to heed the wisdom of two of the most brilliant minds of the 20th Century and do your utmost to keep the truth alive.

  

  *  *  *
  It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can’t do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 19:00

• Chinese EV Battery Giant CATL Is Making A Global Expansion Push
  Chinese EV Battery Giant CATL Is Making A Global Expansion Push

  EV battery manufacturer Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL) is growing its global expansion yet again.

  The world’s largest EV battery producer, which had announced a $233 million factory in Germany back in 2018, has made several moves this year to increase its global footprint. Over the summer, it announced it would be building a $7.2 billion factory in Hungary. Now, plans for a factory in Mexico are also being finalized, according to Caixin. 

  The report also says that the manufacturer could be looking to expand with plants in the U.S. and Indonesia. 

  CATL was barely founded a decade ago, in 2011, but caught the tremendous wave of the EV industry in China (and its related subsidies). As the report notes, the company caught the government subsidy tailwind in 2015 and never looked back:

  In 2015, CATL was included on a government list of EV-battery makers which carmakers had to source from to be eligible for subsidies. This narrowing of the field of competition helped the company hoover up the business from domestic and international carmakers riding the wave of growth. For example, CATL was chosen to be Volkswagen’s sole battery supplier in the country, CEO Matthias Muller told Caixin in early 2018.

  CATL was able to seize this opportunity in part by achieving technological breakthroughs which made its products more competitive than its rivals. The company pioneered the use of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. Though these batteries are safer, they have lower energy density, meaning that EVs powered by such batteries have lower driving range compared to those using nickel-cobalt-manganese (NCM) batteries. But CATL managed to improve their density by redesigning the battery packs with fewer parts.

  

  CATL’s lead among the Chinese EV market is starting to slip, dropping to 47% market share in the first 8 months of this year from 50% in 2020, the report noted. China Aviation Lithium Battery Co. Ltd. (CALB) and BYD are two major competitors in China. 

  A source told Caixin that the company’s outlook on the industry is  “you either forge ahead or drift downstream.” The company will face substantial competitive forces in places like South Korea and Japan, and will have to navigate geopolitical crosswinds when attempting to enter markets like Germany and the U.S. The company is looking to upgrade its product lineup in Germany, the report says. 

  Washington’s Inflation Reduction Act “includes provisions that stipulate EV-makers must source batteries domestically to enjoy subsidies” and in Europe, “stringent environmental rules could also present challenges”. 

  But CATL has already started to make inroads with EV companies outside of China. For example, Tesla announced last October that it would use CATL’s batteries in its cars delivered to global consumers, not just for cars in China. Ford announced in July that it would “import LFP batteries from CATL for its North American electric pickup trucks and SUVs”, Caixin wrote. 

  Liu Yanlong, general secretary at China Industrial Association of Power Sources, concluded: “By setting up production facilities, battery companies can better serve clients at their proximity by reducing costs of transportation and other logistics.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 18:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• UK Gov't "War Gamed" Emergency Plans For Multi-Day Power Blackouts; Leaked Docs Reveal
  UK Gov’t “War Gamed” Emergency Plans For Multi-Day Power Blackouts; Leaked Docs Reveal

  The Guardian has obtained documents marked “official sensitive,” which show the government has “war-gamed” emergency plans for power blackouts lasting up to a week. 

  Documents are not for public consumption, warn a “reasonable worst-case scenario” power blackout would roil all segments of the economy. Transport, food, water supply, communications, and energy would grind to a halt. 

  In such a scenario, the government will provide citizens with food, water, and shelter if power blackouts last more than several days. 

  

  Earlier this week, UK’s Met Office published a three-month outlook for winter. Despite warm weather today, temperatures are expected to be colder than average as the heating season begins shortly:

  “The likelihood of a colder three-month period overall is slightly greater than normal,” the forecasts said.

  Preparing for the inevitable crisis has already begun. Whitehall officials’ secret plan, dubbed “Programme Yarrow,” has held a number of exercises with government departments and councils across the country in recent weeks to stress test collaboration efforts. 

  We first caught wind of increasing power blackout risks across the UK in early October when the British National Grid warned there might not be enough natural gas and electric imports from other parts of Europe later in the cold season. 

  “We’re heading into winter in an unprecedented situation. Even during the cold war, the Soviet Union kept the gas flowing so it’s very unpredictable,” said one senior industry source.

  The Guardian said government insiders have admitted to planning exercises and preparing for the inevitable as an energy crisis is unavoidable this winter. 

  “All governments do contingency planning for worst-case scenarios but the truth is that we are vulnerable as a country as a direct consequence of a decade of failed Conservative energy policy.

  “Banning onshore wind, slashing investment in energy efficiency, stalling nuclear and closing gas storage have led to higher bills and reliance on gas imports, leaving us more exposed to the impact of Putin’s use of energy as a geopolitical weapon,” Ed Miliband, the shadow climate secretary, said.

  Last month, The Guardian revealed secret scripts prepared for BBC news anchors to read on air if rolling blackouts strike the country. The purpose of the talking points is to calm the public during a “major loss of power” event. 

  Only analog FM radio stations will broadcast messages to the population during a national emergency because power grid failures would cripple communication networks. 

  One source made it clear that Brits aren’t supposed to know about Programme Yarrow: 

  “The government doesn’t want any publicity on Yarrow, as they don’t want it to be seen as linked to Ukraine, energy supply and the cost of living. But we need to think about how we can help people in advance. The fact they’re talking about it now means they have a real concern it could happen.”

  The good news so far is that weather has been on the warm side across the UK for October but is set to slide from here as the heating season begins. 

  

  How many cold snaps will it take for the UK to stumble into a situation where it might have to ration power? 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 02:45

• Poland Begins Construction Of Razor-Wire Barrier Along Border With Russia's Kaliningrad Amid Security Concerns
  Poland Begins Construction Of Razor-Wire Barrier Along Border With Russia’s Kaliningrad Amid Security Concerns

  Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

  Poland has begun constructing a razor-wire fence on its border with Russia’s Kaliningrad, where Moscow has a significant military presence, officials said on Nov. 2.

  

  Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and defense minister Mariusz Blaszczak meet with service members near the frontier, as hundreds of migrants gather on the Belarusian side of the border with Poland in an attempt to cross it, near Kuznica in Bialostocka, Poland, on Nov. 9, 2021. (Polish Prime Minister’s Office/Handout via Reuters)

  Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak told reporters at a news conference that he has ordered the temporary barrier to be built immediately to ensure that Poland is secure. The barrier will measure 2.5 meters (eight feet) high and three meters (10 feet) deep along the 210-kilometer (130-mile) border.

  Błaszczak cited security concerns as the reason behind the construction at the border, which comes amid ongoing tensions with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

  Warsaw is also concerned that the Kremlin plans to facilitate illegal border crossings by Asian and African immigrants in an effort to destabilize Europe, concerns prompted by a recent decision by Russia’s aviation authority to launch flights from the Middle East and North Africa to Kaliningrad.

  The border area, which is patrolled by border guards, has no physical barrier. Polish soldiers specializing in demining began carrying out the initial prep work on Nov. 2.

  The barrier is due to be completed by the end of 2023, Błaszczak said.

  He referenced the 2021 crisis during which thousands of African and Middle Eastern illegal aliens attempted to cross the border of Belarus, a close ally of Russia, into Poland. Many of those border crossers died, and Poland subsequently erected a steel wall on the Belarus border to stem the flow of illegal immigrants. That border was completed in June.

  At the time, Polish and other European Union leaders accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s government of encouraging immigrants from the Middle East to travel to Minsk and make their way into Europe.

  Belarus officials denied those claims.

  

  A member of the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service stands near the border with Belarus and Poland in the Volyn region of Ukraine on Nov. 16, 2021. (Gleb Garanich/Reuters)

  Poland–Russia Border ‘Stable and Calm’

  Human rights groups then accused Poland of double standards after the nation welcomed an influx of Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion while simultaneously moving to prevent Middle Eastern and North African migrants from entering via the Belarus border.

  “If you give a lift to a refugee at the Ukrainian border, you are a hero. If you do it at the Belarus border, you are a smuggler and could end up in jail for eight years,” said Natalia Gebert, founder and CEO of Dom Otwarty, or Open House, a Polish nongovernmental organization that helps refugees, according to a June report by The Associated Press.

  Kaliningrad is a semi-exclave—a portion of a country that’s geographically separated from the main part by a surrounding foreign territory—that lies on the Baltic Sea and is sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania and separated from Belarus by a border corridor.

  Despite there being no barrier along the border, a spokesperson for the Polish Border Guard told Reuters that there were no illegal entries from Kaliningrad into Poland in October.

  “The Polish–Russian border is stable and calm. There has been no illegal crossing of the border,” Polish border spokesperson Anna Michalska said. “We are not only there in times of peace. We are prepared for various crisis situations, and after what happened on the Polish–Belarusian border, we are even more prepared for everything, for all of the darkest scenarios.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/03/2022 – 02:00

• Medical Board Moves To Strip Dr. Peter McCullough Of Certifications
  Medical Board Moves To Strip Dr. Peter McCullough Of Certifications

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

  A medical board has moved to strip top cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough of his certifications in internal medicine and cardiovascular disease, claiming that he provided misleading medical information to the public about COVID-19 vaccines.

  

  The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) informed McCullough of the action in a recent letter.

  The board stated that McCullough’s statements questioning COVID-19 vaccination for healthy people younger than the age of 50 and pointing out that Americans have died after getting a COVID-19 vaccine triggered a review, which led to a recommendation that McCullough’s board certifications be revoked.

  The ABIM’s Credentials and Certification Committee found that McCullough had “provided false or inaccurate medical information to the public,” the letter states.

  “By casting doubt on the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines with such seemingly authoritative statements, made in various official forums and widely reported in various media, your statements pose serious concerns for patient safety,” it reads. “Moreover, they are inimical to the ethics and professionalism standards for board certification.”

  McCullough was given until Nov. 18 to appeal.

  If he appeals, the matter will be considered by a panel designated by the ABIM’s Board of Directors and at least one hearing would be held. The panel could accept the recommendation, rescind it, or impose an alternative punishment.

  McCullough told The Epoch Times in an email that he’ll appeal.

  Allegations

  In a May notice of potential disciplinary measures, the board said it had learned that McCullough made “numerous widely reported and disseminated public statements about the purported dangers of, or lack of justification for, Covid-19 vaccines.”

  As an example, the board cites McCullough’s March 10, 2021, testimony before a Texas Senate panel in which he said that people who have recovered from COVID-19 have “complete and durable immunity” and that there was no rationale for vaccinating such a person.

  McCullough also said at the time that there was “no scientific rationale” for people who are healthy and younger than 50 to receive one of the vaccines.

  In a declaration in a court case, meanwhile, McCullough said that more than 18,000 COVID-19 vaccine deaths had been submitted to the U.S.-run Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and that the number of reported deaths was far above that of all other vaccines combined.

  ABIM says the statements might violate the board’s policy on false or inaccurate medical information, which states that “providing false or inaccurate information to patients or the public is unprofessional and unethical” and could lead to sanctions.

  McCullough responded the following month, requesting the matter be dismissed and offering a point-by-point rebuttal.

  To back up his statements on COVID-19 vaccination, for instance, McCullough referenced data that shows people younger than 50 have a minuscule risk of death after contracting the illness, particularly if they don’t have serious underlying medical conditions.

  He also noted the availability of COVID-19 treatments, that the COVID-19 vaccine spike protein has been linked to problems such as blood clotting, and that the vaccines have provided poor protection against infection and no protection against transmission.

  McCullough also referenced research that found people who have natural immunity—a group excluded from the vaccines’ clinical trials—are at higher risk of side effects from the vaccines and have better protection than the vaccinated.

  He said that based on his medical opinion, drawing from his medical education, clinical experience, and review of scientific information, people who have recovered from COVID-19 “have robust and durable immunity against the severe outcomes of adjudicated COVID-19 hospitalization and death recognizing that the Omicron variant has broken through natural immunity.”

  He also said that there “is no medical necessity or clinical indication for vaccination of a COVID-19 recovered patient since they have already had the condition for which the vaccines are indicated to prevent” and that the scientific evidence doesn’t support vaccinating people younger than the age of 50.

   

  ABIM Response

  In the decision letter, ABIM said the statements on the alleged lack of benefit from COVID-19 vaccines against mortality for those younger than 50 were “not factual, scientifically grounded, or consensus driven.”

  The board based that finding on data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that list more than 71,000 Americans in that population dying from COVID-19 as of Oct. 6. The board referenced no studies or other data.

  The board stated that the statements about COVID-19 vaccine deaths also weren’t factual because the CDC says COVID-19 vaccine benefits outweigh the risks. According to the CDC, serious side effects from the vaccines include heart inflammation, blood clotting, and severe allergic shock. All three can cause death.

  “Nothing in your declaration submitted in response to the Notice, or in the materials submitted to ABIM on your behalf, compels a different conclusion,” ABIM wrote.

  The board’s only other citation was to the World Health Organization, which stated in March that billions of people around the world “have been safely vaccinated against COVID-19” and that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines “have been rigorously assessed for safety and clinical trials have shown that they provide a long-lasting immune response.”

  The latter statement is false; the protection against both infection and severe disease quickly drops, according to recent CDC data. Some studies have found negative effectiveness within months. The waning effectiveness prompted the CDC to change its definition of a vaccine.

  McCullough said he’s concerned that ABIM will “continue to cherry-pick data and claim they have ownership over the ‘truth’ when in reality we are simply discussing data from a rapidly evolving pandemic.”

  “ABIM should be only concerned with my clinical track record … which is perfect,” he said. “Board scores and clinical practice are of the highest quality.”

  Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who invited McCullough to Capitol Hill to testify, said the doctor “has dedicated his life to saving others” and called for ABIM to reverse its decision.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/02/2022 – 23:30

• Judge Stops Arizona "Mule Watchers" From Ballot Box Surveillance Tactics
  Judge Stops Arizona “Mule Watchers” From Ballot Box Surveillance Tactics

  A federal judge in Arizona has put the brakes on various tactics used by self-described “mule watchers” – who have been surveilling ballot boxes by taking photos and videos and posting information online, often while wearing body armor and weapons.

  

  The group, Clean Elections USA, says it wants to prevent voter fraud by staking out ballot boxes to catch “mules” – people who illegally catch multiple ballots.

  In a lawsuit against the “Mule Watchers” – named after the 2022 film “2,000 Mules” which claimed evidence of systematic election fraud – a group called the League of Women Voters said the election integrity group’s actions amounted to “time-tested methods of voter intimidation.”

  Prior to a Tuesday hearing on the matter, the mule watchers agreed to cease some activities, such as open-carrying firearms or wearing visible body armor within 250 feet of ballot boxes, the NY Times reports.

  Judge Michael T. Liburdi agreed with the League, issuing a temporary restraining order which prohibits the mule watchers “and other persons in active concert or participation with” from taking photos or videos of voters, or spreading information about voters online – as well as “making false statements” about the state’s statutes regarding early voting.

  “It is imperative we balance the defendants’ right to engage in First Amendment-protected activity with the plaintiffs’ right to act without intimidation or harassment,” Liburdi said following a long hearing in Phoenix, which included testimony from a man who said he was harassed at a ballot box. He went on to say Clean Elections founder Melody Jennings went on Steve Bannon’s podcast to say they had ‘caught a mule.’

  According to the man, who testified without revealing his name publicly for fear of harassment, eight to 10 people filmed the couple and told them they were “hunting mules.” Images of him and his car were posted online and Ms. Jennings subsequently appeared on the podcast of Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump adviser, saying they had caught a mule and “blasted it out viral.”

  Judge Liburdi called his experience particularly compelling, and noted that it went well beyond testimony from last week in a parallel case against Clean Elections USA. In that lawsuit, brought by the Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans and Voto Latino, the judge declined to enjoin Clean Elections USA’s activities, saying he had not seen any evidence that real harm had befallen any voters. That ruling is being appealed in the Ninth Circuit. -NYT

  Liburdi also called out Jennings for incorrectly claiming that only spouses could return ballots on behalf of Arizona voters, when in fact housemates and caregivers may do so as well.

  “This does not prohibit Miss Jennings from correctly stating what the law is,” said the judge, who said he would be drafting a preliminary injunction against Clean Elections USA over the next few days. “I just have a problem with her stating it incorrectly in a way that is intimidating or coercive to voting behavior.”

  A lawyer for Clean Elections USA and Ms. Jennings, Alexander Kolodin, said he would most likely appeal the ruling – arguing that restrictions on photography or online posting and discussing AZ voting laws infringed on free speech.

  “It seems like our clients are on trial for the entire state or anybody who wants to participate in ballot box monitoring or even share their views,” he said.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/02/2022 – 23:10

• US Vows To Never Accept North Korea As A Nuclear Weapons State
  US Vows To Never Accept North Korea As A Nuclear Weapons State

  Authored by Kyle Anzalone & Will Porter via The Libertarian Institute,

  Washington insists on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and will never accept Pyongyang as a nuclear weapons state, the State Department said. The US also repeated warnings that North Korea would soon test a nuclear weapon. 

  Asked if the United States would “eventually recognize North Korea as a nuclear state” during a Monday presser, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters “That is not our policy. I do not foresee that ever becoming our policy.”

  “The complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula has been our objective since the conclusion of our DPRK policy review last year,” Price continued. “That has not changed. I don’t foresee that changing going forward.”

  

  Across several administrations, Washington has ordered Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons time and again since the country detonated its first warhead in 2006. After more than a decade of fruitless demands, then-President Donald Trump made diplomatic headway following multiple rounds of negotiations in 2018, with North Korea agreeing to a pause on missile and nuclear tests in exchange for a similar moratorium on US-South Korean war games. 

  However, that deal was upended just one year later, after Trump resumed demands for complete denuclearization, driving North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un to abandon the talks.

  In September, Kim signed a new decree codifying North Korea’s nuclear weapons doctrine, declaring it would not give up its arsenal unless the rest of the world did the same, while also urging the United States to end its aggressive policies.

  Though Washington claims it desires a denuclearized Korean Peninsula, it has repeatedly vowed to defend South Korea and Japan with its own atomic arsenal, keeping large swaths of the region under the US ‘nuclear umbrella.’ Under those conditions, Pyongyang has been unwilling to entertain talks with the Joe Biden administration, which has also continued – and in some cases escalated – provocative joint military drills with Seoul.

  The latest round of war games kicked off this week, seeing American and South Korean warplanes take part in their largest-ever aerial drills, following several major joint exercises in the weeks prior, some also involving Tokyo.

  Amid the escalating military activity, Pyongyang has carried out a record number of weapons tests in 2022, including one drill involving preparations to deploy a tactical nuclear missile. While Price warned that North Korea’s next step could be to test a nuclear weapon, Western officials have repeated that claim for several months and no test has materialized.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/02/2022 – 22:50

• "Mattress Mack" Bet $10 Million On Astros To Win World Series
  “Mattress Mack” Bet $10 Million On Astros To Win World Series

  A Houston businessman has placed a total of $10 million in bets on the Astros to win the World Series. He says his wagers carry an average payout of 7.5-to-1, which means a Houston championship would bring him $75 million — if the Astros can overcome their current deficit to the upstart Philadelphia Phillies. 

  That would be the largest haul in sports betting history, according to the Houston Chronicle. 

  Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale, the 71-year-old owner of Gallery Furniture in Houston, is famed for making enormous sports bets that hedge his sports-linked furniture promotions. This year’s gimmick: 

  “When you purchase a Tempur-Pedic, Stearns & Foster or Sealy mattress sleep set priced at $3,000 or more, and if the Houston Astros win it all in the 2022 final championship series, your purchase is FREE!”

  While there’s only upside for his customers, McIngvale could see $10 million of his estimated $300 million net worth vanish. Then again, he reportedly won $15 million betting on the Kansas Jayhawks to win the NCAA men’s basketball tournament earlier this year, so he may well consider this Astros bet as using “house money.” 

  “Winning the bet is very important, but more importantly, winning the bets allows us to give money back to all of our customers who bought about $75 million worth of furniture,” McIngvale tells CNBC.

  In Tuesday night’s Game 3 in front of a Philadelphia crowd, the Astros were positively pummeled by the Phillies, 7-0. The win put the Phillies up 2 games to 1 in the best-of-seven series, with the next two games played in Philadelphia Wednesday and Thursday (8:03 pm ET on Fox.) 

  McIngvale has been a huge backer of the Astros, even after the team’s reputation was reputation forever stained by a 2017-18 cheating scandal in which video cameras were used to steal opposing catchers’ signals, and the banging of trash cans — or silence — was used to tell Astros batters what pitch to expect.

  

  This week, he’s on the road to support his team. Ahead of Tuesday’s game, he enjoyed a warm welcome from Phillies fans who spotted the iconic fan and sports bettor:

  Now I know why they call it the City of Brotherly Love. These @Phillies fans couldn’t be nicer. Our @astros are still going to win tonight!#levelup #AstrosVsPhillies pic.twitter.com/1DSpV8su2X

  — @MattressMack (@MattressMack) October 31, 2022

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

  After the lopsided Astros loss, things weren’t so pretty: 

  Houston businessman Jim McIngvale, known as Mattress Mack, appears to be seen in a verbal altercation with Phillies fans following the Astros loss on Tuesday eveningpic.twitter.com/8vf0D6T8gu

  — YouWager.lv (@YouWager_FF) November 2, 2022

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

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/02/2022 – 22:30

• It Was The Worst Final 90 Minutes To A Fed Day In History, As JPM Warns "Squeeze Has Been Squoze"
  It Was The Worst Final 90 Minutes To A Fed Day In History, As JPM Warns “Squeeze Has Been Squoze”

  It will live in the annals of market infamy as the day the Fed rugpulled the market, when first a very dovish statement sparked a frenzied buying spree, only to be followed by a blistering, hawkish assault on the bulls during Powell’s press conference, leading to risk freefall, and the worst final 90 minutes of a Fed day in history, according to Bespoke.

  

  In his EOD wrap, Goldman tradaer John Flood agrees that today was a Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde kinda day, when the Fed statement, ostensibly written by the dovish Lael Brainard, sparked a risk-on buying frenzy, only to crater when Powell said it was not only premature to think about pausing rates, but said that “incoming data since our last meeting suggests that the ultimate level of interest rates will be higher than previously expected” suggesting that the dots will be revised materially up in December.

  75bps it is (for the 4th consecutive meeting). Table now set for a potential pull back to 50bps in Dec (market was already pricing this in coming into today). Official 2pm statement was indeed dovish: The Fed said it will consider existing tightening steps, the lagged effect of policy, and “economic and financial developments” (all dovish phrases).

  However, during the presser Powell was quite hawkish: “VERY PREMATURE TO THINK ABOUT PAUSING RATE HIKES” was the line that really stood out to me. After this comment we saw Macro HFs press shorts and L/Os outright cxl bids in singles that they had layered lower in the mkt. We had steady L/O supply in supercap tech all session (again). Our U.S. equities franchise ended with -449bps sell skew vs 30d avg of -135bp sell skew. Growth factor -$838mm notional sell skew which is most dramatic since 8/22/22 and in 79th percentile vs previous 52 weeks.

  As the selling accelerated, all support levels were taken out:

  S&P 50dma of 3822 didn’t provide any support. CTAs and Corporates can’t prop this tape up on their own. Lower for longer now when it comes to US stocks post today’s developments.

  For Flood’s downbeat conclusion to today’s market action, he uses Jpow’s own summation of today’s message:

  “Okay. So I would also say it’s premature to discuss pausing. It’s not something that we’re thinking about. That’s really not a conversation to be had now. We have a ways to go. The last thing I’ll say is that I would want people to understand our commitment to getting this done and to not making the mistake of not doing enough or the mistake of withdrawing our strong policy and doing that too soon. I control those messages. That’s my job.”

  The pivotal moment in #Fed press conference:

  When (incorrectly) told the market had reacted positively, Jerome Powell seems frustrated and lists ONLY reasons why this is the wrong interpretation.

  Very telling for #stocks.$QQQ $SPY #macro #inflation pic.twitter.com/Vb9nhuskV7

  — Andy West, PhD (@andycwest) November 2, 2022

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

  JPMorgan’s Andrew Tyler agreed with Goldman, saying that – to use the parlance of the apes – the squeeze has been squoze.

  Ron Adler sums up the Equity view, “There hasn’t been a real shift in the cadence or complexion of our flows. We’ve seen some faster $ players look to sell, but I wouldn’t say there’s a heightened sense of urgency. As noted earlier, buyers were buying this am on the hope that we would rally, knowing they had more stock lower to buy; they were set up to buy on weakness (which they are doing ~3800), not to chase. I’ll leave the parsing through Powell’s comments to others, but my simple view -> those looking for immediate gratification should continue to buckle up (this is going to take a while), and while the rate of increase will slow, Terminal Rate isn’t ready to go lower yet, and probably trends higher. The most recent squeeze has probably been appropriately squeezed at this point.

  In retrospect, everything Powell said was with the benefit of solid payrolls numbers backing him. Let’s see how fast his enthusiasm to crush inflation taper, so to speak, once we get a -100,000 NFP print, which judging by what is happening in Silicon Valley, may be as soon as next month, especially since the BLS “seasonal adjustments” team will no longer have Biden propaganda henchmen breathing down their neck after next week’s midterms avalanche.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/02/2022 – 22:15

• RCP Now Projects 54 GOP Senate Seats As New Hampshire Leaning Red
  RCP Now Projects 54 GOP Senate Seats As New Hampshire Leaning Red

  It looks like “Red Wave” in the the 2022 midterm may crest even higher, as the New Hampshire senate race is now tilting toward the GOP in what would be another flip of a currently Democratic seat. 

  A multi-week narrowing of a 9-point lead held by incumbent Maggie Hassan has culminated in a brand new St. Anselm College poll that puts Republican challenger Don Bolduc up by a percentage point. That’s within the poll’s 2.5% margin of error — but who knows the extent to which, like other polls, it understates GOP strength.   

  

  Chalk up the shift to Bolduc winning over more independents, who comprise about 40% of the electorate:

  “Hassan’s lead among undeclared voters has evaporated,” reports St. Anselm’s pollsters. “After leading by 8 points (49%-41%) among undeclareds in September, Hassan is now tied with Bolduc at 45%.” 

  Bolduc’s favorability rating has risen from 41% to 46%, putting him just ahead of Hassan, whose favorability has sagged. Asked about Bolduc’s surge on Tuesday, Hassan said, “We’ve always known it would be a very, very tight race.”

  Hassan, a former New Hampshire state legislator and governor, is in her first term in the US Senate. Bolduc is a retired US Army brigadier general who spent most of his career in Special Forces, surviving both a helicopter crash and a 2,000-pound bomb in a friendly fire incident. He has acknowledged having coped with post-traumatic stress disorder. 

   

  According to The Hill, Bolduc had struggled to convince Republicans to coalesce around his candidacy, as he’d faced controversy over previously claiming that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. As he’s backed away from that rhetoric, his fortunes have risen, putting him on the threshold of victory. 

  On Monday, Bolduc received Trump’s endorsement via the former president’s account on his Truth Social platform. Trump couldn’t resist including a scolding of his endorsee: 

  “General Don Bolduc has run a great campaign to be the U.S. Senator from the beautiful State of New Hampshire. He was a strong and proud ‘Election Denier,’ a big reason that he won the Nomination, but he then disavowed.” 

  Because of the swing in the New Hampshire race, RealClear Politics is now projecting that Republicans will control 54 seats in January, holding on to all their current seats while flipping seats in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Nevada. 

  

  As has been the case with Republican challenger Blake Masters in the Arizona Senate race, national GOP organizations dialed back their spending on the New Hampshire race when Bolduc was trailing by a significant margin, only for Bolduc to battle back into contention anyway. He’s done so while emphasizing energy policy and southern border security. 

  Bolduc has opposed Washington’s relentless infusion of weapons and billions of dollars into Ukraine without any accompanying pursuit of diplomacy.

  “Where’s the rest of the strategy? How are we going to get these guys to the table to talk about peace?” he asked in August. “We’re not the World Bank. We’re not the Bank of Ukraine. We’re not the bank of anybody. We’re not the world police.” 

  Former Democrat and fellow veteran Tulsi Gabbard has campaigned for Bolduc, and recently penned an endorsement op-ed at Fox News: 

  “Having both seen the cost of war firsthand, we understand the importance of peace, and how essential and urgent it is that we stop spending taxpayer dollars to escalate the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, walk us back from the brink of nuclear war, and support a negotiated end to this disastrous war.”

   

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/02/2022 – 21:50

• The Lukoil Loophole: How Russian Oil Sidesteps Sanctions To End Up In The US
  The Lukoil Loophole: How Russian Oil Sidesteps Sanctions To End Up In The US

  Authored by Mike Shedlock via MIshTalk.com,

  I describe the roundtrip process in which Russian oil refined in Italy makes its way to to the US. It’s a real hoot…

  

  Image composite from WSJ video below 

  The Wall Street Journal has an interesting video that describes How Russian Crude Avoids Sanctions and Ends Up in the US.

  With an upfront ad, that is a free WSJ video link.

  The Lukoil Connection

  

  Image composite from WSJ video

  Sanction Avoidance Process 

  • US sanctions are on crude oil, not refined products.

  • Lukoil, Russia’s second largest oil and gas company was not sanctioned by the US.

  • Lukoil’s refinery in Sicily is the second largest in Italy and fifth largest in Europe.

  • A Lukoil refinery in Italy once processed crude from multiple countries. Now it inputs are 93 percent from Russia. 

  • After refining, the country of origin is Italy, not Russia. This is due to longstanding practice of changing the country of origin to where oil is refined. 

  • The refined product then makes its way Exxon and Lukoil plants in New Jersey and Texas. 

  • Lukoil still has a gas station presence in the US and it distributes products to eleven states. 

  Lukoil Stations in 11 US States

  

  Image composite from WSJ video

  Note: Most of the 230 Lukoil gas stations in the US are owned by individual American franchisees, not the oil giant itself. 

  Understanding the Process

  • The US has sanction exclusions for oil “substantially transformed into a foreign-made product.”

  • US refiners cannot process Russian crude, but Italian refiners can, then distribute the product here. 

  • In return, US can send its refined products to the EU, completing the round trip! 

  Lukoil is 6th largest refiner in Europe. It went from processing 30% Russian oil to 93%. That’s a pretty big sieve even if amounts to US are small.

  Conveniently timed for the US election, European bans on Lukoil do not come into play until December 5. 

  Unless the EU backs down, this could lead to another surge in the price of gasoline in December.

  Meanwhile, In eleven US states, people are filling up their tanks in part with Russian oil products via the above convoluted means.

  The US Treasury department refused to comment on this process. Gee, I wonder why.

  Biden says this is all Putin’s fault, while traipsing the globe begging Saudi Arabia and Venezuela for more oil. 

  Finally, after Biden told both OPEC and the US oil industry of its intent to kill the industry, the president now threatens both the US and Saudi produces with tax hikes and unspecified consequences.

