Oct 19

Today’s News 19th October 2022

  • Europe's Ultimate Choices On Ukraine
    Europe’s Ultimate Choices On Ukraine

    Authored by Oscar Silva-Valladares via OrientalReview.org,

    As the Ukraine conflict continues, a basic question with ethical dimensions has risen and will need to be answered soon by European politicians: how moral it is to support Ukraine “as long as it takes” against the necessity of protecting your own citizens’ welfare and the constitutional duty to follow your people’s mandate which is the basic rule of democracy?

    European unclenched and blind support for US policies in the Ukraine conflict, and the dire economic and political consequences it has unleashed, is bringing the continent’s political architecture to a defining moment which may only be resolved through the end of the European Union (EU) regime and the emergence of a new and still undefined political settlement.

    Betting on Russia’s defeat and Vladimir Putin’s demise, the EU has followed the US-led economic war against Russia via sanctions which now far outnumber those directed against any other country on earth but nevertheless have failed.  On the other hand, beyond the adverse impact on consumers and small/medium businesses caused by rising energy bills, general inflation, and the prospects of serious heating scarcity this winter, EU’s sanctions against Russia are causing irreparable damage to the continent’s economy.  Energy intensive manufacturing companies are going bankrupt or moving overseas attracted by lower energy costs, prompting business closures, a deterioration of trade balances, a severe erosion of the Euro currency,  job losses, the destruction of the continent’s manufacturing competitive advantage built over decades and an inevitable and severe recession in the coming months.  The overall political and social impact of these events on the continent’s future is still unclear as there is no escaping to its lack of natural resources.

    EU’s decisions in support of Ukraine have purportedly been taken in the name of democracy, the rule of law and western values and against a military action by Russia considered unprovoked and illegal.  The EU appears to have been also concerned about the unsettling of post-World War II borders – or rather the national frontiers that followed the end of the Cold War – and has expressed unfounded fears that Russia’s actions in Ukraine are the prelude for further aggression in Europe.

    Deep down, through its actions against Russia the European leadership psyche seems to have had a cathartic release, unleashing an old Russophobia manifested in Europe over decades if not centuries, melting together Czarist Russia, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation in an effort to portray and convince the average European about an inherent Russian malignity that needs to be rooted out once and for all.

    In its one-sided defence of Ukraine, the EU has been unwilling to recognize and accept the civil war character of the Ukraine conflict, Russia’s legitimate security concerns and its ongoing warnings about it over years, the historical background of a conflict rooted on the mistreatment of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population that worsened since the US sponsored Ukraine coup in 2014 and its failure to support a diplomatic settlement in 2015 – i.e. the Minsk agreements -, in which they played a mayor facilitating role.  The EU ignores the deep flaws of the current Ukraine government and the society it has tried to create, both defined now by blatant corruption, political persecution of opposition and an ultra-nationalist ideology,  all this hardly reflecting so-called European values.

    Sadly, the EU has been incapable to develop an autonomous and justly self-serving European alternative in the conflict and has become hostage of the US hegemonistic agenda.  By refusing to take a balanced approach, the EU is disqualifying itself to be an honest broker on peace negotiations that sooner rather than latter will need to start in the conflict.  Non-European countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia are now taking the lead, reflected for instance in the recent Russo-Ukrainian prisoner exchange, a prominent role unthinkable only a few months ago which is embarrassing for Europe given its traditional place in diplomacy.

    Europe’s capitulation to the US agenda is of course not new and had a glaring precedent in the support of NATO’s bombing of Serbia in 1999 and its dismemberment with the creation of the Kosovo enclave.  Nowadays, the EU nomenklatura tramples on basic principles of democracy and sovereignty through its attempts to drop the unanimity principle in the EU’s decision-making process.  Furthermore, the EU leadership is opportunistically using the Ukraine conflict to preserve its existence and even trying to morph itself into a de facto military alliance, an aberration from its original aims.

    The EU behaviour reflects a political and military marasmus that had its roots in the outcome of World War II.  The United Kingdom has had a similar trajectory in international relations, but at least it has been consistent with its old pro-Atlantic views and has had a bit more of care and concern for its own independence and sovereignty, at least insofar as continental Europe is concerned.

    Only an existential shock in Europe, which may come this coming winter and result because of an energy blackout, will enable its society and their politicians to understand where their true interests lie and how to take proper action.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/19/2022 – 02:00

  • Blinken: China Wants To Seize Taiwan On A "Much Faster Timeline" Than Previously Thought
    Blinken: China Wants To Seize Taiwan On A “Much Faster Timeline” Than Previously Thought

    China has made a decision to seize Taiwan on a “much faster timeline” than previously thought, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday after China’s leader Xi Jinping reiterated his intent to take the island, by force if necessary.

    “There has been a change in the approach from Beijing toward Taiwan in recent years,” Blinken said in an event at Stanford University in California, according to Bloomberg.

    The remarks from Biden’s top diplomat on Monday come as China holds its twice-a-decade Communist party congress, and were in response to Xi Jinping’s widely-watched, nearly two-hour-long speech on Sunday to say the “wheels of history are rolling on towards China’s reunification” with Taiwan. While peaceful means were preferable, Xi added, “we reserve the option of taking all measures necessary.”

    According to Blinken, China has made a “fundamental decision that the status quo was no longer acceptable, and that Beijing was determined to pursue reunification on a much faster timeline.” He didn’t elaborate on the timing or provide other details.

    Responding to Blinken’s remarks on Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin criticized the U.S. for selling billions in advanced weapons to Taiwan and accused the Biden administration of encouraging the island’s move toward formal independence.

    “Resolving the Taiwan question is a matter for the Chinese, a matter that must be resolved by the Chinese,” Wang told reporters at a regular briefing. “We are ready to create vast space for peaceful reunification, but we will leave no room for separatist activities in any form.”

    As Bloomberg notes, although Biden administration officials have regularly accused China of eroding the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait, comments about Beijing’s intentions with regard to an invasion are less common.

    Observers are highly sensitive to any remarks that might provide insights into how senior officials in Beijing or Washington view the potential for war over Taiwan — an event that would have enormous geopolitical and economic consequences, particularly given President Joe Biden’s repeated pledges that the U.S. would help defend the island.

    The State Department didn’t respond to questions on Monday whether Blinken’s comments reflected any formal assessment that China has moved up its agenda for taking Taiwan – they probably didn’t and the comment was merely an off the cuff comment by an administration that has lost all control and is alienating virtually every foreign power, from the Russia-China axis, to all of OPEC+. In March of last year, Admiral Philip Davidson, then commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that China wanted to take Taiwan “during this decade, in fact, in the next six years.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/18/2022 – 23:40

  • Johnstone: The Profoundly Stupid Narrative That Nuclear Brinkmanship Is Safety And De-Escalation Is Danger
    Johnstone: The Profoundly Stupid Narrative That Nuclear Brinkmanship Is Safety And De-Escalation Is Danger

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    Of all the face-meltingly stupid narratives that have been circulated about the US proxy war in Ukraine, the dumbest so far has got to be the increasingly common claim that aggressively escalating nuclear brinkmanship is safety and de-escalation is danger.

    We see a prime example of this self-evidently idiotic narrative in a new Business Insider article titled “Putin’s nuclear threats are pushing people like Trump and Elon Musk to press for a Ukraine peace deal. A nuclear expert warns that’s ‘dangerous.’”

    “An understandable desire to avoid a nuclear war could actually make the world more dangerous if it means rushing to implement a ‘peace’ in Ukraine that serves Russian interests,” writes reliable empire apologist Charles Davis.

    “Such a move, which some influential figures have called for, risks setting a precedent that atomic blackmail is the way to win wars and take territory troops can’t otherwise hold, a model that could be copycatted by even the weakest nuclear-armed states, and may only succeed at delaying another war.”

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

    Davis’ sole source for his article is the UN Institute for Disarmament Research’s Pavel Podvig, who is very openly biased against Russia.

    “The West supports Ukraine with weapons and financial and moral and political support. Giving that up and saying that, ‘Well, you know, we are too afraid of nuclear threats and so we just want to make a deal’ — that would certainly set a precedent that would not be very positive,” says Podvig. “If you yield to this nuclear threat once, then what would prevent Russia in the future — or others — to do the same thing again?”

    Like other empire apologists currently pushing the ridiculous “de-escalation actually causes escalation” line, Davis and Podvig argue as though nuclear weapons just showed up on the scene a few days ago, as if there haven’t been generations of western policies toward Moscow which have indeed involved backing down and making compromises at times because doing so was seen as preferable to risking a nuclear attack. We survived the Cuban Missile Crisis because Kennedy secretly acquiesced to Khrushchev’s demands that the US remove the Jupiter missiles it had placed in Turkey and Italy, which was what provoked Moscow to move nukes to Cuba in the first place.

    Throughout the cold war the Soviet Union insisted on a sphere of influence that US strategists granted a wide berth to, exactly because it was a nuclear superpower. Even as recently as the Obama administration the US president maintained that “Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.”

    Nevertheless we’re seeing this new “escalation is safety and de-escalation is danger” narrative pushed with increasing forcefulness by imperial spinmeisters, because it would take a lot of force indeed to get people to accept something so self-evidently backwards and nonsensical.

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

    “All of you who are saying that we have to give in to nuclear blackmail are making nuclear war more likely. Please stop,” tweeted Yale University’s Timothy Snyder recently. “When you give in to it, you empower dictators to do it again, encourage worldwide nuclear proliferation, and make nuclear war much, much more likely.”

    Snyder, who has been photographed grinning happily with Ukraine’s President Zelensky, does not actually believe that people tweeting in support of de-escalation and detente will cause a nuclear war. He uses the newfangled buzzword “nuclear blackmail” to discredit calls for de-escalation and detente because he wants those who support de-escalation and detente to be silent. He says “please stop” solely because he wants peace advocacy to stop.

    “Nuclear war comes because we’ve done too little not too much,” tweeted Alexander Vindman, a key player in advancing the Trump-Ukraine scandal, further pushing the narrative that greater escalation is where the safety is.

    In response to a tweet by France’s President Macron saying “We do not want a World War,” a senior policy advisor for the US government’s Helsinki Commission named Paul Massaro tweeted, “Precisely this sort of weak, terrified language leads Russia to escalate.”

    Imagine being so warped and twisted that you see that as a sane response to the most normal statement anyone can possibly make.

    Meanwhile you’ve got idiots like Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger acting like they’re being brave tough guys by welcoming continual nuclear escalation while calling anyone who advocates de-escalation cowards:

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

    The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel somehow pulled off the heroic feat of getting an article advocating de-escalation published in the Washington Post with a piece titled “The Cuban missile crisis was 60 years ago, but it’s urgently relevant today.” Reminding us how close we came to total annihilation and how we only survived getting so recklessly close to nuclear war by “plain dumb luck,” she argues that humanity cannot risk going to the brink like that again.

    “Humanity cannot afford to spin the cylinder again in this game of Russian roulette; we must unload the gun. Our only path forward is de-escalation,” vanden Heuvel writes.

    Indeed it is. It’s absolutely insane that humanity is risking its own extinction over these games of empire-building and planetary domination when we’ve got so many other existential hurdles we need to focus on clearing.

    This is all completely unnecessary. There’s nothing inscribed upon the fabric of reality saying states need to be waving armageddon weapons at each other. There’s no valid reason not to lay aside these games of global conquest and collaborate together toward a healthy coexistence on this planet.

    We could have such a beautiful world. All the energy we pour into competition and conquest could go toward innovation that benefits us all, making sure everyone has enough, eliminating human suffering and the need for human toil. We’re trading heaven on earth for elite ego games.

    There’s no valid reason we can’t move from models of competition and domination to models of collaboration and care. Collaboration with each other; care for each other. Collaboration with our ecosystem; care for our ecosystem. We’re throwing it away in exchange for senseless misery and peril.

    *  *  *

    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
    Tue, 10/18/2022 – 23:00

  • Portion Of Mississippi River Closes Again As Drought Crisis Worsens
    Portion Of Mississippi River Closes Again As Drought Crisis Worsens

    Supply chains across the Midwest face significant constraints as a portion of the Mississippi River is closed again.

    Bloomberg reported a stretch of the Mississippi River, about 125 miles northeast of Memphis, near Hickman, Kentucky, closed Monday as water levels continue to plunge. 

    Dredging operations began in the afternoon to clear debris from the waterway. The US Coast Guard said three vessels and 51 barges were waiting in the line at Hickman. 

    According to the National Weather Service, waters in Memphis reached negative 10.79 feet and continue to decline, reaching record-low levels. 

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

    The ultra-low river levels are severely impacting the agriculture industry across the Midwest. We pointed out barges are reducing weight which has caused a shortage of vessels to haul farm goods from this season’s harvest to Gulf Coast terminals for export. 

    We also said the decline in barge traffic and reduction in weight on vessels has led to a shortage. This has triggered shipping costs for barges to hyperinflate. 

    Farmers who cannot find a shipper on the waterway have piled up beans and other farm goods on their property. There’s only a certain amount of time before these freshly harvested crops go bad.  

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

    Some farmers have been fortunate to find truckers, but there’s only a finite supply due to everyone searching for land transportation, including rail. 

    Earlier this month, the Coast Guard closed the area around Stack Island, Mississippi, due to dredging operations after barges were grounded as water levels dropped. 

    Jeff Graschel, a hydrologist at the Lower Mississippi River Forecast Center, said there are some signs of rainfall with cold fronts ahead, “but nothing that will get us out of the low-water situation.” 

    There are no signs that the low water disruption will soon abate on the nation’s most crucial waterway.

    … and we must remind readers while Bloomberg and every other corporate media outlet blame so-called man-made climate change … perhaps three years of La Nina is the culprit.  

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

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/18/2022 – 22:40

  • Fauci On COVID School Shutdowns: 'I Had Nothing To Do With It'
    Fauci On COVID School Shutdowns: ‘I Had Nothing To Do With It’

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

    Since announcing in August he would be departing his post at the White House, Dr. Anthony Fauci said he had “nothing to do” with COVID-related school lockdowns and the reported accompanied loss in learning among public school students.

    Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testifies during a Senate hearing in Washington on Sept. 14, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    Speaking to ABC News on Sunday, Fauci denied that he was responsible for pushing the public consensus that schools should be shut down due to the spread of the virus. Across the United States, numerous public and private schools were forced to shut down and use virtual learning—which many experts and studies say led to a dramatic drop in basic skills.

    ABC News host Jonathan Karl asked: “Was it a mistake in so many states, in so many localities, to see schools closed as long as they were?”

    “I don’t want to use the word ‘mistake’ John because if I do it gets taken out of the context that you’re asking me the question on,” Fauci said in response. “Could there be too high a price?” Karl clarified, likely referencing the plummeting academic performance, social isolation, and mental health crisis that school closures fueled.

    “What we should realize, and have realized, [is] that there will be deleterious collateral consequences when you do something like that,” added Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984. “The idea that this virus doesn’t afflict children is not so. We’ve already lost close to 1,500 kids so far.”

    A study that inflated the number of COVID-19 deaths among children was corrected in July.

    Fauci’s agency has no authority to force the shutting down of schools, businesses, or other entities, although Republicans and other critics have said that during his frequent interviews starting in early 2020, Fauci recommended widespread lockdowns. Those closures and stay-at-home orders were issued either by states, counties, or municipalities as the federal government—namely the Centers for Disease Control and Prediction—mainly issued recommendations.

    Fauci also often made dire claims about the trajectory of the pandemic—even making a grim prediction this week that new variants of the virus would resurge this fall and winter.

    Later in the ABC interview, Fauci claimed that he repeatedly called on schools to stay open as long as possible, although he did not provide evidence or an example for that claim.

    “No one plays that clip. They always come back and say ‘Fauci was responsible for closing schools.’ I had nothing to do [with it]. I mean, let’s get down to the facts,” he stated.

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

    Statements

    In May 2020, when Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told him that data shows that children aren’t at serious risk of severe COVID-19 complications, Fauci said that “I think we better be careful that we’re not cavalier, in thinking that children are completely immune to the deleterious effects.”

    In other public settings and during interviews, Fauci also continuously warned about lifting restrictions for schools, which likely helped fuel extensions or more lockdowns of schools. In March 2020, Fauci said he would favor a nationwide lockdown and said the “worst is ahead” for COVID-19.

    Fauci in late 2020 expressed support for keeping schools open but wanted many businesses shut down.

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

    During one instance in December of that year, Fauci said he wants to “close the bars and keep the schools open.”

    “The default position should be to try, as best as possible within reason, to keep the children in school or to get them back to school,” Fauci said. “If you look at the data, the spread among children and from children is not really very big at all, not like one would have suspected,” he added.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/18/2022 – 22:20

  • "We Gonna Kill Rats": New York City Battles "Sea Of Rodents"
    “We Gonna Kill Rats”: New York City Battles “Sea Of Rodents”

    As ‘nature heals’ following more than two years of lockdowns, New York City is tackling a “sea of rodents” that has taken over the streets.

    In a Monday press conference, Mayor Eric Adams and crew announced that the city would be limiting the window for residents to put their trash on the curb from 4pm to 8pm. If residents have sealed containers, they can place them outside no earlier than 6 pm.

    “This will reduce the amount of time trash is out before collections,” said Mayor Eric Adams. “No more watching these bags litter our sidewalks.”

    Adams has pledged to solve the city’s sanitation issues and said in June that part of the more than $100 billion budget this year will be allocated to clean up public spaces. In the first six months of 2022, complaints about trash on sidewalks jumped to 17,749 from 13,026, Politico reported in August. Rat sightings increased 71% since 2020, New York City Council member Shaun Abreu said at the press conference. –Bloomberg

    “Everyone that knows me, they know one thing – I hate rats,” said Adams, adding “We gonna kill rats. Rats have no place in the city, and we’re going to use every method as needed…”

    More quotables from the conference, as noted by Bloomberg‘s Emma Court;

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

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

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

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/18/2022 – 22:00

  • Senate Seeks $10 Billion In Military Aid For Taiwan
    Senate Seeks $10 Billion In Military Aid For Taiwan

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    The Senate’s version of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) will include $10 billion in military aid for Taiwan, Defense News reported on Monday.

    The $10 billion would be given to Taiwan over five years in the form of Foreign Military Financing (FMF), a State Department program that gives foreign governments money to purchase US weapons.

    Image: Military News Agency via AP

    However, Taiwan will be able to use $300 million of the FMF each year to purchase military equipment from its own industrial base, a privilege only currently enjoyed by Israel. Other FMF recipients need waivers to use the funds to purchase arms that don’t come from the US.

    The $10 billion is a massive increase from the $4.5 billion initially proposed by Senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in a piece of legislation known as the Taiwan Policy Act. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee brought the military aid up to $6.5 billion when it advanced the bill in September.

    But the senators have decided to include the military aid portion of the Taiwan Policy Act in the NDAA, which was boosted to $10 billion in a bipartisan amendment added to the military spending bill by Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI).

    The Taiwan Policy Act would also boost diplomatic ties with Taiwan, requires sanctions in the event of Chinese aggression, and give Taiwan the benefits of being a major non-NATO ally. But those aspects of the bill were not included in the NDAA amendment.

    The Senate is expected to vote on the NDAA when Congress returns to Washington after mid-term elections in November. Once approved, the House and Senate will need to negotiate the final version that will head to President Biden’s desk.

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

    The Senate’s effort to give Taiwan a massive amount of military aid comes as tensions are soaring between the US and China over the island. China’s unprecedented military drills in response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) visiting Taiwan and its rhetoric over the issue make it clear that more US support for Taiwan will only make a conflict in the region more likely.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/18/2022 – 21:40

  • Surprise! EcoHealth Landed $1 Million Grant To Work With '80% Mouse Death' Boston University On 'Future Pandemic Prevention'
    Surprise! EcoHealth Landed $1 Million Grant To Work With ‘80% Mouse Death’ Boston University On ‘Future Pandemic Prevention’

    Monday’s report in the Daily Mail that the University of Boston has engineered a chimeric COVID that has an 80% kill rate in humanized mice has caused quite the stir.

    To review, in an effort to research what makes Omicron so transmissible – and funded in part by grants from the NIH and Anthony Fauci’s NIAID – a team of researchers cobbled the Omicron spike protein to the original strain of Covid-19. The resulting virus was five times more infectious than Omicron.

    “The Omicron spike (S) protein, with an unusually large number of mutations, is considered the major driver of these phenotypes. We generated chimeric recombinant SARS-CoV-2 encoding the S gene of Omicron in the backbone of an ancestral SARS-CoV-2 isolate and compared this virus with the naturally circulating Omicron variant,” reads the pre-print.

    The authors speculate that their chimeric strain is unlikely to be as deadly in humans as it was in the mice because the specific breed used in testing are more susceptible to severe Covid.

    Gain of Function?

    “The research is a clear example of gain of function research of concern and enhanced potential pandemic pathogen (ePPP) research,” said Dr Richard Ebright, a chemist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, adding “‘It is especially concerning that this new US-government ePPP research – like the previous US-government ePPP research on chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses at Wuhan Institute of Virology that may have caused the pandemic – appears not to have undergone the prior risk-benefit review mandated under US-government policies.”

    Gain of function research was largely restricted in the US until 2017, when the National Institutes of Health began to allow it to take place using government funds.

    Previously it had been halted from 2014 to 2017 over concerns that it could lead to the inadvertent creation of a pandemic. -Daily Mail

    The University of Boston refuted the notion that they were performing GoF research, adding that it was  reviewed and approved by the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) and the Boston Public Health Commission (don’t you feel safer already?).

    “This research mirrors and reinforces the findings of other, similar research performed by other organizations,” said a spokesperson. “Ultimately, this research will provide a public benefit by leading to better, targeted therapeutic interventions to help fight against future pandemics.”

    Peter Daszak again?

    Which leads us to today’s report…

    Just two months before the ‘80% mouse kill rate’ SARS paper was published, EcoHealth Alliance – the NYC-based nonprofit headed by Peter Daszak (and was also funded by the NIH and Fauci’s NIAID to genetically manipulate bat Covid in Wuhan, China) – bragged about a $1 million NSF grant to work with Boston University on a project to ‘work towards predicting and preventing future pandemics.”

    NEW YORK – 30, AUGUST, 2022 – EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), in partnership with Boston University, was awarded a $1 million Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention Phase I (PIPP) grant by the National Science Foundation. The team of scientists will strategize methods of early infectious disease detection and intervention.

    …

    EHA researchers will focus on predictive models of location and likely pathogens. This will be accomplished by first compiling a list of mutagenic RNA viruses with a high risk of spillover based on their ability to spread, cause outbreak, and cause severe illness. Next, the team will identify locations at risk of spillover and localized spread by assembling a list of animals known to host one or more of the focal viruses. -EHA

    And from Boston University’s press release announcing the partnership:

    A multidisciplinary team of researchers at Boston University will work towards predicting and preventing future pandemics as part of a new $1 million project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Faculty members from the Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering, the Center for Information & Systems Engineering (CISE), the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research (CEID), the Bioengineering Technology & Entrepreneurship Center (BTEC), and the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) will work with researchers from EcoHealth Alliance to develop a set of models that can predict disease emergence and spread, and to devise effective pandemic mitigation strategies.

    Of note, several researchers from the EcoHealth-allied National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) were involved in the creation of the 80% mouse death chimeric SARS-CoV-2.

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

    Last year we reported that 18 months before the pandemic, scientists in Wuhan, China submitted a proposal to release enhanced airborne coronaviruses into the wild in an effort to inoculate them against diseases that could have otherwise jumped to humans, according to The Telegraph, citing leaked grant proposals from 2018.

    The bid was submitted by Daszak, who was hoping to use genetic engineering to cobble “human-specific cleavage sites” onto bat Covid ‘which would make it easier for the virus to enter human cells’ – a method which would coincidentally answer a longstanding question among the scientific community as to how SARS-CoV-2 evolved to become so infectious to humans.

    Perhaps Daszak is teaching BU scientists about sequencing spike proteins?

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

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/18/2022 – 21:20

  • Secret Records Released By Court Expose Retired US Generals On Saudi Payroll
    Secret Records Released By Court Expose Retired US Generals On Saudi Payroll

    Authored by Jake Johnson via Common Dreams,

    A sweeping investigation published by The Washington Post on Tuesday after years of digging and legal battles with the US government shows that at least 15 retired American generals and admirals have worked as paid consultants for Saudi Arabia’s ministry of defense since 2016.

    “Saudi Arabia’s paid advisers have included retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, a national security adviser to President Barack Obama, and retired Army Gen. Keith Alexander, who led the National Security Agency under Obama and President George W. Bush,” the Post reported, citing more than 4,000 pages documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filings.

    US Marine Corps General James L. Jones in 2006, Getty Images

    The Post noted that it “sued the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the State Department in federal court” in pursuit of the documents, which the outlet finally obtained after a protracted legal fight.

    “Congress permits retired troops as well as reservists to work for foreign governments if they first obtain approval from their branch of the armed forces and the State Department,” the newspaper pointed out. “But the US government has fought to keep the hirings secret. For years, it withheld virtually all information about the practice, including which countries employ the most retired U.S. service members and how much money is at stake.”

    In total, the Post found that “more than 500 retired U.S. military personnel—including scores of generals and admirals—have taken lucrative jobs since 2015 working for foreign governments” such as Saudi Arabia, Libya, Turkey, and Kuwait, mostly with the official approval of U.S. military branches. “Records show they rarely reject a job request,” the Post found.

    The Post did highlight some cases of ex-military officials taking “foreign jobs or gifts without notifying the U.S. government at all,” citing the prominent example of retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a Trump loyalist who raked in nearly $450,000 in payments from Turkey and Russia in 2015 without receiving clearance from U.S. officials. Other ex-servicemembers named in the Post story as paid consultants to the Saudi defense ministry include retired Air Force Brig. Gen. John Doucette and retired Army Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry.

    Kate Kizer, a senior nonresident fellow at the Center for International Policy, wrote on Twitter that the reporting provides further evidence that “war and crimes against humanity” are “big business for U.S. military leaders after their service.”

    The Post published its explosive story as a growing number of Democratic lawmakers are pushing for a total reexamination of longstanding diplomatic and military relations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia in the wake of OPEC’s decision to slash oil production, driving up prices in the U.S. and across the world. Saudi Arabia receives around 70% of its weaponry from the U.S. on top of other military and logistical support.

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

    “Saudi planes literally couldn’t fly if it weren’t for American technicians,” U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said in an interview last week. “Yet they are fleecing the American public… There needs to be consequences.”

    The Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a watchdog organization, filed a similar FOIA lawsuit as the Post and also published the results of its investigation on Tuesday.

    “Between April 2010 and August 2020, the State Department issued over 500 waivers to retiring servicemembers, allowing them to take emoluments to work on behalf of foreign interests,” POGO’s Julienne McClure wrote in a summary of the group’s findings. “While many of these positions are not disclosed, some clearly support military operations, such as “battle trainer,” while others are far more general, including descriptions like ‘consultant’ or ‘advisor.'”

    McClure noted that “over half of these waivers were granted so former military officials could work on behalf of United Arab Emirates interests, despite the Emirati government’s troubling record of human rights violations.”

    “Even as the State Department issued hundreds of these waivers,” McClure wrote, “they simultaneously listed a bevy of human rights abuses in their 2020 Country Report on human rights issues in the United Arab Emirates, including ‘arbitrary arrest and detention… government interference with privacy rights… undue restriction on free expression and the press… and criminalization of same-sex sexual activity.'”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/18/2022 – 21:00

  • Mysterious GPS Disruptions Spread In Texas Near Fort Hood
    Mysterious GPS Disruptions Spread In Texas Near Fort Hood

    Update (2053ET): 

    GPS interference in Texas has spread from the Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan Area to now east and west regions of Waco, Texas. 

    One area west of Waco with high levels of GPS interference is butting up against America’s third-largest military base, Fort Hood. 

    One Twitter user said: “Can’t wait until someone figures out the source.” 

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

    *  *  *

    GPS interference is being reported around the Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan Area airports, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The first reports of signal degradation occurred about 24 hours ago.  

    “Significant GPS interference being reported by pilots in the Dallas area. Aircraft being rerouted onto non-RNAV arrivals,” the flight tracking website ADS-B Exchange first reported Monday afternoon. 

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

    Bloomberg said the “runway at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport has been closed after aviation authorities said GPS signals there aren’t reliable.”  

    The FAA said it was investigating GPS signal degradation in the metro area and looking closely to see if this could be due to “possible jamming of the global-positioning system. “

    So far, the FAA has found “no evidence of intentional interference.” And airlines have yet to report major disruptions. 

    One Twitter user posted a high-resolution map of the GPS interference. The orange and red specks show areas where GPS signal loss is currently. 

    The cause of the disruption is unknown.  

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

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/18/2022 – 20:53

  • "Operation Lone Star" In Texas Seizes Enough Fentanyl To Kill Every American
    “Operation Lone Star” In Texas Seizes Enough Fentanyl To Kill Every American

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star” has deployed thousands of Texas National Guard soldiers and Department of Public Safety troopers across the border this year despite the lack of effort from the Biden administration. In doing so, Texas has seized enough fentanyl to kill every American. 

    “In the past year, Texas law enforcement alone has seized over 342 million lethal doses of fentanyl—enough to kill every man, woman, and child in the United States,” according to Abbott’s office. 

    The announcement comes after Raul Ortiz, The Head of The US Border Patrol, testified under oath that the White House’s border strategy of “no consequences” for illegal immigrants had caused one of the most significant border “crises” in years.  

    Since President Biden entered office, around 5 million illegal immigrants have crossed onto US soil — that’s almost equivalent to the entire population of Ireland. The crisis unfolded after Biden rolled back Trump-era policies. 

    FAIR President Dan Stein recently warned: “The endless flow of illegal aliens and the incursion of lethal narcotics pouring across our border will not end until this administration demonstrates a willingness to enforce our laws.” FAIR is one of the largest immigration reform groups in the country. 

    The consequence of migrants and drugs flowing over the border has also led to a surge in fentanyl hitting American streets, triggering a tidal wave of overdose deaths. 

    “Fentanyl remains the single deadliest drug threat our state and nation has ever encountered, killing four Texans every day.

    “Fentanyl is a clandestine killer, with Mexican drug cartels strategically manufacturing and distributing the drug disguised as painkillers, stimulants, anti-anxiety drugs, and even candy,” Abbott said in a statement on Monday.  

    Under the Biden administration, teen overdose deaths have never been higher due to synthetic opiates. Last year, more than 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses. 

    Thanks, Biden… 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/18/2022 – 20:40

  • Luongo: The Fed Is Exposing The Lies Of Two Generations Of People In Power
    Luongo: The Fed Is Exposing The Lies Of Two Generations Of People In Power

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

    Fed Watch: When They Call For the Bailiff You Know You’re Winning

    You may ask yourself, “What is that beautiful house?”
    You may ask yourself, “Where does that highway go to?”
    And you may ask yourself, “Am I right, am I wrong?”
    And you may say to yourself, “My God, what have I done?”

    – Talking Heads, “Once in a Lifetime”

    In the face of the Fed’s intransigent hawkishness we are now on the verge of exposing the worst lies of two generations of people in power.  I’ve maintained for more than a year now that the global oligarchy known here as The Davos Crowd thought they’d run the table on the US and the UK with COVID-19.

    The various bailout packages, Pelosi’s CARES Act and pending legislation — Build Back Better, etc. — were supposed to destroy the fiscal position of the US once and for all. These were political blackmail to force the Fed not to raise rates when it clearly needed to.

    That Pelosi et.al. were only able to pass neutered versions of these bills is a sign that powerful forces behind the scenes are not down with this plan.

    Now, in light of the near-complete coup attempt against UK Prime Minister Liz Truss (more on that later this week) we are looking at big power plays to decide whether Davos will retain control over Western policy. Truss’ difficulties point to Davos having a few markers to call in here.

    But, I want to go back to a couple of weeks ago and also talk about Credit Suisse. At the same time there was a coordinated effort to stop Truss implementing a very non-Davos fiscal program. there was a coordinated whisper campaign to start a bank run on Credit Suisse.

    Clearly this attack failed, but it’s equally clear Davos activated the next level of their assault on any institution snot aligned with them.  

    Is it any wonder that the two big European financial centers outside of the EU came under coordinated attack, Economic Hitman style, in the days following Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral and the coronation of Globalist Charles III as King?

    After that, and subsequent statements by FOMC Chair “Baller” Jerome Powell, Davos had to bring in the UN begmanding (begging masquerading as demanding [H/T Joachin Flores for that one]) all central banks stop raising rates to avoid a global recession.

    This was promoted all across the Davos-controlled media space.  Even Rupert Murdoch’s War Street Journal got in on the action to sway GOPer’s a month out from the mid-terms. And I asked the big question last week, “Can the Fed Afford to Pivot,” with the US $31 trillion in debt?

    The answer from the Fed has been a consistent, no.

    And that means Davos is in serious trouble. As I’ve tirelessly pointed out, the Fed controls global dollar liquidity in a way they haven’t in decades. And that is why the screams of pain from all the usual suspects are so loud.

    That said, Davos continues to execute a script they have no way to augment if they want to achieve their stated goals. Taking out the UK was the right move. But, is it a move that puts them on the path to winning or just an attack of opportunity in a series of rearguard actions?

    The Bailiff Moment

    Bullies always know when they are caught.  Bullies are also generally the worst form of liars, ones who shout down opposition rather than engage in conversation.

    In interrogations the goal is always to get the liar to trap himself and leave him calling for relief. This is why you should never talk to cops without a lawyer, FYI.

    They are easy to trap because the lies are so transparent.  All it takes is the slightest application of the Socratic Method — using one’s own argument to find flaws in it through counter-example — and you can get them “calling for the bailiff” in a matter of minutes.

    The title of this post is my best remembrance of the title I first saw this video posted under at Lewrockwell.com back in 2009. I know this is 7+ minutes of having to watch Nancy Pelosi, but trust me, it’s worth it.

    This is the only video of Nasty Nancy I can stomach to watch, because Jan Helfeld crushes her on minimum wage in less than 3 minutes.  The squirm is almost like music.  It’s a masterclass in evasion, deception and bullying.  It lays bare the malignancy of her narcissism.

    It is a real, tangible benefit to humanity revealing this horrific human being.  Notice how when Pelosi really understands what’s happened she resorts to multiple threats, “You made a mistake!” she repeats glaring at him. 

    She became his enemy in that moment. 

    If you despise Pelosi as much as I do this is a treat for new readers, a thank you for joining us I’ve dredged up from my memory and the bowls of the YouTube algorithm.

    I brought this out to show you how easy it is to expose the duplicity and fragility of the narratives surrounding our political and financial reality.  

    The Reflections of Vampires

    It was this interview which helped crystallize my filter I use to view these false narratives.  It’s why it was so easy for me to see the Fed’s raising the RRP rate by 0.05% above the Fed Funds Rate at last year’s June FOMC meeting as a watershed moment. 

    It was no different than Helfeld showing Pelosi that her intern argument was nonsense.  That move exposed the weak US dollar which had been created during the Trump administration as a supremely false move in historical context.

    Powell raises RRP by 0.05% and the whole world freaks out.  The euro collapses, gold’s nascent rally is snuffed out and US bond yields begin rising, forcing euro-bond rates out of the negative-yielding basement.

    “It puts the positive yield on its skin or else it gets the rate hike again!”

    Since then it’s been nothing but a series of ever-escalating actions to force the Fed to pivot off Powell’s ‘Volcker-esque’ policies.  I’ve chronicled all of the twists and turns of this story, beat for beat, since last June.

    These last sixteen months have played out like this seven minute interview with Pelosi.  Jerome Powell is Helfeld and Davos is Pelosi.   They kept making the case their plan for the US to spend spend spend when inflation was here here here.

    The most obvious corollary to this interview and Powell was when Obama et.al. launched that insider trading scandal of the Fed governors last fall and forced three hawks off the FOMC.  

    “You made a mistake!”

    Note we have a sequel this week with Atlanta Fed Chair Raphael Bostic having to do a mea culpa over more insider trading at the Fed.

    Don’t Look Up!

    This week Truss finally caved. It will be the end of her and the any dreams Elizabeth II had of an independent Britain.

    I told you Truss was a moron and clearly overmatched for the job.  But it goes beyond that.  After the BoE toys with markets for a couple of weeks, the message to the world was to avoid bad stuff (“RECESSION!”) is get the evil US Fed to pivot.

    Will Powell pivot? I don’t think so. Why? He’s not a moron. Nor is he alone like Truss was. Truss was set up to fail.

    For months, I’ve been alone in saying the Fed is going to be aggressive. For months I said the Fed is not raising rates to tame cost-push inflation which it doesn’t have the tools to fight.

    Now, I’m not alone anymore. Neither John Hussman or Danielle Dimartino Booth thinks the Fed will pivot. Others are still trapped at denial in the Kubler-Ross model.

    Hussman points out that the Fed has never pivoted on hiking rates with the PCE deflator, currently 4.9% (with modifiers, see the linked article), above the Fed Funds Rate, 3.25%. He makes a powerful argument.

    This is what Powell et.al. mean when they say they can’t leave the job undone.

    But in a recent interview with Hedgeye’s Keith McCullough, Ms. Booth kept saying what I’ve been saying, “The Fed isn’t trying to stop inflation.” She uses the Fed’s massive TIPS portfolio as part of the reason, but it’s also something, when pressed, she’s, “not able to say.”

    Watch the whole interview, it’s fascinating.

    So, against this dark background, we have one non-EU European financial center crushed.  Let’s go back to the other, Switzerland.  The Fed’s intransigence is why I think the whisper campaign against Credit Suisse was another of these operations.  

    I’m not saying that Credit Suisse isn’t vulnerable.  Of course it’s vulnerable. The reason it almost worked is because they are vulnerable, just like the UK pension system was Truss’ Achilles’ heel.

    All I’m saying is that I have a hard time believing that all of the EU’s continental competition coming under extreme pressure in quick succession has a strategic component to it.

    Everyone acted like the Fed pivoted when they did a couple of $3+ billion tranches of swap line liquidity to the Swiss National Bank this month. Notice how there was no money for the Bank of England and almost no money for the ECB.

    What if this is just more battle lines being drawn?

    Because the UN coming out and decrying the central banks raising rates is a massive tell that the wrong people’s oxen are being gored.  It isn’t just these two events.  

    We had the public meltdown of Jeremy Seigel on CNBC which was amplified beyond all recognition. Jeffrey Sachs stopped CNN cold with the pronouncement that the US was behind the bombing of the Nordstreams.  

    These people are all close allies of George Soros and the Democratic party machine.  The fear over the mid-terms is real now.  Even Nate Silver at five-thirty-eight.com is worried the Democrats are about to get Rick-rolled.

    UN Cries Uncle

    So, Davos using deep assets at the UN through UNCTAD to issue warnings against the Fed and Volcker-like policy is no different than Pelosi calling for the guard to remove Helfeld from her office. 

    They demanded easy money and price controls in typical Davosian communist fashion.  We need to coordinate monetary policy worldwide to stop the collapse of the old system.  

    It was a classic appeal to the common good and for internationalism over nationalism.  

    This is also a moment of the purest weakness.  

    And if you think Europe isn’t weak here and that the Fed is still not in Helfeld’s seat asking uncomfortable questions of narcissist bullies with questionable taste in clothes I give you the EU’s latest trade data. (H/T Robin Brooks on Twitter)

    Trade surpluses are gone. Inflation raging. Producer prices rising faster than inflation. Bond volatility at levels not seen since COVID.

    Europe’s Energy price spikes are demons of their own summoning. They had a cozy deal with Russia and chose fake free markets for natural gas to create a volatility playground to bankrupt their middle classes.

    So, they want this inflation, even if they say they don’t. They want the inflation to force the Fed to subsidize it, like it did when Globalist Ben and his Auntie Janet ran the place.

    What they never planned on was having to do this and fight the Fed simultaneously. In broad strokes, they could freeze capital in Europe’s banks, grab back City of London and add Zurich, while putting the US on a path to true insolvency to neuter the power of New York.

    Now all they have left is playing power politics with its junior EU members who were only interested in ensuring their people didn’t starve, e.g. Hungary. Lashing out at cripples is not a good look.

    All arguments that the US dollar doesn’t deserve its strength or that the Fed has a responsibility to Europe when all they’ve done is engage in fiscal and monetary hara-kiri via negative rates for nearly a decade are pathetic as they are stupid.

    You can see that this call was an extension of the anti-US psy-op that ran wild after the Nordstream bombings.  There is a concerted effort now to at once push for open war between the US and Russia while also blaming the Fed for the crash in the global markets. 

    “You made a mistake, here!”

    The BoE pivot was done to isolate the Fed. The Reserve Bank of Australia only raised by 25 basis points to support the BoE.

    The ECB is silent during all of this, because they are the Elephant in the room that’s been pushed off the mountain and is about to go splat.

    The UN’s response? Don’t Look Up!

    Fake Rally, Fake Markets

    The reward to the world is a massive rally in stocks, bonds and safe-havens.  While this is clearly just a bout of short-covering in most of these markets which were stretched to the downside, it’s also timed with the global call for central bank dovishness and price controls from the UN.

    The narrative now is the Fed is being petulant and rapacious, just like the US foreign policy establishment. The victim narrative is reaching a crescendo right in time for the mid-terms.

    That’s why the whisper campaign against Credit Suisse didn’t materialize into a bank run. They were a warning and used as a weapon to pressure the Fed.  As pointed out to me on Twitter the Fed opened a new repo facility for commercial banks.  

    Do you notice who ISN’T on this list?  Three guesses and the first two don’t count.  No major European banks.  Nataxis doesn’t count when Deutsche Bank, Unicredit, or ING are not on the list.

    Just US, Canadian, Hong Kong and Japanese banks.

    Guess who got money and who didn’t? The Swiss.

    A lot was made of that meeting, and it served as good fodder for the attack on Credit Suisse. Will the Fed come in with an emergency rate cut? Will they pivot?

    And for the Fed to call a meeting for the same day that Credit Suisse was attacked and the UN to begmand them to pivot only to comment on debit card payment systems, is a massive tell.

    The Fed updated the new rules for debit card transactions to have at least one backup processor in place. If anything, this means Davos can’t lean on VISA to deny your grocery purchase unilaterally because of mean tweets or because you’re Alex Jones. 

    This clearly says to me that they are fighting this crap at the foundational level.  It also says that the FOMC’s silence on UK Gilts, Credit Suisse, etc. is deafening.

    Since then there’s been nothing but more acquiescence to the coming 75 basis point hike on the eve of the mid-term elections. The Bank of England got their pound of flesh, all puns intended, and for now things are stable. It won’t be for long.

    As Ms. Booth said and I agree, every rally in the stock market, every wiggle by someone to increase offshore liquidity and calm things down, is another opportunity for the Fed to keep repeating their position.

    “Why can’t we raise rates?”

    “Why can’t we charge what we want for the money we provide?”

    “Why do we have to define the value of US labor by your rules?”

    “Why does their have to enforce a minimum wage for offshore dollar speculators?”

    “Bailiff!!”

    But, the big unanswered question no one is allowed to answer is the one that Ms. Booth kept avoiding in that interview, “If the Fed isn’t fighting inflation with rate hikes, then what are they fighting?”

    You know my answer. Davos does too.

    What’s hilarious is watching Europe call for the bailiff and everyone finally realizing that the Fed told him to take an early lunch break.

    *  *  *

    Join my Patreon if you like watching narcissists squirm

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/18/2022 – 20:20

  • Biden To Unveil Cunning New Plan To Lower Gas Prices: Drain Even More From The SPR
    Biden To Unveil Cunning New Plan To Lower Gas Prices: Drain Even More From The SPR

    As was leaked earlier today, President Biden will address the nation tomorrow to explain his next cunning plan to lower gas prices for the average American (except those in California) since OPEC+ snubbed his delay-til-after-the-midterms begging-bowl and decided to cut production last week.

    His cunning new plan, we hear you ask?

    Well it’s simple – more of the same: blame big oil (gouging and profiteering), blame little oil (greedy local gas station owners), blame the Saudis (who are now Putin puppets)… and drain more of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

    The Wall Street Journal reports, citing official sources, that central to the president’s address will be a decision for the Energy Department to go ahead and sell the last roughly 15 million of 180 million barrels from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve he had authorized for sale back in March.

    Biden also plans to call on the Energy Department to be prepared for more sales from what’s left of about 400 million barrels in the reserve if Russia or others disrupt world markets, according to the White House.

    The SPR is already at its lowest level since 1984…

    …and as the chart shows only 130mm barrels above its lows at inception of around 270mm barrels.

    However, as we have noted too many times to remember, the problem is not a lack of crude oil but a lack of refining capacity…

    Brian Milne, product manager, editor, and analyst at DTN, told MarketWatch:

    “U.S. policy pushing away from oil consumption has led to refinery transitions to renewables, or outright closures. This trend accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic,” and then accelerated further upon Biden’s inauguration.

    Gasoline prices at the pump are still up $1.66 from when the Biden administration moved into The White House (but are well off the highs from June)…

    And as far as the belief that the previous SPR drainage lowered the gas price, Milne highlighted that the bigger drivers lowering US gasoline prices, however, were “sharply lower demand from China amid its zero-COVID policy that has stymied economic activity, and reduced transportation demand as millions of citizens were either locked down or had other restrictions reduce their mobility.”

    Since President Biden has been in The White House, 230mm barrels of crude have been drained from the SPR and gasoline prices for the average American are up $1.66…

    That said, imagine where oil prices (and gas prices) would be without the SPR drain! (and maybe, just maybe, that is the point: if market forces allowed to work – as painful in the short-term as they may be – as every energy/commodity trader knows, high prices beget low prices in the end).

    Finally, we couldn’t help but consider the case for impeaching the president over such reckless acts.

    Consider that first, we learned he was pressing Saudis to help him with elections (Trump was impeached for less ‘quid pro quo’), and now he is draining a critical national asset (enabling a clear national security threat) just to boost approval (for his party’s personal gains), instead of encouraging US production and enabling increased refining.

    Bear in mind that the level of the SPR is now at a record low around just 22 days of supply (and will go even further down should the latest plan come into place)…

    Cuts from OPEC and Russia, combined with a higher demand from China as its economy emerges from pandemic lockdowns, would lead to new shortfalls in oil supply, according to Neil Beveridge, senior energy analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. That could push crude prices back to $120 a barrel by the end of 2023, his team forecast.

    “That’s when you really need the SPR,” Mr. Beveridge said in an interview.

    “And if the SPR has been partially exhausted, it can lead to a steeper escalation in prices.”

    But it gets better (or worse), since Bloomberg reports that the administration plans to initiate purchases when West Texas Intermediate crude prices are at or below $67 to $72 per barrel, according to a senior administration official.

    Just who do they think will sell them oil at that price?

    And while we are doing thought experiments, what’s to stop OPEC+ from cutting output by another 1MM per day for a year and forcing Biden to drain the entire SPR? Inevitably leading to a massive new demand to refill the ’emergency’ reserve, sending prices soaring?

    Perhaps that why oil is starting to catch a bid this evening?

    We give DTN’s Brian Milne the last word on the actual policy:

    “Transferring SPR crude oil from emergency reserves to commercial tanks now would likely not help in lowering retail gasoline prices, or do so only marginally,” adding that “such a policy does not make sense.”

    Or put another way…

    Source: @AbeLopezAuthor

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/18/2022 – 20:00

  • Democratic Party Captured By Environmentalists, Aiding Russia & China; Expert Claims
    Democratic Party Captured By Environmentalists, Aiding Russia & China; Expert Claims

    Authored by Katie Spence via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Environmentalists have captured the Democratic party and, in their push towards Net Zero, are aiding Russia and China, a senior fellow at RealClearFoundation, Rupert Darwall, says.

    Workers sort coal near a coal mine in Datong, China’s northern Shanxi Province on Nov. 3, 2021. (Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images)

    Furthermore, the push towards Net Zero has monopolized “the money,” as the group includes many Silicon Valley billionaires, intellectuals, and the mainstream media, Darwall told The Epoch Times and NTD’s Paul Greaney in an interview.

    In the interview, which aired on NTD’s Fresh Look America on Oct. 12, Darwall said a prime example of environmentalists taking over the Democratic party, and monopolizing the money, is California.

    There, billionaire environmentalists have instituted “an aggressive green agenda” that doesn’t negatively impact them but directly opposes the average California voters’ interests, he said.

    Chinese leader Xi Jinping (L) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) pose during their meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on Sept. 15, 2022. (Alexandr Demyanchuk/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

    “Voters, and particularly in the Central Valley, who endure stifling temperatures in summer, had to pay ruthlessly high prices to condition their homes. They don’t have beachfront properties that are cooled from the Pacific.”

    Darwall added that because California is “essentially a one-party state,” voters can’t correct the “extreme environmental policies.” Plus, environmentalists use a version of McCarthyism to stifle opposition.

    In the 1950s, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy accused thousands of innocent people and parties of disloyalty and allowing Communism to influence their lives and policies.

    Darwall said environmentalists today use a similar tactic when they label anyone who disagrees with them as a “climate denier.”

    “They know ‘denier’ is a very powerful term to be called. You may have seen a New York Times journalist interviewing the president of World Bank, and [the journalist asks] “are you a climate denier?’ It’s designed to chill debate. Not just chill it but prevent people questioning.”

    Green Imperialism

    If this progression towards Net Zero continues, Darwall said he knew who will win.

    “China and Russia. I mean, basically, the opponents of the West, geopolitically from stepping back, but they’re the big winners from the West deciding to bring itself to its knees. I mean, no modern economy can function without cheap, abundant energy and fossil fuel derived energy.”

    “We’re basically cutting off our legs. The pain will increase. People are blaming Putin for the terrible winter the Europeans are going to experience this this year. But the way I would put it is Net Zero is Vladimir Putin’s best ally.”

    Darwall further added that not only is the West hurting itself and helping Putin, but it’s also engaging in a sort of “green imperialism.”

    As mentioned above, the president of the World Bank had been attacked, specifically by Al Gore, Darwall said, because the World Bank was one of the “big providers of finance to Africa.”

    “There are over a billion Africans, and they are energy starved. Africa is an energy-starved continent. And the effect of Western green policies is to freeze, as it were, African Development at a very low level.”

    Darwall continued, “Grid-delivered electricity is the doorway to the modern world. If you compare the 19th century to the 20th century, the big change is electricity.

    “For Africa to flourish and develop, it needs reliable, cheap, grid-delivered electricity. And that is what people like Al Gore and John Kerry are denying Africans.”

    Darwall specified that people like Kerry and Gore are pursuing an agenda that geologically damages the West, its strategic interest, and the economic and social interests of less developed nations.

    Political Reckoning

    As a result, Darwall believed a political reckoning is coming to the West. He says that as gas prices and inflation continue to climb, voters will show their displeasure for extreme environmental policies and “vote for the other party.”

    That benefits Republicans, as under Donald Trump, the United States was an energy superpower.

    “In those four years he was president, America was an energy superpower. And now this energy superpower is going around to the Gulf, begging OPEC plus to increase oil production. It’s absolutely extraordinary.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/18/2022 – 19:40

  • Biden Tells Iran Protesters "Keep Fighting" As Tehran Says Unrest Driven By US, Saudis
    Biden Tells Iran Protesters “Keep Fighting” As Tehran Says Unrest Driven By US, Saudis

    Iran protests have been persisting and growing fiercer since the September 16 death of 22-year old Mahsa Amini, who had been detained by police in Tehran for not adhering to the country’s strict Islamic dress code. The “anti-hijab” protests which are raging and lately taking over university campuses across various cities are now coming under increased international media coverage. Now in their fifth week, the protests and ongoing clashes with security forces have left over 230 Iranians dead, including reportedly with casualties among police as well.

    Multiple hundreds of demonstrators have also been arrested. Increasingly, Iranian authorities are blaming the Islamic Republic’s “enemies” – including the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia – for fomenting what have morphed into raging anti-government unrest. This theme of Tehran is likely to gain more traction among broader swathes of the Iranian population which have by and large remained on the sidelines after on Monday President Joe Biden issued a message of support for the protests…

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

    Biden made the off-the-cuff statements to activists and reporters, describing of his July visit to Saudi Arabia, “Everyone thought I went to the Middle East because of oil, it was because of Iran.” Biden praised the “incredible courage” of the protesters, and when asked by an activist to issue a message to Iranians in the streets, he said: “Keeping fighting, we’re with you.”

    This past week has seen the first instances of the US president personally issuing such specific support to the anti-regime protests, and it’s certainly going to be noticed in Tehran, given officials there have already said the “riots” are a US-backed plot. 

    Biden had also said days ago in a visit to a California community college:

    “Iran has to end the violence against its own citizens simply exercising their fundamental rights,” Biden said.

    “I want you to know that we stand with the citizens, the brave women of Iran, for real, for real,” Biden said, “who right now are demonstrating to secure their very basic, fundamental rights.”

    Speaking about the death of Amini, he said, “it stunned me what it awakened in Iran. It’s awakened something that I don’t think will be quieted in a long, long time.”

    Via CNN

    It’s very likely the protesters themselves are increasingly wary of ways in which their movement faces the potential to be externally hijacked (whether real or perceived). Already the government is pointing to instances of protests being encouraged from the outside. This was a key talking point on Tuesday from Iranian government spokesman Ali Bahadori-Jahromi in an address given at Tehran’s Allameh Tabatabai University.

    The official cited Western as well as Gulf Arab attempts to beam propaganda into Iran via state-funded satellite broadcasts. As AFP and Iran state media described of his words:

    Bahadori-Jahromi said Persian-language media outlets and platforms based outside Iran were being used to “put pressure” on Tehran.

    “Countries are willing to pay from their own pockets to start Persian-language media, while they do not know Persian at all and want to put pressure on us,” IRNA quoted him as saying.

    Earlier Tuesday, Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi accused Iran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia of backing such foreign media.

    “Social media and television channels, especially the ones affiliated with regional movements including Saudi Arabia and some Western countries,” have created “false atmospheres”, he said, without identifying any of the outlets.

    This has further been a theme of government officials and some Iran-based pundits appearing on US networks like CNN.

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

    They liken what’s happening inside Iran to an externally driven regime change project, akin to the way events spiraled in Libya and Syria during the “Arab Spring” of the prior decade.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/18/2022 – 19:20

  • Buchanan: Where US And Ukrainian War Aims Collide
    Buchanan: Where US And Ukrainian War Aims Collide

    Authored by Pat Buchanan,

    To President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine, Crimea and the Donbas are national territories whose retrieval justifies all-out war to expel the invading armies of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

    Yet, who controls Crimea and the Donbas has, in the history of U.S.-Russian relations, never been an issue to justify a war between us.

    America has never had a vital interest in who rules in Kyiv.

    Through the 19th and almost all of the 20th century, Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire or the USSR, ruled from Moscow. And that condition presented no issue of concern to the USA, 5,000 miles away.

    For us, the crucial concern in this Ukraine-Russia war is not who ends up in control of Crimea and the Donbas, but that the U.S. not be sucked into a war with Russia that could escalate into a world war and a nuclear war.

    That is America’s paramount interest in this crisis.

    Nothing in Eastern Europe would justify an all-out U.S. war with Russia. After all, Moscow’s control of Eastern and Central Europe was the situation that existed throughout the Cold War from 1945 to 1989.

    And the U.S. never militarily challenged that result of World War II.

    We lived with it. When Hungarians rose up in 1956 for freedom and independence, the U.S. refused to intervene. Rather than risk war with Russia, the Hungarian patriots were left to their fate by President Dwight Eisenhower.

    How the world has changed in the 21st century.

    Today, while the U.S. is under no obligation to go to war for Ukraine, we are obliged, under the NATO treaty, to go to war if Slovakia, Czechia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia are attacked.

    And, though Kyiv is not a member of NATO, the U.S. finds itself the financier and principal armorer of Ukraine in a war with Russia over Crimea and the Donbas, which could involve the use of nuclear weapons for the first time since Nagasaki.

    In short, our vital interest — avoidance of a U.S. war with a nuclear-armed Russia — may soon clash with the strategic war goals of Ukraine — i.e., full retrieval of Crimea and the Donbas.

    If Putin is serious about an indefinite war to hold Crimea and the Donbas as Russian territory, how far are we willing to go to aid Ukraine in driving the Russians out and taking these lands back?

    What appears to be emerging is a situation something like this:

    As U.S. weapons help drive Russian soldiers out of the occupied regions of Ukraine, Russia and Putin are being driven into a corner, where the alternatives left to them shrink to two: accept defeat, humiliation and all its consequences, or escalate to hold onto what they have.

    At some point, escalation to prevent defeat can require crossing the nuclear threshold. And Putin and his retinue have said as much.

    Bottom line: At some point in this conflict, achieving the war aims of Ukraine must force Moscow to consider escalation or accept defeat.

    For Russia, the worse the war situation is, the sooner comes the day when Putin must either play his ace of spades to avoid defeat, or accept defeat, humiliation and his potential overthrow in Moscow.

    As Russia’s use of nuclear weapons could lead to a war that could involve the United States, Kyiv’s relentless pursuit of its vital interests — retrieval of all the lands taken by Russia, including the Donbas and Crimea — will eventually imperil vital U.S. interests.

    If Kyiv, with U.S. weapons and support, pushes the Russians out of Crimea and the Donbas, Kyiv pushes its war with Russia closer and closer to a nuclear war.

    As Kyiv seeks to reconquer all its territory lost to Russia since 2014, it pushes Russia closer and closer toward consideration of the only way to avert defeat and national humiliation, use of tactical nuclear weapons, which means moving closer to war with the United States.

    The higher the casualty rates for Putin’s Russia, the worse the defeats inflicted on Russia by U.S.-armed and -equipped Ukrainians, the greater the likelihood Russia plays its ace of spades, nuclear weapons, to stave off defeat and humiliation and ensure the survival of the regime.

    In short, the closer Putin comes to defeat, the closer we come to nuclear war, for that increasingly appears to be the only way Putin can prevent a Russian defeat, disgrace and humiliation.

    Americans had best begin to consider what is the outcome to this war that can end the bloodshed, restore much of Ukraine to Kyiv, but not be seen as a historic humiliation for Russia.

    Some Americans see this war as an opportunity to inflict a defeat and disgrace on Putin’s regime and Russia. Those seeking such goals should recognize that the closer they come to achieving their goals, the closer we come to Russia’s use of nuclear weapons.

    Recall: President John F. Kennedy sought to provide an honorable way out of the Cuban missile crisis for the Soviet dictator and nation who precipitated it.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/18/2022 – 19:00

  • "This Is Unsustainable": NYC Homeless Shelter Population Hits Record High
    “This Is Unsustainable”: NYC Homeless Shelter Population Hits Record High

    It’s a ticking time bomb. 

    New York City Mayor Eric Adams declared a state of emergency earlier this month as the city’s homeless shelter population exploded to a record high due to an endless stream of migrants bussed up from the southern border.

    NYC’s Department of Homeless Services reported 62,174 people are now living in the city’s shelters, exceeding the previous record of 61,415 set in January 2019, according to New York Daily News. 

    Adams’ administration has blamed the shelter chaos on an influx of migrants from border states. He has forecasted a billion-dollar cost to house and provide social services to the migrants. 

    “This is unsustainable. The city is going to run out of funding for other priorities,” Adams recently warned. “Local government cannot be the solution for national crisis – especially manufactured crisis.” 

    Construction is underway for a migrant humanitarian emergency center at Randall’s Island. It would be the first stop where migrants bussed from border states to NYC would be processed. 

    The city’s shelter system is cracking, and nearly every homeless shelter is at full capacity as the cold season begins. 

    In addition to setting a new population record, the average length of stay has also surged to all-time highs, with single adults now spending an average of 509 days in shelters, according to city data. Families with kids are, on average, in a shelter even longer — 534 days — and adult families spend an astonishing 855 days in shelters on average, the data shows. — New York Daily News

    The official count as of last week is around 19,000 Central and South Americans have entered the city homeless shelter intake system. Adams said the influx of migrants could soon send the shelter population above 100,000. 

    But it’s not just migrants adding to the count, Kathryn Kliff of the Legal Aid Society told CBS News:

    “The fact that we are at a record high number of people in shelters is not just a result of recent migrants – it’s a result of vast homelessness in New York City and the city failing to prioritize affordable housing for new Yorkers, and this has been going on for years.” 

    NYC’s homeless say migrants are being prioritized over them. 

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

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

    Adams’ office has considered renting out thousands of hotels and even contracting a cruise ship for six months to house the migrants. 

    What’s even more astonishing is that mainstream corporate media blamed the migrant influx on Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott, though as we pointed out, one Democrat-led Texas border city has been shipping thousands of illegals to sanctuary cities like New York City and Chicago. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/18/2022 – 18:40

  • Catalog Of Deceit: A List Of JB Pritzker's Falsehoods & Whoppers
    Catalog Of Deceit: A List Of JB Pritzker’s Falsehoods & Whoppers

    Authored by Mark Glennon, founder of Wirepoints,

    Truth is easy to hide in politics today. The number of crises and governmental failures in America and Illinois are simply overwhelming — far beyond what most voters can be expected to see. In Illinois, that blindness is worsened by a shrinking media unwilling to question.

    Gov. JB Pritzker has exploited those circumstances relentlessly and successfully. The record must be corrected.

    Straight to the point, here’s our list of minor deceptions to outright lies we’ve seen from him. Suggest additions that we have overlooked in the comment section.