  For discussion, please see Biden Threatens Saudi Arabia With Unspecified Consequences for Slashing Oil Production

  Consequences

  “There will be consequences,” says president Biden. “It’s time to rethink our relationship with Saudi Arabia.”

  Yeah, there will be consequences. 

  The one on the immediate horizon is an election blowout on Tuesday, November 8.

  *  *  *

  Please Subscribe to MishTalk Email Alerts.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/02/2022 – 21:30

• Russia Preparing To Move 70,000 Civilians From Kherson Region
  Russia Preparing To Move 70,000 Civilians From Kherson Region

  Russia is preparing to order a “compulsory” transfer of tens of thousands of residents in the Kherson region as the fight for the south heats up. This could involve as many as 70,000 civilians in what would mark a large-scale Russian withdrawal from the occupied Ukrainian city. 

  Citing Russian officials, The Wall Street Journal reports that “starting Sunday they would begin relocating residents from the Kakhovsky district on the east bank of the Dnipro River due to what they claim is the possibility of a Ukrainian attack on a strategic dam nearby.” Already evacuations have been ongoing for weeks from the city as fighting and heavy shelling encroach. 

  

  And the pro-Russian governor of Kherson Volodymyr Saldo confirmed preparations for a mandated evacuation ahead of advancing Ukrainian forces, which a Russian decree said will be “in a compulsory manner.” Russian officials say this is necessary because Ukraine forces are plotting a “massive missile strike on the Kakhovka hydroelectric station” to flood Kherson.

  Ukraine has denied these plans of course, and has in turn accused the Russian side of essentially using the large civilian transfer as one big “human shield”:

  “They want to create the impression that this is a civilian evacuation. Surrounded by civilians they understand that they have a degree of safety,” said a spokeswoman for the southern command of Ukraine’s armed forces.

  They say Russian military vehicles are intentionally mixing with civilian convoys as they exit the region.

  Meanwhile, Ukrainian media sources are touting that the national armed forces have conducted at least 100 firing missions on Wednesday, conducted by artillery and missile units.

  “The Armed Forces of Ukraine struck an extremely successful blow on the occupiers in Kherson, hitting the air defense systems at Spartak stadium, which were used to attack Mykolaiv,” a statement from an official with Ukraine’s Kherson Regional Council said on Facebook. 

  

  A report this week in the Associated Press said that many among the recently mobilized Russian recruits have been sent to Kherson front lines, despite official denials from the Kremlin.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/02/2022 – 21:10

• North America's Reshoring Of The Global Supply Chain
  North America’s Reshoring Of The Global Supply Chain

  By John Gallagher of FreightWaves

  With manufacturing and labor markets on the decline with North America’s traditional partners in Asia — and with trade with Russia collapsing — North America is in prime position to take advantage by reshoring global sourcing.

  “For the most part we can keep this in America — or at least North America,” said geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan during the opening keynote Monday at FreightWaves’ F3: Future of Freight Festival in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

  

  Zeihan is the author of the recently published book “The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization.”

  He said one of the keys to boosting U.S. trade will be reforming the Jones Act, a century-old trade protection law that Zeihan contends boosts transport costs.

  “This would help the country bring manufacturing back on the water in a very big way,” he said. “Mexico is now ahead of Canada from a labor productivity measure, which means that Mexico now needs a low-wage partner. Colombia and Cuba are the obvious candidates. It’s a much simpler system, one that is reliant on things close to home.

  “When you want to do a trade deal with Russia or China, it’s a pain. But calling on a country like Colombia, which is kind of desperate and wants to be part of the club, it’s a much easier process and we don’t need to do things at scale to the same degree. A small container ship is fine, you don’t need that massive Triple E container ship.”

  Some of the trends that many in the transportation industry are expecting to happen quickly — such as the transition to electric vehicles — could be stuck in neutral for a while, Zeihan said.

  In fact, he said, “the [EV] transition is not going to happen — that’s the short version. Russia is one of the top three suppliers of nickel, cobalt and aluminum — and all of those are going to zero” as far as U.S. imports.

  

  “So we’re going to be in the position, very soon, where we will have to decide which parts of the green transition are worth doing because we will not have the materials. If you’re looking at this from a carbon production transition period, a wind tower you put up in a place with wind, that has an immediate carbon impact.

  “But an EV does not, because it draws from the grid in its current form, and for the most part the processing facilities required to build the EVs in the first place are incredibly carbon intensive. And most vehicles running on most grids are going to take in excess of a decade to pay back the carbon debt.”

  And in a world where globalization is shifting — or ending — what does that mean for inflation?

  “Every disinflationary trend of the last 75 years has flipped, and every inflationary trend is back at the same time. We are looking at 9% to 15% inflation for at least the next five years — and that’s independent of anything the Fed does,” he said.

  “If at the end of the five-year period we’ve succeeded in building out the industrial plant, we go back to a much tamer system that will be lower for longer, because the supply chains will be local, the processing will be local and we’ll be following our own labor metrics, which will have evolved because we will have had to do a lot more with artificial intelligence and automation than we currently have, especially as we bring in electronics manufacturing — we will have a choice.

  “But if we fail to do that, then the 9% to 15% inflation continues and there are product shortages. From my standpoint, it’s a really clear path. The alternative is to go through the worst of it and get none of the benefits.”

  For companies looking to survive in the new North American supply chain, “anything that makes you more modular and more capable and allows you to adapt more quickly is something I think that can provide an outsized advantage,” Zeihan said.

  “We’re going to have fewer supply chain steps closer to home, and the competitive nature to that is going to be very different from just waiting for things to show up at the dock. We’re going to have the need to do everything that is currently done in Asia but in fewer steps and right in our own world.

  “That’s not just an issue of a capacity increase. That’s an awareness of what the cargo is on a micro level and in each container so that anyone can go to anything at any time and find out the best way to route within the system — that’s going to require a lot more information technology.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/02/2022 – 20:50

• Elon Musk To Fire Half Of Twitter On Friday
  Elon Musk To Fire Half Of Twitter On Friday

  Taking a page out of Thanos’ playbook (or is that Zorg), in two days Elon Musk will finally do what he has repeatedly warned he would do: unleash mass layoffs at the company he just acquired.

  According to Bloomberg, the world’s richest man will eliminate 3,700 jobs at Twitter – roughly half of the company’s entire workforce – in a bid to drive down costs following his $44 billion acquisition; Musk will inform affected staffers Friday, said the Bloomberg sources. Oh, and all those masked snowflakes who previously raged against the previous management’s “draconian” demand to come back to the office, you’re out of luck too: Musk intends to reverse the company’s existing work-from-anywhere policy asking what few employees remain to report to offices.

  Musk and a team of advisers have been weighing a range of scenarios for job cuts and other policy changes at San Francisco-based Twitter, the people said, adding that the terms of the headcount reduction could still change. In one scenario being considered, laid off workers will be offered 60 days’ worth of severance pay, two of the people said.

  With the “liberal and tolerant” left putting Musk under the financial deplatforming squeeze, as various woke advertisers are pressured by vocal ultra-left radicals to drop Twitter unless the social media platform is fully MSNBC’ed…

  Advertisers should support:

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 2, 2022

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

  … which will leave advertisers showing their ads to a handful of socialist-preapproved media outlets catering to those whose entire income comes from the government, who pay zero taxes, and can’t really afford to buy anything, Musk is under pressure to find ways to slash costs of a business for which he overpaid.

  To be sure, the mass exodus won’t come as a surprise: Twitter employees have been bracing for layoffs ever since Musk took over last Thursday and fired the top executive team, including CEO Parag Agrawal and top censor, Vijaya Gadde. Over the weekend, a few employees with director and vice president jobs were cut, while other leaders were asked to make lists of employees on their teams who can be cut, Bloomberg reported, adding that senior personnel on the product teams were asked to target a 50% reduction in headcount. Engineers and director-level staff from Tesla reviewed the lists.

  Layoff lists were drawn up and ranked based on individuals’ contributions to Twitter’s code during their time at the company. The assessment was made by both Tesla personnel and Twitter managers.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/02/2022 – 20:32

• Portland Facing Homelessness 'Catastrophe': Mayor
  Portland Facing Homelessness ‘Catastrophe’: Mayor

  Authored by Scottie Barnes via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  With the homelessness crisis cited among their top concerns, Oregon voters are taking note of Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler’s declaration of a “humanitarian catastrophe” in the state’s largest city.

  

  Oregon has among the highest homeless populations in the nation per capita. According to DHM Research, 9 of 10 voters statewide identify homelessness as a “very big problem” as Election Day draws near.

  In the Portland metropolitan area alone, an estimated 6,000 people are experiencing homelessness, according to Multnomah County’s 2022 point-in-time count, an annual census of the unhoused.

  “The magnitude and the depth of the homeless crisis in our city is nothing short of a humanitarian catastrophe,” Wheeler said in an Oct. 26 city council meeting.

  Portland Commissioner Dan Ryan described homelessness as the city’s “No. 1 problem” and painted a bleak picture of its impact during the meeting

  “It is inhumane to watch the homeless suffer,” Ryan said. “It is also irresponsible to not to address the safety concerns of neighbors and business owners who are deeply impacted by the consequences of untreated behavioral and mental health issues and drug addiction.”

  He described disturbing trends in the City of Roses.

  “Declining enrollment in Portland Public Schools means families are moving away,” Ryan explained.

  Population growth is flat.

  “People are not choosing Portland as their home as often as they used to,” Ryan said.

  “Portlanders report they don’t feel safe allowing their children to access our parks. Elders don’t feel safe strolling along the riverfront or simply walking to the local grocery store.”

  “Portland businesses with a long history in the city have closed because their employees don’t feel safe doing their jobs, walking to lunch, or commuting on public transportation.”

  “Our county, state, and region cannot move forward without addressing this issue.”

  At the meeting, Wheeler and Ryan proposed five “resolutions” to try to reduce homelessness.

  The first involves building 20,000 housing units by 2023. The city currently has a five-year waitlist for people to get into affordable housing.

  A proposed workforce program aims to “find non-standard” paid work for unhoused people—work that better fits their needs so that they can sustain those jobs.

  Their plan will also ban unsanctioned camping, but increase access to other camping options with mental health and sanitary services. Reports indicate that the first camp would not open for 18 months.

  Another resolution entails working with the local district attorney to create a “diversion program” that gives people who are homeless and cited for low-level offenses “more opportunity to address their legal issues and get them resolved.”

  Wheeler says the city will rework its budget to prioritize affordable housing and connect the homeless with mental health, sanitary, and substance abuse recovery services.

  The cost to taxpayers was not discussed.

  The council will work to refine the proposals before voting on them on Nov. 3.

  Wheeler acknowledged that previous government “solutions” have sometimes exacerbated the problem.

  Just last month, a group of Portlanders filed suit against the city, claiming that tents were blocking the sidewalks in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Weeks later, the lawyers for the suit learned that Multnomah County’s Joint Office of Homeless Services had distributed 6,550 tents and 27,000 tarps to the homeless in 2021.

  The lawyers argued those very same tents could be the ones blocking the sidewalks.

  “The city has been trying to address ADA issues and the recent lawsuit makes it clear that we have not done enough,” Wheeler said. “These are important concerns and ones that we need to address as a city.”

  In May, Wheeler banned camping on the sides of “high-crash” roadways after learning that 19 of 27 pedestrians killed by cars in Portland last year were homeless. People in at least 10 encampments were given 72 hours to leave.

  “Nearly 800 unsanctioned encampments spread out over the 146 square miles of the City of Portland,” Wheeler said. “Something needs to change.“

  But many Portlanders have lost faith in city leaders.

  In a recent poll conducted by The Oregonian, nearly 75 percent of Portland voters said the city is “on the wrong track.”

  And 81 percent believe the 2020 George Floyd protests and more than 100 days of unchecked riots, even as Wheeler announced the defunding of police by $12 million, harmed the city.

  Still, Wheeler called on other Oregon officials to join him and “declare a statewide emergency.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/02/2022 – 20:10

• China's 'iPhone City' Locks Down As Workers Flee Factory Amid Zero Covid Chaos
  China’s ‘iPhone City’ Locks Down As Workers Flee Factory Amid Zero Covid Chaos

  A week-long lockdown was implemented around the world’s largest iPhone factory in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou. Beijing is ramping up its zero Covid policy despite internet rumors suggesting otherwise, only to be proven false this morning.

  Zhengzhou officials posted a statement on WeChat stating that the lockdown in the metro area would last through November 9. 

  It [memo on WeChat] ordered people and vehicles off the streets except for medical or other essential reasons, a prohibition that threatens to cut off the flow of additional workers and components needed to rev up production ahead of the holiday-season crush. —Bloomberg

  The lockdown could significantly impact Foxconn’s largest iPhone factory, producing four of five of Apple’s latest handsets. 

  

  Last month, Foxconn closed off the factory of 200,000 employees to the outside world due to an outbreak of infections, embracing a “closed loop” system, where workers live on campus and are prohibited from physical contact with the outside world – including family members.

  

  As a result of the lockdowns, cafeterias at the manufacturing site were shut down, and workers on assembly lines were given “meal boxes.” Some employees have remained locked down in their dormitories and were given only instant noodles. Unrest is rising at the factory as workers are fed up with cramped living and working conditions. 

  There have also been reports of workers escaping from the factory. WaPo interviewed one worker named “Zhuo,” 19, who was among hundreds of others that busted out. 

  On Friday, Zhuo decided to make a run for it. He climbed a seven-foot wall, ducked under a fence through a hole dug out by workers who fled before him and walked almost 15 miles before getting a ride from a passerby.

  “There were around 200 of us that evening. It was like a prison break movie,” Zhuo said by phone from a quarantine hotel near his home in Henan province. Zhuo did not give his full name out of security concerns.

  The lockdown of the surrounding area and chaos in and around the factory comes as Apple just launched the iPhone 14. 

  Counterpoint senior analyst Ivan Lam said the factory is responsible for 80% of iPhone 14 production and 85% of iPhone 14 Pro production. 

  There have been no reports of disruptions yet, and the factory is supposedly well-supplied with components to operate “for a while,” according to Bloomberg. 

  No wonder a growing number of US companies with manufacturing facilities in China are looking to rejigger supply chains elsewhere. What a mess China has become under zero Covid policies. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/02/2022 – 19:50

• No, There Will Not Be Any "Pandemic Amnesty"
  No, There Will Not Be Any “Pandemic Amnesty”

  Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

  Nothing is Forgotten, Nothing Will Be Forgiven.

  On the very first day of this year I wrote that the pandemic was over and that only the most brainwashed true believers would cling to the absurd narratives that enabled it. Since then, all of it has been exposed to be falsehoods, cluelessness and lies:

  • Vaccines were never tested or proven to stop transmission.

  • The fatality rate was around 0.005%

  • Ivermectin worked

  • Masks don’t

  • Lockdowns did more damage than good

  …and the final straws for the credibility of all involved:

  • This thing came out of a lab, and

  • “Safe and effective” turned into “sudden and unexpected”

  Innumerable careers, reputations and lives have been destroyed in order to enforce a completely debunked narrative as truth. The mainstream media, Big Tech, governments at all levels, neo-liberal glee clubs like the WEF, all coordinated to gaslight the entire population of the world that we were facing existential annihilation, and would have to henceforth trade in our civil rights to these authorities to escape it.

  The economic damage is only now beginning to be felt in runaway inflation with central banks powerless to contain it, at risk of destroying what’s left of the economy.

  We don’t need to enumerate the litany of injustice, ridicule and persecution  anybody who tried to counter these absurd narratives had to endure. Lost friends, family, jobs, position, businesses, cancelations, deplatformings – all of it.

  So it is unsurprising, now that the edifice is crumbling, that those who piled on to the persecutions, those who feathered their nest being “on the right side of history”, seeing that it’s all turning to dust in realtime, are starting – one and all – to back away from their role.

  Now the name of the game is to distance oneself from the most intense and virulent outbreaks of mass formation psychosis in recorded history:

  You can fuck right off with this shit. pic.twitter.com/YmDiHIR7TU

  — Clifton Duncan. (@cliftonaduncan) October 31, 2022

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

  There are many who were up to their eyeballs in this who will now try to frame themselves as “the voice of reason” who was trying to introduce some rationality into the conversation.

  We’re into the truly nauseating phase now, where every media whore, bluetard and imbecilic “expert” sombrely critiques the failures of Covid tyranny …as they frantically back-peddle away from their own complicity… https://t.co/9mFDpgCCD4

  — Mark Jeftovic, The C̶r̶y̶p̶t̶o̶ ₿itcoin Capitalist (@StuntPope) July 10, 2022

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

  The most nauseating part of #EndTheMandates and #NoMoreLockdowns is going to be when every sociopathic zealot who wanted to literally wreck your life for non-compliance will start taking victory laps and pretending they were always champions of The Great Reopening…

  — Mark Jeftovic, The C̶r̶y̶p̶t̶o̶ ₿itcoin Capitalist (@StuntPope) February 9, 2022

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

  Don’t believe them.

  

  “Sooner or Later Everyone Sits Down to a Banquet of Consequences”

  If the globally botched pandemic response accomplished one thing, it was to open many people’s eyes to how obsolete and ill equipped our current institutions are for handling a global crisis in this new, decentralized, multi-polar world.

  While these insular elites believed they had Divine Right to “re-imagine” every aspect of our lives for some grandiose Great Reset, it’s these sclerotic, self-serving institutions they inhabit who are going to get their asses re-imagined. With a vengeance.

  Here’s what you can do to reclaim your life, and take your power back from those who abused it and used their positions against you:

  1. Vote out any politician who imposed lockdowns or vaccine mandates – regardless of party affiliation. At least the ones who doubled down on them after it became clear how destructive and ineffective they were.
  2. Cancel all paid subscriptions to the mainstream media – you’re better off supporting the many independent outlets and those doing real journalism and providing high-signal content.
  3. Advocate for defunding state-run media apparatuses: NPR in the US, CBC in Canada, BBC in the UK, et al
  4. De-Google-fy your life: Start looking at alternatives to Big Tech. There are other search engines like Duck, Facebook is quickly becoming irrelevant, Twitter may be fun for awhile longer given the meltdowns over the Musk takeover.
  5. Don’t hire or do business with Covid fanatics. If you’re hiring or scouting vendors, check their socials: were they demonizing lockdown skeptics? Hashtagging “#Freedumb”? (Better start scrubbing those timelines, mofos)
  6. Buy Bitcoin. Yes, I’m shilling BTC because Bitcoin is the global opt-out – stacking sats is calling b/s on everything. 

  You can put that pandemic amnesty where the sun don’t shine. pic.twitter.com/NGIaMvLb5L

  — Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) November 1, 2022

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

  There will be no pandemic amnesty. More likely, by the time this is all over, there will be pandemic tribunals.

  *  *  *

  Mark E. Jeftovic is the CEO of easyDNS, co-founder of Bombthrower Media, author and investor. Sign up for The Bombthrower mailing list to get updates straight into your inbox and get a free copy of The Crypto Capitalist Manifesto while you’re at it. Follow me on Gettr, Telegram or Twitter.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/02/2022 – 19:30

• The View Co-Host Joy Behar Claims Crime Is “Going Down” Under Biden
  The View Co-Host Joy Behar Claims Crime Is “Going Down” Under Biden

  Does gaslighting still represent an effective debate strategy in 2022, or does the public understand how the tactic works?  We’re about to find out this month as the midterm elections approach, but for now the political left has decided that instead of addressing the numerous problems that have arisen nationwide on their watch, they would rather pretend that those problems don’t exist and anyone that says they do is a liar.  

  The View’s Joy Behar is leaping into action to save Democrats, arguing that the nationwide spike in crime is not real and that the numbers have been inflated by the Republican party.  Behar once again tried to distract from the main issue by mentioning the Jan 6th riot and suggests that protesters “tried to kill the vice president,” even though there was not a single death at the event attributed to the protesters.  She then states that crime has actually gone down under Joe Biden.  

  “Republicans now, coming up to the next election all they do is talk about crime, crime, crime…I looked it up, murders in major cities have fallen by 4% so far in 2022, compared with the same period a year ago. So crime is not on the rise, it’s actually going down under Joe Biden.”

  

  Behar does not cite the specific source for this optimistic data, nor does she outline the context.  Though, one can already see a highly dishonest spin on display in her comments.  

  For example, she seeks to conflate all crime with a single stat – Murder rates in major cities.  Americans are not only concerned with one type of crime, they are concerned with an increase in all types of crime.  According to data from Axios, overall violent crime rates are actually up 4.2% from January to June of this year. 

  While homicides rates did fall 2.4%, Behar should have taken into consideration the fact that they skyrocketed from 2020 through 2021, in almost exact parallel with the BLM riots and the covid lockdowns.  The drop in 2022 does not erase the gains from the past two years.

  This is much like Joe Biden making the claim that gas prices went down on his watch.  Prices actually doubled on his watch, and then fell slightly the past few months as he continues to dump oil from the US strategic reserves onto the market.  When it comes to statistics, everything is about context.   

  The downfall of the gaslighting methodology is that it is usually only effective against individuals, not an entire population.  You can’t tell millions of people that they are not suffering from increased crime while they deal with the effects on a daily basis.  They’re going to call you out for lying, and they certainly aren’t going to vote for your candidates at election time.  The frog in the pot strategy doesn’t work when the water is already boiling.  

  Even CNN, citing a poll from Gallup, recently admitted that Americans are more worried about crime today than at any other time this century.  And the majority of areas facing rising crime are in large cities controlled by Democrat politicians.    

  Separating the Dems from the spike in US crime is truly an impossible task after years of blind support for the BLM/Antifa riots and calls for defunding the police.  Behar’s misrepresentation of the statistics underscores a long running trend of political leftists ignoring inconvenient truths, from rising crime, to rising inflation, to rising public discontent over extreme social policies.  Pretending as if all is well is no longer an option.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/02/2022 – 19:10

• Watch Live: President Biden Reads Pre-Midterm Speech On 'Dangers To Democracy'
  Watch Live: President Biden Reads Pre-Midterm Speech On ‘Dangers To Democracy’

  With midterms right around the corner and polls looking dismal for Democrats, President Biden is set to give a Wednesday speech on “preserving and protecting our democracy” during a DNC event in Washington DC.

  Because when you don’t have any accomplishments to ride on, use fear.

  

  Biden is scheduled to speak at 7pm ET at the Columbus Club in Union Station, where he will discuss “the threat of election deniers and those who seek to undermine faith in voting and democracy.” Really?

  Watch live:

  The speech was announced Wednesday morning during an Axios event.

  “Well, obviously, President Biden has been speaking about democracy for the entire time he’s been in office. And before then know, I think you can expect to hear from him this evening similar to what he’s been saying over the course of the last several months, that there is a lot at stake, including democracy, and that everyone has a role on that,” White House deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon told Axios.

  “I think the other thing that will be really important and something you heard from President Biden in 2020 was that people are going to be able to vote. Over 25 million already have. They are voting all across the country. You know, in some places where we will have a lot of attention, focus, the votes will be counted and will take a few days to be counted because that’s how democracy works to make sure every vote is counted. So and highlight that as well for,” she added.

  White House senior adviser Anita Dunn said that Union Station was chosen as the venue because of its proximity to Capitol Hill, where the January 6th riots took place, Fox News reports.

  “On January 6, we saw violence geared toward subverting democratic processes there. So it is you know, it’s an appropriate place to make these remarks tonight,” Dunn said. She added that most Americans find political violence “abhorrent” and cited the brutal attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi as a recent example,” she said, adding “[Political violence is] something that unites almost all Americans and that we can all be united against. And obviously, we’ve seen horrible things happen quite recently, certainly the speaker’s husband. But it’s from Capitol Hill because that is where there was an attempt to subvert our democracy.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/02/2022 – 18:55

• "Dark Clouds On Horizon": Maersk Warns About Rapid Economic Deterioration
  “Dark Clouds On Horizon”: Maersk Warns About Rapid Economic Deterioration

  A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, the world’s largest owner of container ships and one of the best bellwethers for global trade, lowered its outlook for the growth of 2022 global container demand and warned next year could be worse. 

  Maersk’s warning about a slowdown in container demand and economic turmoil ahead was conveyed in a third-quarter earnings report released today and in an interview by the company’s top executive on Bloomberg. 

  The Copenhagen-based company lowered its outlook for the growth of 2022 global container demand to decline 2-4% from the previous estimate of plus or minus 1%. The forecast sent Maersk’s shares tumbling nearly 6%. 

  “However, it is clear that freight rates have peaked and started to normalize during the quarter, driven by both decreasing demand and easing of supply chain congestion. As anticipated all year, earnings in Ocean will come down in the coming periods,” Maersk wrote in the earnings report.

  “There are plenty of dark clouds on the horizon,” the company continued, adding, “this weighs on consumer purchasing power which in turn impacts global transportation and logistics demand.”

  It then warned: “With the war in Ukraine, an energy crisis in Europe, high inflation, and a looming global recession.”

  Maersk CEO Soren Skou joined Bloomberg TV this morning for an interview where he said, “it’s really hard to be very optimistic with a war on our doorstep and a bigger energy crisis this winter so that is impacting consumer confidence and therefore also demand.” He added:

  “Global trade is moving backward this year.” 

  The company expects the global container market to be “broadly flat to negative” as risks in 2023 are “skewed to the downside” due to the macroeconomic headwinds. Skou noted in the interview that it is “clearly better for the economy and for our customers” to have lower freight rates. 

  In May, we outlined that a reversal of the “shortage of everything” bullwhip effect was nearing, as skyrocketing inventories (the result of Covid-era overordering due to snarled supply chains) was about to hit a faltering economy, and prices of goods would decline as companies would be forced to liquidate excess inventories into a recession (see “Bullwhip Effect Ends With A Bang: Why Prices Are About To Fall Off A Cliff” from May 23). We reminded readers about this a few times over the summer (“Bullwhip-Effect Reversal Is The Major Downside Growth Risk” and “Container Rates Slump As “Bullwhip Effect” Enters Terminal Phase“). 

  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 from overseas manufacturers, which has led to a plunge in container spot rates. Even to the extent that major shipping companies are canceling sails. 

  

  Maersk’s warning comes as central banks are engaged in the most aggressive interest rate hikes in decades to quell inflation. Any overtightening could spark a global recession next year. 

  

  Perhaps, JP Morgan’s consolidated manufacturing PMIs suggest mounting recession risks and declining price pressure are a big theme in 2023.  

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/02/2022 – 18:40

• Clarence Thomas Weighs In On Diversity
  Clarence Thomas Weighs In On Diversity

  Authored by Martin Armstrong via ArmstrongEconomics.com,

  The Supreme Court is likely to rule that colleges may no longer consider race as a qualification for college applications.

  This has been a problem in America for many years as colleges aim to admit racially diverse incoming classes and overlook test scores in the process.

  Even Elizabeth Warren falsely claimed to be Native American to gain access to a job at an Ivy League school, earning her the name of “Pocahontas.” The SCOTUS 6-3 conservative-liberal majority is reconsidering Affirmative Action in general.

  Justices Kagan and Jackson threw around the word “diverse” many times, but Clarence Thomas said that “diverse” has not been properly defined.

  

  Thomas has long been a critic of Affirmative Action and believes it is in itself racist.

  He explained his beliefs in 2003:

  “The Constitution abhors classifications based on race, not only because those classifications can harm favored races or are based on illegitimate motives, but also because every time the government places citizens on racial registers and makes race relevant to the provision of burdens or benefits, it demeans us all.”

  North Carolina Solicitor General Ryan Park told Thomas that diverse means “a broadly diverse set of criteria that expands to all different backgrounds and perspectives and not solely limited to race.”

  Thomas said he failed to see the educational benefits.

  “I’d like you to tell me expressly when a parent sends a kid to college that they don’t necessarily send them there to have fun or feel good or anything like that,” Thomas pressed.

  “They send them there to learn physics or chemistry or whatever their study. So tell me what the educational benefits are.”

  When Park said that students perform better in a diverse environment, Thomas said he has heard “similar arguments in favor of segregation.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/02/2022 – 18:20

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Lockdowns: The Great Gaslighting
  Lockdowns: The Great Gaslighting

  Authored by Michael Senger via ‘The New Normal’ substack,

  More than two years since the lockdowns of 2020, the political mainstream, particularly on the left, is just beginning to realize that the response to Covid was an unprecedented catastrophe.

  But that realization hasn’t taken the form of a mea culpa. Far from it. On the contrary, in order to see that reality is starting to dawn on the mainstream left, one must read between the lines of how their narrative on the response to Covid has evolved over the past two years.

  The narrative now goes something like this: Lockdowns never really happened, because governments never actually locked people in their homes; but if there were lockdowns, then they saved millions of lives and would have saved even more if only they’d been stricter; but if there were any collateral damage, then that damage was an inevitable consequence of the fear from the virus independent of the lockdowns; and even when things were shut down, the rules weren’t very strict; but even when the rules were strict, we didn’t really support them.

  Put simply, the prevailing narrative of the mainstream left is that any upside from the response to Covid is attributable to the state-ordered closures and mandates that they supported, while any downside was an inevitable consequence of the virus independent of any state-ordered closures and mandates which never happened and which anyway they never supported. Got it? Good.

  

  This perplexing narrative was perfectly encapsulated in a recent viral tweet by a history professor who griped about the difficulty of convincing his students that government mandates had nothing to do with the fact that they couldn’t leave their homes in 2020.

  

  Similarly, in an interview with Bill Maher, celebrity scientist Neil DeGrasse Tyson argued that we can’t assess the effects of lockdowns and mandates because the counterexamples, like Sweden, are too different to be applicable. (Starting at 2:15).

  We’re now learning just how bad the “collateral damage” is post-pandemic. pic.twitter.com/ECw649U7do

  — Bill Maher (@billmaher) October 18, 2022

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

  Likewise, astonishingly, in a debate on Monday, Charlie Crist, Democratic candidate for governor of Florida, accused Ron DeSantis of being “the only governor in the history of Florida that’s ever shut down our schools.” “You’re the only governor in the history of Florida that shut down our businesses,” Crist went on, “I never did that as governor. You’re the one who’s the shutdown guy.”

  In fact, as DeSantis pointed out, Crist had publicly sued DeSantis to keep kids out of school in 2020, and he wrote DeSantis a letter in July 2020 saying the entire state should still be in lockdown.

  Charlie Crist attempts to paint Gov. Ron DeSantis as “the shutdown guy” immediately after DeSantis talks about how he rejected Crist’s calls to shut the state down. pic.twitter.com/0XoEbgq4Pg

  — The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) October 24, 2022

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  Arguments like these are as facile as they are transparent. Does anyone honestly think these people would be arguing that lockdowns didn’t happen, or that it’s impossible to measure their effects, if the policy had been a success?

  As is extraordinarily well-documented by data, video evidence, news reports, government orders, testimonial evidence, and living memory, the strict lockdowns of spring 2020 were all too real. And few people publicly opposed them.

  As former UN Assistant Secretary-General Ramesh Thakur has documented in meticulous detail, the harms that lockdowns would cause were all well-known and reported when they were first adopted as policy in early 2020. These included accurate estimates of deaths due to delayed medical operations, a mental health crisis, drug overdoses, an economic recession, global poverty and hunger. In March 2020, the Dutch government commissioned a cost-benefit analysis concluding that the health damage from lockdowns—let alone the economic damage—would be six times greater than the benefit.

  Yet regardless, for reasons we’re still only beginning to understand, key officials, media entities, billionaires and international organizations advocated the broad imposition of these unprecedented, devastating policies from the earliest possible date. The resulting scenes were horrific and dystopian.

  People lined up outdoors in freezing temperatures to get food.

  It’s before the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning, yet the line outside the Winco Foods grocery store on Coffee Road stretches around the block. Market employees are allowing 15 people in at a time. Some folks have been in line since 3 a.m. pic.twitter.com/hPYuhnQUwY

  — Eytan Wallace (@EytanWallace) March 14, 2020

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  In many cities, still-sick patients were tossed out of hospital beds and sent back to nursing homes.

  

  Playgrounds were taped up.

  

  Parks and beaches were closed, and some mainstream commentators argued that those closures should be even stricter.

  

  Many who flouted these closures were charged or arrested.

  

  Stores, and sometimes sections of stores, that were deemed “non-essential” were cordoned off.

  

  School closures caused an unprecedented learning setback, especially for the poorest students. But even when schools were open, kids had to sit for hours in masks, separated by plexiglass barriers.

  

  Many kids were forced to eat lunch outside in silence.

  CHILD ABUSE: Kindergartners are forced to eat lunch outside in 40 degree weather at Capitol Hill Elementary School in Portland, Oregon.

  They sit on buckets to social distance from their classmates. pic.twitter.com/KqFcliTFYf

  — Katie Daviscourt🇺🇸 (@KatieDaviscourt) December 8, 2021

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  Countless small businesses were forced to close, and more than half of those closures became permanent.

  

  Cars lined up for miles at food banks.

  Never forget. 59/ pic.twitter.com/Upyu7yev9c

  — LLadany (@lladany) March 29, 2022

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  The Financial Times reported that three million in the United Kingdom went hungry due to lockdown.

  

  The situation was far worse in the developing world.

  If these horror stories aren’t enough, the raw data speaks for itself.

  

  The mainstream left’s newfound reluctance to refer to these policies as “lockdown” is especially curious, because they showed no such reluctance at the time they were actually implementing lockdowns in 2020.

  

  By pretending that all of these horrors were attributable to public panic, apologists for the response to Covid are attempting to shift blame away from the political machines that imposed lockdowns and mandates onto individuals and their families. This is, of course, despicable and bunk. People did not voluntarily go hungry, or stand in the freezing cold to get food, or remove themselves from hospitals while they were still sick, or bankrupt their own businesses, or force their own kids to sit outside in the cold, or march hundreds of miles in exodus after losing their jobs in factories.

  The collective denial of these horrors, and the refusal of media, financial, and political elites to report on them, amounts to nothing less than the greatest act of gaslighting that we’ve seen in modern times.

  Further, the argument that all of these terrible outcomes could be attributed to public panic rather than state-imposed mandates would be far more convincing if governments hadn’t taken unprecedented actions to deliberately panic the public.

  A report later revealed that military leaders had seen Covid as a unique opportunity to test propaganda techniques on the public, “shaping” and “exploiting” information to bolster support for government mandates. Dissenting scientists were silenced. Government psyops teams deployed fear campaigns on their own people in a scorched-earth campaign to drive consent for lockdowns.

  Moreover, as a study by Cardiff University demonstrated, the primary factor by which citizens judged the threat of COVID-19 was their own government’s decision to employ lockdown measures. “We found that people judge the severity of the COVID-19 threat based on the fact the government imposed a lockdown—in other words, they thought, ‘it must be bad if government’s taking such drastic measures.’ We also found that the more they judged the risk in this way, the more they supported lockdown.” The policies thus created a feedback loop in which the lockdowns and mandates themselves sowed the fear that made citizens believe their risk of dying from COVID-19 was hundreds of times greater than it really was, in turn causing them to support more lockdowns and mandates.

  Those who publicly spoke against lockdowns and mandates were ostracized and vilified—denounced by mainstream outlets like the New York Times, CNN, and health officials as “neo-Nazis” and “white nationalists.” Further, among those who really believed the mainstream Covid narrative—or merely pretended to—all the authoritarian methods that had supposedly contributed to China’s “success” against Covid, including censoring, canceling, and firing those who disagreed, were on the table.

  Though many now claim to have opposed these measures, the truth is that publicly opposing lockdowns when they were at their apex in spring 2020 was lonely, frightening, thankless, and hard. Few did.

  The gaslighting is by no means limited to the political left. On the political right, which now generally acknowledges that Covid mandates were a mistake, the revisionism is subtler, and tends to take the form of elites casting themselves—falsely—as having been anti-lockdown voices in early 2020, when the record is quite clear that they were vocal advocates of lockdowns and mandates.

  Fox News host Tucker Carlson now rightly acts as a champion of the anti-mandate cause, but in fact Carlson was one of the most influential individuals who talked Donald Trump into signing onto lockdowns in early 2020. The UK’s short-lived Prime Minister Liz Truss stated that she’d “always” been against lockdowns, but she publicly supported both lockdowns and vaccine passes. Likewise, Canada’s conservative leader Pierre Poilievre now casts himself as an anti-mandate leader, but he supported both lockdowns and vaccine mandates as they were happening.

  As Ben Irvine, author of The Truth About the Wuhan Lockdown, has tirelessly documented, right-wing publications including the UK’s Daily Telegraph now routinely act as opponents of lockdowns and mandates, while staying silent as to their own vocal support for strict lockdowns in spring 2020. And the same goes for countless other commentators and influencers on the political right as well.

  To those who know their history, this wholesale gaslighting by elites on both the left and the right, while galling, isn’t terribly surprising. Most elites obtain power by doing whatever is in their own perceived best interest at any given time. They didn’t support lockdowns for any moral or even utilitarian reason. Rather, in spring 2020, elites calculated supporting lockdowns to be in their own best interest. Two years later, many now calculate it to be in their best interest to pretend they were the ones who always opposed lockdowns—while sidelining those who actually did.

  This revisionism is all the more disappointing because a small handful of politicians including Ron DeSantis, Imran Khan, and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith have proven that admitting error in implementing lockdowns and mandates isn’t that hard, and can even be politically profitable.

  The same should go for the political left. Thus far, we have yet to see anything remotely resembling regret from any leader on the left, but this is what a decent, Truman-era Democrat might say in these circumstances:

  “The lockdowns of 2020 were a terrible mistake. While they were outside my field, it was my duty to properly vet the credibility of the advice that was coming from health officials and to end the mandates as soon as it was clear they weren’t working. In that role, I failed, and you all have my humblest apologies. Given the unprecedented harm that’s been done by these mandates, I support a full investigation into how this advice came about, in part to ensure there hasn’t been any untoward communist influence on these policies.”

  Those who spoke against lockdowns and mandates in early 2020 showed that they were willing to stand up for the freedoms and Enlightenment principles for which our forebears fought so tirelessly, even when doing so was lonely, thankless, and hard. For that reason, anyone who did so has reason to feel extremely proud, and the future would be brighter if they were in positions of leadership. That fact is now becoming increasingly clear—unfortunately, even to those who did the opposite. One more reason to keep all the receipts.

  *  *  *

  Michael P Senger is an attorney and author of Snake Oil: How Xi Jinping Shut Down the World. Want to support my work? Get the book. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/02/2022 – 00:05

• General Dynamics Reveals Next-Generation Army Tank, Could Replace M1 Abrams
  General Dynamics Reveals Next-Generation Army Tank, Could Replace M1 Abrams

  America’s main battle tank, designed by Chrysler Defense (now General Dynamics Land Systems), has been in service for over forty years. The M1 Abrams is one of the world’s most fearsome tanks, though it’s becoming outdated and vulnerable on the modern battlefield. 

  Earlier this month, General Dynamics’ unveiled “AbramsX,” the next generation of main battle tanks that could one day replace the M1 Abrams, at the United States Army annual conference in Washington, D.C.

  

  A demonstrator version of the AbramsX was on the show floor. The most notable upgrades for the new tank are weight reduction, fuel efficiency, artificial intelligence systems, and reduced crew size. 

  

  At 73.6 tons today, the M1 Abrams is a behemoth. Meanwhile, General Dynamics was able to shave off more than ten tons — with the new tank coming in around 60 tons, Timothy Reese, director of Business Development for General Dynamics Land Systems, told Sandboxx. 

  AbramsX features an auto-loader for the main gun, eliminating the need for a human tank loader, thus reducing crew size from four to three. Reese said the new tank’s land speed would stay the same, but lighter displacement would make it more maneuverable. 

  Another radical new design is the AbramsX’s power plant. It’s a diesel hybrid-electric system, compared with the M1 Abrams’ gas-guzzling turbine engine dating from the 1970s. The new power plant offers a 50% fuel savings, which increases mission time. 

  It’s too early to say what the future of the Army’s battle tank will be, considering new versions of the M1 Abrams are slated for the battlefield in the next several years. 

  General Dynamics also released a video of the AbramsX driving around a parking lot. 

  If the Army wants to achieve a 50% reduction in greenhouse pollution by 2030, compared to 2005 levels, then AbramsX could be America’s next main battle tank. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/01/2022 – 23:45

• Supreme Court Asked To Restore Felon Voting Rights In Mississippi
  Supreme Court Asked To Restore Felon Voting Rights In Mississippi

  Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A left-wing civil rights group is asking the Supreme Court to review the felon disfranchisement provision of the Mississippi Constitution that permanently prevents certain felons from voting, claiming the law is rooted in racial animus.

  

  The appeal is not expected to affect the approaching Nov. 8 elections.

  The petition (pdf) in the case, Harness v. Watson, is expected to be docketed by the Supreme Court in the coming days. The respondent, Michael Watson, is Mississippi’s Republican secretary of state.

  The petitioners, Roy Harness and Kamal Karriem, are black Mississippi residents. Harness was convicted of forgery in 1986. Karriem, a former Columbus city council member, was convicted of embezzlement in 2005. Both have completed their sentences.

  According to a summary provided by the Mississippi Center for Justice, which is representing the men, Section 241 of the Constitution permanently blocks anyone from voting who was convicted of certain crimes that the original framers of the document believed were committed mostly by black people.

  The state constitution bars those convicted of murder, rape, bribery, theft, arson, obtaining money or goods under false pretenses, perjury, forgery, embezzlement, or bigamy, from voting.

  “It was one of several voting provisions in the 1890 Constitution designed to take the vote away from Black citizens who had obtained it during the Reconstruction period after the abolition of slavery and the end of the Civil War,” the summary states. “The other discriminatory provisions, including the poll tax and the so-called understanding clause, were eliminated in the 1960s in response to federal court orders and the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.”

  Rob McDuff is the attorney for the plaintiffs and the director of the Impact Litigation Project at the Mississippi Center for Justice.

  “At a time when our state and nation are struggling with the vestiges of a history of racism, it is important that the United States Supreme Court step in to address this remaining vestige of the malicious 1890 plan to prevent an entire race of people from voting in Mississippi,” McDuff said.

  “Although the Supreme Court has become more conservative in recent years, we hope it will see that the continued implementation of this racist provision is an affront to the promise of the Equal Protection of the Law contained in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

  A federal district court upheld the ban, concluding it was bound by the 1998 ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in Cotton v. Fordice, which held that the “discriminatory taint associated with the original version” had been erased when burglary was removed from Section 241 in 1950 and rape and murder were added as disenfranchising crimes in 1968.

  Because a majority of voters approved these racially neutral amendments to the provision in 1950 and 1968 and discriminatory animus was not a factor at those times, Section 241 was “redeem[ed] … from its unconstitutional provenance.”

  The district court ruling was affirmed by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. In August all 17 judges on the 5th Circuit reviewed the ruling and voted 10–7 to uphold the ban.

  The 10-member majority acknowledged (pdf) the state’s 1890 constitutional convention was “steeped in racism,” that the “state was motivated by a desire to discriminate against blacks,” and that Section 241 was a “device that the convention exploited to deny the franchise to blacks.”

  But any discriminatory intent was “cured” by the later constitutional amendments, the majority stated.

  The Epoch Times reached out to Watson for comment but his office did not immediately respond.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/01/2022 – 23:25

• Who Americans Spend Their Time With…
  Who Americans Spend Their Time With…

  Throughout history, humans have relied on cooperation and social relationships to thrive. Of course, who we spend time with evolves throughout our lifetime.

  Using insights from the American Time Use Survey and Our World in Data, Visual Capitalist’s Avery Koop and Nick Routley look at who Americans spend the most time with at various ages of their life.

  Adolescence to Adulthood

  In the average American’s teenage years, they spend most of their time alone and with their family. This makes sense, as the majority of people under 18 still live in a home with their nuclear family unit, meaning parents and siblings. Not surprisingly, adolescence is also when time spent with friends reaches its peak.

  Jumping forward to a person’s early adulthood, 25-year-olds spend an average of 275 minutes per day alone, and 199 minutes with coworkers. This aligns with people in their twenties beginning to enter the workforce.

  By age 35, people are still spending the most time with themselves, at 263 minutes per day. However, time spent combined with children and partners, the runner-ups, adds up to 450 minutes or around 7.5 hours a day.

  

   

  Although people are spending more time with kids and partners as they grow older, this trend may shift, as women are having fewer children. More women today are obtaining an education and are entering the workforce, causing them to delay or entirely put off having children.

   

  Middle to Old Age

  Upon turning 45, the average person spends 309 minutes a day alone, and in second place, 199 minutes with children. Time with coworkers remains relatively steady throughout someone’s forties, which coincides with the middle of career for most people in the workforce.

  By age 55, time spent alone still takes top spot, but time spent with a partner goes up to 184 minutes, and time with coworkers also moves up, pushing out time spent with children.

  

   

  Typically, time spent with children during the mid-fifties tends to see a sharp decline as children enter adulthood and begin to move out or spend more time out of the house.

   

  Today, more children are staying at home longer or even moving back home. 52% of adult children in the U.S. today are living with their parents.

  As people get closer to old age, around 65-years-old, they spend increasingly less time with coworkers as they begin to retire, and much more time alone or with a spouse. Then, from age 65-75, people consistently spend the most time alone, then with a partner and family.

  Alone and Lonely?

  One of the most significant trends on the chart is increased time spent alone.

  

  By the time someone reaches 80, their daily minutes alone goes up to 477. This can be a problematic reality. As the population continues to age in many countries around the world, more elderly people are left without resources or social connection.

  Additionally, while one quarter of elderly Americans live alone, the trend of solo living is going up across nearly every age group, and this trend applies to a number of mature economies around the world.

  

  A natural conclusion would be that increasing alone time has negative impacts on people, however, being alone does not necessarily equate to loneliness. Our World in Data found that there was no direct correlation between living alone and reported feelings of loneliness.

  One final consideration is the role technology plays in our social interactions. Thanks to smartphones and social platforms, time alone doesn’t necessarily equal isolation.

  It is not just the amount of time spent with others, but the quality and expectations, that reduce loneliness.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/01/2022 – 23:05

• A Surprising Threat To The US Power Grid Could Plunge The Country Into Darkness
  A Surprising Threat To The US Power Grid Could Plunge The Country Into Darkness

  Authored by John Mac Ghlionn via The Epoch Times,

  The importance of a strong power grid cannot be emphasized enough. Often, when a grid fails, the results are terrifying. Of all the major power grids in the world, the United States’ is one of the more vulnerable to attack.

  State-sponsored hackers from the likes of Iran, Russia, and, unsurprisingly, China pose a real threat to the United States’ electrical transmission lines. However, there’s another (far less obvious) threat to the grid: electric vehicles (EVs).

  

  Yes, you read that right.

  The Biden administration is desperate to consign the internal combustion engine to the dustbin of history. In this radical shift to embrace a new, zero-emission world, Americans are being told to embrace EVs. Such an embrace, however, requires a stellar power grid, the very thing the United States lacks.

  Just to be clear, the U.S. power grid (or electric grid) involves a huge network of transmission lines, power plants, and distribution centers. The United States has three major grids: the Eastern Grid, the Western Grid, and the ERCOT Grid, otherwise known as the Texas Grid. Of the three, the Eastern Grid is the largest.

  Although the three grids can operate independently, they’re also connected. A failed grid means no power for tens of millions of citizens and prolonged periods of darkness. Imagine a power grid failure in the likes of Los Angeles or New York. The two cities are already riddled with crime; grid failures would make things many times worse.

  Attacks Since 2016

  In 2018, the Department of Homeland Security announced that Russian hackers had hijacked the control rooms of various electric utilities. This allowed the hackers to disrupt power flows and cause blackouts.

  Rather alarmingly, the DHS conceded that the attacks had been occurring since 2016, the same year the Russians started attacking Ukraine’s grid. Although the Russians have strenuously denied the attack, such denials appear to conflict with reality.

  As tensions between Russia and the United States escalate, and tensions between China, another hacker-friendly country, intensify, expect more disruptions to the grid.

  

  A photo illustration shows a background of electric power infrastructure with an Apple iPhone showing an Emergency Alert notification from CalOES urging the public to conserve energy to protect health and safety as the electricity grid is strained during a heat wave in Los Angeles, Calif., on Sept. 6, 2022. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

  However, as mentioned, Americans must concern themselves with more “benign” threats. A recent paper, published in Applied Energy, discussed the threat of electric cars to the grid. Currently, there are 2.5 million electric vehicles in the United States; four in five owners opt to charge their cars overnight. This decision, according to the researchers, is putting a considerable strain on power grids.

  By 2025, the United States will have more than 20 million EVs on its roads. By 2030, according to Bloomberg, more than half of car sales will be electric. The strain is increasing, and power grids are ill-equipped to shoulder the load.

  If Bloomberg’s projection proves to be correct, then, as the researchers note, it will take 5.4 gigawatts of energy storage to charge EVs. To put 5.4 gigawatts into perspective, one nuclear power plant produces 1 gigawatt of energy. The United States currently has 55 power plants. To facilitate the new EV revolution, the United States requires many more. Considering California, the largest state in the country, has moved to ban the sale of gas-powered cars, and other states are considering introducing similar measures, the United States needs to get a move on. Time is very much of the essence.

  What would happen if, say, the power grid was to fail in EV-crazed California? To answer that question, we need only rewind a few months. This past summer, plagued by scorching hot temperatures, the Golden State’s power grid came incredibly close to collapsing.

  It survived, but only just.

  The grid will be tested again. With California’s desire to push the sales of EVs, the next test could prove to be an unmitigated disaster. Energy is a finite resource, a fact that seems to be lost on so many EV enthusiasts.

  

  A charging port is seen on a Mercedes Benz EQC 400 4Matic electric vehicle at the Canadian International AutoShow in Toronto on Feb. 13, 2019. (Mark Blinch/Reuters)

  In truth, the nation’s power grid is already on its last legs. It has been for years. In a sobering piece for Smithsonian Magazine, Dr. Massoud Amin, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Minnesota, explained the many ways in which the country’s power grid, “the most complex” one ever assembled, could fail. The grid, he wrote, “underpins our economy, our quality of life, our society.” Without it, society will be brought to a screeching halt. Crime will rise. Lives will be lost. Chaos will reign supreme.

  By 2025, according to the American Society for Civil Engineers, the inability of the United States to maintain its many power lines will cost the country dearly—$130 billion, to be exact. EVs, so often hailed as the best thing since sliced bread, come with a whole host of sizable problems.

  Across the United States, as the author Ben Guess recently noted, there are currently 21 EVs per public charging port. By 2030, to keep up with EV purchasing trends, the United States must install almost 500 charging ports every day for the next 8 years.

  Does this sound realistic to you?

  Even if the United States does somehow manage to install enough ports, the grid simply isn’t strong enough to support the battery-related demands. This is a point that needs to be emphasized, repeatedly and unapologetically. Yes, state-sponsored hackers are a threat, but state-sponsored EV initiatives aren’t exactly harmless. In the blind embrace of all things green, we must not lose sight of the bigger picture, the objective realities that stare us straight in the face

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/01/2022 – 22:45

• Miami's First Supertall Tower Begins Construction As Financial Winds Shift South
  Miami’s First Supertall Tower Begins Construction As Financial Winds Shift South

  By the end of this decade, if everything goes to plan, Miami will have a new supertall tower, measuring more than 1,000 feet tall, able to withstand hurricane-force winds. 

  WSJ said developers broke ground on the new 100-story Waldorf Astoria residential tower in October. It will feature 360 luxury condo residences and 205 hotel guest rooms in the tallest residential building south of Manhattan. 

  

  PMG, which is developing the Waldorf tower, said the structure had overcome many designing and planning challenges, such as how to engineer a foundation in porous limestone, survive hurricane-force winds, and obtain permission from Miami International Airport to build a supertall building in the middle of a highly traveled flight path. 

  One of the engineering marvels PMG worked into the tower’s design is a pendulum at the top that counteracts swaying in high winds. There are also plans to use specialized technology called deep soil mixing to create a sturdy foundation. 

  “Where other buildings might have taken four months of foundation, it’s going to take us a year to get all that structure underground just to support this building,” PMG chief executive Kevin Maloney said. 

  Maloney said the building is so massive that 150-200 knot hurricane-strength winds wouldn’t compromise the building structure – mainly because each floor is a massive 20,000 square feet, compared with PMG’s Manhattan’s West 57th street’s 5,000 square feet. 

  “The building code in Miami is the strictest in the country, and that’s true about 1,000-foot towers or eight-story towers.

  “There’s not a city I feel safer in than Miami in terms of hurricane code,” Ryan Shear, Managing Partner of PMG, said. 

  Maloney said 87% of the condo space in the supertall tower has already been sold, with units starting at $2 million.

  

  High demand for the future tower could be due to the massive influx of people and new money flooding into Miami. There are financial moguls, such as billionaire Ken Griffin moving the global headquarters of his Citadel and Citadel Securities to the city from Chicago. 

  The financial winds are shifting, and in no time, the streets of Brickell will be filled with portfolio managers and programmers. 

  Miami is the next Wall Street. We doubt Waldorf tower will be the only one by the decade’s end. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/01/2022 – 22:25

• 'True The Vote' Founders Jailed For Contempt Of Court
  ‘True The Vote’ Founders Jailed For Contempt Of Court

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

  The founders of the election integrity group True the Vote were jailed on Oct. 31 by a federal judge for contempt of court.

  

  U.S. marshals detained Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips after a hearing in federal court in Dallas, according to a court docket entry.

  Court filings show U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt, the Reagan appointee overseeing a lawsuit against True the Vote, Engelbrecht, and Phillips, ordered the defendants jailed after they refused to share information, including all people who have had or still have possession of any information from Konnech computers.

  Konnech is an election management software firm whose CEO was arrested in October for allegedly stealing poll worker data and hosting it on servers in China.

  Konnech sued True the Vote prior to the arrest, alleging that the election integrity group and its founders gained unauthorized access to its computers and gained information from them.

  In the lawsuit and a motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO), Konnech said that the defendants made “completely baseless claims” that Konnech’s CEO and employees were Chinese operatives and that the FBI was investigating Konnech.

  “The truth is that Konnech is a U.S. company founded and operated by a U.S. citizen who has no affiliation with the Chinese Communist Party whatsoever,” Konnech said, adding that all of its U.S. customer data “is secured and stored exclusively on protected computers located within the United States.”

  That was part of the $2.9 million contract Konnech reached with Los Angeles County, but Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón, a Democrat who charged Konnech CEO Eugene Yu, said investigators found that information “was stored on servers in the People’s Republic of China.”

  True the Vote said Konnech’s claims that they hacked into Konnech servers were false and that they accessed a server in China using a “pre-loaded password that did not even require typing in a password to enter the server.”

  Hoyt in September ordered the defendants to stop accessing the computers and to return all property and data obtained from the computers. He also ordered them to identify each person and group involved in accessing the computers and to disclose to Konnech how the computers were accessed.

  Defendants told the court in a sealed letter that they wouldn’t identify the source of the data, “arguing that to do so would hinder an FBI investigation concerning the matter, or jeopardizing ‘national security,’” Hoyt said in a recent order.

  Defendants said they turned over the person’s identity to the FBI and that they shouldn’t have to make that name available to Konnech. Text messages submitted to the court were sent between Engelbrecht and FBI agents, according to an affidavit from the former.

  Phillips said in an affidavit that defendants would “comply fully” with Hoyt’s order and that the name of the person who accessed information from a computer was revealed in court during a recent hearing. According to Votebeat, that person is Mike Hasson. A summons was issued to Hasson on Oct. 31.

  Phillips also said that Hasson and FBI agents were the only people who had access to the information.

  The defendants will be detained “until they fully comply” with Hoyt’s order to disclose information, according to a summary of the hearing.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/01/2022 – 22:05

• FOMC Preview: Time To Step Off The Brake
  FOMC Preview: Time To Step Off The Brake

  As Goldman trader John Flood describes in his end-of-day market recap note (available to pro subs) the day on Goldman’s trading desk, “it was a 4 on 1 – 10 scale in terms of overall activity levels w/ most investors relatively frozen in terms of playing offense ahead of FOMC tomorrow.”

  So with everyone frozen until 2pm tomorrow – and many could be very surprised if the Treasury announces some actionable news on Treasury buybacks during tomorrow’s 8:30am Refunding announcement which could spark a far bigger risk rally than Powell sounding modestly on the dovish side – here is a preview of what to expect: as we noted yesterday, a fourth successive 75bps rate hike has long been pretty much nailed down but the subsequent path of hikes is now up for grabs and will be the focus from this week’s meeting.

  As DB’s Jim Reid wrote on Monday , “it feels inconceivable to us, given how spectacularly forward guidance has broken down across the global markets over the last 12 months, that Powell will try to guide too aggressively for December, especially with two payrolls (one this week) and two CPIs to come before they meet again.” In light of this, DB’s economists currently believe that 75bps is still likely in December, but that January could mark a downshift whilst still seeing upside risks to their terminal rate expectation of 5% given the recent inflation data and evidence that r-star has risen. Even WSJ Fed mouthpiece, Nick Timiraos, tweeted at the weekend “Consumers have a big cushion of savings. Corporations have lowered their debt-service costs. For the Fed, a more resilient private sector means that when it comes to rate rises, the peak or “terminal” policy rate may be higher than expected.”

  To be fair in his WSJ article that went viral 10 days ago he did mention that 2023 Fed forecasts could be upgraded. However the market mostly focused on the near-term downshift possibilities (that changed today because while tomorrow’s 75bps hike is a lock, the odds of a 75bps hike in Dec jumped today and the odds of a 50bps hike in Feb also jumped notably).

  

  Over the weekend, Goldman came out with a slightly different scenario then DB: the bank’s economics team – which also expects a 75bps hike this week – had updated its terminal rate estimate to 4.75-5% in March, and sees hikes set for: 75bps in Nov, 50bps in Dec, 25bps in Feb, 25bps in March (with March here being the new add).

  

  As Goldman’s Jan Hatzius wrote, there are three possible reasons why the FOMC could end up hiking past the February meeting, as the bank now expects:

  1. First, inflation is likely to remain uncomfortably high for a while, which could make continuing to hike in small increments the path of least resistance.
  2. Second, more rate hikes might be needed to keep the economy on a below-potential growth path now that the fiscal tightening has mostly run its course and real income is growing again.
  3. Third, the FOMC might need to do more if a future pivot causes a premature easing of financial conditions.

        (More details in the full note available to pro subscribers).

  It is unclear which of these three possible routes might eventually lead the FOMC to tighten by more than it currently plans, but Goldman thinks “it is more likely than not that one of them will.” Goldman also updated its scenario analysis of possible Fed paths to reflect the bank’s revised baseline forecast: the average view (the green line on the right side of Exhibit 3) is now slightly higher than before and is roughly in line with market pricing for 2023 (the orange line on the right side of Exhibit 3), which has moved up more meaningfully since our last update a month ago.

  

  What is notable in the Goldman forecast is the bank’s recent insistence that inflation will remain “uncomfortably high for a while” which could make hiking for longer than currently planned the path of least resistance.

  

  We would discount this, for two reasons: i) it comes from the same bank which one year ago we mocked for “convincing” its clients every week that inflation would be transitory and ii) the coming recession will spark massive job losses which will far outweigh the adverse impact of higher inflation, as the growing complaints from the Bernies, Warrens and other democrats make clear.

  Shifting away from Goldman, Morgan Stanley is more dovish, writing in its FOMC preview that it expects the Fed to increase the policy rate by an additional 50bp in December and 25bp in January, for a peak rate of 4.625%: “The Fed then holds rates there for an extended period until beginning to normalize policy with a 25bp decrease December 2023.” Some more from the MS preview:

  With little doubt around the policy decision at hand, the focus of this meeting will be squarely on the signals the FOMC is sending around a possible step-down in the pace of rate hikes in December. Currently, the market is placing a 50% probably of a 75bp hike in December – giving the Fed full optionality to make a game time decision. There are multiple ways of signaling the possibility of a step down, largely related to acknowledging concerns around the extent of tightening already implemented. Most immediately, the paragraph on current conditions could include an observation that financial conditions have tightened, and the discussion of future policy moves could be softened from referencing “ongoing increases” in the future.

  The FOMC statement may also add a reference to global financial conditions, reflecting concerns about the effects that interest rate hikes have had on the global financial system. “Watching closely” in this regard, similar to language used by Vice Chair Brainard in her speech on October 10, would send a very strong message that the committee will look to step down – should the data allow.

  Decreasing the pace of tightening could appeal to both hawks and doves – slower rate hikes would better enable reaching a higher peak rate (hawks), and would also allow more time to respond to the incoming data (doves). Nevertheless, the Committee will not want to signal that a step down in the pace of rate hikes signals an earlier end to tightening or a lower peak rate, limiting the dovishness that markets may try to associate with the preference for a step down to a 50bp hike.

  (More in the full note available to pro subscribers).

  Next, Newsquawk summarizes the consensus view, noting that the Fed is expected to hike its target Fed Funds range by another 75bps to 3.75-4% (money markets have 75bps priced at a 98% probability) with a firm focus on the guidance and Powell’s presser as the FOMC looks to step down its pace of tightening approaching its expected terminal rate, roughly in the 4.5-5% area some time in May/June.

  

  Ahead of the blackout, Fed insider Timiraos at the WSJ noted the FOMC is barreling towards a fourth straight 75bps hike in November, adding that the meeting could serve as a critical staging ground for future plans, including whether and how to step down to 50bps in December; Fed’s Daly also gave remarks calling on the need to step down the pace of tightening. Timiraos wrote, “Some officials are more eager to calibrate their rate setting to reduce the risk of overtightening. But they won’t want to dramatically loosen financial conditions if and when they hike by 50bps (instead of 75).