    1. Gerrymandered Maps. “The Illinois Governor’s whopper on redistricting is one for the ages, wrote the Wall Street Journal.” Specifically, Pritzker promised during his first campaign to veto any redistricting map “drafted or created by legislators, political party leaders and/or their staffs or allies.” But he proceeded to sign what is widely seen as among the most gerrymandered maps in the nation, and his broken promise, wrote the Journal, “will now take its rightful place in the annals of political whoppers beside George H.W. Bush’s famous pledge not to raise taxes.”

    2. Claims that federal bailout money had nothing to do with improved budget situation. “Let me set the record straight for you,” Pritzker said. “State budget surpluses would exist even without the money we received from the federal government.”  That’s among his most audacious whoppers, explained in detail here.

    3. False growth claims. “Numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau show that Illinois is now a state on the rise with a growing population,” Pritzker said. We explained here in detail why that is false.

    4. Claim that US Constitution prohibits Illinois pension reform. Pritzker says that a state constitutional amendment to allow for meaningful pension reform is “fantasy.” That claim, which he uses to justify inaction on pension reform, is flat wrong. Pensions and other contracts may be reformed within reasonable limits, just as other states have done, as we’ve explained and courts have ruled.

    5. False claims about pension buyouts. Under Illinois’ pension buyout programs, Pritzker claimed in 2019, the state will save “billions and billions,” perhaps $25 billion. That claimed contradicted what the state had said in bond offering documents and nothing remotely close to supporting those savings was ever produced, despite our requests for any evidence. Alleged savings from it were “plucked out of thin air,” as one journal for government professionals put it.

    6. Absurd claims about savings from consolidating some pension administration. Pritzker in 2019 claimed that his new law to consolidate administration of local pensions was a “banner accomplishment in Illinois’ long history” that showed “monumental willingness to prioritize responsible and sustainable fiscal management.” It was a wise step but savings will be tiny, as we explained here. And it now turns out that the law has yet to be fully implemented, being held up in litigation.

    7. Numerous false or unfounded claims about “the science” on Covid. We have a full, new column on those here.

    8. “Strongest financial position in decades.” That’s a repeated claim about where Illinois stands. The best way to look at the state’s overall financial performance is the state’s Net Position, basically, it’s net worth – as shown in actual, audited financial statements that include growing debts, which is where Illinois’ crisis lies. That’s exactly what Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza focused on – before Pritzker took office. Net Position has plummeted year in and year out since for twenty years, through 2021, the last year reported. Improvement may be expected for 2022 but that’s only because of a deluge of federal bailout money and an exceptionally good year for the markets, which bolstered pension funds. Pritzker often cites recent credit upgrades to support his claim. But the credit upgrades resulted largely from the federal bailouts, which drove up inflation and interest rates, more than cancelling out any interest savings that might have resulted from the upgrades. Moreover, Illinois would need around 20 more upgrades to truly get back to the “strongest financial position in decades.”

    9. The Kyle Rittenhouse lie. After Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted for shooting three men in the Kenosha riots, Pritzker issued a statement saying “shooting unarmed citizens is fundamentally wrong.” In truth, one had a pistol pointed at Rittenhouse at the moment Rittenhouse fired, captured in video. More fundamentally, Pritzker knows full well that it is entirely appropriate and lawful to use a gun in self-defense when facing imminent bodily harm of any kind, which the jury rightly concluded was shown by the evidence. For this defamatory lie, Pritzker should have apologized.

    10. Caps on SALT deduction as a middle class issue. Last April, Pritzker and governors from six other high tax blue states sent a letter to President Biden asking for elimination of the cap on SALT deductions for federal income tax calculations with the central claim being that the caps hurt the middle class. That’s completely false. Pritzker and the other governors were trying to alleviate the particulary harsh impact of the caps on high earners in high tax states. In truth, the cap on SALT deductions was a windfall for the middle class and hammered high income taxpayers.

    11. Unfounded claims to Congress about masks and COVID. In July 2020, before Covid had fully impacted Illinois, Pritzker testified before Congress that he had “created a path for others to follow” through his mask mandate, and advocated for a federal mask mandate. In truth, he had no empirical support for that claim even at the time, and evidence has shown that masks were ineffective.

    12. Persistent claim that Illinois “was facing unprecedented challenges because we had a Republican governor who decided to hold the state budget hostage.” That’s a whopper. As we have explained in detail, while Bruce Rauner harmed the state by handling the budget impasse poorly, the state was in abysmal shape when he took office. Fiscal problems soared when a Democratic supermajority allowed a temporary income tax increase to expire during Rauner’s term, and problems abated when the biggest tax increase in state history passed concurrently with a budget and borrowed $7 billion to pay bills, moving debt from one credit card to another.

    13. Claim that Illinois budget surpluses are “projected for years to come,” made before the U.S. House Oversight Committee. No such projections exist. All budget projections show deficits returning.

    14. Blaming Republicans for failure to pay down federal loans for the state’s unemployment fund. “Every republican voted against paying down our states debts,” Pritzker said earlier this year. No, Republicans unanimously opposed the bill authorizing a partial repayment because they wanted all of the $4.5 billion paid off, not just $2.7 billion as the bill provided.

    15. False claim that federal law prevented use of pandemic relief money for paying down unemployment fund debt. Debt owed by the unemployment trust fund has been ignored in state budgets. When asked last year why it wasn’t reduced using funds from federal government under ARPA, the American Rescue Plan Act, Pritzker said, “You can’t actually use ARPA funds according to the rules of ARPA. That’s patently false.

    16. Child Care and unemployment. “The biggest thing preventing people from getting back to work is child care and sometimes elderly care,” Pritzker said last year. That’s highly debatable, at best. There are many reasons why people aren’t returning to work.

    17. Pension debt. “We have been paying down the pension obligation,” Pritzker said last year. That’s utter nonsense. The unfunded pension liability has grown and grown every year and has peaked under Pritzker because annual pension contributions are not enough even to allow the pensions to tread water. The most recent year is an exception by some measures but only because of extraordinary market gains in the state’s 2022 fiscal year that are now rapidly being reversed.

    18. Blaming Covid for fiscal issues. Last year, Pritzker wrote, “COVID-19 temporarily interrupted the progress we were making to undo the damage left behind by Gov. Bruce Rauner, who saddled state residents with massive additional deficit spending and caused the state to suffer eight credit rating downgrades in just four years.” No, the state came out ahead thanks to excessive federal assistance.

    19. Claim that GOP opposed all federal pandemic relief. In December 2020, Pritzker said about half of Congressional Republicans won’t vote for “any” state and local help, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. In truth, the CARES Act had already passed both the House and Senate unanimously and gave $150 billion to state and local governments. Trillions more that indirectly helped the state had been authorized with bipartisan votes, and the Omnibus Spending Bill had passed the House and Senate with overwhelming, bipartisan majorities including an extremely generous $82 billion for schools and $14 billion for regional transit.

    20. Boasting about high college financial aid application rates by high schoolers and crediting state officials. In truth, all high schoolers were required to do so by law.

    21. The “very fine people” lie. In his Florida presidential teaser speech, he repeated the claim that “Trump said there were ‘very fine people on both sides’ at the Charlottesville white supremacy rally.” That one has been discredited over and over again, even by two CNN hosts.

    22. Bleach to stop Covid. Also in his Florida speech, he repeated the claim that Trump suggested ingesting bleach to stop COVID. Newsweek and even left-leaning PolitiFact, among many others, have shown that he didn’t.

    23. “Don’t say gay.” Pritzker repeated the lie about what Florida’s restriction on teaching gender identity says. “Under the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ agenda,” Pritzker said, “DeSantis wants to codify a modern day LGBTQ McCarthyism, forcing teachers to hide their marriages and children to out their peers at school.” The bill says no such thing. It only says classroom curriculum from kindergarten through third grade should not include teaching little children about gender identity. Two-thirds of Americans support that. “This polling reflects what our common sense already tells us,” one pollster said. “Only fanatics think the classroom curriculum from kindergarten through 3rd grade should include teaching little children about gender identity.”

    24. White nationalists everywhere. We have an epidemic of young men enamored with white nationalism,” Pritzker said in Florida. There’s not a shred of evidence supporting anything remotely close to that.

    25. Schilling in 2021 for what Pritzker and President Biden called a “$3.5 trillion infrastructure” bill. That bill in fact was “one of the greatest financial cons in fiscal history,” said the Wall Street Journal. It was far more than $3.5 trillion and it wasn’t infrastructure.

    26. “Comprehensive” property tax relief for everybody. He made that claim earlier this year regarding legislation that in fact only provided relief for senior, veteran and disabled homeowners, shifting the burden to others, with no overall effect on property taxes paid.

    27. Claim that the recent Dobbs decision by the US Supreme Court eviscerated privacy rights. In fact, truth both the leaked draft opinion and the final opinion went to great lengths to say the decision was limited to abortion and had no effect on other privacy rights.

    28. An April TV ad claiming he lowered gasoline, grocery and property taxes. No, his tax relief only delayed a gasoline tax increase, temporarily lowered grocery taxes until after the election and provided a on-time rebate on property taxes.

    29. Blaming Senate Republicans for failure to appoint Prison Review Board members. The Republicans simply didn’t have enough members to do that.

    30. False claim that federal bailout money cannot be used to repay Illinois’ loan from the federal government for its unemployment trust fund. We wrote about that whopper here and much of the loan remains unpaid.

    31. False claims about reduced debt. Earlier this year, he said this, which is typical of claims he often makes: “Every year over the last three years we have paid off debts by our predecessors that have been a drag on Illinois finances, in some instances for decades…. reduced the burden that would have fallen on future generations and stopped irresponsible practices that would have kicked the can down the road.” That’s preposterous, flatly contradicting what both the state’s auditors and Comptroller Mendoza say. Illinois’ balance sheet sank further into the hole during each of the three years since Pritzker took office in January 2019.

    32. Toilets. Pritzker and his wife had five toilets removed from a mansion they own to claim that it was uninhabitable in a fraudulent attempt to reduce property taxes.

    33. Balanced Budgets. Pritzker as well as countless Republicans and Democrats have made the claim every year, and every year we have documented ad infinitum why they are not balanced. They are not balanced either on the cash basis on which they are prepared or on the far more important accrual basis, which reflect growing debt, which is the core of Illinois’ fiscal crisis.

    Wake up, Illinois.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/18/2022 – 18:20

  • Twitter Is Fine With Pfizer Propaganda, But Comic Books About The US Border Crisis Are Not Allowed
    Twitter Is Fine With Pfizer Propaganda, But Comic Books About The US Border Crisis Are Not Allowed

    Only a couple weeks ago, corporate Pharma giant Pfizer partnered with Marvel and widely promoted a new one-shot comic book featuring classic Avengers heroes leaping into action as children watch from the sidelines in a hospital.  The children learn that in order to become like the Avengers they don’t need to fight villains, all they need to do is get their new covid mRNA vaccines.  The propaganda campaign was all over Twitter’s social media platform and the ethics of the source was never questioned.

    The book has been immediately dated due to Pfizer’s recent admission under oath at the EU Parliament that their covid vaccines were never tested in the prevention of viral transmission, upending months of claims that getting the vax meant saving grandma and grandpa from exposure to the disease.  The claim that the vaccines were “proven” to prevent transmission was also used as the basis for covid passport schemes in nations across the west, trampling the personal rights of millions.  

    Pfizer essentially gets to say and do what they want on Twitter, and Marvel has the same luxury.  Neither company has anything to fear in terms of their voices being censored due to the political leanings they might exhibit, the issues they address or the fallacies they might spread.  Some groups are protected because they have the “correct” politics.

    In yet another incident which showcases the ideological bias of a platform which has long claimed to have never targeted conservatives, it appears that Twitter is not so favorable towards comic books that veer away from leftist ideology.

    Comic book writer/creator and Eisner award winner Mike Baron, known for his popular work on The Punisher, has had to go independent in order to continue telling pro-military, pro-police and pro-conservative stories.  Marvel has since neutered the Punisher franchise, long hated by leftists because they consider the character to be a symbol for the political right.  Baron can’t make Punisher comics anymore, so he created his own characters as a means to explore topics which are important for conservatives. 

    His latest effort is a book called ‘Private American’, which tells the story of a US border overrun by illegal immigration and human trafficking, a border patrol agency overwhelmed and a federal government that does nothing to help.  The hero, a Cuban American and army veteran, decides to step in to thwart the criminal threat.

    If we set aside the comic book element, it’s basically a documentation of current events.  

    Without the backing of large corporate marketing machines like Marvel, Baron has to turn to social media to promote his work.  Unfortunately, Twitter has not been receptive.  The account for Private American has been permanently banned and Baron is not allowed to use any alternative accounts to discuss his creative efforts.  Twitter claims that the comic violates its terms of service and that the Private American account is used for “abusive behavior.”  No examples of violations have yet been provided by the social media company.

    When asked what the real reason for the ban might be, Baron and his team had this to say:

    “We think the ban is most likely due to the content being pro-border control. We have seen our last three projects deal with some kind of big tech censorship: Florida Man was banned from the comic books subreddit (with 2.7 million comicbook fans) because moderators loath conservative creators. Facebook rejected our ads for Thin Blue Line (a pro police graphic novel), until FOX News did a story about it and they relented, saying there was violence depicted but upon another review, it was acceptable. Now Twitter has said we use multiple accounts for “abusive behavior” and to evade banning.

    If we were using multiple accounts to abuse people, then why not ban ALL of the accounts I operate?  We can show proof that all of our Private American posts are promotional or only share news stories dealing with the border chaos.

    When we asked Twitter to be more specific of what we could do to remedy this, they never responded again.”

    The purging of conservatives from social media is real, and certain issues can be declared taboo at any given moment to the advantage of the political left.  If something makes them look bad they don’t have to debate the details or defend their policies, all they have to do is silence the discussion.  This includes censoring writers and artists that simply address the existence of a problem from a non-leftist perspective.

    “Ten years ago, this book wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow,” Baron says. “But in today’s hyper-politicized climate, with a press that won’t do its job, the simple act of stating the obvious truth that borders are necessary is considered forbidden speech.”

    A lawsuit was filed in May of this year against top ranking Biden Admin officials, citing evidence that indicates potential collusion with Big Tech companies like Facebook and Twitter.  Internal documents released by Republican Attorneys General Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Jeff Landry of Louisiana suggest that the White House used connections and influence within these companies to censor and ban accounts which disagreed with their official narratives.  

    The DHS “Government Disinformation Board”, which was disbanded after only three weeks due to massive public backlash, was meant to become an extension of the White House coordination with social media companies.

    Perhaps the border crisis has been added to the Biden list of forbidden topics?  Specifically, the concept of “private Americans” standing up and doing something about it?  

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/18/2022 – 18:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Oct 18

Today’s News 18th October 2022

  • Escobar: Russia Courts Muslim Countries As Strategic Eurasian Partners
    Escobar: Russia Courts Muslim Countries As Strategic Eurasian Partners

    Authored by Pepe Escobar,

    Everything that matters in the complex process of Eurasia integration was once again at play in Astana, as the – renamed – Kazakh capital hosted the 6th Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA).

    The roll call was a Eurasian thing of beauty – featuring the leaders of Russia and Belarus (EAEU), West Asia (Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Qatar, Palestine) and Central Asia (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan).

    China and Vietnam (East and Southeast Asia) attended at the level of vice presidents.

    CICA is a multinational forum focused on cooperation toward peace, security, and stability across Asia.,Kazakh President Tokayev revealed that CICA has just adopted a declaration to turn the forum into an international organization.

    CICA has already established a partnership with the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). So in practice, it will soon be working together side-by-side with the SCO, the EAEU and certainly BRICS+.

    The Russia-Iran strategic partnership was prominently featured at CICA, especially after Iran being welcomed to the SCO as a full member.

    President Raeisi, addressing the forum, stressed the crucial notion of an emerging  “new Asia”, where “convergence and security” are “not compatible with the interests of hegemonic countries and any attempt to destabilize independent nations has goals and consequences beyond national geographies, and in fact, aims to target the stability and prosperity of regional countries.”

    For Tehran, being a partner in the integration of CICA, within a maze of pan-Asia institutions, is essential after all these decades of”maximum pressure” unleashed by the Hegemon.

    Moreover, it opens an opportunity, as Raeisi noted, for Iran to profit from “Asia’s economic infrastructure.”

    Russian President Vladimir Putin, predictably, was the star of the show in Astana. It’s essential to note that Putin is supported by “all”nations represented at CICA.

    High-level bilaterals with Putin included the Emir of Qatar: everyone that matters in West Asia wants to talk to “isolated” Russia.

    Putin called for “compensation for the damage caused to the Afghans during the years of occupation” (we all know the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder will refuse it), and emphasized the key role of the SCO to develop Afghanistan.

    He stated that Asia, “where new centers of power are growing stronger, plays a big role in the transition to a multipolar world order”.

    He warned, “there is a real threat of famine and large-scale shocks against the backdrop of volatility in energy and food prices in the world.”

    Hefurther called for the end of a financial system that benefits the “Golden billion” – who “live at the expense of others” (there’s nothing “golden” about this “billion”: at best such definition of wealth applies to 10 million.)

    And he stressed that Russia is doing everything to “form a system of equal and indivisible security”. Exactly what drives the hegemonic imperial elites completely berserk.

    “Offer you can’t refuse” bites the dust

    The imminent juxtaposition between CICA and the SCO and EAEU is yet another instance of how the pieces of the complex Eurasia jigsaw puzzle are coming together.

    Turkey and Saudi Arabia – in theory, staunch imperial military allies – are itching to join the SCO, which has recently welcomed Iran as a full member.

    That spells out Ankara and Riyadh’s geopolitical choice of forcefully eschewing the imperial Russophobia cum Sinophobia offensive.

    Erdogan, as an observer at the recent SCO summit in Samarkand, sent out exactly this message. The SCO is fast reaching the point where we may have, sitting at the same table, and taking important consensual decisions, not only the “RICs” (Russia, India, China) in BRICS (soon to be expanded to BRICS+) but arguably the top players inMuslim countries: Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Qatar.

    This evolving process, not without its serious challenges, testifies to the concerted Russia-China drive to incorporate the lands of Islam as essential strategic partners in forging the post-Western multipolar world. Call it a soft Islamization of multipolarity.

    No wonder the Anglo-American axis is absolutely petrified.

    Now cut to a graphic illustration of all of the above – the way it’s being played in the energy markets: the already legendary Opec+ meeting in Vienna a week ago.

    A tectonic geopolitical shift was inbuilt in the – collective – decision to slash oil production by 2 million barrels a day.

    The Saudi Foreign Ministry issued a very diplomatic note with a stunning piece of information for those equipped to read between the lines.

    For all practical purposes, the combo behind the teleprompter reader in Washington had issued a trademark Mafia threat to stop “protection” to Riyadh if the decision on the oil cuts was taken before the US mid-term elections.

    Only this time the “offer you can’t refuse” didn’t bite. OPEC+ made a collective decision, led by Russia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

    Following Putin and MBS famously getting along, it was up to Putin to host UAE President Sheikh Zayed – or MBZ, MBS’s mentor – at the stunning Konstantinovsky Palace in St. Petersburg, which datesback to Peter the Great.

    That was a sort of informal celebration of how OPEC+ had provoked, with a single move, a superpower strategic debacle when it comes to the geopolitics of oil, which the Empire had controlled for a century.

    Everyone remembers, after the bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, how US neo-cons bragged, “we are the new OPEC”.

    Well, not anymore. And the move had to come from the Russians and US Persian Gulf “allies” when everyone expected that would happen the day a Chinese delegation lands in Riyadh and asks for payment of all the energy they need in yuan.

    OPEC+ called the American bluff and left the superpower high’n dry. So what are they going to do to “punish” Riyadh and Abu Dhabi? Call CENTCOM in Qatar and Bahrain to mobilize their aircraft carriers and unleash regime change?

    What’s certain is that the Straussian/neocon psychos in charge in Washington will double down on hybrid war.

    The art of “spreading instability”

    In St. Petersburg, as he addressed MBZ, Putin made it clear that it’s OPEC+ – led by Russia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – that is now setting the pace to “stabilize global energy markets” so consumers and suppliers would “feel calm, stable and confident” and supply and demand “would be balanced”.

    On the gas front, at Russian Energy Week, Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller made it clear that Russia may still “save” Europe from an energy black hole.

    Nord Stream (NS) and Nord Stream 2 (NS2) may become operational: but all political roadblocks must be removed before any repairing work starts on the pipelines.

    And on West Asia, Miller said additions to Turk Stream have already been planned, much to the delight of Ankara, keen to become a key energy hub.

    In a parallel track, it’s absolutely clear that the G7’s desperate gambit of imposing an oil price cap – which translates as the weaponization of sanctions extended to the global energy market – is a losing proposition.

    Slightly over a month before hosting the G20 in Bali, Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati could not make it clearer:

    “When the United States is imposing sanctions using economic instruments, that creates a precedent for everything”, spreading instability “not only for Indonesia but for all other countries.”

    Meanwhile, all Muslim-majority countries are paying very close attention to Russia. The Russia-Iran strategic partnership is now advancing in parallel to the Russia-Saudi-UAE entente as crucial vectors of multipolarity.

    In the near future, all these vectors are bound to unite in what ideally should be a supra-organization capable of managing the top story of the 21st century: Eurasia integration.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/18/2022 – 02:00

  • The Long Game: An Uphill Battle To Restore Gun Rights
    The Long Game: An Uphill Battle To Restore Gun Rights

    Submitted by Alex Madajian of Gun Owners of America.

    Sometimes, when a good legislator introduces a strong piece of legislation while in the minority, the reaction of some is to scoff. This begs the question: Should advocates push for strong legislation when we know it does not have the votes to pass Congress, let alone override a president’s veto? In questions of statecraft, one should defer to the adage attributed to Robert Harris: “if you find yourself stuck in politics, the thing to do is start a fight.”

    Realistically, any half-decent legislation which would restore Americans’ gun rights would not get the votes to pass either chamber – and that’s in the unlikely case the leadership for the House and Senate even allowed such legislation to see the light of day for an actual floor vote.

    Members of Congress usually are the most vocal and aggressive in the minority, in part because they know their bills won’t pass. In short, they can talk the talk without having to walk the walk. However, once they secure real power and get in the majority, their legislative priorities can change to maintaining control instead of rocking the boat. Rather than legislating how the highly informed parts of their base that elected them desire, they become fearful of offending independent and swing voters, who typically attach themselves to strong leaders making compelling cases.

    Because so few members of Congress are genuine leaders, they abandon the Second Amendment advocates who helped them secure office just as soon as they face push-back from the those who voted the other way. These legislators much prefer to be cheerleaders from the backbench, rather than fighters on the frontlines.

    This reality, however, is exactly why there’s never a bad time to introduce a good bill. In our case, if you get more members to introduce or cosponsor solid Second Amendment legislation while in the minority, that forces the squishes to get on the record. In turn, when back in the majority with the ability to pass pro-gun legislation, Second Amendment advocates can then hold them accountable for any inconsistency. If they really support pro-gun bills, then they should certainly support them when they have the ability to pass them.

    Another reason we encourage members to introduce pro-gun legislation now, is so they have a chance to rehearse their defense of it. They need to learn who the allies and enemies are – who has their back, or who wants to put a knife in it. That’s why it’s so important for you to tell your Senators and Representatives how much you appreciate them when they sign-on to pro-gun legislation.

    The great news is it doesn’t take much to make a difference in a congressman’s day. They understand that for each email you send, several other constituents feel the same way. If you call in, that’s even better. And if you happen to meet them in person, that likely counts for dozens, if not hundreds, of others who weren’t able to. So, when you contact your representative and tell them to vote pro-gun, you’re not just doing it for yourself, you’re doing it for others, as well. If they want to reelection, they need to have their finger on the pulse of all their constituents, not just swing voters and those championed by anti-gun media.

    Now on the other hand, let’s imagine members only introduced good bills every ten years when self-proclaimed pro-gun politicians had control over both chambers of Congress and the White House. We know it probably won’t be that great of a bill because they only gave lip service for the ten years while they were out of power. They’re so used to compromising with the majority party to get crumbs, they have no idea what a clean piece of legislation would look like.

    Were it not for Gun Owners of America pushing our “No Compromise” approach on the only Constitutional right that explicitly says “shall not be infringed,” politicians would be more than happy to throw bones to the anti-gun crowd, introduce half-measures that don’t solve any problems, and in turn create dozens of new problems instead.

    Establishment D.C. swamp-monsters are exclusively obsessed with what can pass in a divided Congress, meaning they’re hyper focused on either meaningless change to the law, comparable to re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic, or completely capitulating to what the other side wants. They don’t operate on solving problems, only on how to appease their political opponents so they don’t get attacked as much.

    At the end of the day, politicians are people too – believe it or not. We need to allow them time to mess-up and find their footing when the consequences are not as dire. Once they have power, there is little margin for error. If we think strategically over the long-run, it doesn’t matter if a bill doesn’t currently have the votes in Congress or the support of the president. As long as the legislation is well-written and support is growing, things are moving in the right direction.

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

    Don’t get me wrong, the correct time to vote for good legislation was yesterday, but recall Rome wasn’t built in a day. GOA has been leading the fight to repeal the National Firearms Act for decades. Back in the day, we were the only major pro-gun group, working with Rep. Ron Paul to sponsor this sort of legislation with maybe one or two cosponsors in the House. Now, we are working directly alongside a sitting U.S. Senator (Roger Marshall-KS), with several of his colleagues joining in the effort to go on the record to gut major parts of the NFA. That’s in addition to getting over 80 unique members of the House to sign on to repealing different parts of the NFA.

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

    Good legislating takes years of effort to build real support, and GOA is proud to stand alongside Senator Marshall and his fantastic bill to remove Short Barrel Rifles, Short Barrel Shotguns, and Any Other Weapons from the jurisdiction of the NFA. The fact that he introduced it while in the minority shows this is a priority other Senators need to recognize. Remember, there’s never a bad time to start to pushing. 

    We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/17/2022 – 23:40

  • Florida To Revoke Licenses Of K-3 Teachers Who Discuss Gender Identity, Sexuality
    Florida To Revoke Licenses Of K-3 Teachers Who Discuss Gender Identity, Sexuality

    The Florida Department of Education is planning to revoke or suspend the teaching licenses of K-3 teachers who discuss gender identity or sexuality with their students, according to the Washington Post, citing a new rule published by the department.

    The rule, proposed in September by Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr., would enforce a 2021 state law that prohibits instruction on gender identity and sexuality for children in kindergarten through third grade – the Parental Rights in Education Act, colloquially known by opponents as the “don’t say gay” law.

    According to the rule, any teacher who “intentionally provide[s] classroom instruction” to K-3 students on those topics will face “revocation or suspension of the individual educator’s certificate, or the other penalties as provided by law.”

    The 2021 law already requires schools to create a system via which parents can report teacher noncompliance with the law. If a school system does not address a parent’s concerns, the law makes it easy for parents to sue and says the Florida Department of Education can launch an investigation of the district.

    The rule on teachers’ licenses drew immediate condemnation from some teacher groups and LGBTQ advocates. Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, executive director of LGBTQ rights group GLSEN, said in a statement Thursday that the Florida rule “will harm LGBTQ+ students, who we know benefit by having supportive teachers and inclusive curriculum in the classroom.” -WaPo

    The Dept. of Education rule was published as Hurricane Ian hit, and was first reported last Tuesday by the Progress Report.

    A spokesman for the department said on Thursday evening that “it should not be surprising that educators are at risk of having their certificates sanctioned if they violate state law. The proposed amendment will change nothing for teachers who follow the law and are focused on providing high-quality classroom instruction aligned to state academic standards.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/17/2022 – 23:20

  • Doug Casey On The Likelihood Of Nuclear War With Russia
    Doug Casey On The Likelihood Of Nuclear War With Russia

    Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

    International Man: Recently, we’ve seen what appears to be an escalation in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

    There is an excellent chance the US government was behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, Russia has annexed four regions of Ukraine, and President Zelensky announced an accelerated bid to join NATO.

    What do you make of this?

    Doug Casey: I’d say that the odds are extremely high, approaching certainty, that the US was complicit in the sabotage. It certainly had the Motive, Means, and Opportunity—the three elements necessary to warrant suspicion in a criminal investigation.

    The US has unique capabilities for this kind of mischief—an air-launched drone torpedo or a submarine aren’t available to just any terror group. It was a major operation, not something that a few scuba divers could pull off. Apparently, tons of explosives were used to blow these things up.

    Biden and other US officials previously said they didn’t want the Nord Stream to go through and planned to prevent it. A boldly idiotic thing to say since the pipeline is neither its property or business.

    The narrative that the Russians did it is completely insane. Putin could simply turn off the gas until it was convenient to be turned back on; now that option is gone. The Russians wouldn’t limit their own options.

    If it’s proven that the US did it, then the Russians and/or the Germans will have to engage in a tit-for-tat retaliation to punish the US for this sabotage. That may be tantamount to an act of war, but once the culprit is proven, they have to take action. This thing isn’t over. The culprit will be found.

    As far as Russia annexing Crimea and the regions of the Ukraine in question, it seems to me—from a historical point of view—that would be par for the course. Remember that borders have been flowing and ethnic groups moving for a thousand years in that part of the world. In any event, it makes no sense to take sides in disputes between nation-states. In this case, it amounts to the US sticking its nose into a border war between two shit-hole countries.

    That said, being as objective as possible, I’d say that the Russians have a certain amount of right on their side. They’ve been mightily provoked since the Maidan Revolution of 2014 and the attack by the Ukrainian Army on the Donbas. It’s too bad that this is spinning out of control—largely because of US intervention. In a rational world, it would basically be worth a couple of columns on the sixth page of the New York Times and then forgotten.

    As for Zelensky accelerating the bid to join NATO, it’s insanely stupid. Zelensky is a corrupt nothing/nobody puppet who’s being manufactured into a hero. The strutting little megalomaniac has apparently been paid at least half a billion dollars to be an authoritarian, jailing opposition leaders, closing down dissident newspapers, and building a secret police force. Ukraine joining NATO at this point would be asking for World War 3. Of course, NATO should have been abolished after the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991. But now it’s become an institution, almost impossible to get rid of.

    The chances of a war between NATO and Russia are extremely high. Instead of talking about getting rid of Putin, the world would be better off if they got rid of Zelensky.

    International Man: Vladimir Putin recently gave a speech in which he said:

    “The West is ready to cross every line to preserve the neo-colonial system which allows it to live off the world, to plunder it thanks to the domination of the dollar and technology, to collect an actual tribute from humanity, to extract its primary source of unearned prosperity, the rent paid to the hegemon. The preservation of this annuity is their main, real and absolutely self-serving motivation. This is why total de-sovereignization is in their interest. This explains their aggression towards independent states, traditional values and authentic cultures, their attempts to undermine international and integration processes, new global currencies and technological development centers they cannot control. It is critically important for them to force all countries to surrender their sovereignty to the United States.”

    What’s your take on this?

    Doug Casey: I’ve listened to a number of Putin’s speeches.

    It’s fashionable to make him out as being not only the devil incarnate but irrational and somebody that wants to conquer Europe and perhaps destroy the world in the process. But in fact, compared to all of the other European leaders, he’s the most cool-headed, the most thoughtful, and the one with the most perspective.

    He is absolutely right when he says that the West is acting as a hegemon. In particular, the US has been exporting dollars for decades—which have allowed it to live way above its means—and control the world by controlling the world’s monetary system. With the dollar accepted as the international reserve currency, backed up by institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, and a giant military with bases in over 100 countries, the US can basically call the shots for other cultures and countries.

    Let me explain. I like American culture. Despite the fact the US is rapidly devolving into a police state, it’s still by far the most individualistic, liberty-oriented, and freewheeling culture the world has ever seen. But at the same time, I understand his resentment.

    The world is covered with McDonald’s and Pizza Huts, Hollywood movies, Coca-Cola, mass consumer advertising, and a thousand other trends, ideas, and artifacts generated in the US. Call them “good” or “bad,” but they have absolutely acted to destroy local cultures. T-shirts, blue jeans, and rock music assault your eyes and ears everywhere, from the biggest cities to the upper reaches of the Amazon and the Congo.

    I think they’re mostly good things in themselves. But it’s easy to see how a traditionalist, someone who values cultural stability and diversity, could view them as aggressive threats, as cultural imperialism. In fact, we’ve destroyed the local culture everywhere. I understand his unhappiness with aspects of this.

    Vlad makes some valid points.

    I know you’re not supposed to say that since he’s been designated the new enemy, in the mold of Saddam, Qadhafi, Assad, Noriega, and a dozen others in recent history. Unfortunately, though, Americans’ opinions are products of what they’re fed by the media, not actual facts. If they were well-informed and thought about it, they’d realize their real enemies weren’t foreign nonentities but the Bidens, Bushes, Obamas, and the US Deep State in general.

    International Man: It seems tensions with Russia are reaching a crescendo.

    What do you think is the likelihood of the US or NATO becoming directly involved in combat?

    Doug Casey: As I said, there’s no reason for any conflict between Russia and the US. In fact, there are now fewer communists in Russia than there are in US universities.

    Russia under Putin has tried to reach a rapprochement with Western Europe and the US numerous times, and they’ve been rejected.

    It makes me think that our leaders are more psychopathic than Russia’s.

    Will the US become directly involved in combat? I don’t think so. The US has already pissed away $60 billion, or who knows how much, supporting the terminally corrupt Zelensky regime. More and more Americans are coming to the conclusion that it’s against our interests. I doubt there’s any support to send American soldiers over there, and it greatly increases the chances of nuclear blasts leveling most US cities.

    Direct involvement seems unlikely at this point, even though we’re dealing with sociopaths and, worse, who control the world’s major governments. So don’t accuse me of being a permabear… I’m an optimist.

    International Man: There is a lot of talk in the mainstream media about whether Russia will use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. David Petraeus and other Deep Staters have suggested the US and NATO would directly attack Russian forces in Ukraine as a response.

    Could the media and Deep State be laying the groundwork for some sort of incident, staged or otherwise?

    What are the implications of people like Petraeus openly talking about directly attacking Russian forces?

    Doug Casey: Again, once people reach a high level in any government, it’s proof—ipso facto—that they’re sociopaths. Many are narcissistic and power-hungry psychopaths. You don’t get the “best and brightest” walking the halls of Mordor or the Deathstar.

    That certainly includes generals or ex-generals like Petraeus. In today’s world, once a soldier reaches a general’s rank, he’s a self-promoting bureaucrat first and foremost.

    I’ll draw your attention to the movie Dr. Strangelove. Once someone gets enough stars on their shoulders, they start thinking like George C. Scott’s General Buck E. Turgidson or Sterling Hayden’s Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove.

    It’s actually a type of psychosis that overtakes people once they have too much power. Anything’s possible with these people.

    I don’t support either Washington or Moscow. At the moment—let me shock some readers—Washington is much more dangerous than Moscow, with the current administration totally controlled by Jacobins and other strident ideologues. Americans should be terrified that one of their politicians could push the wrong button and destroy the world, whether with nuclear, cyber, or biological weapons. 

    International Man: Is there such a thing as a limited nuclear war between the US and Russia? If not, what does full-scale nuclear war look like, and what is the likelihood of it happening?

    Is it worth risking this outcome over a country that most Americans cannot even find on a map?

    Doug Casey: As you know, my belief is that a government—if you’re going to have government at all—should have nothing but police to protect citizens from violence within a country, a court system to allow them to adjudicate disputes without resorting to force, and a strictly defensive military, kept within our borders. Our current government, however, has a life of its own, detached from the country it rules.

    Seeing the kind of people that we have in Washington, with actual Jacobins in charge, it’s understandable how the Russians could be paranoid of the US military machine and the US government.

    Could we have limited nuclear war?

    It’s possible. Perhaps the Russians will, if pushed up against the wall and invaded, set off a couple of small tactical nukes just as a warning to show they’re serious.

    But if it goes to a global thermonuclear war, it’s going to set civilization back hundreds of years.

    The people that are in back of fomenting and promoting the Ukraine war should be hauled out of office and tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity. These fools are toying with what could soon be the biggest disaster in world history.

    *  *  *

    The US government is overextending itself by interfering in every corner of the globe. It’s all financed by massive amounts of money printing. However, the next financial crisis could end the whole charade soon. The truth is, we’re on the cusp of a global economic crisis that could eclipse anything we’ve seen before. And most people won’t be prepared for what’s coming. That’s exactly why bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released a free report with all the details on how to survive an economic collapse. Click here to download the PDF now.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/17/2022 – 23:00

  • Mexican National Gets 9 Years In Prison For Smuggling 9 Tons Of Meth, Fentanyl
    Mexican National Gets 9 Years In Prison For Smuggling 9 Tons Of Meth, Fentanyl

    A Mexican national who admitted to driving a drug-laden tractor-trailer into the United States through the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in San Diego, CA has been sentenced to 9 years in prison.

    Seizure of more than 3,000 pounds of methamphetamine, fentanyl powder, fentanyl pills, and heroin as part of the second largest methamphetamine bust along the southwest border in the history of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in Otay Mesa, San Diego, on Oct. 9, 2020. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

    The man, Carlos Martin Quintana-Arias, was busted with a record-breaking 17,684 pounds of meth and 389 pounds of fentanyl on November 18, 2021, and was declared the nation’s largest confiscation in each drug category for 2021 and 2022 so far, according to US Customs and Border Protection. 

    Just two-milligrams of fentanyl can prove fatal.

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

    Quintana-Arias – who applied to enter the US with a manifest claiming he was carrying automotive body parts, only for an X-ray machine to reveal otherwise – was sentenced to 108 months on Oct. 14.

    “This massive seizure prevented a huge quantity of deadly drugs from saturating our community,” said U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman. “Because of the vigilance of border officials, this fentanyl did not kill anyone, and this meth did not destroy even one life.”

    Chad Plantz, special agent in charge, HSI San Diego, said that “This was a brazen attempt to smuggle a record amount of deadly narcotics into our country,” adding that smugglers “looking to make a quick profit from narcotics smuggling will be vigorously investigated and prosecuted.”

    The San Diego and Imperial Valley ports of entry account for about “61 percent of all the fentanyl CBP seizes nationwide,” said Acting Director of Field Operations Anne Maricich.

    Deploying K-9 teams and imaging systems, CBP officers in the San Diego Field Office made drug busts “totaling over $4.1 million worth at its ports of entry” during the week of Sept. 18–24, according to a CBP statement. -Epoch Times

    Quintana-Arias faced a maximum penalty of 40 years in prison and a $5 million fine under Title 21, U.S.C., Sections 952 and 960 Importation of a Controlled Substance.

    The primary source of Fentanyl found in the United States can be traced back to chemicals imported from China and mixed by Mexican cartels.

    As the Epoch Times notes, the synthetic opioid is pressed into pills or mixed with other narcotics to increase potency. Law enforcement confiscated 1,232 pounds (559 kilograms) of fentanyl—which is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine—from 2016–2018 and 7,710 pounds (3,497 kilograms) from 2019–2021.

    Illicit fentanyl accounted for 64 percent of all drug-related deaths in the United States in 2021, according to nonprofit group Families Against Fentanyl. It is the top cause of death among adults aged 18–45, overtaking COVID-19, suicide, and car accidents.

    Deaths from fentanyl among teens tripled in just two years. Black teens were affected the most with a five-fold increase of deaths from the substance. Based on the data, 175 deaths occur every day from illegal fentanyl with the drug responsible for killing more than 200,000 Americans since 2015.

    The organization has been calling for the categorization of illicit fentanyl as a Weapon of Mass Destruction. This would elicit a government response targeting the top of the supply chain while holding international criminal organizations responsible.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/17/2022 – 22:40

  • China Pursuing 'Strategic Military' Interests In The Arctic: Pompeo
    China Pursuing ‘Strategic Military’ Interests In The Arctic: Pompeo

    Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times,

    China’s ruling communist regime seeks to expand into the Arctic region to exploit natural resources, secure trade routes, and garner a military advantage against the United States, according to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

    The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its leader, Xi Jinping, are putting China on a path toward confrontation with the United States by pursuing strategic objectives in the region, Pompeo said in an interview with the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank where Pompeo is a distinguished fellow.

    “Xi Jinping has made very clear that he wants to rule forever and that his rule should be over everything,” Pompeo said.

    “I think we should take that seriously.”

    “Make no mistake about it, the CCP has deep, strategic military intentions in the Arctic.”

    Pompeo said that the CCP is encroaching on the Arctic region as part of a wider effort to secure military and economic security against the West. That effort goes back a number of years but reached new highs in 2017 when the CCP attempted to purchase a decommissioned naval base in Greenland.

    The Arctic region is critical to U.S. defense and national security, Pompeo said, not just because of the resources located there, but also because ballistic missiles launched by China or Russia at the United States would need to pass over the region.

    “America’s national security depends on this region,” Pompeo said.

    “Every single Chinese land-based ICBM must fly through the Arctic region to hit its targets here in the United States and Canada.”

    “Our missile defense against such ICBMs, whether they come from Russia or China, are deployed primarily in the Arctic, in Greenland, and Alaska.”

    Pompeo said that the eight nations of the Arctic Council should ban military presence in the Arctic by non-Arctic countries.

    The eight nations that exercise sovereignty over land within the Arctic region are Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States.

    The CCP has dubbed China a “near-Arctic state” to legitimize its move into the region, but the designation has no legal authority and is not recognized outside of China.

    “The Chinese Communist Party lacks any legitimate claim to sovereignty [in the region] even though it has made … this idea of it being a ‘near-Arctic nation,’” Pompeo said.

    “The CCP should never be permitted to be part of any organization, including the Arctic Council, that is trying to deliver outcomes for this special space.”

    To that end, however, Pompeo warned that the CCP and Kremlin were closely aligned and that the United States might reasonably expect to see Sino-Russian cooperation in the region as the two powers work to undermine the U.S.-led West.

    “I don’t think there’s any chance China’s going to do much independently,” Pompeo said of Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    “I think these two are now locked in.”

    “The Arctic will be another place where we will find the two of them working together.”

    Pompeo said that the recent decision by Finland and Sweden to apply for NATO membership was a “good outcome” and hoped that the admission of the two into the defensive alliance would increase security cooperation in the Arctic.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/17/2022 – 22:20

  • Watch: Smash-And-Grab Hits Jewelry Shop On NYC's Billionaires' Row
    Watch: Smash-And-Grab Hits Jewelry Shop On NYC’s Billionaires’ Row

    A wild video shows thieves targeting a jewelry store on New York City’s Billionaires’ Row, an area along the southern end of Central Park in Manhattan. The area is home to ultra-luxury residential skyscrapers and some of the world’s wealthiest people. 

    NYPD Crime Stoppers tweeted a video showing the wild smash-and-grab at Cellini Jewelers (460 Park). The three thieves used a sledgehammer to blast through the front door. Within minutes, they stole more than half a million dollars of jewelry. 

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

    “A full inventory of the stolen items is pending, but police say the estimated value is more than $500,000,” NBC New York said. 

    A Twitter user pointed out the smash-and-grab was “across the street from this ….” 

    We’ll explain more about the building. So it’s 432 Park Avenue, a residential skyscraper that is part of Billionaires’ Row and has some of the most expensive condos in the city. The median unit sells for tens of millions of dollars. 

    The fact that smash-and-grabs are happening feet away from one of the most expensive and luxurious residential buildings should concern the area’s residents because Mayor Eric Adams and progressive city officials have yet to get a handle on soaring violent crime. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/17/2022 – 22:00

  • "We Got Weights In Fish!": Two Anglers Charged With Cheating After Video Goes Viral
    “We Got Weights In Fish!”: Two Anglers Charged With Cheating After Video Goes Viral

    Two fisherman have been indicted on felony charges of attempted grand theft, cheating, possession of criminal tools and unlawful ownership of wild animals after they were appear to have been caught cheating at an Ohio fishing tournament last month.

    Photo: Dave Leska, Yough Lake News

    Jacob Runyan, 42, and Chase Cominsky, 35 were the focus of a viral video in which they appear to have stuffed weights and frozen fish inside their ‘winning’ haul described by Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael C. O’Malley as “not only dishonorable but also criminal.”

     The ‘criminal tools’ used refers to Cominsky’s boat, which authorities seized on Tuesday along with its trailer.

    The men were looking at a $28,760 payout from the Sept. 30 to Oct. 1 tournament in Cleveland.

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

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/17/2022 – 21:20

  • Woke War III – The Deadly Neocon-Left Alliance
    Woke War III – The Deadly Neocon-Left Alliance

    Authored by David Sacks, op-ed via Newsweek.com,

    Elon Musk got in hot water again on Twitter—for proposing peace. On Monday, Musk proposed a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine, for which he was denounced as a pro-Putin puppet by the Twitter mob that has formed to police the discourse on all things related to Ukraine.

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

    The president of Ukraine himself, Volodymyr Zelensky, accused Musk of supporting Russia—even though Musk’s company SpaceX donated Starlink to Ukraine’s war effort at an out-of-pocket cost of $80 million. (Full disclosure: Musk is a friend and I am an investor in SpaceX.) Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany Andrj Melnyk was less subtle, telling Elon to “f***k off,” while David Frum tweeted without evidence that “Russian sources” had used Elon to float a “trial balloon” of a peace proposal because they’re afraid of losing Crimea. Scores of blue-checks on Twitter followed their lead, ordering Musk to stay in his lane.

    What matters in this story is not that Musk was told off, but rather, that a Twitter hive mind is using the same intolerant cancellation tactics that they use to shut down debate on domestic political issues in order to shape U.S. policy toward Ukraine.

    They are doing so by demonizing dissent, defaming opponents, and closing off as ideologically unacceptable any path to peace or even deescalation.

    The online mob has decided that any support for a negotiated settlement—even proposals that Zelensky himself appeared to support at the beginning of the war—is tantamount to taking Russia’s side, denouncing voices of compromise and restraint as Putin apologists. This removes them from acceptable discourse and shrinks the Overton window to those advocating the total defeat of Russia and an end to Putin’s regime—even if it risks WWIII.

    We’ve seen this before: “Woke mobs” on Twitter routinely demonize and defame their political opponents, impugn the motives of anyone who questions their goals or tactics, and squelch dissent even in their own ranks by declaring the debate on certain topics over.

    What makes the “I stand with Ukraine” version of the Twitter mob unique is that it brings together two forces that used to be sworn enemies of one another—the woke Left and the neoconservative Right. It turns out they share many of the same loathsome ideological and personality traits, and have a similar “slash and burn” approach to political engagement. It’s a new political marriage.

    A BM-21 ‘Grad’ multiple rocket launcher fires at Russian positions in Kharkiv region on October 4, 2022.YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

    Just over a decade ago, former President Barack Obama defeated Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary to become president due in no small part to his opposition to the Iraq War. At the time, the Left despised neocon hawks for pushing the Bush-Cheney administration’s disastrous Forever Wars in the Middle East. Moreover, the Left supported Obama in his policy toward Ukraine when he refused to escalate with Russia over Crimea, pointing out that America has no vital security interests in Ukraine, though Russia does. As a result, Russia would always be able to maintain “escalatory dominance,” Obama said. “This is an example of where we have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for.”

    But since neoconservatives largely walked out of the Republican Party over Trump and disavowed all of their conservative domestic policy views to become commentators on MSNBC, the Left has discovered a new love for interventionist foreign policy, as long as it serves “democracy” and opposes “autocracy”—an increasingly malleable term that both the wokes and the neocons now use to define not just Putin but also democratically elected leaders like Viktor Orban in Hungary, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, and Donald Trump in the United States.

    Despite voting for Obama because he promised to break with neoconservative foreign policy, the Left has now joined with neocons to oppose Obama’s restrained foreign policy in Ukraine.

    This shift is disorienting, but on a purely tactical level, it makes a certain amount of sense. Neocons invented the cancellation game before there was even a Twitter board on which to play it. Neocons arrogantly dismiss the other side’s point of view as argued in bad faith and not worth considering, and label anyone who dares question the cause as a heretic or traitor.

    David Frum set the neocon standard for this tactic when he branded the small number of pundits on the Right who opposed the Iraq War as “Unpatriotic Conservatives” at the outset of that strategic disaster. Fast forward to today and anyone who suggests that NATO expansion could have been a contributing factor to the current Ukraine crisis, or that the sanctions imposed on Russia are not working and have backfired on a soon-to-be-shivering Europe, or even that the U.S. must prioritize avoiding a world war with a nuclear-armed Russia, is denounced as a Putin stooge.

    Warping the debate in this way allows delusional and contradictory thinking to go unchallenged. Thus, we get the argument that Putin is a madman who will kill indiscriminately to achieve his aims—but he is also somehow definitely bluffing about using nuclear weapons. And he’s only using that bluff because he’s losing the war—but if he’s not stopped in Ukraine, he will go on to conquer the rest of Europe. Putin’s regime must fall because he has killed or jailed all the liberal reformers and yoked himself to a hardline Far Right, but somehow he will be replaced by a liberal reformer when his regime collapses.

    It’s nonsensical, and a real debate would expose some of the delusions in this thinking. But we aren’t allowed to have one.

    As long as this woke-neocon alliance is allowed to set the terms of the debate, we will continue to see a one-way ratchet toward greater and more dangerous escalation of this conflict.

    There will be no peaceful resolution to this conflict that America doesn’t at least have a hand in negotiating, and we should be leading the effort. Instead, we’ve been deferring to the Ukrainians and their maximalist demands, upping the sanctions on Russia as Putin ups his rhetoric against the West. Someone blew up the Nord Stream pipeline just in case another key nation such as Germany had any thoughts about coming to the bargaining table. And now we are playing a game of nuclear “chicken” with a Russian leader who, if his unhinged “War against the West” speech last Friday is any indication, has thrown away his steering wheel.

    A regional war turned into the First World War because all parties made maximalist demands and assumed others were bluffing. It can happen again, especially if the media, social media, and foreign policy elite join forces and use woke cancellation tactics to preclude discussion of any alternatives. Right now, we are locked on an escalatory path, and the destination ahead is Woke War III.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/17/2022 – 21:00

  • Virginia Democrat Wants To Criminalize Parents Who "Misgender" Their Children
    Virginia Democrat Wants To Criminalize Parents Who “Misgender” Their Children

    Making laws surrounding transgender “rights” is disturbingly a lot like the concept of spectral evidence taken from the days of the Salem witch trials.  Trans identity is a purely subjective concept with zero concrete proof to support it – All a person has to do is simply say they are now whatever made-up gender they announce at the moment and the rest of the world is supposed to revolve around them.

    During witch trials witnesses could say that ghosts or spirits were telling them that a defendant was guilty of devilry, and the court was supposed to take these unfounded accusations as evidence.  Similarly, under gender identity laws a person could say that they are trans and accuse other people of violating their “right” to be referred to in the pronouns they prefer.    

    But it goes beyond the issue of personal feelings.  Maybe a biological man suddenly decides he is a woman that wants to use a public woman’s bathroom because there is an underage girl in there he has targeted, but he’s not required to provide proof of being a woman and we are not allowed to stop him.  We are required to accept his identity at face value based on his subjective claims.  Otherwise, we are “assuming that person’s gender.”  We become the bad guys for applying common sense.

    Subjective law is the beginning of the end of a free society because it places the preponderance of evidence into the hands of lunatics and dictators that can fabricate their own proof at will.  

    Virginia Democrat and delegate Elizabeth Guzman believes the opposite, though.  She plans to introduce a bill in Virginia’s upcoming fall session that would expand the definition of child abuse to include parents who refuse to use gender identify in the manner their children demand.  In other words, if you are a parent in Virginia, your kids have the power in the household.  All they have to do is say they are trans and if you do not obey then Child Protective Services can get involved.

    The bill would make misgendering of children a misdemeanor or possible felony.  Guzman clarifies:  

    “If the child shares with those mandated reporters, what they are going through, we are talking about not only physical abuse or mental abuse, what the job of that mandated reporter is to inform Child Protective Services (CPS)…That’s how everybody gets involved. There’s also an investigation in place that is not only from a social worker but there’s also a police investigation before we make the decision that there is going to be a CPS charge.”  

    When asked by the local reporters whether she isn’t “criminalizing parents” as many Republicans argue, Guzman answered:

    “No, it’s not. It’s educating parents because the law tells you the do’s and don’ts…So this law is telling you do not abuse your children because they are LGBTQ.”

    When countered with arguments from people who call for religious freedom, Guzman makes the typical leftist response:

    “The Bible says to accept everyone for who they are. So that’s what I tell them when they asked me that question, and that’s what I will continue to tell people.”

    First, in terms of legal definitions, there is no scientific indicators of what makes a child or anyone else “trans.”  Thus, there is no way to prove in a court of law that a parent “abused” a “trans child” because there is no way to prove a child is trans.  Beyond the extremely tiny percentage of people that have the mental illness known as Gender Dysphoria, which requires years of psychological therapy to designate, objective proof of trans identity does not exist.

    Second, a child’s hurt feelings are not grounds for CPS to intervene in parental rights.  

    Third, the trans identity movement is not a civil liberties movement, it’s a political movement.  LGBT people have the same exact legal rights as everyone else.  What the trans movement wants is extraordinary powers and special treatment.  They want the ability to dictate other people’s speech and behavior according to their whims.  This is unacceptable.

    Fourth, it is not the purpose of the law to “educate parents.” It’s not the job of the government to educate parents.  The government and the bureaucrats that infest it are not qualified to give parenting advice.  It is the job of government only to protect the rights of citizens as outlined in the Constitution.  Gender pronouns and personal feelings are not constitutionally protected.  

    Free speech is protected, though.  

    Fourth, Guzman appears to be unfamiliar with the Bible, because there is a list of behaviors in that book that are prohibited.  We might not all agree with every item on that list, but “accepting everyone” is absolutely not a religious requirement.  Some people and behaviors should not be accepted, because they lead to the decline and downfall of civilization.  Thousands of years of observation have taught us this, but leftists believe they know better. Children dictating to their parents is on that list, along with enabling the mentally ill and putting them in positions of authority.  

    One would hope that Elizabeth Guzman and ideological zealots like her will be swiftly removed from office as soon as possible, but it is likely that America will have to suffer through more of their insanity before people are finally fully fed up.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/17/2022 – 20:40

  • Central Bank Digital Currencies Would Let Governments Control What People Spend Money On: IMF Official Admits
    Central Bank Digital Currencies Would Let Governments Control What People Spend Money On: IMF Official Admits

    Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

    The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) could potentially allow a government to control what people spend their hard-earned cash on.

    Speaking at the IMF-World Bank annual meeting on Oct. 15, Deputy Managing Director Bo Li said that a CBDC could improve “financial inclusion” through programmability.

    “A CBDC can allow government agencies and private sector players to program, to create smart contracts, to allow targeted policy functions,” Li explained.

    “For example, welfare payments, for example, consumption coupons, for example, food stamps.”

    “By programming CBDC, that money can be precisely targeted for what kind of people can own [CBDC] and for what kind of use this money can be utilized, for example for food.”

    Li, who stepped into the role of deputy managing director at the IMF on Aug. 23, 2021, added that by allowing the government to precisely target what people need, this will enable said government to “improve financial inclusion.”

    However, his comments were quick to garner a reaction from experts, including Nick Anthony, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives.

    Anthony wrote on Twitter that the IMF executive’s comments revealed how a CBDC would “allow the government to precisely control what people can and cannot spend their money on.”

    Prior to joining the IMF, Li worked for many years at the People’s Bank of China, according to the IMF’s official website.

    A staff member counts renminbi (yuan) at a bank in Haian, Nantong city, East China’s Jiangsu Province, on May 15, 2022. (CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)

    ‘I Don’t See How Americans Would Want This’

    In a follow-up post on Twitter, Anthony quoted a comment made by Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, writing:

    “I can see how China is for this. I don’t see how Americans would want this.”

    Anthony also noted that “governments have a historical pattern of misusing these tools,” citing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s move to freeze the bank accounts of anti-COVID-19 vaccine mandate protesters earlier this year.

    A May report (pdf) from the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) found that almost 90 percent of national central banks are planning to launch their own CBDC for release to the general public.

    That includes the United States, where Washington is currently looking into the possibilities for issuing such a digital currency, with officials citing an array of alleged benefits, such as efficient and low-cost transactions, boosting economic growth, and improved access to the financial system.

    However, critics fear CBDCs will increase government control over money that could be used as a tool for financial discrimination while simultaneously tracking purchases, and restricting access to funds, thereby working against decentralization, which is one of the main advantages of adopting cryptocurrencies.

    Agustin Carstens, general manager of the BIS, noted in 2021 that central banks would have “absolute control over the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability, and then will also have the technology to enforce that.”

    Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell last month also stated that a CBDC would not be anonymous and would be identity-verified, meaning details regarding transactions of a CBDC would be public.

    The European Central Bank (ECB) reiterated Powell’s remarks at the same Banque de France event on Sept. 27, with ECB President Christine Lagarde stating: “There would not be complete anonymity as there is with … bank notes.”

    Lagarde did, though, add that “there would be a limited level of disclosure and certainly not at the central bank level.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/17/2022 – 20:20

  • Will James Comey & Robert Mueller Be Prosecuted For Lies John Durham Uncovered?
    Will James Comey & Robert Mueller Be Prosecuted For Lies John Durham Uncovered?

    Authored by Hans Mahncke via The Epoch Times,

    While special counsel John Durham’s prosecution of Steele dossier source Igor Danchenko appears to be headed toward acquittal, Durham has used the trial to make public a number of revelations that cast the entire Trump-Russia collusion narrative in a fresh light.

    Most prominently, Durham revealed that on Oct. 3, 2016, the FBI had offered dossier author Christopher Steele up to $1 million to provide any information, physical evidence, or documentary evidence that could back up the claims in his dossier. But despite the huge reward on offer, Steele did not provide any such information.

    Crucially, despite Steele’s failure to back up his dossier, a mere 18 days later the FBI proceeded to obtain a FISA warrant against Trump 2016 presidential campaign adviser Carter Page. In its application to the FISA court, the FBI used the Steele dossier—specifically, its claim that Page was acting as an agent of Russia—as evidence.

    Then, after Donald Trump won the presidential election on Nov. 8, 2016, the U.S. intelligence community, which included the FBI, began drafting an intelligence community assessment (ICA) on Russian interference in the election. The ICA was issued in early January 2017, claiming that Russia had helped Trump win the election.

    The assessment included a summary of the dossier, claiming that it had been partly corroborated. The inclusion of Steele’s dossier in an official U.S. intelligence community product gave the dossier the credibility it had lacked up until that point.

    It also gave the media, which had held back from reporting on the dossier between July 2016 and January 2017, the excuse it needed to start doing so. For the next several years, the dossier and its lurid claims became the centerpiece of the media’s campaign against Trump. As Durham has now made public, the inclusion of the dossier in the ICA was based on a lie.

    Danchenko on FBI’s Payroll

    Another major revelation exposed by Durham in a pre-trial motion was that Danchenko had been on the FBI’s payroll between March 2017 and October 2020 as a confidential human source (CHS). By bestowing this coveted status on Danchenko, the FBI was able to conceal the existence of Danchenko from congressional and other investigators. This was crucial, as Danchenko had told FBI investigators in January 2017 that the dossier was based on rumors and gossip made in jest. The admission that the Steele dossier was nothing more than bar talk needed to be concealed if the FBI was to continue its investigation of Trump.

    Appointing Danchenko as a CHS had another benefit for the FBI. As Danchenko’s handler, FBI agent Kevin Helson, confirmed in court last week, because he was an incoming CHS, Danchenko was directed to scrub his phone. Conveniently, that also meant scrubbing evidence of Danchenko’s alleged lies to the FBI, evidence that Durham now lacks.

    Comey’s Lies

    In March 2017, then-FBI Director James Comey briefed congressional leaders, the so-called Gang of Eight, on his investigation of the Trump campaign. As Comey’s briefing notes reveal, members of Congress were not told about Steele’s failure to back up his dossier, despite the huge reward on offer, nor were they told that Danchenko had disavowed the dossier.

    Additionally, Comey told congressional leaders that the dossier was “derived primarily from a Russian-based Sub-Source” and that the “FBI has no control over the Russian-based Sub-Source.” The same wording was also used by the FBI in the Page FISA warrant application. And it was entirely false. Danchenko was not “Russian-based,” he was a former Brookings Institution analyst based in Virginia. And not only did the FBI have control over him, but he was working for them.

    Comey’s lies successfully ratcheted up the pressure and in May 2017, acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate claims of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

    Mueller’s Lies

    Mueller has denied having investigated the Steele dossier. In congressional testimony on July 24, 2019, Mueller repeatedly stated that the dossier was outside his purview. However, evidence elicited by Durham last week from two counterintelligence agents, Brittany Hertzog and Amy Anderson, paints a very different picture.

    Hertzog and Anderson were assigned to Mueller’s special counsel office in the summer of 2017. Hertzog testified last week that she was assigned the task of investigating the Steele dossier, a task that Mueller claimed was outside the purview of his investigation. According to Anderson’s testimony, Mueller’s dossier team comprised at least five agents.

    As part of their assignment, Hertzog and Anderson investigated two of Danchenko’s alleged sub-sources, Olga Glakina, a Russian national living in Cyprus, and Charles Dolan, a public relations executive with decades-long ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Illustrating the depths to which Mueller’s team went to investigate the dossier, Anderson flew to Cyprus to personally interview Galkina.

    According to Anderson’s testimony last week, Galkina admitted that Dolan was a source for the dossier. Given Dolan’s longstanding ties to the Clintons, this presented a huge problem for Mueller’s team. When Anderson additionally found out that Dolan was well connected in the higher echelons of the Russian government, she recommended that an investigation into Dolan be opened. However, according to her testimony, Mueller’s team blocked the investigation from going forward and destroyed her memo on the matter.