  One possible solution would be for Fed officials to approve a half-point increase in December, while using their new economic projections [in Dec.] to show they might lift rates somewhat higher in 2023 than they projected last month.” Those concerns around loosening financial conditions will already be top of mind for the Fed given the spike higher in long-end inflation breakevens that have been accompanied by a pick-up in stock appetite, fall in Treasury yields, and a weakening Dollar seen in wake of the WSJ article, not to mention the dovish developments at the ECB and BoC which have only added to central bank ‘pivot’ pricing. As such, Powell will likely push back on the ‘pivot’ narrative at the November FOMC, and perhaps front-run the December SEPs in hinting towards a higher terminal rate than the 4.6% median dot in the September SEPs and stressing a “higher for longer” stance as a means to counter the dovish signalling of a reduction in the pace of hiking in the backdrop of little progress made on the inflation front.

  Shifting away from these qualitative forecasts we next look at what JPM had to say, which is again on the quantitative side, and in keeping with previous scenario analyses (see “JPM’s Fed Day Scenario Analysis“, “JPMorgan’s Payrolls Scenario Analysis“, and “How To Trade The CPI: Scenario Analysis From JPMorgan“), JPMorgan trader Andrew Tyler writes that as he thinks about Fed scenarios, “consider that of the prior 6 meetings this year, markets have rallied into Fed Day on 3 occasions and sold off into the day on 3 occasions. Post-Fed Day, there is a similar hit rate with markets closing higher as of that Friday three times; and, by the next Wednesday markets have been up 3x and lower 3x. 2 weeks after the Fed, markets have been up 4 of 6 times; when they are up, the SPX is up and average of +4.1% vs. +1.3% across all 6 observations.” And since the hike for this meeting is known (75bps), and all that matters what hints Powell shares on the rate hike path, Tyler’s recommendation is to “keep an eye on terminal rate expectations; Friday we closed with terminal rate expectations of 4.90%” This number has since spiked back over 5% following today’s much hotter than expected JOLTS print.

  

  Which is not to say that Powell can’t surprise: he can, and as the last two FOMCs showed, he certainly will if he wants to (that said, the question whether the Fed chief wants to crash markets one week before the midterms is also rather pertinent). Below are Tyler’s six scenarios for Wednesday’s FOMC:

  • 50BPS HIKE; DOVISH PRESS CONFERENCE – of the scenarios, this is the least likely and the most bullish. It is difficult to conceive of a scenario where this outcome occurs given inflation levels and a tight labor market. Should this outcome occur, the immediate reaction could produce a double-digit 1-day return for Equities. The last time the SPX had such a strong 1-day return was in Oct 2008 when the SPX was +10.8% on Oct 28 and +11.6% on Oct 13. Given the low liquidity environment, this time the SPX is looking at +10% to +12%. Once again, this scenario would lead to the biggest stock market gain in 14 years.
  • 50BPS HIKE; HAWKISH PRESS CONFERENCE – a slightly more likely scenario; this outcome could stem from a Fed that is increasingly concerns about financial stability as it balances growth and inflation. However, it seems far more likely that the Fed gets Fed Funds to 4% before they begin to balance their considerations. This outcome is still very bullish and the SPX would rally +4% to- +5%.
  • 75BP HIKE; DOVISH PRESS CONFERENCE – this is second most probabilistic outcome in JPM’s view. While a stepdown from 75bps to 50bps is reflected in the DOTS, this is still a Fed that appears nervous about loosening financial conditions, of which Equity levels are an input, so a dovish press conference seems less likely than a hawkish one. If you saw the Fed give explicit guidance for the December meeting, then that is likely viewed as a dovish outcome. SPX jumps +2.5% to +3%.
  • 75BP HIKE; HAWKISH PRESS CONFERENCE – this is the most likely outcome with Powell retaining optionality for December and 2023 meetings while emphasizing the current risks to inflation moving higher. Even with a hawkish press conference, we may see language suggesting that a stepdown from 75bps is coming, which softens the blow. This outcome feels like the one that is most expected by bond markets, so we may not see a significant move in yields which keeps Equities from melting down. SPX down 1% to up 0.5%.
  • 100BPS HIKE; DOVISH PRESS CONFERENCE – given recent publications from WSJ, this outcome feels as unlikely as seeing a 50bps hike. Should this outcome occur, it may mean that the Fed both wants a higher terminal rate and that it wants to complete the tightening cycle this year. The Fed could do 100bps here and December, taking Fed Funds to the 5.00% – 5.25% level. Speaking with clients who invest in EM, this is lower range of where they think the Fed should take rates. Separately, the market may digest this move as the Fed having prior knowledge of where next week’s CPI prints; the previous CPI prints triggered a -4.3% day. In this scenario, the SPX falls 4% – 5%.
  • 100BPS HIKE; HAWKISH PRESS CONFERENCE – this is the best outcome for bears or for Equity investors waiting for this latest rally to dissipate. This outcome likely ends this latest rally irrespective of what CPI does next week. Here this would seem to be a Fed reassessing its own inflation forecasts, which some investors feel is too optimistic. Here you likely see a significant selloff across all risk assets as bonds reset higher. This type of shock, especially when considering the WSJ articles, could see Equities retest YTD lows. SPX falls 6% to 8%.

  To summarize visually, stocks could move… a lot.

  

  While the above forecast may be just a tad ridiculous and extreme, another market-linked observation comes from Bespoke which notes that the ”S&P 500 once again finds itself lower between FOMC meetings, for 8th time in past 10 periods; current decline has been more modest than some historic drops (like 13% decline prior to June meeting).”

  

  Since tomorrow’s statement will not contain any surprises – as noted above 75bps is a lock –  we will skip a projected redline as most attention will be on Powell’s press conference comments, and instead remind readers of why the market has turned much more dovish in recent weeks: as Morgan Stanley economists note, they expect the Fed to prep for a step down in the pace of hikes at the upcoming FOMC meeting as hinted by recent Fedspeak quotes below which show that the Fed appears ready to ratchet down the hawkishness, especially as the Fed continues to believe in the idea that monetary policy works with “long and variable lags” (see quotes below).

  • Daly, October 21: A benchmark rate in range of 4.5%-5.0% is a ‘very reasonable estimate’ of how high rate needs to go…the time is now to start talking about stepping down, from the 75bp pace of hikes.
  • Harker, October 19: I expect we will be well above 4 percent by the end of the year. Sometime next year, we are going to stop hiking rates. At that point, I think we should hold at a restrictive rate for a while to let monetary policy do its work…If we have to, we can tighten further, based on the data.
  • Kashkari, October 19: My best guess right now is yes, do I think inflation is going to level out over the next few months, the services, the core inflation, and then that would position us some time next year to potentially pause.
  • Bullard, October 20: The goal is to move to some meaningfully restrictive level that will push inflation down. But it doesn’t mean that you go up forever

  One final reason why it’s time for the Fed to turn dovish is growing liquidity concerns: as we have discussed extensively over the past few weeks, Treasury market liquidity has been challenged in recent months, there could be a question linked to the Fed’s role in supporting Treasury liquidity, especially with the backdrop of recent BoE intervention in Gilts. While changing QT or balance sheet policy in general has a very high bar, the Fed could be asked about regulations like the SLR, and the possibility of exempting Treasuries from SLR calculations. While few expect any announcements or new headlines from Chair Powell, it will be important to see what kind of guardrails, if any, the Fed wants to put around Treasury liquidity issues. An unexpectedly large hawkish surprise would lead to further fractures in Treasury market liquidity.

  Much more details in the full FOMC previews available to pro subscribers, from DB (link), JPM (link), Goldman (link) and MS (link) and Newsquawk (link)

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/01/2022 – 21:45

• 14 Years After The Bitcoin White Paper; Reflecting On Satoshi Nakamoto's Manifesto
  14 Years After The Bitcoin White Paper; Reflecting On Satoshi Nakamoto’s Manifesto

  Authored by Archie Chaudhury via BictoinMagazine.com,

  14 years later, Bitcoin has shown its strengths… and that it still has a long way to go to achieve its original goals…

  

  When Satoshi Nakamoto first published the Bitcoin white paper in October of 2008, the world was reeling from a financial crisis caused by the irresponsibility and negligence of the institutions that controlled our financial system. Hedge funds, central banks and other powerful agents had been all too happy to place over-leveraged bets on the economy, and to profit from the economic losses incurred by the working class when these bets collapsed.

  Governments, in a desperate attempt to keep these institutions alive, spent hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts and other monetary injections instead of ensuring the well-being of the average citizen. Bitcoin was Satoshi Nakamoto’s answer to state-backed money; it was a vision for a decentralized digital currency that could provide the efficiency of online banking, the relative pseudonymity of physical cash, and the scarcity of gold.

  Unlike previous attempts at creating digital cash, Bitcoin was not backed by or controlled by a singular entity or party, but rather by an anonymous developer (developers?), a set of faceless forum visitors and a small online community that believed in using cryptographic software for privacy and independence from authoritarian powers. Nakamoto’s ultimate goal was to create an asset that was autonomous, decentralized and was not susceptible to the greed or will of any one individual. October 31, the day Satoshi Nakamoto formally announced their white paper to the Cypherpunks Mailing List, has come to be known as “Bitcoin White Paper Day” and is celebrated as an informal declaration of independence from corrupt state-backed money, heard across the world. The purpose of this article is to reflect on how far we have come since then, and how much work remains to be done in order to accomplish Nakamoto’s goals.

  The Bitcoin that we use today is vastly different from the Bitcoin that Satoshi Nakamoto and his fellow contributors created in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Beyond the numerous technical upgrades and hard forks, the network itself has grown significantly, with more and more people taking the proverbial “orange pill” and deciding to use bitcoin in some capacity.

  There is another way in which Bitcoin has changed: the core network, and asset (BTC), is thought of more as a store of value rather than a platform for micropayments. Indeed, there was a significant cultural schism within the Bitcoin community that led to this change: the famous, and aptly titled, “Blocksize Wars” approximately five years ago led to this change, with forks such as Bitcoin Cash and later Bitcoin SV being created by community members who believed in scalability over all else, and the core Bitcoin chain being upheld by members who sought to preserve decentralization and to look at alternative methods such as Layer 2 payment channels to support scalability. The Lightning Network, which is the most popular payment channel, has slowly gained popularity, recently reaching a capacity of 5000 bitcoin.

  Despite these changes, the core technological tenets espoused by Nakamoto in 2008 (Nakamoto Consensus with proof-of-work mining and a static maximum supply of 21 million) remain constant. This is not solely because of a technological or economic reason; in fact, it has been argued that changing Bitcoin’s underlying consensus mechanism or supply cap could lead to increased performance and adoption respectively. Rather, Bitcoin’s consistency in these areas can be attributed to the philosophy of its underlying community, who believe strongly in scarcity, security and decentralization over all else.

  Meanwhile, bitcoin is being used by people around the world to stave off unruly economic conditions. Bitcoin’s natural scarcity makes it attractive for citizens where corruption has led to unrestricted inflation. This adoption has even led some governments, such as El Salvador, to declare bitcoin a national currency, a move that would have been unfathomable to Nakamoto and Bitcoin’s original contributors.

  Perhaps the most interesting thing to take from Bitcoin’s progress over the past couple of years is that it has happened without a central leader: unlike alternative assets that are more akin to decentralized software platforms, bitcoin functions purely as money, with key “policy” decisions being made by a community. There is no Bitcoin organization or representative solely responsible for promoting adoption, nor is there a central “chief scientist” that has a significant impact on key protocol-level decisions. While there are certainly major influences within the community, the protocol as a whole does not have an organizational structure to lead either adoption or development. In fact, Bitcoin’s lack of hierarchy should be a goal for other distributed ledger projects who, while perhaps decentralized to a certain degree, are still largely influenced by a singular entity or individual.

  While Bitcoin has certainly grown from its humble beginnings as a white paper and a couple hundred lines of scrappy code, it still has a long way to go if it is to achieve the ambitious goals discussed by Nakamoto and other early adopters in their email chains and forum posts. From a technical standpoint, the Bitcoin community needs to continue building technology that not only enables further scalability and security, but perhaps more importantly, also helps make the network more decentralized. One of the most staunch mottos that Bitcoin community members have adopted is the term “Don’t trust, verify.” This is, of course, in reference to running a full Bitcoin node and not relying on data from external third parties, such as node providers. Network optimization, rollups, and other scalability research has been proposed by various individuals in the Bitcoin community as a way for the network to simultaneously scale while decreasing the cost it takes to run a full node. A recent report, published by John Light through research funded by the Human Rights Foundation, Starkware and CMS Holdings, provides more detail about rollups-related scalability research.

  Despite its roots in technology, Bitcoin has evolved over the years to become something more: it is now a community, a network, if you will, of like minded-individuals who all have some varying degrees of belief in a singular idea. Bitcoin is no longer a software, privy to only developers, coders or those with a highly technical background, and this marked shift should also signal additional non-technical priorities for the Bitcoin community to address over the next decade.

  More effort needs to be spent on educating the general public and making them aware of not only Bitcoin’s technology, but also the failures of the legacy financial systems that they use today. More effort needs to be spent not only on touting bitcoin’s economics and technology, but also drawing on distinctions between bitcoin and other cryptocurrency platforms. Finally, more effort needs to be made among the cryptocurrency community as a whole to come together when the fundamental principles that Satoshi Nakamoto and his fellow cypherpunks believed in are threatened by authoritarian governments, regardless of the platform that is being attacked.

  While discussions around varying blockchain networks have always been tribalistic to a degree, the recent trend has been to promote the success of your platform over all else, and even chide or insult platforms who face potential regulatory scrutiny. While believing that bitcoin is the most sound digital asset in terms of economics/construction, and getting into arguments about said belief is okay, and should even be encouraged, celebrating when an alternative platform is threatened with regulatory action or censorship goes against what Bitcoin is fundamentally all about.

  The cypherpunks, Satoshi Nakamoto and a majority of Bitcoin’s community all believe in the idea that one day, there can be a digital peer-to-peer currency completely independent of any government, intermediary or biased party. While we certainly have various disagreements about the pros and cons of our respective technology, belong to different “maximalist” groups, and in general have varying beliefs, we all ultimately belong to a space that was motivated by the idea of a censorship-resistant and non-partisan digital asset/network. We would do well to remember that fundamental principle as we continue to work on Bitcoin over the next 14 years.

  

  Tweet from Erik Vorhees on the sanctioning of Tornado Cash and potential BTC regulation by ESG proponents.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/01/2022 – 21:25

• Comparing Lightning-Caused & Human-Caused US Wildfires
  Comparing Lightning-Caused & Human-Caused US Wildfires

  Each year, thousands of acres of land are scorched by wildfires across the United States. But, as Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang details below, while most of these fires are triggered by natural causes such as lightning, some are unfortunately caused by human activity.

  This graphic by Gilbert Fontana uses data from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) to show the number of acres burned across the U.S. between 2001 and 2021.

  

  Historically, we can see that lightning-caused fires have led to more damage in the U.S., and this is especially true in the West region which includes states like California, Oregon, and Washington.

  That said, it’s worth noting that in three out of the six years from 2016–2021, human-caused wildfires led to more damage.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/01/2022 – 21:05

• Ron Paul: Will The Midterms Change Anything?
  Ron Paul: Will The Midterms Change Anything?

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

  Many experts expect public anger over inflation to enable Republicans to regain a majority in the US House of Representatives and maybe the Senate in next week’s midterm elections.

  However, even if every close Senate race broke in Republicans’ favor, and the new Republican majority was determined to pass a pro-liberty agenda, there still would not be the votes to override President Biden’s vetoes, or Chuck Schumer’s filibusters.

  Pro-liberty legislation cutting spending, or protecting our First, Second, and Fifth Amendment rights, or shutting down the Department of Education, or auditing the Federal Reserve, would not become law.

  

  The fact that such pro-liberty legislation would not become law is a reason many Republican Congress members feel comfortable cosponsoring and voting for such bills. One of the dirty secrets of American politics is that the establishment of both parties supports the corporatist welfare-warfare state and the fiat money system that makes it all possible.

  While they quibble over the details, the only real disagreement between the two parties is over which one is better able to run the economy, run the world, and run our personal lives.

  One hoped-for benefit of having Congress in Republican hands is that the Republican desire to deny President Biden any major legislative victories going into the 2024 election means the American people will be safe from more big spending legislation like the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act that will lead to more inflation. It is also hoped that our liberty and prosperity will be safe from attempts to expand government’s role in healthcare and implement the Green New Deal.

  Should Republicans take the Senate, my son Kentucky Senator Rand Paul could assume the chairmanship of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Rand has already stated he wants there to be a full investigation into Dr. Anthony Fauci’s actions leading up to and during the covid scare. Rand’s chairmanship would also allow him to examine ways in which the Department of Education has undermined parental authority and weakened academics while promoting the use of critical race theory in government schools. He could also look at how the Education Department is abusing its authority to force schools to allow boys to play on girls’ sports teams and even to use girls’ bathrooms.

  Arizona could send pro-liberty members of Congress a new ally: Blake Masters. Masters is an advocate of limited constitutional government who understands the importance of challenging the Federal Reserve’s unchecked power and protecting liberty and prosperity. He is currently in a very close race with incumbent Senator Mark Kelly, who is a leading advocate for gun control in the Senate.

  While we should support those few politicians who stand up for liberty, we should remember that we cannot rely on politicians alone to restore liberty. Instead, the only way to win back our liberty is to change the political and cultural environment politicians operate in. That is why converting a critical mass of people to libertarianism is crucial. Our victory will come not by electing a libertarian majority to Congress but by controlling the political and intellectual environment so even the authoritarians feel compelled to vote for liberty.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/01/2022 – 20:45

• "It's Already Happening" – Roubini Warns "World War III Has Effectively Begun"
  “It’s Already Happening” – Roubini Warns “World War III Has Effectively Begun”

  Economist Nouriel Roubini, who’s been dubbed ‘Dr. Doom’ for his gloomy-yet-correct prediction of the 2008 market meltdown, is making headlines again during a series of interviews promoting his new book “Megathreats”.

  “We have to worry about everything at the same time, as all these megathreats are interconnected…”

  

  When asked if we’re “there again” in reference to the 2008 great financial crisis, Roubini replied: “Yes, we’re here again.”

  “But in addition to the economic, monetary, and financial risks – and there are new ones – now we’re going towards stagflation like we’ve never seen since the 1970s.”

  Private and public debt levels globally have exploded from 200 percent of GDP in 2000 to around 350 percent of GDP today, he said, blaming ultra-loose central bank policies that made borrowing cheap and encouraged households, businesses, and countries to take on ever greater debt loads even though many were barely solvent.

  But now, facing persistently high inflation, central banks led by the Fed have embarked on aggressive rate hiking cycles, with Roubini predicting that highly indebted and operationally fragile “zombie” institutions are going to go bankrupt.

  “That’s why we’re not only going to have inflation and stagflation but we’ll have a stagflationary debt crisis,” Roubini predicted.

  In the 1970s, debt levels were far lower than today and so advanced economies didn’t suffer debt crises when the Fed jacked up rates to around 20 percent.

  “Today we have the worst of the 70s with a massive amount of stagflationary negative supply shock,” he added.

  Roubini has called predictions for a brief and mild U.S. recession “delusional.”

  He told Bloomberg in an interview at the end of July that he expects the United States to be hit by a “severe recession and a severe debt and financial crisis.”

  Roubini said that, in addition to economic, monetary, and financial risks currently in play, the world faces higher geopolitical risks.

  During an extensive interview with Der Spiegel, the economist said he preferred “Dr. Realist” as he detailed some of the world’s most acute problems.

  When speaking about major global threats, Roubini mentioned the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, adding that Iran and Israel are “on a collision course” as well.

  “It is already happening. The U.S. has just passed new regulations banning the export of semiconductors to Chinese companies for AI or quantum computing or military use. Europeans would like to continue doing business with the U.S. and China, but it won’t be possible because of national security issues.”

  “…just this morning, I read that the Biden administration expects China to attack Taiwan sooner rather than later. Honestly, World War III has already effectively begun, certainly in Ukraine and cyberspace.“

  He believes that a breakup of the globalized world is looming.

  “Trade, finance, technology, internet: Everything will split in two,” he predicted.

  Finally, Roubini said debt levels are higher than they’ve ever been, adding that all this represents a confluence of “mega trends” that he predicts will combine into a stagflationary storm that will engulf many of the world’s economies.

  The economist said that the worst possible outcome would be if all eleven “mega trends” materialize and feed on each other, leading to a “dystopian future.”

  “It’s not just the end of the world economy… it could be even global war.”

  Recalling a recent event hosted by the IMF, Roubini referred to historian Niall Ferguson who “said in a speech there that we would be lucky if we got an economic crisis like in the 1970s — and not a war like in the 1940s.”

  After all that, we think ‘Dr. Doom’ remains a more appropriate nickname.

  *  *  *

  Read the full Der Spiegel interview below:

  DER SPIEGEL: Professor Roubini, you don’t like your nickname “Dr. Doom.” Instead you would like to be called “Dr. Realist.” But in your new book, you describe “ten megathreats” that endanger our future. It doesn’t get much gloomier than that.

  Roubini: The threats I write about are real – no one would deny that. I grew up in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s. Back then, I never worried about a war between great powers or a nuclear winter, as we had détente between the Soviet Union and the West. I never heard the words climate change or global pandemic. And no one worried about robots taking over most jobs. We had freer trade and globalization, we lived in stable democracies, even if they were not perfect. Debt was very low, the population wasn’t over-aged, there were no unfunded liabilities from the pension and health care systems. That’s the world I grew up in. And now I have to worry about all these things – and so does everyone else.

  DER SPIEGEL: But do they? Or do you feel like a voice crying in the wilderness?

  Roubini: I was in Washington at the IMF meeting. The economic historian Niall Ferguson said in a speech there that we would be lucky if we got an economic crisis like in the 1970s – and not a war like in the 1940s. National security advisers were worried about NATO getting involved in the war between Russia and Ukraine and Iran and Israel being on a collision course. And just this morning, I read that the Biden administration expects China to attack Taiwan sooner rather than later. Honestly, World War III has already effectively begun, certainly in Ukraine and cyberspace.

  DER SPIEGEL: Politicians seem overwhelmed by the simultaneity of many major crises. What priorities should they set?

  Roubini: Of course, they must take care of Russia and Ukraine before they take care of Iran and Israel or China. But policymakers should also think about inflation and recessions, i.e. stagflation. The eurozone is already in a recession, and I think it will be long and ugly. The United Kingdom is even worse. The pandemic seems contained, but new COVID variants could emerge soon. And climate change is a slow-motion disaster that is accelerating. For each of the 10 threats I describe in my book, I can give you 10 examples that are happening as we speak today, not in the distant future. Do you want one on climate change?

  DER SPIEGEL: If you must.

  Roubini: This summer, there have been droughts all over the world, including in the United States. Near Las Vegas, the drought is so bad that bodies of mobsters from the 1950s have surfaced in the dried-up lakes. In California, farmers are now selling their water rights because it’s more profitable than growing anything. And in Florida, you can’t get insurance for houses on the coast anymore. Half of Americans will have to eventually move to the Midwest or Canada. That’s science, not speculation.

  DER SPIEGEL: Another threat you describe is that the U.S. could pressure Europe to limit its business relations with China in order to not endanger the U.S. military presence on the continent. How far are we from that scenario?

  Roubini: It is already happening. The U.S. has just passed new regulations banning the export of semiconductors to Chinese companies for AI or quantum computing or military use. Europeans would like to continue doing business with the U.S. and China, but it won’t be possible because of national security issues. Trade, finance, technology, internet: Everything will split in two.

  DER SPIEGEL: In Germany, there is a dispute right now about whether parts of the Port of Hamburg should be sold to the Chinese state-owned company Cosco. What would your advice be?

  Roubini: You have to think about what the purpose of such a deal is. Germany has already made a big mistake by relying on energy from Russia. China, of course, is not going to take over German ports militarily, as it could in Asia and Africa. But the only economic argument for this kind of agreement would be that we could strike back once European factories are seized in China. Otherwise, it’s not a very smart idea.

  DER SPIEGEL: You warn that Russia and China are trying to build an alternative to the dollar and the SWIFT system. But the two countries have failed so far.

  Roubini: It’s not just about payment systems. China is going around the world selling subsidized 5G technologies that can be used for spying. I asked the president of an African country why he gets 5G technology from China and not from the West. He told me, we are a small country, so someone will spy on us anyway. Then, I might as well take the Chinese technology, it’s cheaper. China is growing its economic, financial and trading power in many parts of the world.

  DER SPIEGEL: But will the Chinese renminbi really replace the dollar in the long run?

  Roubini: It will take time, but the Chinese are good at thinking long term. They have suggested to the Saudis that they price and charge for the oil they sell them in renminbi. And they have more sophisticated payment systems than anyone else in the world. Alipay and WeChat pay are used by a billion Chinese every day for billions of transactions. In Paris, you can already shop at Louis Vuitton with WeChat pay.

  DER SPIEGEL: In the 1970s, we also had an energy crisis, high inflation and stagnant growth, so-called stagflation. Are we experiencing something similar now?

  Roubini: It is worse today. Back then, we didn’t have as much public and private debt as we do today. If central banks raise interest rates now to fight inflation, it will lead to the bankruptcy of many »zombie« companies, shadow banks and government institutions. Besides, the oil crisis was caused by a few geopolitical shocks then, there are more today. And just imagine the impact of a Chinese attack on Taiwan, which produces 50 percent of all semiconductors in the world, and 80 percent of the high-end ones. That would be a global shock. We depend more on semiconductors today than on oil.

  DER SPIEGEL: You are very critical of central bankers and their lax monetary policy. Is there any central bank that gets it right these days?

  Roubini: They are damned either way. Either they fight inflation with high policy rates and cause a hard landing for the real economy and the financial markets. Or they wimp out and blink, don’t raise rates and inflation keeps rising. I think the Fed and the ECB will blink – as the Bank of England has already done.

  DER SPIEGEL: On the other hand, high inflation rates can also be helpful because they simply inflate the debt away.

  Roubini: Yes, but they also make new debt more expensive. Because when inflation rises, lenders charge higher interest rates. One example: If inflation goes from 2 to 6 percent, then U.S. government bond rates will have to go from 4 to 8 percent to keep bringing the same yield; and private borrowing costs for mortgages and business loans will be even higher. This makes it much more expensive for many companies, because they have to offer much higher interest rates than government bonds, which are considered safe. We have so much debt right now that something like this could lead to a total economic, financial and monetary collapse. And we’re not even talking about hyperinflation like in the Weimar Republic, just single digit inflation.

  DER SPIEGEL: The overriding risk you describe in your book is climate change. Isn’t rising debt secondary in light of the possible consequences of a climate catastrophe?

  Roubini: We have to worry about everything at the same time, as all these megathreats are interconnected. One example: Right now, there is no way to significantly reduce CO2 emissions without shrinking the economy. And even though 2020 was the worst recession in 60 years, green house gas emissions only fell by 9 percent. But without strong economic growth, we will not be able to solve the debt problem. So, we have to find ways to grow without emissions.

  DER SPIEGEL: Given all these parallel crises: How do you assess the chances of democracy surviving against authoritarian systems like in China or Russia?

  Roubini: I am worried. Democracies are fragile when there are big shocks. There is always some macho man then who says »I will save the country« and who blames everything on the foreigners. That’s exactly what Putin did with Ukraine. Erdogan could do the same thing with Greece next year and try to create a crisis because otherwise he might lose the election. If Donald Trump runs again and loses the election, he could openly call on white supremacists to storm the Capitol this time. We could see violence and a real civil war in the U.S. In Germany, things look comparatively good for now. But what happens if things go wrong economically and people vote more for the right-wing opposition?

  DER SPIEGEL. You have become known not only as the crash prophet, but also as a party animal. Do you still feel like partying these days?

  Roubini: I always hosted art, culture, and book salons, not just social events. And during the pandemic I rediscovered my Jewish roots. Today, I prefer to invite 20 people to a Shabbat dinner with a nice ceremony and live music. Or we do an evening event where I ask a serious question and everyone has to answer. Deep conversations about life and the world at large, not chitchat. We should enjoy life, but also do our bit to save the world.

  DER SPIEGEL: What do you mean?

  Roubini: All of our carbon footprints are much too big. A significant part of all greenhouse gas emissions alone come from livestock farming. That’s why I became a pescatarian and gave up on meat, including chicken.

  DER SPIEGEL: You used to be famous for being on the road for three-quarters of the year.

  Roubini: I still do travel nonstop. But I will tell you one thing: I love New York. During the pandemic, I didn’t flee to the Hamptons or Miami like many others. I stayed here, I saw the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, I volunteered to help the homeless. I saw daily the desperation of many artist friends who lost jobs and incomes and couldn’t afford their rent. And even if there is another hurricane like Sandy in New York that could lead to violence and chaos, I will stay. We have to face the world as it is. Even if there is a nuclear confrontation. Because then the first bomb would fall on New York and the next one on Moscow.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/01/2022 – 20:25

• Jack Dorsey Retains Stake In Twitter, Saving Elon Musk $1 Billion
  Jack Dorsey Retains Stake In Twitter, Saving Elon Musk $1 Billion

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

  Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey has retained his 2.4 percent stake in the social media platform after it was acquired by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, according to a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

  

  According to the filing, Dorsey retained more than 18 million shares in Twitter, valued at about $1 billion when the company became private.

  The decision by Dorsey, which was initially agreed upon back in April according to the filing, means that Musk has saved himself a substantial payout to the former Twitter CEO.

  It also means that Dorsey will remain one of Twitter’s largest shareholders, second only to Musk himself and Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Al Saud, who rolled over his 34.948 million shares of Twitter, valued at roughly $1.9 billion, in October.

  Dorsey, who stepped down from Twitter’s Board of Directors in May this year, has been outspoken in his support for Musk taking over Twitter, writing in April that Musk was the “singular solution” he trusts.

  ‘Common Digital Town Square’

  “Elon’s goal of creating a platform that is ‘maximally trusted and broadly inclusive’ is the right one,” Dorsey said at the time. “This is also @paraga’s [former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal’s] goal, and why I chose him. Thank you both for getting the company out of an impossible situation. This is the right path. … I believe it with all my heart.”

  “I’m so happy Twitter will continue to serve the public conversation. Around the world, and into the stars!” Dorsey added.

  Musk, who officially acquired Twitter on Oct. 27, has repeatedly stated that the platform must be a place where individuals can debate a wide range of topics without fearing censorship of minority and politically conservative viewpoints; something that Twitter has been accused of repeatedly in the past.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/01/2022 – 20:05

• The Rise (Or Fall?) Of Vegetarianism
  The Rise (Or Fall?) Of Vegetarianism

  Whether vegetarianism is pursued with the aim of protecting animals, preserving environmental resources, leading a healthier life or because of cultural traditions, the practice can have a profound influence on health and carbon footprints.

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, while vegetarianism is expanding slowly in several countries around the world, for example in Europe or the United States, large emerging economies are doing it the other way around. Here, vegetarianism is in decline – for example in India, where traditional vegetarian diets are increasingly swapped for an omnivore approach to eating.

  While in 208/19 around a third of urban Indians said they were vegetarians, this decreased to approximately one quarter by 2021/22. This is according to the Statista Global Consumer Survey...

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Vegetarian diets have become more popular in the last three years overall, but some countries are more steadfast than others in their love for meat.

  In Mexico and Spain, the rate of vegetarians hovered below 3 percent most recently. The same is true for South Korea, even though here, the rate vegetarians rose from an extremely low 0.9 percent in 2018/19.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/01/2022 – 19:45

• US Will No Longer "Waste Its Time" On Iran Nuclear Deal Talks
  US Will No Longer “Waste Its Time” On Iran Nuclear Deal Talks

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  On Monday, President Biden’s special envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, said the US isn’t going to “waste its time” on talks with Tehran to revive the nuclear deal and would use a military option as a “last resort” against Iran.

  Negotiations between the US and Iran on the nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, have been stalled since early September. The Biden administration hasn’t officially said it’s done with the talks, but Malley’s comments are the surest sign that diplomacy between Washington and Tehran is dead.

  

  Malley echoed other administration officials and said that the JCPOA is “not our focus right now” and that the US is going to focus on other issues, including supporting protesters inside Iran.

  “It is not on our agenda. We are not going to focus on something which is inert when other things are happening… and we are not going to waste our time on it… if Iran has taken the position it has taken,” Malley said at a Carnegie Endowment event, according to Axios.

  There’s no sign that Iran is working to develop a nuclear weapon, but Malley still threatened the US would use military action as a “last resort” to prevent Tehran from doing so.

  “We will use other tools, and in last resort, a military option if necessary, to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon,” he said.

  The US has accused Iran of making “extraneous demands” during the JCPOA negotiations. But the Biden administration had taken a hardline approach in the talks by refusing to lift all Trump-era sanctions.

  The stance forced Iran to negotiate what sanctions would be lifted in exchange for it bringing its nuclear program back into the strict limits set by the JCPOA.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/01/2022 – 19:25

• "Possibility Of Additional Outbreaks:" Bird Flu Strikes Iowa Egg Farm With Million Hens
  “Possibility Of Additional Outbreaks:” Bird Flu Strikes Iowa Egg Farm With Million Hens

  The unseasonable return of avian influenza or bird flu continues to wreak havoc on the US poultry industry. Iowa agriculture officials announced Monday that the first infection since April was detected at a large commercial egg-laying farm, AP News reported.

  Iowa Department of Agriculture officials said the commercial farm with 1.1 million chickens in Wright County (central Iowa) just detected the highly contagious and deadly virus.

  

  All chickens at the facility were culled and disposed of to avoid spreading the disease. Iowa has been hit hard by bird losses this year, with more than 13 million killed. On a national level, 47.7 million birds have been affected in 43 states. 

  Bird flu continues “to be a significant threat across the country,” Iowa Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig told The Des Moines Register. He added:

  “We have been preparing for the possibility of additional outbreaks,” working closely with producers and the US Department of Agriculture.

  “With migration ongoing, we continue to emphasize the need for strict biosecurity on poultry farms and around backyard flocks to help prevent and limit the spread of this destructive virus.” 

  In late September, we noted there was concern that the fall migration of wild birds could spread the virus. That appears to be correct. 

  The culling of tens of millions of birds has dented national egg supplies, sending prices sky-high and above 2015 outbreak levels (last major bird flu) to about $3 per dozen at the supermarket. 

  

  Retail egg prices have doubled since August 2020, straining consumers’ wallets as breakfast inflation soars. What used to be a cheap source of protein in the morning has become expensive. 

  Besides eggs, turkeys have also been impacted by bird flu, sending prices to record highs ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/01/2022 – 19:05

• Supreme Court Leaves TSA Mask Mandate Ruling In Place
  Supreme Court Leaves TSA Mask Mandate Ruling In Place

  Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

  The Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal on Oct. 31, leaving in place a federal appeals court ruling that allowed the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to require the wearing of masks on airplanes, trains, and buses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

  Although the TSA abandoned its mask mandate in April, the decision allows a Dec. 10, 2021, ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to remain on the books as a legal precedent that the government may rely upon in the future.

  

  In a brief filed with the high court on Sept. 27, the Biden administration urged the Supreme Court to reject the case.

  U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar noted in the document that the TSA had announced on April 13 that it would extend the mask directives through May 3, 2022.

  But days after the announcement, when a federal district judge in Florida vacated the Centers for Disease Control’s order requiring masking at transportation hubs and in airplanes, the TSA backed out of its mask mandate extension.

  The TSA mandate was allowed to expire on April 18.

  The D.C. Circuit Court’s ruling was correct because it recognized TSA was acting within its statutory authority and its actions were aimed at addressing the threats to transportation posed by COVID-19, the brief stated.

  The high court refused to take up the petition filed in Corbett v. TSA (court file 22-33), without explaining why.

  Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did not participate in the consideration of the petition, but the court did not explain why she refrained from doing so.

  Frequent flyer Jonathan Corbett challenged the TSA’s January 2021 directives requiring that passengers wear masks.

  Corbett argued that the agency’s authority under the federal Aviation and Transportation Security Act was limited to developing policies and directives aimed at guarding against violent attacks on transportation infrastructure.

  The statute did not empower TSA to do things like require mask-wearing to protect public health, he argued.

  But the appeals court disagreed.

  “The COVID-19 global pandemic poses one of the greatest threats to the operational viability of the transportation system and the lives of those on it seen in decades,” the circuit court ruled in an opinion written by Judge Harry T. Edwards, who was appointed by then-President Jimmy Carter in 1980. One judge on the three-judge panel dissented from the ruling.

  “TSA, which is tasked with maintaining transportation safety and security, plainly has the authority to address such threats under” the Aviation and Transportation Security Act.

  Congress granted the TSA “broad authority” to analyze potential risks to aviation and national security and respond to those risks and conferred upon the agency “an expansive power to act in relation to the transportation system during a national emergency.”

  Given the language in the statute, “it cannot seriously be doubted that Congress’ delegations of authority to TSA authorize the Mask Directives issued to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus.”

  If Congress wanted to limit the reach of the TSA it could have done so, but instead it “selected broad language in its mandate to the agency.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/01/2022 – 18:45

• Israel Election: Exit Polls Show Netanyahu On Brink Of Returning To Power
  Israel Election: Exit Polls Show Netanyahu On Brink Of Returning To Power

  Early exit polls show former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is poised to return to power in a Tuesday vote that reportedly had huge turnout – the largest the country has seen in over two decades. 

  Israel is on edge waiting for the results after five rounds of voting in three-and-a-half years, which still has yet to produce a clear winner and new government; instead there’s been nothing but gridlock and power-sharing arrangements so far. 

  

  Fox News reports as Israel approaches midnight local time, based on national media, “Early exit polls predicted that former prime minister and current opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu might very well be that winner this time around.”

  And further: “His bloc of right-wing, religious parties was slated to draw up to 62 seats, the number of mandates needed to form a majority in the 120-seat Knesset, Israel’s parliament.”

  And Haaretz is reporting: 

  Two of the three exit polls give the pro-Netanyahu bloc 62 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, with the other putting the party at 61. The anti-Netanyahu bloc won 54 seats, according to two exit polls, and 55 according to the third.

  Fox cites Assaf Shapira, Director of the Political Reform Program at the Israel Democracy Institute, who points to all major exit polling pointing to the opposition “Bibi bloc” – a controversial alliance of far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties – holding a lead…

  “All of the exit polls predict between 61-62 seats for the pro-Netanyahu political bloc, which was quite expected,” he said, adding however that previous exit polls in 2021 also gave Netanyahu between 61-62 seats, but they missed one small Arab party that ended up becoming a decisive factor that allowed the other factions to unite and oust Netanyahu from power. 

  

  Results might not be known for a number of hours, or possibly days.

  But then there’s still the potential scenario of gridlocked results stretching into more weeks or even months, possibly resulting in the current “transitional prime minister” period being extended.

  Middle East Eye notes that “Months ago, Israelis started repeating a bitter joke that a sixth round of elections would follow these. Now that may soon become a nightmarish reality.”

  Benjamin Netanyahu gives brief statement to the media in Hebrew *AND* English on election results. pic.twitter.com/oQi67bXmOo

  — Moshe Schwartz (@YWNReporter) November 1, 2022

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  “This is, in fact, not bad news for Yair Lapid. In case of 60-60 deadlock, no new government can be formed and Lapid gets to keep the title of ‘transitional prime minister’ for another six months,” MEE adds.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/01/2022 – 18:25

• Wall Street Gives Up On Corporate Profit Outlooks
  Wall Street Gives Up On Corporate Profit Outlooks

  By Jessica Menton, Bloomberg Earnings Watch reporter

  Wall Street is finally caving on its forecasts for corporate earnings for the next couple of years.

  For some investors, it’s still short of a capitulation in sentiment that would signal battered equities are getting close to a bottom.

  Projections for 2023 earnings have fallen six straight weeks, by 3% to $233 a share for the S&P 500 Index, according to Bloomberg Intelligence data.

  For 2024, the consensus has tumbled even more steeply: It’s dropped 19 consecutive weeks, by about 6% since mid-June to $253 a share.

  

  Investors say it’s constructive that many analysts are steadily revising their view lower, after sticking to a rosy outlook while stocks sank into a bear market in the first half of the year. However, money managers like Dan Eye at Fort Pitt Capital Group say the gloom needs to deepen further before the market fully prices in the risk that Federal Reserve policy tightening will weaken the economy. 

  S&P 500 earnings forecasts for 2023 should be closer to $220 a share, almost 6% lower than the current consensus, he says.

  “Earnings estimates getting slashed for 2023 is part of the bottoming process for the equity market,” said Eye, the firm’s chief investment officer.

  “Progress has been made, but there’s still more work to do before stocks can bottom. It’s too optimistic to see earnings projections that high next year.”

  The strong dollar, which erodes the value of overseas revenue, and slowing economic growth have been the key drivers for the  decline in earnings forecasts, said Wendy Soong, a senior associate analyst at BI. That backdrop adds to the strain on multinational companies that are already grappling with higher inflation costs, she said.

  Tuesday brought signs of surprising strength in the US labor market that will likely keep pressure on the Fed to prolong its campaign to tame inflation. The central bank is widely expected to lift its benchmark overnight rate by 75 basis points for a fourth straight meeting on Wednesday, and tighten further in December.

  To JPMorgan Chase strategist Marko Kolanovic, the reset in earnings expectations may lead investors to seek an inflection point in the market, should they conclude that the Fed’s policy is working as planned.

  That’s the debate that will grip the market in the coming months as investors sift through Fed officials’ comments and the latest inflation readings, while assessing the overarching risk: whether rate hikes push the US economy into a recession.

  “Analysts earnings forecasts are starting to capitulate,” said Soong.

  “From a valuation perspective, it’s better for stocks for sure, but there are still geopolitical and interest-rate risks for equities. Lower earnings projections won’t predict the stock market’s direction from here.”

  Elsewhere in corporate earnings:

  

  

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/01/2022 – 18:05

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• First Nuclear Power Plant In Poland To Be Constructed By US Company
  First Nuclear Power Plant In Poland To Be Constructed By US Company

  Via Remix News,

  The construction of the nuclear plant will commence in 2026 on the Baltic Sea shore in northern Poland…

  

  Poland has chosen the Westinghouse group from the U.S. to construct the country’s first nuclear plant, with a government resolution on the matter to be adopted on Nov. 2, announced Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Saturday.

  Morawiecki said the project will be realized using the proven and safe technology offered by the U.S. Westinghouse Electric Company. He delivered the news following successful talks with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, U.S. State Secretary Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.

  Very pleased to see Poland will select Westinghouse technology to help produce safe, clean, and reliable nuclear power and create thousands of good paying jobs for both our countries. The United States is proud to be Poland’s strong partner for energy and security. https://t.co/r3X2wrfKiH

  — Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) October 28, 2022

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

  The markets had expected Poland to choose the U.S. technology but the two other offers from French and Korean companies were also taken into consideration by the government. However, Poland and the United States feature the strongest cooperation dialogue in the nuclear sector going back many years.

  In January 2022, the Westinghouse Electric Company signed a memorandum of cooperation with ten Polish companies regarding the potential construction of six AP1000 reactors as part of the Polish Nuclear Energy Program. The company specializes in producing devices utilizing nuclear energy and their flagship projects are the AP1000 reactors that are used in countries such as China.

  Poland’s decision to choose the U.S. firm does not mean that the other offers submitted by French EDF group and Korean KHNP are not at play, as two nuclear plants are to be constructed in Poland. According to unofficial information reported on Monday, KHNP will sign a letter of intent with Polish Energy Group and ZE PAK concerning the construction of nuclear units in Pątnów in central Poland on land owned by ZE PAK group. On Tuesday, Polish Deputy Prime Minister Jacek Sasin will be visiting Shin-Kori nuclear plant in South Korea.

  The Polish nuclear program envisions the construction of six reactors, one every two years.

  The construction of the first reactor is to begin in four years, and its launch is planned for 2033. It will be able to provide energy to 4 million households. The last reactor of the second power plant will start functioning in 2043.

  If both investments are completed, Polish nuclear power could amount to between 8.8 and 11.8 gigawatts, with the government estimating the cost of their construction at around €39 billion (185 billion Polish zloty).

  In December 2021, Polish Nuclear Plants (PEJ) reported that the seaside area of Lubiatowo-Kopalino was selected as the preferred location for the construction of the first nuclear plant in Poland. The second possible location is in nearby Żarnowiec, where a nuclear plant of the Soviet-era remains unfinished to this day.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/01/2022 – 02:00

• COVID-19: A Universe Of Questions In A Time Of Universal Deceit
  COVID-19: A Universe Of Questions In A Time Of Universal Deceit

  Authored by Michael Bryant via Off-Guardian.org,

  “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act“

  -George Orwell

  As we approach the third year of the ‘Covid Crisis’, the once unassailable Covid Story – reported and repeated by politicians, public health mandarins and all mainstream media – has been replaced by contradictions and inconsistencies.

  

  The original Covid Story narrated by health ‘experts’ and government officials told of a particularly virulent pathogen which besieged the planet in 2020 and spread like wildfire– terrorizing, infecting, and killing people en masse. 

  It was the story of a “pandemic level event” in which people were told to stay indoors, entire sectors of society were forced to shut down and humans were told to do everything possible to avoid contact with one another. 

  It was a story of closed down schools, closed down businesses, closed down churches and soon-to-be overwhelmed hospitals.

  In later chapters the Covid Story morphed from ironclad truths, “Follow the science”, to ever changing definitions, “The science evolves.” Countless aspects of the “official” narrative changed overnight. Gradually the tale became fraught with pages of questionable statistics and ever shifting storylines.

  What was one to make of all of these contradictions and ministerial mutations? 

  Did today’s story make sense with yesterday’s? Will tomorrow’s make sense with today’s?

  Soon the only certainty within the Covid narrative became its uncertainty– the moment the Covid story “you thought you knew” was on solid footing the sands shifted yet again.

  Attempting to make sense of the Covid conundrum soon required navigating a complex labyrinth of deceits, manipulations, obfuscations and concealments. Separating fact from fiction became more challenging each day.

  While most persisted with the media storyline and government edicts, some began to take notice of the numerous anomalies and started asking questions.

  The most glaring question was simply: “Why was no one allowed to ask questions?” Once this Pandora’s Box opened, a stream of questions came tumbling out. 

  Why wasn’t the media asking any questions? How were they all operating in lockstep?

  Were we alerted to this “pandemic-level event” by our direct observations and experiences? 

  Were we surrounded by sick people, in our homes, neighborhoods and workplaces who were succumbing to a quick-spreading and dangerous virus?

  If we were truly in a pandemic of biblical proportions would there be so much discussion of the epidemiological minutiae?

  Bit by bit as most of the accepted narrative began to unravel, questioning the “official story” became more than a revolutionary act it became an obligation.

  If you have to be persuaded, reminded, pressured, lied to, incentivized, coerced, bullied, socially shamed, guilt-tripped, threatened, punished and criminalized. If all of this is considered necessary to gain your compliance — you can be absolutely certain that what is being promoted is not in your best interest. Ian Watson

  To sell the Covid Story a mass marketing campaign rife with its own nomenclature was launched. The constant drumbeat of the Covid battle cry became inescapable resembling  military grade propaganda rather than public health messaging.

  • Were these Covid watch words and rallying cries intended to serve public health or were they designed merely to be obeyed? Where did these ideas and phrases come from? 

  • Why did the media and government relentlessly stoke public fear and anxiety?

  • Why were millions spent on behavioral management teams?

  • How did the phrase “the new normal” emerge within the first weeks of the pandemic?

  • Was sustained psychological manipulation utilized to create fear and coerce the public?

  • Were Covid symptoms genuinely unique or were we being conditioned to believe there was a new disease?

  • Were statistics about Covid deaths being manipulated to create the perception of a crisis?

  • Were lockdowns about protection or social control?

  • Did lockdowns reduce deaths or cause increased mortality?

  • Was there ever any evidence for ”asymptomatic spread”  or was this overstated to frighten the public?

  • How did we go from “two weeks to flatten the curve” to permanent emergency “laws?

  “Hospitals and doctors are getting rich off a sickened mass population.“

  – Steven Magee, Hypoxia, Mental Illness & Chronic Fatigue

  One of the earliest Covid Campaign methods used to alert the public to the coming storm of dire illness centered on the belief that hospitals were going to be overwhelmed by a cascade of the Covid infected.

  “Two weeks to flatten the curve” became a national rallying cry.

  The public was flooded with stories of overflowing hospital corridors and swamped ICU’s. Makeshift hospitals were swiftly constructed to take in the excess casualties. The unquestioning media amplified these stories creating a climate of widespread panic and hysteria.

  Was any of this true?    

  • Were US hospitals really overwhelmed? What does the data say?

  • Were NYC hospitals overwhelmed in Spring 2020?

  • Was Elmhurst hospital, the ‘epicenter of the epicenter’, overflowing in Spring 2020?

  • Were ICUs flooded with patients?

  • Were US hospitals busier in 2020 than they were in 2019?

  • Are hospitals regularly overrun during cold and flu season?

  “Fear is a market. To instill fear in people also has advantages. Not only in terms of drug use. Anxiety-driven people are easier to rule.”

  – Gerd Gogerenzer, Director Emeritus, Max Planck Institute for Educational Research

  As the pandemic picked up speed, the “Covid death toll” became a daily marker hammered home by media bullhorns and mortality scoreboards.

  Ghastly tales of the “first wave” of Covid fatalities were plastered all over media channels in lockstep. Harrowing tales of overflowing morgues and refrigerated trucks filled with Covid cadavers saturated the evening news. While a simpler explanation for these trucks was readily available, a compliant and complicit media plugged its ears and continued to manufacture mass hysteria. 

  Again all questions that might sow seeds of skepticism were kept away from public discussion. 

  But was this advertised death march verifiable or was this yet another feature of the Covid fear campaign?

  • Were Covid death counts and death certificates accurate or were Covid deaths artificially inflated?

  • What was the average age of Covid deaths and how did that compare with normal life expectancy?

  • What percentage of Covid deaths were from people who already had multiple comorbidities?

  • Were the photos of coffins from Bergamo, Italy, in March 2020, used to terrify the world, authentic?

  • Why did CNN report that a 7-year-old Georgia boy died from Covid when he drowned in a bathtub after a seizure.

  • How many Covid deaths due to “intentional and unintentional injury, poisoning and other adverse events” were placed in the CDC COVID death count?

  • Why were 14,369 injury deaths, 1,265 deaths due to falls,  drowning deaths and suicides listed in the Covid-19 death count?

  • Why did the CDC change recording methods exclusively for Covid deaths and did this inflate Covid fatality numbers?

  “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth.“

  – Carl Sagan

  As the purported wreckage of the “first wave” subsided and the body count failed to add up to the predicted totals, the narrative abruptly shifted.

  “The Covid Death” was replaced by “The Covid Case” as the main vector of fear. What defined a “Covid Case” generally seemed up for grabs. “Case” definitions ranged from anyone “suspected of having Covid” to those who were ‘positive’ as established through PCR testing.

  Nowhere in the media could one find an inquiring reporter who would question what it meant to be a “probable case.” Even as the PCR became a regular feature of daily life never was the soundness of its usage as a diagnostic tool examined by any mainstream source. 

  Were these case counts and the methods used situated on solid scientific ground?

  • Was Covid-19 a novel virus?

  • How did the peer-review process of the critical publication about the Covid PCR tests only take one day? 

  • Were Covid PCR test results accurate?

  • Were Covid case counts and diagnoses accurate?

  • Were PCR tests used deceptively to invent Covid “cases?”

  • Why was the definition of a Covid “case” altered?

  “Big Pharma needs sick people to prosper. Patients, not healthy people, are their customers. If everybody was cured of a particular illness or disease, pharmaceutical companies would lose 100% of their profits on the products they sell for that ailment. What all this means is because modern medicine is so heavily intertwined with the financial profits culture, it’s a sickness industry more than it is a health industry.“

  – James Morcan

  Once it was firmly established in the public’s mind that a pathogenic menace was lurking just outside their door a non-stop barrage of messaging, gaslighting and coercion kicked in from all angles. 

  The entire world was repeatedly informed that the only salvation for the human species was a genetically engineered experimental medical product concocted at “Warp Speed” by giant Pharmaceutical companies. This and only this medication could save humanity from catastrophe.

  Like many other facets of the Covid Story, the tale of Big Pharma and their magical potions unraveled upon further scrutiny. Multiple questions arose:

  • If Big Pharma is truly in the business of public health what is their historical record towards safeguarding public health?

  • What is Pfizer’s previous track record of fraud and corruption?

  • Has Big Pharma captured the FDA and the political and regulatory processes?

  • Does Big Pharma control the CDC?

  • Does Big Pharma influence clinical trials?

  • Were Pfizer’s clinical trials for Covid vaccines properly run  trials?

  • Why did the FDA try to conceal Covid vaccine trial data for 75 years? What did the trial data reveal?

  • Why has the FDA refused to make its vaccine safety monitoring public?

  • How did the CDC decide the Pfizer clinical trials proved a ‘safe and effective’ vaccine?

  “I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.“

  – Malcolm X

  When the mass rollout of the experimental Covid vaccines was launched, a compulsory campaign silencing all voices who dare question the vaccine imperative was set in motion. Even so, some voices of apprehension slipped through the cracks. Many of these voices were some of the most renowned medical practitioners in their field. 

  Why were their voices not allowed into the mainstream conversations? 

  • Why were thousands of dissenting physicians censored and silenced?

  • Why were doctors who spoke out about early treatment vilified and censored?

  • Were the Covid vaccines necessary, effective or safe?

  • Would the Covid Vaccines stop hospitalizations or deaths?

  • Was evidence of harm and serious adverse events from the clinical trials covered up?

  • Why did the media maintain silence about potential dangers of the Covid vaccine?

  • Were people given proper informed consent for the Covid vaccines?

  • What did multiple studies as early as 2020 say about the Covid vaccines and microvascular injury?

  • Why weren’t independent scientists allowed to examine the mRNA vaccine vials?

  • Was there a connection between heart inflammation and the Covid vaccines?

  • Why were kids targeted for vaccination when it was known they were at zero risk from the disease in question?

  • Were there doctors calling for a halt to the Covid vaccine program?

  Ultimately a comprehensive and complete reckoning with the ‘Covid Story’ is not possible without a thorough examination of the policies which unfolded in hospitals and nursing homes and the catastrophic consequences.

  While hospital workers were feted as heroes, reports began to leak out hinting that what actually occurred inside these medical institutions was contrary to the sustained media narrative. As more stories surfaced, suspicions escalated that this too was part of the Covid mythology.

  Questions concerning treatments in hospitals and nursing homes emerged and allegations about monied interests materialized. 

  • Were hospitals incentivized to manufacture Covid patients?

  • What were the Covid hospital treatment protocols?

  • Were hospitals incentivized to put Covid patients on ventilators and to use Remdesivir?

  • Did these incentives and protocols endanger people?

  “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil.“

  – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  In the early chapters of the Covid Story, perhaps no other storyline trapped our imaginations and pulled on our heartstrings quite like the “Saving Grandma” shibboleth. We were told that “Covid-19” targeted the old and the sick and multiple reports from across the globe revealed a consistent pattern of how ghastly situations in long-term care facilities unfolded. 

  As more information on this piece of the sordid Covid puzzle surfaced more questions came to light.

  Did thousands of elderly die because of Covid or was the management of their end-of-life treatment withdrawn actively putting them in a situation that ensured their death?

  • What did they mean when they said “taking care of the elderly?”

  • How did they “take care of the elderly in Canada?” In the UK? In France? In Maryland?In Massachusetts?In Washington DC? In Mississippi? In NewYork? In New Jersey? In Minnesota? In Indiana? In Louisiana? In Michigan? In Rhode Island?

  • Were conditions for high death rates at Care Homes created on purpose?

  “I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin.” The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.“

  – C.S. Lewis

  All intricate stories require a cast of characters and the Covid Chronicle was no different. Neil Ferguson and Christian Drosten played significant supporting roles behind the scenes while others, like Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates, took center stage. As we moved through the Covid narrative we “came to know” these personalities through the portraits painted by a uniformly deferential media. 

  Were these images of our Covid cast of characters accurate depictions? How much about them did we really know?

  • What did Neil Ferguson’s original computer models predict about Covid deaths and what was his well documented track record?

  • How did his calamitous and inaccurate predictions play such a central role in determining government policy?

  • Who is Christian Drosten and how did he develop the now famous Covid PCR test? 

  • Who is The Real Anthony Fauci?

  • What role did Anthony Fauci play in the HIV/AIDS crisis?

  • Given that Bill Gates has no medical training, why did he play such a central role in determining government policy? 

  • How did Bill Gates  know in 2019  that vaccines would be “one of the best buys” in 2020? 

  • How did Bill Gates use medical investments to turn $10 billion into $200 billion?

  • Why did the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invest $55 million in the shares of BioNTech in August of 2019? 

  “They failed to see that globalisation was merely a tactic to prise power from nation states towards international conglomerates. Once the power was siphoned from the people and democratic control was circumvented, the ability to assert global governance without any democratic restraint was available.“

  –James Tunney

  Finally, to understand the totality of the Covid Story it’s necessary to understand how the public health industry is inextricably linked to global financial markets and operates based on the demands of those financial conglomerates. Manufactured pandemics are now considered one of the biggest investment opportunities to increase the wealth of billionaires and consolidate their power. 

  The medical industry is no longer a system whose primary focus is to serve the health and well-being of the public. It is a system whose primary function is as a financial instrument for investors. The present-day policies that define the medical industry are designed to serve socioeconomic and political agendas which benefit these same financial elites.

  Was the entire ‘Covid Crisis’ a genuine health emergency or was it an agenda rooted in fear to enrich the pockets of Big Pharma and their monied investors.

  Here again the mainstream media remain dutifully silent, refusing to ask the most basic of questions:

  • Who owns Big Pharma? 

  • Is it a coincidence that the Covid Public Health Emergency created over 500 new billionaires and coincided with one of the largest upwards transfers of wealth in human history?

  • Why were Big Banks being bailed out during the Covid era while small businesses were being pushed out?

  • How did workers around the world lose $3.7 trillion in the pandemic while billionaires around the world gained $3.9 trillion in the pandemic?

  • Is it possible to “follow the science” if the science is controlled by money?

  • What did the Head of the IMF say about the fate of the world’s economy and vaccines?

  • What is the “Great Reset?” 

  • What is the Great Reset?

  • What are Central Bank Digital Currencies?

  After a deeper dive into the Covid Hall of Mirrors one wonders if even a single strand of the story withstands scrutiny. Three years on and the wreckage from the fusillade of Covid policies continue to pile up. With every passing day more holes appear in the official narrative and more admissions come to light as officials scurry to avoid accountability.

  As the dust settles in the aftermath of the Covid carnage we are left asking one final question: 

  “Was the entirety of the Covid Story a lie?”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 10/31/2022 – 23:45

• "Dangerous Escalation": US To Deploy Six Nuclear-Capable B-52 Bombers To Australia
  “Dangerous Escalation”: US To Deploy Six Nuclear-Capable B-52 Bombers To Australia

  America’s great power competition against China is gaining momentum as the Pentagon plans to deploy a fleet of nuclear-capable B-52 bombers in northern Australia in what is being dubbed a “signal” to Beijing, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported. 

  “Having bombers that could range and potentially attack mainland China could be very important in sending a signal to China that any of its actions over Taiwan could also expand further,” Centre for New American Security’s Becca Wasser told the ABC. 

  

  The Australian broadcaster’s current affairs show, Four Corners, revealed the US documents detailing up to six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers were set for deployment at the Tindal air base, south of Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory. The airbase would also receive $100 million in upgrades for the maintenance and parking areas for the bombers, expected to be finished by 2026. 

  “The ability to deploy US Air Force bombers to Australia sends a strong message to adversaries about our ability to project lethal air power,” the US Air Force told Four Corners.

  

  Meanwhile, Greens Senator David Shoebridge tweeted: 

  “This is a dangerous escalation. It makes Australia an even bigger part of the global nuclear weapons threat to humanity’s very existence — and by rising military tensions it further destabilises our region.” 

  This is a dangerous escalation. It makes Australia an even bigger part of the global nuclear weapons threat to humanity’s very existence – and by rising military tensions it further destabilises our region https://t.co/OTSSfV25fJ

  — David Shoebridge (@DavidShoebridge) October 30, 2022

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  The long-range heavy bombers send a clear “signal to the Chinese” that the Americans and its allies are “planning for a war with China,” Richard Tanter, a senior research associate at the Nautilus Institute and anti-nuclear activist, explained to Four Corners. 

  A recent op-ed in the Australian Financial Review titled “Australia’s alliances in Asia are a tale of two regions” points out that the Biden administration’s chip restrictions on China to crush its technological capabilities “is unambiguously a new cold war.” He said Australia has a complicated juggling act of catering to its top trading partner China and its top security partner, the US, while Washington pressures Canberra and other countries in the region to distance themselves from Beijing.

  Besides the bombers, Australia, the UK, and the US recently announced a new security deal known as AUKUS, allowing the Australian military to procure a fleet of nuclear submarines by 2040. 

  Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian responded to the news Monday and wasn’t all too thrilled:

  “The US’s move escalates regional tensions, gravely undermines regional peace and stability, and may trigger an arms race in the region.” 

  The US military’s expanding footprint in northern Australia shows Washington’s quest to build a ‘friends circle’ of bombers and stealth fighter jets around China. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 10/31/2022 – 23:25

• Democrats 'Fearful' Over Where 'Momentum Is Going' In Midterm Elections: Former Press Secretary
  Democrats ‘Fearful’ Over Where ‘Momentum Is Going’ In Midterm Elections: Former Press Secretary

  Authored by Lorenz Ducahmps via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Oct. 28 that Democrats are worried that the momentum has shifted toward Republicans as polls continue to tighten in the leadup to the Nov. 8 midterm elections.