    Mueller’s false statements do not end there. A central alleged figure to the dossier, Sergei Millian, now claims on Twitter that he was in touch with Mueller’s office from 2017 to 2019. Mueller’s report claims that Millian refused to meet with investigators. Millian claims that he offered to meet Mueller’s team in various locations, including in the United Kingdom and Switzerland. Mueller’s team could easily have arranged such a meeting if it had wanted to, as illustrated by the fact it was willing and able to interview Galkina in Cyprus.

    It appears that the reason Mueller did not want to talk to Millian—and later lied about this fact—is that Millian is central to the dossier. According to Steele, Millian was the originator of the dossier’s key allegations, including that there was a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between Trump and the Kremlin, the infamous pee tape story, and that Russia had helped Trump by passing hacked Democratic National Committee emails to Wikileaks.

    Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConell (R-Ky.) (C) walks to a press conference with fellow Republicans following the weekly Republican policy luncheon in Washington on July 30, 2019. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

    However, there was a snag. Millian never spoke to Steele or Danchenko. Danchenko later admitted to the FBI that he had told Steele otherwise. This was not only a problem for Danchenko, but also for Mueller and the FBI. Without Millian, the dossier’s main allegations would have collapsed. That is why Mueller could not afford to talk to Millian.

    While Durham’s revelations explain crucial aspects of the false witch hunt against Trump, they do not amount to much unless those responsible are held to account.

    Durham himself has shown a marked disinterest in pursuing key government actors such as Comey or Mueller, focusing instead on private actors. A possible reason for this may be that Durham’s hands were tied by Biden’s Department of Justice. If that is the case, Durham’s final report, which will likely be issued in the next few months, should detail instances of such obstruction.

    Whatever the reasons for Durham’s failure to pursue FBI leadership and Mueller’s team, he has now left a trail of evidence for others to pursue.

    For instance, Mueller’s untrue statement that he did not investigate the Steele dossier is still within the statute of limitations until 2024 for charges to be brought. The concealment of Danchenko behind CHS status carried on until 2020, meaning that the statute of limitations on related charges does not expire until 2025. Durham may be nearing the end of his work, but there is plenty left for others to pick up.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/17/2022 – 19:40

  • 'They Will Come After You': GOP Attack Ads Warn Of Weaponized IRS
    ‘They Will Come After You’: GOP Attack Ads Warn Of Weaponized IRS

    Midterm election ads from two conservative groups are attacking Democrats over their $80 million investment in supercharging the IRS, with congressional Republicans amplifying claims that the tax-collection agency will target the middle class, Fox News reports.

    “I think it’s insane that Joe Biden and Patty Murray are sending a stadium full of new IRS agents to force families making less than $75,000 to pay for someone else’s law degree,” says one ad from WA Senate candidate Tiffany Smiley, who was filmed standing in front of a football stadium.

    Ads published by the Senate Leadership Fund and Our American Century PACs, as well as ads from candidates themselves, say the IRS’ 80,000 new hires will dig into the pockets of everyday Americans. The ads have popped up in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Nevada Ohio and elsewhere in recent weeks. -Fox News

    In a Georgia ad against Sen. Raphael Warnock (D), it’s argued that the Democrats gave the IRS “$46 billion to hire IRS agents to extract $20 billion from people who make less than $400,000” – citing a preliminary estimate from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) regarding how much the IRS funding boost – part of the Inflation Reduction Act – is expected to impact those making less than $400K per year.

    “Much of that money will come from cracking down on people who get paid with cash, tips or phone apps. If you do real work — waiting tables, serving drinks, driving Ubers or other jobs, Biden and Warnock’s new IRS agents may knock on your door soon.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsThe Biden Treasury Department insists that the majority of new agents will be tasked with looking into the finances of those making over $400,000 per year, and that many of the new hires will replace an expected wave of retirements and departures.

    As Fox News points out, however, “An amendment from Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, would have prohibited the IRS from using any of its new funding to target Americans below the $400,000 threshold, but it failed in Congress.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/17/2022 – 19:20

  • US Backs Sending 'Multinational Rapid Action Force’ To Haiti
    US Backs Sending ‘Multinational Rapid Action Force’ To Haiti

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    The US has drafted a UN Security Council resolution calling for the deployment of an international force to help the Haitian government quell protests and unrest, The Washington Post reported on Saturday.

    The Post obtained a copy of the resolution, which calls for “the immediate deployment of a multinational rapid action force.” The draft doesn’t identify specific countries that would take part or detail what their role would be, but it is the clearest sign yet that the US favors some sort of military intervention in Haiti.

    Political unrest and destabilization has been ongoing for years. Image: AFP/Getty

    The draft proposal, which could be formally proposed as soon as Monday, came after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for the creation of an international force to help the Haitian National Police as they deal with an uprising led by armed groups the Haitian government considers gangs.

    According to the draft resolution, the US is “encouraging the immediate deployment of a multinational rapid action force to support the [Haitian National Police], as recommended in the Secretary General’s letter.”

    The US resolution singles out Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, who leads a group known as G9 Family and Allies. Cherizier has blockaded a key fuel terminal in Port-au-Prince and has called for the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who has led the Haitian government since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

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

    Moïse was gunned down in his home by a group of mostly Colombian mercenaries, some of whom were former members of Colombia’s military and had been previously trained by the Pentagon. But who ordered the killing has not been solved as the investigation has been stalled.

    Protests have also broken out in Haiti’s major cities, where demonstrators have blocked roads and are calling for Henry’s resignation. The protests were sparked by the government announcing that it would stop subsidizing fuel.

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

    Henry’s government has appealed for the deployment of an international force to help deal with the situation. The US and Canada on Saturday sent armored vehicles and other supplies to help police quell the unrest.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/17/2022 – 19:00

  • Watch: 'Real Life Grand Theft Auto' On Chicago Highway As Man With Rifle Hijacks Car
    Watch: ‘Real Life Grand Theft Auto’ On Chicago Highway As Man With Rifle Hijacks Car

    Violent crime in Chicago is out of control and has skyrocketed since the Black Lives Matter riots and progressive city officials calling to defund the police after the death of George Floyd in 2020. People are fleeing the liberal-run metro area, and there’s also a surging corporate exodus. 

    The latest episode of violent crime isn’t the weekly occurrence of dozens of people shot over the weekend but a video that surfaced on social media of a real-life scene that looks like one from the video game “Grand Theft Auto” on a Chicago highway where a man in a ski mask with a rifle hijacks a car.  

    Video emerged on social media this weekend of a man carjacking a driver while armed with a rifle on an expressway near downtown Chicago.

    The footage shows three people running out of a car that was apparently involved in an auto accident along the outbound Dan Ryan Expressway just north of the Stevenson Expressway. Then one of them, wearing a black ski mask and toting a large weapon, tries to carjack passing vehicles. — CWB Chicago

    The video went viral on Twitter and was also uploaded on YouTube. The man who captured the footage can be heard saying, “Look at that rifle! Look at that rifle!”

    None of this is surprising as Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s city is in the terminal phase as progressive social justice reform policies backfire, forcing companies, such as Citadel Securities, to relocate to South Florida. When companies and people exit, the tax base will shrink. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/17/2022 – 18:40

  • Hiding Hunter's Laptop: "Right Out Of The Soviet Playbook"
    Hiding Hunter’s Laptop: “Right Out Of The Soviet Playbook”

    Authored by Jim Hanson via AmGreatness.com,

    This is the tale of the epic conspiracy and effort the political Left and their Trump-hating friends on the Right put into hiding Hunter’s laptop…

    Near the end of the 2020 presidential campaign there was an October Surprise. A shocking and provocative story that could potentially alter the outcome. That was, of course, Hunter Biden’s laptop.

    This report shows the full extent of a successful censorship and disinformation campaign by the Left that directly influenced the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

    In the final months of the 2020 race an amazing revelation of corruption and actual crimes by Hunter and Joe Biden came to light. The New York Post ran an exposé of emails from a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden at a repair shop. They showed evidence the Bidens were involved in taking money from foreign entities and providing access to the U.S. government.

    At a minimum, these are likely felony violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and perhaps also the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). 

    Joe Biden was the Democratic candidate and the entire country was about to decide whether he was suitable to serve as president. This story was highly relevant for citizens trying to make an informed voting decision. Voters were denied the opportunity to see and evaluate this information. Worse yet, they were subjected to a calculated disinformation campaign designed to discredit it. 

    This project has identified the conspirators, their strategy, their actions, and the chilling effect they had on our representative democracy. Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. It is a perfect example of the tilted playing field for ideas the Left has created. Our goal is to shine so bright a light on their actions they will not be able to do this again.

    The Usual Suspects

    This operation was run by the same people who control information flow to the vast majority of the American people.

    The conspirators were:

    • Corporate Media

    • Tech Tyrants

    • The deep state

    • The political Left

    These groups wanted to save a weak candidate from the probable defeat to which the evidence contained on that laptop would lead. They had zero regard for the truth, ethics, or the law. They were going to stop Trump by any means necessary, and they did.

    Uncle Joe was supposed to be the antidote for Trumpism, the smiling storyteller who wouldn’t cause any trouble. But that carefully crafted fiction would crumble if his involvement in selling out his country to enrich his own family was exposed. 

    That meant the story had to be covered up, and the Left jumped into action to do so in the fashion Dave Burge noted on Twitter.

    And smother it they did.

    We must change the overwhelmingly biased information landscape in this country. One side of the political spectrum controls the narrative so completely they successfully censored a story and ran a disinformation campaign of immense magnitude. The first step in changing that information landscape is exposing the organizations, networks, actors and funders who operate it. 

    The Censorship and Disinformation Campaign

    Their strategy had two major components:

    • Censorship—Blocking the distribution of this story so voters could not see it

    • Disinformation—False or misleading narratives to discredit the information

    There was an unprecedented operation in October of 2020 to censor the story of Biden family corruption revealed in the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop. It was a potential death blow to Biden’s already creaky campaign and the combined organs of the Left could not afford to let it see the light of day.

    Censorship in America is supposed to be forbidden. The First Amendment means politicians are not permitted to use state power to silence political opponents. That protection has been tested in recent years, as the Left has attempted to brand conservatism as extremism, fascism, and even terrorism. But in this case Biden and his allies could not use the government directly to shut the story down.

    Fortunately for them, the bulk of America’s information space is dominated by their allies who are happy to act as co-conspirators. Corporate media, social media, popular culture, academia, and most governmental entities are all solidly on the Left. They all saw the danger posed to them if the public learned how Joe and Hunter had traveled the world selling access to the U.S. levers of power. Hunter took the cash and Joe took the meetings with his foreign clients. 

    The New York Post is America’s oldest newspaper and when they broke the story of this influence-peddling it was a blockbuster. But the crisis response groupthink of the corporate media kicked in immediately to minimize the damage. 

    They claimed it had already been “debunked” or that it had been hacked or stolen or was “unverified.” They threw every smear they had at the wall, just hoping something would stick. Nothing they said about the story was based on facts or evidence; It was just a flurry of attempts to bury it before it buried Joe Biden.

    The major media outlets wanted to hide or ignore the story, but that wasn’t really possible. The Post was their hated enemy as one of a tiny number of right-of-center outlets, but it was too big to just ignore. And they didn’t have the power to stop the Post from distributing its story.

    But social media operates in a completely different fashion and they not only could shut it down— they actually made it disappear.

    As you see in the headline above, they tried to play this off as “making sure our elections are secure.” But they had no evidence at all of any foreign involvement or any other threat beyond the danger of American voters learning about Biden corruption. It was a credible story produced by a major U.S. newspaper about information they received from known American sources. Taking these “unusual steps” was partisan bias not “election preparedness.”

    Tech Tyrants 

    Censorship is an ugly thing, especially when it is done to influence the outcome of a presidential election. The tech companies that own and operate our shared information space collectively and individually hated President Trump.

    They are led and staffed by an overwhelmingly activist workforce. They are the shock troops in the woke revolution and see themselves as tasked with bringing about the “fundamental transformation” Barack Obama talked about.

    Twitter brags about its role on their website:

    Freedom of speech is a fundamental human right—but freedom to have that speech amplified by Twitter is not. Our rules exist to promote healthy conversations.

    It is fair to note Twitter is not the government and is free to censor speech if it wishes to do so. But when they control the most influential platform for influencing ideas in the world, they can be held to account if they abuse that. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted this is a problem.

    We need to constantly show that we are not adding our own bias, which I fully admit is . . . is more left-leaning.

    They have failed miserably in keeping their bias at bay. It infects every aspect of their business model even if it is not written into their policies. Their woke workforce interprets the policies in ways that greatly advantage Democratic politicians and liberal ideas. They simultaneously punish and throttle conservative ones.

    This was on full display when the Post article came out and Twitter shut down the Post’s Twitter account, as well as the ability for anyone to share the article. 

    In line with our Hacked Materials Policy, as well as our approach to blocking URLs, we are taking action to block any links to or images of the material in question on Twitter,” a Twitter spokesperson told The Post in a statement.

    Their reasons were unconvincing and illogical:

    Twitter is still demanding The Post delete six posts linking to our reporting (tweets that don’t violate their rules!) before restoring our account

    Twitter users who attempted to retweet the Post article received an error message and eventually were informed that the article had been identified as “potentially harmful.” 

    Ironically, they were right for the wrong reason. It was “potentially harmful”. . .  not because it was a foreign influence operation, but because it could be deadly to the presidential ambitions of Joe Biden.

    Facebook chose a different, but no less improper and biased form of censorship. Their spokesperson Andy Stone, a long time Democratic operative, announced their rationale.

    Facebook did not require fact-checking or limit distribution on thousands of stories claiming President Trump colluded with Russia. 

    Trump-Russia smear stories were a mainstay of Facebook’s curated news content throughout the entire Trump Administration and the 2020 campaign. This was a direct reaction to the unwanted success conservative media had on the platform.

    Facebook’s leadership and staff were just as reliably doctrinaire leftists as were Twitter’s. They believed their mission was to bring the world into the woke paradise we all need. But something was going wrong. People kept engaging with conservative content at alarming rates. They had identified this as a problem after Trump’s win in the 2016 election. They couldn’t understand it, but they knew they needed to stop it.

    Facebook’s problem was their platform actually worked the way they built it. It allowed people to see content they were likely to enjoy and then engage with. The unintended consequence for the activists at Facebook was that people really liked conservative content. 

    For one thing, they couldn’t get it elsewhere. When Facebook let them find and share it, they did . . . a lot. 

    Unlike Twitter, which had actively gamed algorithms and rule enforcement to squash conservatives, Facebook had a basically democratic platform. Popular content ruled and sadly for the Left that meant conservatives had a voice. After the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments phase over the result of the 2016 election had passed, the true believers at Facebook set out to ensure it would never happen again. This actually led to a precursor disinformation campaign related to the ones we are discussing here, which began the use of the chosen narrative, Russian disinformation.

    After the 2016 election the existence of a small number of ads on Facebook tied to overseas troll farms was discovered. This became a cause célèbre in the effort to discredit the evil Trump’s victory over the chosen Hillary.

    It was not possible for them to fathom Americans could have chosen a vulgarian right-winger in a fair contest, so they needed an external enemy. Russian propaganda was a perfect target. In other words, they employed a technique common to both propaganda and advertising called “An Appeal to Fear.” In this case it is the fear of an external enemy which is a necessary component for those who want to increase the power of government.

    Over the ages, governments refined their appeals to popular fears, fostering an ideology that emphasizes the people’s vulnerability to a variety of internal and external dangers from which the governors—of all people! — are said to be their protectors. Government, it is claimed, protects the populace from external attackers and from internal disorder, both of which are portrayed as ever-present threats.

    The American Left was looking at Hillary to finish the fundamental transformation begun under Obama and bring benevolent statism to America. It was not possible that both she and the quasi-socialism she represented could have been spurned. No! It was those damn Russians. And thus Russian disinformation became the external threat that had unduly empowered the troglodytes of the Right.

    The truth was Russian-linked entities had spent around $150,000 on Facebook ads during the campaign. This was during a campaign into which both candidates were putting close to $1 billion.

    That is not to say Russian propaganda was never a real problem. It was a major problem during the Soviet era and it had grown and evolved in the modern age.

    The Rand Corporation’s study on Russian propaganda, Firehose of Falsehood, reveals:

    Russia has taken advantage of technology and available media in ways that would have been inconceivable during the Cold War. Its tools and channels now include the Internet, social media, and the evolving landscape of professional and amateur journalism and media outlets.

    Even though it was nowhere near the threat they hyped it to be, the Left had found their demon. They would use this as the rationale for a censorship campaign to limit the spread and effectiveness of all messages deemed damaging to the cause. This enabled them to attack their political opponents but to wrap it in the patriotic propaganda of “election integrity.”

    Starting in 2017 Facebook made a massive push to publicize their newfound zeal to stop anyone from influencing U.S. Elections.

    As it turned out, Facebook had its own election meddling plan: stop anyone from influencing elections, except fellow leftists. What they touted as the answer to Russian interference soon morphed into a chance to build and deploy a thought police to shut down ideas they disliked. They had the aircover of election integrity so who could argue with that?

    In the intervening time between presidential elections they began to systematically push back not just on foreign influence efforts, but on conservative content they deemed misinformation. This allowed them to limit, or eliminate, the ability for all of those people who had been choosing to engage with conservative content to do so. 

    The Biden team still wanted more actual election and information interference from Facebook. Campaign Digital Director Rob Flaherty attacked them for suggesting that an even playing field was the right answer.

    Everyone works the refs, but the shocking thing here is the appeal to reasonableness. As if it was unchallenged that the Left was fundamentally honest and the Right fundamentally fallacious. Many at Facebook shared that view and their bias became policy.

    The collection of bad actors we are discussing here worked together to tilt the playing field in the information space on a daily basis. Any information you get without purposely going directly to a known conservative outlet is filtered through their leftist lens. This control is pervasive and does tremendous damage to having an informed electorate.

    All of this culminated in a well-oiled machine ready for action when the damaging information on Hunter’s laptop came to light. They had a plan, they had chosen enemies to blame and they were not about to let the Right use their platforms to tell any truths.

    Excuses about the information being hacked or stolen were simply invented to obscure the facts. The tech tyrants did not want the public to know how corrupt Joe Biden was so they served as surrogates for the Biden campaign. Their censorship operations were successful and denied a large number of people the opportunity to judge for themselves.

    We can’t know for sure what the impact of this story would have been had it been propagated freely. But it would have been very damaging to a candidate packaged and marketed as kinder, gentler, and more honest than Trump. Now that more is known about the story, recent polling shows people consider that it would have been a highly influential story.

    Nearly two-thirds of voters say the story of Hunter Biden’s lost laptop is important and believe President Joe Biden was probably involved in his son’s foreign business deals.

    Would that have changed the outcome? Sadly, we’ll never know. But we can make sure it never happens again.

    Disinformation—These Are Not the Incriminating Emails You Are Looking For

    The definitive book on Cold War era information warfare from our Communist foes is Dezinformatsia: Active Measures in Soviet Strategy. In that book, disinformation is defined as “false, incomplete, or misleading information that is passed, fed, or confirmed to a targeted individual, group, or country.”

    The American public was subjected to a campaign right out of the Soviet playbook designed to obfuscate the Biden family corruption. It was concocted and deployed by a loosely connected conspiracy of the media, current and former government officials, the Biden campaign, and the social media tech companies.

    As soon as the story broke October 19, 2020 virtually every major and subsidiary media outlet reported on it with negative sentiment using one of two major themes:

    First they argued that it was stolen. The immediate response was to deny the provenance of the laptop which was that Hunter Biden had abandoned it at a repair shop. They began questioning that story and throwing out the completely unfounded speculation that it may be stolen. 

    This smear hit directly at John Paul Mac Isaac, the owner of the repair shop. He provided the contents of the laptop first to law enforcement and when they took no action, to Rudy Giuliani who eventually gave it to the New York Post. 

    The bulk of the media accounts discussing the story in the next 24 hours included a reference to the “stolen” theme.

    The second argument offered was that the laptop was not verified. This was the most defensible part of the smoke screen. Most of the media outlets did not have the hard drive so they could say they had not verified it themselves. However, the New York Post showed numerous items in their reporting that would lead any reasonable person to understand the laptop most likely belonged to Hunter Biden.

    During the taping of an interview with President Trump soon after the story broke, Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes” ran with this narrative.

    Stahl denied that the Delaware computer suspected of belonging to Hunter Biden’s was even a story at all after claiming it has been “investigated and discredited.”

    “It can’t be verified,” Stahl said of the laptop. “It can’t be verified.”

    “What can’t be verified?” Trump said.

    “The laptop!”

    It had been investigated, but unlike Stahl’s false claim to the contrary the laptop was not discredited. All of the investigations and verification measures showed the same thing: This was Hunter’s laptop, the information was his and it was devastating.

    One of the truly amazing things is the longevity of the media’s willingness to continue to ignore and suppress this story. It was not until March of 2022 that the New York Times and Washington Post both admitted the long-known fact that Hunter’s laptop was Hunter’s laptop.

    Their admissions were not because of some ethical epiphany. They were merely part of a new aspect of the disinformation campaign about the likely charges coming from the ongoing investigation into Biden family corruption. They are based on the disinformation tactic popularized by John Ehrlichman, an aide to President Richard Nixon during Watergate. It’s called the modified limited hangout. In other words, mixing partial admissions with additional misinformation in order to confuse people.

    There has been an obvious attempt by the same collection of operators to steer coverage of this corruption away from Joe Biden and away from the felony violations of FARA and FCPA. But they know there is too much information publicly available to make the whole thing entirely disappear. The recent stories and admissions that it was true all along are designed to deflect the inevitable revelations of crimes and possible indictments.

    That is the regime media’s role, and they played it with vigor. To them the possibility of Trump winning reelection justified any and all possible propagandizing. So they ran with the narrative that the laptop was unverified all the way through the election and beyond until it collapsed under the weight of the truth.

    The Deep State/Permanent Bureaucracy 

    After avoiding any investigation into the details of Biden family corruption on the laptop for months, the evidence was too overwhelming to ignore. But they are still trying to avoid the fact it was a full-on business of selling access to the U.S. government. They want to turn it into simply a matter of Hunter not paying the proper taxes. A Hollywood lawyer paid more than $2 million in delinquent taxes for Hunter and this makes that angle their most likely attempt to sweep the rest under the rug.

    The IRS can simply state that there were some minor violations and maybe even slap Hunter with a charge or two. Then they can give him a fine and all the same propaganda outlets can claim the government “dealt with the issue.” This helps them avoid the unmistakable conclusion that Joe Biden is deeply implicated in this and likely guilty of multiple felonies. They can chalk it up to Hunter’s taxes and move on. 

    This is unacceptable—and even if Joe Biden avoids charges or a possible impeachment, we must expose the conspiracy to conceal information from the American people.

    Democratic Political Operatives 

    Political machines and the tools they employ exist to kill this kind of story. The October surprise from one side faces the censorship and disinformation campaign of the other. Sometimes the October surprise is a fake and the efforts to discredit it are completely justified. That was not the case here. There was zero evidence this was fake and considerable proof it was real.

    That put the smear mongers into frenzied overdrive, but as we have outlined they had plenty of willing allies to help spin their tales. This whole effort to discredit the laptop is one of the most successful political warfare operations in U.S. history. And almost every aspect of it was absolute fiction.

    The political operatives knew there was something brewing. Steve Bannon had bragged about having the hard drive from Hunter’s laptop. The plans to smear and obfuscate the purveyors of the information and its provenance were ready to drop, as the Daily Beast did immediately:

    When the journalist asked Bannon what’s on it and whether he’d release it before the presidential debate, Bannon replied, ‘You’ll see, standby.’ The Post disclosed that Bannon and Rudy Giuliani gave the hard drive to the newspaper, and included an unlikely story about them obtaining it from a computer repairman who copied it.

    As The Daily Beast reported today, a network run by Chinese fugitive Guo Wengui, who is Bannon’s business partner, was hyping damaging hard drives obtained by Chinese officials around the same time as Bannon’s Dutch interview.

    “An unlikely source” and an insinuation that this may be Chinese in origin were floated. They joined a vast array of stories using the chosen narratives hacked and disinformation.

    There were three main propaganda attacks on the story: first that it was hacked, and then two separate attempts to label it a product of Russian disinformation.  

    Hacked—October 14-15, 2020

    As soon as the story broke the initial disinformation campaign was to say the information was hacked. Hearing the word “hacked” creates an instant distaste for the information in most people as the word is associated with stolen credit cards and other criminal activity. It also implies the information is untrustworthy or even fake. 

    Corporate media and social media outlets were still stinging from the 2016 revelation of Hillary Clinton campaign emails, which damaged her campaign greatly. They took immediate action to censor the story of Hunter’s laptop as soon as it dropped.

    The social media companies led off with the chosen crisis message of hacked. For example, Twitter announced:

    In line with our Hacked Materials Policy, as well as our approach to blocking URLs, we are taking action to block any links to or images of the material in question on Twitter.

    This was despite exactly zero evidence that the material was actually hacked. It was just exceptionally dangerous—to the Biden campaign—so it had to be hidden.

    This led the major media organs to cheer for any and all censorship and to cast aspersions on the material before it could gain traction.

    After years of inaction, Facebook and Twitter are finally starting to clean up their messes. And in the process, they’re enraging the powerful people who have thrived under the old system.

    They rightly believed the emails played a definitive role in Hillary’s defeat.

    The alleged Biden laptop situation calls to mind the notorious Wikileaks dump of Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s emails in October 2016. The press went wild with those materials, which were later determined to have been given to Wikileaks by state-backed Russian hackers. The air of controversy the emails generated likely contributed to Clinton’s loss to Trump.

    They were bound and determined not to let that happen again, and they were far too successful for anyone who believes in free speech. 

    The problem with the hacked narrative was not just that it was an invented falsehood, but that in the end it didn’t actually discredit the actual information. Hillary’s campaign emails were hacked and they were real and they were damaging. The Left needed something more convincing with which they could smear those reporting the facts about the laptop.

    Russian Disinformation Round One—October 16-17, 2020

    The Left had spent the entire time from Hillary’s defeat in 2016 up through the 2020 election trying (and failing) to pin a charge of Russian collusion on Donald Trump. It went well beyond normal political smears to an unhealthy obsession that distorted all media coverage of Trump’s presidency.

    When the laptop story broke it was impossible for them to resist taking another bite of that poisoned apple and Russian disinformation, ironically, became the second major disinformation campaign about the laptop.

    This effort was launched using one of the Left’s biggest purveyors of leaks and propaganda: Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

    Anywhere lies about Russian influence operations are being told, you can be sure to find Adam Schiff. This operation was no different and, as always, he led the charge with accusations there was absolutely no evidence to support.

    Schiff spent most of the Trump Administration telling everyone who would listen that Trump was Putin’s puppet. He would claim to have evidence he could not share and which never materialized. When he made the statement that “we know” the info came from the Kremlin he had nothing to back that up.

    He had been pushing the Trump-Russia attack for years and the Wall Street Journal showed he knew it was a lie.

    Americans expect that politicians will lie, but sometimes the examples are so brazen that they deserve special notice. Newly released Congressional testimony shows that Adam Schiff spread falsehoods shamelessly about Russia and Donald Trump for three years even as his own committee gathered contrary evidence.

    The House Intelligence Committee last week released 57 transcripts of interviews it conducted in its investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. The committee probe started in January 2017 under then-Chair Devin Nunes and concluded in March 2018 with a report finding no evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin. Most of the transcripts were ready for release long ago, but Mr. Schiff oddly refused to release them after he became chairman in 2019. He only released them last week when the White House threatened to do it first.

    He was the perfect member of the usual suspects to bring the Russian disinformation tale into play. He launched it with the assistance of Wolf Blitzer on CNN.

    This led to a lawsuit from the computer shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac, who did not take kindly to being defamed.

    It was pretty quick out of the gate that I was labeled a hacker and then, after Adam Schiff and 51 intelligence experts decided to pen a letter and tell the rest of the American people I was a Russian asset, things have gone downhill from there.

    Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe immediately debunked Schiff’s tale.

    “Hunter Biden’s laptop is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign,” Ratcliffe said. “Let me be clear: The intelligence community doesn’t believe that because there is no intelligence that supports that. And we have shared no intelligence with Adam Schiff, or any member of Congress,” he said.

    That only brought Schiff’s deep state allies in the intelligence community into the game. They tried to undercut their boss Ratcliffe by saying there was an investigation into whether the laptop was tied to efforts of any foreign intelligence services. To get their information out they went to one of their favorite palace scribes: Ken Dilanian of NBC.

    Dilanian was well known as a tool for the IC who would ensure their leaks and undermining of their official leadership got the attention they wanted to receive. In this case they fed him a line that there was an investigation into Hunter’s laptop.

    Dilanian promptly parroted the propaganda. There actually was an investigation. It would have been malfeasance if there wasn’t.

    But there was no link to foreign intelligence operations because it actually was Hunter’s laptop and the IC already knew that. But they had the ability, using helpful media lap dog Dilanian, to get massive coverage of their fiction.

     The combination of Schiff lying on CNN and Dilanian putting it out via NBC gave the disinformation campaign using the Russian disinformation narrative its first major bump.

    The deep state had already been involved in influencing the election from the executive offices of our security organs in September. 

    Testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee, Wray told lawmakers that Russia is primarily interfering through ‘malign foreign influence in an effort to hurt Biden’s campaign’—echoing the intelligence community’s public assessment on Moscow’s meddling efforts issued last month.

    Wray’s comments come as President Donald Trump and several other top administration officials have recently attempted to play up the theory that China is meddling to get Biden elected, while downplaying well-founded reports that Russia is trying to help Trump win again, like it did in 2016.

    The Department of Justice, including Wray and others, were complicit in putting the fictional Steele dossier into play. This attempt to smear then candidate Trump during the 2016 election was commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign and propagated by the same crew now attempting to hide the Hunter story.

    There is a painful irony in creating a disinformation campaign about a fantasy of Russian disinformation to discredit a story when it is directed by people who invented a previous fake tale of Russian collusion with Trump to smear him in 2016. They failed in 2016, although not for lack of effort. The Mueller investigation into non-existent Russian collusion acted as a drag on the Trump Administration for more than two years.

    They never let go of that failure to take down Trump and now they trotted Russia out again to try and save the endangered Biden campaign.

    Russian Disinformation Round Two—October 19-20, 2020

    The first round of attempts to call the laptop story Russian disinformation fall into the crisis communications category of propaganda efforts. The real planned and coordinated campaign launched when a group of former U.S. Intelligence officials wrote an open letter claiming the story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

    Note the use of the weasel wording “all the classic earmarks.” They lawyered this letter very hard because they knew there was not an ounce of evidence that Russia had anything at all to do with the laptop But they also knew that if they abused their credibility as former members and leaders of our intelligence agencies, they would achieve the desired effect of Laptop story=Russian disinformation.

    They broke the story with a back channel from former CIA Director John Brennan to another willing palace scribe, Natasha Bertrand, then working at Politico. She was a reliable conduit for the deep state to get its messaging out, as was Politico. 

    Her story on October 19, 2020 was highly effective in launching the official deep state disinformation campaign that Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation.

    Again, the irony is so thick here it is hard even to fathom the unmitigated gall of these people. They purposely misled the American people by running the exact type of campaign they were busy falsely creating the impression the Russians were doing.

    Bertrand was an easy choice for the job of launching this, as she had been a lead member of the Trump-Russia cabal for years. She pushed every angle, trying vainly to midwife that nonexistent narrative into an actual scandal. All of that was fed by an ongoing collection of leaks from many of the same people who now signed this letter.

    The leader of this effort was John Brennan who had become so unhinged with Trump hatred he had lost the ability to pretend otherwise.

    At the same time, he was organizing this bipartisan group of supposedly unbiased “professionals,” he was giving statements like this bashing Trump regularly.

    “He’s just going to continue along this trajectory of incompetence, ineptitude, corruption, malfeasance, deceit, lying, and fueling polarization at home,” Brennan said, adding alienating allies and cozying up to dictators to the list. “And that’s just the start.”

    Former CIA operations officer Charles Faddis noted Brennan’s pivotal anti-Trump role: “Mr. Brennan is at the heart of the efforts to prevent Donald Trump from ever being president.”

    Brennan minion Nick Shapiro tried to spin the letter, saying  “the whole point was that the Russians most likely spread the information, whether it was disinformation or accurate information,” except there was zero Russian involvement of any kind. The most likely reason to call the information Russian-based was simply to discredit it.

    Not all were willing to prostitute themselves and join Brennan’s anti-Trump crusade

    A former national security official who was asked to sign the letter but declined to do so told the Washington Examiner that Brennan’s involvement with the letter was problematic because of his anti-Trump commentary and repeated claims of Trump-Russia collusion, and Brennan’s name on the letter made it look like he was running a ‘rear guard action’ as a favor to Biden.

    As a private citizen John Brennan has every right to publicly air his political preference and grievances. But he used the prestige of his previous role as CIA director to recruit fellow travelers and operate a blatant attempt to mislead the public for transparently political purposes. That is a bridge too far. 

    It enabled Joe Biden himself to make this statement at the final debate:

    Biden campaign officials also participated in the disinformation campaign, lying directly to the American public. Even the letter from the former intelligence community partisans did not state the laptop story was definitively Russian disinformation. They knew there was not a single piece of evidence showing that, and they rightly feared legal consequences.

    But members of Biden’s crew were scared enough to risk pushing lies and made definitive statements that are completely indefensible.

    Many members of the Biden campaign and future members of his administration echoed the IC letter, but Biden’s deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield went further and outright claimed the invented tale of Russian disinformation was true, insisting whenever Trump brought the topic up:

    I think we need to be very, very clear that what he’s doing here is amplifying Russian misinformation.

    The others hedged their bets by simply parroting the propaganda of the IC letter. Bedingfield made this declarative statement on a conference call with reporters and cited no proof it was true or a single piece of evidence beyond the baseless speculation that it “has all the hallmarks of Russian information operation.” 

    She clearly had nothing to justify using the language she did and it served to purposely misinform the American public.

    In a Washington Post “news” story on October 24, 2020 just after the final debate, two members of their crack journalistic crew decided to go all-in as well.

    In their story, they accused the Trump team of running a disinformation campaign.

    Director of National Intelligence Ratcliffe’s statement that the story was not Russian disinformation was interpreted broadly in the media as a partisan gesture designed to bolster a disinformation campaign launched directly by Trump’s allies, rather than a formal assessment from the U.S. intelligence community.

    The unmitigated gall to actually invent a second disinformation campaign accusation inside the existing Russian disinformation creation, when in fact they were part of the only actual disinformation campaign against the American people . . . is gobsmacking.

     They also got Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates to step out well past the facts and claim:

    We know who is behind this, and it is the same hostile foreign power whose assistance Donald Trump has repeatedly courted

    He did in fact “know who is behind this,” except it was not the Russians but the merry band of domestic propagandists of which he was a member. This was direct collusion between the Biden campaign and two Washington Post reporters to create an even bigger lie. According to them not only was the laptop story a Russian operation, but Trump’s allies were also part of the disinformation campaign as well. 

    The Washington Post also brought in a supposed expert on disinformation to bolster the fact-less nature of their own disinformation campaign. 

    In a piece on October 24, 2020 Thomas Rid said “we must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation—even if they probably aren’t.” That is an amazing statement, akin to “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” They didn’t need the story to be true, they just needed the rest of the media to treat it that way. 

    The Damage

    We will never know exactly how large an effect this unprecedented operation had on the 2020 election. But it was likely the broadest election influence conspiracy conducted by domestic entities in U.S. history.

    John Sipher, a member of the former intelligence community disinformation effort, even bragged about flipping the election in a Twitter scrap with Ric Grenell.

    Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was called to testify to Congress shortly after the election.

    While Dorsey did admit it was a mistake, he still tried to deflect from the completely obvious political bias in the case. “It was literally just a process error. This was not against them in any particular way,” Dorsey told the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

    That would be hard to believe in the best of circumstances. After four years of participating in the effort to smear President Trump for collusion with Russia, Twitter has zero credibility on the topic. Add to that the numerous instances of selective enforcement of their rules to disadvantage conservative voices and his spin falls flat.

    Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson blasted the disinformation campaign:

    My main point is that the mainstream media, their bias, their corruption, their complicity in the Russian collusion hoax, interfered with our elections. Had a far greater impact on our elections than anything Russia or China ever could hope to accomplish. But they’re never held accountable because they have to hold themselves accountable, and they are not going to do that.

    The only lesson the political Left learned was that it worked. They figured out that as long as they are the deciders of what is disinformation, they have a license to censor. 

    Multiple whistleblowers have informed Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that an FBI agent named Timothy Thibault intervened to stop any investigation into the laptop story until after the election.

    “In October 2020, an avenue of additional derogatory Hunter Biden reporting was ordered closed at the direction of ASAC Thibault,” Grassley wrote six weeks ago in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland. 

    More whistleblowers have surfaced and they all tell a tale of a politicized FBI and other state security organs being abused to attack political opponents of the Left.

    It didn’t take long for the Biden Administration to start institutionalizing this game plan with a public/private partnership. They took the election integrity banner and added the idea of domestic terrorism, then had the Department of Homeland Security include a call for thought police at the social media companies in their National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.

    These efforts speak to a broader priority: enhancing faith in government and addressing the extreme polarization, fueled by a crisis of disinformation and misinformation often channeled through social media platforms, which can tear Americans apart and lead some to violence.

    Translation: Your ideas are dangerous to our ability to aggregate state power, and we are going to shut you down. Social media companies have been censoring conservative speech very happily, and Americans have been told that’s just fine because they’re private companies. But this was a bald-faced announcement of a public-private partnership to create a national thought police.

    The Biden crew continued to expand pressure on social media. 

    In July 2021, White House press secretary Jen Psaki and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy argued that social media platforms should combat health “misinformation.” Murthy said, “We’re saying we expect more from our technology companies . . . . We’re asking them to consistently take action against misinformation super-spreaders on their platforms.” At the same press conference, Psaki said, “We are in regular touch with these social media platforms, and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff, but also members of our COVID-19 team . . . We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.” 

    This eventually led to the announcement of the DHS Disinformation Governance Board. This ill-fated attempt to actually establish a “Ministry of Truth” was a shocking—and yes, Orwellian—attempt to give the thought police official status.

    Nina Jankowicz was chosen to run the operation. Like most of the chosen disinformation specialists her actual expertise was in the creation and propagation. She has a long history of pushing the fabricated tale of Trump Russia collusion. 

    She stated: “Trump had not one, but two secret email servers to communicate with influential Russian bank. Unbelievable.”

    Fact was he had zero servers and this was pure disinformation.

    The outcry was immediate—and for once, effective—delaying the launch and finally trashing the whole idea. In a case of multilevel propaganda and gobsmacking irony, Jankowicz tried to claim the demise of her role as Big Sister before it even began was itself due to disinformation.

    We’re not just talking about speech that happens to be inconvenient for someone’s political viewpoint. Disinformation is false or misleading information spread with malign intent. In this case, the intent would be to hurt or harm the American people. That’s the type of stuff that we were looking at: where disinformation had a nexus with offline action. So violence or making people unsafe in some way.

    The idea is to help people understand how these techniques of manipulation look when they encounter them online. To help people recognize when they’re being manipulated or when they’re being scammed.

    We can’t for a second think that they have abandoned their efforts to control our information space. They will simply conduct the same operations in existing parts of our security apparatus. It is up to us to find and dismantle those as well.

    The Counterattack

    This was perhaps the most complete conspiracy to conduct a disinformation campaign designed to influence a U.S. election, ever. The Federal Election Commission (FEC), Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) must promulgate rules that require companies that control a large enough amount of our shared information space to operate with a presumption of free speech.

    Yes, this is government intervention into the operations of private corporations, but we have just laid out how dangerous they can be without some oversight. 

    We would not let the power company refuse service to customers based on political orientation, and the major information operators should have no right to do so, either. Google and Facebook control a majority of the online advertising market. That gives them outsized power and they use it to strangle competitors. They also use it to put their left-leaning filter on all information they provide.

    The legal avenues to change this are challenging, but not impossible. The first thing we have to do is file as many lawsuits in as many venues as possible and make the Left defend them. We can make it too damaging to the corporate boards and investors to allow these woke corporations to run rampant.

    There are also increasing opportunities to file consumer-based suits based on breach of contract and failure of the tech firms to fairly apply their own rules. Giving users some ownership over content they create can be done at the state level as well.

    The lawsuit by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana against the Biden Administration is a great example of lawfare. They allege collusion between tech and government actors to have the tech tyrants act to censor things the government cannot. This abridges the free speech of the citizens of their states. This suit survived a challenge on standing and was awarded expedited discovery for a potential injunction.

    Conclusion

    The conspiracy to hide Hunter’s laptop was the largest censorship and disinformation campaign ever conducted to influence a U.S. election. All elements of the political Left combined to stop this story and mislead the American public. They censored the facts about Biden family corruption, then created and propagated a disinformation campaign to falsely convince the American public the laptop was Russian disinformation.

    This shameless operation was successful.

    After they achieved their goal, most of the major media outlets have been forced to admit the truth about the laptop. Not because some new information came out, but because their lies and obfuscation were about to be revealed, as we have shown here. 

    Many on the political Right worked tirelessly to expose this corruption, which would have otherwise been swept under the rug. But we must also work just as hard to ensure the Left can never mount this type of propaganda effort again. The American people cannot safely operate our republic if they have an information space that is controlled by malign forces.

    The challenge now is to expose and dismantle this control and establish an information space based on free speech. We must have a marketplace of ideas and let the best ones win. 

    *  *  *

    For more on this developing story, check out the embedded video below:

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

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/17/2022 – 18:20

  • Xi-Biden Meeting At G20 Reported To Be In Peril As Beijing 'Stonewalling' Preparation
    Xi-Biden Meeting At G20 Reported To Be In Peril As Beijing ‘Stonewalling’ Preparation

    The Biden White House has been looking for openings toward maintaining ways to cooperate productively with China, particularly on key issues such as climate change, despite ongoing tensions in the South China Sea and over the simmering Taiwan issue. 

    But these efforts appear to be in peril, Politico has reported, as the Chinese side is said to be stonewalling preparations for a crucial upcoming face-to-face meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali set for mid-November.

    “Beijing won’t engage with U.S. officials trying to draft an agenda for the meeting, according to a person familiar with the planning — a move that could prevent it from happening at all,” Politico wrote in the recent report.

    Image: Associated Press

    The latest US statements and actions regarding trade, on China’s human rights record, as well as Taiwan – including continuing preparations for major weapons packages – has reportedly frustrated and outraged Beijing officials to the point that China might back out of the G20 Xi-Biden meeting altogether.

    The latest salvo from early last month was an announced $1.1 billion arms sale package for Taiwan approved by the Biden administration, marking no less than the sixth major defense package under Biden. The New York Times soon after the massive new arms package was announced observed that the US is seeking to turn Taiwan into a “giant weapons depot”.

    While neither China’s foreign ministry nor its embassy in Washington has given official comment, one diplomat privy to the behind-the-scene signaling explained the following: 

    “Normally, when you have a presidential bilat you start working out the agenda quite a while in advance, but Chinese diplomats are saying, ‘You guys whack us every other day — if that is the environment, how can we expect a positive outcome from a Xi-Biden meeting?‘” a person briefed by Chinese officials on the planning told POLITICO.

    “If they can’t have a positive outcome, their view is ‘should we even have the meeting?‘” the person said. The individual was granted anonymity to prevent possible reprisals for speaking publicly about the bilateral spat.

    However, the US side did respond to growing rumors and reports that Beijing is stonewalling…

    “This story is 100 percent false,” a National Security Council’s top spokesperson, was quoted by Politico as saying. “We’ve already said the two presidents tasked out their teams to look into a meeting. I won’t get beyond that though in terms of timing and location as of now.” And yet at least one diplomat involved in the planning admitted under anonymity that a G20 meeting between Biden and Xi is “still not confirmed”. 

    Related to diplomatic uncertainty at the G20 is also Russia and the plans of Vladimir Putin. His attendance is still entirely unclear despite positive signals from months ago that he’s set on going. But Moscow’s growing isolation on the world stage due to its unpopular war in Ukraine means Putin is unlikely to want to face potentially embarrassing situations such as being shunned by other world leaders, or the likelihood that he’d be continually put on the spot by the international press corps during the summit.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/17/2022 – 18:00

  • States Seek To Depose Fauci, Other Top Officials In Big Tech–Government Censorship Case
    States Seek To Depose Fauci, Other Top Officials In Big Tech–Government Censorship Case

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

    Plaintiffs in the high-profile case that’s uncovered evidence of big tech companies and government officials colluding to censor users are seeking to depose 10 top officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci.

    The attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri and other plaintiffs asked a U.S. court in a recent motion to allow them to depose Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser; FBI special agent Elvis Chan, former White House press secretary and current MSNBC pundit Jen Psaki, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, a Biden appointee; and Rob Flaherty, deputy assistant to the president.

    They also want to question five other officials, including Carol Crawford, chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Digital Media Branch.

    While emails and other documents uncovered in discovery have revealed an “enormous and far-reaching” censorship enterprise, the discovery “makes very clear that federal officials have frequently engaged in their most telling and probative communications with social media companies orally, not in writing,” plaintiffs said in a joint statement with defendants.

    “Perhaps not surprisingly, the more senior the federal official involved, the more likely they appear to have been to rely on oral, rather than written, communications to pressure social-media platforms to censor,” the statement also said.

    Fauci, for instance, communicated in a long-shielded phone call with some scientists who went on to write a paper castigating others who were open to the theory that the COVID-19 virus came from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, where the first COVID-19 cases were detected.

    Fauci was also in touch with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, but the content of oral communications between the two “is yet to be revealed,” the new filing, dated Oct. 14, says.

    Fauci has not made any statements under oath about his communications with big tech firms like Facebook, despite the judge overseeing the case ordering the government to provide answers from Fauci to questions, plaintiffs said.

    Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, the lead plaintiffs and both Republicans, announced recently they planned to seek depositions but had not identified any officials who they would seek to depose.

    Proposed Schedule

    Plaintiffs want U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee overseeing the case, to greenlight the 10 requested depositions. If Doughty agrees, the depositions would take place during a 30-day window.

    Doughty already agreed to the plaintiff’s request to expedite discovery. That led to the production of hundreds of pages of documents, which bolstered plaintiff claims of Big Tech–government collusion.

    In that order, Doughty said plaintiffs could alert defendants to any depositions plaintiffs wished to take, and that the parties would then meet to confer on any deposition requests.

    If the parties did not agree on the depositions, then they were to file a joint statement outlining their differences.

    Doughty has seven days to rule on the new filing, which included objections from the government.

    …

    Plaintiffs said the arguments in opposition were meritless and should be rejected.

    The descriptions of some officials as too “high-level” to be deposed is outweighed by the fact that the officials all have firsthand knowledge of the matter and the information they hold cannot be obtained elsewhere, plaintiffs said, referring to a ruling in a separate case, United States v. Newman.

    …

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/17/2022 – 17:40

  • Crypto Adoption Continues: Mastercard To Debut Product To Help Buy Digital Assets Through Bank Accounts
    Crypto Adoption Continues: Mastercard To Debut Product To Help Buy Digital Assets Through Bank Accounts

    Dare we say the adoption of crypto looks like it is…accelerating?

    Mastercard is now joining the ranks of a number of other major institutions now playing a role in helping plug crypto into the mainstream, announcing this week that they are debuting a service that is going to allow consumers to buy and sell digital assets through their bank accounts.

    Banks had traditionally been hesitant to offer such services to their retail customers, as much of the crypto world remains in a state of regulatory limbo. Mastercard could wind up speeding up adoption, as they have “thousands of bank partners”. 

    The service, called “Crypto Source”, is going to be offered as part of a partnership with Paxos, according to a Bloomberg report. The report says the service could pave the way for “thousands of finance firms to offer crypto trading for the first time”. 

    Paxos’ role will be to “provide virtual currency trading and custody services on behalf of the banks”, according to the report. It’ll debut in the US, Israel and Brazil, according to Ajay Bhalla, Mastercard’s president of cyber and intelligence.

    MasterCard already has a history of crypto adoption, announcing earlier this year that it would be bringing on 500 new people to expand staff that are tied to crypto. It also partnered with Bakkt earlier this year to help banks offer crypto rewards on their credit and debt cards. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/17/2022 – 17:20

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Oct 17

Today’s News 17th October 2022

  • EU Prosecutor Opens Probe Into COVID Vaccine Purchases
    EU Prosecutor Opens Probe Into COVID Vaccine Purchases

    Two weeks after Pfizer CEO bailed on EU testimony in the wake of a report highlighting a ‘secretive’ vaccine deal between himself and European Commission President Ursula ‘missing texts‘ von der Leyen, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) has opened an investigation into the EU’s Covid-19 vaccine purchases, Politico reports.

    EPPO, and independent EU body, is responsible for investigating and prosecuting financial crimes, including fraud, money laundering and corruption, according to the report. In its Friday announcement, the body did not specify who was being investigated, or which contracts were the subject of inquiry.

    That said, two other watchdog agencies have brought attention to the von der Leyen – Bourla deal.

    “This exceptional confirmation comes after the extremely high public interest. No further details will be made public at this stage,” said the EPPO.

    In April 2021, the New York Times first reported on text messages exchanged between von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in the run-up to the EU’s biggest vaccine procurement contract — for up to 1.8 billion doses of BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine. The deal would be worth up to €35 billion if fully exercised, according to leaked vaccine prices.

    In January this year, the EU’s ombudsman charged the Commission with maladministration for failing to look for the text messages in response to a freedom of information request. Without confirming the existence of the texts, the Commission argued in its response that “short-lived, ephemeral documents are not kept.” It said that a search for the text messages hadn’t yielded any results. -Politico

    Last month, the European Court of Auditors published the aforementioned report in which it said the Commission refused transparency regarding details of von der Leyen’s personal role in the Pfizer contract.

    In it, the budget watchdog found that the EU chief went rogue in order to personally hammer out a preliminary deal with Pfizer, instead of relying on joint negotiating teams. While the Commission has been forthcoming with other vaccine contracts, it has refused to provide the court with any documents regarding those preliminary negotiations.

    According to Belgian Socialist MEP Kathleen van Brempt, “several aspects” of the Pfizer contract should be investigated, including “the text messages between the Commission President and the fact that there is no paper trail of the preliminary negotiations in first instance.”

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

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsAccording to Politico, “The MEP chairs the European Parliament’s special committee on COVID-19,” adding that both the EU’s ombudsman and a member of the European Court of Auditors have made appearances before the panel.

    “The [COVID-19] committee will be following this case with great attention,” said Van Brempt.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/17/2022 – 02:45

  • Global Tensions Rise Over Russia And Ukraine – What Happens Next?
    Global Tensions Rise Over Russia And Ukraine – What Happens Next?

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

    There comes a point in the lifespan of any economic or political analysis when most of your observations or predictions either become mostly wrong, or mostly right. If you have done your job properly through due diligence, research and applied practical insight, then you will be in a position to point out why the dominoes are falling. People have to understand how these events were predictable so that they can prepare better in the future.

    The mainstream media, politicians and global banks will tell the public that “no one could have seen these events coming.” This is a lie. Some of us in the alternative fields did see them coming and with considerable clarity. The establishment and their defenders don’t want you to know that. They will deny up and down that we predicted anything; they’ll claim that we don’t exist, that our analysis never happened, or as a last ditch effort they’ll claim that they saw it all coming before we did.

    The mainstream officials and analysts have to maintain their image of public authority, and they can’t do that if “upstarts” in the alternative arena are constantly right while they are constantly wrong. They have all the fancy Ivy League degrees, after all.

    In my article ‘The Globalist Reset Agenda Has Failed – Is Ukraine Plan B?’, published in January of this year, I outlined why I believed that a war between Ukraine and Russia was the most likely crisis to follow after the hype of the covid pandemic faded away.

    In my article ‘Ukraine Learns The Value Of An Armed Citizenry, But Far Too Late’ I argued the high probability that NATO troops were already on the ground in the region and not just as advisors. According to mounting evidence it is clear that western troops are active in Ukraine and that US and European intel are essentially running the war. In some cases this has been openly admitted. And why wouldn’t they be running the war? It’s being fought entirely with NATO money and NATO weapons.

    Then, recently I predicted that the Kremlin was poised to shift strategies, rather than trying to hold larger swaths of territory I believed they would instead seek to use a “tenderizing” strategy and destroy the bulk of Ukrainian infrastructure, specifically electricity and water grids. In my article ‘Escalation: Recent Events Suggest Mounting Economic Danger’ published a month ago I stated that:

    “With the amount of propaganda coming from Ukrainian Intelligence and NATO, it’s hard to say what is actually happening, but I suspect Russia is changing strategies and repositioning to deploy missile and artillery bombardment of infrastructure, including power grids and water.”

    “This is a tactic that Russia has avoided for months, which is surprising because one of the first measures usually taken by the US during an invasion is to eliminate most key infrastructure (as we did in Iraq). You would think Russia would have done the same, but perhaps they were saving that scenario for winter when it is harder for Ukraine to cope…This would make Ukraine essentially unlivable in the coming winter for most of the population.”

    This past week my latest prediction came true, with Russia now striking multiple infrastructure targets using cruise missiles and drones and taking down at least 60% of Ukraine’s electrical grids. These grids are now rerouted to provide SOME power to the affected regions, but in the best case scenario they are only able to be active for 5 hours a day. Kyiv city authorities called on residents and businesses to limit electricity consumption from 5pm until 10pm and urged owners of advertising signs to turn off their lights during this time.

    Ukraine has halted all energy exports to Europe in response to the grid damage. Meaning, the EU just lost even more of their primary energy resources on top of the loss of Russian gas and oil.

    Some people might claim that the missile attacks were impromptu and were only triggered by the partial destruction of the Kerch Bridge by a Ukrainian truck bomb. This is false. According to Ben Hodges, a retired U.S. general, the intensity and volume of the attacks indicated they were planned well in advance of the weekend’s explosion on a bridge linking Russia and annexed Crimea. Meaning, Russia was going to strike Ukraine infrastructure regardless.

    But what does all this mean, and what happens next?

    My track record on the crisis has been accurate so far, but you don’t need a crystal ball to see where this situation is headed. First and foremost, the propaganda war is going to go into high gear, with Russia widely condemned for “genocide” as Ukraine civilians face a long winter with little to no electricity and minimal clean water.

    To put this in perspective, however, when the US invaded Iraq for the second time during Operation Iraqi Freedom, we annihilated most vital grid resources and left millions of Iraqis without power or water. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died during the war, many of them due to lack of basic necessities. So, we need to be careful about how we throw around the word “genocide,” our glass house breaks just as easily as any other.

    I would remind readers that I have no personal interest in either side of this conflict, I’m only interested in the facts on the ground and how they affect the rest of the world and America in particular. I don’t trust Vladimir Putin with his long running ties to globalists in the WEF and his friendship with Henry Kissinger, and I certainly don’t trust the puppet government in Ukraine. I suspect this conflict has been instigated to the benefit of global elitists, and I gave all my reasons why at the very beginning of the war.

    I would also remind readers that not long ago there was an aggressive push by Democrats and some GOP Neo-cons to get the American public to support deep US involvement and possibly open troop deployments to Ukraine. This attempt failed for the most part, but they will try again as the conflict escalates. Words like “genocide” are used liberally by propagandists to induce emotional outrage, but these people are rarely honest.

    That’s not to say Ukraine isn’t facing disaster, far from it. Until now, they have enjoyed amenities which are rarely available to a country in the midst of invasion, including power and internet communications. This is now changing. As grid systems continue to fail or be destroyed by targeted strikes it is inevitable that millions more Ukrainians will seek to leave the region as refugees to neighboring countries. The influx will definitely create a humanitarian crisis.

    Furthermore, the calls by NATO governments for direct intervention will increase to a constant roar and the mainstream media will try to amplify the saber rattling as much as possible.

    Ukraine will turn to more asymmetric strikes within Russia, using multiple guerrilla or terrorist actions, more so to elicit a wider response from Russia that might lure America and the EU into open engagement.

    Russia will simply bide their time. They are facing minimal economic pressure given they are enjoying an explosion in energy profits and their close trade ties with China and India. All Putin has to do is wait for the NATO weapons and money to run out, which they will, sooner rather than later. From a strategic perspective, it makes sense for Russia to continue targeted strikes rather than trying to grab more territory. That said, a prolonged conflict also helps the establishment as a distraction from the economic crisis that they have caused.

    Putin would never admit it, but the Russian presence in Ukraine serves many globalist interests.

    The biggest question on everyone’s mind is of course if this will lead to a nuclear event? If we are talking about a global nuclear war, then I think not. If we are talking about a limited regional strike, such as one or two weapons, then yes, the chances are high.

    The automatic assumption people will make is that if one nuclear bomb goes off, then ALL the nuclear bombs will go off. This is not necessarily true. A regional strike, most likely by Russia or at least blamed on Russia, would actually be beneficial to globalist interests who could use the image of a mushroom cloud over Ukraine as a tool of ultimate fear and panic. The public might be more malleable and controllable if they thought evil Russians with nukes are about to erase them.

    An actual global nuke exchange would NOT be so advantageous for the establishment, as the outcome would be completely unpredictable and the vast infrastructure they have spent generations building would be eliminated in the blink of an eye. I think the globalists will do everything in their power to avoid a worldwide nuclear calamity, but they would certainly try to use the threat to their advantage.

    Ukraine’s energy crisis will dovetail with Europe’s impending energy crisis this winter and I doubt there will be many countries in the EU that will avoid economic and supply chain breakdowns. The extent of the crisis will be determined by the harshness of the winter.

    As far as America is concerned, I continue to worry most about political optics. I am already seeing a narrative floating around social media platforms that conservatives are complicit with Russia and that in some cases groups that stand against the draconian policies of the establishment and the Biden Administration are actually “Russian agents.”

    The strategy here is so transparent it’s almost laughable. As Biden continues to overstep and continues to beat his war drums against half the US population, the claim will be that those of us who respond or resist are not “freedom fighters,” but paid Russian saboteurs. Even those of us that have been fighting this fight for decades will be accused of “treason” and “insurrection” instead of simply defending ourselves against tyranny.

    The time is coming for the ultimate gaslighting of the American citizenry – They will try to take away our freedoms and everything we have and accuse us of being villains and foreign agents at the same time. This IS the endgame of the East/West paradigm, at least for Americans. But, if we can see it coming then we can at least prepare for it and warn as many people as possible before it happens.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/17/2022 – 02:00

  • Hopkins: The Gaslighting Of The Masses
    Hopkins: The Gaslighting Of The Masses

    Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

    For students of official propaganda, mind control, emotional coercion, and other insidious manipulation techniques, the rollout of the New Normal has been a bonanza. Never before have we been able to observe the application and effects of these powerful technologies in real-time on such a massive scale.

    In a little over two and a half years, our collective “reality” has been radically revised. Our societies have been radically restructured. Millions (probably billions) of people have been systematically conditioned to believe a variety of patently ridiculous assertions, assertions based on absolutely nothing, repeatedly disproved by widely available evidence, but which have nevertheless attained the status of facts. An entire fictitious history has been written based on those baseless and ridiculous assertions. It will not be unwritten easily or quickly.

    I am not going to waste your time debunking those assertions. They have been repeatedly, exhaustively debunked. You know what they are and you either believe them or you don’t. Either way, reviewing and debunking them again isn’t going to change a thing.

    Instead, I want to focus on one particularly effective mind-control technology, one that has done a lot of heavy lifting throughout the implementation of the New Normal and is doing a lot of heavy-lifting currently. I want to do that because many people mistakenly believe that mind-control is either (a) a “conspiracy theory” or (b) something that can only be achieved with drugs, microwaves, surgery, torture, or some other invasive physical means. Of course, there is a vast and well-documented history of the use of such invasive physical technologies (see, e.g., the history of the CIA’s infamous MKULTRA program), but in many instances mind-control can be achieved through much less elaborate techniques.

    One of the most basic and effective techniques that cults, totalitarian systems, and individuals with fascistic personalities use to disorient and control people’s minds is “gaslighting.” You’re probably familiar with the term. If not, here are a few definitions:

    “the manipulation of another person into doubting their perceptions, experiences, or understanding of events.” American Psychological Association

    “an insidious form of manipulation and psychological control. Victims of gaslighting are deliberately and systematically fed false information that leads them to question what they know to be true, often about themselves. They may end up doubting their memory, their perception, and even their sanity.” Psychology Today

    “a form of psychological manipulation in which the abuser attempts to sow self-doubt and confusion in their victim’s mind. Typically, gaslighters are seeking to gain power and control over the other person, by distorting reality and forcing them to question their own judgment and intuition.” Newport Institute

    The main goal of gaslighting is to confuse, coerce, and emotionally manipulate your victim into abandoning their own perception of reality and accepting whatever new “reality” you impose on them. Ultimately, you want to completely destroy their ability to trust their own perception, emotions, reasoning, and memory of historical events, and render them utterly dependent on you to tell them what is real and what “really” happened, and so on, and how they should be feeling about it.

    Anyone who has ever experienced gaslighting in the context of an abusive relationship, or a cult, or a totalitarian system, or who has worked in a battered women’s shelter, can tell you how powerful and destructive it is. In the most extreme cases, the victims of gaslighting are entirely stripped of their sense of self and surrender their individual autonomy completely. Among the best-known and most dramatic examples are the Patty Hearst case, Jim Jones’ People’s Temple, the Manson family, and various other cults, but, the truth is, gaslighting happens every day, out of the spotlight of the media, in countless personal and professional relationships.