  

  Psaki was asked to comment on an Oct. 27 hot mic moment when Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) was overheard telling President Joe Biden on the tarmac of a New York airport that Democrats are “in danger” of losing a seat and are “going downhill” in Georgia.

  “What we heard there and what you saw on the screen is similar to a lot of the conversations Democrats are having behind the scenes and a lot of people I talked to as well,” Psaki said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

  “People are fearful about where the momentum is going in some of these races,” she added. “Yes, there are very encouraging signs like the record early vote numbers, but numbers in some of the House races are not where they should be.”

  The former White House official also said that it appears Democrats are encouraged to vote for candidates “at the top of the ticket” but lack enthusiasm for down-ballot races.

  “A lot of people I talked to are worried about voters being encouraged and excited about people at the top of the ticket, and maybe not excited enough to vote for the congressional candidates, and that’s a real concern,” Psaki said.

  It isn’t the first time Psaki expressed concern about the Democratic Party ahead of the midterms. In late September, she said the party will lose if they are seen by the electorate as a “referendum” on the leadership of Biden.

  Republicans now consistently lead Democrats on the generic congressional ballot. As of this writing, the RealClearPolitics average has Republicans up 2.9 percent in the generic congressional ballot polling average; only two of the past 15 polls show a Democratic lead.

  Last-Ditch Effort

  Psaki also said witnessing “all these people out on the trail,” including former President Barack Obama and Biden, is a reflection of Democrats’ concerns over where the midterm elections are headed.

  “That’s why I think you see Barack Obama, Joe Biden all these people out on the trail because they’re trying to light a fire with Democrats right now,” she said.

  

  Obama recently traveled to Georgia to attempt to bolster Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) and Democrat gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. In an event outside Atlanta, the 44th president said that the “basic foundation of our democracy” is under threat and that voters should elect Democrats.

  Last week, Obama also campaigned in Michigan and Wisconsin, two key Midwestern states. He will visit Nevada on Tuesday and then hold multiple events in Pennsylvania alongside Biden on Saturday.

  Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, meanwhile, made a rare joint appearance on Oct. 28 in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania in an effort to boost Senate hopeful John Fetterman, a fellow Democrat, in the closing stretch ahead of the midterm elections.

  “Democracy is literally, not figuratively, on the ballot this year,” Biden told the event. “I’m going to be spending the rest of this time making the case that this is not a referendum. It’s a choice, a fundamental choice.”

  Fetterman, who suffered a stroke five months ago, appeared on stage on Oct. 25 to debate rival Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz as the two vie for a key Senate seat. The impact of the stroke was apparent during the debate as Fetterman used closed-captioning posted above the moderator to help him process the words he heard, which led to occasional awkward pauses.

  The Senate stands at 50–50, with Harris serving as a tiebreaker. In the House, Republicans need to gain a total of five seats. Historically, the party that occupies the White House tends to lose seats in Congress.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 10/31/2022 – 23:05

• NASA Captures Creepy 'Jack-O'-Lantern' Image Of Sun
  NASA Captures Creepy ‘Jack-O’-Lantern’ Image Of Sun

  NASA’s space-based Solar Dynamics Observatory tweeted what appeared to be a jack-o’-lantern-esque creepy smile of the sun — just in time for Halloween.

  “Seen in ultraviolet light, these dark patches on the Sun are known as coronal holes and are regions where fast solar wind gushes out into space,” NASA said, adding the sun appeared to be “smiling.” 

  

  The United Kingdom’s Science and Technology Facilities Council responded to the space agency’s tweet with a photoshopped pumpkin of the sun. 

  

  According to NASA, coronal holes are areas of high magnetic field that emit solar wind streams into the universe. If the coronal holes are Earth-facing, a flow of protons, electrons, and other particles collide with Earth and cause geomagnetic storms, ranked on a scale from G1 (minor) to G5 (extreme). 

  

  And solar storms can cause a whole lot of disruption if powerful enough. 

  

  The coronal hole trio prompted a minor geomagnetic storm watch over the weekend. As of the late afternoon, SolarHam indicates there’s no notable space weather event today. 

  As a reminder, the sun goes through 11-year solar cycles. It’s currently in Solar Cycle 25 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 10/31/2022 – 22:45

• Can A Republican Become California’s Top Cop?
  Can A Republican Become California’s Top Cop?

  Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClear Wire,

  In an attack ad blasting California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a woman named Rachel describes her deep frustration over the five-month probation sentence for the juvenile driver who slammed into her and her 8-month-old child in Los Angeles last year.

  

  The disturbing incident was caught on tape and quickly went viral on social media, cited by countless critics as yet more evidence of a spike in brazen and violent crime across the state.

  Rachel, a Democrat, says she will vote for Nathan Hochman, the GOP candidate for attorney general. Even though she and Bonta share other political beliefs, she said the Democratic attorney general isn’t doing enough to stop the surge in violent crime across the state. She’s particularly angry that Bonta has declined to take over her case from embattled Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón.

  “The kid tried to murder me and my child, and the state couldn’t have cared less, and they proved that by only giving him five months of probation,” she says. “California Attorney General Rob Bonta has the ability to step in and take over from district attorneys like George Gascón, but Bonta chooses not to. It’s about voting for the right candidate, and the right candidate is Nathan Hochman.”

  The ad is part of a soft-on-crime barrage Republicans are deploying across the country to skewer Democrats’ public safety records. Too many Democratic officials have pushed liberal policies that emboldened criminals, critics argue. Top policy targets include cashless bail, early release for tens of thousands of prisoners, and reduced punishment for many convicted of theft and other nonviolent offenses.

  Over the last three months, worries about rising crime have helped power New York Rep. Lee Zeldin to within striking distance of incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul. And growing anxiety over public safety ranks among the top three to five issues in many urban areas across the country.

  In California, rising violent crime has been a flash-point all year, before and after San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who was accused of coddling criminals and neglecting rampant drug use on city streets, was recalled in early June. In Los Angeles, critics of Gascón, who is known as the “godfather of progressive prosecutors” and preceded Boudin as San Francisco DA, claimed to have collected 715,000 signatures to launch a recall of him. County officials, however, invalidated 200,000 of the signatures, preventing a recall but prompting an ongoing legal fight.

  A Harvard/Harris poll released Oct. 14 found that 68% of respondents considered crime to be “very important” and are more likely to vote Republican than Democratic in the upcoming midterm election because of that concern. Earlier this year, two-thirds of registered voters in California said crime had risen in their neighborhoods, according to a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times. Just more than half of voters surveyed said California Gov. Gavin Newsom was doing a poor job on crime and public safety, up 16 percentage points from 2020.

  Hochman, a federal prosecutor with 30 years of experience, is running to replace Bonta, a former state assemblyman for Oakland who previously served as the deputy city attorney for San Francisco. Newsom appointed Bonta to replace Xavier Becerra when he stepped down to become President Biden’s secretary of Health and Human Services. 

  Hochman says he’s running because Bonta has failed to intervene in counties where crime has risen sharply, and policies he’s championed, including cashless bail, have placed the interests of criminals above victims. Bonta has countered that he’s “strong, effective, and smart on crime” and can make the criminal justice system fairer without compromising public safety.

  Over the last week, Hochman has been touring the state on a bus emblazoned with his promise to “stop the spiral of lawlessness.” Along the way, he’s touted his endorsements from across the political spectrum – from Death Row Records founder Michael “Harry-O” Harris and Hollywood A-lister Gwyneth Paltrow to former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic Los Angeles Sheriff Alex Villanueva. Two dozen district attorneys from across the state and Female Business Leaders, a Democratic-leaning group in Los Angeles have also endorsed him. In late September, Hochman received the backing of the San Diego Union-Tribune, which said both candidates are strong, but Hochman has a “better plan for responding to growing crime.”

  In numerous interviews and a recent ad, Hochman has hammered Bonta as “missing in action” when it comes to the state’s fentanyl crisis. Fentanyl is responsible for 5,722 California deaths in 2021, including 224 between the ages of 15 and 19, according to the California Department of Public Health.

  In mid-October, Bonta appeared to respond, arguing that the state is “all-in when it comes to protecting California families from the dangers of fentanyl” and issuing an update to the state Department of Justice’s work to address the crisis.  

  Both MSNBC and Fox News in recent days have dubbed the race one of the most competitive in the country. RealClearPolitics talked to Hochman about his chances on Election Day and the current political mood in California. Here are excerpts from that interview:

  Q: The district of attorney recall efforts in several cities, including San Francisco, shows that many California voters, including Democrats and independents, are looking for new leadership. Still, no Republican has won statewide in California since 2006. How can you overcome that big hurdle?

  Hochman: I would classify myself as a moderate Republican and [someone] who has the best chance in a generation to win this office. Here’s why: The first is a change in conditions on the ground. 2014 was considered one of California’s safest years in the last 30. [This year] public safety has risen to a top-three issue in polling for the first time in a generation.

  When people are afraid to send themselves, their kids, their parents out at night in their neighborhoods … when you have what I’ve described as a ‘spiral of lawlessness’ that starts with one or two people going into a small business and stealing just under $950 and not being prosecuted because it’s now a misdemeanor and the prosecutors aren’t doing their jobs … and that turns into three people running out of Walgreens and people running out of Nordstroms in smash-and-grab robberies, home robberies, train robberies and a double-digit rise in homicides … That’s a wake-up call for not just Republicans, but Democrats and independents.

  I believe California voters are going to look to the one statewide position that’s identified with safety and security, and that’s the attorney general position. The kind of conditions on the ground are ripe for change – people are crying out for change.

  The Boudin recall and the issues that arose there show that a Republican can win. Chesa Boudin was recalled 55% to 45%. Republicans make up only 8% of the vote in the city of San Francisco, and roughly three-quarters of the votes to recall Boudin came from Democrats and independents.

  Secondly, in the last 20 years, you had Jerry Brown, Kamala Harris, and Javier Becerra serving as attorney general. Those are fairly unbeatable candidates with great statewide name recognition and some level of law enforcement background. They were also presiding over a time when safety and security was much more under control.

  Rob Bonta was appointed by Gov. Newsom, and shockingly, he had zero law enforcement experience before he took the job. Gavin Newsom appointed an Oakland assemblymember –basically a politician – to be your chief law enforcement officer, someone who’s never argued a criminal case or conducted a criminal investigation, dealt with victims or [handled] criminal sentencing and dealt with judges. He is absolutely inexperienced and unqualified to hold that position. Coupled with that, he also has brought along a criminal justice agenda that I believe is too far to the left. I believe it’s very pro-criminal.

  Q: But aren’t the laws that California voters approved a few years ago the problem, and your job would be enforcing them? Proposition 47 was passed by voters. It reclassified felony drug and theft offenses as misdemeanors and raised from $400 to $950 the amount for which theft can be prosecuted as a felony. Two years later, voters approved another proposition that allowed prisoners to be released earlier.

  Hochman: They call [the attorney general] the top cop in the state for good reason, because under the California constitution, the chief law enforcement officer has the power to go into any one of the 58 counties and take over any case, if you believe it’s not being properly prosecuted.

  It’s an enormous power that’s somewhat unique to California, and I wouldn’t hesitate to use it.

  [Bonta’s] opened up the middle ground. That’s where I exist.

  In contrast to his zero years of criminal-justice experience, I was a judge’s clerk. I was then an assistant U.S. attorney, a federal prosecutor for seven years in Los Angeles where I went after narcotics traffickers, gang members, international money launderers, tax evaders, public corruption cases, dirty sheriffs. I ran the environmental crimes unit. Then [I served as] assistant attorney general running the U.S. Department of Justice’s tax division. We had 350 lawyers and a $100 million budget to go after tax cheats across country. I’ve also been a defense attorney.

  Thirty years of experience gives me the perspective to figure out the true public safety threats to our society – who should and shouldn’t be in jail. It requires an individualized analysis of three things: the level of crime that’s committed, the defendant’s criminal history, which is often overlooked, as well as the impact on the victim.

  Q: What specifically can a state attorney general do to stop fentanyl overdoses? Fentanyl is coming across the border, and most Republicans argue it’s a border security issue that the Biden administration needs to fix.

  Hochman: The fact that Rob Bonta since he took over the position has not been a central figure, front-and-center, leading the task force to go after all the fentanyl dealers that are bringing millions of counterfeit tablets in, spiking marijuana, cocaine and other drugs with fentanyl, is a dereliction of duty. We’re talking about people who are poisoning Californians. It would be like if there were a sniper killing 17 people a day in San Francisco or Los Angeles with a high-powered rifle, and it’s not front-page news in California.

  As attorney general, you have the power to educate. You can hold press conferences, you can go into high-school communities … you can do your own PR campaign in connection with all the other state and federal government agencies. By leading an enforcement and an education effort, you could really make a difference. You could save lives tomorrow.

  Q: After the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade earlier this summer, Newsom pledged to make California an abortion sanctuary state and signed several new laws strengthening abortion access. What is your position on abortion, and how would you carry out these news laws?

  Hochman: I am pro-choice and will fully enforce all the laws on the books in protecting a woman’s reproductive rights. Full stop.

  Q: What do you think of Brooke Jenkins, the interim district attorney appointed following the recall of Chesa Boudin – her effort so far to reverse Boudin’s record? She has decided to try some juveniles who committed heinous crimes as adults and has overturned some of Boudin’s plea deals.

  Hochman: Anyone from any part of the political spectrum that has safety and security as one of their top goals, and actually enacts policies to do that – I think that’s great. Safety and security and justice should not be political issues. If Jenkins is reversing policies and doing her best to bring safety and security back to San Francisco, I applaud that.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 10/31/2022 – 22:25

• Alberta's New Premier Under Attack For Refusing To Associate With WEF
  Alberta’s New Premier Under Attack For Refusing To Associate With WEF

  Recently noted as an opponent of vaccine and mask mandates, new Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is breaking previously established ties with the World Economic Forum, which has been deeply involved in a “health consulting agreement” revolving around the province’s covid response.

  “I find it distasteful when billionaires brag about how much control they have over political leaders,” Smith said at a news conference Monday after her new cabinet was sworn in. “That is offensive … the people who should be directing government are the people who vote for them.”

  The United Conservative Party premier said she is in lockstep with federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who has stated he and his caucus will having nothing to do with the World Economic Forum.  Earlier this month, on her first day as premier, Smith stated that people not vaccinated against covid are the most discriminated group she has seen in her lifetime.  

  In response, the Canadian mainstream media is pursuing a thorough hatchet campaign against Smith, consistently referring to all opposition to the WEF as being based in “conspiracy theory.”  As they say, if you want to know who is really in power, all you have to do is find out who you are not allowed to criticize.

  

  After two years of authoritarian lockdowns and attempts to enforce vaccine passports in Canada, Alberta was one of the only regions in the country that asserted political opposition to executive dictates.  This helped to support the anti-passport protests by truckers and other Canadians, and led to Justin Trudeau using provisions for terrorism to confiscate donations to the movement.  Alberta’s covid averages in terms of infections and deaths are no worse than provinces with strict mandates, proving once again that the mandates achieved nothing in terms of safety, but everything in terms of control.

  The Canadian Press and other media outlets claim that criticism of the WEF is built on “online conspiracy accusations, unproven and debunked, that the forum is fronting a global cabal of string-pullers exploiting the pandemic to dismantle capitalism and introduce damaging socialist systems and social control measures, such as forcing people to take vaccines with tracking chips.”

  Every “conspiracy” noted in that statement is true – none of them have been “debunked” except perhaps the “tracking chip” claim, which is unnecessary because the WEF was already encouraging governments to use cell phone tracking apps to monitor the vaccine status and movements of their respective populations.  Many of these apps were approved by the CDC in the US, and in countries like China they are mandatory.

  The World Economic Forum, acting as a kind of globalist think-tank for future policy initiatives, was instrumental in promoting many of the failed restrictions used by various national governments during the pandemic.  

  WEF head Klaus Schwab specifically mentions in his writings that the institution saw covid as a perfect “opportunity” to implement what he calls the “Great Reset” which includes the concept of the “Shared Economy,” a global socialist technocracy meant to replace free markets and end capitalism as we know it.  As the WEF states, you will “own nothing, have no privacy” and you will like it.

  This is not conspiracy theory.  This is openly admitted conspiracy fact.  It is undeniable. 

  The use of the “conspiracy theory” label is generally a tactic designed to circumvent fair debate based on facts and evidence.  If the Canadian Press was forced to defend their position based on the information at hand, they would lose.  So, they instead try to inoculate their readers to opposing arguments by calling them “conspiracy theory” in the hope that those readers will never research the information further.  

  The Canadian media then cites quotations that specifically argue that not working with the WEF would put the Alberta public at a disadvantage because it would cut them off from information that the WEF provides.  

  It’s important to mention that there is no evidence that the WEF has provided any life saving health information to date concerning the covid pandemic.  In fact, there is no evidence that the WEF is useful to the Canadian public in any way.  The mainstream media’s bizarre and antagonistic reaction to Smith’s shunning of a foreign organization of elitists that has no loyalty to the Canadian citizenry suggests that they may be operating from a foundation of bias.     

  Danielle Smith’s bravery in cutting off WEF influence from Alberta is being met with a dishonest media response, but in the long run, she is making the best decision possible.  Taking advice from a potential parasite is not good leadership.  

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 10/31/2022 – 22:05

• FBI Asks Court For 66 Years To Release Seth Rich Laptop Information
  FBI Asks Court For 66 Years To Release Seth Rich Laptop Information

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

  The FBI is asking a U.S. court to reverse its order that it produce information from Seth Rich’s laptop computer.

  If the court does not, the bureau wants 66 years to produce the information.

  

  Rich was a Democratic National Committee staffer when he was killed on a street in Washington in mid-2016. No person has ever been arrested in connection to the murder.

  U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant, an Obama appointee, ruled in September that the bureau must hand over information from the computer to Brian Huddleston, a Texas man who filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the info.

  The FBI’s assertion that the privacy interest Rich’s family members hold outweighed the public interest was rejected by Mazzant, who noted the bureau cited no relevant case law supporting the argument.

  But the ruling was erroneous, U.S. lawyers said in a new filing.

  The bureau shouldn’t have to produce the information because of FOIA exemptions for information that are compiled for law enforcement purposes and “could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential source,” the lawyers said in a motion for reconsideration. Another exemption, which enables agencies to withhold information that would disclose law enforcement techniques also applies, they said.

  “Given the Court’s findings that except for the information related to Seth Rich’s laptop withheld pursuant to Exemptions 6 and 7(C) based on privacy interests, the FBI properly withheld or redacted all other information responsive to Huddleston’s requests, the production order seems inconsistent with the rest of the order,” the motion stated.

  The FBI, after claiming it never possessed Rich’s laptop or any information from it, acknowledged in 2020 that it had thousands of files from the computer.

  The bureau “is currently working on getting the files from Seth Rich’s personal laptop into a format to be reviewed,” the government said at the time.

  

  Information and material extracted from the computer were provided by a source to an FBI agent during a meeting on March 15, 2018, FBI records officer Michael Seidel said in a declaration. He said the files included photographs and documents, among other material.

  In the new filing, government lawyers said the FBI never extracted the data, which it revealed as originating with a law enforcement agency. They said the information is on a compact disc containing images of the laptop.

  “The FBI did not open an investigation into the murder of Seth Rich, nor did it provide investigative or technical assistance to any investigation into the murder of Seth Rich. As a result, the FBI has never extracted the data from the compact disc and never processed the information contained on the disc,” they said.

  To produce the information, the FBI would have to convert information on the disc into pages and then review the pages to redact information per FOIA, according to the government.

  If Mazzant upholds his order, the FBI wants a lengthy period of time to perform the work—66 years, or 500 pages a month.

  “If the court overrules the FBI’s motion, the FBI wants to produce records at a rate of 500 pages per month. At that rate, it will take almost 67 years just to produce the documents, never mind the images and other files,” Ty Clevenger, a lawyer representing Huddleston, told The Epoch Times in an email.

  Read more here…

  or technical assistance to any other investigation of Seth Rich.
  -FBI had no involvement in the extraction of data from Seth
  Rich’s personal laptop
  -And therefore, there was never a need for the FBI to access
  the information contained on the compact disc for investigative

  — Aleksandar Starcevic (@Aleksandaraz) October 31, 2022

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

  release all of this material, that the rate of production be limited to 500 pages per month.

  — Aleksandar Starcevic (@Aleksandaraz) October 31, 2022

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

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 10/31/2022 – 21:45

• CEOs Cutting Back Or Pausing Their ESG Efforts: KPMG Study
  CEOs Cutting Back Or Pausing Their ESG Efforts: KPMG Study

  Authored by Andrew Moran via The Epoch Times,

  Despite U.S. companies championing their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investments and results, many others are planning to suspend or reconsider their ESG efforts in the coming months over growing recession fears, according to a new report. 

  In August, KPMG published an in-depth report titled “2022 U.S. CEO Outlook.” It assessed a wide variety of issues facing businesses over the next 12 months, including economic turbulence, finding and retaining talent, and technological developments. The paper also looked at the ESG trend sweeping America and the rest of the world. 

  The authors pf the report noted that a majority of CEOs (79 percent) think the public will look to the private sector to address major social challenges rather than governments, be it climate change or income inequality.

  But while this form of social investing has become integral in the private marketplace, organizations acknowledged that there is a demand for increased reporting and transparency on ESG issues, particularly as more of the public becomes skeptical over “virtue signaling” and “greenwashing.” 

  The former consists of a business expressing a specific moral viewpoint to communicate an impeccable character, typically one that favors an establishment talking point. The latter is when consumers are deceived into thinking a company’s products are environmentally friendly or socially responsible. 

  

  Fumes emit from factories of Keihin Industrial Area in Kawasaki, Japan, on Dec. 1, 2009. (Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images)

  But the key finding from the report was that 59 percent say they “plan to pause or reconsider their ESG efforts in the next six months” to help prepare for the anticipated recession. 

  The report suggested that diminishing investment in ESG strategies “may lead to long-term financial risk,” as a possible recession tests CEOs’ commitment to the latest craze in Corporate America. Seventy percent of CEOs noted that ESG has improved their firms’ financial performance. 

  “As CEOs take steps to insulate their businesses from an upcoming recession, ESG efforts are coming under increasing financial pressure,” said Jane Lawrie, global head of corporate affairs at KPMG. 

  Eighty percent of CEOs expect a recession within the next 12 months, according to the KPMG survey. 

  Is ESG Still a Priority?

  Central banks worldwide have abandoned their pandemic-era easy-money policies, with market experts warning that these tightening efforts will lead to an economic downturn in either 2023 or 2024. This type of climate will make borrowing more expensive, forcing companies and investors to tighten their belts and be more conservative with their dollars and cents.

  Will ESG still remain a top priority for businesses and traders in such a fiscally prudent environment?

  While speaking at CNBC’s Delivering Alpha Conference in September, Lauren Taylor Wolfe, Impactive Capital co-founder and managing partner, explained that financial performance is the chief objective for companies.

  “We believe that ESG without returns is simply not sustainable,” she said.

  “We are exclusively focused on risk-adjusted returns.”

  Meanwhile, a broad array of studies points to greater skepticism and less enthusiasm over everything related to ESG.

  A recent Capital.com poll, for example, found that investors and traders are not prioritizing ESG. The online brokerage firm’s research indicated that 52 percent never picked a stock based on ESG factors. Nearly half (46 percent) reported not knowing how to do so, while 12 explained that ESG investments were too expensive. 

  A separate survey from global investment manager Ninety One discovered that 55 percent say the risk and return performance of their holdings remained the chief concern. Interestingly enough, 40 percent of asset purport that investing in funds related to ESG goals, such as climate change, will cause a reduction in their returns. 

  Many states across the country, including Florida, Arizona, North Dakota, West Virginia, and Kentucky, have rejected ESG strategies, divesting billions from financial institutions that make investment decisions based on the system. Wall Street appears mixed on the issue, with 45 percent of CFOs telling a CNBC survey that they supported the moves. Thirty percent stated they were neutral, while 25 percent opposed these decisions.

  “I think the criticism is deserved,” Wolfe added.

  Last week, Strive Asset Management, led by activist investor Vivek Ramaswamy, launched a nationwide campaign that aimed to “promote excellence over ESG priorities.” The initiative suggests that some of the world’s largest companies, such as Amazon, Citigroup, ExxonMobil, and Home Depot, maintain “untapped potential” that could be unleashed if they were not beholden to ESG.

  “Everyday Americans have extraordinary yet unrealized power at their fingertips,” said Ramaswamy in a statement. “They don’t just vote as citizens at the polls in two weeks. They vote every day with their investment dollars, which are too often used by other asset managers to inject political agendas into corporate America’s boardrooms.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 10/31/2022 – 21:05

• China Lashes Out At Export Curbs In Blinken Call, Says US "Blinded By Ideology"
  China Lashes Out At Export Curbs In Blinken Call, Says US “Blinded By Ideology”

  Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi lashed out over US export curbs in a Sunday phone call with his US counterpart Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The tense call underscored that significant obstacles remain as the two sides continue preparing for a potential Biden and Xi Jinping face-to-face meeting next month.

  “The U.S. side should stop its containment and suppression of China and not create new obstacles to bilateral relations,” Wang said, base on a foreign ministry statement. “The US side introduced new export controls against China, restricting investments in China, seriously violating free-trade principles and seriously harming China’s legitimate rights and interests, which must be corrected.”

  

  Additionally, per state media: “China’s diplomatic and domestic policies are open and transparent, and the US should not be blinded by ideology,” Wang said. The US was generally once again accused of suppressing China’s economic growth. 

  It was the first direct contact since Wang became China’s top-ranked diplomat, having been promoted to the Communist Party’s 24-member Politburo during its major meeting earlier this month. 

  Biden’s first ever sit-down meeting as president with President Xi is likely to happen at the Group of 20 meeting in Bali, Indonesia in mid-November. Washington efforts to restrict Chinese access to chipmaking technology, which it appears was a top pressing issue raised with Blinken by Wang, will likely be brought up by Xi as an area of deep contention later.

  As for the US readout of the call, Blinken said the two agreed upon the need to “maintain open lines of communication” – with two main foreign policy issues also raised: Ukraine and Haiti. “The Secretary raised Russia’s war against Ukraine and the threats it poses to global security and economic stability,” an official US readout said. “The Secretary also noted the deteriorating humanitarian and security situation in Haiti and the need for continued coordinated action in support of the Haitian people.”

  Currently, the US is attempting to put together a UN coalition that can lead a peace-keeping force into restive Haiti, at a moment the US-backed Acting President Ariel Henry is battling armed groups seeking his removal from power. China and Russia have signaled they would veto such a resolution at the UN Security Council, seeing in it another attempt at US-Western intervention in a foreign country’s internal affairs.

  As for the Russia-Ukraine conflict, President Xi while entering a third term as China’s most powerful leader in decades is expected to deepen relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

  As a further sign of China’s growing willingness to stand behind Moscow even while Putin faces unprecedented global isolation over the war…

  Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific to restart use of polar route flight path over Russia after it was axed in March because of invasion of Ukraine https://t.co/bCL9RXofxF

  — South China Morning Post (@SCMPNews) October 30, 2022

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

  Last week, Reuters cited Wang’s words describing Beijing’s future outlook on its relationship with Russia as follows, “China is willing to deepen its relationship with Russia in all levels and any attempt to block the progress of the two nations will never succeed.”

  “It is the legitimate right of China and Russia to realise their development and revitalisation, Wang Yi said in a telephone call with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov,” the report noted.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 10/31/2022 – 20:45

• Yuan Traders Test PBOC's Credibility Like It's 2015
  Yuan Traders Test PBOC’s Credibility Like It’s 2015

  By Ye Xie, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and analyst

  The People’s Bank of China has urged traders to respect its yuan fixing. Instead, they are testing the central bank’s resolution to defend the currency by pushing the yuan toward the limit of its trading band.

  The longer the deviation between the market and the PBOC’s reference rates persist, the more likely it will end in a volatile showdown.

  Recent data show continued weakness in economic fundamentals for the yuan. Both manufacturing and service sectors contracted. Outflows from the bond market continued. And Covid cases are spreading again.

  Against this backdrop, it’s not surprising to see the yuan under pressure. One-month implied volatility has hit a record since the offshore market came into existence in 2011. The volatility curve is inverted, with short-term vol higher than one-year vol, in a sign of market stress.

  On Monday, the yuan traded about 1.8% weaker than the fixing, marking the third time over the past five weeks that the spot rate was so close to the 2% daily limit. The currency has never tested the trading band so often since China revamped the fixing mechanism in 2015.

  

  And it’s not only against the dollar. The yuan’s weakness is broadening. The CFETS yuan basket fell below 100 for the first time since November 2021. On a trade-weighted basis, the divergence between the market and the official reference rate reached a record 1.8% on Oct. 25, according to Bank of America’s calculation.

  

  In September, when the spot yuan traded close to the daily limit, the PBOC issued a strongly-worded statement saying that speculators will lose money and called for market participants to “protect the authority of the fixing.”

  These warnings have fallen on deaf ears. That shows “the credibility of the CNY regime is being tested,” Bank of America’s strategists, including Claudio Piron, wrote in a note Monday.

  In early 2015, the PBOC kept the yuan steady even as the spot rate started to weaken toward the edge of the trading band. The divergence was eventually resolved when the PBOC engineered a one-off devaluation in August of that year.

  The central bank is facing a similar dilemma. Either it forces the market to converge to a stronger level to reinforce its authority, or it allows the market to guide the yuan to a lower level. Either way, there’s likely to be more volatility ahead.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 10/31/2022 – 20:25

• Trick-Or-Treat Around The World
  Trick-Or-Treat Around The World

  Trick-or-treating has been associated with Halloween celebrations in the U.S. and Canada since the early 1900s, but, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, traditions of children going door to door in a quest for treats exist in many parts of the world, with one European custom being widely recognized as the precursor of the North American tradition.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  As far back as the Middle Ages, people in the British Isles dressed up for holidays and went from door to door performing scenes in order to receive a thank-you in the form of food and drink. The tradition is preserved today in Scotland and Ireland under the name guising and features dressed-up children rather than theater displays. The origin of Halloween, celebrated on October 31, also goes back to Celtic traditions, more specifically the Samhain festival, which marked the beginning of winter and a time when fairies and spirits needed to be appeased. Like many Christian holidays, All Saints’ Day (November 1) and its eve, All Hallows’ Day, coincide with the pagan festival and trick-or-treating is done in Portugal on the first day of November. All Saints’ Day also has a big significance in Mexico (celebrated as Day of the Dead there) but U.S. Halloween traditions have also been adopted, most heavily in the Northern and Central parts of the country, where the custom is named calaverita (litte skull) after the sugar skulls which are gifted for the festival.

  But scary dress and trick-or-treating antics are not tied to a single date: Scandinavian children engage in them around Easter, while those in Northern Germany and Southern Denmark pick New Year’s Eve. In Southern Germany, Austria Switzerland, the Netherlands and Flanders in Belgium, treats are given out not for threats, but for songs, which children perform on November 11 (St. Martin’s Day). Caroling for sweets is also performed during Ramadan in Central Asia. This is where trick-or-treating blends into Christmas caroling, which is sometimes also rewarded with food offerings, for example in Eastern Europe.

  The practice is associated most closely with England and the United States, but involves adults as well as children and more commonly the collection of money, for example for charity.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 10/31/2022 – 20:05

• Anti-Russian Alliance Fractures After Japan Decides To Stay In Russia's Sakhalin-1 Energy Project
  Anti-Russian Alliance Fractures After Japan Decides To Stay In Russia’s Sakhalin-1 Energy Project

  While Europe continues the unvarnished hypocrisy of pretending it is imposing draconian sanctions against Russian oil and gas, when instead it is merely buying the country’s natural resources via such middlemen as India and China (an exercise in virtue signaling that costs it a 20% mark-up to Russian prices), less than a year since the start of the Ukraine war, some countries have had enough of pretending.

  Today, the Japanese government decided to officially screw the sanctions, and remain involved in the (formerly Exxon-led) Sakhalin-1 oil and gas project in Russia, as it seeks a stable supply of energy (who doesn’t) despite international sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine, the Nikkei reported.

  

  ExxonMobil, which held a 30% stake in Sakhalin-1, announced in March that it would withdraw from the project. But after vacillating for more than half a year, Japan decided not to follow in Exxon’s footsteps.

  Meanwhile, Russia set up a new company to take over the project under a presidential decree that has in effect forced investors to choose sides. Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is a stakeholder in Tokyo-based Sakhalin Oil and Gas Development — which owns 30% of Sakhalin-1’s current operator – along with other investors including Itochu, Japan Petroleum Exploration and Marubeni.

  The Japanese consortium will make a final decision on whether to stay invested in the project after discussions with other stakeholders.

  Why does this matter? Well, back in may, the G-7 nations decided to ban imports of Russian crude oil. Although the G-7 did not decide on a time frame, saying only that the ban will be enforced in a “timely and orderly fashion,” Japan’s continued participation in Sakhalin-1 would go against the consensus among fellow G-7 members.

  In short, Japan would be the first “western” nation to officially breach the anti-Russia alliance.

  Of course, there are reason: Japan relies on the Middle East for 95% of its crude imports, and sees ownership in Russian projects as essential to ensuring a stable supply of energy. But then again, one can say the same of most of the developed world, and certainly all of Europe, where Russian energy commodities serve as the basis for comfortable, modern life.

  On October 7, Vladimir Putin signed a decree transferring Sakhalin-1 to a newly established company, which was registered on Oct. 14. Stakeholders in the project were given one month to decide whether to invest in the new company, and relevant Japanese agencies, including the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, have been considering their options. They have now decided.

  A unit of Russian state oil company Rosneft is expected to operate Sakhalin-1 after ExxonMobil. Rosneft and India’s state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp. each previously held 20% of the project.

  As a result of the chaos, operations at Sakhalin-1 have been virtually shut down, and Japan has imported no oil originating from the project recently, so losing its stake will not have an immediate impact on the country’s fuel supply.

  Russia has transferred operations of the Sakhalin-2 natural gas project to a new company as well. Japanese investors Mitsui & Co. and Mitsubishi Corp. decided to retain their stakes in the project, and their continued investment has been approved by the Russian government.

  Translation: the upcoming G-20 will be rather awkward as Japan’s PM Fumio Kushida, an anchor pillar of the G7 in Asia, may decide to sit at the table next the Xi and Putin.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 10/31/2022 – 19:45

• Iran's IRGC Seizes Foreign Fuel Tanker In Persian Gulf
  Iran’s IRGC Seizes Foreign Fuel Tanker In Persian Gulf

  Iran’s military has seized a foreign-flagged tanker on suspicion of illegal smuggling operations, state media announced Monday.

  While the tanker or flag it is flying under hasn’t been identified by Tehran authorities, it was said to be carrying 2.9 million gallons of “smuggled fuel” – worth an estimated $6.6 million, according to a statement of an Iranian official. 

  

  The country’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) boarded and took control of the vessel in the Persian Gulf. Tehran has long complained about and tried to crackdown on what it has described as persistent smuggling of its oil and fuel to Gulf states.

  “The captain and crew of this foreign tanker are also detained as investigations and legal procedures are being completed,” Iran’s judiciary chief of the southern province of Hormozgan, Mojtaba Ghahremani, said in a video address.

  “All vessels which have delivered fuel to the violating tanker will also be subject to prosecution,” Ghahremani added.

  State media showed a clip of the seized vessel with IRGC operatives approaching it. This practice of intercepting foreign vessels in the vital Strait of Hormuz waterway has put Iran’s navy on a crash course with the US military presence in the region. Of late, the IRGC has sought to seize US sea drones in the region.

  WATCH: #BNNIran Reports.

  Mojtaba Ghahremani, the judiciary chief for Hormozgan province in Iran said, “The navy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has seized a foreign tanker carrying 11 million liters of smuggled fuel.” #Iran #Crime pic.twitter.com/jR4dXuGrto

  — Gurbaksh Singh Chahal (@gchahal) October 31, 2022

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

  Interestingly, Iran is further alleging that smugglers seek to steal national assets with the help of foreigners. 

  “The criminal acts by fuel smugglers who plunder national assets in coordination with foreigners will not be hidden from the sight of Judiciary officials and officers, and the perpetrators of such crimes will be punished severely and without leniency,” Ghahremani said additionally in his statement, according to PressTV.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 10/31/2022 – 19:25

• Spooky Torts: The 2022 List Of Litigation Horrors
  Spooky Torts: The 2022 List Of Litigation Horrors

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  Here is my annual list of Halloween torts and crimes. Halloween of course remains a holiday seemingly designed for personal injury lawyers around the world and this year’s additions show why. Halloween has everything for a torts-filled holiday: battery, trespass, defamation, nuisance, product liability and more. Particularly with the recent tragedy in South Korea, our annual listing is not intended to belittle the serious losses that can occur on this and other holidays. However, my students and I often discuss the remarkably wide range of torts that comes with All Hallow’s Eve.

  So, with no further ado, here is this year’s updated list of actual cases related to Halloween.

  In October 2021, Danielle Thomas, former exotic dancer known as “Pole Assassin” (and the girlfriend of Texas special teams coach Jeff Banks), found herself embroiled in a Halloween tort after the monkey previously used in her act bit a wandering child at the house of horror she created for Halloween. Thomas considers the monkey Gia to be her “emotional support animal.”

  Thomas goes all out for the holiday and converted her home into a house of horrors, including a maze. She said that the area with Gia was closed off and, as for petting, “no one is allowed to touch her!”  She publicly insisted “No one was viciously attack this a lie, a whole lie! She was not apart of any haunted house, the kid did not have permission to be on the other side of my property!” She even posted a walk-through video of the scene to show the steps that a child would have to take to get to the monkey.

  Don’t worry folks I got the #MonkeyGate video pic.twitter.com/TAy6leBqDS

  — Christian Sykes (@ctsykes13) November 2, 2021

  She insists in the video that she knows all of the governing legal rules and shows the path in detail. It is not helpful on the defense side: it is not a long path and easy to see how a child might get lost. She later deleted her account (likely after her attorney regained consciousness).

  The case raises an array of torts including animal liability, licensee liability, negligence, and attractive nuisance claims.

  In 2022, we often added conversion to the usual torts where multiple versions of the new giant skeleton were stolen, including one particularly ham-handed effort in Austin, Texas caught on video tape:

  * * *

  In Berea, Ohio, the promoters of the 7 Floors of Hell haunted house at the Cuyahoga County Fairgrounds appreciate realism but one employee took it a bit too far. An actor brandished this real bowie knife as a prop while pretending to stab an 11-year-old boy’s foot. He then stabbed him.

  

  The accident occurred when the actor, 22, approached the boy and stabbed at the ground as a scare tactic. He got too close and accidentally cut through the child’s shoe, piercing a toe.

  The injury was not serious since the boy was treated at the scene and continued through the haunted house.

  The case raises an interesting question of “respondeat superior” for the negligent acts by employees in the course of employment. The question is what is in the scope of employment.  The question is often whether an employee was on a “detour” or “frolic.”  A detour can be outside of an employer’s policies or guidelines but will be the basis for liability as sufficiently related to the employment.  A frolic is a more serious deviation where the employee is acting in his own capacity or for his own interests.

  In this case, the actor was clearly within his scope of employment in trying to scare the visitors. However, he admitted that he bought the knife in his personal capacity and agreed it “was not a good idea” to use it at the haunted house, according to FOX 8. That still does not negate the negligence — both direct and vicarious liability. There was a failure to monitor employees and safeguard the scene. His negligence is also likely attributable to the employer. Finally, this would constitute battery as a reckless, though unintended, act.

  * * *

  In 2020, parents in Indiana were given a warning in a Facebook post that the Indiana State Police seized holiday edibles featuring packaging that resembles that of actual name brands — but with the word “medicated” printed on the wrapper along with cannabis symbols.

  The packaging makes it easy for homeowners to confuse packages and give out drugged candy.  Indeed, last year, two children were given THC-infused gummies while trick-or-treating, according to police in Waterford, Conn.. Such candies include the main active ingredient linked to the psychedelic effects of cannabis – the plant from which marijuana is derived.

  Even an accidental distribution of such infused candies would constitute child endangerment and be subject to both negligence and strict liability actions in torts.

  * * *

  I previously have written how the fear of razor blades in apples appears an urban legend. Well, give it enough time and someone will prove you wrong. That is the allegation of Waterbury, Connecticut police who say that Jason A. Racz, 37, put razor blades in candy bags of at least two trick-or-treaters. Racz’ razor defense may not be particularly convincing to the average juror. According to police, “Racz explained that the razor blades were accidentally spilled or put into the candy bowl he used to hand out candy from.” However, police noted that he “provided no explanation as to how the razor blades were handed out to the children along with the candy.”

  

  The charge was brought soon after Halloween in 2019. Racz is now charged with risk of injury to a minor, reckless endangerment and interfering with a police officer. He could also be charged with battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress, but it is not clear if any children were injured.

  *  *  *

  Steven Novak, an artist from Dallas, Texas, believes that Halloween should be a bit more than a traditional plastic pumpkin and a smiling ghost.  Police were called to his home in Texas over a possible murder. They found a dummy impaled on a chainsaw with fake blood; another dummy hanging from his roof; a wheelbarrow full of fake dismembered body parts and other gory scenes.  Neighbors called the display too traumatizing.  Police responded by taking pictures for their families.

  

  A tort action for intentional infliction of emotional distress is likely to fail. There must be not just outrageous conduct but conduct intended to cause severe emotional distress. Courts regularly exclude injuries associated with the exercise of free speech or artistic expression . . . even when accompanied by buckets of fake blood.

  *  *  *

  The Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom in Pennsylvania tells customers that, if they come to their Halloween Haunt, “Fear is waiting for you.” In 2019, a new case was filed by Shannon Sacco and her daughter over injuries sustained from “unreasonable scaring.” They are seeking $150,000.

  

  The Allentown Morning Call reported that “M.S.” went with friends to the amusement park and was immediately approached by costumed characters. She said that she told them that she did not want to be scared and backed away. A little further on into the park however a costumed employee allegedly ran up behind her and shouted loudly. The startled girl fell forward and suffered what were serious but unspecified injuries. She alleges ongoing medical issues and inability to return to fully functioning activities. The lawsuit also alleges that the park failed to inform Sacco or her daughter that they could buy a glow-in-the-dark “No Boo” necklace to ward off costumed employees. The obvious issue beyond the alleged negligence of the Park is the plaintiffs’ own conduct. Pennsylvania is a comparative negligence state so contributory negligence by the plaintiffs would not be a bar to recovery. See Pennsylvania General Assembly Statute §7102. However, it is a modified comparative negligence state so they must show that they are 50 percent or less at fault. If they are found 51 percent at fault, they are barred entirely from recovery. Even if they can recover, their damages are reduced by the percentage of their own fault in going to a park during a Halloween-themed event.

  *  *  *

  In 2019, there is a rare public petition to shutdown a haunted house that has been declared to be a “torture chamber.” The move to “shut down McKamey Manor” that has been signed by thousands who believe Russ McKamey, the owner of McKamey Manor, has made his house so scary that it constitutes torture, including an allegation of waterboarding of visitors. The haunted house requires participants to get a doctor’s note and sign a 40-page waiver before they enter. People are seeking the closure of the houses located in Summertown, Tennessee and Huntsville, Alabama. McKamey insists that it is just a “crazy haunted house” and stops well short of the legal-definition of torture. The question is whether consent vitiates any extreme frights or contacts.

  He is also clear in both the waiver and the website that the house is an “extreme haunted attraction” for legal adults who “must be in GREAT HEALTH to participate.” Not only do people enter with full knowledge but there is no charge. McKamey owns five dogs and only requires a bag of dog food for entry. Presumably the food is cursed.

  *  *  *

  An earlier case was recently made public from an accident on October 15, 2011 in San Diego. Scott Griffin and friends went to the Haunted Trail in San Diego. The ticket warns of “high-impact scares” along a mile path with actors brandishing weapons and scary items. Griffen, 44, and his friends went on the trail and were going out of what they thought was an exit. Suddenly an actor jumped out as part of what the attraction called “the Carrie effect” of a last minute scare. While Griffen said that he tried to back away, the actor followed him with a running chain saw. He fell backwards and injured his wrists.

  The 2013 lawsuit against the Haunted Hotel, Inc., in the Superior Court of California, County of San Diego, alleged negligence and assault. However, Superior Court Judge Katherine Bacal granted a motion to dismiss based on assumption of the risk. She noted that Griffin “was still within the scare experience that he purchased.” After all, “Who would want to go to a haunted house that is not scary?”

  Griffen then appealed and the attorney for the Haunted Hotel quoted Hunter S. Thompson: “Buy the ticket, take the ride.” Again, the court agreed. In upholding the lower court, Justice Gilbert Nares wrote, “Being chased within the physical confines of the Haunted Trail by a chain saw–carrying maniac is a fundamental part and inherent risk of this amusement. Griffin voluntarily paid money to experience it.”

  *  *  *

  In 2018, a case emerged in Madison, Tennessee from the Nashville Nightmare Haunted House.   James “Jay” Yochim and three of his pals went to the attraction composed of  four separate haunted houses, an escape room, carnival games and food vendors.  In the attraction, people are chased by characters with chainsaws and other weapons.  They were not surprised therefore when a man believed to be an employee in a Halloween costume handed Tawnya Greenfield a knife and told her to stab Yochim.  She did and thought it was all pretend until blood started to pour from Yochim’s arm. The knife was real and the man was heard apologizing “I didn’t know my knife was that sharp.”

  It is not clear how even stabbing with a dull knife would be considered safe.

  The attraction issued a statement:

  “As we have continued to review the information, we believe that an employee was involved in some way, and he has been placed on leave until we can determine his involvement. We are going over all of our safety protocols with all of our staff again, as the safety and security of all of our patrons is always our main concern. We have not been contacted by the police, but we will cooperate fully with any official investigation.”

  The next scary moment is likely to be in the form of a torts complaint.  Negligence against the company under respondeat superior is an obvious start. There is also a novel battery charge where he could claim that he was stabbed by trickery or deceit of a third person. There are also premises liability issues for invitees.  As for Greenfield, she claims to have lacked consent due to a misrepresentation.  She could be charged with negligence or a recklessness-based theory of battery, though that seems less likely.  Finally, there is an interesting possible claim of negligent infliction of emotional distress in being tricked or misled into stabbing an individual.

  *  *  *

  Last year, a 21-year-old man surnamed Cheung was killed by a moving coffin in a haunted house in Hong Kong’s Ocean Park.   The attraction is called “Buried Alive” and involves hopping into coffins for a downward slide into a dark and scary space. The ride promises to provide people with the “experience of being buried alive alone, before fighting their way out of their dark and eerie grave.” Cheung took a wrong turn and went backstage — only to be hit by one of the metal coffins.  The hit in the head killed Cheung who was found later in the haunted house.

  

  While there is no word of a tort lawsuit (and tort actions are rarer in Hong Kong), the case is typical of Halloween torts involving haunted houses.  The decor often emphasizes spooky and dark environs which both encourage terror and torts among the participants.  In this case, an obvious claim could be made that it is negligence to allow such easy access to the operational area of the coffin ride — particularly in a dark space.  As a business invitee, Cheung would have a strong case in the United States.

  *  *  *

  A previous addition to the Spooky torts was the odd case of Assistant Prosecutor Chris White. White clearly does not like spiders, even fake ones. That much was clear given his response to finding fake spiders scattered around the West Virginia office for Halloween. White pulled a gun and threatened to shoot the fake spiders, explaining that he is “deathly afraid of spiders.” It appears that his arachnophobia (fear of spiders) was not matched by a hoplophobia (fear of firearms).

  The other employees were reportedly shaken up and Logan County Prosecuting Attorney John Bennett later suspended White. Bennett said “He said they had spiders everyplace and he said he told them it wasn’t funny, and he couldn’t stand them, and he did indeed get a gun out. It had no clip in it, of course they wouldn’t know that, I wouldn’t either if I looked at it, to tell you the truth.” It is not clear how White thought threatening the decorative spiders would keep them at bay or whether he was trying to deter those who sought to deck out the office in a Halloween theme. He was not charged by his colleagues with a crime but was suspended for his conduct.

  This is not our first interaction with White. He was the prosecutor in the controversial (and in my view groundless) prosecution of Jared Marcum, who was arrested after wearing a NRA tee shirt to school.

  *  *  *

  Another new case from the last year involves a murder. Donnie Cochenour Jr., 27, got a seasonal break (at least temporarily) on detecting his alleged murder of Rebecca J. Cade, 31. Cade’s body was left hanging on a fence and was mistaken by neighbors as a Halloween decoration. The “decoration” was found by a man walking his dog and reported by construction workers. A large rock was found with blood on it nearby. Donnie Cochenour Jr., 27, was later arrested and ordered held on $2 million bond after he pleaded not guilty to murder.

  Cade apparently had known Cochenour since he was a child — a relationship going back 20 years. Cochenour reportedly admitted that they had a physical altercation in the field. Police found a blood trail that indicates that Cade was running from Cochenour and tried to climb the fence in an attempt to get away. She was found hanging from her sleeve and is believed to have died on the fence from blunt force trauma to the head and neck. Her body exhibited “defensive wounds.”

  When police arrested Cochenour, they found blood on is clothing.

  *  *  *

  In 2015, federal and state governments were cracking down on cosmetic contact lenses to give people spooky eyes. Owners and operators of 10 Southern California businesses were criminally charged in federal court with illegally selling cosmetic contact lenses without prescriptions. Some of the products that were purchased in connection with this investigation were contaminated with dangerous pathogens that can cause eye injury, blindness and loss of the eye.

  

  The products are likely to result in a slew of product liability actions.

  *  *  *

  Another 2015 case reflects that the scariest part of shopping for Halloween costumes or decorations may be the trip to the Party Store. Shanisha L. Saulsberry sued U.S. Toy Company, Inc. after she was injured shopping for Halloween costumes and a store rack fell on her. The jury awarded Saulsberry $7,216.00 for economic damages. She appealed the damages after evidence of her injuries were kept out of the trial by the court. However, the Missouri appellate court affirmed the ruling.

  *  *  *

  The case of Castiglione v. James F. Q., 115 A.D.3d 696, shows a classic Halloween tort. The lawsuit alleged that, on Halloween 2007, the defendant’s son threw an egg which hit the plaintiff’s daughter in the eye, causing her injuries. The plaintiff also brought criminal charges against the defendant’s son arising from this incident and the defendant’s son pleaded guilty to assault in the third degree (Penal Law § 120.00 [2]). However, at his deposition, the defendant’s son denied throwing the egg which allegedly struck the plaintiff’s daughter.

  Because of the age of the accused, the case turned on the youthful offender statute (CPL art 720) that provides special measures for persons found to be youthful offenders which provides “Except where specifically required or permitted by statute or upon specific authorization of the court, all official records and papers, whether on file with the court, a police agency or the division of criminal justice services, relating to a case involving a youth who has been adjudicated a youthful offender, are confidential and may not be made available to any person or public or private agency [with certain exceptions not relevant here]” (CPL 720.35 [2]). This covers both the physical documents constituting the official record and the information contained within those documents. Thus, in relation to the Halloween egging, the boy was protected from having to disclose information or answer questions regarding the facts underlying the adjudication

  *  *  *

  We discussed the perils of pranks and “jump frights,” particularly with people who do not necessarily consent. In the case of Christian Faith Benge, there appears to have been consent in visiting a haunted house. The sophomore from New Miami High School in Ohio died from a prior medical condition at the at Land of Illusion haunted house. She was halfway through the house with about 100 friends and family members when she collapsed.

  

  She had an enlarged heart four times its normal size. She also was born with congenital diaphragmatic hernia, which prevents the lungs from developing normally. This added stress to the heart. In such a case, consent and comparative negligence issues effectively bar recovery in most cases. It is a terrible loss of a wonderful young lady. However, some fatalities do not always come with liability and this appears such a case. Source: Journal News

  *  *  *

  As discussed earlier, In Franklin County, Tennessee, children may want to avoid the house of Dale Bryant Farris, 65, this Halloween . . . or houses near him. Bryant was arrested after shooting a 15-year-old boy who was with kids toilet-papering their principal’s front yard. Bryant came out of his house a couple of houses down from the home of Principal Ken Bishop and allegedly fired at least two blasts — one hitting a 15-year-old boy in the right foot, inner left knee, right palm, right thigh and right side of his torso above the waistline.

  Tennessee is a Castle Doctrine state and we have seen past cases like the notorious Tom Horn case in Texas where homeowners claimed the right to shoot intruders on the property of their neighbors. It is not clear if Bryant will argue that he was trying to stop intruders under the law, but it does not appear a good fit with the purpose or language of the law. Farris faces a charge of aggravated assault and another of reckless endangerment. He could also face civil liability from the boy’s family. This would include assault and battery. There is a privilege of both self-defense and defense of others. This privilege included reasonable mistaken self-defense or defense of others. This would not fit such a claim since he effectively pursued the boys by going to a neighbor’s property and there was no appearance of a threat or weapon since they were only armed with toilet paper.

  The good news is that Farris can now discard the need for a costume. He can go as himself at Halloween . . . as soon as he is out of jail.

  *  *  *

  As shown below, Halloween nooses have a bad record at parties. In 2012, a club called Pink Punters had a decorative noose that it had used for a number of years that allowed party goers to take pictures as a hanging victim on Halloween. Of course, you guessed it. A 25-year old man was found hanging from the noose in an accidental self-lynching at the nightclub in England.

  The case would appear easy to defend in light of the assumption of the risk and patent danger. The noose did not actually tighten around necks. Moreover, this is England where tort claims can be more challenging. In the United States, however, there would remain the question of a foreseeable accident in light of the fact that patrons are drinking heavily and drugs are often present at nightclubs. Since patrons are known to put their heads in the noose, the combination is intoxication and a noose is not a particularly good mix.

  *  *  *

  Grant v. Grant.

  A potential criminal and tort case comes to us from Pennsylvania where, at a family Halloween bonfire, Janet Grant spotted a skunk and told her son Thomas Grant to fetch a shotgun and shoot it. When he returned, Janet Grant shined a flashlight on the animal while her son shot it. It was only then that they discovered that Thomas Grant had just shot his eight-year-old cousin in her black and white Halloween costume. What is amazing is that authorities say that they are considering possible animal gaming charges.

  Fortunately, the little girl survived with a wound to the shoulder and abdomen.

  The police in Beaver County have not brought charges and alcohol does not appear to have been a factor.

  Putting aside the family connection (which presumably makes the likelihood of a lawsuit unlikely), there is a basis for both battery and negligence in such a wounding. With children in the area, the discharge of the firearm would seem pretty unreasonable even with the effort to illuminate “the animal.” Moreover, this would have to have been a pretty large skunk to be the size of an eight-year-old child.

  Just for the record, the average weight of a standard spotted skunk in that area is a little over 1 pound. The biggest skunk is a hog-nosed skunk that can reach up to 18 pounds.

  *  *  *

  We also have a potential duel case out of Aiken, South Carolina from one year ago. A 10-year-old Aiken trick-or-treater pulled a gun on a woman who joked that she wanted take his candy on Halloween. Police found that his brother, also ten, had his own weapon.

  The 28-year-old woman said that she merely joked with a group of 10 or so kids that she wanted their candy when the ten-year-old pulled out a 9 mm handgun and said “no you’re not.” While the magazine was not in the gun, he had a fully loaded magazine in his possession. His brother had the second gun. Both appear to have belonged to their grandfather.

  The children were released to their parents and surprisingly there is no mention of charges against the grandfather. While the guns appear to have been taken without his permission, it shows great negligence in the handling and storage of the guns.

  What would be interesting is a torts lawsuit by the woman for assault against the grandfather. The actions of third parties often cut off liability as a matter of proximate causation, though courts have held that you can be liable for creating circumstances where crimes or intentional torts are foreseeable. For example, a landlord was held liable in for crimes committed in his building in Kline v. 1500 Massachusetts Avenue. Here the grandfather’s negligence led to the use of the guns by these children. While a lawsuit is unlikely, it would certainly be an interesting — and not unwarranted — claim.

  *  *  *

  Tauton High School District

  The Massachusetts case of Smith v. Taunton High School involves a Halloween prank gone bad. A teacher at Taunton High School asked a 15-year-old student to answer a knock on the classroom door. The boy was startled when he came face to face with a man in a mask and carrying what appeared to be a running chainsaw. The student fell back, tripped and fractured a kneecap. His family is now suing though the state cap on such lawsuits is $100,000.

  Dussault said the family is preparing a lawsuit, but is exploring ways to avoid a trial and do better than the $100,000 cap when suing city employees. This could make for an interesting case, but would be better for the Plaintiffs as a bench versus a jury trial. Many jurors are likely to view this as simply an attempt at good fun by the teacher and an unforeseeable accident.

  Source: CBS

  *  *  *

  In Florida, a woman has sued for defamation, harassment and emotional distress after her neighbor set up decorations that included an insane asylum sign that pointed to her yard and a fake tombstone with an inscription she viewed as a reference to her single status. It read, “At 48 she had no mate no date/ It’s no debate she looks 88.”

  This could be a wonderful example of an opinion defense to defamation. As for emotional distress, I think the cause of the distress pre-dates Halloween.

  *  *  *

  Pieczonka v. Great America (2012)

  A family is suing Great America for a tort in 2011 at Great Falls. Father Marian Pieczonka alleged in his complaint that his young daughter Natalie was at the park in Gurnee, Illinois for the Halloween-themed Fright Fest when a park employee dressed in costume jumped out of a port-a-potty and shot her with a squirt gun. He then reported chased the screaming girl until she fell and suffered injuries involving scrapes and bruises. The lawsuit alleges negligence in encouraging employees to chase patrons given the tripping hazards.

  They are asking $30,000 in the one count complaint but could face assumption or comparative negligence questions, particularly in knowingly attending an event called “Fright Fest” where employees were known to jump out at patrons.

  *  *  *

  A lawsuit appears inevitable after a tragic accident in St. Louis where a 17-year-old girl is in a critical condition after she became tangled in a noose at a Halloween haunted house called Creepyworld. The girl was working as an actress at the attraction and was found unconscious. What is particularly chilling is that people appeared to have walked by her hanging in the house and thought she was a realistic prop.

  Notably, the attraction had people walk through to check on the well-being of actors and she was discovered but not for some time after the accident. She is in critical condition. Creepyworld employs 100 people and can expect a negligence lawsuit.

  *  *  *

  Rabindranath v. Wallace (2010)

  Peter Wallace, 24, was returning on a train with fellow Hiberinian soccer fans in England — many dressed in costumes (which the English call “fancy dress.”) One man was dressed as a sheep and Wallace thought it was funny to constantly flick his lighter near the cotton balls covering his body — until he burst into flames. Friends then made the matter worse by trying to douse the flames but throwing alcohol on the flaming man-sheep. Even worse, the victim Arjuna Rabindranath, 24, is an Aberdeen soccer fan. Rabindranath’s costume was composed of a white tracksuit and cotton wool.

  Outcome: Wallace is the heir to a large farm estate and agreed to pay damages to the victim, who experienced extensive burns.

  What is fascinating is the causation issue. Here, Wallace clearly caused the initial injury which was then made worse by the world’s most dim-witted rescue attempt in the use of alcohol to douse a fire. In the United States, the original tortfeasor is liable for such injuries caused by negligent rescues. Indeed, he is liable for injured rescuers. The rescuers can also be sued in most states. However, many areas of Europe have good Samaritan laws protecting such rescuers. Notably, Wallace had a previous football-related conviction which was dealt with by a fine. In this latest case, he agreed to pay 25,000 in compensation.

  The case is obviously similar to one of our prior Halloween winners below: Ferlito v. Johnson & Johnson

  *  *  *

  Perper v. Forum Novelties (2010)

  Sherri Perper, 56, of Queens, New York has filed a personal injury lawsuit due to defective shoes allegedly acquired from Forum Novelties. The shoes were over-sized clown shoes that she was wearing as part of her Halloween costume in 2008. She tripped and fell.

  She is reportedly claiming that the shoes were dangerous. While “open and obvious” is no longer an absolute defense in such products cases, such arguments may still be made to counter claims of defective products. In most jurisdictions, you must show that the product is more dangerous than the expectations of the ordinary consumer. It is hard to see how Perper could be surprised that it is a bit difficult to walk in over-sized shoes. Then there is the problem of assumption of the risk.

  *  *  *

  Dickson v. Hustonville Haunted House and Greg Walker (2009) Glenda Dickson, 51, broke four vertebrae in her back when she fell out of a second story window left open at the Hustonville Haunted House, owned by Greg Walker.

  Dickson was in a room called “The Crying Lady in the Bed” when one of the actors came up behind the group and started screaming. Everyone jumped in fright and Dickson jumped back through an open window that was covered with a sheet — a remarkably negligent act by the haunted house operator. She landed on a fire escape and then fell down some stairs.

  *  *  *

  Maryland v. Janik (2009)

  Sgt. Eric Janik, 37, went to a haunted house called the House of Screams with friends and when confronted by a character dressed as Leatherface with a chainsaw (sans the chain, of course), Janik pulled out his service weapon and pointed it at the man, who immediately dropped character, dropped the chainsaw, and ran like a bat out of Halloween Hell.

  Outcome: Janik is charged with assault and reckless endangerment for his actions. Charges pending.

  *  *  *

  Patrick v. South Carolina (2009) Quentin Patrick, 22, an ex-convict in Sumter, South Carolina shot and killed a trick-or-treater T.J. Darrisaw who came to his home on Halloween — spraying nearly 30 rounds with an assault rifle from inside his home after hearing a knock on the door. T.J.’s 9-year- old brother, Ahmadre Darrisaw, and their father, Freddie Grinnell, were injured but were released after being treated at a hospital.