    Since the Spring of 2020, we have been subjected to official gaslighting on an unprecedented scale. In a sense, the “Apocalyptic Pandemic” PSYOP has been one big extended gaslighting campaign (comprising countless individual instances of gaslighting) inflicted on the masses throughout the world. The events of this past week were just another example.

    Basically, what happened was, a Pfizer executive confirmed to the European Parliament last Monday that Pfizer did not know whether its Covid “vaccine” prevented transmission of the virus before it was promoted as doing exactly that and forced on the masses in December of 2020. People saw the video of the executive admitting this, or heard about it, and got upset. They tweeted and Facebooked and posted videos of Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, Bill Gates, the Director of the CDC, official propagandists like Rachel Maddow, and various other “experts” and “authorities” blatantly lying to the public, promising people that getting “vaccinated” would “prevent transmission,” “protect other people from infection,” “stop the virus in its tracks,” and so on, which totally baseless assertions (i.e., lies) were the justification for the systematic segregation and persecution of “the Unvaccinated,” and the fomenting of mass fanatical hatred of anyone challenging the official “vaccine” narrative, and the official New Normal ideology, which hatred persists to this very day.

    The New Normal propaganda apparatus (i.e., the corporate media, health “experts,” et al.) responded to the story predictably. They ignored it, hoping it would just go away. When it didn’t, they rolled out the “fact-checkers” (i.e., gaslighters).

    The Associated Press, Reuters, PolitiFact, and other official gaslighting outfits immediately published lengthy official “fact-checks” that would make a sophist blush. Read them and you will see what I mean. They are perfect examples of official gaslighting, crafted to distract you from the point and suck you into an argument over meaningless details and definitions. They sound exactly like Holocaust deniers pathetically asserting that there is no written proof that Hitler ordered the Final Solution … which, there isn’t, but it doesn’t fucking matter. Of course Hitler ordered the Final Solution, and of course they lied about the “vaccines.”

    The Internet is swimming with evidence of their lies … tweets, videos, articles, and so on.

    Which is what makes gaslighting so frustrating for people who believe they are engaged in an actual good-faith argument over facts and the truth. But that’s not how totalitarianism works. The New Normals, when they repeat whatever the authorities have instructed them to repeat today (e.g., “trust the Science,” “safe and effective,” “no one ever claimed they would prevent transmission”), could not care less whether it is actually true, or even if it makes the slightest sense.

    These gaslighting “fact-checks” are not meant to convince them that anything is true or false. And they are certainly not meant to convince us. They are official scripts, talking points, and thought-terminating clichés for the New Normals to repeat, like cultists chanting mantras at you to shut off their minds and block out anything that contradicts or threatens the “reality” of the cult.

    You can present them with the actual facts, and they will smile knowingly, and deny them to your face, and condescendingly mock you for not “seeing the truth.”

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

    But here’s the tricky thing about gaslighting.

    In order to effectively gaslight someone, you have be in a position of authority or wield some other form of power over them.

    They have to need something vital from you (i.e., sustenance, safety, financial security, community, career advancement, or just love). You can’t walk up to some random stranger on the street and start gaslighting them. They will laugh in your face.

    The reason the New Normal authorities have been able to gaslight the masses so effectively is that most of the masses do need something from them … a job, food, shelter, money, security, status, their friends, a relationship, or whatever it is they’re not willing to risk by challenging those in power and their lies. Gaslighters, cultists, and power freaks, generally, know this. It is what they depend on, your unwillingness to live without whatever it is. They zero in on it and threaten you with the loss of it (sometimes consciously, sometimes just intuitively).

    Gaslighting won’t work if you are willing to give up whatever the gaslighter is threatening to take from you (or stop giving you, as the case may be), but you have to be willing to actually lose it, because you will be punished for defending yourself, for not surrendering your autonomy and integrity, and conforming to the “reality” of the cult, or the abusive relationship, or the totalitarian system.

    I have described the New Normal (i.e., our new “reality”) as pathologized-totalitarianism, and as a “a cult writ large, on a societal scale.” I used the “Covidian Cult” analogy because every totalitarian system essentially operates like a cult, the main difference being that, in totalitarian systems, the balance of power between the cult and the normal (i.e., dominant) society is completely inverted. The cult becomes the dominant (i.e., “normal”) society, and non-cult-members become its “deviants.”

    We do not want to see ourselves as “deviants” (because we haven’t changed, the society has), and our instinct is to reject the label, but that is exactly what we are … deviants. People who deviate from the norm, a new norm, which we reject, and oppose, but which, despite that, is nonetheless the norm, and thus we are going to be regarded and dealt with like deviants.

    I am such a deviant. I have a feeling you are too. Under the circumstances, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. On the contrary, we need to accept it, and embrace it. Above all, we need to get clear about it, about where we stand in this new “reality.”

    We are heading toward New Normal Winter No. 3. They are already cranking up the official propaganda, jacking up the fabricated “cases,” talking about reintroducing mask-mandates, fomenting mass hatred of “the Unvaccinated,” and so on. People’s gas bills and doubling and tripling. The global-capitalist ruling classes are openly embracing neo-Nazis. There is talk of “limited” nuclear war. Fanaticism, fear, and hatred abound. The gaslighting of the masses is not abating. It is increasing. The suppression of dissent is intensifying. The demonization of non-conformity is intensifying. Lines are being drawn in the sand. You see it and feel it just like I do.

    Get clear on what’s essential to you. Get clear about what you’re willing to lose. Stay deviant. Stay frosty. This isn’t over.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/16/2022 – 23:30

  • Goldman Trader: I Said "This Reminds Me Of 2008" More Times This Week Than I Can Remember
    Goldman Trader: I Said “This Reminds Me Of 2008” More Times This Week Than I Can Remember

    Over the weekend, we discussed that the probability of another sharp leg lower on Monday after Friday’s panicked reversal of Thursday’s furious gains is extremely low (in fact it’s likely that we will get yet another squeeze), if only due to technicals and positioning as hedge funds doubled-down on short aggressively into Friday’s dump while overall hedge fund net leverage fell to the lowest level since Mar ’20.

    And if that isn’t enough, Sundial Capital’s Jason Goepfert pointed out something far more startling: “Last week, retail traders bought $19.9 billion worth of puts to open. They bought only $6.5 billion in calls to open. This is the first time in history that puts were 3x calls.“

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

    Translation: the massive Delta hedge unwind that sent futures explosively higher on Thursday after the dismal CPI print is back even bigger than before, and just waiting for the signal to unwind the dealer delta hedge that will send futures soaring higher.

    Still, as we discussed yesterday, while technicals point to a rollercoaster reversal on Monday as we get another overshorted, oversold rally on Monday and we may get a powerful bear market rally in November that pushes stocks to 4,000 or higher by year end, “the bear market won’t end until the Fed pivots. The timing of that still remains to be determined, however after the midterm elections when the political blinders drop, we expect that the full – and dire – picture of the US labor market will finally emerge and shock everyone, especially the Fed.”

    Until then, however, the bear market will be alive and raging, and it is this part of the market cycle that Goldman flow trader, Matt Fleury, who has been one of the most vocal bears on the bank’s trading desk, focuses on not only the bear market that is yet to come but also on the Mother of all bear markets, the Global Financial Crisis.

    As he writes in his latest note, titled “Adult Swim” (available to pro subs in the usual place), “I said “this reminds me of 2008” more times this week than I can remember. The velocity of moves is increasing. The pace of tremors quickening.”

    Below we excerpt from Fleury’s must-read note, published with quite a bit of urgency late on Saturday night ahead of what is shaping up to be another hair-raising week, at a time when as Bank of America warned that “Liquidity Breaks And Credit Freezes” as its Credit Dysfunction Indicator Breaches The Critical Zone. In short, all hell may be about to break loose.

    The year when you started in this business shapes you. I started in 2006 at Bear Stearns with a Bachelor & Masters in how good the economy of Ireland was during the Celtic Tiger. Quite a baptism.

    If you started in this business after 2009, all you know is a ‘buy the dip’ market, all you know is a Fed that has your back. You have got glimpses of crashing bear markets. But never rolling bear markets.

    A crashing bear market is like swimming in shallow water; eventually you put your feet down and its ok, and there is a lifeguard on duty (the Fed) who is there to save you.

    A rolling bear market is deep water swimming, with no lifeguard.

    That’s what we are in. A rolling bear market.

    The pain trade is lower. It’s always lower.

    I get in this debate all the time, and it’s usually with people who started after 2009. It’s a pain trade to watch your friends lose their entire net worth because they never sold a Bear Stearns share. It’s a pain trade to watch your parents lose what money they had saved their whole lives which were in Irish bank shares when they went under.

    It is not a pain trade when a hedge fund returns +0.5% on a given day and the market is 2%. They get paid on that +0.5%.

    The pain trade is lower, and I do not believe we have seen the worst yet. Sample conversation on the trading floor:

     

    “Matt, but everyone is bearish.”

     

    “Yes, but those same people have their entire net worth ex their homes in equities.”

    “Oh.”

    Liquidity is tightening

     

    “Earnings don’t move the overall market; it’s the Federal Reserve Board… focus on the central banks, and focus on the movement of liquidity… most people in the market are looking for earnings and conventional measures. It’s liquidity that moves market.” – Stan Druckenmiller

     

    The Fed’s continued aggressive pace of hikes is causing unexpected knock on effects. I was certainly not aware of how levered the UK LDI pensions were. This had an eerie feel to me of the Bear Stearns hedge funds that went down in 2007 and all I could think of “what else is out there we don’t know about?”

    The inflation reading in the US was undoubtedly bearish for risk assets.

    There was an oversold/technical bounce which was swiftly sold. Ironically this is exactly what I was looking for last month which turned out to be a very strong candidate for worst call of the year.

    It is noticeable however how these bounces are getting shorter and shorter. This makes me very uneasy.

    The mark of a bear market is large intraday trading ranges. H/t Matt Kaplan for the chart, which I think is a good illustration of when you get wide intraday trading ranges, it tends to be in the depths of bear markets. Based on history, there is certainly more scope for these to increase in frequency.

    Here are a few headlines which caught my eye this week in my inbox for GIR’s excellent econ team. A worrying theme:

    • Poland: Large Inflation Increase in September Confirmed, As Underlying Inflation Reaccelerates
    • USA: Core CPI Inflation Jumps to 6.6% on Service-Sector Strength
    • Romania: Inflation Rises by 0.6pp to +15.9%yoy, Surprising Expectations to the Upside
    • India: CPI inflation increased in September driven by higher food prices
    • USA: Producer Prices Above Expectations In September
    • Hungary: Sharp Rise in Inflation on Household Energy Price Hike, And Underlying Inflation Rises Further
    • Asia in Focus: ASEAN-5 Inflation Outlook: Higher For Longer

    Within the US there is an increased focus on sticky inflation. The transition from goods consumption to services consumption kicks off labor demand and wages drive shelter inflation which is sticky.

    Here is the 12mo Atlanta Sticky-Price CPI:

    GIR breaks this move from goods to services down nicely:

    The Fed’s hands are tied here and the terminal rate which the market is pricing continues to move higher.

    If you are waiting for the Fed to pivot and save you, I point you towards the 2024 dots.

    I am of the opinion that the Fed has already made one error by not moving quick enough to hike rates, is now compounding that error, and is also making it up as they go along. They will stay the course into 2023 at least.

    The market is leading the Fed, and it is moving ever higher.

    This hawkish impulse has been a consistent headwind for equities and I don’t see that stalling in the near term.

    Putting the UK in the rearview mirror

    For quite some time S&P futures have moved hand in hand with Britcoin (GBP), but that seems to be breaking as the events within the UK take almost circus like turns.

    I do believe the live cam of “who will last longer?” of Liz Truss versus a head of lettuce (LINK) will mark the “peak UK fears” for stock operators.

    Rolling bears

    These are what rolling bears look like. This is the environment we are in.

    I have seen a lot of talk about the 200wk moving average acting as support. Well yes, it does aside from in rolling bear markets. 200wk MA with Fed support:

    But when it breaks in rolling bears, it is ugly:

    Corporate Finance 101

    These are the MSFT bonds on Bloomberg. Let’s call it a 5% average. You can debate the attractiveness of owning a 23x MSFT P/E vs its bond at 5%.

    But a more important question right now, if the market deems MSFT paper should yield 5%, where will it price lower quality company debt when they need to come to market?? 10%? 12%?

    This is the GIR estimate for net corporate demand in 2023.

    Question for the upcoming conference calls:

    “Hey great quarter guys. Mr. CFO, in this backdrop, with your cash yielding ~4%, are you really buying back stock? And where do you think you would be able to issue debt in the current environment?”

    In difficult times, corporate issuance ramps up. I will be watching to see how companies choose to fund themselves in 2023 – via debt or via equity issuance.

    Additionally, there has been a lot of money that flowed into dividend funds – surely that can now buy some high quality IG paper?

    Similarly, is there a home to be found for fallen heroes? This is the market value of AAPL + AMZN + GOOGL + MSFT. That looks like a break.

    What am I watching this week?

    Liquidity remains poor. Top of book depth:

    I call this chart the “potential for destruction” – it is top of book depth normalized by 1mo implied vol. It’s as bad now as it was in March 2020.

    Overlaying top of book depth in futures vs 1mo 95/105 risk reversals, it will tell you that it is now worse:

    Intraday vol is picking up:

    Puts are not helping as much as they could. This is the 100d SPX % change vs SPX 25dp change in vol points. If hedges aren’t working, degrossing is more likely.

    This was the chart from Thursday of intraday SPX move vs Vix level (h/t Cullen Morgan):

    This could change soon. I sent around some thoughts to those on my direct mailing list. Options volume is exploding. The tail is wagging the dog.

    More daily notional calls traded in SPX on Thursday than ever before.

    The 5dma of $put notional is ever climbing. It now dwarfs 2008/9 when dealers hands were less tied due to banking regulation and risks they could absorb.

    Levered ETF volumes are picking up, and SOXL (Semis 3x levered ETF) is the centre of attention. $10bn+ daily rebalances at the close in this ETF are common place now.

    These are not healthy undercurrents. And the Fed’s hands are tied due to the inflation set up.

    The Fed pivot will come, but when it comes the Fed pivot will be bearish. It is my view they will be forced to pivot because inflation is coming down due to a cardiac arrest in economic activity. 

    It is somewhat ironic that a Fed pivot is both part of the bull and bear case.

    I do not believe we have seen the full pain of a Fed tightening this quickly yet.

    Where are the bankruptcies? Where are the private mark downs? Who owns too much illiquid assets that haven’t had a real mark in years? Where are the over levered homebuilders going under?

    The UK LDI pensions look like the first domino to me. The old regime of a central bank supported market is gone. And many business models that were spawned in that era will be tested.

    This also comes at a time when the west has no allies in Opec for the first time since inception as the US drains the SPR (potential for oil price to stay elevated further causing headaches for the Fed?), and geopolitical tensions with China potentially impacting future global growth (see escalation on semiconductors late this week).

    Good luck out there; it is adult swim, and there is no liFEguarD.

    The full note available to pro subs.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/16/2022 – 23:00

  • Igor Danchenko Trial Revelations: Team Mueller’s Obstruction
    Igor Danchenko Trial Revelations: Team Mueller’s Obstruction

    Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

    On Friday, Special Counsel John Durham finished presenting evidence in the Igor Danchenko trial.

    The most damning part of the day, if not the trial? Testimony that FBI supervisors within the Mueller Special Counsel refused requests to interview a source for the Steele Dossier: longtime Democrat activist Charles Dolan.

    But first we start with the redirect examination of a witness from Thursday afternoon – FBI Special Agent Kevin Helson – who handled Danchenko when he was a confidential human source. (Our prior article discussed Helson’s investigative failures at length.)

    Durham questioned Helson about efforts to determine the Danchenko-Dolan connection in the summer of 2017. By that time, the Mueller Special Counsel had been ongoing since May 2017 and had, on its own, taken part in the last Carter Page FISA renewal. And if you recall from our last articles, Danchenko had been an FBI CHS since March 2017. Once Mueller was appointed, Helson was the go-between, asking Danchenko questions posed by the then-Special Counsel’s team.

    By June 2017, the Mueller Special Counsel had developed information that Democrat Charles Dolan may have been a source of the Steele Dossier. They passed questions about Dolan to Agent Helson:

    Q         Who did those [Dolan] questions come from?

    A         It came from the Mueller investigative team, particularly Ms. [Amy] Anderson.

    Durham also cleaned-up Helson’s sloppiness. The previous day, Helson testified that Danchenko didn’t know the Steele Dossier was going to the FBI. Helson admitted he didn’t have any evidence to support his own conclusion.

    Q         You were asked a question yesterday that you adopted — you were asked a question about, well, the defendant didn’t know that Steele’s reports were going to the FBI, and you said yes. Do you have any independent knowledge of that?

    A         No.

    Q         That’s just what the defendant told you, right?

    A         Yeah.

    Q         So when you told the jury that he, Mr. Danchenko, didn’t know that they were going to the FBI, you don’t know that to be the case?

    A         I had no other knowledge that suggested that, no.

    Q         Right. There’s no independent evidence of any sort, correct?

    A         Yes, correct.

    Helson was also asked about Danchenko’s lack of complete honesty with respect to his interactions with Charles Dolan and his travels to Moscow. As you’ll see, Helson’s answers also implicate his own failure to fully investigate his source.

    Q         Did Mr. Danchenko tell you about his having been in Moscow in June of 2016?

    A         No, he did not tell me that.

    Q         Did he tell you anything about his having met with or seen Mr. Dolan in Moscow in June of 2016?

    A         No, sir.

    Q         Do you recall, sir, whether or not you ever learned the dates on which Mr. Danchenko was in Moscow in June of 2016?

    A         I learned of it later.

    Q         And do you remember: When you learned at a later point in time he had been in Moscow in June of 2016, did you talk to him about that?

    A         No.

    Danchenko’s June 2016 Moscow trip, where he met with Dolan, has significant timing because Danchenko flew from Moscow to London to give “a report”. Who was in London? Christopher Steele.

    Durham also inquired about Helson’s October 24, 2017 interview of Danchenko. Helson described the purposes of that meeting:

    “This meeting was — in part, it was a direction from the Mueller investigative team bringing up the discrepancies in the Sergei Millian matter, and they wanted me to go back specifically to ask the questions and get his response.”

    Just so we’re clear – by October 24, 2017, the Mueller Team knew there were issues with Danchenko’s allegations about Sergei Millian. At a minimum, they were aware of the discrepancies in Danchenko’s claims about Millian. And how did Danchenko respond? By changing his story.

    The importance is two-fold. First, it confirms to the Mueller Special Counsel that there are even more problems with Danchenko’s story. Second, it catches Danchenko in a lie that would, 4+ years later, be part of his own indictment.

    The Testimony of Former FBI Intelligence Analyst Brittany Hertzog

    Hertzog was with the FBI from 2008 through 2019 as an intelligence analyst with a primary focus on Russian counterintelligence. She described her role as an analyst who “looks at information and tries to identify trends, patterns, and investigative next steps.” She was assigned to the Directorate of Intelligence at FBI Headquarters.

    Hertzog was assigned to Special Counsel Mueller’s Office in July 2017.  She described her role and chain of command with the Mueller Team:

    Q         And what, generally, was your role with the Special Counsel Mueller’s team?

    A         I was primarily initially to focus on looking into  reports that the FBI had received on Russian matters.

    Q         All right. Did those reports have a particular name?

    A         We referred to them typically as the Steele dossier.

    Q         Now, as a member of Special Counsel Mueller’s team, was there a chain of command?

    A         Yes.

    Q         Can you describe the chain of command that you worked with?

    A         I reported directly to SIA Brian Auten. Above him was Special Counsel Mueller. There were horizontal chains of reporting as well. So there was an attorney, a supervisory special agent, and then head of FBI personnel.

    Q         Okay. So you had occasion to work with special agents as well, correct?

    A         Correct.

    Q         And who were some of the special agents that you worked with Special Counsel Mueller?

    A         I worked with Supervisory Special Agent Amy Anderson and Supervisory Special Agent Joe Nelson.

    Hertzog became familiar with the Steele Dossier, and with the parties involved in the Steele Dossier, once she joined the Mueller Team:

    Q         And how did you become familiar with Mr. Steele?

    A         When I reported [July 2017] to the Special Counsel’s Office, SCO, I had received background information on the investigation up until that point.

    It was her job to “look into the Steele Dossier.” She described this as “trying to identify the sourcing for the claims in the dossier and, specifically, the national security threat with regards to the Russian influence piece.” Hertzog explains:

    Q         And a lot of names appeared in those dossier reports?

    A         Correct.

    Q         Did you learn that there were a number of different sources that the defendant relied on?

    A         Yes.

    Q         Did you have a particular focus on any of those sources?

    A         There were a number of sub-sources that were identified for investigative next steps.

    Q         Okay. And did you have a particular individual that you focused on?

    A         Yes. There was an individual named Olga Galkina who was — when I was assigned to SCO, was my primary focus initially.

    Compare Hertzog’s testimony to the words of Robert Mueller:

    How do we not conclude that Mueller lied to Congress?

    Unless his own team kept him in the dark about their own investigation of the Steele Dossier?

    The title of this post references “obstruction” by the Mueller Special Counsel. Just to clarify, we’re not saying that there will be charges of obstruction of justice from anyone on the Mueller Team. (We’re not going to predict what comes next.) By obstruction we mean obstructing the truth, or obstructing the efforts to determine the truth. We plan to dive deeper into this Mueller issue in the near future.

    Back to Hertzog. She took investigative steps to look into the Steele Dossier. She investigated Olga Galkina. She also looked into Charles Dolan:

    Q         And what’s your understanding of who Mr. Dolan is?

    A         Mr. Dolan, to my understanding, having reviewed FBI databases, had connectivity to both Mr. Danchenko and Ms. Galkina.

    Q         So your testimony is that you learned about Mr. Dolan through the various FBI databases?

    A         I believe information was provided to me as background when I on boarded with SCO, and I became aware of more information as I researched.

    In fact, Hertzog connected Dolan to Olga Galkina, and also to those who had worked in the Russian government (such as Putin ally and confidant Dmitry Peskov). She checked Dolan’s travel records, finding he had traveled to Cyprus (where Galkina was located) and also to Russia. She found Dolan’s link to Galkina, a “sub-source for the Steele Dossier” of particular importance.

    Hertzog also discovered that Dolan and Danchenko had been in Moscow together and described that fact’s importance:

    “It was an important fact because Mr. Danchenko was identified as being a source for the Steele dossier, and connectivity between Mr. Dolan and Danchenko was important, especially considering Mr. Dolan’s connectivity to Dmitry Peskov.”

    Special Counsel Keilty asked Hertzog about her desire (and the desire of counterintelligence analyst Amy Anderson, and even Brian Auten) to interview Dolan. Hertzog was emphatic that she wanted the interview:

    Other members of the Mueller Special Counsel team, however, took the position “to not investigate Mr. Dolan.” Their side ultimately won. To the best of Hertzog’s knowledge, “nobody at Special Counsel’s team interviewed Mr. Dolan.”

    Not that Hertzog didn’t try to convince others to look deeper into the Dossier sources. Her file on Galking, which referenced Dolan, was uploaded into three different case files. Hertzog did those because she “wanted others to see it who had the authority to take action.”

    And why did she take that step?

    That report was specifically put into once case file she “believed would be reviewed by Washington Field Office, FBI headquarters, and the Inspector General.” Hertzog explains why she sent it to the IG:

    Q         And for the benefit of the jury, to your knowledge, what is generally the inspector general?

    A         The inspector general looks at matters — sorry. Are you asking specifically that or just the inspector general?

    Q         Just generally, what the inspector general does, to your knowledge.

    A         To my knowledge, the inspector general reviews Department of Justice agencies to ensure that actions are being taken appropriately.

    Q         Okay. So you wanted the inspector general to see your report on Ms. Galkina, correct?

    A         Correct.

    Q         And that’s because Mr. Dolan’s name was in it, correct?

    A         Yes.

    Q         And you thought Mr. Dolan was an important individual?

    A         I believed that — yes.

    Q         And did you believe that further investigative steps should have been taken on Mr. Dolan?

    A         Yes.

    The Testimony of FBI Special Agent Amy Anderson

    Agent Anderson, who works in the field of counterintelligence, was part of the Crossfire Hurricane/Mueller Team from April 2017 through January of 2018. Her initial assignment was “to attempt to validate the Steele Dossier,” to “either verify the reporting or determine that it was not accurate.”

    Anderson described her role and supervisors with Special Counsel Mueller:

    Q         What was your initial — who were you initially working with in that role at the Special Counsel’s investigation?

    A         When I first arrived at the Special Counsel, I worked with Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten, as well as quite a few other intelligence analysts, Stephanie LaParre, Iva Drasinover. We had a team that was working the dossier in particular.

    Q         Did you work with someone by the name of Brittany Hertzog?

    A         I worked with Brittany a little bit later. She came in not at the very beginning but maybe a month after, a month or two.

    Q         And in terms of who you reported to at the Special Counsel’s office, if you could, just tell us who you reported to.

    A         Technically, I reported to Supervisory Special Agent Joe Nelson.

    Anderson said she was interested in Dolan in particular, given his connection to Galkina and Danchenko:

    Q         And how did you learn of the connection between Mr. Dolan to Ms. Galkina and the defendant?

    A         I believe it was also database checks, and Ms. Galkina did tell us that she knew him — both of them.

    Q         And learning of Mr. Dolan’s connection to the two individuals, what did you do with respect to Mr. Dolan? Did you look into him?

    A         I wanted to look into him.

    She also wanted to speak to Danchenko. But she had to do that through Agent Helson, Danchenko’s handler. Here’s how that process worked:

    Q         And just briefly explain to the jury how it might work. If you wanted to get information from Mr. Danchenko, how would you go about getting that?

    A         I would speak to the source handler. So in this case, I would speak to Agent Helson, and we would discuss what might be interesting for us to know. And then he would go and speak to his source. We do that for reasons of source safety, so that not everyone knows who our sources are.

    Agent Anderson would eventually fly to Cyprus with Auten to interview Olga Galkina. She said Galkina was mostly forthcoming, except when it came to discussing Charles Dolan:

    Q         And did you interview with her all days?

    A         Yes, we did three days.

    Q         And would you characterize Ms. Galkina as forthcoming with her information about her role with the dossier and any information in it?

    A         She seemed mostly forthcoming.

    Q         You said mostly forthcoming. Was there a particular area that she was not forthcoming about?

    A         Yes. She was hesitant in telling us about Mr. Dolan.

    Q         All right. Let’s start with the beginning of these interviews. When you began interviewing Ms. Galkina, did you specifically ask her about Mr. Dolan or not?

    A         We did.

    Q         And if you could, how did she react when you asked her about Mr. Dolan the first time?

    A         She did not want to speak about him.

    But Anderson kept pressing and eventually straight-up asked if Dolan had a connection with the Steele Dossier. At that point, Galkina admitted Dolan’s involvement:

    Agent Anderson then prepared a report of the interviews and compiled a report on everything that she and Analyst Hertzog had compiled on Charles Dolan. That report was submitted to her supervisor, Supervisory Special Agent Joe Nelson. Read what happened next:

    How convenient that the Mueller Special Counsel ended an inquiry that would have implicated itself.

    Agent Anderson didn’t have any personal knowledge as to why the interview request with Dolan was declined. We’re confident Durham asked that very question to SSA Joe Nelson.

    The Testimony of FBI Special Agent Ryan James

    Agent James’s purpose was to discuss evidence acquired by Special Counsel Durham’s team through the course of their investigation. To briefly summarize, he discussed:

    • How they obtained telephone/e-mail/Facebook records.

    • Danchenko’s e-mails, call records, and Facebook postings.

    • Sergei Millian’s travels and his telephone calls.

    • The time and dates of the calls between Danchenko and Dolan.

    • The lack of calls between Danchenko and Millian, and the lack of the 10 to 15 minute call Danchenko purportedly received from someone he thought was Millian.

    And that wrapped-up evidence for this case.

    The court did, as reported, dismiss Count One of the indictment, which alleged Danchenko gave a false statement when asked whether he had talked to Mr. Dolan about anything that ended up in the Dossier. The problem Durham always faced with Count One was the FBI Agent’s lack of attention to detail; the world “talked” has a very specific definition. The judge recognized as much. No surprise with that dismissal.

    As to the Defense?

    Danchenko will not be testifying, and his attorneys will not be presenting any evidence. Closing arguments are scheduled for Monday. Expect them to last an hour or less, with jury deliberations to begin thereafter. The jury might give us a verdict on Monday afternoon at the earliest.

    But the trial’s biggest takeaways will be what we learned about the FBI and the Mueller Special Counsel.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/16/2022 – 22:30

  • Beijing's New Leadership Faces Same Old Problems
    Beijing’s New Leadership Faces Same Old Problems

    By Ye Xie and Georgei Lei, Bloomberg Markets Live reporters and analytsts

    The Party Congress typically doesn’t make major policy announcements. Still, personnel changes, such as the makeup of the top-decision body — the Politburo’s Standing Committee — may influence China’s economic and development strategy in coming years.  

    Regardless, Beijing faces the same daunting challenges that have confronted China in recent years, including an aging population, mounting debt and a deteriorating relationship with the US. These constraints mean that Beijing is unlikely to deviate away from its current strategies for curtailing debt, boosting birth rates and becoming self-reliant in key technologies. It also implies slower growth in coming years.  

    Start with the worsening demographics. With a fertility rate below that of Japan, China’s working age population will keep falling in the next decade and beyond, according to Bloomberg economist Eric Zhu. Last year, new marriages fell to a record low, nearly half of the rate a decade ago. That figure could drop further this year due to Covid lockdowns. Also, a decline in the number of people working points to lower growth potential and higher burdens in the pension system.
     

    Source: Goldman Sachs

    A shrinking population means that China doesn’t need as many homes as before, suggesting the sector will turn from a major contributor to a drag on growth. By Goldman Sachs’s estimate, demand for housing may fall from 18 million units a year in 2010-2020 to 6 million by 2050. Developing more-productive industries, such as high-tech manufacturing, to make up for the holes left by a downsized real-estate sector is becoming a top priority.

    Source: Goldman Sachs

    Beijing has to transit away from housing without a further buildup in debt. After all, China’s debt leverage has already surpassed that of Japan prior to the burst of an asset bubble in the 1990s. Beijing started the deleveraging campaign last year but was forced to reverse course as Covid restrictions took a toll on the economy. Going forward, stabilizing leverage and containing financial risks remain a key theme.

    Source: BIS

    What makes such a transition to more productive-sectors challenging is the deteriorating relationship with the US. The Biden Administration has shifted its strategy from containing China to one that aims to “freeze” China’s technology development at the current level. The recent sweeping restrictions on China’s access to US semiconductor technology reflects such a shift. It forces Beijing to become more self-sufficient in key technology and slows its catchup.

    Source: Clocktower

    President Xi Jinping is set to retain his position as the paramount leader when the Party Congress concludes. But the structural headwinds mean the policy choices he and his colleagues in the new leadership have are quite limited.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/16/2022 – 22:10

  • 'Crying CEO' Uses Granny's Death To Pump Company
    ‘Crying CEO’ Uses Granny’s Death To Pump Company

    The CEO of an Ohio-based marketing firm who made headlines in August for posting a “crying selfie” on LinkedIn to announce layoffs has once again come under fire – this time for announcing the death of his grandmother on the networking site.

    “My grandma passed away today,” begins the post by Braden Wallake. “I got the text from my mom, closed my computer, and headed straight over to her house,” he continued. “While driving to my moms, I was reminded days like today are why I do what I do.”

    He then opined over “hustle culture,” and how he’s had “sleepless nights” and had to ‘skip fun things for work.’

    “But the reason I started HyperSocial was to help these same people build their businesses in the background so they can go have fun, spend time with family, do the important things that matter besides work, be next to people that matter.”

    LinkedIn users were not amused.

    “Such a sad post, to use your Grandmom’s death as a way to promote your company,” wrote one user, Jason A.

    “Very sorry to hear about the passing of your grandmother,” said another – Brian FitzGerald. “When can we expect the crying selfie?“

    Wallake hit back at critics – telling the New York Post “I’m not exploiting her death for company promotion,” adding “It would suck if I couldn’t be there for my mom because of work. And the same thing for our clients. We exist so they don’t miss out on life.”

    On LinkedIn, he wrote: “Sometimes I get so lost in the weeds it’s hard to remember the why behind what I do,” adding “But when I’m able to go be with my mom when her mom passes away and know that I can step away with no issues, I’m ever grateful for it.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/16/2022 – 22:00

  • Hedge Fund CIO: "I'm Growing Extremely Concerned About The Market. We're Close To A Broad Liquidation Point For Markets"
    Hedge Fund CIO: “I’m Growing Extremely Concerned About The Market. We’re Close To A Broad Liquidation Point For Markets”

    By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

    “Following the 2008 crisis, there was this well-intended, monoline focus on banks becoming safe,” said the CIO, high atop his prodigious pile. “The thought was that by making banks permanently safe, we could effectively eliminate systemic risk,” he said. “That’s wrong of course, but not for obvious reasons.” Following each financial crisis, the politicians, regulators, and policy makers strive to ensure that we never repeat the debacle, which inevitably appears obvious in hindsight. They usually succeed, and in so doing, sow the seeds of something novel.

    “Removing the possibility that banks would be the source of risk in the financial system required that regulators prevented them from having flexible balance sheets,” continued the same CIO. “In a market decline, banks used to be able to buy distressed assets.” Expanding their balance sheets, absorbing panic selling by their clients, taking on market risk. “But they can no longer be a buyer in periods of market stress. And the regulators think this is fine, because the risk is transferred to investors and speculators, none of whom threaten to the broader system.”

    “But the issue of course, is that the risk in the system has been transferred from banks to asset managers,” he said. “And asset managers do not have flexible balance sheets.” In an industry that has grown to be dominated by passive, long-only products, asset managers simply buy assets when they get inflows and sell assets when they get outflows. They do not have the ability to expand their balance sheets when assets are being sold at distressed prices. No such mechanism exists. “In today’s system, the shock absorber is the asset price.”

    “In a system where price is the shock absorber, we should expect very large price moves, and the need for the central bank to step in and support markets becomes more obvious in a crisis,” he said. “But given today’s inflationary backdrop, policy makers cannot be seen to react quickly. They won’t bend early, they simply can’t,” he said.

    “I’m growing extremely concerned about the market. Bearish sentiment remains awful. But despite this, the rallies are getting shorter, sharper, whippier. We’re getting close to a broad liquidation point for markets.”

    “Most people remain focused on bearish investor positioning,” he said. That measure has been helpful for years; but it was in a disinflationary period with QE in the background, Fed puts, plunge protection teams. “Traders are fearful of missing the turn, the bounce, the Fed pivot. It is all micro focus; they’re chasing their tails. They underestimate the impact of rapidly contracting liquidity; today’s novel flow into reverse repos. They miss things like UK pension margin calls. No one appreciates the risk that the market runs out of oxygen.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/16/2022 – 21:30

  • China Orders Evacuation Of All Citizens Still In Ukraine, Sparking Escalation Fears
    China Orders Evacuation Of All Citizens Still In Ukraine, Sparking Escalation Fears

    China’s foreign ministry on Saturday issued an urgent call for any Chinese nationals still in Ukraine to exit immediately, kicking off speculation over what’s behind the unspecified appeal and scramble.

    The notification is being widely seen as the most forceful evacuation order yet, and suggests that Beijing might be aware of Russian plans for possibly imminent bigger, sweeping airstrikes against Ukrainian cities, such as the widespread escalatory strikes conducted last Monday into Tuesday.

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

    The first big evacuation of Chinese citizens took place starting last March, in which some 6,000 Chinese nationals left the country amid the Russian invasion. But now, as state media Global Times writes, “Some Chinese nationals still in Ukraine have signed up for evacuation from the country, with most registering for organized evacuations, while others are preparing to leave Ukraine on their own, the Global Times learned on Sunday, after the Chinese Foreign Ministry urged Chinese citizens to leave Ukraine, citing the grave security situation.”

    The foreign ministry and embassy warned of the “grave security situation” and ordered an immediate departure, citing the need “to enhance safety precautions and evacuate.” The statement indicated that “the embassy will assist in organizing the evacuation of people in need.” Russian state sources also on Sunday began publicizing the new alert notification.

    GT is reporting that an evacuation is now in progress: 

    As of press time on Sunday, 161 people had registered on the form the embassy sent out for organized evacuation, and another 27 people registered on the form for self-evacuation, according to a Global Times’ count of the registration on the embassy’s WeChat account. 

    It additionally comes at a moment of stepped-up cross-border attacks on the Russian city of Belgorod, which lies just north of the Ukrainian border opposite Kharkiv. 

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

    While it’s yet unknown precisely what triggered the heightened, urgent appeal for all remaining Chinese nationals to exit Ukraine, it’s possible the answer could come Monday or in the following days. Does this signal that greater Russian escalation on the horizon?

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/16/2022 – 21:00

  • 'Wild Ride' Begins With Court Clash Over First US Law To Ban Child Transgender Surgeries
    ‘Wild Ride’ Begins With Court Clash Over First US Law To Ban Child Transgender Surgeries

    Authored by Janice Hisle via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    When America’s first law banning “gender transition procedures” for minors was passed in Arkansas last year, it spawned a wave of similar legislation.

    But legislative proposals in a dozen other states withered on the vine, while the Arkansas law faced an immediate court challenge that temporarily blocked the law from taking effect in July 2021.

    A gender neutral sign is posted outside a bathroom at Oval Park Grill on May 11, 2016 in Durham, North Carolina. The debate over transgenderism is spreading nationwide, particularly when it comes to transition surgery for young people. (Sara Davis/Getty Images)

    Since then, Alabama and Arizona moved forward and passed their own versions of the Arkansas act, while California took a 180-degree turn to counteract the bans. Last month, California became the nation’s first “sanctuary” state welcoming out-of-state youths who seek puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries.

    And now, the Arkansas law, called the Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act, remains closely watched from all sides as it heads to trial in Little Rock starting Oct. 17.

    The outcome will determine how lawmakers and activists nationwide plan their next moves in the evolving controversy over medical intervention for transgender-identifying minors.

    ‘Necessary’ or ‘Experimental’?

    U.S. District Court Judge James Moody Jr. must decide a case that pits the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) against Arkansas officials who are defending the SAFE Act.

    The ACLU contends that the SAFE Act unconstitutionally denies “medically necessary” treatments for youths suffering from gender dysphoria, which is persistent distress about one’s gender.

    In its lawsuit, the ACLU is representing four gender-dysphoric children, ages 9 to 16 at the time of the filing in May 2021, and two doctors who provide “gender-affirming care.”

    The children’s parents described seeing marked improvements in attitude and reduced anxiety after counseling and, in some cases, treatments with hormones.

    The parents worry about what would happen to their children if the law were to take effect, requiring the treatment to abruptly stop.

    Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge counters that the state is obligated to protect juveniles from “experimental” treatments that can permanently alter their still-developing bodies. She and other supporters of the SAFE Act say that long-term effects of the treatments remain unknown.

    Multiple Appeals Likely

    The case serves as the nation’s first test of the constitutionality of this type of law, Danielle Weatherby, an associate professor at the University of Arkansas School of Law, told The Epoch Times.

    Regardless of which way the judge rules, “this is just the beginning of a wild ride,” Weatherby said.

    She predicts multiple appeals will follow, along with legislative proposals in a number of states.

    From a legal standpoint, Moody’s decision will be considered a precedent only within the Eighth Circuit, a six-state federal court region that includes Arkansas.

    At least two Eighth Circuit states, Iowa and Missouri, had introduced bills resembling the SAFE Act. (The remaining states are Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.)

    If the ACLU prevails and Moody strikes down the SAFE Act, “it will mean that any state that is in the Eighth Circuit will not be permitted to pass one of these laws,” Weatherby said.

    When Moody agreed to temporarily block Arkansas from implementing the SAFE Act, he was required to base that decision on a “reasonable likelihood” that the ACLU would prevail in its lawsuit.

    Arkansas sought a reversal of Moody’s decision, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upheld the preliminary injunction.

    Thus, Moody’s court and the appeals court both appear to have telegraphed that they’re leaning toward the ACLU’s contentions in the case.

    But Moody is expected to have five long days of testimony to mull over, leaving open the possibility that he still may uphold the SAFE Act.

    Court Disputes ‘Reversible’ Tag

    On a personal level, Weatherby said she cares about the outcome of the case because she knows several transgender people and their families.

    “I know that firsthand, having worked with transgender children, they do not make this decision lightly,” to undergo gender-altering medical procedures, she said. “And I think that gets lost in the conversation.”

    She also is aware of the debate over whether “gender-affirming care” is safe and effective. She said that’s a decision each family has to make, in consultation with doctors, and “do the best we could do with the knowledge we have, because these kids are suffering from certain fear, anxiety and depression.”

    One atypical argument in favor of the SAFE Act relies on a British court ruling, as opposed to one in the United States.

    “When there’s no precedent, we look elsewhere,” Weatherby said.

    Rutledge, the attorney general, wrote, “The SAFE Act responds to widespread, growing international concerns” over body-altering medical treatments being performed on minors’ still-developing bodies.

    She noted that, a few months before the SAFE Act was approved, the high court in the United Kingdom “determined that children likely cannot ever understand the irreversible consequences of using puberty-blocking drugs as a transition procedure.”

    The UK court also disputed assertions that puberty blockers’ effects are “fully reversible,” if the patient stops using the medications.

    Instead, the court found: “Missed development and experience, during adolescence, can never truly be recovered or ‘reversed.’”

    In its initial complaint against Arkansas, the ACLU declared: “Puberty-delaying treatment is reversible.” But further down on the same page, the ACLU cites professional guidelines describing the “partly irreversible effects” of those prescriptions.

    Such conflicts arise because the science is unsettled, Arkansas officials have argued.

    Odd Battle Lines Drawn

    Another unusual aspect of the case: The unexpected mix of people on both sides.

    A  large number of medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have thrown their support behind the ACLU, along with other groups supporting civil rights and LGBT rights, plus 20 states, predominantly Democrat, as The Epoch Times reported in a previous story.

    On the other side, backers of the SAFE Act include 19 mostly Republican-dominated states, along with a number of “detransitioners,” who say medical transitioning didn’t solve their problems—it just created more issues. Those people express regret over their gender-altering medications and surgeries.

    Additional supporters of the SAFE Act include a handful of individual doctors, the conservative Family Research Council, and a nationwide feminist group, the Women’s Liberation Front.

    The somewhat unexpected alliances within each camp show “what an anomaly this case is,” attorney Vernadette Broyles told The Epoch Times.

    Broyles, who holds a Harvard University law degree and an undergraduate biology degree from Yale University, is positioned as a rare authoritative voice when legal and medical battles intersect.

    Conveyor Belt Approach?

    Broyles and her team with the Child and Parental Rights Campaign filed a brief that shares stories of 10 families whom the SAFE Act would have protected.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/16/2022 – 20:30

  • "We Have Entered The Stage Where Policy Makers May Feel They Have Control, But Are Nevertheless No Longer In Control"
    “We Have Entered The Stage Where Policy Makers May Feel They Have Control, But Are Nevertheless No Longer In Control”

    By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

     “We’ve announced we will be out by the end of this week. My message to the pension funds is you’ve got three days left,” said Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey, explaining his intention to end support for the price of Britain’s government bonds. Prices fell and investors raced to hit the central bank’s bid before it disappeared.

    What made Bailey’s statement of great significance, is that for over a decade, each successive central bank and government intervention seemed to never end. And even when a program did wind down, its sequel was waiting anxiously in the wings. But here was Bailey, ending a program that had only just started on September 28th, following the catastrophic mini budget. To halt the ensuing bond crash, Bailey had pledged to buy UK government debt “on whatever scale is necessary.”

    Naturally, limited intervention is the only path a prudent government should take. And had policy makers restrained themselves during these past fifteen years, we would not have hyper-financialized our economies, and would thus be unlikely to find ourselves in today’s predicament. This trap of our own creation requires central banks to tighten policy hard enough to restrain inflation, which in turn creates a level of financial instability that requires central banks to ease policy.

    The UK is a rather poorly run nation, so it is unsurprising that the architecture of this circular trap should first be revealed there. But after decades of growing monetary policy homogeneity across the developed world, what we are seeing now in the UK will manifest broadly before this cycle is over.

    Bailey correctly realized that he cannot credibly tighten and ease policy simultaneously. But what he does not yet appreciate is that we have entered the stage in this cycle where policy makers may feel they have control, but they are nevertheless no longer in control. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/16/2022 – 19:30

  • Morgan Stanley: Trouble In The Kingdom Is Just Starting
    Morgan Stanley: Trouble In The Kingdom Is Just Starting

    By Andrew Sheets, Chief Cross-Asset Strategist for Morgan Stanley, as excerpted from the bank’s Sunday Start.

    At the west end of the new rail station in Canary Wharf, up the escalators and to the right, is a coffee shop. It’s full of wooden panelling and a big chalkboard above the tills with the price of the drinks. Faint markings on the chalkboard make something very clear. The prices have been changing.

    The United Kingdom is the world’s sixth-largest economy and faces a complicated, interwoven set of challenges. It is a volatile and fascinating cross-asset story.

    First among these challenges is inflation. High UK inflation is partly due to global factors like commodity prices, but even excluding food and energy core inflation in the UK is 6.3%Y. Since the UK runs a large current account deficit (5.5% of GDP), a weak currency is driving higher costs on imported items. Meanwhile, Brexit has reduced the supply of labor and increased the costs of trade, boosting inflation and reducing the benefit that a weaker currency would otherwise bring.

    The circularity here is unmissable; high inflation drives currency weakness, and vice versa. High inflation has depressed UK real rates, making the currency less attractive to hold. And high inflation relative to other countries undermines valuations: on an inflation-adjusted basis (i.e., purchasing power parity) the British pound has ‘cheapened’ by a similar percentage as the Swiss franc over the last year, and much less than, say, the Norwegian krone. That’s hardly irrational.

    If inflation is high, why doesn’t the Bank of England simply raise rates to slow demand? The BoE is moving, but as our UK economist Bruna Skarica notes, it has raised rates by less than the market expected in six of its last eight meetings. That’s left investors anticipating ~320bp of BoE hikes between now and May 2023, ~140bp more than expected from the Federal Reserve over the same period; if the UK underdelivers and the Fed does not, it could drive more FX weakness.

    The BoE’s hesitation is understandable; my colleague Vasundhara Goel notes that most UK mortgage debt is only fixed for 2-5 years, with roughly 100k loans resetting every month (see “UK Mortgage Repayments Poised To Soar To Financial Crisis Levels“). The impact of higher rates can therefore flow through to the economy quickly, especially as UK households are also facing an unusually large year-on-year increase to utility costs.

    Another path to slow inflation would be tighter fiscal policy. But the UK government announced a budget to loosen fiscal policy, which was followed by further increases to UK rates and more currency weakness, which in turn put historical pressure on the country’s pension sector and contributed to UK 30-year inflation-linked bonds falling 67% from last December. To give it some context, the S&P 500 is down about 25% year to date. If the S&P 500 fell 25% three more times…it would be down about much as that 30-year UK inflation-linked bond.

    Then on Friday, the government announced that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was stepping down and recent plans to cut corporate taxes would be shelved in an attempt to reassure markets. But questions remain; the UK Prime Minister stated that she still desires a “low tax” economy, and fiscal policy will still be loosened under the government’s proposals. Immediately following the press conference Friday afternoon announcing these changes, GBP fell and yields rose.

    The UK’s problems are not insurmountable. But for the moment, they remain daunting. My colleague Wanting Low in FX strategy expects GBP to weaken to parity with USD. My colleague Theo Chapsalis, our UK rates strategist, likes being long UK 5-year inflation (RPI) and is negative on duration, expecting gilts to underperform swaps as issuance increases and the balance sheet becomes more valuable. Sterling IG credit, at a ~7.0% yield, is increasingly competitive versus UK equities, but it is also a much smaller credit market than its global peers.

    A weak GBP may help UK stocks outperform EU equities, but with my colleague Graham Secker well below consensus for EPS in the region, that’s a low bar. For investors looking for deep value, we believe that the better opportunity is in emerging market equities, which we’ve just upgraded to overweight after a long period of skepticism. That upgrade is a function of both a top-down view that EM can bottom before DM markets (it has repeatedly in the past), and bottom-up work by our sector teams. Within EM, our strategists like Korea, Taiwan and Brazil.

    The UK is an evolving story and essential macro viewing, but for now, we see better opportunities elsewhere.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/16/2022 – 18:30

  • Saudis Announce $400M In Ukraine Aid After Biden Said US 'Re-Evaluating' Ties With Kingdom
    Saudis Announce $400M In Ukraine Aid After Biden Said US ‘Re-Evaluating’ Ties With Kingdom

    Saudi state media announced Saturday that the kingdom will provide $400 million in humanitarian aid to Ukraine, following a Friday phone call between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and President Volodymyr Zelensky.

    SPA stated of the call, “The crown prince expressed the kingdom’s readiness to continue efforts of mediation and support everything that contributes to de-escalation,” in reference to the over seven-month long invasion of Ukraine.

    Anadolu via Getty Images

    The timing of the new aid is raising eyebrows at a moment there are growing calls in US Congress to freeze all new military arms and equipment sales to Riyadh, and after the White House just days ago confirmed President Biden will re-evaluate ties with Saudi Arabia.

    “We are reviewing where we are; we’ll be watching very closely, talking to partners and stakeholders,” State Department spokesman Ned Price price said Tuesday, following the Saudis having led the way in getting major oil producers to cut petroleum output, crucially also ahead of mid-term elections in the US.

    As reported previously by Al Jazeera of Price’s press briefing:

    He added that President Joe Biden had previously spoken of the need to “recalibrate” ties with Saudi Arabia to better serve the US – a position that Price said was underscored by the recently announced oil cuts.

    “Our guiding principle will be to see to it that we have a relationship that serves our interests. This is not a bilateral relationship that has always served our interests,” Price said.

    Price went so far as to charge the OPEC is essentially supporting Russia’s aggression in Ukraine “against the interests of the American people” in this latest move.

    Chart via Al Jazeera: OPEC members’ oil reserves

    Currently Senator Chris Murphy and Rep. Ro Khanna are leading a Congressional move to get advanced anti-air missile systems which the Pentagon has stationed in Saudi Arabia removed and transferred to Ukraine.

    Murphy announced in a Thursday statement, “For several years, the US military has deployed Patriot missile defense batteries to Saudi Arabia to help defend oil infrastructure against missile and drone attacks. These advanced air and missile defense systems should be re-deployed to bolster the defenses of eastern flank NATO allies like Poland and Romania — or transferred to our Ukrainian partners.”

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

    As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Murphy also lent his voice to ongoing calls to “freeze new military aid to Saudi Arabia” – which would possibly impact the pending sale and transfer of Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) to Riyadh based on a previously approved contract of $650 million

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/16/2022 – 18:00

  • The Wall Of Worry Knows No Bounds
    The Wall Of Worry Knows No Bounds

    By Peter Tchir, chief macro strategist at Academy Securities

    The Wall of Worry Knows No Bounds

    There is no shortage of risks for markets and companies to worry about right now. Today’s T-Report will be short because some of these things have been discussed lately:

    • Top Secret – Russia’s Nuclear Threat. Markets had a brief respite as stories about potential talks between Russia and possible intermediaries to Ukraine circulated, but those faded by the end of the week as Putin (and increasingly Belarus) stuck to the hardline approach.
    • For Your Eyes Only – OPEC+. The more I think about this report, the more concerned I am that we’ve bled our strategic reserves to very low (if not precarious) levels when there remains so much uncertainty around Russia, the Middle East, and Venezuela. The only place with “certainty” seems to be domestically where the energy industry still seems to be under attack rather than encouraged.
    • The Defense of Taiwan. We haven’t completed the trilogy yet, as we will wait for what comes out of China this weekend, but if Xi mentions reunification in a major way, it is yet another thing for markets to worry about.

    The other reason today’s T-Report will be short is because I’m undergoing Clockwork Orange style reprogramming to accept that housing inflation is running at the hottest levels it has been in 3 decades according to CPI!

    • OER Seems Crazy. I cannot come to grips with using data that seems nonsensical to determine policy. There are many explanations as to why it lags (in addition to potential calculation biases), but that just makes it explainable (i.e., still not sensical). Scientists wouldn’t let bad, or inaccurate, or stale data affect their analysis, so why should economists? As you can tell, at the time of this writing, the shock therapy isn’t working well.

    But as scary as nuclear war, oil shortages, deteriorating relationships across the Middle East, and the risk to Taiwan is, they barely form the foundation of the current wall of worry!

    I’ve Lost Track of What to Worry About in the U.K.

    I’ve literally lost track of the narrative around why the U.K. is a huge problem.

    • Corporate Taxes! Remember that line from the original Wall Street movie – “Your boy really did his homework, Fox. And you’ll have the shortest executive career since that Pope that got poisoned.” Well, even Bud Fox might feel sorry for Kwasi Kwarteng.
    • Limited “whatever it takes.” Draghi turned an entire continent around when he uttered “whatever it takes,” even though he had little (if anything) ready to back it up. “Whatever it takes” with the present deadlines and likely limited resources isn’t really “whatever it takes,” even adjusting for the British sense of humor.
    • LDI. Overleveraged is still overleveraged even if you try and give it a fancy new name, though LSS (Leveraged Super Senior) and CPDO (Constant Proportion Debt Obligation) were still more interesting than LDI, and far more damaging.

    I’m not sure what is left for the U.K. to do, but the one takeaway that we cannot forget is that we have witnessed a top 10 country (with a developed economy and a seasoned bond market) succumb to complete disarray!

    That loss of faith in such a major market is concerning as it begs the question of “could it happen here”? To that, I have two things that I feel the need to point out:

    Could we see a “failed” German bund auction? The mechanics for U.S. Treasury auctions are very different than how German government bund auctions are managed. I vaguely remember that there has been concern about this in the past, and given what has gone on in England, it is yet another worry.

    Maslow’s Hierarchy of a Credit Bubble. I need to update the chart, but one thing that I argue in this report is that any Financial Crisis Starts with “Safe” Assets. It seems paradoxical at first, but it is how and where “safe” assets are used that ensures that when they crack, calamity will ensue. From the S&L crisis, to Russia/LTCM, to WorldCom/Enron, to AAA MBS and Greece, the biggest problems come when safe assets are no longer deemed safe. While I’m not alarmed about sovereign debt, it made its way onto my crisis bingo card in a hurry after the U.K.’s cracks were highlighted.

    Weekly and Daily Options Give CDS a Good Name

    Despite starting my Wall Street career as a credit derivatives structurer (they weren’t traded enough back in the day to warrant being called a trader), many people, including some still on this distribution list, like to tell me that Credit Default Swaps were the worst invention ever on Wall Street. That says a lot. The combination of gamma, low liquidity, and stop losses (Trader of the Year Awards) seems to determine not just how any given day normally trades, but as we saw on Thursday of last week, these things can also fuel massive intraday moves (i.e., the 6% swing in the Nasdaq from high to low).
    CDS may be bad (I beg to differ), but a lot of people are noticing and complaining about these products and the impact they are having on markets.

    The Data

    At this point:

    • I’m not sure how to predict next week’s data at all.
    • More importantly, I’m not sure I’d pay good money to know the data in advance. This is because I’m not sure how markets will respond given positioning, options, and the wide array of data and news that is impacting markets.

    I continue to believe that:

    • QT is a drag and FX is increasingly a problem not just for corporations, but for investors of all stripes as they revisit the cost of hedging dollar denominated assets back to their own currency.
    • Inventories are a Major Problem. It will be interesting to see if various sales, such as early Prime, will clear excess inventory or not.
    • Data should weaken over time.
    • The messaging that we are getting on earnings calls is key to inferring where the economy is headed.
    • Stagflation is NOT a Stable State in an economy such as ours. Though I guess if you compare old data with new data, it is possible to have one show inflation and the other show recession.
    • Cracks are appearing and we need to be “ready” for new hits. Cracks tend to expose more cracks.

    Bottom Line

    If it seems like I’m mentioning a lot of 2007 and 2008 terms, it is because I am. This market and the global economy seem fragile to me. On the other hand, Wall Street traditionally has to climb a wall of worry, and since this wall knows no bounds, it might be time to put on that climbing gear!

    It is a bit nerve wracking that there is some evidence that positioning isn’t as negative as sentiment (i.e., it might be “cool” to sound bearish, but positioning hasn’t caught up). I’m not sure I buy that argument, but it is in the back of my mind.

    I’ve also been on the Darkest Before the Dawn view since the start of October. Weirdly, the S&P 500 is violently unchanged since then! It closed at 3,585 on the 30th and 3,583 on Friday. There have been so many opportunities to be right or wrong since then that the “darkest before the dawn” call seems wrong, but it’s actually been ok.

    The bet, for better or worse, is that the market will either price in a pivot or a soft landing, or it will decide that it has already priced in too many negatives (in conjunction with QT and Fed hiking) and rally. Options will help. Then we can worry about my bigger fear which is the dreaded hard landing.

    The only strategy worse than “hope” might be “climbing the wall of worry” but I like it for now, caveated by the guiding principles of late:

    • Be small.
    • Be nimble.
    • Use options as much as reasonably possible (when vol isn’t prohibitive).

    There were signs last week (at least until Friday) that we could climb that wall of worry and I think that we will see more of that this week!

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/16/2022 – 17:30

  • "This Is What Annihilation Looks Like": Biden Export Controls 'Wreaking Havoc' On China's Chip Industry
    “This Is What Annihilation Looks Like”: Biden Export Controls ‘Wreaking Havoc’ On China’s Chip Industry

    A Twitter thread translated by Rhodium Group China expert Jordan Schneider – whose blog, China Talk, can be found here, provides keen insight into the effects of the Biden administration’s new export controls on the chip industry.

    To review, the Biden administration last week laid out new rules on chip exports based on US concerns that China will use AI to improve military capabilities, support surveillance for human rights abuses and “disrupt or manufacture outcomes that undermine democratic governance and sow social unrest,” according to Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration Thea D. Rozman Kendler.

    The sweeping regulations will curb the sale of semiconductors and chipmaking equipment to its #1 geopolitical rival – which, as Bloomberg puts it, is “sending shockwaves through the $440 billion industry.“

    In a Friday Twitter thread which he translated from Hedgehog Computing Group founder Xinran Wang (@lidangzzz), Schneider lays out the carnage in English:

    “To put it simply, Biden has forced all Americans working in China to pick between quitting their jobs and losing American citizenship,” Schneider writes, adding “One round of sanctions from Biden did more damage than all four years of performative sanctioning under Trump.”

    Continued (emphasis ours): 

    Although American semiconductor exporters had to apply for licenses during the Trump years, licenses were approved within a month. With the new Biden sanctions, all American suppliers of IP blocks, components, and services departed overnight —— thus cutting off all service [to China].

    Long story short, every advanced node semiconductor company is currently facing comprehensive supply cut-off, resignations from all American staff, and immediate operations paralysis.

    This is what annihilation looks like: China’s semiconductor manufacturing industry was reduced to zero overnight. Complete collapse. No chance of survival.

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

    According to Schneider, “The level of embarrassment is on par with Pelosi’s Taiwan visit.”

     

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

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/16/2022 – 17:00

  • Texas Sheriff Declares Undocumented Migrants "Crime Victims" To Secure Visas
    Texas Sheriff Declares Undocumented Migrants “Crime Victims” To Secure Visas

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar made national headlines by opening a criminal investigation into the recent flights arranged by Florida of undocumented migrants to Martha’s Vineyard.  I have previously written about the dubious claims of kidnapping and human trafficking made by figures like Hillary Clinton.

    Now, however, Salazar is certifying the roughly 50 individuals as “crime victims” despite the lack of any criminal charges in order to qualify them for visas.  While this is clearly not human trafficking, Salazar is working with immigration advocates to use a law designed to protect victims of human trafficking and other crimes, even before any such charge is brought by prosecutors.

    The move could be denounced as itself an inducement, even a political exploitation, of migrants who must cooperate with an investigation to qualify.

    Immigration advocates were only able to get three migrants to join the initial challenge.

    Salazar opened a criminal investigation into Governor DeSantis based on the allegation that the Venezuelans were “lured under false premises” to leave the Migrant Resource Center in Bexar County to fly to Florida. Three filed a complaint against the state. Florida has responded with signed waivers by the migrants.

    While no criminal charges have been filed, Salazar is working with Massachusetts immigration advocates seeking to secure “U visas” for the migrants based on their alleged status as victims of crime or witnesses to criminal acts. Given the small percentage of the migrants who joined the initial lawsuit, the inducement of the U Visa program could change the situation.

    In order to qualify, the migrants must claim that, being given free passage to the East Coast, qualified as “substantial physical or mental abuse.” That would be highly challengeable, but it would be up to the Biden Administration.

    Florida could object that Salazar is himself inducing the participation of the migrants by certifying U Visa for cooperating with the investigation. While he is suggesting that all 50 will be declared crime victims, they might be induce to support the claims to qualify under the program.

    The U Visa program was created by Congress with the passage of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act in October 2000. It is meant to enhance the ability of law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute cases of domestic violence, sexual assault, trafficking of noncitizens and other crimes. It also protects victims of crimes who have suffered substantial mental or physical abuse due to the crime. They are expected to assist law enforcement authorities in the investigation or prosecution of the criminal activity.

    Under the program, eligibility requires that:

    You have information about the criminal activity. If you are under the age of 16 or unable to provide information due to a disability, a parent, guardian, or next friend may possess the information about the crime on your behalf (see glossary for definition of ‘next friend’).