  Patrick left his porch light on — a general signal for kids that the house was open for trick and treating. The boy’s mother and toddler sibling were in the car.

  Patrick emptied the AK-47 — shooting at least 29 times through his front door, walls and windows after hearing the knock. He said that he had been previously robbed. That may be so, but it is unclear what an ex-con was doing with a gun, let alone an AK-47.

  OUTCOME: Charges pending for murder.

  *  *  *

  Kentucky v. Watkins (2008)

  As a Halloween prank, restaurant manager Joe Watkins of the Chicken Ranch in Paris, Kentucky thought it was funny to lie in a pool of blood on the floor. After seeing Watkins on the floor, the woman went screaming from the restaurant to report the murder. Watkins said that the prank was for another employee and that he tried to call the woman back on her cell phone.

  OUTCOME: Under Kentucky law, a person can be charged with a false police report, even if he is not the one who filed it. The police charged Watkins for causing the woman to file the report — a highly questionable charge.

  *  *  *

  Mays v. Gretna Athletic Boosters␣95-717 (La.App. 5 Cir. 01/17/96)

  “Defendant operated a haunted house at Mel Ott Playground in Gretna to raise money for athletic programs. The haunted house was constructed of 2×4s and black visqueen. There were numerous cubbyholes where “scary” exhibits were displayed. One booster club member was stationed at the entrance and one at the exit. Approximately eighteen people participated in the haunted house by working the exhibits inside. Near and along the entrance of the haunted house was a bathroom building constructed of cinder blocks. Black visqueen covered this wall.

  Plaintiff and her daughter’s friend, about 10 years old, entered the haunted house on October 29, 1988. It was nighttime and was dark inside. Plaintiff testified someone jumped out and hollered, scaring the child into running. Plaintiff was also frightened and began to run. She ran directly into the visqueen-covered cinder block wall.

  There was no lighting in that part of the haunted house. Plaintiff hit the wall face first and began bleeding profusely from her nose. She testified two surgeries were required to repair her nose.”

  OUTCOME: In order to get the proper effect, haunted houses are dark and contain scary and/or shocking exhibits. Patrons in a Halloween haunted house are expected to be surprised, startled and scared by the exhibits but the operator does not have a duty to guard against patrons reacting in bizarre, frightened and unpredictable ways. Operators are duty bound to protect patrons only from unreasonably dangerous conditions, not from every conceivable danger.

  As found by the Trial Court, defendant met this duty by constructing the haunted house with rooms of adequate size and providing adequate personnel and supervision for patrons entering the house. Defendant’s duty did not extend to protecting plaintiff from running in a dark room into a wall. Our review of the entire record herein does not reveal manifest error committed by the Trial Court or that the Trial Court’s decision was clearly wrong. Plaintiff has not shown the haunted house was unreasonably dangerous or that defendant’s actions were unreasonable. Thus, the Trial Court judgment must be affirmed.

  *  *  *

  Powell v. Jacor Communications␣

  UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

  320 F.3d 599 (6th Cir.2003)

  “On October 15, 1999, Powell visited a Halloween season haunted house in Lexington, Kentucky that was owned and operated by Jacor. She was allegedly hit in the head with an unidentified object by a person she claims was dressed as a ghost. Powell was knocked unconscious and injured. She contends that she suffered a concussion and was put on bed rest and given medications by emergency-room physicians. Powell further claims that she now suffers from several neuropsychological disorders as a result of the incident.”

  OUTCOME: Reversed dismissal on the basis of tolling of statute of limitations.

  *  *  *

  Kansas City Light & Power Company v. Trimble␣

  315 Mo. 32; 285 S.W. 455 (1926)

  Excerpt: “A shapely pole to which, twenty-two feet from the ground is attached a non-insulated electric wire . . Upon a shapely pole were standard steps eighteen inches apart; about seventeen feet from the ground were telephone wires, and five feet above them was a non-insulated electric light wire. On Halloween, about nine o’clock, a bright fourteen-year-old boy and two companions met close to the pole, and some girls dressed as clowns came down the street. As they came near the boy, saying, “Who dares me to walk the wire?” began climbing the pole, using the steps, and ascended to the telephone cables, and thereupon his companions warned him about the live wire and told him to come down. He crawled upon the telephone cables to a distance of about ten feet from the pole, and when he reached that point a companion again warned him of the live wire over his head, and threatened to throw a rock at him and knock him off if he did not come down. Whereupon he turned about and crawled back to the pole, and there raised himself to a standing position, and then his foot slipped, and involuntarily he threw up his arm, his hand clutched the live wire, and he was shocked to death.”

  OUTCOME:

  Frankly, I am not sure why the pole was so “shapely” but the result was disappointing for the plaintiffs. Kansas City Light & Power Company v. Trimble: The court held that the appellate court extended the attractive nuisance doctrine beyond the court’s ruling decisions. The court held that appellate court’s opinion on the contributory negligence doctrine conflicted with the court’s ruling decisions. The court held that the administrator’s case should never have been submitted to the jury. The court quashed the appellate opinion.

  “To my mind it is inconceivable that a bright, intelligent boy, doing well in school, past fourteen years of age and living in the city, would not understand and appreciate the fact that it would be dangerous to come in contact with an electric wire, and that he was undertaking a dangerous feat in climbing up the pole; but even if it may be said that men might differ on that proposition, still in this case he was warned of the wire and of the danger on account of the wire and that, too, before he had reached a situation where there was any occasion or necessity of clutching the wire to avoid a fall. Not only was he twice warned but he was repeatedly told and urged to come down.”

  *  *  *

  Purtell v. Mason␣ 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 49064 (E.D. Ill. 2006)

  “The Purtells filed the present lawsuit against Defendant Village of Bloomingdale Police Officer Bruce Mason after he requested that they remove certain Halloween tombstone “decorations” from their property. Evidence presented at trial revealed that the Purtells placed the tombstones referring to their neighbors in their front yard facing the street. The tombstones specifically referred to their neighbors, who saw the language on the tombstones. For instance, the tombstone that referred to the Purtells’ neighbor James Garbarz stated:

  Here Lies Jimmy, The OlDe Towne IdioT MeAn As sin even withouT his Gin No LonGer Does He wear That sTupiD Old Grin . . . Oh no, noT where they’ve sent Him!

  The tombstone referring to the Purtells’ neighbor Betty Garbarz read:

  BeTTe wAsN’T ReADy, BuT here she Lies Ever since that night she DieD. 12 feet Deep in this trench . . . Still wasn’T Deep enough For that wenches Stench!

  In addition, the Purtells placed a Halloween tombstone in their yard concerning their neighbor Diane Lesner stating:

  Dyean was Known for Lying So She was fried. Now underneath these daises is where she goes crazy!!

  Moreover, the jury heard testimony that Diane Lesner, James Garbarz, and Betty Garbarz were upset because their names appeared on the tombstones. Betty Garbarz testified that she was so upset by the language on the tombstones that she contacted the Village of Bloomingdale Police Department. She further testified that she never had any doubt that the “Bette” tombstone referred to her. After seeing the tombstones, she stated that she was ashamed and humiliated, but did not talk to Jeffrey Purtell about them because she was afraid of him.

  Defense counsel also presented evidence that the neighbors thought the language on the tombstones constituted threats and that they were alarmed and disturbed by their names being on the tombstones. James Garbarz testified that he interpreted the “Jimmy” tombstone as a threat and told the police that he felt threatened by the tombstone. He also testified that he had concerns about his safety and what Jeffrey Purtell might do to him.”

  OUTCOME: The court denied the homeowners’ post-trial motion for judgment as a matter of law pursuant to and motion for a new trial. Viewing the evidence and all reasonable inferences in a light most favorable to Officer Mason, a rational jury could conclude that the language on the tombstones constituted threats, that the neighbors were afraid of Jeffrey Purtell, and that they feared for their safety. As such the Court will not disturb the jury’s conclusion that the tombstones constituted fighting words — “those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.”

  *  *  *

  Goodwin v. Walmart

  2001 Ark. App. LEXIS 78

  “On October 12, 1993, Randall Goodwin went to a Wal-Mart store located on 6th Street in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He entered through the front door and walked toward the sporting goods department. In route, he turned down an aisle known as the seasonal aisle. At that time, it was stocked with items for Halloween. This aisle could be observed from the cash registers. Mr. Goodwin took only a few steps down the aisle when he allegedly stepped on a wig and fell, landing on his right hip. As a result of the fall, Mr. Goodwin suffered severe physical injury to his back, including a ruptured disk. Kelly Evans, an employee for appellee, was standing at the end of her check-out stand when Mr. Goodwin approached her and informed her that he had fallen on an item in the seasonal aisle. She stated that she “saw what he was talking about.”

  OUTCOME: Judgment affirmed because the pleadings, depositions, and related summary judgment evidence did not show that there was any genuine issue of material fact as appellant customer did not establish a plastic bag containing the Halloween wig which allegedly caused him to slip and fall was on the floor as the result of appellee’s negligence or it had been on the floor for such a period of time that appellee knew or should have known about it.

  *  *  *

  Eversole v. Wasson␣ 80 Ill. App. 3d 94 (Ill. 1980)

  Excerpt: “The following allegations of count I, directed against defendant Wasson, were incorporated in count II against the school district: (1) plaintiff was a student at Villa Grove High School which was controlled and administered by the defendant school district, (2) defendant Wasson was employed by the school district as a teacher at the high school, (3) on November 1, 1978, at approximately 12:30 p.m., Wasson was at the high school in his regular capacity as a teacher and plaintiff was attending a regularly scheduled class, (4) Wasson sought and received permission from another teacher to take plaintiff from that teacher’s class and talk to him in the hallway, (5) once in the hallway, Wasson accused plaintiff of being one of several students he believed had smashed Wasson’s Halloween pumpkin at Wasson’s home, (6) without provocation from plaintiff, Wasson berated plaintiff, called him vile names, and threatened him with physical violence while shaking his fist in plaintiff’s face which placed plaintiff in fear of bodily injury, (7) Wasson then struck plaintiff about the head and face with both an open hand and a closed fist and shook and shoved him violently, (8) as a result, plaintiff was bruised about the head, neck, and shoulders; experienced pain and suffering in his head, body, and limbs; and became emotionally distraught causing his school performance and participation to be adversely affected . . .”

  OUTCOME: The court affirmed that portion of the lower court’s order that dismissed the count against the school district and reversed that portion of the lower court’s order that entered a judgment in bar of action as to this count. The court remanded the case to the lower court with directions to allow the student to replead his count against the school district.

  *  *  *

  Holman v. Illinois

  47 Ill. Ct. Cl. 372 (1995)

  “The Claimant was attending a Halloween party at the Illinois State Museum with her grandson on October 26, 1990. The party had been advertised locally in the newspaper and through flier advertisements. The advertisement requested that children be accompanied by an adult, to come in costume and to bring a flashlight. The museum had set up different display rooms to hand out candy to the children and give the appearance of a “haunted house.” The Claimant entered the Discovery Room with her grandson.

  Under normal conditions the room is arranged with tables and low-seated benches for children to use in the museum’s regular displays. These tables and benches had been moved into the upper-right-hand corner of the Discovery Room next to the wall. In the middle of the room, there was a “slime pot” display where the children received the Halloween treat. The overhead fluorescent lights were turned off; however, the track lights on the left side of the room were turned on and dim. The track lights on the right side of the room near the tables and benches were not lit. The room was dark enough that the children’s flashlights could be clearly seen. There were approximately 40-50 people in the room at the time of the accident.

  The Claimant entered the room with her grandson. They proceeded in the direction of the pot in the middle of the room to see what was going in the pot. Her grandson then ran around the pot to the right corner toward the wall. As the Claimant followed, she tripped over the corner of a bench stored in that section of the room. She fell, making contact with the left corner of the bench. She experienced great pain in her upper left arm. The staff helped her to her feet. Her father was called and she went to the emergency room. Claimant has testified that she did not see the low-seating bench because it was so dimly lit in the Discovery Room. The Claimant was treated at the emergency room, where she was diagnosed with a fracture of the proximal humeral head of her left arm as a result of the fall. Claimant returned home, but was unable to work for 12 to 13 weeks.”

  OUTCOME: “The Claimant has met her burden of proof. She has shown by a preponderance of the evidence that the State acted negligently in placing furnishings in a dimly-lit room where visitors could not know of their location. The State did not exercise its duty of reasonable care. For the foregoing reasons, the Claimant is granted an award of $20,000.”

  *  *  *

  Ferlito v. Johnson & Johnson

  771 F. Supp. 196 “Plaintiffs Susan and Frank Ferlito, husband and wife, attended a Halloween party in 1984 dressed as Mary (Mrs. Ferlito) and her little lamb (Mr. Ferlito). Mrs. Ferlito had constructed a lamb costume for her husband by gluing cotton batting manufactured by defendant Johnson & Johnson Products (“JJP”) to a suit of long underwear. She had also used defendant’s product to fashion a headpiece, complete with ears. The costume covered Mr. Ferlito from his head to his ankles, except for his face and hands, which were blackened with Halloween paint. At the party Mr. Ferlito attempted to light his cigarette by using a butane lighter. The flame passed close to his left arm, and the cotton batting on his left sleeve ignited. Plaintiffs sued defendant for injuries they suffered from burns which covered approximately one-third of Mr. Ferlito’s body.”

  OUTCOME: Ferlito v. Johnson & Johnson: Plaintiffs repeatedly stated in their response brief that plaintiff Susan Ferlito testified that “she would never again use cotton batting to make a costume.” Plaintiffs’ Answer to Defendant JJP’s Motion for J.N.O.V., pp. 1, 3, 4, 5. However, a review of the trial transcript reveals that plaintiff Susan Ferlito never testified that she would never again use cotton batting to make a costume. More importantly, the transcript contains no statement by plaintiff Susan Ferlito that a flammability warning on defendant JJP’s product would have dissuaded her from using the cotton batting to construct the costume in the first place. At oral argument counsel for plaintiffs conceded that there was no testimony during the trial that either plaintiff Susan Ferlito or her husband, plaintiff Frank J. Ferlito, would  have acted any different if there had been a flammability warning on the product’s package. The absence of such testimony is fatal to plaintiffs’ case; for without it, plaintiffs have failed to prove proximate cause, one of the essential elements of their negligence claim.

  In addition, both plaintiffs testified that they knew that cotton batting burns when it is exposed to flame. Susan Ferlito testified that she knew at the time she purchased the cotton batting that it would burn if exposed to an open flame. Frank Ferlito testified that he knew at the time he appeared at the Halloween party that cotton batting would burn if exposed to an open flame. His additional testimony that he would not have intentionally put a flame to the cotton batting shows that he recognized the risk of injury of which he claims JJP should have warned. Because both plaintiffs were already aware of the danger, a warning by JJP would have been superfluous. Therefore, a reasonable jury could not have found that JJP’s failure to provide a warning was a proximate cause of plaintiffs’ injuries.

  The evidence in this case clearly demonstrated that neither the use to which plaintiffs put JJP’s product nor the injuries arising from that use were foreseeable.

  But in Trivino v. Jamesway Corporation, the following result:

  The mother purchased cosmetic puffs and pajamas from the retailer. The mother glued the puffs onto the pajamas to create a costume for her child. While wearing the costume, the child leaned over the electric stove. The costume caught on fire, injuring the child. Plaintiffs brought a personal injury action against the retailer. The retailer filed a third party complaint against the manufacturer of the puffs, and the puff manufacturer filed a fourth party complaint against the manufacturer of the fibers used in the puffs. The retailer filed a motion for partial summary judgment as to plaintiffs’ cause of action for failure to warn. The trial court granted the motion and dismissed the actions against the manufacturers. On appeal, the court modified the judgment, holding that the mother’s use of the puffs was not unforeseeable as a matter of law and was a question for the jury. The court held that because the puffs were not made of cotton, as thought by the mother, there were fact issues as to the puffs’ flammability and defendants’ duty to warn. The court held that there was no prejudice to the retailer in permitting plaintiffs to amend their bill of particulars.

  OUTCOME: The court modified the trial court’s judgment to grant plaintiffs’ motion to amend their bill of particulars, deny the retailer’s motion for summary judgment, and reinstate the third party actions against the manufacturers.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 10/31/2022 – 19:05

• "Nothing But A Lie": Beijing Responds To COVID Lab Leak Allegations, Blaming Them On "Anti-China Forces"
  “Nothing But A Lie”: Beijing Responds To COVID Lab Leak Allegations, Blaming Them On “Anti-China Forces”

  Just days after a Senate report was published outlining how the origins of Covid were more likely than not the result of a “research related incident”, Beijing has gone on the defensive, blaming the lab leak theory on “anti-China forces,” Bloomberg reported this weekend. 

  Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Monday that the idea that Covid leaked from a lab in Wuhan is “nothing but a lie”. According to Bloomberg, Zhao also said that China has maintained a consistent position on the origins of the virus, seemingly alluding to the idea that the virus originated in a Wuhan wet market.

  China “opposes all forms of political manipulation”, Zhao went on say, according to the report. 

  Recall, just days ago, a Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions interim report from October 27, 2022 titled “An Analysis of the Origins of the COVID19 Pandemic” revealed that the origins of Covid were more likely based in a lab as part of a “research related incident” and not zoonotic. This report came weeks after Dr. Richard Ebright of Rutgers University posted a damning chronology of circumstantial evidence that seemed to back up the lab leak theory. 

  The Senate report was the result of a “bipartisan Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee oversight effort into the origins of SARS-CoV-2”. It provided a lengthy analysis that reviewed “publicly available, open-source information to examine the two prevailing theories of origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus”.

  

  Among other conclusions, the report notes: “Substantial evidence suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic was the result of a research-related incident associated with a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” the report states.

  “A research-related incident is consistent with the early epidemiology showing rapid spread of the virus exclusively in Wuhan with the earliest calls for assistance being located in the same district as the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s (WIV) original campus in central Wuhan. The WIV is an epicenter of advanced coronavirus research, where researchers have collected samples of and experimented on high-risk coronaviruses.”

  “While precedent of previous outbreaks of human infections from contact with animals favors the hypothesis that a natural zoonotic spillover is responsible for the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 that resulted in the COVID-19 pandemic was most likely the result of a research-related incident.”

  In other words, all of us “conspiracy theorists” floating the idea of a lab leak just because of the totally coincidental fact that the virus showed up on a virology lab’s doorstep, have now been validated by the U.S. Senate.

  In a section titled “Problems with the Natural Zoonotic Hypothesis”, the report says:

  “Based on precedent and genomics, the most likely scenario for a zoonotic origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is that SARS-CoV-2 crossed over the species barrier from an intermediate host to humans. However, the available evidence is also consistent, perhaps more so, with a direct bat-to-human spillover. Both scenarios remain plausible and, in the absence of additional information, should be considered equally valid hypotheses.”

  “However, nearly three years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, critical evidence that would prove that the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 and resulting COVID-19 pandemic was caused by a natural zoonotic spillover is missing.”

  “Such gaps include the failure to identify the original host reservoir, the failure to identify a candidate intermediate host species, and the lack of serological or epidemiological evidence showing transmission from animals to humans, among others outlined in this report,” the report states.

  “As a result of these evidentiary gaps, it is hard to treat the natural zoonotic spillover theory as the presumptive origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

  Then, in the report’s conclusion, it states:

  “Based on the analysis of the publicly available information, it appears reasonable to conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic was, more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident. New information, made publicly available and independently verifiable, could change this assessment. However, the hypothesis of a natural zoonotic origin no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt, or the presumption of accuracy.”

  The report was signed off on by Richard Burr, United States Senator and Ranking Member, U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 10/31/2022 – 18:45

• TuSimple Fires Co-founder As CEO Amid Federal Probes, Board Inquiry
  TuSimple Fires Co-founder As CEO Amid Federal Probes, Board Inquiry

  By Alan Adler if FreightWaves

  TuSimple Holdings on Monday fired co-founder Xiaodi Hou as chairman, CEO and chief technology officer amid federal probes and an internal investigation of the company’s dealings with China.

  An ongoing investigation led by the audit committee of the TuSimple board of directors  determined a change at the top was necessary, TuSimple said in a statement. Hou also was removed as a member of the government security committee.   

  The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) are investigating TuSimple over the exchange of its U.S. intellectual property with a China-backed company started by Hou’s co-founder, Mo Chen.

  TuSimple shares crater

  The news led to a sharp sell-off of TuSimple stock (NASDAQ:TSP), which already was down 83% this year. Shares traded at midday Monday at $3.35, down $2.96 or 46.91%. 

  CFIUS investigated TuSimple before the company went public in April 2021. It found no wrongdoing. But two board members backed by China technology conglomerate Sina Corp. left the TuSimple board after the probe concluded. TuSimple also agreed to limited federal oversight of its business as part of the settlement. 

  Sina divested part of its 20% stake at the time TuSimple went public.

  Yumer becomes interim CEO and president

  Ersin Yumer, executive vice president of operations, will serve as interim CEO and president while Russell Reynolds Associates conducts an executive search. Lead independent director Brad Buss will be TuSimple’s chairman. The board is seeking to add new independent members following the departure of the two Sina-related board members.

  “Transparency, good judgment and accountability are critical values to our Company,” Buss said. “We take these values extremely seriously.”

  Coincidentally, Hou said almost the same thing in a Sept. 15 Q&A with Morgan Stanley analyst Ravi Shankar during the investment firm’s 10th annual Laguna Conference.

  “We are very honest with ourselves and to the world,” Hou said. “That sets us apart as a unique company.”

  In an email to employees, Buss wrote: “And we also know that the technology we’ve developed at TuSimple works. We have proven it through the world’s first driver-out autonomous freight test runs, and we are on the path to commercialization. Now, we have to continue to make the hard decisions necessary to keep TuSimple moving on its trajectory toward long-term success and long-term stability.

  Yumer, who joined TuSimple from rival Aurora Technology, rose quickly through the technology ranks since joining the company 15 months ago. Like Hou, he has a Ph.D. focused on engineering and product development.

  Yumer’s rise coincided with the departure earlier this year of CEO Cheng Lu and CFO Pat Dillon, who led TuSimple to public trading via an initial public offering.

  “It’s not uncommon for a CFO to leave shortly after their CEO,” Yumer told FreightWaves in a recent interview. “Our perspective is that it’s not uncommon with companies that come from being a startup and then transition into being a public company. That transition changes what the focus is for the folks that have actually brought the company there.”

  

  Hou lashes out

  In a linkedIn post Monday, Hou lashed out at the board, complaining that it fired him without cause.

  “Unfortunately, the Board’s processes and conclusions have been questionable at best,” Hou wrote. “As the facts come to light, I am confident that my decisions as CEO and Chairman, and our vision for TuSimple, will be vindicated. I want to be clear that I fundamentally deny any suggestions of wrongdoing.

  “I have been completely transparent in both my professional and personal life and I fully cooperated with the Board because I have nothing to hide.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 10/31/2022 – 18:25

• Biden Lost Temper In Zelensky Phone Call: "Show A Little More Gratitude" 
  Biden Lost Temper In Zelensky Phone Call: “Show A Little More Gratitude” 

  Days after the Pentagon announced that total US military aid given to Ukraine so far has topped $18.5 billion, new reporting has revealed President Joe Biden briefly lost his temper in a phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, after the latter kept pressing for more money and arms.

  NBC has cited four officials familiar with a phone call which took place in June, who revealed for the first time on Monday, “Biden had barely finished telling Zelenskyy he’d just greenlighted another $1 billion in U.S. military assistance for Ukraine when Zelenskyy started listing all the additional help he needed and wasn’t getting.”

  

  At that point, “Biden lost his temper, the people familiar with the call said.” Not only has Washington handed Kyiv a record amount of military aid, but tens of more billions in humanitarian funding as well, as the country struggles to keep the lights on and keep civil services active amid mounting wartime debt as the Russian invasion continues. 

  President Biden, reportedly showing his irritation, explained to Zelensky in that prior phone call, “The American people were being quite generous, and his administration and the U.S. military were working hard to help Ukraine, he said, raising his voice, and Zelenskyy could show a little more gratitude.”

  The report followed by citing one source who said additionally that “Biden was direct with Zelensky” and reminded him that defense aid must be handled through the appropriate military channels. 

  According to more from NBC, the two leaders’ communications have since improved: 

  Administration officials said Biden and Zelenskyy’s relationship has only improved since the June phone call, after which Zelenskyy made a statement praising the U.S. for its generous assistance. But the clash reflects Biden’s early awareness that both congressional and public support for sending billions of dollars to Ukraine could begin to fade. That moment has arrived just as the president prepares to ask Congress to greenlight even more money for Ukraine.

  Perhaps the two getting past those prior June tensions was the result of the White House continuing to essentially sign off on whatever Ukraine asks for. 

  Biden was so angry that he sent Zelensky more billions.

  — Juju (@Juju315858) October 31, 2022

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

  Last month, Zelensky boasted in a CBS “Face the Nation” interview that Washington is providing him with a whopping $1.5 billion per month for state coffers as the country piles up a large war-time deficit. 

  “The United States gives us $1.5 billion every month to support our budget to fight” against Russia the Ukrainian leader explained, but pointed out there remains “a deficit of $5 billion in our budget.” Of course, in that interview he immediately pivoted to repeating Kyiv’s longtime complaint that it’s not enough – because it’s never enough, apparently.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 10/31/2022 – 18:05

• Pelosi Attacker Charged With Assault, Attempted Kidnapping; Intended To "Kneecap" Nancy "If She Lied"
  Pelosi Attacker Charged With Assault, Attempted Kidnapping; Intended To “Kneecap” Nancy “If She Lied”

  The man who allegedly attacked the husband of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was charged Oct. 31 with assault and attempted kidnapping.

  

  David DePape, 42, was charged with assaulting Paul Pelosi, 82 and attempting to kidnap Nancy Pelosi, 82.

  DePape was charged in U.S. court in northern California three days after he allegedly broke into the Pelosi residence in San Francisco and attacked Paul Pelosi.

  He faces up to 50 years in prison if convicted on both counts.

  As The Epoch Times’ Zachary Stieber reports, San Francisco officers responded to a 911 call from Paul Pelosi in the early hours of Friday and witnessed, after the door was opened, DePape and Paul Pelosi each with a hand on the same hammer.

  At 2:31 a.m., San Francisco Police Department (“SFPD”) Officer Colby Wilmes responded to the Pelosi residence, California and knocked on the front door.

  When the door was opened, Pelosi and DEPAPE were both holding a hammer with one hand and DEPAPE had his other hand holding onto Pelosi’s forearm.

  Pelosi greeted the officers.

  The officers asked them what was going on.

  DEPAPE responded that everything was good.

  Officers then asked Pelosi and DEPAPE to drop the hammer.

  Officers located zip ties in a bedroom in the home and inside of a backpack, they found a journal, a roll of tape, a hammer, a pair of gloves, and white rope.

  Officers found signs that DePape broke into the home through the rear of the building.

  A witness told officers that he saw a person wearing all black and carrying a large black bag walking near the Pelosi residence. Paul Pelosi, meanwhile, said that he was asleep when DePape entered the bedroom and said he wanted to talk to Nancy Pelosi. DePape said that he would wait, even after Paul Pelosi said his wife would not be home for several days.

  Paul Pelosi called 911 from the bathroom.

  According to dispatch audio, Paul Pelosi said that he was with a man he described as “a friend” and that the man was going to wait for his wife.

  The dispatcher sent officers to the home after receiving the call.

  DePape told officers hours after being detained that he intended to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage and that he would break her kneecaps if she did not tell the truth.

  As the criminal complaint breaks down, in a Mirandized and recorded interview of DEPAPE by San Francisco Police Department Officers, DEPAPE provided the following information:

  a.    DEPAPE stated that he was going to hold Nancy hostage and talk to her. If Nancy were to tell DEPAPE the “truth,” he would let her go, and if she “lied,” he was going to break “her kneecaps.”

  DEPAPE was certain that Nancy would not have told the “truth.”

  In the course of the interview, DEPAPE articulated he viewed Nancy as the “leader of the pack” of lies told by the Democratic Party.

  DEPAPE also later explained that by breaking Nancy’s kneecaps, she would then have to be wheeled into Congress, which would show other Members of Congress there were consequences to actions.

  DEPAPE also explained generally that he wanted to use Nancy to lure another individual to DEPAPE.

  b.    DEPAPE stated that he broke into the house through a glass door, which was a difficult task that required the use of a hammer.

  DEPAPE stated that Pelosi was in bed and appeared surprised by DEPAPE. DEPAPE told Pelosi to wake up. DEPAPE told Pelosi that he was looking for Nancy. Pelosi responded that she was not present. Pelosi asked how they could resolve the situation, and what DEPAPE wanted to do. DEPAPE stated he wanted to tie Pelosi up so that DEPAPE could go to sleep as he was tired from having had to carry a backpack to the Pelosi residence.

  Around this time, according to DEPAPE, DEPAPE started taking out twist ties from his pocket so that he could restrain Pelosi. Pelosi moved towards another part of the house, but DEPAPE stopped him and together they went back into the bedroom.

  c.    While talking with each other, Pelosi went into a bathroom, where Pelosi grabbed a phone to call 9-1-1.

  DEPAPE stated he felt like Pelosi’s actions compelled him to respond.

  d.    DEPAPE remembered thinking that there was no way the police were going to forget about the phone call.

  DEPAPE explained that he did not leave after Pelosi’s call to 9-1-1 because, much like the American founding fathers with the British, he was fighting against tyranny without the option of surrender.

  DEPAPE reiterated this sentiment elsewhere in the interview.

  e.    DEPAPE stated that they went downstairs to the front door. The police arrived and knocked on the door, and Pelosi ran over and opened it. Pelosi grabbed onto DEPAPE’s hammer, which was in DEPAPE’s hand.

  At this point in the interview, DEPAPE repeated that DEPAPE did not plan to surrender and that he would go “through” Pelosi.

  f.    DEPAPE stated that he pulled the hammer away from Pelosi and swung the hammer towards Pelosi.

  DEPAPE explained that Pelosi’s actions resulted in Pelosi “taking the punishment instead.”

  DePape and Paul Pelosi were both taken to a hospital for treatment.

  Paul Pelosi underwent surgery for a skull fracture and injuries to his hands, according to Nancy Pelosi’s office. Paul Pelosi’s condition “continues to improve,” Nancy Pelosi said in a statement over the weekend.

  Local prosecutors have said they also plan to file a slew of felony charges against DePape, including  attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, burglary, and elder abuse.

  As if that was not enough, a source with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told Fox News that DePape was an illegal immigrant and a “longtime” visa overstay, meaning he arrived in the United States by legal means but did not leave after his visa expired and was never repatriated. DePape was born in Canada and has resided within the U.S. for roughly 20 years.

  

  So in summary, a Berkeley nudist and illegal-immigrant, with a pedophile ex-wife, leaves his BLM-adorned, LGBT-supporting home and attacks the Pelosi residence with the goal of getting the “truth” from the Speaker and “fighting against tyranny”.

  What’s weird about that?

  Read the full criminal complaint below:

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 10/31/2022 – 17:46