    You were helpful, are helpful, or are likely to be helpful to law enforcement in the investigation or prosecution of the crime. If you are under the age of 16 or unable to provide information due to a disability, a parent, guardian, or next friend may assist law enforcement on your behalf.

    Thus, the visa could be an inducement for the other migrants to join efforts by immigration advocates in Massachusetts who were only able to secure three migrants in the initial filing.

    In most cases, the certification under the U Visa program before a charge is not particularly controversial. However, Salazar’s claims of crimes like human trafficking and kidnapping are, in my view, wildly off-base. There are other allegations of misuse of pandemic funds, though various blue states have been accused of similar violations.

    The Biden Administration has launched an investigation through Treasury into the funds, but that is not likely to be a criminal matter. Moreover, Florida insists that it consulted with Treasury.

    Salazar has had controversies as sheriff, including (ironically) improper transfers of inmates.

    It is not clear if the Biden Administration will oppose giving these undocumented migrants visas, but the basis for the certification could be used a major avenue for legalization of status by cooperating local law enforcement.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/16/2022 – 16:30

  • Tourists Shocked As Number Of Homeless Encampments Explodes In DC
    Tourists Shocked As Number Of Homeless Encampments Explodes In DC

    Washington DC has been looking more and more like other Democrat-run cities across the country, as abject squalor spreads throughout the nation’s capital.

    AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez

    Over the past two years, the number of homeless encampments has grown to an estimated 120, following pandmic-era decisions by both the city and federal governments to pause enforcement actions – making it an easy choice for itinerants to set up shop, the NY Post reports.

    A tour by The Post of the district’s major tourist areas this week found at least 35 vagrants in residence at a National Park Service site two blocks from the White House; more than 20 in the green spaces surrounding the State Department complex; and five across the street from the infamous Watergate Hotel.

    And these sites accounted for less than 5 percent of the estimated 120 tent cities in Washington D.C. -NY Post

    “It’s wicked and it’s medieval,” said 59-year-old Robert Westover, a longtime DC resident. “We’re really letting people suffer on the street like animals? Somehow that’s progressive?”

    Tourists are shocked

    “The land of milk and honey’ — it means that in America you don’t lack anything,” said 39-year-old Elvis Shu from Cameroon. “I know people don’t get hungry here, so I’m surprised indeed.”

    Another tourist, 48-year-old Moti from Israel, said “We didn’t expect to see the homeless here near the White House.“

    “I thought it was a rich city,” said his wife, Orli. “It’s a Democrat here in the White House, and the Democrats are more socialist, right?”

    Wait until they hear about DC’s stance on bused-in migrants!

    According to homeless man Daniel Kingery, who set up his tent in historic McPherson Square over two years ago, the number of people living on the street has exploded since President Biden’s inauguration.

    “Bleeding hearts have no brains, unfortunately,” he said. “There’s so much [donated] food coming into this park, there’s not enough people to eat it. So they’ll give it to the birds or throw it away.”

    “All of these bleeding-heart organizations,” added the 61-year-old, ““bring pretty much the same thing to the same park and it usually gets thrown away … sleeping bags, ponchos, and once in a while I would throw away brand new blankets.”

    William Everett Randolph, 66, who has lived at McPherson off and on for five years after moving from Philadelphia, agreed.

    “You got people giving out breakfast, giving out juice, giving out socks, giving out all types of stuff they need, a toothbrush, toothpaste,” he said.

    But it’s not freebies that keep him in an underpass encampment at 3rd St. and Virginia Ave. SE, said David Graves, 44, who came to Washington from New York three years ago.

    “I moved here and met these brothers and we formed this society or community or whatever,” Graves said. “We became a family, understanding, you know, it could be dangerous if we don’t stick together and work together.” -NY Post

    With a median monthly rent at $1,976, Washington DC ranks number 8, just behind New York City in terms of the most expensive metro areas in the nation, according to Stessa.com.

    While the number of tent cities explode, Mayor Muriel Bowser brags that the number of people reported living on the street or in a shelter – 4,410 – is the lowest in 17 years. That said, the city also counted a 40% increase in the number of encampments in November 2021 vs. 2020 – causing the Centers for Disease Control to issue a document telling cities that homeless encampments should be left untouched for the duration of the outbreak.

    “Clearing encampments can cause people to disperse throughout the community and … increases the potential for infectious disease spread,” explained the CDC.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/16/2022 – 16:00

  • Few Getting Updated COVID-19 Boosters Despite White House Pleas
    Few Getting Updated COVID-19 Boosters Despite White House Pleas

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

    Few people have received updated COVID-19 vaccine boosters since it was first made available in August, according to recent data published by the federal government.

    A man fills syringes with COVID-19 vaccine booster shots at a COVID-19 vaccination clinic in San Rafael, California, on April 6, 2022. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

    About 14.8 million have received bivalent boosters made by Pfizer and Moderna, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data that was published Thursday shows. The Food and Drug Administration provided emergency use authorizations for both booster doses on Aug. 31 for people aged 12 and older, while it signed off on an emergency approval for children aged 5 to 11 this week.

    Some 226 million people have received their primary vaccination series, CDC data shows. It means that about 6.5 percent of people who are eligible got the updated boosters, which were designed to target the Omicron variant and several of its subvariants.

    The Biden administration has repeatedly called on people to get the bivalent booster shots. Earlier this week, White House COVID-19 coordinator Ashish Jha earlier this month claimed that “tens of thousands of lives” could be saved by people taking the booster shot.

    “Each of the last two winters we have seen increases in Covid infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. There are new subvariants of Omicron emerging that are going to pose substantial challenges to several of our therapies. So our message is very simple: Don’t wait. Get vaccinated,” he stated.

    Lack of Testing?

    However, some medical professionals—including members of an FDA advisory panel—have recommended that young people shouldn’t receive the updated boosters.

    Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, said in a CNN interview that he isn’t convinced the Omicron-specific shots will provide any benefit to that age cohort.

    “When you’re asking people to get a vaccine, I think there has to be clear evidence of benefit,” he said in September. “And we’re not going to have clinical studies, obviously, before this launches, but you’d like to have at least human data [on] people getting this vaccine, you see a clear and dramatic increase in neutralizing antibiotics, and then at least you have a correlate of protection against [Omicron subvariant] BA.4, BA.5.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/16/2022 – 15:30

  • In Groundbreaking Speech, Xi Vows To Guide China To "Incomparable Glory", An Alternative To The US
    In Groundbreaking Speech, Xi Vows To Guide China To “Incomparable Glory”, An Alternative To The US

    Flanked by party leaders past and future,  President Xi Jinping on Sunday took center stage to present his grand vision for China, and in a speech running almost two hours, Xi let the world know that China wouldn’t change course and that by rallying around the party center – of which Xi is the core-  they would be able to ride out the storms and guide the country to “incomparable glory” as China restores the country to the forefront of global powers even as he highlighted the challenges and risks faced by the country and warned party members to brace for “dangerous storms” ahead. Instead, he declared the “rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is now on an irreversible historical course” and as Bloomberg notes, forcefully offered China up as an alternative to the US and its allies as he laid out the ruling party’s priorities on everything from Covid Zero to its ambitions on Taiwan and goals for tech sufficiency.

    China’s President Xi Jinping delivers his speech to the party congress in Beijing. Photo: AFP

    In his 105-minute speech on Sunday, which took months to prepare and gives the president an opportunity to review past challenges and achievements and lay out his grand vision and goals for the nation, Xi highlighted the challenges and risks faced by the country and warned party members to brace for “dangerous storms” ahead. But by rallying around the party center, of which Xi is the core, they would be able to ride out the storms and guide the country to “incomparable glory”, he declared.

    “China’s international influence, appeal and power to shape the world has significantly increased,” Xi said in kicking off the Communist Party’s once-in-five-year party congress, at which he’s set to secure a norm-breaking third term in office. “Chinese modernization offers humanity a new choice for achieving modernization,” he added.

    This came as Xi, widely regarded as the most powerful Chinese politician since Deng Xiaoping, delivered his work report to some 2,000 Communist Party delegates gathered in Beijing for the twice-a-decade national congress. As SCMP reports, the speech marked the beginning of a weeklong session ending on October 22, when a new Central Committee to head the 97 million party members will be formed and ratified.

    Chinese President Xi Jinping and his predecessor Hu Jintao at the Great Hall of the People, in Beijing on October 16. Photo: Kyodo

    Some more highlights from Xi’s speech:

    • By 2049, when the People’s Republic will hold centennial celebrations, China should become a leading power in all aspects, Xi said. To achieve this, the party will first aim to complete all modernization programs by 2035, turning China from the largest developing economy to a middle-to-high-income country, he said. This would mean that China will have successfully avoided the “middle-income trap”.
    • Building on the momentum, China will strive to become a leading global power by mid-century. This power will not only be measured by the size of China’s economy but also by its achievements in the fields of science and technology and culture, Xi said.
    • The Chinese military force, already the largest in the world, will become a “world-class fighting force”. On the environment front, China will also “largely eliminate pollution” and achieve carbon neutrality.

    But what drew the longest applause from the audience, was Xi’s vow that the island of Taiwan – self-governed since a bitter civil war in 1949 – must be brought back into the fold. But he also said Beijing would show the “utmost sincerity and make the greatest efforts” to achieve such reunification by peaceful means, while stressing that it would not give up the use of force as a last resort.

    Xi’s remarks indicate that China is ready to stare down a growing challenge from the US under President Joe Biden, who has moved to hinder Beijing’s ability to access advanced technology and sought to deter any military action against Taiwan – the biggest flash point between the world’s biggest economies. The Chinese leader hailed the nation’s “fighting spirit” and said the country was “well-positioned for pursuing development and ensuring security.”

    “The message to the party is that China can develop its technological advantages without the United States, and is going to be able to withstand the policies that Biden and others are promoting to cut China off from certain high-tech goods like semiconductors,” said Neil Thomas, a China analyst at Eurasia Group Ltd., a political risk advisory and consulting firm. “Whether that’s going to succeed is a totally different question of course, but it’s certainly expressing confidence to those in the system.”

    According to Bloomberg, Xi’s speech reflected a changed world from 2017, when he declared that China was “standing tall and firm in the East.” Since then, he’s faced a barrage of US tariffs, financial sanctions and trade curbs aimed at blocking China’s ability to grow even more powerful, culminating in a sweeping order this month restricting Beijing’s access to high-end chips used in artificial intelligence, supercomputing and other technologies set to drive the modern economy.

    On Sunday, Xi vowed to “resolutely win the battle in key core technologies.” Pledging to speed up innovation in areas vital to “technology self-reliance,” he said that China “will move faster to launch a number of major national projects that are of strategic, big-picture and long-term importance.”

    Xi’s defiant tone stood in stark contrast with the calamitous problems facing China’s economy. The country is facing one of its most challenging periods in decades as Covid Zero policies and a property crackdown place pre-pandemic predictions of a 5% growth rate out of reach. In addition to failing to make significant breakthroughs on chip technology despite spending tens of billions of dollars, the nation is also facing the slowest economic growth in more than four decades, excluding 2020’s Covid slump. Restrictive pandemic policies have cut off visitors and hurt spending, while youth unemployment is around record highs. A property crisis has also spurred a wave of mortgage boycotts.

    Xi reiterated that economic development was the party’s “top priority,” even as he twice mentioned the need to “balance development with security” — a phrase suggesting growth can be sacrificed for goals like self-sufficiency and national defense. Noting “drastic changes in the international landscape,” he said the party “safeguarded China’s dignity and core interests.”

    The speech delivered by Xi at the Great Hall of the People was an abridged version of his work report. This was a departure from tradition, as the party chief usually reads out the entire document. The only exception was at the 16th party congress 20 years ago, when the then-party chief, Jiang Zemin, aged 76, also opted for a shorter version. According to SCMP, Xi may have cut back his speech out of concern for the retired elderly party leaders who made a rare appearance to join him on stage. They included his predecessor Hu Jintao, 79, who looked tired and frail throughout the session. At 105, Song Ping was the most senior party elder to appear on stage on the day. However, the two most noticeable absentees were former president Jiang, now 96, and former premier Zhu Rongji, 93. Their names, however, are on the list of an ad hoc group set up to supervise the proceedings of the party congress.

    Communist Party elder Song Ping (left) and former vice-president Zeng Qinghong at the opening ceremony of the 20th party congress. Photo: Kyodo

    While the influence of party elders varies over time, their appearance this time could be largely symbolic. While Xi had sought their views, the president has a free hand to make all key decisions. Yu Jie, a senior research fellow on China at Chatham House – an independent policy think-tank based in London – is among analysts who see the shortened report as an indication of Xi’s firm hold on power.

    “The 20th party congress report speech is significantly shorter than the 19th, a clear indication of Xi’s success in centralising power,” Yu said. “The speech acts as a summary of the party’s achievements and future plans – expressed as the lowest common denominator of consensus between competing factions. A shorter report speech would seem to suggest smaller factional gaps in reaching consensus.”

    While Xi did not mention the United States in his speech, he warned against a cold-war mentality – a catchphrase to describe Washington’s attempts to isolate China – as well as Western double standards, as he asserted that the country would not be bullied. Further elaboration of the point came in the full work report released shortly afterwards.

    “The attempt to suppress and contain China’s growth could escalate anytime,” the report read. “We are entering a stage where great opportunities and risks coexist. Uncertainties and unpredictability are rising. All kinds of black swans and grey rhinos [unexpected and overlooked risks] could strike any time. We must have a keen sense of crisis and make thorough preparations. Only by doing that can we rise to the challenges ahead.”

    To mitigate the risks, Xi said the party needs to strengthen its work on national security and improve the protection of all major infrastructure and networks, as well as data, biosecurity, nuclear and space assets.

    “We must improve our capacity to counter foreign sanctions, interference and long-arm jurisdiction,” the report said. Long-arm jurisdiction in party-speak usually refers to the US imposing its own laws and court orders on other countries.

    China also needs to increase self-reliance in the food, energy and technology sectors, Xi said, as he listed technological innovation and scientific breakthroughs as key to achieving the development goals outlined in the report.

    “We must speed up technological progress and self-reliance. We must pool our resources and focus on key areas to achieve breakthroughs, so that we can win the race in core technologies critical to our national strategy.”

    The party must also develop more open, inclusive and efficient talent schemes to groom and attract top talents to China, Xi emphasised.

    Xie Maosong, a senior fellow at Tsinghua University’s National Strategy Institute, described the work report as a “galvanising call” to the party and the Chinese people. “This is the party’s first work report after its centennial celebration [in 2021], so it is not just meant [to resonate] for the next five years,” Xie said. “It sets the goal of realising China’s great rejuvenation, and to do so by charting our own path and not following the Western model of political party rotation,” he explained.

    “To achieve that, the party needs to address the unique question of how to stay in power and win public trust continuously. It needs to provide a structural and systematic answer on ways to maintain a high-quality decision-making process and fight chronic corruption.”

    Xi’s work report was the first highlight of the 20th party congress. The weeklong event is also expected to endorse a revision to the party constitution, which most observers believe will further elevate Xi’s position and governance philosophy.

    On Monday, the committee will vote to confirm the line-up of a new 25-member Politburo and seven-member Politburo Standing Committee – the highest decision-making body in Chinese politics. While Xi is set to get a convention-breaking third term as party leader, he will reshuffle many key positions and put together a new supporting cast for the next five years and beyond.

    * * *

    Below we excerpt from a note by Goldman strategist Andrew Tilron summarizing his main takeaways from Xi’s opening remarks:

    • The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (NCCPC) convened today in Beijing and will conclude on 22 October. Through the opening remarks, President Xi summarized the achievements over the past five years and set out the blueprint for the Party and the country for the future.
    • In summary,
      • 1) President Xi’s “Thoughts on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” have been further highlighted;
      • 2) national security and social stability appear to have become more important, especially for the security of key supply chains;
      • 3) President Xi reiterated the “One Country, Two Systems” principle, and strengthened the stance to secure national sovereignty; and
      • 4) economic development remains important, with continued focus on high-quality growth. 
    • Our textual analysis suggests the adjusted frequency of “security”, “people”, “socialism”, “modernization” and “military” this time increased versus five years ago, that of “growth” and “law-based governance” remained largely stable, while that of “economy”, “market” and “reform” declined somewhat. 

    • We believe the ongoing Party congress may not be an inflection point for major policy changes. We maintain our view that a reopening will probably be delayed until at least Q2 2023, and implemented gradually to the extent possible. Policymakers’ reaction function such as “no flooding of easing measures” and the top leadership’s long-term goals are unlikely to change after the Party Congress. 
    • In terms of equity market implications, we are not changing our views in the absence of any fresh and material policy and political inputs so far from the Congress—We prefer China A over Offshore equities, and would continue to focus on thematic ideas such as “Common Prosperity” and “Little Giants” to trade for sustainable alpha in the stock market. That said, we’d argue that a high level of risk premium is embedded in prevailing equity valuations, and investors should consider option strategies to tactically position in the market.

    (Full note available to pro subscribers.)

    Finally, courtesy of Bloomberg, here is how global China experts are reacting to Xi’s speech:

    Neil Thomas, a China analyst at Eurasia Group:

    • “Xi changed the structure of the report fairly significantly compared to previous years. There are new sections on science and education, on national security and on the legal system areas that have previously been addressed in other parts of report. Having these new sections means they’re going to be even higher priorities.
    • “The new focus on science and education is a reflection on just how much Xi is betting on innovation as a solution to China’s economic problems and its reliance on Western technology. I think that’s super significant.
    • “What’s new there is the addition that this would be done by using or done through Chinese-style modernization. That’s a strong sign Xi is sticking to his guns in going his own way toward wealth, power and very much not following the ways of the West.
    • “The message for the United States is that China’s going to do its own thing. The message to the rest of the world is that China is going to remain powerful and is going to remain a potential partner, especially for developing countries.”

    Scott Kennedy, senior adviser and trustee chair in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic & International Studies:

    • “The language of this speech is all about trying to establish a different kind of international system from what we’ve seen since World War II — one led by the US emphasizing free markets and through the UN system, multilateralism and democracy.
    • “And you can see the whole emphasis of this speech an emphasis of a Chinese style everything — China’s foreign policy, domestic policy, and, in some ways, an acceptance of the fact that the US and China are strategic competitors in the type of world order they’re trying to create. And he was not backing down from that at all.
    • “So I think we’re seeing a real effort for the Chinese to say, ‘You know what, we still want to participate in this global society but we want to be rule makers not just rule takers.’”

    Peiqian Liu, chief China economist of Natwest Markets:

    • “There were two parts that are important to the medium term. First, there was a balanced emphasis on both development and security. This means growth rates will no longer be the only and top priority in coming years, security of development also matters.
    • “Second, there was a lot of emphasis on technology and innovation, which means the focus will likely shift away from just lowering financial risks and reducing debt growth to pouring more resources to development of high tech and innovation.
    • “Common prosperity is still highlighted. That means the policy goal of redistribution of income and wealth is still a medium term goal.”

    Wu Xianfeng, fund manager at Shenzhen Longteng Assets Management Co:

    • “The standout of the speech was that Xi emphasized economic development still remaining the priority, contrary to the jitters and misconceptions prior to the meeting that common prosperity would come first.
    • “It’s reassuring the leaders say growth still comes first and foremost in the current stage of development, especially as we are faced with economic difficulties from virus curbs and as we are in for challenges from the US over the long term.”

    Ding Shuang, chief economist for Greater China and North Asia at Standard Charted Plc:

    • “It’s important that he reiterated that development is the first priority, and that modernization can’t be achieved without the material foundation. That means the economy’s size still needs to expand and the quality needs to improve.
    • “The speech is mostly an extension of Xi’s previous thoughts on the economy, and there aren’t much new ideas. That’s understandable because he has helmed development in the past decade.
    • “The speech itself may not have much impact on the market, because most of the points have already been raised in the past.”

    Frank Tsai, lecturer at the Emlyon Business School’s Shanghai campus:

     

    • “Xi’s speech sends a signal that China is serious about its socialist roots. To paraphrase, Xi stated that China offers a ‘new choice for humanity,’ China’s ‘scientific socialism,’ and that ‘Chinese wisdom and capacity’ will make this model work for the benefit of all. This sounds like boilerplate propaganda, but it is serious. China is the last major country standing with Cold War roots in Soviet communism.”

     

    Alfred Wu, associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy:

    • “From his speech, it’s clear he’s the leader of the world’s number two country; he wants to change the world order. So China’s clash with the US will be intensified. I don’t see any possibility of tensions being lowered.
    • “China has always argued that the US made the current world order, but now they are doubling down on how they present a true alternative world.
    • “Xi emphasized and boosted the narrative of national security because it is serving as a justification for him to remain in office for as long as possible. He won’t tolerate sensitive issues that could jeopardize his regime.”

    Chen Shi, fund manager at Shanghai Jade Stone Investment Management Co.:

    • “The report settled my nervousness over the past weeks, and should assuage concerns of those investing in China. The fact that the report is shorter this time says to me that the party is confident and policies are consistent — it doesn’t feel the need to waste words explaining itself, and that the overall direction in policies remains the same, and iterated in various policy blueprints in the past.
    • “The way that development and technology came so high up in the report also is reassuring to me — this party is not just about ideology, as some were beginning to fear, but development and economic stability stays high on the list. Those words coming out the mouth of the man himself means that China will still be full of investment opportunities.”
    • Xi Jinping tells the Communist Party that China’s “power to shape the world” has increased, although “dangerous storms” are ahead.

    Drew Thompson, visiting senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore:

    • “It’s interesting how Xi characterizes China’s response to the dynamic international situation as a ‘struggle’ in the Marxist sense for its own national and political security. He is calling on the nation to struggle against international forces that threaten China’s interests.
    • “It reflects an adversarial world view that is zero-sum, and likely foretells of continuing tensions between China and developed nations, featuring wolf warriors and coercion in multiple domains — diplomatic, economic, informational, and military.
    • “Xi emphasized the importance of the country gaining in strength, and the need to struggle against challenges and threats to the party and country, which requires not only a modern military, but a ubiquitous domestic security apparatus as well.”

    Baohui Zhang, a professor of political science at Lingnan University in Hong Kong:

    • “Xi’s speech re-emphasized China’s commitment to ‘openness,’ which was started by Deng Xiaoping. Many have wondered if the strategic rivalry between China and the United States could push them apart and motivate China to pursue autarky. Xi’s message is to assure the world the China remains committed to economic integration with the world.
    • “However, this may not impact the Sino-US rivalry in significant ways. Washington is pursuing at least limited decoupling to redefine its relations with China. Recent technology denial measures are the latest evidence. As such, China’s commitment to ‘openness’ does not mean that decoupling will not continue ,as Washington’s choices and strategies also impact their relations.”

    Wen-Ti Sung, a political scientist at Australia National University’s Taiwan Studies Program:

    • “By giving Taiwan the spotlight early in his speech, Xi is committing the performance of his Taiwan policy to be put under the microscope over the next five years.
    • “Xi declared the Chinese military has both the capability and resolve to deter external influence over Taiwan. What he still hasn’t said is if Chinese ‘intent’ to do so.
    • “In that sense, China is still preferring peaceful unification to using force, but the focus on military capability will only accelerate an arms race in the Taiwan Strait, and the need to demonstrate resolve through military exercises will both raise tensions and increase risks of accidental escalation.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/16/2022 – 15:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Oct 16

Today’s News 16th October 2022

  • National Conservatism Is New Deal Liberalism
    National Conservatism Is New Deal Liberalism

    Authored by Verlan Lewis & Hyrum Lewis via RealClear Wire,

    The National Conservatism Conference that took place in Miami last month has generated a lot of attention and hand-wringing, especially from self-identified “anti-Trump conservatives” who don’t like the direction their movement is taking. In their view, this new national conservatism – with its populist rhetoric, advocacy of government regulation of corporations, favorability to the welfare state, and appeals to religious values and the white working class – is apostasy from the “true conservatism” they supported during the Reagan era.

    But National Conservatism isn’t a turn away from “true conservatism,” because such a thing doesn’t exist. Lacking any essential core, conservatism has always evolved and always will. A self-conscious movement operating under the label “conservative” began in the 1940s with the single purpose of combatting the New Deal. In the 1950s, it mutated to back domestic anti-communism efforts; in the 1960s, it supported greater military intervention overseas; and in the 1970s, it worked to preserve Christian social values. Conservatism has taken many forms over the past century, and National Conservatism is only the latest iteration.

    Ironically, the mutations of conservatism that have occurred in the 21st century have turned the movement into that which it was born to oppose: New Deal liberalism. In the present day, national conservatives are calling for the government to control, regulate, and break up corporate power. In the 1930s, these policies were central to the New Deal. Currently, national conservatives denounce corporate leaders as “tech oligarchs”; in the 1930s, FDR denounced corporate leaders as “economic royalists.” The belief of national conservatives in an expansive government with a robust welfare state is a decisive move away from the limited government conservatism of the Reagan era – and a decisive move towards the expansive-government liberalism of the New Deal era.

    But the similarities don’t stop there. Like today’s national conservatives, FDR drew heavily on religious rhetoric to justify his policies. His radio fireside chats frequently invoked God, and he often prayed on air, asking Providence for guidance and blessings for America. FDR’s base of support came from white, rural, Christian Americans of the middle or lower class – the same demographic base of national conservatism today. Religious Americans are much more likely to vote Republican today, but in FDR’s time, under the influence of social gospel theology, they were far more likely to vote Democrat. In fact, the most prominent opponents of the New Deal were also some of the most prominent anti-religious voices, including Ayn Rand, Max Eastman, and H.L. Mencken. Religious Americans formed the core of the New Deal coalition just as they form the core of the national conservative coalition today.

    Both today’s national conservatives and the New Dealers of the 1930s share a common enemy: urban, coastal, secular, elites who treat them with contempt. The New Dealers turned to FDR to fight back against these cosmopolitans; national conservatives turned to Trump for the same reason.

    The New Deal was also highly nationalistic. The liberalism FDR inherited and advanced was most powerfully articulated by the progressive-era reformer Herbert Croly in his classic book, “The Promise of American Life.” The book called for a “new nationalism” that would unite Americans behind the Hamiltonian project of greater democratic equality and national greatness. Nationalism and expansions of government power went hand in hand during the New Deal, as is visible in the pamphlets, literature, office photographs, and promotional materials of that era.

    The fact that conservatism has done a complete 180 and turned into what it was born to oppose helps expose the central political misconception of our time: the idea that ideologies precede policies.

    Although it is commonly believed that conservatism is a philosophy or temperament that leads to a coherent set of issue positions, the reality is that conservatism is an ex post story that Republicans tell themselves to justify whatever policies are currently associated with their side. During the 1940s, self-identified “conservatives” such as Russell Kirk and William F. Buckley Jr. developed creative ex post stories to explain how a Burkean philosophy led to a set of anti-state policies. Now, self-identified “conservatives” such as Tucker Carlson and Yoram Hozany have developed creative ex post stories to explain how a Burkean philosophy leads to a set of pro-state policies.

    So what is “conservatism” then? It’s a story to justify the policies that tribe red favors at a given moment. And although the story has persisted over the past hundred years, the policies have reversed, meaning that what is considered “conservative” today is exactly what was considered “liberal” at the time of FDR.

    Verlan Lewis the Stirling Professor of Constitutional Studies at Utah Valley University. Hyrum Lewis is Professor of History at BYU-Idaho. Their book, “The Myth of Left and Right” is forthcoming from Oxford University Press in January. They are affiliated with the Jack Miller Center.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/15/2022 – 23:30

  • World's Largest Airplane Prepares For Reported In-Flight Drop Test Of Hypersonic Vehicle
    World’s Largest Airplane Prepares For Reported In-Flight Drop Test Of Hypersonic Vehicle

    The aerospace venture established by late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is preparing to fly the world’s largest airplane in an upcoming flight test that is reported to include a separation drop-test of a hypersonic vehicle. 

    Spotters at the Mojave Air and Space Port told TheAviationist Thursday that Stratolaunch’s twin-fuselage “Roc” airplane was outside its massive hanger with engines running. 

    Additional sources told the aviation blog, “the aircraft is being prepared for an upcoming test flight that is reported to include the separation drop-test of an unmanned Talon-A hypersonic mock-up that is being referred to as “Talon-0″ for this reported upcoming test.”

    Sources familiar with the project said Roc may be ready for flight in “two to three weeks.”

    The reported upcoming flight of Stratolaunch in, “Two to three weeks” was described to TheAviationist as a test of how the reusable Talon-A unmanned hypersonic will separate from the Stratolaunch launch aircraft. The source told us that, “The Talon-0 is an accurate representation of the weight, C.G. [center of gravity] and aerodynamic characteristics of the Talon-1. It even has a system for pumping fluid to simulate fuel flow.”

    This would be the aircraft’s eighth flight and the first with a hypersonic test vehicle though only separation tests will be conducted. 

    In the future, the Pentagon could be a top customer of Stratolaunch’s launching services. The company has a contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory to test hypersonic vehicles. 

    As a reminder, America lags in the hypersonic race while Russia and China field these new weapons. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/15/2022 – 23:00

  • More Foods Will Be Gene-Edited Than You Think
    More Foods Will Be Gene-Edited Than You Think

    Authored by Camille Su via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Gene editing has long been primarily used for research, treatment, and disease prevention. Currently, this technology is increasingly being applied to modify agricultural products to create more “perfect” species. More and more genetically edited foods are appearing on the market, including high-nutrient tomatoes and zero-trans-fat soybean oil.

    Some argue that gene-edited foods are safer than genetically modified (GM) foods (pdf). The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) specified in 2018 that most genetically edited foods do not need to be regulated. However, are these foods, which will increasingly appear on the table, really risk-free?

    Gene Modification 2.0: Gene-Edited Foods May Become More Available

    In September 2021, the first gene-edited food—Sicilian Rouge tomatoes—made with CRISPR-Cas9 technology were officially on sale.

    This gene-edited tomato contains high levels of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which helps lower blood pressure and aids relaxation.

    Japanese researchers remove a gene from the genome of the common tomato. After the gene is removed, the activity of an enzyme in tomatoes increases, promoting the production of GABA. The GABA content in this tomato is four to five times higher than that of a regular tomato.

    Warren H. J. Kuo, an emeritus professor of the Department of Agronomy at National Taiwan University, explains that both gene editing and transgenic organisms are genetic modification, also known as genetic engineering.

    The earliest technique was genetic modification, that is, transgenic—in which a plant or animal is being inserted a gene from another species, such as a specific bacterial gene. The purpose of artificially modifying plants and animals is to improve their resistance against diseases and droughts, promote growth rates, increase yields, or improve nutrient content. However, the finished product will exhibit the foreign species’ genes.

    Kuo says that transgenic modification is “genetic modification 1.0,” while gene editing is “genetic modification 2.0.” Gene editing is directly modifies the genes of the organism itself, so most of them do not exhibit foreign genes. However, the most common gene editing technique, CRISPR-Cas9, introduces foreign genes as the editing tool, and then removes the transplanted foreign genes.

    While gene-edited tomatoes were on the market, Japan also approved two types of fish genetically edited with CRISPR—tiger pufferfish and red seabream. These fish are genetically edited to accelerate muscle growth. Among them, the gene-edited tiger pufferfish weighs nearly twice that of the ordinary species.

    Back in 2019, the United States had used another earlier gene-editing technique to create soybean oil with zero trans fat and introduced it into the market.

    Gene-edited foods which have also been approved for sale worldwide by now include soybeans, corn, mushrooms, canola, and rice.

    The number of genetically edited foods on the market is likely to increase. Patent applications relating to CRISPR-edited commercial agricultural products have skyrocketed since the 2014/2015 period.

    Gene-Edited Foods May Pose 2 Major Risks

    Proponents of genetic modification believe this is a method to perfect agricultural produce and solve problems such as pests, droughts, and nutritional deficiencies. But the technology is still a double-edged sword.

    “Genetic engineering indeed has its benefits in the short term, but it may bring long-term pitfalls,” said Joe Wang, molecular biologist. Wang is currently a columnist with The Epoch Times.

    Hornless cattle were once the celebrity of the animal kingdom, appearing in news stories one after another.

    Many breeds of dairy cattle have horns, but they are dehorned to prevent them from harming humans and other animals, and to save more feeding trough space. To solve the “problem” of horns, the gene editing company Recombinetics successfully produced hornless cattle with gene-editing techniques many years ago.

    The company simply added a few letters of DNA to the genome of ordinary cattle and their offspring didn’t grow horns, either.

    However, a few years later, an accident happened.

    The FDA found that a modified genetic sequence of a bull contained a stretch of bacterial DNA including a gene conferring antibiotic resistance, which has been one of the global health crises in recent years. Scientists aren’t clear whether this gene in gene-edited cattle will pose a greater risk than expected or not, and the FDA has stressed that it’s hazard-free. However, John Heritage, a retired microbiologist from Leeds University, told MIT Technology Review that the antibiotic resistance gene could be absorbed by gut bacteria in cattle and could create unpredictable opportunities for its spread.

    In fact, this is one of the currently perceived risks of genetically edited foods.

    Genetic Accidents, New Toxins?

    The problem with unexpected accidents in the genetic modification process occurs in GM foods because transgenic techniques cannot control where the foreign gene is embedded in the chromosome.

    Kuo used the example of a study that compared the protein of transgenic soybeans and non-transgenic soybeans. These transgenic soybeans were initially embedded with one foreign gene, and should have had only one protein that didn’t exist before. However, the comparison showed that there was a difference of about 40 proteins between the two: Half of the proteins were originally present, but disappeared after transgenic modification; the other half were not present but were added after the transgenic modification.

    In contrast, emerging gene editing techniques allow for more precise modification of specific genes (pdf). It’s like a tailor modifying a section of a zipper by cutting off a specific segment and replacing it with a new one. However, there may be mistakes and unexpected changes in the process of cutting and repairing, and another similar section of the zipper may also be cut off.

    Kuo says that this process may have unforeseen side effects; for example, if during this, new allergy-causing proteins or new toxins are produced.

    “The genetic engineering procedure, and this includes gene editing, has the potential to damage DNA,” said molecular geneticist Dr. Michael Antoniou, head of the Gene Expression and Therapy Group at King’s College London, in an interview in April 2022. “If you alter gene function, you automatically alter the biochemistry of the plant …  included within that altered biochemistry can be the production of novel toxins and allergens … that is my main concern.”

    More Herbicide Use?

    Another major concern with GM foods is herbicide residue.

    Most crops, whether genetically edited or genetically modified, have herbicide-resistant genes incorporated into them. This is done so that when herbicides are applied to crops for weed control, the crops themselves won’t be harmed.

    When planting herbicide-resistant crops, farmers can use herbicides rather liberally. But, long term, the weeds the farmers are targeting become increasingly herbicide-resistant as well, resulting in a cycle of increased herbicide use and resistance.

    Since the introduction of herbicide-resistant GM crops in 1996, herbicides have experienced a significant growth in application every year. The herbicides residue in the crops grown are increasing as well.

    One of the most widely used herbicides is glyphosate under the trade name Roundup. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classifies glyphosate as a Group 2A carcinogen that is probably carcinogenic to humans.

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researcher Stephanie Seneff and scientific consultant Anthony Samsel said in their study that 80 percent of GM crops, especially corn, soybeans, canola, cotton, sugar beets, and alfalfa, are specifically introduced with glyphosate resistance genes.

    In addition to carcinogenic concerns, glyphosate may have more harmful effects. They have collected and reviewed 286 studies and indicated that glyphosate inhibits the activity of an enzyme in the mitochondria of liver cells—cytochrome P450—which has the ability to detoxify and decompose foreign toxic substances. Moreover, glyphosate also has adverse effects on the gut microbiota.

    These effects are not immediately apparent, but in the long run may contribute to inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), multiple sclerosis, cancer, infertility, and developmental abnormalities.

    An animal study published in Environmental Health shows that long-term exposure to ultra-low doses of glyphosate still causes liver and kidney diseases in rats.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/15/2022 – 22:30

  • KFC Ranks Fastest In Drive-Thru Wait Time
    KFC Ranks Fastest In Drive-Thru Wait Time

    One of the stickiest trends that resulted from the virus pandemic is the consumer shift to restaurant drive-thrus. The surge of drive-thru use in the last two years led many restaurant chains to upgrade their facilities to increase the speed of service.

    Restaurant chains have long competed for drive-thru business. Some fast-food companies have widened ordering lanes to two, while others have added sophisticated technology to smooth the process. 

    Speed and ease of service is the goal of restaurant drive-thrus in a post-pandemic world, and now a new study from Intouch Insight shows out of ten major US restaurant chains and more than 1,500 drive-thrus later, KFC has the fastest average wait time of just 5 minutes. 

    Besides KFC, Taco Bell is second at 5 mins 18 seconds, and Hardee’s is third at 5 mins 23 seconds. 

    The slowest was Chick-fil-A at 8 mins 29 seconds. Surprisingly, Burger King, McDonald’s, and Wendy’s were all at the lower end of the list between 6-7 min waits. 

    Source: WSJ

    If there’s any indication of where the restaurant industry is headed. Chipotle Mexican Grill is now adding “Chipotlane” to existing restaurants and new stores to increase sales via drive-thrus. The battle between restaurant chain drive-thrus is well underway. Before the pandemic, it was about the inside experience — now it’s outside. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/15/2022 – 22:00

  • Why Are Student Test Scores Plunging? Look At Politicized Education
    Why Are Student Test Scores Plunging? Look At Politicized Education

    Authored by Lance Izumi & Wenyuan Wu via RealClear Wire (emphasis ours),

    Recent national student test scores showed a massive decline in learning in reading and math. This achievement implosion has several explanations – one is the increasing politicization of classroom instruction, which is reducing rigor and diverting attention from improving students’ foundational knowledge and skills.

    From 2020 to 2022, reading scores for nine-year-olds on the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP), often referred to as the nation’s report card, registered the largest decline since the 1990s, while math scores declined for the first time ever. These score comparisons were the first nationally representative snapshot of student learning during the pandemic.

    While school closures and ineffective distance-learning efforts were important reasons for the slide in test scores, former North Carolina governor Beverly Perdue, who chairs the board responsible for the NAEP, warned, “We can’t keep blaming COVID.”

    Indeed, other important reasons exist for the nosedive in student performance.

    Many students report that increasing ideological indoctrination in the classroom is leading to weaker standards and lower expectations.

    One California student reported that a teacher at his school told the class that perfectionism and striving for perfection was part of white supremacy culture. Another one of his teachers “made it seem like it was bad to have a good work ethic or to be supportive of meritocracy.” In his school, grades were inflated, low grades were eliminated, late assignments were allowed, and multiple retakes of exams were permitted. Rigor simply disappeared.

    “To not teach hard work and to not teach a work ethic is going to be disastrous for the kids who kind of cruise along in public schools,” the student reflected.

    The ideological instruction that this student experienced is happening across the country. It is pushed by special interests such as teachers’ unions.

    The National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers’ union in the country, pushes the critical race theory-inspired position that systemic racism permeates all American institutions and must be taught in our schools so that kids challenge “the systems of oppression that have harmed people of color.” In 2021, the NEA adopted a resolution that would mandate race-based ideological instruction in public schools across the country.

    According to the resolution, the union intends to disseminate its own study that “critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society.” The NEA specifically says that critical race theory is one of the methods that should be used to teach these topics in school districts around the country.

    Unions are also using race to undermine teacher quality in the classroom. In a recent announcement, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers reached an agreement with Minneapolis Public Schools to lay off white teachers regardless of seniority or merit before laying off minority teachers in the name of “anti-bias, anti-racism.”

    As one analyst noted, the Minneapolis agreement seeks “to achieve ‘equity’ by reducing standards and replacing white teachers,” while the “sensible (and legal) goal is to expand the pool and retention rate of all qualified teachers.”

    When confronted with the reality of historically low academic performance, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, attempted to flip the script, blaming conservatives and Trump-era education policies for harming learning.

    Yet, many teachers disagree and are speaking out against politicized classrooms.

    Virginia public school teacher Laura Morris quit her job and told her school board, which had pushed race-based indoctrination, “I quit your policies, I quit your training, and I quit being a cog in a machine that that tells me to push highly politicized agendas to our most vulnerable constituents – children.”

    The politicization of classroom instruction leads not only to indoctrination but also, as the California student noted, to lower student achievement. “It’s not a school’s place to impose on the students any viewpoint,” he observes. “What we need to do is really encourage achievement for all people.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/15/2022 – 21:30

  • Arctic Blast To Blanket Eastern Half Of US Next Week
    Arctic Blast To Blanket Eastern Half Of US Next Week

    A cold blast will descend on the eastern US early next week, forcing tens of millions of Americans to turn on their heaters or fire up their stoves as the cold season comes early. 

    “It will feel more like November for many next week,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Tyler Roys said.

    Unseasonably cold weather begins Monday and could last through the week and extend down to the Gulf of Mexico. There’s also a risk of snow across the Great Lakes, Midwest, and New England.

    AccuWeather’s models expect temperatures to dive 10-20 degrees Fahrenheit below average for the first half of next week for the entire eastern half of the country. 

    “Daytime temperatures will be stuck in the 30s and 40s F across the upper Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes region on Monday. Highs are forecast to generally be in the 40s across the interior Northeast on Tuesday, with 50s from Washington, DC, to Boston,” AccuWeather said. 

    The cold blast would indicate surging demand for power as tens of millions of Americans crank up their thermostats to stay warm. Heating demand will rise next week and may put a bid under natural gas prices. 

    Some good news is US NatGas prices have declined for eight consecutive weeks, with prices down more than 30% from a 14-year high in August. 

     But the downturn could be short-lived because US NatGas stockpiles are still below average for this time of year.

    “Globally, we’re feeling better about ourselves and about the natural gas storage levels that we have now,” Gary Cunningham, director of market research at risk management firm Tradition Energy, told Bloomberg last week. 

    Cunningham said traders have so far priced in mild temperatures in NatGas markets for the Northern Hemisphere, which helps curb demand but warned, “All of that can change very quickly and dramatically if we have a cold start to winter.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/15/2022 – 21:00

  • In Overheated Economy, Dems Forced To Cool Climate Messaging
    In Overheated Economy, Dems Forced To Cool Climate Messaging

    Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClear Wire,

    Eric Sorensen, a Democrat running for an open seat in a northwest Illinois congressional district that Donald Trump narrowly won twice, concluded recently that his campaign website’s top issues section needed a major reshuffling.

    Wind energy near Palm Springs Pacific Southwest Region USFWS fro

    A section entitled “Addressing Climate Change,” which was initially leading the page, was relegated to the no. 4 spot, according to a comparison of the archived version of the website. The revamped website’s top two sections were new: “Addressing Rising Costs” and “Securing Reproductive Rights.”

    Sorensen’s re-tooled website reflects the purple nature of his district and the shifting realities of the 2022 midterms as candidates head into the final stretch. Democrats are facing severe headwinds when it comes to the economy and inflation, and they can’t afford to dodge the issue or ignore the pain it’s causing many low- and middle-income Americans.

    At the same time, Democrats still hope that opposition to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning federal abortion protections continues to resonate enough to hand them wins in tight races around the country.

    In unpredictable, ultra-competitive races like Sorensen’s, Democrats are deliberating over every move in the final weeks. The race for the seat held by retiring Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos pits Sorensen against Republican Esther Joy King, a U.S. Army JAG officer reservist running a campaign focused on combating inflation.

    Yet, for Sorensen’s campaign to follow suit – to re-order his policy priorities and slide climate change down the priority list – is telling. The former TV weatherman’s campaign logo still includes a windmill and a sun. He’s also on the record repeatedly stating that climate change is his top priority while claiming to be the first meteorologist to mention climate change on air 15 years ago.

    “Climate change is top,” Sorensen said at a virtual Democratic candidate forum in late April before the primary. “And I was the communicator for events as they happened so our local communities could understand the implications.”

    Why the sudden shift? Republicans offer a succinct explanation: The climate message is backfiring among voters in Illinois’ 17th Congressional District, which is split between rural and urban areas and is home to thousands of farms, including 157 dairy farms. (Dairy farms are a frequent target of environmentalists, who argue that the cows and their manure produce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.)

    “Eric Sorensen is completely out of touch with Illinois voters,” National Republican Campaign Committee spokeswoman Courtney Parella said in a statement over the summer. “Sorensen wants Illinois families, already struggling to afford basic necessities thanks to Democrats’ inflation crisis, to pay higher costs for his radical climate agenda.”

    The Sorensen campaign, which is endorsed by the National Resources Defense Council, a strong proponent of the Green New Deal, now offers a more nuanced version of his top policy priorities.

    “Our campaign is built around economic opportunity and making sure that Central and Northwest Illinois is sustainable now and for years to come,” Sorensen campaign spokesman Joseph Goldberg told RealClearPolitics in an emailed statement. “On the ground, we’re talking about lowering costs for working families and making sure we’re able to tackle the generational challenges that pose climate and economic threats to constituents.”

    “We can both protect and expand thriving industries in Illinois and solve the climate crisis,” he added.

    Not long ago, however, Sorensen and many other Democrats were wholeheartedly touting climate change as the transcendent issue of our time – and were busy promoting their party’s record on the subject.

    As recently as mid-September, congressional Democrats and the White House celebrated the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which is considered one of the most significant climate measures in U.S. history. Signed by President Biden on Aug. 16, the legislation passed on a nearly straight party-line vote and allocates $369 billion over 10 years to various green investments while seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by some 40% by 2030.

    As Biden and party leaders looked on at the White House signing ceremony, singer-songwriter James Taylor trumpeted the law’s green provisions. “It strikes me that this is a time when the world needs to cooperate … more than ever before,” he said of the climate change provisions.

    Last month, Sorensen sent out a fundraising email focused solely on climate change. It highlighted a new study warning that Illinois will be “squarely within an ‘extreme heat belt,’ where dangerously high temperatures will threaten human health with increasing frequency as the planet warms.”

    Yet, in the weeks since the Inflation Reduction Act’s passage, food and rent prices have continued to climb, with free-market economists and other administration critics blaming the law for exacerbating inflation, not easing it. Recent polls also show that the nation’s economic woes have pushed aside climate change as a top-tier voter concern.

    A national poll conducted in mid-August for NBC by GOP and Democratic pollsters found that only 9% of respondents said “climate change” was an important election issue for them. The survey ranked it fifth behind “threats to democracy” (21%), “cost of living” (16%), “jobs and the economy” (14%), and immigration (13%). “Guns” and “abortion” came in just behind “climate change” at 8% each.

    Those are national numbers, however, and concerns about climate vary state by state – and at the county level, which is a more relevant factor in House races. Last year, even before record inflation became the clear driving issue in the campaign, the green agenda was a tough sell in several agriculture-heavy districts, even in reliably Democratic Illinois. The state is the fourth highest producer of coal in the U.S., and over the last decade coal-fired power plants have been the second largest provider of energy in the state, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Illinois also generates more electricity from nuclear power than any other state.

    Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed a landmark law this month that will transition the state to 100% clean energy by 2045. Pritzker is up for reelection this year and has a lead in the low-double digits. But GOP challenger Darren Bailey, a state senator and farmer from downstate, has repeatedly hit Pritzker over his “virtue-signaling” green agenda, which he’s called harmful to the state’s agriculture industry.

    Sorensen is already at odds with several national labor unions after opposing a pipeline project in the district that would transport liquified carbon dioxide 1,300 miles across four Midwest states and deposit it in central Illinois. The companies involved say the project would help ethanol refiners offset emissions from roughly 215,469 vehicles each year and create 8,000 jobs.

    Statewide, some 1,200 farmers led by the Illinois Farm Bureau contacted their representatives over the summer, asking them to oppose the Inflation Reduction Act and faulting the measure for increasing taxes and failing to address “record-high input for [farming] costs,” among other reasons.

    Meanwhile, a study by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, free-market think tanks, predicted that the Green New Deal would have a devastating impact on Midwest farming. The study points out that the Green New Deal’s emissions reductions offset fees of $230 per metric ton of carbon dioxide released will apply to dairy farms and could cost them up to $2,000 per cow. The same analysis also said the Green New Deal’s organic farming requirements would reduce corn and soybean yields by 11%.

    In Sorensen’s telling, however, climate change and the green agenda would be resonating with voters if only the Democratic Party could get its talking points right. In August, Sorensen sent out a fundraising email criticizing Democratic party leaders for not doing a better job selling climate policies, especially in their infrastructure legislation, the Build Back Better Act, which preceded the Inflation Reduction Act.

    “I believe Democrats need more communicators in Washington – individuals who know how to talk about complex issues in ways that highlight the positives but also address real, daily concerns,” he told supporters.

    “This is a common problem that we see with climate change,” he added. “Often, it’s framed around problems that aren’t tangible to everyday life, like ‘saving the polar bears.’ However, that’s not how voters here experience it.”

    It’s a similar refrain to other Democrats who have blasted party leaders for “out-of-touch” positive economic talking points while hearing from voters experiencing pain at the pump and grocery stores. Rep. Susan Wild, a Pennsylvania Democrat running in another competitive House district, said she still backs the Inflation Reduction Act, even though she concedes its promises were exaggerated.

    “[W]e should be cautious about over-promising,” she recently told the New York Times. “You always have to temper your enthusiasm with a huge dose of reality so that people don’t think that next time they go fill their prescription, it’s going to cost less.”

    Despite the concerns from those campaigning on the ground, the White House this week continued to take credit for an economic turnaround since coming to office – even as the president acknowledged in a CNN interview that a “slight recession” is possible but unlikely.

    “When he walked in, small businesses were closed, schools were not open … and thousands of people were dying from the pandemic a day,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday. “[Biden’s] economic policies have been able to get us back on track in a historic fashion.”

    It’s that type of happy talk that leaves Josh Riley cold.

    An attorney and former Capitol Hill staffer running as a Democrat in New York’s 19th District, Riley didn’t mince words recently when blaming the party’s unrealistic messaging for the economic headwinds they face.

    Riley labeled recent talking points from Democratic Party leadership in Washington as “wildly out of touch,” arguing that he would “lose all credibility” if he repeated such unrealistic views on the economy to voters.

    “Yeah, I got to be honest, folks: A lot of it is really bad right now,” he said at a local campaign event. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to say that, but it’s … The D.C. Democratic establishment is doing no favors.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/15/2022 – 20:30

  • DeSantis Slams Light Sentence Given To Nikolas Cruz In Murder Of 17
    DeSantis Slams Light Sentence Given To Nikolas Cruz In Murder Of 17

    Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) had some sharp words over the life sentence handed down to Nikolas Cruz, the man who pleaded guilty to murdering 17 people in a Florida high school in 2018.

    Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nikolas Cruz, seated with sentence mitigation specialist Kate O’Shea, left, and Assistant Public Defender Melisa McNeil, in court as verdicts are read in his trial in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Oct. 13, 2022. (Amy Beth Bennett/Pool/Getty Images)

    “I think that if you have a death penalty at all, that is a case where you’re massacring those students with premeditation and utter disregard for basic humanity, that you deserve the death penalty,” said DeSantis at an unrelated Cape Coral press conference.

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

    “That means that this killer is going to end up getting the same sentence as people who have committed bad acts but acts that did not rise to this level,” he continued. “I just don’t think anything else is appropriate except the capital sentence in this case. So I was very disappointed to see that. I’m also disappointed that we’re four-and-a-half years after those killings and we’re just now getting this. They used to do this, he would have been executed in six months. He’s guilty. Everybody knew that from the beginning, and yet it takes years and years in this legal system that is not serving the interest of victims.”

    DeSantis’ Democratic opponent for Governor, Charlie Crist, agreed.

    “There are crimes for which the only just penalty is death. The Parkland families and community deserved that degree of justice,” Crist tweeted.

    Cruz shot 14 students and three adults to death at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on February 24, 2018, and admitted to attempting to murder 17 others. The jury in the case could not reach a unanimous decision on sentencing Cruz to death, which means he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole.

    Under Florida law, a death sentence requires a unanimous vote on at least one count. The seven-man, five-woman jury unanimously agreed there were aggravating factors to warrant a possible death sentence, such as agreeing that the murders were “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel.”

    But one or more jurors also found mitigating factors, such as untreated childhood issues. In the end, the jury could not agree that the aggravating factors outweighed the mitigating ones, so Cruz will get life without parole. –Epoch Times

    “We went through all the evidence and some of the jurors just felt that was the appropriate sentence,” said Jury foreman Benjamin Thomas, in an interview broadcast on local TV station WPLG – indicating that more than one juror was involved in the ‘no’ decision. “I didn’t vote that way, so I’m not happy with how it worked out, but everyone has the right to decide for themselves.”

    Cruz will formally receive his life sentence on Nov. 1 by Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer, when relatives, students and teachers Cruz wounded will be allowed the opportunity to speak.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/15/2022 – 20:00

  • Truckload Market Loosens Again As Tender Rejections Touch New Low
    Truckload Market Loosens Again As Tender Rejections Touch New Low

    John Hampstead of FreightWaves

    By now, most industry observers and analysts agree that the U.S. truckload market has slowed significantly, part of a broader goods normalization and hangover in our COVID-recovery. Multiple spot rate benchmarks have been falling for months; capacity metrics have loosened. Accepted contract loads (CLAV.USA) peaked in October 2021 and just took a sharper turn downward. 

    National outbound tender rejections (OTRI.USA), which measure the percentage of truckload shipments tendered by shippers that are rejected by trucking carriers, fell to a new cycle low of 5.05%. That’s a very low level last seen in May 2020, when the economy was climbing out of its lockdown-induced deep freeze. When freight is plentiful and trucking carriers have options, they reject contract shipments for higher-paying spot loads and tender rejections rise. But when the market softens, carriers worry about filling their trucks and take all the contract freight they can get, lowering tender rejections. 

    Trucking carriers have reacted to the slowing business environment by deploying their assets on power lanes between major markets that are still dense with activity. But that tactic has had the effect of driving tender rejections in the largest U.S. markets even lower than the national average.

    (Chart: FreightWaves SONAR. Outbound tender rejections in LA (white), Dallas (green), Chicago (blue), Atlanta (orange), and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (purple).

    Trucking carriers are only rejecting 3% of contract loads outbound from Los Angeles and 4.5% of loads outbound from Chicago. Of the five largest markets, only Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, tender rejections at 6.39% are higher than the national average. That higher floor may be supported by the reefer market out of Harrisburg, which is rejecting 7.5% of outbound loads, and may tighten further as temperature-controlled food imports into Philadelphia peak during the Northeast winter. 

    Spot rates fell hard in the first half of 2022, but national averages have been somewhat range-bound since mid-August. The National Truckload Index, Daily Report – Linehaul rate is now at $1.90 per mile, well below the Van Contract Rate Per Mile, Initial Report at $2.70, which itself has fallen about 25 cents from its mid-June peak.

    There are cleavages in the contract truckload market, though, that national benchmarks may sometimes obscure. 

    “I think there is a big gap between live/live contract and drop/drop contract that nobody is talking about,” said William Kerr, president at Edge Logistics, a tech-enabled freight brokerage based in Chicago projected to generate $150 million in gross revenues this year. “When you look at big data rates, you have to take the contract with a grain of salt because 70% of the data is drop/drop.”

    Kerr referred to the distinction between truckload shipments that are loaded and unloaded live, as the driver in his or her truck waits at the dock, and drop shipments in which the driver picks up and drops off preloaded trailers without having to wait for loading and unloading. 

    Setting up a drop trailer pool with a shipper customer requires a higher level of commitment from the carrier and a closer, more collaborative relationship with the shipper customer to manage the assets, and Kerr suggested that the contract rates for that kind of service were holding up better than those for live/live shipments. On the other hand, live/live shipments can be handled by carriers hired the day of, so non-asset freight brokerages have typically concentrated on that kind of business. 

    “I think the correction has been long underway in the live/live market,” Kerr added. “Once we get to February and March and the drop/drop market rolls over, live/live spot will come roaring back.”

    The spread between spot and contract rates blew out into negative territory as spot fell hard but has been closing back up toward zero as spot rates stabilized and contract rates started to react to downward pressure. Kerr confirmed that contract volumes were lower than projected, revenue per load was down and net revenue dollars per load were down but that gross margins were holding steady. That implies that in the freight brokerages’ share of the truckload market, both contract and spot rates are actually lower than market averages with heavy exposure to asset-based carriers’ transactions and drop/drop shipments.

    Like other freight brokerage executives who have spoken to FreightWaves in the past month — including Doug Waggoner, CEO of Echo Global Logistics — Kerr seemed to sense pockets of instability and unsound capacity that were primed for the next upcycle. Last month, Waggoner warned that lower truck orders portended an equipment-driven capacity crunch, perhaps catalyzed by an unforeseeable external event sometime in the next year. Kerr’s hunch has more to do with the internal dynamics of the market and the sequence in which capacity and volume enter and exit different market segments. 

    David Spencer, director of business intelligence at Arrive Logistics, a large Austin, Texas-based freight brokerage that will record approximately $2.5 billion in gross revenue this year, agreed that contract rates for drop trailer shipments tend to be stickier because those carriers staging drop trailers at customer locations are harder to replace. So when contract rates are falling, drop/drop rates will be more stable and lag behind any price move. 

    But Spencer cautioned that the economics of drop/drop loads for carriers can be complex: Although they have to provide equipment, they gain efficiencies from quick drop-and-hook freight, allowing them to run more miles. In other words, even if rates for drop/drop loads move more slowly, they aren’t necessarily higher than live/live rates—usually only for multi-day transits, Spencer said.

    That said, there’s a plausible way that a capacity-driven turnup could materialize in 2023. If shippers rapidly shift strategies from focusing on maintaining service to managing spend because capacity seems abundant, they might well de-emphasize drop trailer networks and other contracted and semi-dedicated arrangements in favor of cheap spot capacity. Enterprise carriers, many of which have already paused growing their fleets because of difficulty recruiting and retaining drivers, could find new equipment harder to procure next year. More freight could be pushed into the spot market that way and rates could turn up again, especially if enough time has passed for significant spot capacity to exit the market.

    Time will tell, but for now, with August real goods spending down 0.2% year over year, most parts of the truckload market are on a clear downward glide.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/15/2022 – 19:30

  • Dems Move To Transfer Air Defense Systems From Saudis To Ukraine As Punishment
    Dems Move To Transfer Air Defense Systems From Saudis To Ukraine As Punishment

    A group of leading Congressional Democrats are seeking to punish longtime US ally Saudi Arabia for the latest “shock” oil output cuts recently announced by OPEC, which was taken by the Biden administration as a direct slap in the face and shot across the bow.

    Senator Chris Murphy and Rep. Ro Khanna are leading the charge to get advanced anti-air missile systems which the Pentagon has stationed in Saudi Arabia removed and transferred to Ukraine. The systems were sent there over the past several years following an uptick in missile and drone attacks by Yemeni Houthi rebel attacks on Saudi cities and energy infrastructure coming from the south.

    Sen. Chris Murphy via ABC News

    Murphy announced in a Thursday statement, “For several years, the US military has deployed Patriot missile defense batteries to Saudi Arabia to help defend oil infrastructure against missile and drone attacks. These advanced air and missile defense systems should be re-deployed to bolster the defenses of eastern flank NATO allies like Poland and Romania — or transferred to our Ukrainian partners.”

    As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Murphy also lent his voice to ongoing calls to “freeze new military aid to Saudi Arabia” – which would possibly impact the pending sale and transfer of Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) to Riyadh based on a previously approved contract of $650 million

    “Policy decisions have consequences, and these steps would right-size [the] relationship with Saudi Arabia and help Ukraine,” he said this week. The Congressional movement to drastically reevaluate and change the US-Saudi arms relationship has gained traction ever since the October 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as well as growing alarm over Saudi massacres in Yemen and the dire humanitarian situation.

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

    Rep. Khanna too grew more vocal this week following Riyadh not playing ball with Washington on desired levels of near-term oil output. “At the very least, the Patriot missiles will be suspended,” Khanna forewarned. 

    “The reality is that there is no economic case for what they are doing. This was punitive for Americans and it is aiding [Russia’s President Vladimir] Putin,” the representative from California added.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/15/2022 – 19:00

  • Alaska Snow Crab Season Canceled For First Time After Population Crash In Bering Sea
    Alaska Snow Crab Season Canceled For First Time After Population Crash In Bering Sea

    One year ago to this week, we pointed out, “Alaska Snow Crab Harvest Cut By 88% After Population Crash In Bering Sea.” Back then, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game set catch limits for fishermen. Now the agency has canceled the season altogether because of a continued population collapse. 

    ADF&G published an advisory notice this week titled “2022/23 Bering Sea Snow Crab Season Closed,” which outlines the snow crab season in the Bering Sea will be closed for the first time. 

    CBS News spoke with state officials who said a whooping billion crabs have mysteriously disappeared in the past few years, resulting in a devastating population collapse in the region. 

    “Did they run up north to get that colder water?” asked Gabriel Prout, whose Kodiak Island fishing company depends heavily on snow crabs. “Did they completely cross the border? Did they walk off the continental shelf on the edge there, over the Bering Sea?” 

    Ben Daly, a researcher with ADF&G, is investigating the catastrophic population crash of the large crustacean. He believes disease could be one of the possibilities. His agency monitors the health of the state’s fisheries, which produce 60% of all US seafood. 

    Scientists who study snow crabs have been trying to figure out what happened. Some have said a great migration could have pushed the crabs farther to the northwest and deeper waters due to warmer waters.

    “Environmental conditions are changing rapidly.

    “We’ve seen warm conditions in the Bering Sea the last couple of years, and we’re seeing a response in a cold adapted species, so it’s pretty obvious this is connected. It is a canary in a coal mine for other species that need cold water,” Daly said. 

    The cancelation of the season will be a significant blow to America’s seafood industry. 

    “It’s going to be life-changing, if not career-ending, for people,” Dean Gribble, a crab boat captain who has fished in the Alaskan waters since the 1970s, told NBC News. 

    “A lot of these guys with families and kids, there’s no option other than getting out. That’s where the hammer is going to fall — on the crew,” he continued. 

    The snow crab population collapse might have a ripple effect across restaurant menus, as prices for Alaskan snow crabs could soon jump. Some restaurants might come across shortages of the crab due to supply woes. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/15/2022 – 18:00

  • Democratic Party Moved From Uncomfortable To Intolerable For Members: #WalkAway Founder
    Democratic Party Moved From Uncomfortable To Intolerable For Members: #WalkAway Founder

    Authored by Beth Brelje via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    While Democrat voters have been leaving the party for years, their reasons have become more urgent.

    “When people were feeling pushed away years ago, to the point where they were starting to walk away, there was more of a casual tone about it,” former liberal Democrat Brandon Straka, founder of #WalkAway told The Epoch Times.

    “People were beginning to feel the effects of leftist, communism, Marxism infiltration into our society, our culture, and our politics.”

    Brandon Straka, founder of the #WalkAway Campaign, speaks at the CPAC convention in National Harbor, Md., on Feb. 28, 2020. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

    Straka founded #WalkAway in 2018 after making his personal decision to leave the party public while inviting others to join him. Since then, thousands of exiting Democrats made social media videos explaining why they were choosing to #WalkAway, giving Straka a window into the minds of these voters.

    At that time, people were just noticing changes in the party, he said. They weren’t always identifying what it meant, but they knew they didn’t like how it felt, and quietly left.

    “But now, it’s akin to cancer. Cancer doesn’t stop growing and spreading just because people don’t like it. And what’s happening with the left is no different,” Straka said. “Particularly with them getting rid of Trump, installing Biden, and the Democrats taking full control of the government. This is a cancer that’s rapidly growing and spreading now. And it’s becoming not just uncomfortable, but I think intolerable, for a lot of people.”

    Democrats More Extreme

    Voters have shifted beyond concern to fear and worry, he says.

    Under Biden, things have become more extreme, Straka said. “People feel concerned about the amount of overreach they’re seeing in the government, the DOJ, the FBI, and that’s a lot of what Tulsi [Gabbard] talked about; there’s a weaponization now of government agencies and the sort of authoritarian approach to government. It’s not reflective of why she became a Democrat. I think that is resonating with a lot of people.”

    Gabbard, a former U.S. Rep serving Hawaii, released a video this week explaining her decision to leave the Democrat party.

    Then-Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) delivers a 20-minute campaign speech at the Des Moines Register Political Soapbox during the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa, on Aug. 9, 2019. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    “By weaponizing the security state and federal law enforcement for their own partisan political ambitions, Democrat leaders are undermining the rule of law and turning our democracy into a banana republic,” Gabbard said in the video. She talked about policies that have led to violent criminals being released from prison and surging crime rates.

    “Is it any surprise that firearm purchases for self-defense have skyrocketed over the last couple of years? Under the Obama administration, the IRS was used to target conservative groups,” Gabbard said. “Now Biden’s Department of Justice recently indicted 11 pro-life activists for organizing an event blockading an abortion clinic. They didn’t use physical force. They weren’t dangerous.” But seven of the protesters face 11 years in prison and fines of $250,000 each, she said, then mentioned parents speaking about school curriculum being targeted by the administration.

    Compared to the 2018 stories of why people left the Democrat party, the reasons have become more alarming. Things have not gotten better, Straka said.

    “People are truly scared, and they should be. I’m living proof that you might be sitting home, minding your own business, and the FBI might break your door down and take you to jail.”

    Straka says he was scheduled to be a speaker at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

    “When I got there, the doors to the Capitol were open, and I stood outside the building and shot a video for eight minutes, and then I published my video to Twitter. But while shooting the video, apparently, I had entered a restricted area. And so the FBI raided my house in tactical gear, put me in handcuffs, took me to jail, and charged me with two felonies and a misdemeanor for occupying restricted grounds and for being a part of what they called impeding police officers in the line of duty.”

    His case went on for a year until he took a deal to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct in conjunction with Jan. 6.

    Brandon Straka sits in a simulated jail cell during a demonstration at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, Texas on Aug. 05, 2022. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

    Republicans Leaving Too

    Although Straka is now a Republican, when Democrats leave the party, they don’t automatically become Republicans.

    “A lot of people in the Republican Party are also feeling no longer represented or disenchanted with the establishment Republicans,” Straka said.

    As members of the Republican Party become more focused on the America First or MAGA agenda, they are less connected to establishment Republicans or Republicans in Name Only (RINOS), he said.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/15/2022 – 17:30

  • Federal Tax Haul Nears Record-High Share Of GDP
    Federal Tax Haul Nears Record-High Share Of GDP

    Federal tax collections are surging — not only in absolute terms, but also as a share of the nation’s output.  

    According to a Tax Foundation analysis of Congressional Budget Office data, the U.S. government’s confiscation of wealth soared 21% in the 2022 fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30.

    In all, the feds took a record $4.9 trillion — $850 billion more than the $4.05 trillion in 2021, which was itself a record.  

    That represents about 19.6% of GDP, which is close to a previous peak that accompanied the FY 2000 dot-com bubble. It’s also within shouting distance of the all-time high of 20.5% set during World War II.    

    What’s most troubling about the record tax haul is that it was accompanied by a $1.4 trillion budget deficit, which helped push the U.S. national debt over $31 trillion this month — not counting the unfunded liabilities associated with Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs. 

    Meanwhile, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, policies enacted by the Biden administration will add more than $4.8 trillion to deficits between 2021 and 2031. As Veronique de Rugy points out at Reason, that’s before counting the impact of Biden’s student-loan forgiveness order, which will cost another $400 billion. 

    And imagine how much bleaker the federal financials are about to look as rising interest rates increase the government’s cost of servicing its enormous pile of IOUs. 

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

    The juxtaposition of a record-high tax haul and an enormous deficit validates an axiom attributed to Milton Friedman:

    “History shows that, over a long period of time, government will spend whatever the tax system raises plus as much more as it can get away with.”

    With that in mind, the FY2022 results should galvanize those of us who adhere to a “starve the beast” philosophy — that is, supporting policies that reduce taxes wherever possible, contentedly disregarding objections that tax cuts are “fiscally irresponsible.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/15/2022 – 17:00

  • Chicago Fifth-Grade Teacher Allegedly Made 'Kill List' Of Students, Teachers: Police
    Chicago Fifth-Grade Teacher Allegedly Made ‘Kill List’ Of Students, Teachers: Police

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

    A fifth-grade teacher in East Chicago, Indiana, has been detained by police after it was discovered that she had a “kill list,” of individuals which included her own students and school staff members.

    Police car in Chicago, on June 30, 2017. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

    Teacher Angelica Carrasquillo-Torres, 25, worked at St. Stanislaus School in East Chicago, the East Chicago Police Department said in a statement published on Thursday.

    On Oct. 12 at approximately 5 p.m., law enforcement officers were called to the school due to a “threatening report” that had allegedly been made.

    Upon arrival at St. Stanislaus, officers spoke with the principal and the assistant principal of the school who claimed that Carrasquillo-Torres allegedly told a fifth-grade student about the list and informed them that he/she was on the bottom of that list.

    Police said the student had originally told their student counselor about Carrasquillo-Torres’s list and that the fifth-grader claimed the teacher had also made comments about killing ” herself, students, and staff ” at the school.

    According to police, Carrasquillo-Torres was immediately taken to the principal’s office to discuss her alleged comments.

    “While discussing the matter in the office the teacher allegedly admitted to the Principal that she did in fact make those statements to the student and confirmed that she did have a ‘kill list,’” the statement read.

    “During the conversation, the teacher named a specific student on her list but did not provide the list. The Principal then advised the teacher to leave and not return to school pending an investigation.”

    Wellbeing of  ‘Students And Staff is Top Priority’

    The East Chicago Police Department said in the statement that they were informed of the situation roughly 4 hours after the teacher was allowed to leave the school and go home. They promptly completed a report on the issue and notified the Criminal Investigation Division who were then able to obtain an emergency detention order for Carrasquillo-Torres.

    She was taken into custody by detectives from her home and “without incident” on Wednesday, police said. “This is still an active investigation and no further statements will be made at this time,” they added.

    In a separate statement on social media, St. Stanislaus School said that Carrasquillo-Torres had been “removed from the classroom and escorted to the principal’s office, where she remained under supervision and had no further contact with students,” following the student’s allegation.

    “The teacher was interviewed to further identify the details of the incident,” the school said.

    “After students were safely dismissed at the end of the school day, the teacher was escorted off campus and the East Chicago police department was notified at approximately 4:45 p.m. When asked, the police assured the principal that the facility was safe and that they could proceed normally with all scheduled learning and school events for the next school day.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/15/2022 – 16:30

  • Elon Musk Alarmed After Apparent Inclusion On Well-Known Ukrainian 'Kill List'
    Elon Musk Alarmed After Apparent Inclusion On Well-Known Ukrainian ‘Kill List’

    Elon Musk has publicly expressed alarm over his name and profile appearing to have been added to a well-known Ukrainian ‘kill list’, following controversy and outrage from Kiev over his prior “Russia-Ukraine peace poll” and subsequent threats to cut funding for Starlink satellite internet services deployed in the country.

    On Friday, the billionaire SpaceX founder responded directly to a viral tweet by independent journalist Eva Bartlett which claimed “Musk added to Ukraine’s Myrotvorets kill list (which includes 327 children!),” in which he asked her “is this list real?“

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

    Musk later appeared to answer is own question in the affirmative, tweeting out a link to the ‘kill list’ website’s Wikipedia page. The website within recent weeks fell into the spotlight after Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters highlighted his own inclusion on the list.

    “Concerning,” Musk later wrote.

    In the case of Waters, Louder Sound writes;

    The ‘list’ that Waters is referring to is stored on the NSFW website Myrotvorets (‘Peacemaker’), which, in addition to posting graphic photos of dead Russian soldiers, allegedly features around 187,000 names of people critical of the Ukrainian government, alongside their home address, phone numbers and contact details. The left-wing UK website The Canary actually identified Waters’ name on the list in an article published in May, stating that the musician was on the database as he is accused of “Anti-Ukrainian propaganda. An attempt on the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Participation in attempts to legalize the annexation of Crimea by Russia.”

    Newsweek, meanwhile, in attempting to identify and verify the Ukrainian website suggested that it is independently-run, but at the same time kept open the question of whether it has direct links to the Ukrainian government:

    As various media reports on Mirotvorets note, it is an NGO that keeps an open-sourced database of persons that it deems to have promoted anti-Ukrainian narratives or acted to destabilize Ukraine’s national security. Since the start of the war, it also keeps count of the Russian soldiers and agents killed on its territory.

    It was founded by a Ukrainian politician and activist Heorhiy/Georgiy Tuka. It has also been closely linked to politician Anton Gerashchenko, whom The Times of London in a recent interview referred to as a co-founder of the project.

    According to Rolling Stone, “There is a list maintained by a far-right Ukrainian organization that contains hundreds of thousands of enemies of Ukraine, from alleged members of the Wagner private military company to journalists accused of cooperating with puppet governments in the Donbas region. The site, which has been roundly internationally condemned — but not taken down by the Ukrainian government itself — claims not to be a kill list but rather “information for law enforcement authorities and special services.“

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

    Newsweek highlighted that in some instances names of Ukrainians that had their names and addressed published as “collaborators” were hunted down and prosecuted, and that some turned up dead.

    The Mirotvorets list has no official standing in Ukraine, though Al Jazeera, citing the rights group Uspishna Varta, reported that it had been used as evidence in more than 100 court cases against those suspected of involvement with pro-Russian paramilitaries.

    In April 2015 two pro-Russian Ukrainians, politician Oleg Kalashnikov and publicist Oles Buzina, were shot dead in Kyiv.

    Al Jazeera reported that the attacks took place just days after Mirotvorets published personal details, including addresses, about the two men, but no direct link has been found or proven in court. -Newsweek

    And according to Mirotvorets’ Wikipedia page, the site does maintain an “enemies of Ukraine” list, and has even come under censure from Western allies of Kiev, who find it somewhat of an uncomfortable embarrassment.

    “The site has remained open despite repeated requests from the UN, G7 ambassadors, the EU and human rights groups to close it down, and although it has no official status, it acts to supplement government databases at checkpoints,” the Wikipedia page which Musk refers to cites.

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

    Eva Bartlett herself, the journalist and pundit that Musk interacted with on Twitter, is reported to be on the kill list.

    Screenshot of “liquidated persons” on the Myrotvorets site… names that appear were accused of publicly supporting Russia or of being “anti-Ukrainian”, or being collaborators with the occupying Russian army.

    While a screenshot of Musk’s profile on the kill list is now being widely circulated, his name may have only briefly appeared on the website, reportedly having been taken down quickly after it became focus of attention on social media.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/15/2022 – 16:00

  • Central Banks Are "Impotent" – Russell Napier Warns Of "Shift Of Power That Cannot Be Underestimated"
    Central Banks Are “Impotent” – Russell Napier Warns Of “Shift Of Power That Cannot Be Underestimated”

    Authored by Mark Dittli via TheMark.ch,

    Russell Napier has never been one of the eternal inflation warners. On the contrary: The market strategist and historian, who experienced the Asian Financial Crisis 25 years ago at first hand at the brokerage house CLSA in Hong Kong, wrote for years about the deflationary power of the globalised world economy.

    «Many investors today still pretend that we’re in the system that we had from 1980 to 2020. We’re not. We’re going through fundamental, lasting changes on many levels»

    Two years ago, the tide turned and Napier warned of a vicious return of inflation – and he hit the mark. In an in-depth conversation with The Market NZZ, which was lightly edited for clarity, he explains why most developed economies are undergoing a fundamental shift and why the system most investors have become accustomed to over the past 40 years is no longer valid.

    According to Napier, financial repression will be the leitmotif for the next 15 to 20 years.

    But this environment will also bring opportunities for investors.

    «We will see a boom in capital investment and a reindustrialisation of Western economies,» says Napier. Many people will like it at first, before years of badly misallocated capital will lead to stagflation.

    In summer of 2020, you predicted that inflation was coming back and that we were looking at a prolonged period of financial repression. We currently experience 8+% inflation in Europe and the US. What’s your assessment today?

    My forecast is unchanged: This is structural in nature, not cyclical. We are experiencing a fundamental shift in the inner workings of most Western economies. In the past four decades, we have become used to the idea that our economies are guided by free markets. But we are in the process of moving to a system where a large part of the allocation of resources is not left to markets anymore. Mind you, I’m not talking about a command economy or about Marxism, but about an economy where the government plays a significant role in the allocation of capital. The French would call this system «dirigiste». This is nothing new, as it was the system that prevailed from 1939 to 1979. We have just forgotten how it works, because most economists are trained in free market economics, not in history.

    Why is this shift happening?

    The main reason is that our debt levels have simply grown too high. Total private and public sector debt in the US is at 290% of GDP. It’s at a whopping 371% in France and above 250% in many other Western economies, including Japan. The Great Recession of 2008 has already made clear to us that this level of debt was way too high.

    How so?

    Back in 2008, the world economy came to the brink of a deflationary debt liquidation, where the entire system was at risk crashing down. We’ve known that for years. We can’t stand normal, necessary recessions anymore without fearing a collapse of the system. So the level of debt – private and public – to GDP has to come down, and the easiest way to do that is by increasing the growth rate of nominal GDP. That was the way it was done in the decades after World War II.

    What has triggered this process now?

    My structural argument is that the power to control the creation of money has moved from central banks to governments. By issuing state guarantees on bank credit during the Covid crisis, governments have effectively taken over the levers to control the creation of money. Of course, the pushback to my prediction was that this was only a temporary emergency measure to combat the effects of the pandemic. But now we have another emergency, with the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis that comes with it.

    You mean there is always going to be another emergency?

    Exactly, which means governments won’t retreat from these policies. Just to give you some statistics on bank loans to corporates within the European Union since February 2020: Out of all the new loans in Germany, 40% are guaranteed by the government. In France, it’s 70% of all new loans, and in Italy it’s over 100%, because they migrate old maturing credit to new, government-guaranteed schemes. Just recently, Germany has come up with a huge new guarantee scheme to cover the effects of the energy crisis. This is the new normal. For the government, credit guarantees are like the magic money tree: the closest thing to free money. They don’t have to issue more government debt, they don’t need to raise taxes, they just issue credit guarantees to the commercial banks.

    And by controlling the growth of credit, governments gain an easy way to control and steer the economy?

    It’s easy for them in the way that credit guarantees are only a contingent liability on the balance sheet of the state. By telling banks how and where to grant guaranteed loans, governments can direct investment where they want it to, be it energy, projects aimed at reducing inequality, or general investments to combat climate change. By guiding the growth of credit and therefore the growth of money, they can control the nominal growth of the economy.

    And given that nominal growth consists of real growth plus inflation, the easiest way to do this is through higher inflation?

    Yes. Engineering a higher nominal GDP growth through a higher structural level of inflation is a proven way to get rid of high levels of debt. That’s exactly how many countries, including the US and the UK, got rid of their debt after World War II. Of course nobody will ever say this officially, and most politicians are probably not even aware of this, but pushing nominal growth through a higher dose of inflation is the desired outcome here. Don’t forget that in many Western economies, total debt to GDP is considerably higher today than it was even after World War II.

    What level of inflation would do the trick?

    I think we’ll see consumer price inflation settling into a range between 4 and 6%. Without the energy shock, we would probably be there now. Why 4 to 6%? Because it has to be a level that the government can get away with. Financial repression means stealing money from savers and old people slowly. The slow part is important in order for the pain not to become too apparent. We’re already seeing respected economists and central bankers arguing that inflation should indeed be allowed at a higher level than the 2% target they set in the past. Our frame of reference is already shifting up.

    Yet at the same time, central banks have turned very hawkish in their fight against inflation. How does that square?

    We today have a disconnect between the hawkish rhetorics of central banks and the actions of governments. Monetary policy is trying to hit the brakes hard, while fiscal policy tries to mitigate the effects of rising prices through vast payouts. An example: When the German government introduced a €200 bn scheme to protect households and industry from rising energy prices, they’re creating a fiscal stimulus at the same time as the ECB is trying to rein in their monetary policy.

    Who wins?

    The government. Did Berlin ask the ECB whether they can create a rescue package? Did any other government ask? No. This is considered emergency finance. No government is asking for permission from the central bank to introduce loan guarantees. They just do it.

    You’re saying that central banks are powerless?

    They’re impotent. This is a shift of power that cannot be underestimated. Our whole economic system of the past 40 years was built on the assumption that the growth of credit and therefore broad money in the economy was controlled through the level of interest rates – and that central banks controlled interest rates. But now, when governments take control of private credit creation through the banking system by guaranteeing loans, central banks are pushed out of their role. There’s another way of looking at today’s loud, hawkish rhetoric by central banks: Teddy Roosevelt once said that, in terms of foreign policy, one should speak softly and carry a big stick. What does it tell you when central banks speak loudly? Perhaps that they’re not carrying a big stick anymore.

    Would that apply to all Western central banks?

    Certainly to the ECB and definitely to the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan. These countries are already well on their path to financial repression. It will happen in the US, too, but we have a lag there – which is why the dollar is rising so sharply. Investment money flows from Europe and Japan towards America. But there will come a point where it will be too much for the US as well. Watch the level of bond yields. There is a level of bond yields that is just unacceptable for the US, because it would hurt the economy too much. My argument for the past two years was that Europe can’t let rates go up, not even from current levels. The private sector debt service ratio in France is 20%, in Belgium and the Netherlands it’s even higher. It’s 11% in Germany and about 13% in the US. With rising interest rates, it won’t take long until there will be serious pain. So it’s just a matter of time before we all get there, but Europe is at the forefront.

    Walk us through how this will play out.

    First, governments directly interfere in the banking sector. By issuing credit guarantees, they effectively take control of the creation of broad money and steer investment where they want it to. Then, the government would aim for a consistently high growth rate of money, but not too high. Again, history shows us the pattern: The UK had five big banks after World War II, and at the beginning of each year the government would tell them by what percentage rate their balance sheet should grow that year. By doing this, you can set the growth rate of broad money and nominal GDP. And if you know that your economy is capable of, say, 2% real growth, you know the rest would be filled by inflation. As a third prerequisite you need a domestic investor base that is captured by the regulatory framework and has to buy your government bonds, regardless of their yield. This way, you prevent bond yields from rising above the rate of inflation. All this is in place today, as many insurance companies and pension funds have no choice but to buy government bonds.

    You make it sound easy: The government just has to engineer a level of nominal growth and of inflation that is consistently somewhat higher than interest rates in order to shrink the debt to GDP ratio.

    Again, this is how it was done after World War II. The crucial thing is that we are moving from a mechanism where bank credit is controlled by interest rates to a quantitative mechanism that is politicised. This is the politicisation of credit.

    What tells you that this is in fact happening today?

    When I see that we are headed into a significant growth slowdown, even a recession, and bank credit is still growing. The classic definition of a banker used to be that he lends you an umbrella but would take it away at the first sight of rain. Not this time. Banks keep lending, they even reduce their provisions for bad debt. The CFO of Commerzbank was asked about this fact in July, and she said that the government would not allow large debtors to fail. That, to me, was a transformational statement. If you are a banker who believes in private sector credit risk, you stop lending when the economy is headed into a recession. But if you are a banker who believes in government guarantees, you keep lending. This is happening today. Banks keep lending, and nominal GDP will keep growing. That’s why, in nominal terms, we won’t see an economic contraction.

    Won’t there come a point where the famed bond market vigilantes would step in and demand significantly higher yields on government bonds?

    I doubt it. First, we already have a captured investor base that just has to buy government bonds. And if push comes to shove, the central bank would step in and prevent yields from rising higher, with the ultimate policy being overt or covert yield curve control.

    What if central banks don’t want to play along and try to regain control over the creation of money?

    They could, but in order to do that, they would really have to go to war with their own government. This will be very hard, because the politicians in government will say they are elected to pursue these policies. They are elected to keep energy prices down, elected to fight climate change, elected to invest in defence and to reduce inequality. Arthur Burns, who was the Fed chairman during the Seventies, explained in a speech in 1979 why he lost control of inflation. There was an elected government, he said, elected to fight a war in Vietnam, elected to reduce inequality through Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs. Burns said it wasn’t his job to stop the war or the Great Society programs. These were political choices.

    And you say it’s similar today?

    Yes. People are screaming for energy relief, they want defence from Putin, they want to do something against climate change. People want that, and elected governments claim to follow the will of the people. No central banker will oppose that. After all, many of the things that are associated with financial repression will be quite popular.

    How do you mean that?

    Remember I said that financial repression means engineering an inflation rate in the area of 4 to 6% and thereby achieving a nominal GDP growth rate of, say, 6 to 8%, while interest rates are kept at a lower level. Savers won’t like it, but debtors and young people will. People’s wages will rise. Financial repression moves wealth from savers to debtors, and from old to young people. It will allow a lot of investment directed into things that people care about. Just imagine what will happen when we decide to break free from our one-sided addiction of having pretty much everything we consume produced in China. This will mean a huge homeshoring or friendshoring boom, capital investment on a massive scale into the reindustrialisation of our own economies. Well, maybe not so much in Switzerland, but a lot of production could move back to Europe, to Mexico, to the US, even to the UK. We have not had a capex boom since 1994, when China devalued its currency.

    So we’re only at the start of this process?

    Absolutely. I think we’ll need at least 15 years of government-directed investment and financial repression. Average total debt to GDP is at 300% today. You’ll want to see it down to 200% or less.

    What’s the endgame of this process, then?

    We saw the endgame before, and that was the stagflation of the 1970s, when we had high inflation in combination with high unemployment.

    People are already talking about stagflation today.

    That’s utter nonsense. They see high inflation and a slowing economy and think that’s stagflation. This is wrong. Stagflation is the combination of high inflation and high unemployment. That’s not what we have today, as we have record low unemployment. You get stagflation after years of badly misallocated capital, which tends to happen when the government interferes for too long in the allocation of capital. When the UK government did this in the 1950s and 60s, they allocated a lot of capital into coal mining, automobile production and the Concorde. It turned out that the UK didn’t have a future in any of those industries, so it was wasted and we ended up with high unemployment.

    So the endgame will be a 1970s style stagflation, but we’re not there yet?

    No, not by a long shot. First comes the seemingly benign part, which is driven by a boom in capital investment and high growth in nominal GDP. Many people will like that. Only much later, when we get high inflation and high unemployment, when the scale of misallocated capital manifests itself in a high misery index, will people vote to change the system again. In 1979 and 1980 they voted for Thatcher and Reagan, and they accepted the hard monetary policy of Paul Volcker. But there is a journey to be travelled to get to that point. And don’t forget, by the time Thatcher and Reagan came in, debt to GDP had already come down to new lows. That enabled them to introduce their free market policies, which would probably not have been possible if debt to GDP were much higher. So that’s why we’re in for a long social and political journey. What you have learned in market economics in the past forty years will be useless in the new world. For the next twenty years, you need to get familiar with the concepts of political economy.

    What would have to happen for you to conclude that we’ll avoid this path?

    If governments went out of interfering with the banking system, reinstated private sector credit risk and handed back control over the growth of money to central bankers. Also, if we had a huge productivity revolution that would make real GDP grow at 4%. This would allow us to keep inflation at 2% in order to get nominal growth of 6%. We can’t forecast productivity, and I never want to underestimate human ingenuity, so we’ll see about that. A third possibility would be voters telling their governments to stop these policies by voting them out of office. But this is not likely because, as mentioned, most people will like this environment at first.

    What will this new world mean for investors?

    First of all: avoid government bonds. Investors in government debt are the ones who will be robbed slowly. Within equities, there are sectors that will do very well. The great problems we have – energy, climate change, defence, inequality, our dependence on production from China – will all be solved by massive investment. This capex boom could last for a long time. Companies that are geared to this renaissance of capital spending will do well. Gold will do well once people realise that inflation won’t come down to pre-2020 levels but will settle between 4 and 6%. The disappointing performance of gold this year is somewhat clouded by the strong dollar. In yen, euro or sterling, gold has done pretty well already.

    What about countries that don’t follow the path of financial repression?

    That’s going to be tricky. Switzerland, for example, will probably stay away from these policies, but it will see continued inflows of capital, creating upward pressure on the franc. Sooner or later, Switzerland will have to bring back some forms of capital controls. That will be a feature worldwide. We have gotten used to sitting in Zurich or London and investing money in the US, in China, in Malaysia or Mexico. There are some emerging markets that are attractive today, as they have low levels of debt. But in a world where large parts of the global economy are in a system of financial repression, there will be all sorts of capital controls. That means that as an investor, you best invest in jurisdictions where you plan to spend your retirement. To me, that means I don’t want to be invested in China at all, for example. The risks of getting stuck there are way too high, as the example of Russia has shown. Many investors today still pretend that we’re in the system that we had from 1980 to 2020. We’re not. We’re going through fundamental, lasting changes on many levels.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/15/2022 – 15:30

  • Watch: Flying Teardrop-Shaped Air Taxi Makes First Public Debut
    Watch: Flying Teardrop-Shaped Air Taxi Makes First Public Debut

    ​​​​​​A Chinese-manufactured air-taxi made its first public test flight in the United Arab Emirates during the opening day of the GITEX Global technology show at the Dubai World Trade Center.

    According to Reuters, Xpeng’s X2 vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) conducted a successful demonstration flight in the skies of Dubai for 90 seconds on Wednesday. It was noted the aircraft flew an empty cockpit. 

    “This is the first step in achieving the dream,” said Omar Alkhan, Executive Director of the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry, adding that he expects more eVTOLs like these will be tested soon. 

    Xpeng’s President Brian Gu wrote in a press release that the main reason for testing the eVTOL in Dubai is because it’s a ‘city of innovation.’ 

    “Today’s flight is a major step in XPENG’s exploration of future mobility,” Gu said. 

    Xpeng’s teardrop-shaped design air taxi is considered a fifth-generation model, but the company is currently working on the sixth-generation version:

    XPeng said the two-seater X2 will be available in 2024 and should cost around $157,000. 

    The future of civilian air mobility is coming quickly, though countries and their respective flight regulators have a lot of planning to ensure the skies are ready for eVTOLs by the end of the decade. 

    We’ve pointed out that cities worldwide are beginning to look at the new infrastructure that could one-day support landings and takeoffs for eVTOL aircraft.

    If you don’t want to wait for the future, Sweden’s Jetson is already selling personal eVTOLs. However, Jetson chassis have to be reserved. The ones right now won’t be available until 2024. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/15/2022 – 15:00

  • Israel Shares Intel With Ukraine On Iranian Drones, But Refuses To Sell Iron Dome
    Israel Shares Intel With Ukraine On Iranian Drones, But Refuses To Sell Iron Dome

    Via The Cradle, 

    A senior Israeli official revealed to the New York Times (NYT) on 12 October that Tel Aviv is providing Ukraine with “basic intelligence” on Iranian drones used by Russia on the battlefield.

    The unnamed official also revealed that a private Israeli firm was giving Ukraine satellite imagery of Russian troop positions. In September, western media reported that Kiev had asked Israel to share intelligence on “any support” Iran has been giving to Russia. “The Israelis gave us some intelligence, but we need much more,” a senior Ukrainian official who spoke with Axios was quoted as saying.

    Image: Zuma press

    Hebrew media revealed earlier that an Israeli defense contractor is supplying anti-drone systems to the Ukrainian military by way of Poland, in order to circumvent Israel’s official stance of not selling advanced arms to Kiev.

    The unofficial sales are likely a stopgap measure to make up for the refusal of Israeli officials to sell Ukraine their Iron Dome missile defense system, reportedly in a bid to maintain strategic relations with Russia in Syria.

    The Israeli defense and foreign ministries on Wednesday declined to comment on long-standing requests from the government in Kiev and its western backers to acquire the Iron Dome system, including pleas made since this week’s Russian missile barrage.

    “Israel has great experience with air defense and Iron Dome, and we need exactly the same system in our city,” Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in an interview 11 October. “We have been talking with them a long time about it. Those discussions have not been successful,” he added.

    The reluctance by Tel Aviv to aid its US-sponsored analogue has not changed much since the war erupted in February, drawing the ire of Ukrainian officials. “Everybody knows that your missile defense systems are the best,” President Volodomyr Zelensky said while pleading with the Israeli parliament in the spring.

    Via The Mirror

    “I don’t know what happened to Israel,” he said in an interview with French TV5 channel on 23 September. “I am in shock, because I don’t understand why they couldn’t give us air defenses.”

    But while unofficial reports attribute Israel’s refusal to a lack of inventory and the system’s shortcomings against long-range missiles, analysts agree Israel cannot arm Ukraine directly without shattering its cooperation with Russia in Syria.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/15/2022 – 14:30

  • Oregon May Elect First GOP Governor In 35 Years
    Oregon May Elect First GOP Governor In 35 Years

    Believe it or not, Oregon might just elect a Republican governor on Nov 8 — thanks to a three-way race and voters fed up with crime, homelessness and public schools used as progressive indoctrination centers. 

    In recent weeks, Republican Christine Drazan, the former Oregon House minority leader, has opened a 3-point lead over Democrat Tina Kotek, a former state House speaker. If she wins, it would be the first Republican victory in a governor’s race since 1982. 

    Republican gubernatorial candidate Christine Drazan (Jamie Valdez/Pool via AP)

    “I’m very concerned,” Greg Peden, an aide to a previous Democratic governor, tells ABC. “I think this is the tightest race we’ve seen and the most complex race we’ve seen.”

    Kotek’s support is being sapped to some extent by a wave-making independent candidate, Betsy Johnson, a former state senator who held office as a Democrat. A recent Emerson College survey found that 9% of Republicans support Johnson, versus 17% of Democrats. 

    Running as a “pro-choice, pro-jobs” moderate who’s held an A rating from the National Rifle Association, Johnson is currently polling at around 16%. That’s well off her peak in the high twenties. However, as the independent’s showing has waned, it’s Republican Drazen who’s moved into the overall lead, according to a polling average maintained by FiveThirtyEight.  

    Via FiveThirtyEight

     

     

    Drazan and Johnson have both hammered Democrat Kotek on festering crime and homelessness. 

    “Public safety has become the top issue in a way it didn’t used to be,” GOP strategist Rebecca Tweed tells NBC News. “It really is a problem here in Oregon. It’s not just talking points.”

    Drazan has also worked to tie Kotek to term-limited incumbent Democratic Governor Kate Brown, who has the highest disapproval rating of any American governor. Kotek’s campaign, in turn, links Drazan to Donald Trump.  

    Oregon’s wealthiest man, Nike co-founder Phil Knight, recently chipped in $1 million to Drazan’s campaign. That’s after he’d earlier backed independent Johnson with $3.75 million. 

    President Biden, who won Oregon by 16 points, is set to campaign for Kotek on Saturday.

    “They are sending the president in right before the election and that only means one thing — they recognize that they are in trouble,” Oregon state Senator Tim Knopp, who represents the high-desert city of Bend, told KATU-TV.  

    On Tuesday, Republican Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin, who pulled off his own blue-state upset last year, will visit the Beaver State to campaign for Drazan. 

    Education factored heavily in Youngkin’s victory, and it’s a theme being emphasized by Drazan and by Johnson, who recently told Fox News that “people are frightened and they’re mad” about what’s happening in Oregon schools. “Let’s not worry about pronouns. Let’s worry about mathematics.”  

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 10/15/2022 – 14:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Oct 15

Today’s News 15th October 2022

  • 'The Post-Cold War Era Is Over': White House National Security Advisor
    ‘The Post-Cold War Era Is Over’: White House National Security Advisor

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

    The international order has entered a new epoch and the United States will need to vigorously defend its way of life from encroaching authoritarianism from China and Russia, according to a senior U.S. official.

    White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan speaks at a press conference in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, on Aug. 17, 2021. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

    How the United States acts over the course of the next decade will make or break its efforts to preserve a liberal international order against the autocratic advances of China’s communist regime, said White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan.

    “We’re in the early years of a decisive decade,” Sullivan said at an event hosted by the Center for a New American Security and the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington.

    “The terms of our competition with the People’s Republic of China will be set. The window of opportunity to deal with shared challenges like climate change will narrow drastically even as the intensity of those challenges grows.”

    Sullivan delivered the remarks hours after the unveiling of the Biden administration’s national security strategy, which designated communist China as the greatest challenge facing the United States.

    “The PRC’s assertiveness at home and abroad is advancing an illiberal vision across economic, political, security, and technological realms in competition with the west,” Sullivan said, using the acronym for the regime’s official name.

    “It is the only competitor with the intent to reshape the international order and the growing capacity to do it.”

    Sullivan said that the world had left the post-Cold War era, often associated with the rise of globalization, international cooperation, and a general lack of military conflict between great powers.

    Now, he said, a new era of geopolitical competition has arisen, tied closely to the push by China and Russia towards a multipolar world order. In this burgeoning era, autocratic nations would seek to rewrite the rules of the international system according to their whims, he said.

    “The world’s major autocracies believe that the democratic world is in decline,” Sullivan said.

    “They seek to advance a very different vision, where might makes right and technological and economic coercion squeezes anyone who steps out of line.”

    To that end, Sullivan said that the authoritarian philosophies of Chinese communist leader Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin contained a “fundamental fragility” that could be overcome by a united “free, open, and prosperous international order.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/14/2022 – 23:40

  • These Are The Best (And Most Expensive) Universities In America
    These Are The Best (And Most Expensive) Universities In America

    The United States is home to many world-class universities like Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, which boast innovative research programs, famous alumni, prestigious awards, and students and faculty from all over the world.

    But which schools are actually the best ones in America?

    This ranking by Visual Capitalist’s Avery Koop and Bhabna Banerjee, using data from U.S. News & World Report, ranks America’s 50 best universities from the Ivy League to public institutions. Additionally, this visual shows the average tuition and acceptance rate of each school.

    The Methodology

    Here’s a look at how different categories are scored in the ranking. It is worth noting that U.S. News relies on each university’s independent reporting of data and information and does not standardize or corroborate the reported information themselves.

    How categories are weighted:

    • Graduation & Retention Rates = 22%

    • Undergraduate Academic Reputation = 20%

    • Faculty Resources = 20%

    • Financial Resources per Student = 10%

    • Graduation Rate Performance = 8%

    • Student Selectivity for Fall Entering Class = 7%

    • Social Mobility = 5%

    • Graduate Indebtedness = 5%

    • Average Alumni Giving Rate = 3%

    The Top Schools

    Ivy League universities are often assumed to be the top schools in America, but in reality, only four of the eight make the top 10.

    Here’s a closer look:

     

    One of the Ivies, Columbia University, actually dropped 16 spots from last year’s ranking due to a scandal involving misreported statistics by the university, which was exposed by one of its own professors. There have been critiques of the U.S. News & World Report ranking since, as it doesn’t provide a uniform set of standards for the universities, but lets them determine how they score their categories themselves.

     

    Among the top 10 schools admittance is very competitive, and none of the acceptance rates surpass the 7% mark. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, and Caltech are among the most difficult universities to get into, with only 4% of applicants receiving that exciting acceptance letter. On the flip side, the universities of Illinois and Wisconsin, for example, accept 60% of all applicants.

    Types of Universities

    A few more things to know—there are eight private schools in the U.S. that have earned the distinction of “Ivy League,” due to their history and prestige. A number of schools are also classified as land-grant universities—built on land which was essentially given to them by the U.S. government. This was in an effort to provide higher education to lacking communities across the country, and there is at least one in every state.

    These are the U.S.’ eight Ivy League Institutions:

    • Princeton University

    • Yale University

    • Columbia University

    • Brown University

    • Harvard University

    • Cornell University

    • Dartmouth University

    • University of Pennsylvania

    Beyond these prestigious academies, there are many high caliber institutions like The Ohio State University and the University of Wisconsin—both of which are land-grant universities.

    Among the top 50, there are another four land-grant universities:

    • University of Florida

    • University of Georgia

    • University of Illinois

    • Cornell University

    There is ripe controversy, however, surrounding land-grant universities, as, in many cases, the U.S. government funded these institutions through expropriated indigenous land.

    The Cost of an American Education

    U.S. college tuition is famous for being unaffordable. Combining all the federal and private loans in the country, the total student debt comes out to $1.75 trillion and the average borrower owes $28,950.

    Here’s a look at how tuition breaks down on average:

    The most expensive school in America is Columbia University, with the cost of admission coming out to a whopping $65,524, with some estimates showing even higher rates for the 2022/2023 academic year. The least expensive among the top 50 is the University of Florida at $6,380 for in-state tuition—more than 10x cheaper than Columbia.

    But many Americans may soon see their college loans forgiven. The Biden administration’s initiative to cancel student debt will roll out any day now and will be available on federal loans for select qualifying individuals. It has the potential to provide 40 million people with as much as $20,000 in debt forgiveness.

    And given that American universities make up eight of the 10 best universities in the world, perhaps the price tag will be worth it.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/14/2022 – 23:20

  • Domestic Left-Wing Extremist Groups More Dangerous Than 'MAGA Republicans': Experts
    Domestic Left-Wing Extremist Groups More Dangerous Than ‘MAGA Republicans’: Experts

    Authored by Scott Wheeler via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    National security analysts, scholars, and a federal indictment reveal that threats from left-wing extremist groups in the United States are more dangerous than right-wing and “MAGA Republican” groups recently cited by the Biden administration as “threats to democracy.”

    An Antifa extremist pushes a burning recycling bin at Trump supporters during a free speech rally in Berkeley, Calif., on April 15, 2017. (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)

    According to the U.S. government, some of the left-wing groups are being funded by Russian influence operations to “sow discord, spread pro-Russian propaganda, and interfere in elections within the United States.”

    On July 29, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the indictment of a Russian national for working on behalf of the Russian government to sow discord in the United States.

    “From at least December 2014 until March 2022, Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, a resident of Moscow, together with at least three Russian officials, engaged in a years-long foreign malign influence campaign targeting the United States” the indictment alleged.

    A DOJ press release stated, “Ionov—working under the supervision of the FSB [Russia’s Federal Security Services] and with the Russian government’s support—recruited political groups within the United States, including U.S. Political Group 1 in Florida, U.S. Political Group 2 in Georgia, and U.S. Political Group 3 in California, and exercised direction or control over them on behalf of the FSB.”

    Russia Supports Left-wing Groups

    Ionov’s activities were not in support of right-wing groups, the operation was allegedly funding left-wing groups that promoted socialism, defunding police, and California secession, according to multiple reports.

    In August, the Tampa Bay Times reported that “Political Group 1” named in the indictment is the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) of St Petersburg, Florida. On the group’s website, its chairman, Omali Yeshitela, is quoted as saying “we need a revolution” and promotes calls for reparations for slavery. On July 29, the same day the indictment for Ionov was unsealed, it was raided by the FBI, according to the APSP. When contacted for comment, a spokesman for the APSP said it was unlikely that the group would be able to answer questions from The Epoch Times based on advice from counsel.

    The Atlanta Journal-Constitution identified “Political Group 2” in a July 29 article as the Atlanta-based Black Hammer Party. On May 31, 2020, the group’s website featured a statement by Ionov responding to the death of George Floyd that stated:

    “Justice for George Floyd and all Colonized people (aka “people of color”), who have died at the hands of White Power Colonial terrorism (aka america’s racist police system).”

    The group states it exists to “take the land back for all colonized people worldwide … Currently, our physical and intellectual labor is being coerced to build for the capitalist white colonial state, but it can be redirected to a noble cause.” The Black Hammer Party could not be reached for comment.

    The Sacramento Bee identified “Political Group 3” as Yes California, an organization formed to promote California secession from the United States. Louis Marinelli, the founder of the organization, had worked in Russia teaching English. According to some news sources, Marinelli may once have held conservative views, however, the Yes California Twitter feed was critical of President Donald Trump and suggested that his “reactionary” policies were helping to drive the California secession movement. Marinelli could not be reached for comment.

    President Joe Biden delivers a primetime speech at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia on Sept. 1, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

    Politicizing Domestic Threats

    Critics have accused the Biden administration of using the levers of the federal government to attack his political opposition by prioritizing what he calls threats to democracy and domestic tranquility. Biden’s list of targets has included Trump supporters, “election deniers,” and “white supremacists.”

    In early September, bathed in a red-lit backdrop and flanked by two U.S. Marines, Biden told the nation, “There is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country.”

    Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has made groups and individuals that Biden considers a threat a priority for investigation. The DHS refused to be interviewed for this report but provided a “Summary of Terrorism Threat to the United States” which was published in the June National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin.

    The bulletin stated: “The continued proliferation of false or misleading narratives regarding current events could reinforce existing personal grievances or ideologies, and in combination with other factors, could inspire individuals to mobilize to violence.”

    Many of the domestic threats listed in the bulletin were identifying those who question the administration’s policies:

    “Some domestic violent extremists have expressed grievances related to their perception that the U.S. government is unwilling or unable to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.”

    “Given a high-profile U.S. Supreme Court case about abortion rights, individuals who advocate both for and against abortion have, on public forums, encouraged violence, including against government, religious, and reproductive healthcare personnel and facilities, as well as those with opposing ideologies.”

    The bulletin also predicts, “As the United States enters mid-term election season this year, we assess that calls for violence by domestic violent extremists directed at democratic institutions, political candidates, party offices, election events, and election workers will likely increase.”

    While the DHS and the Biden administration say they are expecting violence from right-wing groups, others say there is a more pressing threat from the left.

    Academic Report Fears Leftists

    In the summer of 2020, Rutgers University’s Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience issued a report (pdf) that found evidence that left-wing groups pose a considerable threat:

    “Anarcho-socialist militias which explicitly glorify Martyr narratives, classic authoritarian narratives, and revolutionary narratives are now formally organizing—and are growing.”

    The Miller Center cited leftist groups such as the Youth Liberation Front, John Brown Gun Club, Redneck Revolt, and the Socialist Rifle Association, among others, which claim 10,000 to 40,000 members on social media accounts.

    The Miller Center report says these groups use social media to promote violence: “Extreme anarcho-socialist fringe online forums on Reddit use memes calling for the death of police and memes for stockpiling munitions to promote violent revolution.”

    The report cites the example of Willem Van Spronsen who was shot and killed during a shootout with police in July 2019. Van Spronsen was fire-bombing an Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Washington state. Multiple news reports state that Van Spronsen was a member of Antifa and the John Brown Gun Club.

    According to the global nonprofit organization Counter Extremism Project (CEP), many of these groups operate “under the wide umbrella of Antifa” which is made up of individual cells and “the leaders of these cells remain autonomous,” states CEP’s reporting.

    John Farmer, Director of the Miller Center, in an email response to questions from The Epoch Times, stated that he does not see a serious national security threat from either the right or left. “Quite frankly, I don’t view either the so-called ‘anarcho-socialist extremists’ or the ‘white nationalist extremists’ as a serious threat to national security,” Farmer stated.

    However, extremists on both sides do pose problems, according to Farmer: “Each in their own way is a threat to public order; each, for different reasons, seeks to destabilize our institutions and overthrow the established norms of democracy. Each has proven violent, even murderous, in differing contexts.”

    What Political Attacks Mean

    J. Michael Waller, a national security and intelligence expert at the Center for Security Policy, told The Epoch Times that the Biden administration is “trying to frighten the public” by labeling Trump supporters as threats to democracy: “They are trying to create a political, psychological, and legal pretext for cracking down on groups and larger movements that they can connect through guilt by association.”

    Waller compares this sort of labeling to the so-called “red scare” period during the Cold War.

    “If you apply subjective definitions to words, and you make the words mean what you want them to mean, and you recklessly apply those words to your opponent, you are creating a 21st-century red scare.” Waller says he sees a disturbing pattern in Biden’s words.

    “You label someone you don’t like with an inflammatory term that objectively does not apply, which gives you the public support you need to amass more power to create more bureaucracy. You then have the legal grounds to go after what amounts to political opponents.”

    “Look at the way they throw around the word ‘fascists,” Waller said. “They are not even using the objective definition of fascist.”

    Why Trump Supporters

    Emily Finley, author of “The Ideology of Democratism,” told The Epoch Times that the Biden administration is laying the groundwork to “normalize the idea that MAGA Republicans are extremists,” adding that “the larger philosophical impetus” behind Biden’s Philadelphia speech is to segregate and “marginalize” MAGA Republicans.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/14/2022 – 23:00

  • These Are The World's Best Bars In 2022
    These Are The World’s Best Bars In 2022

    Barcelona has been named the new world capital of cocktails, with the famed Paradiso bar taking the top spot in ‘The World’s 50 Best Bars 2022’ by William Reed.

    As Statista’s Anna Fleck details below, the roundup is based on the votes of more than 600 industry experts from around the world, from bartenders and cocktail connoisseurs to consultants and drinks reviewers. This year marks the first since the list was created in 2009 that a bar from outside of New York or London has come out on top.

    Infographic: The World’s Best Bars in 2022 | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Paradiso, which ranked third place in 2021, is a Mediterranean-style bar located in the trendy Born neighborhood of Barcelona.

    The Catalan capital can also boast two other bars in the top 10: Sips, which jumped from 37th place to third, and Two Schmucks, which has risen from 11th to 7th place.

    Altogether, four Spanish venues have made it into the world’s top 50, with Salmon Guru, located in Madrid, in 15th place.

    In addition to Spain’s three bars, two Latin American countries have also scored highly, with Licorería Limantour, in Mexico City, ranking fourth, and Alchemical, in Cartagena (Colombia), tenth.

    Mexico is a firm favorite when it comes to bars, with four establishments making it into the top 50 in the country’s capital.

    Other Latin American countries that curry favor with experts globally are Argentina, with three bars in Buenos Aires, and Peru, with one in Lima.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/14/2022 – 22:40

  • Pipelines Vs. USA
    Pipelines Vs. USA

    Authored by Scott Ritter via ConsortiumNews.com,

    Intent, motive, and means: People serving life sentences in U.S. prisons have been convicted on weaker grounds than the circumstantial evidence against Washington for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines…

    Circumstantial evidence, just like direct proof, can be used to prove the elements of a crime, the existence or completion of certain acts and the intent or mental state of a defendant. Generally speaking, a prosecutor, to obtain a conviction, needs to show beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant committed a certain act and that the defendant acted with specific intent.

    Nord Stream 1 is a multi-national project operated by Swiss-based Nord Stream AG intended to supply some 55 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Russian natural gas annually to Europe by directly transporting it from Russia, through twin 1,224 kilometer-long pipelines laid beneath the Baltic Sea, to a German hub, from which the gas would be distributed to other European consumers.

    The first of the twin pipelines was completed in June 2011 and began supplying gas in November 2011. The second was completed in April 2012 and began supplying gas in October 2012. Gazprom, the Russian gas giant, owns 51 percent interest in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline project.

    Nord Stream 2 is a near clone of the Nord Stream 1 project, consisting of twin 1,220-kilometer pipelines laid beneath the Baltic Sea connecting Russia to Germany. Started in 2018, it was completed in September 2021. Like Nord Stream 1, the Nord Stream 2 is designed to deliver approximately 55 bcm of natural gas from Russia to Europe through Germany. Nord Stream 2, like Nord Stream 1, is operated by a multinational company in which Gazprom has 51 percent ownership.

    Unlike Nord Stream 1, Nord Stream 2 was never allowed to begin supplying gas.

    Nord Stream 2 area map. (Berria Egunkaria, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

    The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines are anathema to U.S. national security policy, which for decades has been sour on the degree to which Russian natural gas dominates the European energy market. This animus was perhaps best captured by a column published in the German newspaper DieWelt in July 2019.

    The piece, co-authored by Richard Grenell, Carla Sands, Gordon Sondland (respectively, the U.S. ambassadors to Germany, Denmark and the European Union), was entitled “Europe must retain control of its energy security” and made the argument that the “Nord Stream 2 pipeline will drastically increase Russia’s energy leverage over the EU,” noting that “[s]uch a scenario is dangerous for the bloc and the West as a whole.”

    Observing that “a dozen European countries rely on Russia for more than 75 percent of their natural gas needs,” the ambassadors concluded “This makes United States allies and partners vulnerable to having their gas shut off at Moscow’s whim.”

    Moreover, the ambassadors claimed,

    “European Union reliance on Russian gas presents risks for Europe and the West as a whole and makes U.S. allies less secure. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline will heighten Europe’s susceptibility to Russia’s energy blackmail tactics. Europe must retain control of its energy security.”

    The ambassadors also wove in some critical geopolitical context as well, declaring

    “Make no mistake: Nord Stream 2 will bring more than just Russian gas. Russian leverage and influence will also flow under the Baltic Sea and into Europe, and the pipeline will enable Moscow to further undermine Ukrainian sovereignty and stability.”

    Russia’s “weaponization” of energy against Europe was the topic of a “debate” that Gary Peach and I carried out in December 2018 on the pages of Energy Intelligence, which monitors issues pertaining to global energy security. Gary, one of EI’s senior writers, covers Russian energy.

    Gazprom headquarters in the Lakhta Center skyscraper in Saint Petersburg, Russia, February 2021. (CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

    I argued that “Russia has never sought to use its status as a major supplier of energy to Europe as a vehicle of policy influence,” noting that:

    “[t]he weaponization of Russian energy comes in the form of sanctions imposed against Moscow and the pursuit of policies designed to curtail development of Russia’s energy sector. It is far easier to make a case that the U.S. and Europe pose a threat to Russian energy security rather than vice versa.”

    Gary, on the other hand, noted that

    “Gazprom’s supply contracts exhibit the underlying economic threat from Moscow: The pricing formula is roughly the same for all countries, but those countries in Russia’s good graces receive an arbitrary ‘discount.’” He concluded that “when Gazprom is the only conceivable gas supplier, it has shamelessly abused the monopoly.”

    In December 2019 the administration of President Donald Trump imposed sanctions in a desperate last-second bid to prevent the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from being completed.

    These sanctions were waived by the administration of President Joe Biden in May 2021 in an effort to be seen as repairing relations with Germany that had been severely frayed during the Trump administration. However, upon completion, Nord Stream 2 was prevented from operating by objections raised by German regulators regarding licensing issues, which were not expected to be resolved until mid-2022.

    In the lead up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration devised a plan to punish Russia by imposing severe economic sanctions which would target the Russian energy sector, including measures designed to halt the delivery of gas from Russia to Germany via the Nord Stream pipelines.

    One of the issues confronting U.S. policy makers was finding the right mix of sanctions that would succeed in harming Russia without destroying the European economy in the process. Policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic, however, recognized that meaningful sanctions which targeted Russian energy contained collateral risk to the European economy which could not be avoided. 

    One of the mechanisms that U.S. and E.U. policy makers were hoping would alleviate the economic consequences of sanctioning Russian energy was to increase the supply of U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG) to Europe. Since 2016 the amount of LNG supplied by the U.S. to Europe has increased, with more than 21 bcm delivered in 2021.

    Deck of the LNG tanker Energy Atlantic in Port Arthur, Texas, 2016. (U.S. Coast Guard, Dustin R. Williams)

    But 21 bcm couldn’t begin to offset the quantity of natural gas being shipped by Russia to Europe in case of any large-scale disruption of Russian energy supplies brought on by the imposition of economic sanctions that targeted the Russian energy sector.

    After the Russian invasion of Ukraine — and the realization that the energy disruption to Europe was going to be far greater than had been anticipated — Biden made good on his promise to increase the supply of U.S. LNG to Europe. But the quantities still fell far short of demand, and at prices that were, literally, bankrupting all of Europe.

    The Victims

    With Germany blocking the operation of Nord Stream 2 and sanctions precluding the repair of the Nord Stream 1, the German population began bearing the brunt of the sanctions on Russian energy.

    Despite their government’s insistence that it would remain resolute in confronting what it perceived as Russian aggression against Ukraine, the German people had other plans. By Sept. 26 they began taking to the streets in large numbers to demand that their government open the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and provide the German people and economy with the energy needed to survive.

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

    The Crime

    On Sept. 26, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline reported a massive drop in pressure. The next day, the Nord Stream 1 pipeline reported the same. A Danish fighter jet, flying over the pipeline route, reported seeing a one-kilometer diameter disturbance in the water off the island of Bornholm, directly over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, created by the massive release of natural gas underwater. (Danish authorities have estimated that between the two pipelines the total amount of methane released into the atmosphere was around 500,000 metric tons.)

    Locations of the explosions caused by the Nord Stream attacks on Sept. 26. (Lampel, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

    The incident took place in the exclusive economic zone of Sweden, and the Swedish Security Service took the lead in investigating what had happened. (Curiously, Russia was not invited to participate, despite having a vested economic and security interest in the matter.)

    “After completing the crime scene investigation,” the Swedes reported, “the Swedish Security Service can conclude that there have been detonations at Nord Stream 1 and 2 in the Swedish economic zone,” noting that the blasts had caused “extensive damage” to the lines.

    The Swedes also declared that they had retrieved some materials from the incident site, which were being analyzed to determine who was responsible. This evidence, the Swedes stated, “strengthened the suspicions of gross sabotage.”

    While all parties involved with the Nord Stream pipeline “sabotage” concur that the cause was manmade, no nation outside Russia has named a suspect. (Russian President Vladimir Putin has attributed the attack, which Russia has labeled an act of “international terrorism,” on the “Anglo-Saxons” — the British and Americans.)

    Biden dismissed the Russian claims. The pipeline attack “was a deliberate act of sabotage and the Russians are pumping out disinformation and lies,” the U.S. president said. “At the appropriate moment, when things calm down, we’re going to be sending divers down to find out exactly what happened. We don’t know that yet exactly.”

    But we do know. Biden told us himself. So did Secretary of State Antony Blinken. So did the U.S. Navy. Between the three, we have incontrovertible evidence of intent, motive and means — more than enough needed to prove guilt beyond any reasonable doubt in a court of law.

    Intent

    Speaking to reporters on Feb. 7, Biden declared “If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

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

    When a journalist asked how Biden could do such a thing, given that Germany was in control of the project, Biden retorted: “I promise you: We will be able to do it.”

    No prosecutor has ever had a more concise statement of intent — a veritable confession before the event — than this. Joe Biden should be taken at his word.

    Motive

    When asked by reporters on Oct. 3 to comment on the Nord Stream pipeline attacks, Blinken responded in part by noting that the attack was “a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.”

    Blinken further declared that the U.S. would work to alleviate the “consequences” of the pipeline attack on Europe, alluding to the provision of U.S. LNG at exorbitant profit margins for U.S. suppliers — another “opportunity.”

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken. (State Department, Freddie Everett)

    Prosecutors often speak of cui bono, a Latin phrase that means “who benefits,” when seeking to import motive for a crime committed, under the presumption that there is a high probability that those responsible for a specific crime are the ones who stand to gain from it.

    Blinken. Tremendous opportunity.

    Cui Bono.

    Means

    In early June, in support of a major NATO exercise known as BALTOPS (Baltic Operations) 2022, the U.S. Navy employed the latest advancements in unmanned underwater vehicle, or UUV, mine hunting technology to be tested in operational scenarios.

    According to the U.S. Navy, it was able to evaluate “emerging mine hunting UUV technology,” focusing on “UUV navigation, teaming operations, and improvements in acoustic communications all while collecting critical environmental data sets to advance the automatic target recognition algorithms for mine detection.”

    One of the UUV’s used by the U.S. Navy is the Seafox.

    Crewmembers aboard a German mine hunter lower a Seafox marine drone into the water on Oct. 26, 2018, during NATO drills in the North Atlantic and the Baltic Sea. (NATO/WO FRAN C.Valverde)

    In September, specialized U.S. Navy helicopters — the MH-60R, capable of employing the Seafox UUV — were tracked flying off the Danish island of Bornholm, directly over the segments of the Nordstream 1 and 2 pipelines that were later damaged in the sabotage incidents.

    To quote TASS,

    “On November 6, 2015, the NATO Seafox mine disposal unmanned underwater vehicle was found during the scheduled visual inspection of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline. It lay in space between gas pipelines, clearly near one of strings. NATO said the underwater mine disposal vehicle was lost during exercises. Such NATO exercises when the combat explosive device turned out to be exactly under our gas pipeline. The explosive device was deactivated by Swedish Armed Forces at that time.”

    Italian explosive ordnance disposal team operates a UUV, unmanned underwater vehicle, in NATO exercises in September in Portugal. (NATO)

    Guilty Beyond Reasonable Doubt

    The burden that exists to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt “is fully satisfied and entirely convinced to a moral certainty that the evidence presented proves the guilt of the defendant.”  In the matter of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 attacks, this burden has been met when it comes to assigning blame to the United States.

    Biden all but confessed the crime beforehand, and his secretary of state, Blinken, crowed about the “tremendous opportunity” that was created by the attack. Not only did the U.S. Navy actively rehearse the crime in June 2022, using the same weapon that had been previously discovered next to the pipeline, but employed the very means needed to use this weapon on the day of the attack, at the location of the attack.

    Guilty as Charged

    U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on banning Russian energy imports on March 8. (White House, Carlos Fyfe)

    The problem is, outside of Russia, no one is charging the United States. Journalists run away from the evidence, citing “uncertainty.” Europe, afraid to wake up to the reality that its most important “ally” has committed an act of war against its critical energy infrastructure, condemning millions of Europeans to suffer the depravations of cold, hunger and unemployment —all the while gouging Europe with profit margins from the sale of LNG that redefine the notion of “windfall” — remains silent.

    There is no doubt in any thinking person’s brain as to who is responsible for the attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines. The circumstantial case is overwhelming and fully capable of winning a conviction in any U.S. court of law.

    But no one will bring the case, at least not at this moment.

    Shame on American journalism for ignoring this flagrant attack on Europe.

    Shame on Europe for not having the courage to publicly name their attacker.

    But most of all, shame on the administration of Joe Biden, who has lowered the U.S. to the same standard of those it hunted down and killed for so many years — a simple international terrorist, and a state sponsor of terrorism.

    *  *  *

    Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/14/2022 – 22:20

  • India Expected To Overtake China As World's Most Populous Country This Year
    India Expected To Overtake China As World’s Most Populous Country This Year

    Humankind is now double the size it was in 1973.

    Of course, that growth has been far from uniform, and the ranking of the world’s most populous countries continues to evolve.

    Using the latest data available from the United Nations, Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley looks at which countries have the largest share of the planet’s eight billion people.

    The Top 10 Most Populous Countries

    Here are the countries shown above, including how much they’ve grown over the past 50 years:

    The numbers above highlight the extreme variance in growth for these world’s most populous countries. While Germany has grown by just 6% over the past 50 years, Pakistan and Nigeria have nearly quadrupled their populations.

    Half a century ago, there were only six countries with populations of over 100 million. Today, there are 15 countries past that mark, with Vietnam positioned to hit that milestone next.

    The Top 20 Most Populous Countries

    Things get even more interesting when we examine the top 20 most populous countries over the same time period.

    Looking back 50 years ago, Nigeria was the lone African nation in the top 20. Today, it is joined by Ethiopia, Egypt, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – all of which have experienced staggering population growth.

    African nations are expected to lead population growth over the next few decades. By 2100, one quarter of the world’s people are expected to be African.

    Europe is the flip side of this equation. Back in 1973, there were six European countries in this top list. Today, only Russia and Germany remain, with the latter country soon to fall out of the top 20 ranking.

    Ukraine, which was shrinking, is expected to fall to at least 41st place due to the turmoil surrounding the Russian invasion of the country. Since the invasion began in February 2022, nearly 14 million border crossings have been recorded from Ukraine to other countries.

    How Big Will Populations Get?

    Once India becomes the world’s largest country, it will likely remain so for many decades in the future, peaking in the 2060s (unless there are substantial changes in projected growth rates). India’s peak population will stand at around 1.7 billion people.

    The world’s population is expected to peak later, around the 2080s. Humanity’s peak population is expected to be about 10.5 billon.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/14/2022 – 22:00

  • Kaiser Permanente Sued For Wrongful Death After California Husband’s Remdesivir Treatment Fails
    Kaiser Permanente Sued For Wrongful Death After California Husband’s Remdesivir Treatment Fails

    Authored by Juliette Fairley via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Before Rodney Briones’ physicians at Kaiser Permanente Riverside Medical Center in California treated him with Remdesivir, they allegedly did not disclose the risks to him or to his wife, Christina, and did not obtain informed consent, according to a complaint filed by the Briones family.

    A vial of Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir in Belgium in a file image. (Dirk Vaem/Belga/AFP via Getty Images)

    The couple had gone to the managed care consortium for help after Rodney developed COVID-19 symptoms and tested positive twice for SARS-CoV-2.

    A five-day course of treatment with the controversial drug and other allegedly contraindicated, high-risk medications allegedly led to kidney failure for the 50-year-old Briones, who was subsequently placed on a ventilator. During this time, Kaiser Riverside reportedly refused to allow the man’s wife or family to see him. He died on Sept. 12.

    “My husband was murdered because of government [expletive],” Christina Briones told The Epoch Times. “I never thought this could happen.”

    Kaiser Permanente and Gilead Sciences, the maker of Remdesivir, did not respond to requests for comment.

    The grieving wife sued Kaiser in Riverside Superior Court alleging the wrongful death of her husband due to hospital protocol that included administering Remdesvir, which, according to the lawsuit, is a failed Ebola drug that was found to be terminally toxic to the kidneys. The drug was pulled from an Ebola study because more than 53 percent of Remdesivir recipients died, the lawsuit states.

    “The Kaiser Riverside physician did not disclose the availability of highly effective Safe Multi-Drug Early Treatment (SMDET) to Rodney when both Rodney and a reasonable patient in Rodney’s position would have wanted the disclosure,” wrote the Briones family attorney Matthew Tyson in the Sept. 7 complaint. “This was constructive fraud.”

    The Briones family seeks survivor action general damages as well as wrongful death general and special damages.

    “We pioneered Remdesivir wrongful death litigation using a constructive fraud theory, and we filed the very first Remdesivir wrongful death lawsuit in the country, back in June, for Evangeline Ortega,” said Tyson, who is working with Attorney Brian Garrie on multiple Remdesivir lawsuits.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/14/2022 – 21:40

  • China Conducting 'Race-Baiting' Social Media Campaigns To Polarize Americans: Former CIA Officer
    China Conducting ‘Race-Baiting’ Social Media Campaigns To Polarize Americans: Former CIA Officer

    Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke and Kevin Hogan via The Epoch Times,

    China’s communist regime is using social media to weaponize racial enmity in the United States, according to a former intelligence officer.

    A protester is holding a “defund the police” sign at a Black Lives Matter protest in Manhattan on July 13, 2020. (Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times)

    The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is actively working to erode trust in the U.S. political system and to increase political polarization among Americans by inflaming racial tensions on social media, according to Nicholas Eftimiades, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank.

    “China works a lot now … attempting to divide the United States,” Eftimiades said during a Sep. 30 interview with NTD, a sister media outlet of The Epoch Times.

    “Race baiting is a tactic that we’ve seen starting to evolve from China in the United States. This goes back to the riots in 2020.”

    Race-baiting refers to the encouragement or coaxing of racism or anger about racial issues for political gain.

    Eftimiades, who previously worked in the Central Intelligence Agency, State Department, Diplomatic Security Service, and Defense Intelligence Agency, said that the CCP maintained several organizations that carried out overseas information operations and could promote such campaigns.

    Among these, he said, were the CCP’s propagandistic United Front work department, the intelligence-focused Ministry of State Security, and the People’s Liberation Army, all of which have conducted covert influence operations in foreign countries.

    Often, Eftimiades said, CCP social media campaigns were short-lived because they were found out by security professionals employed by the social media companies.

    Some, however, could fester and grow within insular echo chambers online, where readers often only see content designed for them based on proprietary algorithms.

    “You can question how effective some of these are because they don’t have time to build up a massive following before they’re taken down,” Eftimiades said.

    “So, you typically look for echo chambers. You look for that type of race-based politics that China’s trying to divide and conquer [with] in the United States.”

    CCP Now Targeting Americans Domestically

    Eftimiades’s comments follow an announcement by Meta Platforms that it had dismantled a China-based misinformation campaign ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

    The purpose of the campaign appeared to be to inflame tensions and increase polarization among Americans on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

    Eftimiades said that this phenomenon presented an evolution in CCP information tactics, as the regime previously focused on swaying opinions about Americans abroad rather than interfering with its people internally.

    “I’d say it’s the first time we’ve seen a lot of attacks in the U.S.,” Eftimiades said. “It’s a concept of divide and conquer internally.”

    “In the United States we have our issues with racism and they’re exploiting those differences as of late,” Eftimiades said.

    The comments echo similar remarks made by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who now hosts a program for the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank.

    “The worst lie they [the CCP] tell is that America is somehow a racist country,” Pompeo said in the first episode of the show. “[But] that is the exact opposite of the truth.”

    “America is the only country in the world founded on the idea that all humans are treated and created equally.”

    Pompeo’s remarks in turn followed a propaganda push by the Chinese state-run media CCTV, which claimed that racism was “an unhealable wound” in the United States.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/14/2022 – 21:00

  • Judge Throws Out Fed Law Against Guns With Serial Numbers Removed
    Judge Throws Out Fed Law Against Guns With Serial Numbers Removed

    In a move that already has gun-control enthusiasts clutching their pearls, a judge on Wednesday ruled that a federal law barring possession of a gun with a removed serial number is unconstitutional.

    Taking his cue from the guiding precedent of the Supreme Court’s landmark June gun ruling that found Americans have a constitutionally-protected right to carry a handgun in public, U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin said the serial-number-removal law was inconsistent with the country’s “historical tradition of firearms regulation.” 

    Wednesday’s ruling in U.S. v Price sprang from a criminal case in which a man named Randy Price was charged with possessing a firearm with its serial number removed. The law that was struck down made it a crime to either transport such a gun across state lines, or simply possess such a gun if it had ever crossed a state line.  

    Judge Goodwin, a President Clinton nominee, noted that “serial numbers were not broadly required for all firearms manufactured and imported in the United States until the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968,” and the ban on possessing a firearm with a removed serial number didn’t come about until 1990. 

    Given that, he found the law barring the removal of serial numbers fails the test established by June’s Supreme Court case, New York Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen. Specifically, to justify a firearm regulation, the Supreme Court said “the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” 

    Though the Bruen test is only a few months old, it’s already animated several rulings against gun laws, including:

    Before some of you start cheerfully obliterating your serial numbers, note that the federal government is likely to appeal the ruling, which means the Fourth Circuit may have a say in it…but maybe not the final say. 

    Until then, take in a few of the reactions:

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

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

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

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

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/14/2022 – 20:40

  • Moderna CEO Confirms New mRNA 'Injection' To Repair Heart Muscles After Heart Attack
    Moderna CEO Confirms New mRNA ‘Injection’ To Repair Heart Muscles After Heart Attack

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

    The CEO of Moderna announced his company has a program that involves injecting messenger RNA (mRNA) into people’s hearts following a heart attack.

    “We are now in a super exciting program where we inject mRNA in people’s hearts after a heart attack to grow back new blood vessels and re-vascularize the heart,” Stephane Bancel, the CEO, told Sky News in a recent interview.

    Stephane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, during a tour of the Moderna facility in Norwood, Mass. on May 12, 2021. (Nancy Lane/The Boston Herald via AP)

    Bancel did not elaborate on the nature of the program. His company produced one of the world’s most-used mRNA vaccines for COVID-19—as did pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.

    When the reporter suggested that there is an “irony” within the COVID-19 pandemic that it allowed companies like Moderna to “develop these other areas because of the revenues that came through the door,” Bancel agreed. “You’re 100 percent right,” he said.

    In August, Moderna reported second-quarter 2022 revenue of $4.7 billion, up $300 million from the second quarter of 2021. For the first half of this year, its total revenue stood at $10.8 billion, or a growth from $6.3 billion in the same period last year.

    The company attributed the significant spike in its revenue growth to the rise in sales of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine.

    Before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) handed down emergency use authorizations for the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines in 2020, no mRNA products received full FDA approval within the United States.

    Research

    Meanwhile, an Australian government agency last month granted $1.1 million to target three major cardiovascular diseases using mRNA technology, with officials claiming that mRNA-based therapies will reduce inflammation in connection to three major heart diseases including atherosclerosis, pulmonary hypertension, and abdominal aortic aneurysm.

    “The mRNA-based targeted strategies that we are investigating can stop the progression of inflammation, providing the opportunities of preventing cardiovascular disease events like heart attack, stroke, and heart failure without the unwanted side effects,” one researcher, Baker Institute’s head of molecular imaging and theranostics Xiaowei Wang, said in a statement after the grant.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/14/2022 – 20:20

  • Musk Demands Pentagon Foot Starlink-Ukraine Bill After Being Told To 'F**k Off'
    Musk Demands Pentagon Foot Starlink-Ukraine Bill After Being Told To ‘F**k Off’

    Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been generous in providing free Starlink satellite internet terminals for Ukraine’s military to boost communication channels as the war enters its eighth month. 

    Musk recently tweeted the Ukrainian “operation has cost SpaceX $80 million and will exceed $100 million by the end of the year.”

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

    But those charitable donations of more than 20,000 Starlink terminals (and counting…) have just come to an abrupt end. CNN obtained a new letter that SpaceX sent the Pentagon, warning about the need for funding to maintain the service in the war-torn country, which costs upwards of $20 million per month (and most of it has been footed by SpaceX). 

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

    The letter continued with the need for the Pentagon to take over Starlink’s expenses. In the next 12 months, Starlink forecasted the service would cost upwards of $400 million. 

    “We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time,” SpaceX’s director of government sales wrote in the letter. 

    Musk on Friday confirmed the letter as he responded to a Kyiv Post journalist on Twitter, saying he only followed the advice of a Ukrainian diplomat who told him to “F*** off.” 

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

    Musk also said: “Starlink is still losing money … goal is “not to go bankrupt.” 

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

    The letter comes after reports of widespread Starlink outages across Ukraine. The Financial Times reported that Ukrainian troops had experienced issues with their terminals. 

    CNN said, “sources familiar with the outages said they suddenly affected the entire frontline as it stood on September 30.” Starlink has been the primary communication link on the battlefield since Russia bombed the country’s infrastructure. 

    SpaceX’s request for funding or it would stop providing free access comes after Musk tweeteed about a controversial peace plan. 

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

    Starlink is essential to the Ukrainian military, and one would suspect that the Pentagon would pick up the tab if US’ proxy war against Russia wants to be successful.

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

  • US-Saudi Relationship 'Likely Unrecoverable': Expert
    US-Saudi Relationship ‘Likely Unrecoverable’: Expert

    The head of the American Enterprise Institute says US-Saudi relations are “likely unrecoverable,” after the White House ‘personalized’ last week’s OPEC+ decision to cut production, according to an expert cited by Bloomberg.

    “They’ve once again personalized the problem, which will lead to another humiliating climbdown when they need something from Saudi Arabia,” said Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, of the US position. “They’d have been smarter to have pointed out that Saudi Arabia frequently refuses US requests to use oil as a policy tool, when the Saudi economy is wholly reliant on it and has an overriding interest in price stability.”

    “The relationship is likely unrecoverable,” Schake added.

    The analysis comes after dueling statements from Washington and Riyadh in recent days over the OPEC+ cut, which underscores how bad the deteriorating relationship has been between the two countries which are now accusing each other of acting in bad faith.

    Saudi Arabia said the cuts were an attempt to ease market volatility, and lectured that relations with the US must be built on trust. A White House statement on Thursday sneered at Saudi Arabia’s attempt to “spin or deflect,” and Secretary of State Antony Blinken echoed Biden’s warnings that the decision would have “consequences.”

    The remarkably public contretemps reflects brewing impatience within the White House now that it has little to show for Biden’s outreach to the Saudis — which he was compelled to make as gasoline prices soared over the summer, despite his campaign promise to treat Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as a “pariah.” -Bloomberg

    One Saudi official said there’s a serious sense of grievance that the US abandoned the Kingdom during periods of low oil prices, only to turn around and expect help now that it wants to keep prices from rising ahead of next month’s midterm elections.

    Another Gulf official insisted that the oil production cut is more about balancing supply and demand – and serving their own economies while trying to minimize international harm.

    Current and former officials on both sides insist that Washington and Riyadh ‘fundamentally misunderstand each other,’ with one saying that there was dismay over the White House’s angry response – suggesting that the Biden administration should have instead taken the high road.

    As such, the only hope for restoring relations is the fact that neither side wants to sever security and energy ties – as the two countries have a long history of intelligence-sharing. The Saudis also house what US officials say are a ‘significant number’ of Patriot anti-missile interceptors sent to Saudi Arabia in May.

    Despite some calls in Congress to curb Saudi purchases of US weapons, the administration is pushing back against any restrictions on arms sales to the kingdom, said Scott Modell, managing director of Rapidan Energy Group. However dissatisfied the Saudis may be with delays in delivery of US weapons or assistance due to the war in Ukraine, “they have to grin and bear it” because there’s no substitute for the US when it comes to defense and security, he said.

    For now, though, talk in the US is of punishment, not rapprochement. Officials say Biden is weighing his options for how best to respond. -Bloomberg

    Getting litigious

    One option the US is considering to punish Saudi Arabia is a bill known as NOPEC – which would enable the US to sue OPEC producers for energy market manipulation. We suppose this only counts in directions that benefit the US – which plans to drain the US strategic reserves by at least 165 million barrels of crude through November to combat rising prices. Bloomberg notes that Biden could release more reserves to try and drive prices down even more.

    And what about arms sales?

    “For us at this moment to have a longstanding partner like Saudi Arabia help Russia fund their war of aggression against Ukraine was a very bitter disappointment and a big surprise,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) in a Friday statement to CNN. “I think you’ll see both the administration and the Senate take action, and one of the most likely actions is to stop any future arms sales.”

    The report notes that Saudi Arabia’s military is 75% composed of US equipment, which includes fighter jets, according to senior Brookings fellow Bruce Riedel.

    If the US does end arms sales, it would mark a ‘whipsaw in policy’ for the Biden administration – which has generally loosened restrictions despite its rhetoric against the Kingdom.

    “I can’t imagine a greater humiliation — both in terms of his domestic political standing, and his efforts on unity in the international arena on Ukraine and Russia — than what MBS did” to Biden, said Carnegie Endowment for International Peace senior fellow Aaron David Miller. “At a minimum, he didn’t really care what the impact was for Joe Biden.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/14/2022 – 20:00

  • Macleod: The Great Global Unwind Begins
    Macleod: The Great Global Unwind Begins

    Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

    There is a growing feeling in markets that a financial crisis of some sort is now on the cards. \

    Credit Suisse’s very public struggles to refinance itself is proving to be a wake-up call for markets, alerting investors to the parlous state of global banking.

    This article identifies the principal elements leading us into a global financial crisis.

    Behind it all is the threat from a new trend of rising interest rates, and the natural desire of commercial banks everywhere to reduce their exposure to falling financial asset values both on their balance sheets and held as loan collateral.

    And there are specific problems areas, which we can identify:

    • It should be noted that the phenomenal growth of OTC derivatives and regulated futures has been against a background of generally declining interest rates since the mid-eighties. That trend is now reversing, so we must expect the $600 trillion of global OTC derivatives and a further $100 trillion of futures to contract as banks reduce their derivative exposure. In the last two weeks, we have seen the consequences for the gilt market in London, warning us of other problem areas to come.

    • Commercial banks are over-leveraged, with notable weak spots in the Eurozone, Japan, and the UK. It will be something of a miracle if banks in these jurisdictions manage to survive contracting bank credit and derivative blow-ups. If they are not prevented, even the better capitalised American banks might not be safe.

    • Central banks are mandated to rescue the financial system in troubled times. However, we find that the ECB and its entire euro system of national central banks, the Bank of Japan, and the US Fed are all deeply in negative equity and in no condition to underwrite the financial system in this rising interest rate environment. 

    The Credit Suisse wake-up call

    In the last fortnight, it has become obvious that Credit Suisse, one of Switzerland’s two major banking institutions, faces a radical restructuring. That’s probably a polite way of saying the bank needs rescuing.

    In the hierarchy of Swiss banking, Credit Suisse used to be regarded as very conservative. The tables have now turned. Banks make bad decisions, and these can afflict any bank. Credit Suisse has perhaps been a little unfortunate, with the blow-up of Archegos, and Greensill Capital being very public errors. But surely the most egregious sin from a reputational point of view was a spying scandal, where the bank spied on its own employees. All the regulatory fines, universally regarded as a cost of business by bank executives, were weathered. But it was the spying scandal which forced the bank’s highly regarded CEO, Tidjane Thiam, to resign.

    We must wish Credit Suisse’s hapless employees well in a period of high uncertainty for them. But this bank, one of thirty global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) is not alone in its difficulties. The only G-SIBs whose share capitalisation is greater than their balance sheet equity are North American: the two major Canadian banks, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan. The full list is shown in Table 1 below, ranked by price to book in the second to last column. [The French Bank, Groupe BPCE’s shares are unlisted so omitted from the table]

    Before a sharp rally in the share price last week, Credit Suisse’s price to book stood at 24%, and Deutsche Bank’s stood at an equally lowly 23.5%. And as can be seen from the table, seventeen out of twenty-nine G-SIBs have price-to-book ratios of under 50%.

    Normally, the opportunity to buy shares at book value or less is seen by value investors as a strategy for identifying undervalued investments. But when a whole sector is afflicted this way, the message is different. In the market valuations for these banks, their share prices signal a significant risk of failure, which is particularly acute in the European and UK majors, and to a similar but lesser extent in the three Japanese G-SIBs.

    As a whole, G-SIBs have been valued in markets for the likelihood of systemic failure for some time. Despite what the markets have been signalling, these banks have survived, though as we have seen in the case of Deutsche Bank it has been a bumpy road for some. Regulations to improve balance sheet liquidity, mainly in the form of Basel 3, have been introduced in phases since the Lehman failure, and still price-to-book discounts have not recovered materially.

    These depressed market valuations have made it impossible for the weaker G-SIBs to consider increasing their Tier 1 equity bases because of the dilutive effect on existing shareholders. Seeming to believe that their shares are undervalued, some banks have even been buying in discounted shares, reducing their capital and increasing balance sheet leverage even more. There is little doubt that in a very low interest rate environment some bankers reckoned this was the right thing to do.

    But that has now changed. With interest rates now rising rapidly, over-leveraged balance sheets need to be urgently wound down to protect shareholders. And even bankers who have been so captured by the regulators that they regard their shareholders as a secondary priority will realise that their confrères in other banks will be selling down financial assets, liquidating financial collateral where possible, and withdrawing loan and overdraft facilities from non-financial businesses when they can. 

    It is all very well to complacently think that complying with Basel 3 liquidity provisions is a job well done. But if you ignore balance sheet leverage for your shareholders at a time of rising prices and therefore interest rates, they will almost certainly be wiped out. There can be no doubt that the change from an environment where price-to-book discounts are an irritation to bank executives to really mattering is bound up in a new, rising interest rate environment.

    Rising interest rates are also a sea-change for derivatives, and particularly for the banks exposed to them. Interest rates swaps, of which the Bank for International Settlements reckoned there were $8.8 trillion equivalent in June 2021, have been deployed by pension funds, insurance companies, hedge funds and banks lending fixed-rate mortgages. They are turning out to be a financial instrument of mass destruction.

    An interest rate swap is an arrangement between two counterparties who agree to exchange payments on a defined notional amount for a fixed time period. The notional amount is not exchanged, but interest rates on it are, one being at a predefined fixed rate such as a spread over a government bond yield with a maturity matching the duration of the swap agreement, while the other floats based on LIBOR or a similar yardstick.

    Swaps can be agreed for fixed terms of up to fifteen years. When the yield curve is positive, a pension fund, for example, can obtain a decent income uplift by taking the fixed interest leg and paying the floating rate. And because the deal is based on notional capital, which is never put up, swaps can be leveraged significantly. The other party will be active in wholesale money markets, securing a small spread over floating rate payments received from the pension fund. Both counterparties expect to benefit from the deal, because their calculations of the net present values of the cash flows, which involves a degree of judgement, will not be too dissimilar when the deal is agreed.

    The risk to the pension fund comes from rising bond yields. Despite the rise in bond yields, it still takes the fixed rate agreed at the outset, yet it is committed to paying a higher floating rate. In the UK, 3-month sterling LIBOR rose from 0.107% on 1 December 2021, to 3.94% yesterday. In a five-year swap, the fixed rate taken by the pension fund would be based on the 5-year gilt yield, which on 1 December last was 0.65%. With a spread of perhaps 0.25% over that, the pension fund would be taking 0.9% and paying 0.107%, for a turn of 0.793%. Today, the pension fund would still be taking 0.9%, but paying out 3.94%. With rising interest rates, even without leverage it is a disaster for the pension fund. But this is not the only trap they have fallen into.

    In the UK, pension fund exposure to repurchase agreements (repos) led to margin calls and a sudden liquidation of gilt collateral less a fortnight ago. A number of specialist firms offered liability driven investment schemes (LDIs), targeted at final salary pension schemes. Using repos, LDI schemes were able to use low funding rates to finance long gilt positions, geared by up to seven times. When LDIs blew up due to falling collateral values, the gilt market collapsed as pension funds became forced sellers, and the Bank of England dramatically reversed its stillborn quantitative tightening policy. That saga has further to run, and the problem is not restricted to UK pension funds, as we shall see. A fuller description of how these repo schemes blew up is described later in this article.

    The LDI episode is a warning of the consequences of a change in interest rate trends for derivatives in the widest sense. We should not forget that the evolution of derivatives has been in large measure due to the post-1980 trend of declining interest rates. With commodity, producer, and consumer prices now all rising fuelled by currency debasement, that trend has now come to an end. And with collateral values falling instead of rising, it is not just a case of dealers adjusting their outlook. There are bound to be more detonations in the $600 trillion OTC global derivatives market.

    Central to these derivatives are banks and shadow banks. Credit Suisse has been a market maker in credit default swaps, leveraged loans, and other derivative-based activities. The bank deals in a wide range of swaps, interest rate and foreign exchange options, forex forwards and futures.[i] The replacement values of its OTC derivatives are shown in the 2021 accounts at CHF125.6 billion, which reduces with netting agreements to CHF25.6 billion. Small beer, it might seem. But the notional amounts, being the principal amounts upon which these derivative replacement values are based are far, far larger. The leverage between replacement values and notional amounts means that the bank’s exposure to rising interest rates could rapidly drive it into insolvency.

    At this juncture, we cannot know if this is at the root of the bank’s troubles. And this article is not intended to be a criticism of Credit Suisse relative to its peers. The problems the bank faces are reflected in the entire G-SIB system with other banks having far larger derivative exposures. The point is that as a whole, participants in the derivatives market are unprepared for the conditions which led to its phenomenal growth at $600 trillion equivalent, which is now being reversed by a change in the primary trend for interest rates.

    Central bank balance sheets and bailing commercial banks

    In the event of commercial banking failures, it is generally expected that central banks will ensure depositors are protected, and that the financial system’s survival is guaranteed. But given the sheer size of derivative markets and the likely consequences of counterparty failures, it will be an enormous task requiring global cooperation and the abandonment of the bail-in procedures agreed by G20 member nations in the wake of the Lehman crisis. There will be no question but that failing banks must continue to trade with their bond holders’ funds remaining intact. If not, then all bank bonds are likely to collapse in value because in a bail-in bond holders will prefer the sanctity of deposits guaranteed by the state. And any attempt to limit deposit protection to smaller depositors would be disastrous.

    Because the Great Unwind is so sudden, it promises to become a far larger crisis than anything seen before. Unfortunately, due to quantitative easing the central banks themselves also have bond losses to contend with, wiping out the values of their balance sheet equity many times over. That a currency-issuing central bank has net liabilities on its balance sheet would not normally matter, because it can always expand credit to finance itself. But we are now envisaging central banks with substantial and growing net liabilities being required to guarantee entire commercial banking networks. 

    The burden of bail outs will undoubtedly lead to new rounds of currency debasement directly and indirectly, as vain attempts are made to support financial asset values and prevent an economic catastrophe. Accelerating currency debasement by the issuing authorities will almost certainly undermine public faith in fiat currencies, leading to their entire collapse, unless a way can be found to stabilise them.

    The euro system has specific problems

    In theory, recapitalising a central bank is a simple matter. The bank makes a loan to its shareholder, typically the government, which instead of a balancing deposit it books as equity in its liabilities. But when a central bank is not answerable to any government, that route cannot be taken.

    This is a problem for the ECB, whose shareholders are the national central banks of the member states. Unfortunately, they are also in need of recapitalisation. Table 2 below summarises the likely losses suffered this year so far on their bond holdings under the assumptions in the notes.

    Other than the four national central banks for which bond prices are unavailable, we can see that all NCBs and the ECB itself have been entrapped by rising bond yields. Even the mighty Bundesbank appears to have losses on its bonds forty-four times its shareholders’ capital since 1 January. Bearing in mind that the Eurozone’s consumer price index is now rising at about 10% and considerably higher in some member states, 5-year maturity government bond yields between 2% (Germany) and 4% (Italy) can be expected to rise considerably from here. No amount of mollification, that central banks can never go bust, will cover up this problem.

    Imagine the legislative hurdles. The Bundesbank, let’s say, presents a case to the Bundestag to pass enabling legislation to permit it to recapitalise itself and to subscribe to more capital in the ECB on the basis of its share of the ECB’s equity to restore it to solvency. One can imagine finance ministers being persuaded that there is no alternative to the proposal, but then it will be noticed that the Bundesbank is owed over €1.2 trillion through the TARGET2 system. Surely, it will almost certainly be argued, if those liabilities were paid to the Bundesbank, there would be no need for it to recapitalise itself.

    If only it were so simple. But clearly, it is not in the Bundesbank’s interest to involve ignorant politicians in monetary affairs. The public debate would risk spiralling out of control, with possibly fatal consequences for the entire euro system. So, what is happening with TARGET2?

    TARGET2 imbalances are deteriorating again…

    Figure 1 shows that TARGET2 imbalances are increasing again, notably for Germany’s Bundesbank, which is now owed a record €1,266,470 million, and Italy’s Banca Italia which owes €714,932 million. These are the figures for September, while all the others are for August and are yet to be updated.

    In theory, these imbalances should not exist because that was an objective behind TARGET2’s construction. And before the Lehman crisis, they were minimal as the chart shows. Since then, they have increased to a total of €1,844,815 million, with Germany owed the most, followed by Luxembourg, which in August was owed €337,315 billion. Partly, this is due to Frankfurt and Luxembourg being financial centres for international transactions through which both foreign and Eurozone investing institutions have been selling euro-denominated obligations issued by entities in Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain (the PIGS). The bank credit resulting from these transactions works through the system as follows:

    • An Italian bond is sold through a German bank in Frankfurt. On delivering the bond, the seller has recorded in his favour a credit (deposit) at the German bank. Delivery to Milan against payment occurs with the settlement going through TARGET2, the settlement system through which cross-border settlements are made via the NCBs. Accordingly, the German bank records a matching credit (asset) with the Bundesbank.

    •  The Bundesbank has a liability to the German bank. On the Bundesbank’s balance sheet, it generates a matching asset, reflecting the settlement due from the Banca d’Italia.

    • The Banca d’Italia has a liability to the Bundesbank, and a matching asset to the Italian bank acting for the buyer of the Italian bond.

    • The Italian bank has a liability to the Banca d’Italia, matching the debit on the bond buyer’s account, which is extinguishedby the buyer’s payment in settlement.

    As far as the international seller and the buyer through the Italian market are concerned, settlement has occurred. But the offsetting transfers between the Bundesbank and the Banca d’Italia have not taken place. There have been no settlements between them, and imbalances are the result. 

    The situation has been worsened by capital flight within the Eurozone, using dodgy collateral originating in the PIGS posted to the relevant national central bank by commercial banks, against cash credits made to commercial banks in the form of repurchase agreements (repos). 

    There are two reasons for these repo transactions. The first is simple capital flight within the Eurozone, where cash balances gained through repos are deployed to buy bonds and other assets lodged in Germany and Luxembourg. The payments will be in euros but are very likely to be for bonds and other investments not denominated in euros. The second is that in overseeing TARGET2, the ECB has ignored collateral standards as a means of subsidising the PIGS’ financial systems.

    With the PIGS economies on continuing life support, local bank regulators would be put in an awkward position if they had to decide whether bank loans are performing or non-performing. Because increasing quantities of these loans are undoubtedly non-performing, the solution has been to bundle them up as assets which can be used as collateral for repos through the central banks, so that they get lost in the TARGET2 system. If, say, the Banca d’Italia accepts the collateral it is no longer a concern for the local regulator.

    The true fragility of the PIGS economies is concealed in this way, the precariousness of commercial bank finances is hidden, and the ECB has achieved a political objective of protecting the PIGS’ economies from collapse.

    The recent increase in the imbalances, particularly between the Bundesbank and the Banca d’Italia are a warning that the system is breaking down. It was not an obvious problem when the long-term trend for interest rates was declining. But now that they are rising, the situation is radically different. The spread between Germany’s bond yields and those of Italy along with those of the other PIGS is increasingly being deemed by investors to be insufficient to compensate for the enhanced risks in a rising interest rate environment. The consequences could lead to a new crisis for the PIGS as their precarious state finances become undermined. Furthermore, capital flight out of Eurozone investments generally is confirmed by the collapse in the euro’s exchange rate against the US dollar.

    The Eurozone’s repo market

    From our analysis of the underlying causes of TARGET2 imbalances, we can see that repos play an important role. For the avoidance of doubt a repo is defined as a transaction agreed between parties to be reversed on pre-agreed terms at a future date. In exchange for posting collateral, a bank receives cash. The other party, in our discussion being a central bank, sees the same transaction as a reverse repo. It is a means of injecting fiat liquidity into the commercial banking system.

    Repos and reverse repos are not exclusively used between commercial banks and central banks, but they are also undertaken between banks and other financial institutions, sometimes through third parties, including automated trading systems. They can be leveraged to produce enhanced returns, and this is one of the ways in which liability driven investment (LDI) has been used by UK pension funds geared up to seven times. Presumably UK LDIs are an activity mirrored by their Eurozone equivalents, likely to be revealed as interest rates continue to rise.

    According to the last annual survey by the International Capital Market Association conducted in December 2021, at that time the size of the European repo market (including sterling, dollar, and other currencies conducted in European financial centres) stood at a record of €9,198 billion equivalent.[ii] This was based on responses from a sample of 57 institutions, including banks, so the true size of the market is somewhat larger. Measured by cash currency analysis, the euro share was 56.9% (€5,234bn).

    Obtaining euro cash through repos is cheap finance, as Figure 2 illustrates, which is of rates earlier this week.

    It allows European pension and insurance funds to finance geared bond positions through liability driven investment schemes. Which is fine, until the values of the bonds held as collateral fall, and cash calls are then made. This is what blew up the UK gilt market recently and are doing do so again this week as gilt prices fall. This is not a problem restricted to the UK and sterling markets.

    We can be sure that this situation is ringing alarm bells in the ECB’s headquarters in Frankfurt, as well as in all the major commercial banks around Europe. It has not been a concern so long as interest rates were not rising. Now that they are, with price inflation out of control there’s likely to be an increased reluctance on the part of the banks to novate repo agreements.

    There are a number of moving parts to this emerging crisis. We can summarise the calamity beginning to overwhelm the Eurozone and the euro system, as follows:

    • Rising interest rates and bond yields are set to implode European repo markets. The LDI crisis which hit London will also afflict euro-denominated bond and repo markets — possibly even before the ink in this article has long dried.

    • Collapsing repos in turn will lead to a failure of the TARGET2 system, because repos are the primary mechanism drivingTARGET2 imbalances. The spreads between German and highly indebted PIGS government bonds are bound to widen dramatically, causing a new funding crisis for ever more highly indebted PIGS on a scale far larger than seen in the past.

    • Commercial banks in the Eurozone will be forced to liquidate their assets and collateral held against loans, including repos, as rapidly as possible. This will collapse Eurozone bond markets, as we saw with the UK gilt market earlier this month. Paper held in other currencies by Eurozone banks will be liquidated as well, spreading the crisis to other markets.

    • The ECB and the euro system, which is already insolvent, is duty bound to intervene heavily to support bond markets and ensure the survival of the whole system.

    Panglossians might argue that the ECB has successfully managed financial crises in the past, and that to assume they will fail this time is unnecessarily alarmist. But the difference is in the trends for price inflation and interest rates. If the ECB is to have the slightest chance of succeeding in keeping the whole euro system and its allied commercial banking system afloat, it will be at the expense of the currency as it doubles down on suppressing interest rates. 

    The Bank of Japan is struggling to keep bond yields suppressed

    Along with the ECB, the Bank of Japan forced negative interest rates upon its financial system in an effort to maintain a targeted 2% inflation rate. And while other jurisdictions see CPI rising at 10% or more, Japan’s CPI is rising at only 3%. There are a number of identifiable reasons why this is so. But the overriding reason is that the Japanese consumer continues to place unshakeable faith in the yen. This means that in the face of higher prices, the average consumer withholds spending, increasing preferences for holding the currency.

    Even though the yen has fallen by 26% against the dollar, and dollar prices are rising at 8.5%, the growing preference for holding cash yen relative to consumer purchases in domestic markets holds. But this cannot go on for ever. While domestic market conditions remain stable, the US Fed’s more aggressive interest rate policy relative to the BOJ’s tells a different story for the yen on the foreign exchanges.

    The Bank of Japan first started quantitative easing over twenty years ago and has accumulated a mixture of government bonds (JGBs), corporate bonds, equities through ETFs, and property trusts. On 30 September, their accumulated total had a book value — as distinct from a market value — of over ¥594 trillion ($4.1 trillion). But at ¥545.5 trillion, the JGB element is 92% 0f the total.

    Since 31 December 2021, the yield on the 10-year JGB (by far the largest component) has risen from 0.17% to 0.25% today. On this basis, the bond portfolio held at that time has lost nearly ¥10 trillion, which compares with the bank’s capital of only ¥100 million. Therefore, the losses on the bond element alone are about 100,000 times greater that the bank’s slender equity.

    One can see why the BOJ has drawn a line in the sand against market reality. It insists that the 10-year JGB yield must be prevented from rising above 0.25%. Its neo-Keynesian case is that consumer inflation is subdued so the case for reducing stimulation to the economy is a marginal one. But the consequence is that the currency is collapsing. And only yesterday, the rate to the US dollar began to slide again. This is shown in Figure 3 — note that a rising number represents a weakening yen.

    Despite the mess that Japan’s Keynesian policies has created, it is difficult to see the BOJ changing course willingly. But the crisis for it will surely come if one or more of its three G-SIBs needs supporting. And it should be noted (See Table 1) that all three of them have balance sheet gearing measured by assets to shareholders equity of over twenty times, with Mizuho as much as 26 times, and they all have price to book ratios less than 50%.

    The Fed’s position

    The position of America’s Federal Reserve Board is starkly different from those of the other major central banks. True, it has substantial losses on its bond portfolio. In its Combined Quarterly Financial Report for June 30, 2022, the Fed disclosed the change in unrealised cumulative gains and losses on its Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities of $847,797 million loss (versus June 30 2021, $185,640m loss).[iii] The Fed reports these assets in its balance sheet at amortised cost, so the losses are not immediately apparent.

    But on 30 June, the five-year note was yielding 2.7% and the ten-year 2.97%. Currently, they yield 4.16% and 3.95% respectively. Even without recalculating today’s market values, it is clear that the current deficit is now considerably more than a trillion dollars. And the Fed’s capital and reserves stand at only $46.274 billion, with portfolio losses exceding 25 times that figure.

    Other than losses from rising bond yields, instead of pushing liquidity into markets it is withdrawing it through reverse repos. In this case, the Fed is swapping some of the bonds on its balance sheet for cash on pre-agreed, temporary terms. Officially, this is part of the Fed’s management of overnight interest rates. But with the reverse repo facility standing at over $2 trillion, this is far from a marginal rate setting activity. It probably has more to do with Basel 3 regulations which penalise large bank deposits relative to smaller deposits, and a lack of balance sheet capacity at the large US banks.

    Repos, as opposed to reverse repos, still take place between individual banks and their institutional customers, but it is not obvious that they pose a systemic risk, though some large pension funds may have been using them for LDI transactions, similarly to the UK pension industry.

    While highly geared compared with in the past, US G-SIBs are not nearly as much exposed to a general credit downturn as the Europeans, Japanese, and the British. Contracting bank credit will hurt them, but other G-SIBs are bound to fail first, transmitting systemic risk through counterparty relationships. Nevertheless, markets do recognise some risk, with price-to-book ratios of less than 0.9 for Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, State Street, and BONY-Mellon. JPMorgan Chase, which is the Fed’s principal policy conduit into the commercial banking system, is barely rated above book value.

    Bank of England — bad policies but some smart operators

    In the headlights of an oncoming gilt market crash, the Bank of England acted promptly to avert a crisis centred on pension fund liability driven investment involving interest rate swaps. The workings of interest rate swaps have already been described, but repos also played a role. It might be helpful to explain briefly how repos are used in the LDI context.

    A pension fund goes to a shadow bank specialising in LDI schemes, with access to the repo market. In return for a deposit of say, 20% cash, the LDI scheme provider buys the full amount of medium and long-dated gilts to be held in the LDI scheme, using them as collateral backing for a repo to secure the funding for the other 80%. The repo can be for any duration from overnight to a year.

     One year ago, when the Bank of England suppressed its bank rate at zero percent, one-month sterling LIBOR was close to 0.4% percent to borrow, while the yield on the 20-year gilt was 1.07%. Ignoring costs, a five-times leverage gave an interest rate turn of 0.63% X 5 = 3.15%, nearly three times the rate obtained by simply buying a 20-year gilt.

    Today, the yield differential has improved, leading to even higher net returns. But the problem is that the rise in yield for the 20-year gilt to 4.9% means that the price has fallen from a notional 100 par to 49.95. Since this is the collateral for the cash obtained through the repo, the pension fund faces margin calls amounting to roughly 2.5 times the original investment in the LDI scheme. And all the pension funds using LDI schemes faced calls at the same time, which crashed the gilt market. This is why the BOE had to act quickly to stabilise prices.

    Very sensibly, it has given pension funds and the LDI providers until this Friday to sort themselves out. Until then, the BOE stands prepared to buy any long-dated gilts until tomorrow (Friday, 14 October). It should remove the selling pressure from LDI-related liquidation entirely and orderly market conditions can then resume.

    This experience serves as an example of how rising bond yields can wreak havoc in repo markets, and with interest rate swaps as well. That being the case, problems are bound to arise in other currency derivative markets as bond yields continue to rise.

    Like the other major central banks, the BOE has seen a substantial deficit arise on its portfolio of gilts. But at the outset of QE, it got the Treasury to agree that as well as receiving the dividends and profits from gilts so acquired, it would also take any losses. All gilts bought under the QE programmes are held in a special purpose vehicle on the Bank’s balance sheet, guaranteed by the Treasury and therefore valued at cost.

    Conclusions

    In this article I have put to one side all the economic concerns of a downturn in the quantities of bank credit in circulation and focused on the financial consequences of a new long-term trend of rising interest rates. It should be coming clear that they threaten to undermine the entire fiat currency financial system.

    Credit Suisse’s public problems should be considered in this context. That they have not arisen before was due to the successful suppression of interest rates and bond yields, while the quantities of currency and bank credit have expanded substantially without apparent ill effects. Those ill effects are now impacting financial markets by undermining the purchasing power of all fiat currencies at an accelerating rate.

    From being completely in control of interest rates and fixed interest markets, central banks are now struggling in a losing battle to retain that control from the consequences of their earlier credit expansion. That enemy of every state, the market, has central banks on the run, uncertain as to whether their currencies should be protected (this is the Fed’s current decision and probably a dithering BOE) or a precarious financial system must be the priority (this is the ECB and BOJ’s current position).

    But one thing is clear: with CPI measures rising at a 10% clip, interest rates and bond yields will continue to rise until something breaks. So far, commercial banks are dumping financial assets to deleverage their balance sheets. The effects on listed securities are in plain sight. What is less appreciated, at least before LDI schemes threatened to collapse the UK’s gilt market, is that the $600 trillion OTC derivative market which grew on the back of a long-term trend of declining interest rates is now set to shrink as contracts go sour and banks refuse to novate them. That means that up to $600 trillion of notional credit is set to vanish, in what we might call the Great Unwind.

    This downturn in the cycle of bank credit boom and bust will prove difficult enough for the central banks to manage. But they themselves have balance sheet issues, which can only be resolved, one way or another, by the rapid expansion of base money. And that risks undermining all public credibility in fiat currencies.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/14/2022 – 19:40

  • Wawa Calls It Quits On Its Hometown City, Shuttering Two More Philadelphia Stores Due To "Safety Challenges"
    Wawa Calls It Quits On Its Hometown City, Shuttering Two More Philadelphia Stores Due To “Safety Challenges”

    Popular convenience store Wawa is calling it quits on the crime-ridden city of Philadelphia.

    The Pennsylvania-based chain, beloved by people in Southeastern Pennsylvania and the surrounding area, doesn’t appear to see the point of staying open in a city where its stores are constantly being looted and ransacked. 

    It was reported by FOX 29 this week that the chain was shuttering stores at two of its locations in Center City due to “continued safety and security challenges and business factors.” 

    Which is a nice way to say “absolute chaos”…

    “We are very sorry we can’t be there for our friends and neighbors at these two locations, but we continue to serve the community from our other nearby stores and our commitment to the greater region remains strong. Philadelphia is our hometown and that’s something that will never change,” the chain said. 

    Locations at 12th and Market and 19th and Market in Philadelphia will both close.

    Wawa spokesperson Lori Bruce said: “Despite reducing hours and investing in additional operational measures, continued safety and security challenges and business factors have made it increasingly difficult to remain open in these two locations.”

    “These two closures do not necessarily impact or limit potential for future stores in Philadelphia County. We continue to be focused on doing everything we can to monitor and work with local authorities to address challenges impacting operations in any other stores,” she continued. 

    As FOX 29 notes, at least 4 Wawas have closed in the city since 2020 – and it looks like they may not be finished. Fox reported that “Philadelphia Councilmember Mike Driscoll suggested Wawa is reconsidering its presence in Philadelphia and could halt expansion due to crime.”

    Philadelphia’s Mayor’s office offered up a token statement to the Philadelphia Inquirer, thanking Wawa and steering clear of mentioning the obvious burgeoning crime problem that forced them out of the city. The office said: “We greatly value the investments that Wawa has made over the years in Philadelphia and are particularly proud of their close partnership on various civic pride initiatives.”

    The news comes a couple weeks after a mob of people entered a Wawa convenience store on Roosevelt Boulevard in Philadelphia and broke out into a riot, seemingly without warning or reason.

    “We continue to be focused on doing everything we can to monitor and work with local authorities to address challenges impacting operations in any other stores,” a Wawa statement this week said. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/14/2022 – 19:20

  • Fauci Edited Paper By NIH-Funded Group Tied To Wuhan Lab
    Fauci Edited Paper By NIH-Funded Group Tied To Wuhan Lab

    Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci edited a research paper by the group that worked with a high-profile Wuhan lab to study dangerous bat virus while pushing back concerns that the facility could be the source of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House Chief Medical Advisor and Director of the NIAID, shows a screen grab of a campaign website for Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) while answering questions at a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on Jan. 11, 2022. (Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images)

    The paper, titled “Nipah virus dynamics in bats and implications for spillover to humans,” was funded by eight federal programs, half of which were from the NIAID that Fauci will head until this December.

    Members of the nonprofit research group EcoHealth Alliance, which became a conduit for the Wuhan Institute of Virology to conduct risky bat research using U.S. taxpayer dollars, make up over half of the roughly two dozen authors on the paper.

    Fauci edited the paper in 2020 after receiving it for review that Jan. 8, two weeks before COVID-19 brought Wuhan into a complete lockdown. Peer-reviewed scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, better known as PNAS, approved it in September that year and published it two months later.

    The extent of Fauci’s input into the paper is unclear. As a public servant of four decades, Fauci has also edited scientific papers notably on the subject of HIV. But Fauci’s editorial role, given the group’s history of ties with the Wuhan lab and the funding it received from his agency, nonetheless raised eyebrows among critics.

    Tristan Daedalus, the government affairs director for White Coat Waste Project that has been tracking the EcoHealth and Wuhan lab’s collaboration, saw in the case a “self-licking ice cream cone.”

    “First, Fauci champions dangerous animal experiments to balloon his $6 billion budget. Next, he doles it out via grants to EcoHealth and other white coats in the U.S. and abroad. He and his colleagues then personally edit and approve the experiments they funded for publication in scientific journals—then claim success because of the publication record. Finally, he renews the payouts to fuel the government gravy train,” Daedalus said in a statement to The Epoch Times. “Fauci isn’t following the science, but EcoHealth sure is following the money.”

    During the months as the virus spread to other parts of the world, Fauci made repeated efforts to promote a natural COVID-19 origin narrative while downplaying the prospect of a lab leak both privately and in public.

    Peter Daszak, a co-author of the PNAS paper and president of EcoHealth, thanked Fauci for backing a natural origin theory in an April 2020 email, according to NIH records since released through a Freedom of Information Request (pdf).

    “I just wanted to say a personal thankyou [sic] on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he wrote on April 18, 2020, a day after Fauci told reporters that all available evidence on the virus was “totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.”

    Peter Daszak (R) and other members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus, arrive at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province on Feb. 3, 2021. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

    “[T]he work we’ve been doing in collaboration with Chinese virologists has given us incredible insights into the risks that these viruses represent, so that we can directly help protect our nation from bat-origin coronaviruses,” he said, citing an NIH-funded multi-year project on bat coronavirus emergence in China. “From my perspective, your comments are brave, and coming from your trusted voice, will help dispel the myths being spun around the virus’ origins.”

    “Many thanks for your kind note,” Fauci wrote in reply.

    The project that Daszak cited was suspended later that year and was the subject of inquiries by both the FBI and the Department of Health and Human Services over its use of grant funding in China. In August, the NIH terminated the project funding to the Wuhan lab after twice failing to get the Chinese facility to hand over laboratory records.

    Fauci’s agency in late September again greenlit millions of funding to EcoHealth to support its research projects in Asia. One of them relates to the Nipah virus.

    Defending the grant decision on Oct. 4, he told a virtual webinar that they “can’t arbitrarily decide, ‘I just don’t want to fund it’ because people don’t like them.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/14/2022 – 19:00

  • Republican Senators Warn DOJ Not To Police Speech Against Transgender Surgeries On Children
    Republican Senators Warn DOJ Not To Police Speech Against Transgender Surgeries On Children

    Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Senate Republicans are warning Attorney General Merrick Garland not to target Americans who speak against transgender surgeries on children the way his department did to parents protesting at school board meetings.

    In a letter sent on Tuesday to Garland, a group of five senators said they remain concerned that he would repeat a pattern played out in his previous handling of unruly school board protesters.

    “In your confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, you promised that, under your watch, the Department of Justice would not be politicized or weaponized,” wrote Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). “You have already broken that promise more than once, and we are concerned you are poised to do so once again.”

    In October 2021, Garland issued a memo bringing together a coalition of federal and local law enforcement to address alleged “threats of violence” against teachers and school board members. In response to that memo, the FBI’s counterterrorism unit created the threat tag “EDUOFFICIALS,” and opened dozens of investigations into the activities of protesting parents.

    According to Garland, the memo was based in part on a letter sent to President Joe Biden by the National School Boards Association (NSBA), which characterized disruptions at school board meetings as “a form of domestic terrorism and hate crime.” Specifically, the NSBA urged the federal government to invoke counterterrorism laws to quell “angry mobs” of parents, who sought to hold school officials accountable for race and sex indoctrination, and for imposing harsh COVID-19 restrictions on their children.

    The senators said they had to remind Garland of his promise, because the DOJ has once again been asked to censor debate, this time, over the issue of children being put through irreversible transgender procedures.

    On Oct. 3, the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, and Children’s Hospital Association sent a letter (pdf) to Garland, asking the DOJ to help with alleged “threats” and “harassment” they face because of the “gender-affirming healthcare” they provide.

    “From Boston to Akron, [Ohio], to Nashville, [Tennessee], to Seattle, children’s hospitals, academic health systems, and physicians are being targeted and threatened for providing evidence-based healthcare,” the organizations wrote in language similar to that of the NSBA letter. “These attacks have not only made it difficult and dangerous for institutions and practices to provide this care, [but] they have also disrupted many other services to families seeking care.”

    “Our organizations have called on technology companies to do more to prevent this practice on digital platforms, and we now urge your office to take swift action to investigate and prosecute all organizations, individuals, and entities responsible,” the letter read.

    Censoring Speech of Critics

    The reason that the DOJ continues to get such requests is because Garland’s response to the NSBA letter set a very bad precedent, the senators argued.

    “Your actions in regard to the NSBA letter sent an inappropriate message that federal law enforcement can and will be used to aid one side of a political debate, and to either silence or chill the speech of the other,” they told Garland. “Now, in a remarkably similar fashion, medical associations have written to you asking you to again treat any speech critical of their position on a sensitive matter of public policy as a physical threat warranting a law enforcement response.”

    “We call upon you to reaffirm that you will faithfully protect the First Amendment rights of all Americans to peacefully debate this and all other policy questions, irrespective of viewpoint,” the senators continued. “The weaponization of federal law enforcement agencies like the DOJ, in order to produce preferred policy outcomes, cannot continue—our democracy depends on it.”

    The senators’ warning comes amid a growing number of pediatric health care providers embracing “gender affirmation care,” a concept rooted in progressive gender ideology.

    The American Academy of Pediatrics, a national organization of pediatric health professionals, in its latest guidelines encourages providers to adopt a “gender-affirmative care model” and offer services that are “oriented toward understanding and appreciating the youth’s gender experience.”

    In such a model, transgender identities and “diverse gender expressions” aren’t considered to be mental disorders but “normal aspects of human diversity.” The model also recognizes gender identity as something that “evolves as an interplay of biology, development, socialization, and culture.”

    Meanwhile, many health professionals who hold a different view of best standard of care for those with gender dysphoria have been pushed out of their profession, like sex researcher Dr. Kenneth Zucker.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/14/2022 – 18:20

  • Anti-Oil Environmentalists Deface $85 Million Van Gogh Painting
    Anti-Oil Environmentalists Deface $85 Million Van Gogh Painting

    Because that’ll show’em, or make people go “green”… or something like that. Watch below as a pair of environmental activists attack a Vincent Van Gogh painting at London’s National Gallery on Friday, in but the latest in a string of similar stunts tailored to grab headlines.

    The 1888 Van Gogh work “Sunflowers” is widely considered to be priceless, but international reports say it was recently valued at $85 million. That didn’t stop climate protesters from the group Just Stop Oil from hitting it with a can of tomato soup. They then tried to glue their hands to the wall while posing under the defaced artwork.

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

    The London gallery issued a statement after the incident, saying the masterpiece was “unharmed” due to the protective glass that covers it. Galleries across Europe have had to beef up their security and protective coverings particularly over high-value and rare pieces.

    “What use is art when we face the collapse of civil society?” the activist group said in its own statement after the two were arrested.

    “The art establishment, artists and the art-loving public need to step up into Civil Resistance if they want to live in a world where humans are around to appreciate art,” the protesters said.

    Getty Images

    According to NBC, the pair was arrested:

    In the background of the video, onlookers gasped and called for security as the protesters kneeled in front of the painting and glued their hands to the wall underneath the painting.

    “What is worth more, art or life?” one of the protesters asked upon kneeling.

    “Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?” the protester continued. “The cost of living crisis is part of the cost of oil crisis. Fuel is unaffordable to millions of cold, hungry families. They can’t even afford to heat a tin of soup.”

    The group was later filmed the same day committing public acts of vandalism outside of the Metropolitan police HQ in London.

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

    One wonders where these left-wing climate activists stand on the prospect of a civilization-ending nuclear war with Russia. They were curiously quiet about Western governments pumping more and more arms into the Ukrainian proxy war, potentially leading toward direct confrontation with a nuclear armed power. 

    Meanwhile, also of note…

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

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/14/2022 – 18:00

  • Federal Government Extends COVID-19 Public Health Emergency
    Federal Government Extends COVID-19 Public Health Emergency

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

    The federal government on Thursday extended its COVID-19 emergency for another 90 days despite President Joe Biden declaring the pandemic “over” weeks earlier.

    U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra confirmed the extension of the emergency in announcement posted on its website. No other details were provided.

    He said that “a public health emergency exists and has existed since January 27, 2020, nationwide,” and it will continue to remain in effect.

    The public health emergency, first declared in January 2020 and renewed every 90 days since, has dramatically changed how health services are delivered.

    The declaration enabled for the emergency authorization of COVID-19 vaccines, testing, and treatments. It also expanded Medicaid coverage to millions of people, many of whom will risk losing that coverage once the emergency ends, and it temporarily opened up telehealth access for Medicare recipients, enabling doctors to collect the same rates for those visits and encouraging health networks to adopt telehealth technology.

    Some Republicans have called on the White House to rescind the public emergency, while Biden and Democrats have asked Congress to pass more COVID-19-related spending bills.

    However, COVID-19 has largely faded from the public eye as government-reported deaths and case numbers have plummeted in recent months.

    During a September interview, Biden declared that the “pandemic is over,” which prompted White House officials to scramble to try and re-frame what the president had said.

    Immediately after he made that comment, unnamed administration officials told the Washington Post that his remark would now make it harder to push COVID-19 vaccines and booster shots. It came on the heels of approvals signed off by the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on updated booster vaccine doses made by Pfizer and Moderna.

    White House adviser Anthony Fauci, claimed the president’s remark was “problematic” because, according to him people would interpret it as it’s completely over and we’re done for good, which is not the case … no doubt about that.”

    The White House has said it would provide 60 days notice before it ends the public health emergency.

    Along with suspending travel from China and other places, former President Donald Trump had declared a national COVID-19 emergency in early 2020 to free up some $50 billion in federal aid. That came weeks after reports of the virus emerged in mainland China as the first cases were being detected in the United States.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/14/2022 – 17:40

  • Nikola Founder Trevor Milton Found Guilty Of Defrauding Investors After Jury Deliberates For Less Than A Day
    Nikola Founder Trevor Milton Found Guilty Of Defrauding Investors After Jury Deliberates For Less Than A Day

    A jury found Nikola founder Trevor Milton guilty of defrauding investors on Friday afternoon after less than a full day of deliberating. 

    Inner City Press had been following the trial and reported shortly after 4pm EST that “Trevor Milton, founder of hydrogen vehicle company Nikola has just been found guilty on 3 of 4 counts (1 of 2 securities fraud charges).”

    They live Tweeted the verdict as it happened:

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

    Short seller Hindenburg Research, whose findings led to the eventual charges against Milton, tweeted: “After deliberating for less than a day, the jury has found Nikola founder Trevor Milton guilty on 3 counts of fraud.”

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

    Recall, Milton was charged with three counts of fraud last year. Milton was charged with making false claims regarding “nearly all aspects of the business” according to the DOJ. 

    “Prosecutors say that when Milton unveiled their tractor trailer truck it had to be plugged into the wall, the headlamps were activated by remote by a staffer, and air had to be pumped in because there was a slow leak in the air lines of the truck,” a CNBC report from 2021 report continued.

    “And yes, prosecutors do say part of Milton’s conduct was video of the Nikola truck in the Super Bowl ad was not in fact of a working truck but was towed to the top of a hill. Brakes were released and it rolled downhill.”

    An SEC complaint filed last year revealed that footage of the truck “had been sped up two-to-three times” and that the video was “ultimately approved” by Milton. The DOJ complaint against Milton had alleged he “repeatedly made false and misleading statements about core aspects of Nikola’s products, technological advancements, and commercial prospects” including

    • (a) Falsely claiming that Nikola’s first semi-truck prototype, the Nikola One, could be driven under its own power, and using a misleading video to create the false impression that the Nikola One was, in fact, driving under its own power
    • (b) Falsely claiming that Nikola was producing hydrogen, that it was doing so at a cost that was four times less than the prevailing market rates, and that it had obtained electricity at costs that made hydrogen production profitable
    • (c) Falsely claiming that Nikola had significantly developed or already completed a prototype of an electric pickup truck, the Badger, and that this vehicle used primarily Nikola’s proprietary components
    • (d) Falsely claiming that Nikola had obtained “billions and billions and billions and billions” of dollars of committed truck orders
    • (e) Falsely claiming that Nikola had developed a “game-changing” battery technology and that Nikola was manufacturing and developing multiple key vehicle components “in-house”; and
    • (f) Falsely claiming that the total cost of ownership of Nikola’s trucks was 20-30 percent below that of diesel vehicles.

    The complaint said that Milton would regularly take action to try and stop declines in Nikola’s share price:

    “On days when Nikola’s stock price declined, Milton regularly attempted to direct Nikola’s senior executives to take actions to stop the price decline. Senior executives received frantic phone calls or text messages from Milton on such days in which he urged the executives to “do something.” Milton also spoke of needing to put out “good news” or some kind of announcement “to get people excited” as a way to counteract price declines or maintain support for the stock price.”

    The complaint also said that “Milton tracked the daily number of new Robinhood users who held Nikola stock” and apparently was excited that retail stockholders were buying the stock:

    The senior executive responded, in part, by expressing his amazement at how many calls he received “from retail investors today that have no clue about Nikola, other than their friends told them to buy. A lot of hype out there with retail investors,” to which Milton replied: “That’s how you build a foundation. Love it.”

    Milton pleaded not guilty and was ultimately freed on a $100 million bond before taking to trial. His bail was initially secured by two properties in Utah owned by Milton, “one worth $36 million, the other worth $4 million.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/14/2022 – 17:20

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Oct 14

Today’s News 14th October 2022

  • Escobar: The Thin Red Line – NATO Can't Afford To Lose Kabul & Kiev
    Escobar: The Thin Red Line – NATO Can’t Afford To Lose Kabul & Kiev

    Authored by Pepe Escobar,

    Let’s start with Pipelineistan. Nearly seven years ago, I showed how Syria was the ultimate Pipelineistan war.

    Damascus had rejected the – American – plan for a Qatar-Turkey gas pipeline, to the benefit of Iran-Iraq-Syria (for which a memorandum of understanding was signed).

    What followed was a vicious, concerted “Assad must go” campaign: proxy war as the road to regime change. The toxic dial went exponentially up with the instrumentalization of ISIS – yet another chapter of the war of terror (italics mine). Russia blocked ISIS, thus preventing regime change in Damascus. The Empire of Chaos-favored pipeline bit the dust.

    Now the Empire finally exacted payback, blowing up existing pipelines – Nord Stream (NS) and Nord Steam 2 (NS2) – carrying or about to carry Russian gas to a key imperial economic competitor: the EU.

    We all know by now that Line B of NS2 has not been bombed, or even punctured, and it’s ready to go. Repairing the other three – punctured – lines would not be a problem: a matter of two months, according to naval engineers. Steel on the Nord Streams is thicker than on modern ships. Gazprom has offered to repair them – as long as Europeans behave like grown-ups and accept strict security conditions.

    We all know that’s not going to happen. None of the above is discussed across NATOstan media. That means that Plan A by the usual suspects remains in place: creating a contrived natural gas shortage, leading to the de-industrialization of Europe, all part of the Great Reset, rebranded “The Great Narrative”.

    Meanwhile, the EU Muppet Show is discussing the ninth sanction package against Russia. Sweden refuses to share with Russia the results of the dodgy intra-NATO “investigation” of itself on who blew up the Nord Streams.

    At Russian Energy Week, President Putin summarized the stark facts.

    • Europe blames Russia for the reliability of its energy supplies even though it was receiving the entire volume it bought under fixed contracts.

    • The “orchestrators of the Nord Stream terrorist attacks are those who profit from them”.

    • Repairing Nord Stream strings “would only make sense in the event of continued operation and security”.

    • Buying gas on the spot market will cause a €300 billion loss for Europe.

    • The rise in energy prices is not due to the Special Military Operation (SMO), but to the West’s own policies.

    Yet the Dead Can Dance show must go on. As the EU forbids itself to buy Russian energy, the Brussels Eurocracy skyrockets their debt to the financial casino. The imperial masters laugh all the way to the bank with this form of collectivism – as they continue to profit from using financial markets to pillage and plunder whole nations.

    Which bring us to the clincher: the Straussian/neo-con psychos controlling Washington’s foreign policy eventually might – and the operative word is “might” – stop weaponizing Kiev and start negotiations with Moscow only after their main industrial competitors in Europe go bankrupt.

    But even that would not be enough – because one of NATO’s key “invisible” mandates is to capitalize, whatever means necessary, on food resources across the Pontic-Caspian steppe: we’re talking about 1 million km2 of food production from Bulgaria all the way to Russia.

    Judo in Kharkov

    The SMO has swiftly transitioned into a “soft” CTO (Counter-Terrorist Operation) even without an official announcement. The no-nonsense approach of the new overall commander with full carte blanche from the Kremlin, General Surovikin, a.k.a. “Armageddon”, speaks for itself.

    There are absolutely no indicators whatsoever pointing to a Russian defeat anywhere along the over 1,000 km-long frontline. The spun-to-death withdrawal from Kharkov may have been a masterstroke: the first stage of a judo move that, cloaked in legality, fully developed after the terrorist bombing of Krymskiy Most – the Crimea Bridge.

    Let’s look at the retreat from Kharkov as a trap – as in Moscow graphically demonstrating “weakness”. That led the Kiev forces – actually their NATO handlers – to gloat about Russia “fleeing”, abandon all caution, and go for broke, even embarking on a terror spiral, from the assassination of Darya Dugina to the attempted destruction of Krymskiy Most.

    In terms of Global South public opinion, it’s already established that General Armageddon’s Daily Morning Missile Show is a legal (italics mine) response to a terrorist state. Putin may have sacrificed, for a while, a piece on the chessboard – Kharkov: after all, the SMO mandate is not to hold terrain, but to demilitarize Ukraine.

    Moscow even won post-Kharkov: all the Ukrainian military equipment accumulated in the area was thrown into offensives, just for the Russian Army to merrily engage in non-stop target practice.

    And then there’s the real clincher: Kharkov set in motion a series of moves that allowed Putin to eventually go for checkmate, via the missile-heavy “soft” CTO, reducing the collective West to a bunch of headless chickens.

    In parallel, the usual suspects continue to relentlessly spin their new nuclear “narrative”. Foreign Minister Lavrov has been forced to repeat ad nauseam that according to Russian nuclear doctrine, a strike may only happen in response to an attack “which endangers the entire existence of the Russian Federation.”

    The aim of the D.C. psycho killers – in their wild wet dreams – is to provoke Moscow into using tactical nuclear weapons in the battlefield. That was another vector in rushing the timing of the Crimea Bridge terror attack: after all British intel plans had been swirling for months. That all came to nought.

    The hysterical Straussian/neocon propaganda machine is frantically, pre-emptively, blaming Putin: he’s “cornered”, he’s “losing”, he’s “getting desperate” so he’ll launch a nuclear strike.

    It’s no wonder the Doomsday Clock set up by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947 is now placed at only 100 seconds from midnight. Right on “Doom’s doorstep”.

    This is where a bunch of American psychos is leading us.

    Life at Doom’s doorstep

    As the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder is petrified by the startling Double Fail of a massive economic/military attack, Moscow is systematically preparing for the next military offensive. As it stands, it’s clear that the Anglo-American axis will not negotiate. It has not even tried for the past 8 years, and it’s not about to change course, even incited by an angelic chorus ranging from Elon Musk to Pope Francis.

    Instead of going Full Timur, accumulating a pyramid of Ukrainian skulls, Putin has summoned eons of Taoist patience to avoid military solutions. Terror on the Crimea Bridge may have been a game-changer. But the velvet gloves are not totally off: General Armageddon’s daily aerial routine may still be seen as a – relatively polite – warning. Even in his latest landmark speech, which contained a savage indictment of the West, Putin made clear he’s always open for negotiations.

    Yet by now, Putin and the Security Council know why the Americans simply can’t negotiate. Ukraine may be just a pawn in their game, but it’s still one of Eurasia’s key geopolitical nodes: whoever controls it, enjoys extra strategic depth.

    The Russians are very much aware that the usual suspects are obsessed with blowing up the complex process of Eurasia integration – starting with China’s BRI. No wonder important instances of power in Beijing are “uneasy” with the war. Because that’s very bad for business between China and Europe via several trans-Eurasian corridors.

    Putin and the Russian Security Council also know that NATO abandoned Afghanistan – an absolutely miserable failure – to place all their chips on Ukraine. So losing both Kabul and Kiev will be the ultimate mortal blow: that means abandoning the 21st Eurasian Century to the Russia-China-Iran strategic partnership.

    Sabotage – from the Nord Streams to Krymskiy Most – gives away the desperation game. NATO’s arsenals are virtually empty. What’s left is a war of terror: the Syrianization, actually ISIS-zation of the battlefield. Managed by braindead NATO, acted on the terrain by a cannon fodder horde sprinkled with mercenaries from at least 34 nations.

    So Moscow may be forced to go all the way – as the Totally Unplugged Dmitry Medvedev revealed: now this is about eliminating a terrorist regime, totally dismantle its politico-security apparatus and then facilitate the emergence of a different entity. And if NATO still blocks it, direct clash will be inevitable.

    NATO’s thin red line is they can’t afford to lose both Kabul and Kiev.

    Yet it took two acts of terror – on Pipelineistan and on Crimea – to imprint a much starker, burning red line: Russia will not allow the Empire to control Ukraine, whatever it takes.

    That’s intrinsically linked to the future of the Greater Eurasia Partnership.

    Welcome to life at Doom’s doorstep.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/14/2022 – 02:00

  • Why Is Leftist Entertainment So Divisive And Devoid Of Imagination?
    Why Is Leftist Entertainment So Divisive And Devoid Of Imagination?

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    When was the last time you saw an original story out of Hollywood that was worth watching (not counting Top Gun: Maverick)? When was the last time you experienced creative storytelling that did not involve the co-option and retelling of a previous work? When was the last time you saw a protagonist that was relatable, interesting and endearing? Hell, when was the last time you were actually excited to go to the movies or relax in front of the television to watch something new?

    Reboots, soft reboots, remakes, live action remakes, re-imagining, gender swapping, race swapping, “rainbow washing” (making classic straight characters gay for virtue signal points): This is a list of new media tropes that have invaded entertainment in the past six years and all of them have been used so frequently that productions can now be quickly identified as woke propaganda by a mere two minute trailer.

    The fascinating thing is, almost all of these productions fail miserably. In recent weeks alone we have seen the attempted woke re-writing of history with The Woman King, which fell flat at the box office after opening week, not even making enough money to cover production and advertising costs.

    Then there was the gay romantic comedy “Bros” which imploded, causing the lead actor, Billy Eichner, to flip out on social media and blame “homophobia” (somehow he actually believed a movie filled with gay orgies was going to appeal to mainstream audiences). Eichner went on to argue that people MUST go see his movie in order to make a “political statement.” This was the same argument made by Woman King actress Viola Davis – Don’t see the movie because it’s well made, see the movie so you can stick it to conservatives.

    Why not just tell a good story instead?

    We have seen the biggest budget TV series in history, Amazon’s The Rings Of Power, crumble in the ratings with its intersectional messaging. We have seen the cancellation of the gay Superman comic book title Son of Kal-El, likely due to low sales. Marvel shows and films are consistently bringing in weak audience numbers and the SJW disaster that is Disney Star Wars can’t write a hit production to save their lives.

    The bottom line? Consumers have near-zero interest in leftist media. As I have said in the past, “Get Woke, Go Broke” is not just a mantra, it’s a rule these days. But why are leftists in entertainment so incapable of producing anything resembling exciting content? Why do they suck so bad?

    Well, they follow a losing formula, and that formula works something like this:

    1) Co-opt a classic franchise or character that has preexisting audience appeal. Never try to create anything original if you can help it.

    2) Market the new film, TV series, comic, etc. as a return to nostalgia to get audiences excited.

    3) Get rid of as many straight, white, or male characters as possible and replace them with token diversity. (Also for some reason they like to get rid of all the redheads).

    4) Portray men as weak and incompetent. Portray white people as stupid or racist. Portray black people as constant victims. Portray women with overtly masculine character traits, but also as victims at the same time. Make everyone in charge a woman, or gay, or both. If a man is in charge, make sure he is being controlled by a woman. Make sure your main character is constantly lecturing everyone else and the audience about leftist virtues.

    5) Make sure there is a perfect pie chart of ethnicity in every single scene despite the statistics and demographics of a place or time. It doesn’t matter if a story is set in an ancient viking village in the north of Europe or in the elitist estates of Victorian England, minorities must be represented as main characters despite all historical fact.

    6) If a classic male character cannot be changed without alienating potential customers away from spending their money, pretend he is a major part of the story to trick people into theaters, then make him weak and pathetic, the opposite of a hero. Or, just kill him.

    7) Steal plot points, story beats and even dialogue directly from other more creative films and productions. Pretend you came up with all that stuff on your own. Or, do a reboot, and copy an older production directly while adding your own woke changes wherever possible.

    8) Now, market the product as a “re-imagined version” updated for “modern audiences” as a justification for abandoning all canon.

    9) Immediately start attacking anyone who MIGHT criticize the product before they ever do so. Make the customers and the fans into villains if they refuse to give you their money. Accuse them of bigotry and blame your inevitable failure on racism, sexism, misogyny, etc. It wasn’t your fault that your story bombed, it is the fault of “incels” and “boomers” and all the uncultured swine out there filled with hate. They sabotaged you. They are the problem.

    10) Rinse. Repeat.

    Yes, it sounds pathetic but this is the state of entertainment today and it has been a pervasive problem for several years now. The industry has always had a bit of a progressive problem, but in the past this was balanced out by more conservative business interests. Today, the business interests are the same zealots as the production interests. But beyond that, liberals used to be more creative in general, now they are devoid of all imagination. Why?

    My theory is that as progressives turned increasingly to the social justice cult, a wave of narcissism has suffocated any and all potential for creative freedom. Even if they had it once, it’s all gone now. Narcissists tend to have no imagination, and the woke ideology is essentially a religion for narcissists.

    Social Justice is a system of belief that uses victim status as a currency. It tells its adherents that each one of them is so special and unique that the world revolves around them and their identity, that their “personal truth” is more important than objective truth. It tells them that they are entitled to respect and admiration from everyone regardless of their lack of accomplishment, lack of knowledge, lack of talent, lack of beauty, lack of intelligence, lack of experience, lack of propriety, lack of restraint, lack of kindness, etc.

    These people have no class and no shame and they think this is a virtue, a strength. You are supposed to idolize them for it and if you don’t then you must be a fascist. How are leftists supposed to compose stories that hold our attention and touch our souls when they are so self absorbed?

    Storytelling requires several things in order to be successful, and they are all things that leftists have no concept of. They include:

    1) The ability to self reflect, but also the ability to write characters outside of yourself. If you have to see yourself in every single character in a story and if every story has to amplify your personal ideology, then you are a narcissist and you should abandon your dreams of writing NOW.

    2) You need an inherent sense of story flow. Some people are naturally good at playing music. Good storytelling is a lot like music in the way plot points and emotions ebb and flow. Either you have the knack, or you don’t. It’s not something that can be learned.

    3) You cannot tell a story with the intent to lie and propagandize. It is selfish and disrupts narrative flow. Even if the basic premise is good, the content will feel false and sometimes dated to audiences. People can sense when they are being lied to, or preached at. They might not know it at the time, but they will not return to your stories in the future. Their intuition will tell them not to.

    4) Stories are usually built on basic archetypes – Archetypes are inherent psychological constructs that help human beings relate to each other and also help us relate to foundational morals and principles. Archetypes exist across cultures and across geopolitical boundaries. If we didn’t have these constructs in our heads from birth, we would have destroyed ourselves thousands of years ago. You cannot change archetypes. They are eternal. Try to change them or deconstruct them and you will fail.

    5) Subverting expectations is lazy and cowardly. Truly talented storytellers can meet audience expectations while still surprising them along the way.

    6) You are not entitled to an audience. The audience owes you nothing. Either your story is good and they relate to it on an emotional level, or your story is garbage and they don’t relate to it. It’s as simple as that. People are not required to consume your product to make a “political statement.” And they are not evil for refusing to spend their money on propaganda. If you enter into storytelling with the intent to create conflict with your audience, then you are probably a bad storyteller.

    Media and entertainment are the modern method of passing on ideas and exploring debates within our culture, and when only one extreme viewpoint is represented within our story lexicon this creates chaos and imbalance in society. The woke movement has utterly poisoned our cultural well and it is incapable of addressing the basic functions of reflection. We cannot look at ourselves honestly through stories when liars and narcissists are in change of the storytelling apparatus.

    I am working in my own small way to bring back the tradition of popular American storytelling with my graphic novel campaign ‘Mountain Hollow.’ I don’t have a multi-billion dollar company behind me, but I guarantee I can write circles around any leftist in entertainment today. And this is what we need more of right now – Clearly, woke media does not sell and does not represent the vast majority of the public, so, we must make media that DOES. It’s not enough to complain about the problem, we have to actually do something about it in order for things to change.

    Nothing pisses off leftists more than when you offer the public an alternative to their narrative.

    *  *  *

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

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/13/2022 – 23:40

  • Best Places To Survive A Nuclear Apocalypse In The US
    Best Places To Survive A Nuclear Apocalypse In The US

    After President Biden’s nuclear “Armageddon” statements and reports, the federal government is purchasing $290 million in anti-radiation drugs for use in “nuclear emergencies,” the first question that comes to mind is where to shelter in the event of nuclear war. 

    To answer that question, the survivalist website Survivalfreedom.com outlines that some of the safest regions in a nuclear war “include the upper Midwest, Maine, West Texas, and multiple small pockets, usually in areas that don’t have large populations.” The most dangerous region is the East Coast because of the significant presence of military installations, defense companies, critical infrastructure, and major cities. 

    The survivalist website pointed to a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) map that outlines the most likely targets of Russian Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). 

    Here’s a more refined map of US nuclear targets. 

    They said, “based on research of numerous sources, this is the consensus on the least safe and most safe areas in the United States in the event of a nuclear attack.” The map below shows red zones are “least safe” while blue zones are “most safe.” 

    Regarding what major metro areas are the most susceptible to nuclear attack, Survivalfreedom said, “New York, NY; Washington D.C.; Dallas-Fort Worth; and Jacksonville, FL. These cities could be potential targets due to their large populations and strategic value.” Adding these cities could also be targets for a nuclear attack:

    • Miami, FL
    • Los Angeles, CA
    • San Francisco, CA
    • Philadelphia, PA
    • Pittsburgh, PA
    • Chicago, IL
    • Houston, TX
    • Phoenix, AZ
    • Honolulu, HI

    As for the areas with the lowest priority targets, the survivalist website said, “Maine, Central Idaho, Oregon, and Northern California — adding these areas are likely to be largely untouched in a nuclear exchange due to their sparse populations and lack of strategic targets.” 

    Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald pointed out the other day on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight that there are minimal talks to de-escalate or end the conflict in Ukraine. 

    And the world’s richest person recently warned the probability of nuclear war “is rising rapidly.” 

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

    The good news is millions of Americans left progressive cities for rural areas during the pandemic. For those people, perhaps it’s time to take your understanding of being self-sufficient up one more notch and learn to live off the grid as the future remains very uncertain as the next global conflict could erupt at any moment. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/13/2022 – 23:20

  • Why Have A Constitution If You Just Ignore It?
    Why Have A Constitution If You Just Ignore It?

    Authored by Frank Miele via RealClear Wire (emphasis ours),

    In two recent columns, I wrote about the danger of public officials who are either unaware of the restrictions placed upon them by the Constitution they have sworn to uphold or, worse, just don’t give a damn.

    In the first, I chided President Biden for his sworn intent to pass a law that would “codify Roe v. Wade into law,” namely to pass a federal law that offers protection for abortion nationwide.

    In the second, I lambasted Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina for proposing a bill that would ban abortion after 15 weeks gestation, the point when unborn children are believed to be able to feel pain. So that raises the obvious question: Why have a Constitution if you are just going to ignore it?

    https://www.facebook.com/WhiteHouse/posts/124511602951025 Adam Schultz

    Democrat Biden and Republican Graham together offer a bipartisan illustration of why our country is dangerously off track. With the implicit permission of the Supreme Court, our elected officials have not just bounced up against the guardrails enshrined in the Constitution, they have flattened them and are driving the republic off a cliff.

    It doesn’t matter which side of the abortion issue you are on; we should all be able to agree that in a constitutional republic, lawmakers and presidents cannot just do whatever they want. And there is absolutely no doubt that the U.S. Constitution does not give Congress the power to regulate medical procedures, whether it be an abortion or an appendectomy.

    That’s just the starting point. Anyone who bothers to read the Constitution knows that Congress was designed to exert limited authority over Americans’ everyday lives. Read Article I, Section 8 if you don’t believe me. You won’t find anything about vaccines or masks, and the whole idea of presidents ordering citizens to do anything is laughable. Article II, Section 2, which spells out most of the powers of the president, is remarkably brief, and the powers are few. Commander in chief? Check. Negotiator of treaties? Check. Nominator of ambassadors and judges? Check. But from where exactly does the president derive the power to forgive student loans? Or order landlords to stop collecting rent?

    Maybe this runaway tyrannical democracy could have been avoided if we still taught civics in our elementary and secondary schools. But at this point there is little to be done. We can’t force members of Congress to read the Constitution, let alone understand it. We can’t stop presidents from legislating with their phone and their pen, as President Obama famously called his ability to unilaterally shape America to his wishes through executive order. And we are decades past the point where we could expect courts to rein in the excesses of the other two branches.

    That leaves only one solution, the same one that gave us a republic in the first place – “We the People.” It is time for the true sovereigns to take back their power and put the guardrails back in place. The Constitution needs to be restored to its original purpose as a mechanism to limit government power, and there is only one practical way to accomplish that. It’s called an Article V convention of states.

    Article V of the Constitution provides that “The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States…” [Emphasis added.]

    Critics like to point out that there has never been a convention of states, as if that is justification for never having one. But we should ask ourselves why, if it is not a vital part of the engine of self-government, the provision was included by the Founders at all. The answer is found in the records of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, which for a while intended only to give Congress the ability to propose amendments. It was thanks to the persistence of Virginia delegate George Mason that the Constitution ultimately also gave the states a path to proposing amendments.

    As described in a 2007 article in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, “On September 15 [1787], as the Convention was reviewing the revisions made by the Committee of Style, George Mason expressed opposition to the provisions limiting the power to propose amendments to Congress. According to the Convention records, Mason thought that ‘no Amendment of the proper kind would ever be obtained by the people, if the Government should become oppressive, as he verily believed would be the case.’”

    The revision passed unanimously.

    Mason has been proven prophetic in his expectation that the government would inevitably become oppressive, and so now we live in a time when it is inconceivable that any branch of the federal government would willingly surrender any of its own power for the good of “we the people.” Instead, it is time for the people to rise up and use the tool George Mason entrusted to them, not to overthrow the Constitution but to restore it.

    This is not a pipe dream. According to the Convention of States organization, 19 state legislatures have already applied to Congress for a convention to be held. That’s well on the way to the 34 needed. More than a dozen other states are actively considering such legislation.

    Fears of a runaway convention are comical at best and hysterical at worst. It doesn’t matter how many amendments such a convention proposed. They would each have to be ratified by three fourths of the 50 states, which means 38 states would have to agree to the new rules. That is a safeguard that would not allow any merely partisan proposal to succeed, and if 38 states did agree on anything, then in the spirit of self-government that proposal should be welcomed as an expression of the will of the people.

    In any case, most supporters of a convention see its purpose as reining in the runaway federal government, not imposing new restrictions on citizens. We already have Congress to do that.

    The Convention of States organization proposes a convention “restricted to proposing amendments that will impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit its power and jurisdiction, and impose term limits on its officials and members of Congress.” Most Americans would be solidly behind such a move.

    How much the convention would accomplish is of course uncertain, but it is well past time for “we the people” to provide the corrective action that the framers envisioned.

    Nearly 10 years ago, I proposed a Restoration Amendment that would lay out the legal framework for putting power back in the hands of the states and the people. Article 1 of that amendment stated, “If a power is not expressly granted to the combined federal government of these United States by this Constitution, then that power cannot be exercised, acquired, or enumerated without specific amendment to this document.”

    That would even force constitutional scofflaws like Lindsey Graham and Joe Biden to sit up and take notice.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/13/2022 – 23:00

  • Visualizing The Global Population Over 300 Years By Country
    Visualizing The Global Population Over 300 Years By Country

    Since the 1800s, our global population has grown from 984 million people to almost 8 billion – an increase of more than 700%.

    Which regions around the world have led this growth, and what’s expected for the rest of the century? As Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang details below, this animated visualization by James Eagle shows 300 years of population growth, including historical figures as well as projections up to the year 2100.

    Asia’s Current Dominance

    For centuries, more than half of the world’s population has been concentrated in Asia. At certain points throughout history, the region has made up nearly 70% of the world’s population.

    Here’s a look at 2021 figures, and how large each region’s population is relative to each other:

     

    China and India have been Asia’s largest population hubs, with China historically leading the front. In the 1950s China’s population was nearly double the size of India’s, but the gap has fluctuated over the years.

     

    As China’s population growth continued, it was causing problems for the country as it struggled to scale up food production and infrastructure. By 1979, the Chinese government rolled out a one-child policy in an attempt to control the situation.

    The program, which ended in 2016, had a number of unintended ramifications, but ultimately, it did succeed in slowing down the country’s population growth. And now, India is projected to overtake China as the world’s most populous country as early as 2023.

    Africa’s Growing Piece of the Pie

    Although Asia dominates the charts when it comes to overall population numbers currently, Africa’s growing population numbers are often overlooked.

    While the continent’s total population is smaller than Asia’s, it will soon be home to the world’s largest working-age population, which could have a significant impact on the global economy in the years ahead.

    This growth is being led by Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. With megacities like Lagos (metro population: 21 million) and over 217 million inhabitants in total, Nigeria is projected to be the world’s third most populous country by the year 2050. Nigeria’s rapid growth is largely thanks to its high birth rate, which is nearly double the global average.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/13/2022 – 22:40

  • JP Morgan Cuts Ties With Kanye West's Business After Controversial Tweets: Report
    JP Morgan Cuts Ties With Kanye West’s Business After Controversial Tweets: Report

    Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

    JPMorgan Chase has decided to end its business relationship with rapper Kanye West’s company Yeezy, according to conservative commentator Candace Owens, which comes after West was suspended from social media after posting content accused of being antisemitic.

    Owens shared a letter reportedly from JPMorgan Chase indicating that the bank will terminate its business relationship with Yeezy and its affiliated entities by Nov. 21.

    “We ask that you act promptly and transfer your business to another financial institution,” the letter reads, with no explanation for the decision except reference to a prior discussion with an unidentified, presumed, Yeezy representative about the termination.

    The Epoch Times reached out to JPMorgan Chase with a request for confirmation and explanation for the reported severance of business ties with Yeezy, but the institution declined comment.

    Owens did not say explicitly why she thinks JPMorgan Chase may have taken the decision, but suggested in a follow-up message on Twitter that the move may be related to the broader trend of de-platforming individuals who express controversial views.

    “I want to say that I do not care what you think about Ye West—but I very much care what you think about this,” Owens wrote. “We have reached extremely frightening times in this country,” she added.

    Candace Owens, American conservative commentator and political activist, in Washington, on June 25, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

    West, who attended an Oct. 12 screening of Owens’s new documentary, told the New York Post’s Page Six that he had been dropped by a number of brands after his recent social media posts.

    “Hey, if you call somebody out for bad business, that means you’re being antisemitic,” West said, according to the report.

    “I feel happy to have crossed the line of that idea so we can speak openly about things like getting canceled by a bank,” he added, presumably referring to JPMorgan Chase.

    Owens wrote in a separate post on Twitter that she was told “no official reason” had been given by JPMorgan Chase.

    After West wore a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt at a fashion event in Paris on Oct. 3, Adidas decided to place its partnership with West “under review,” according to CNBC.

    Locked Out

    West, who is legally known as Ye, was recently locked out of his Twitter and Instagram accounts over posts alleged to be antisemitic, which the social media companies said violated their policies.

    On Instagram, West shared a screenshot of a text exchange with fellow musician Sean “Diddy” Combs, in which he told him, “This ain’t a game. Ima use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me.”

    Shortly afterward, West was locked out of his Instagram account. He then took to Twitter, where he posted a controversial message that also got him suspended.

    “I’m a bit sleepy tonight, but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE, ” West wrote.

    ‘The funny thing is I actually can’t be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jews also. You guys have toyed with me and tried to blackball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.”

    West appeared to be referring to the U.S. Armed Forces’ heightened readiness status DEFCON 3.

    The post was later removed by Twitter for violating its rules, a spokesperson confirmed to multiple outlets, and West is currently unable to access his account.

    West’s exchange with Diddy was heavily criticized by the American Jewish Committee, which said in a statement that West should “figure out how to make a point without using antisemitism.”

    “Over the last week, the musician has fomented hatred of Jews. The greed theme has led to a long list of Jewish stereotypes, such as being money-oriented or controlling the world’s finances.”

    “The control theme seeks to falsely portray Jews as secret puppet masters ruling over others. Ye needs to learn that words matter,” the statement read.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/13/2022 – 22:20

  • "I Lied": Clinton Associate Testifies He Fabricated Claim That Made Its Way Into Dossier
    “I Lied”: Clinton Associate Testifies He Fabricated Claim That Made Its Way Into Dossier

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

    A longtime associate of the Clinton family admitted under oath on Oct. 13 that he lied when he said he spoke to a Republican friend about GOP drama.

    “I lied. I got it off cable news,” Charles Dolan, the associate, testified during Igor Danchenko’s criminal trial in U.S. court in Virginia.

    Dolan provided information to Danchenko, a key source for the anti-Donald Trump dossier that Hillary Clinton helped fund.

    Danchenko is on trial for allegedly lying to FBI agents when he said he had not communicated with Dolan about any of the allegations in the dossier, according to charging documents. Danchenko actually sourced from Dolan at least one of the allegations he provided to dossier author Christopher Steele, a Clinton supporter who harbored animus against Trump.

    On Aug. 20, 2016, Dolan messaged Danchenko, relaying what he portrayed as inside information about Trump campaign officials Corey Lewandowski and Paul Manafort.

    “I had a drink with a GOP friend of mine who knows some of the players and got some of what is in this article, which provides even more detail. She also told me that Corey Lewandowski, who hates Manafort and still speaks to Trump, regularly played a role. He is said to be doing a happy dance over it,” Dolan said, including a link to a news article. “I think the bottom line is that in addition to the Ukraine revelations, a number of people wanted Manafort gone. It is a very sharp elbows crowd.”

    Dolan admitted on Thursday he fabricated the “GOP friend.”

    “Mr. Danchenko had brought me some business. I wanted to tell him that his sources were good. The woman was on cable news,” Dolan said on the stand. “Lewandowski hating Manafort, it was pretty common knowledge and all over the news at the time.”

    Dolan’s information eventually made its way into the dossier, which included numerous allegations that have since been discredited.

    “An American political figure associated with Donald Trump and his campaign outlined the reasons behind Manafort’s recent demise. S/he said it was true that the Ukraine corruption revelations had played a part in this but also, several senior players close to Trump had wanted Manafort out, primarily to loosen his control on strategy and policy formulation,” a report dated two days after Dolan’s email stated.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/13/2022 – 21:40

  • Bank of America Has Bad News For Its Clients: We Are A Long Way From The Market Bottom
    Bank of America Has Bad News For Its Clients: We Are A Long Way From The Market Bottom

    Two days ago, before today’s monster market reversal, Bank of America’s quant team published an interesting note in which the BofA strategist Jill Carey Hall wrote recent client flows “suggest investors believe market may have bottomed.”

    Why did she make this observation? As she explains, “last week, during which the S&P 500 rallied 1.5% off recent lows, clients were big net buyers of US equities ($6.1B; third largest inflow in our data history since ’08 and the fifth consecutive week of inflows).” Digging into the details, BofA’s clients bought both single stocks and ETFs (biggest single stock inflows since April), and bought both large and mid caps while selling small caps for a second week.

    • Clients bought ETFs across styles/sizes, led by large cap and Value ETFs. Value ETF flows were the fourth largest in our data since 2017 and the ninth week of inflows.
    • Clients bought ETFs in six of the 11 sectors, led by Energy (biggest inflows since late July). Materials and Financials ETFs saw the largest outflows

    Unlike previous weeks when client group flows mutually offset each other, this time all client groups (hedge funds, institutional, private clients) were net buyers, led by Institutional clients (first inflow in a month and biggest inflow since Dec. 2020).

    Meanwhile, as we have been warning for weeks, stock buybacks have slowed to a trickle (max blackout window was last Friday), and begin to pick up over the next four weeks of earnings, with Halloween expected to be the day most buybacks are again in the market.

    And with stocks today staging a powerful reversal off of 2022 lows and exploding higher in a powerful thrust, which many say is a telltale sign of market bottoms, many are wondering – are Bank of America’s clients right in believing that we have finally bottomed?

    The answer, according to the bank itself, is that we have a long way to go still before the market bottoms.

    As BofA head quant Savita Subramanian writes, there are two reasons why it is far too early to declare a bottom. The first one comes from the bank’s Regime Indicator, to wit:

    Our US Regime Indicator declined for the 14th consecutive month in September, still in Late Cycle but inching closer to Downturn (from 0.5 in August to 0.4). Historically, the Late-Late cycle phase (i.e., moving from the +0.5 level to negative territory) has lasted ~4 months, which means the current Late Cycle might persist through year-end, favoring Value, Risk, Low Quality and Small Caps for 4Q22. In our history since 1990, once the Regime Indicator declined below the 0.5 level in Late Cycle, it inevitably proceeded to decline into the next phase, Downturn.

    It’s not just the macro regime indicator, however, as BofA’s bull market signposts – a composite of 10 indicators that have historically signaled market bottoms – continue to suggest risk that the market hasn’t yet bottomed. In fact, of the 10 indicators, only 20% were triggered in September, down from 40% a month ago, when the unemployment rate and the ISM both declined (no longer triggered). As BofA notes, “prior market bottoms coincided with over 80% being triggered” so we have a long way to go.

    Bottom line: today’s rally was just the latest spectacular bear-market rally, a combination of a short squeeze, technicals, positioning and a little chart voodoo. But for the true bottom, what the market needs more than anything is a capitulation by the Fed: that won’t happen until inflation moderates, which won’t happen for a long time, if ever, since most of the remaining inflation is supply-driven and the Fed has no control over that, or when something really big finally breaks. Our money is on the latter.

    More in the full note available to pro subs.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/13/2022 – 21:20

  • Nothing But Welfare Queens? Endless American Aid Flowing To Zelensky & Tsai Ing-wen
    Nothing But Welfare Queens? Endless American Aid Flowing To Zelensky & Tsai Ing-wen

    Authored by Patrick Macfarlane via The Libertarian Institute,

    As it pertains to the American public, Ukraine’s response to the Russian invasion can be summed up with two words: “Zelensky demands.” To date, Washington elites and their politicians have been happy to provide—at public expense—lining their own pockets in the process.

    As of this writing, U.S. aid for Ukraine has reached approximately $67.5 billion, a figure greater than Russia’s entire 2021 military budget. According to the State Department, this support includes $15.2 billion in direct military assistance. The support comes although 60-70% of lethal aid never reaches the front lines, according to a now-redacted CBS interview with on-the-ground activists.

    Not only is the American taxpayer supporting much of the Ukrainian military, it is also supporting the Ukrainian government. The same working class Americans who were deemed “nonessential” in 2020—who saw their businesses shuttered and burned down—now have to pay entitlement programs both at home and in Ukraine. As of September 30, 2022, the U.S. has provided $13 billion in “direct budget support,” which is ostensibly used;

    …to pay government salaries, meet pension obligations, maintain hospitals and schools, and protect critical infrastructure[,] support continuity operations at the national, regional, and local levels, support for [sic] the health sector, agricultural production, civil society, [and enable] programs to hold Russia and its forces accountable for their actions in Ukraine.

    Although American taxpayers have already matched Russia’s 2021 military budget, Ukrainian president Vlodomyr Zelensky only demands more. During a Tuesday phone call, President Biden reviewed Washington’s latest $625 million dole to Zelensky. It includes, inter alia, four additional High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), 16 155mm Howitzers, 75,000 155 mm artillery rounds, 500 precision-guided 155mm artillery rounds, 16 105mm Howitzers, 30,000 120 mm mortar rounds, and 200 MaxxPro Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles.

    This latest boon notwithstanding, in the same phone call, Zelensky urged Biden to provide Ukraine with air defense systems that would be used to shoot down Russian planes.

    Much like Washington’s response to COVID-19, a no-holds-barred approach to Ukraine is so widely supported, it is a foregone conclusion. Despite this, some Republicans have valiantly opposed this rampant and provocative spending. Noteable dissenters are: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MS), Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA), and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL).

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

    Republicans like Taylor-Greene, Gaetz, and Hawley understand the cost of empire: endless warfare, a decaying homefront, and a beclowned international reputation. They understand that a war between the U.S. and Russia will be unlike anything Americans have ever experienced. Although they cloak their condemnation of war with Russia in criticism of “weak Joe Biden,” they understand it is the West that provoked this conflict and seeks to prolong it “to the last Ukrainian.” They know that the conflict—even if it remains by-proxy—is a cost war-weary working class Americans do not want and cannot afford.

    They must, then, realize that the same Washington elites waxing American fat off the Ukraine conflict are cultivating Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen as a Zelensky in-waiting.

    Although U.S. military aid to Taiwan traditionally comes by way of arms sales, that may soon change. Senators Bob Menendez and Lindsey Graham have introduced the Taiwan Policy Act—a piece of legislation that would radically overhaul Sino-American relations. In short, “the Taiwan Policy Act would give Taiwan $6.5 billion in military aid, give the island the benefits of being a ‘major non-NATO ally,’ expedite arms sales to Taipei, and require sanction in the event of Chinese aggression.” The bill would also authorize up to $2 billion in loans to Taiwan.

    On September 14, the bill passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Rather than passing it as a standalone piece of legislation, the bill’s supporters currently seek to incorporate “much” of the bill into the $817 billion 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. As of Wednesday, it is not clear exactly which provisions would be incorporated.

    As above noted, the Taiwan Policy Act was introduced in the Senate on June 16, 2022 by Senators Bob Menendez and Lindsey Graham. Both Menendez and Graham are ardent supporters of Ukraine and Zelensky.

    Graham met with Zelensky in July to hand deliver a plaque of his proposed Senate resolution to designate Russia as a State Sponsor of Terrorism. Since the Russian invasion, Graham has made regular appearances on Fox News whipping up lethal aid for Ukraine while calling for regime change in Moscow.

    Menendez, as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has spearheaded Washington’s Ukraine support. In January, he began and continues to lead the comprehensive U.S. sanctions campaign against Russia. In March, Menendez lambasted Congressional Republicans, mainly Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), for undermining Ukraine aid. In May, Menendez, among others, introduced a Senate resolution approving the bids of Finland and Sweden to join NATO (something Josh Hawley correctly opposed).

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

    On June 23 Menendez specifically invoked the 75th anniversary of the Marshall Plan to stoke support for Ukraine. Needless to say, the Marshall Plan preceded American entry into WWII. Republicans opposing U.S. support for Ukraine should take note that both Menendez and Graham have repeatedly met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen to pledge American support for Taiwan. In their latest visit on April 15, 2022, president Ing-wen called Lindsey Graham a “pillar of strength for Taiwan in the U.S. Congress” and dubbed Menendez one of Taiwan’s “staunchest friends.”

    In his meeting remarks, Graham likened U.S. support for Ukraine to its support for Taiwan, saying:

    [a]s we’re here today to show our support for Taiwan, all of us have our hearts broken regarding the people of Ukraine…I just want to let you know that, while we’ve been watching the Ukraine on television, while it has broken our hearts, the American people understand how important you are to us…So here’s my promise to the Taiwanese people: We’re going to start making China pay a greater price for what they’re doing all over the world. The support for Putin must come with a price. The never-ending cyberattacks on your economy and your people by the Communist Chinese need to come with a price.

    Menendez echoed Graham’s sentiment in his own remarks, shedding light on Washington’s Ukrainian plans for Taiwan:

    …I am proud to be back to reaffirm our rock-solid relationship with Taiwan…So you have a high-level delegation whose attention could be brought any place in the world—and for which many of our colleagues are right now in Europe, dealing with the challenges of Ukraine—but we understand that here in Taiwan, here in this region—this is where the future is. [Emphasis added].

    Menendez followed up these remarks with an op-ed in The New York Times, stating:

    Vladimir Putin’s brutal attack on his Ukrainian neighbors has sparked global outrage — and forged unprecedented unity—among the democratic nations of the world. Not so with Xi Jinping, the hypernationalist president of the People’s Republic of China. Rather, he is no doubt taking notes and learning lessons from Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine to apply to his plans for Taiwan. The United States and our partners in the international community need to do the same to develop and put in place a new and more resilient strategy for Taiwan while there is still time.

    These remarks should terrify working class Americans. Essentially, Menendez is proposing a redoubling of military support for Taiwan—the same “preventive policy” which played a large role in provoking Putin to invade Ukraine. We simply cannot afford it.

    The above-named Congressional Republicans were right to oppose aid to Ukraine. For those same reasons, they should oppose adding Tsai Ing-wen to the same dole as the entitled and ungrateful Zelensky. Like Rand Paul, they should oppose the Taiwan Policy Act in all its forms.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/13/2022 – 21:00

  • Video Shows Tesla Semi Truck Broken Down On Highway Just Six Weeks Before Deliveries
    Video Shows Tesla Semi Truck Broken Down On Highway Just Six Weeks Before Deliveries

    Elon Musk has just six weeks before beverage giant PepsiCo takes delivery of the first Tesla Semi, an all-electric class 8 truck — and a new video posted online of a seemingly broken down prototype truck on a highway in Northern California may suggest some kinks need to be worked out before production is ramped up. 

    Footage posted on YouTube shows a Semi on the side of an on-ramp in Fremont, California – near Tesla’s factory. It’s unclear if the Semi ran out of electricity or experienced a mechanical problem, but one thing is sure: a Tesla service vehicle is parked behind the truck, which indicates something went wrong. 

    Last week, Musk tweeted PepsiCo would begin receiving the Semi on Dec. 1. 

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

    “500-mile range and super fun to drive,” Musk tweeted.

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

    The Semi was revealed to the public five years ago and experienced delay after delay. The latest footage of a brokedown prototype truck doesn’t exactly instill confidence in the degree of reliability of the first generation of this truck. 

    Good luck, PepsiCo. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/13/2022 – 20:40

  • Victor Davis Hanson: Biden Plays The Old Ugly American
    Victor Davis Hanson: Biden Plays The Old Ugly American

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

    The Left used to accuse imperialist, resource-hungry Yanquis in Washington of cutting selfish deals with illiberal dictatorships in Latin America to grab their natural resources.

    How odd then that President Joe Biden is now begging the despicable Maduro regime in Venezuela – corrupt, murderous, and anti-American – to produce more of its oil solely to send northward to America.

    Biden is quite willing to ease sanctions and condone the human rights abuses of Maduro – if his dictatorship will just open its oil spigots before the November midterm elections.

    Biden in 2020 campaigned on the supposed evil nature of the Saudi Arabian monarchy. Yet after vainly entreating Venezuela, Iran, and Russia, it was inevitable that Biden would once again supplicate the Saudis to pump more oil.

    Biden even pleaded with OPEC to increase its output and thus lower the world price of energy, again before the midterm elections.

    Biden, remember, has a bad habit of bragging that he lowered gas prices at the pump when the natural volatility of the petroleum markets leads to a fractional decrease. But once prices spike, he is utterly silent about his own role in limiting U.S. oil and gas output.

    So, was it any surprise that the Saudis became the fourth non-democratic regime to refuse Biden’s entreaties? During the 2020 campaign, when gas prices were dirt cheap, and when then-candidate Biden was demagoguing about ending fossil fuel, he opportunistically libeled the Saudis a “pariah” state.

    Biden also claimed that his opponent, former President Donald Trump, had cozied up to these supposedly awful Saudi royals. That accusation was especially ironic given that Trump was the first American president who had no need for Saudi oil.

    His administration had managed to make the United States the largest producer of gas and oil in history — precluding any energy dependence on illiberal regimes abroad.

    Trump was the first U.S. president whose interest in Gulf State monarchies was not energy-driven.

    Instead, he partnered with the Arab nations to end their hostilities with Israel. The ensuing Abraham Accords saw a historic thaw between the Jewish state and moderate Arab nations — given their shared worries about the unhinged Iranian theocracy.

    The Saudis are enjoying the schadenfreude of seeing their former American critic now on his knees, demanding the purportedly dirty, polluting oil produced by a supposed “pariah” state.

    In response to their “no,” a desperate Team Biden is getting nasty. Almost immediately the administration raised the idea of a pre-midterm retribution of suing the OPEC cartel as a price-rigging monopoly. It even maneuvered allies in Congress to take action to punish Riyadh for not playing the American pawn.

    The American public is repelled as they watch Biden’s pathetic theatrics of global oil begging to help himself in the midterms. They are ashamed that their recently energy autonomous country is now imploring non-democratic regimes for every drop of their oil, to the extent of threatening former allies and coaxing current enemies.

    More bizarre still, the public was once told that Biden and the Left wanted high energy prices.

    Why else did Biden upon entering office cancel the Keystone Pipeline?

    Did he not fulfill his green promises to the radical environmentalist Left by shutting down oil fields in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?

    Did Biden not dutifully hector lending agencies, pensions funds, and money managers not to loan to, or invest in, oil and gas companies?

    Did Biden not issue fewer new energy leases on federal lands than any prior president?

    Was it not Biden on the eve of the Ukrainian war who jawboned the Europeans to reject the EastMed pipeline? That project was a much-needed joint effort by three of our closest allies — Greece, Israel, and Cyprus — to bring clean-burning natural gas to an energy-starved Europe.

    In sum, did not Biden brag to the Left that he kept his campaign promises to strangle fossil fuels — both curbing supply and spiking prices — to hasten the “transition” to wind, solar, and batteries?

    Why then is Biden humiliating Americans by playing the hard-nosed ugly American? Why is he demanding foreigners pump what we ourselves have in plentitude but will not fully produce?

    The answer, of course, is raw politics.

    Biden knows he wrecked the economy by deliberately surging oil prices in pursuit of the Left’s utopian green nightmare.

    Or put another way, if it is a question of avoiding a historic midterm wipeout, Biden will now do anything.

    And that anything means all the human rights sermons about ostracizing “pariah” states like oil-rich Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela go out the window.

    In winter 2021 Biden lectured us that fossil fuels were dirty obstacles to our green future.

    In winter 2022 Biden believes that he can strong-arm his enemies to send us more of such taboo energy that we won’t produce ourselves.

    Good luck with all these utter absurdities.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/13/2022 – 20:20

  • Massive Bean Piles Spotted Up And Down Mississippi River As Barges Can't Meet Harvest Demand
    Massive Bean Piles Spotted Up And Down Mississippi River As Barges Can’t Meet Harvest Demand

    Bean and other farm goods are piling up at farms up and down the Mississippi River as barges can’t be fully loaded due to dangerously low water levels. Barges have reduced weight to improve the draft, which means less availability and unable to meet harvest demand. 

    Due to a barge shortage, some farmers have no choice but to store beans and other farm goods outside in massive piles. Twitter user “Will Nicholson” captured footage of an enormous bean pile west of Memphis, Tennessee. 

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

    Another person took a picture of a bean pile in Tunica, Mississippi. 

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

    One person said: 

    “I’m hearing of lots of beans being piled on the ground along the lower Mississippi due to no barge traffic. It’s a regular occurrence here in SESD… but we are prepared with pads/bunks/air/tarps. Some warm and wet weather down south and I see very bad things happening.” 

    Someone tweeted an image that some farmers were resorting to trucks rather than barges as traffic on the Mississippi ground to a halt last week. 

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

    Here’s a shocking image of the dried-up Mississippi River. 

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

    … and here’s another one. 

    Did we mention barge prices on the Mississippi have hyperinflated due to vessel scarcity? 

    Most of these beans and other farm goods were slated for major export terminals in the Gulf of Mexico. How long can these freshly harvested crops be piled up outside until they go bad? 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/13/2022 – 20:00

  • Sorry Nobel Committee, Ben Bernanke's Interventions Were The Crisis
    Sorry Nobel Committee, Ben Bernanke’s Interventions Were The Crisis

    Authored by John Tamny via RealClearMarkets.com,

    In the early 1920s radios were the pricey, must-have gadgets of the day. And as all transformative market goods are, they started out expensive only for RCA (the Apple of its time) to render common what was once a luxury. One hundred years later, those with internet access can listen to radio stations around the world for free. How things change.  

    Capitalistic advances like the radio came to mind while thinking about Ben Bernanke being awarded a portion of the Nobel Prize. Bernanke believes economic growth causes prices to rise. As he told Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane in 2005 during a one-on-one lunch, growth is “inherently inflationary.” Actually, it’s the opposite. Economic growth is a consequence of investment, and investment is all about producing exponentially more at prices that continue to fall. All goods that we covet, from cars, to computers, to radios, start out nosebleed expensive only to decline in price as investment in production efficiencies pushes their prices down. Rest assured that in Bernanke’s lifetime, private flight will become common.  

    That’s the way of things in a real world that Bernanke is only vaguely in touch with. Imagine one of the modern faces of economics believing growth causes inflation. Worse, consider the bigger meaning of all this. Bernanke is wedded to the false notion that country economies are limited by the supply of labor and production capacity within their borders, and as a result, Bernanke believes it’s the job of central bankers to centrally plan job loss and economic sluggishness so that economies don’t “overheat.” Look it up. Yes, he believes this stuff. In reality, every market good and service is the consequence of global labor and capacity inputs, such that there’s never a scenario of the “gap” in “output” being filled.  

    If we ignore that the Fed’s power to manage the economy toward growth or decline is vastly overstated, we can’t ignore that economists like Bernanke believe that central banks can and should put people out of work to keep inflation in check. Yet Bernanke is now a Nobel Prize winner. How embarrassing for economists, and how embarrassing for the Prize.  

    To which some will say that it wasn’t his belief in the discredited Phillips Curve that won him the Prize, rather it was his “Insights That Helped in Financial Crisis” (part of a Wall Street Journal headline about his award) that resulted in his latest honor. Fair enough, in a sense. Bernanke won the prize based on “a 1983 publication establishing bank failures as key to the transformation of an economic recession into the most severe depression of the 20th century.” The problem here is that Bernanke’s publication is as easy to dismiss as his deep belief that growth has an inflationary downside.  

    Indeed, as is well known, capital is borderless. It always has been. We borrow money for what it can be exchanged for, which is a reminder that the only limit to credit is production. Please think about this with Bernanke’s belief that struggling banks brought on the 1930s. Such a view doesn’t stand up to the most basic of scrutiny.  

    Three Reasons to Consider Mid- and Small-Cap Dividend Growth Stocks Right Now

    Large-cap stocks may have dominated over the past several years, but small- and mid-caps might be due for a rebound. Consider a small- and mid-cap dividend growth strategy. Read more.

    That’s the case because finance has never been limited to banks, and certainly wasn’t limited to U.S. banks in the 1930s. Better yet, precisely because U.S. innovation has always been so impressive, the U.S. has long been a magnet for the world’s savings. Applied to the 1930s, even if it had been true that a “tight” Fed hadn’t liquefied banks enough, the reality is that global capital inflows and domestic non-bank sources of capital would have made up for the Fed’s alleged stinginess between breakfast and lunch.  

    Bernanke has long championed himself as a “Great Depression” expert, but his analysis reminds the mildly sapient that he learned all the wrong lessons from a decade of relatively slow growth. Missed by Bernanke is that “depression” in the 1930s was the government intervention. As the U.S. economy fell into a mild, would-be-economic-revival born of the slump (it’s during downturns that the individuals who comprise an economy fix what they’re doing wrong), the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations responded with record tariffs on 20,000 foreign goods, massive increases in the tax that is government spending, an increase in the top individual tax rate from 25 to 83 percent, levies on retained corporate earnings of up to 70 percent, major new regulation, and a 59% devaluation of the dollar. Left alone, recessions are the cure. The problem was that the political class tried to medicate what was healthy.  

    Bernanke fell hard for the medication part. Fast forward to 2008, a falling dollar under the impressively inept President George W. Bush had instigated what Ludwig von Mises referred to in Human Action as a “flight to the real.” Yes, presidents get the dollar they want, Bush wanted a weak one, and a falling dollar drove massive consumption of housing over investment in new ideas.  

    That the U.S. economy slowed as a result of the above was no surprise. Furthermore, the markets weren’t surprised. Figure that they relentlessly process all known information and were doing just that. Repeat it over and over again that errors are the norm in any economy, and they could never cause a “crisis.” Enter Bernanke. With a “whatever it takes” (Bernanke’s words) mantra, the Fed Chairman was “determined to do everything I could, along with my colleagues, to try to prevent the financial system from melting down.” Yet people – including deep-thinking economists – to this day scratch their chins while discussing the “causes” of the 2008 crisis! You can’t make this up.  

    The reality is that market actors were minute by minute pricing the errors that are part and parcel of any mixed, or market economy, only for experts like Bernanke, Bush, and Henry Paulson to substitute their highly limited knowledge for that of the marketplace. That “crisis” followed intervention was a statement of the obvious. In other words, Bernanke was the crisis. Nice job, Nobel Committee.  

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/13/2022 – 19:40

  • Musk Launches "Burnt Hair" Perfume, Quickly Sells 20k Bottles At $100
    Musk Launches “Burnt Hair” Perfume, Quickly Sells 20k Bottles At $100

    Elon Musk has a new title: “perfume salesman.”  

    On Tuesday, Musk’s Boring Company introduced a scent called “Burnt Hair,” describing it as “The Essence of Repugnant Desire.” It can be yours for $100 — which includes domestic shipping and taxes. 

    A product page promotes the fragrance as “just like leaning over a candle at the dinner table, but without all the hard work.” 

    Naturally, Musk announced the gimmicky product launch on Twitter, the platform he’s set to purchase for $44 billion after a months-long, litigious, see-saw saga.

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

    His closing of the Twitter transaction still isn’t guaranteed — it depends on his ability to finance it. Like a high school sports team raising money via cookie sales, Musk is presenting Burnt Hair as a way for supporters to help bankroll his Twitter buyout. “Please buy my perfume, so I can buy Twitter,” he tweeted on Wednesday. 

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

    As Bloomberg explains, this isn’t Musk’s first oddball product launch: 

    The Tesla Inc. chief executive officer has a history of launching products based on jokes that his massive fanbase has sought after as collectibles. A limited line of 20,000 flamethrowers sold by Boring Co. in 2018 to raise $10 million for its tunnel-building tests attracted huge interest.

    In 2020, Tesla sold limited-edition, satin “short shorts” — for $69.420 each — as a means of taunting those who unsuccessfully shorted Tesla stock. 

    Going all-in on his new promotion, Musk changed his Twitter profile to “perfume salesman,” and noted that his diversification into the fragrance sector was predestined by his surname: 

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

    After enthusing that 10,000 bottles had been sold on the first day, Musk was back on Wednesday evening to announce that sales crossed the 20,000-bottle mark — thus raking in $2 million in a little over 24 hours.

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

    Musk cheerfully noted that shoppers can buy the product with Doge coin and, in step with the times, he indicated Burnt Hair isn’t just for men or for women.  

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

    Musk isn’t the only one having some laughs over the product launch:  

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

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

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

     

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/13/2022 – 19:20

  • No Data To Recommend 'Preferential' Omicron Booster Jabs: WHO Panel
    No Data To Recommend ‘Preferential’ Omicron Booster Jabs: WHO Panel

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

    There isn’t enough data to recommend COVID-19 booster jabs for Omicron subvariants over the original virus, the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) panel of vaccine experts said on Tuesday.

    A sign of the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, on April 24, 2020. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

    Four variant-containing mRNA vaccines that either include bivalent Omicron subvariants BA.1 or BA.4–5 in combination with the “ancestral virus” have been authorized for use as booster doses.

    The Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) said in a statement that it reviewed the “safety and immunogenicity” of bivalent vaccines when given as a booster in adults compared to the results of a clinical trial from another kind of vaccine.

    Bivalent vaccines are designed to target two different strains of the virus. They contain both the mRNA of the original virus strain and that of the Omicron variant, which accounts for almost all virus samples collected in the last 30 days.

    The bivalent jabs targeting the dominant subvariant might only offer a “minute incremental benefit,” according to SAGE, which determined that the highest public health priority is to achieve high rates of a primary dose of vaccine containing the “ancestral strain” of the virus.

    “[C]urrently available data are not sufficient to support the issuance of any preferential recommendation for bivalent variant-containing vaccine boosters over ancestral-virus-only boosters,” SAGE added.

    Either a monovalent jab designed for the original strain or a bivalent variant-containing shot can be used as boosters, according to the WHO panel.

    The WHO panel said these shots given as boosters four to six months after the last dose provide “improved protection against currently circulating SARS-CoV-2.”

    “The bulk of the benefit is from the provision of in particular the first booster dose, irrespective of whether it is a monovalent or bivalent vaccine,” SAGE said.

    ‘Modest Effect’ Only Seen in Labs, Not Clinical Settings

    The variant-containing vaccines neutralize the virus to the same extent as ancestral shots but have a “slightly superior neutralization of the Omicron variant, according to SAGE Executive Secretary Joachim Hombach.

    “It’s a relatively modest effect which we can see in the laboratory,” he said, adding that they cannot “relate these laboratory measures with an increase in clinical protection” because there’s no data on effectiveness.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/13/2022 – 19:00

  • Twitter Lawyers Say Musk Under Federal Investigation Over Deal
    Twitter Lawyers Say Musk Under Federal Investigation Over Deal

    In yet another unexpected twist in the saga of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, Bloomberg reports that, according to the latest court filing, the billionaire is facing a federal probe over the deal:

    “Elon Musk is presently under investigation by federal authorities for his conduct in connection with the acquisition of Twitter,” attorneys for Potter Anderson Corroon LLP wrote in a filing dated Oct. 6 and unsealed Thursday.

    While the deal inches closer to consummation (with a month-end deadline from the judge), it appears Twitter is looking for some kind of leverage as their lawyers are asking the court for access to documents that Musk has given to authorities.

    “Through counsel, he has exchanged substantive correspondence with those authorities concerning their investigations,” the said.

    “Twitter wants those documents, because they bear upon key issues in this litigation.”

    While no details at all are given for the probe, we do note that the SEC sent a query earlier this year to Musk over how he initially disclosed his major stake in Twitter, according a letter dated April 4 that was released in May.

    Who could have seen this coming?

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

    They really don’t want to lose control of the digital town square (translation: the acceptable narrative).

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/13/2022 – 18:43

  • Chevron CEO Blames Western Governments "Doubling-Down" On 'Climate' Policies For Global Energy Crisis
    Chevron CEO Blames Western Governments “Doubling-Down” On ‘Climate’ Policies For Global Energy Crisis

    The chairman and CEO of energy company Chevron warned the global energy crisis had been exacerbated by Western governments “doubling down” on green energy policies that will only cause “more volatility, more unpredictability, and more chaos.” 

    “If people want to stop driving, stop flying… that’s a choice for society,” he said.

    “I don’t think most people want to move backwards in terms of their quality of their life… our products enable that.”

    CEO Mike Wirth told Financial Times in an interview this week that the premature transition from fossil fuels to green energy, a move to decarbonize the economy, has sparked “unintended consequences,” such as energy supply issues that are already widespread in Europe and emerging in California. 

    Wirth continued that even though renewables, such as wind and solar, have been invested heavily by Western governments over the last two decades to decarbonize grids, fossil fuels still are a large percentage of power generation, adding politicians really need to hold an “honest conversation” about the energy crunch before things worsen.

    “The conversation [about energy] in the developed world for sure has skewed towards climate, taking affordability and security for granted. 

    “The reality is, [fossil fuel] is what runs the world today. It’s going to run the world tomorrow and five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now.”

    Wirth outlined years of underinvestment caused the global energy crunch and predated Russia’s invasion. This has given way to limited spare capacity by oil-producing countries.

    He said the investments in alternatives versus fossil fuel were “woefully short, trillions of dollars short,” and has caused the mismatch “illustrates the risk in moving from a system that keeps the world functioning today aggressively to another system, and shutting down nuclear, shutting down coal, discouraging oil and gas.”

    Wirth’s comments squarely blamed Western governments for the energy crunch and should also include Wall Street banks (cough cough BlackRock’s Fink), big tech companies, corporate elites, and other progressive organizations, such as The World Economic Forum, that have worked together to push a green energy agenda. 

    This was a dilemma for an administration that had entered office with a “very clear agenda . . . to make it more difficult for our industry to deliver energy to our customers”.

    What’s become evident following the war in Ukraine and disruptions to global energy markets — is that countries that quickly increased investments in green energy and decommissioned fossil fuel power plants suffer the most (Germany is a prime example). The people who pushed green energy now say the world needs more and take no responsibility for the decarbonization movement backfiring (which has led to energy hyperinflation). 

    Wirth’s latest comments come as he warned US households to brace for soaring natural gas prices this winter. He has combated (read: here & here) the mindless folks at the White House who have blamed the oil and gas industry for the energy crunch. 

    The unintended consequence of decarbonizing economies too fast is energy hyperinflation. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/13/2022 – 18:40

  • Bitcoin Miners Are The Dung Beetles Of The Energy Sector
    Bitcoin Miners Are The Dung Beetles Of The Energy Sector

    Authored by Robert Warren via BitcoinMagazine.com,

    Miners will consume every last drop of wasted energy available, because they’re incentivized to do so.

    The layperson knows only one thing about Bitcoin mining – it uses a lot of energy, and that is bad.

    This mind-virus, successfully spread by the climate extremists and anti-Bitcoin street corner preachers (typically carrying a proof-of-stake torch) is intended to be the death knell of our burgeoning industry. We use a lot of energy, and using energy is obviously a terrible thing. It follows that we should be scorned, pursued and regulated out of existence.

    We are in a climate crisis, so as we all know, the best course of action is to install solar on your roof, buy a Tesla, shut down the coal and gas plants in your region, and argue anything short of that is systematically racist. Proof-of-work is the enemy.

    This argument is, to most reasonable people who enjoy running their dishwasher and having the lights on at night, patently ridiculous.

    But there is still that one big issue: “Doesn’t Bitcoin mining still use a lot of energy? And don’t those computers clog our landfills the second they become unprofitable?”

    If you find yourself under the interrogation of the Bitcoin curious, having to answer for all of those megawatts we’re consuming, there is one question you must ask in response to, “Doesn’t Bitcoin use a lot of energy?”

    Yes, but which energy?

    Source: Author

    NOTE: Before we go any further, let’s draw a clear distinction between energy and electricity. Energy comes from primary sources like a natural gas well, or hydroelectric dam. These primary sources are used to generate electricity, the secondary energy we make all over the world, sent through high voltage wires and used to power our dishwashers. If you want a resource to explore further, look HERE.

    NOTE TO THE NOTE: Today not all bitcoin miners are using waste or excess energy. My assertion is that this is the direction our industry trends over the long run, regardless of generation type, because simple supply and demand drives miners to the lowest priced energy.

    WHICH ENERGY DO BITCOIN MINERS USE?

    As long as waste energy exists, Bitcoin mining exists and is profitable.

    Let me say again that for those of you in the back rows. As long as there is waste in energy production and supply chains, it will always be profitable to mine bitcoin, regardless of hardware type, manufacturer, age, location, anything.

    Even esteemed Bitcoin Mining FUD masters like Alex de Vries of Digiconomist fail the simplest of economic analyses in the bitcoin mining space. That is, not understanding supply and demand. Which is why they publish findings like, “A similar dynamic ultimately determines the fate of ASIC-based mining devices as advances in ASIC chip efficiency result in more powerful devices that eventually crowd out older, less efficient technology … Because the technical lifetime of ASIC mining devices typically exceeds the period of time during which the device can perform its task profitably (McCook, 2018), the moment they become unprofitable determines their lifespan and the point at which they become electronic waste … We show in this study that the lifespan of Bitcoin mining devices remains limited to just 1.29 years.”

    So, we are to understand, that efficiency in the ASIC market is the single driver of energy consumption and e-waste produced?

    I’ll invoke Brandolini’s Law (“The amount of energy needed to refute bullsh*t is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.”) as my rationale for not addressing the above directly, and will instead discuss energy waste.

    By waste energy I mean the various points across energy supply chains where energy is available to perform work, but for one reason or another does not. This takes various forms across the market, whether it’s methane venting and flaring on oil and gas sites, wind farms, hydroelectric plants, nuclear reactors, and solar farms powering down due to low demand.

    Bitcoin mining is the ultimate waste reduction tool, because as long as waste exists in the energy sector, and it always will, there will always be an incentive to mine Bitcoin with that energy, regardless of ASIC type. (NOTE: If you are Alex de Vries, I need you to re-read that last sentence and reconsider your 1.29 year estimate for ASIC lifespan.)

    Source: Author

    Source: Author

    The energy that is worth the least, is the energy that never makes it to market. The methane vented or flared on an oil well, the wind turbine that sits idle in a megafarm, the hydroelectric turbine that doesn’t spin. In the case of solar, you have production times that mismatch demand times, so excess capacity goes unused midday. I.e., People turn lights on more when the sun goes down.

    Bitcoin miners have no interest in your Science-Backed Turbo Grid™, your political idealizations, or which dream team you assembled to form a research council. Whether you want 89% nuclear, 71% solar with Tesla Powerwalls, elimination of fossil fuels completely or 93.7% hydro-power, is irrelevant, we don’t care.

    We are the eternal free market free agents.

    We want your waste and excess.

    We are the dung beetles of the energy sector.

    And already the framework of this robust industry is developing.

    Rack, power distribution unit and transformer expertise for indoor operations, a variety of containerized solutions designed to protect miners in rugged Texas Summers and frigid Alberta Winters, half engine half datacenter chimeras birthed for the sole purpose of consuming natural gas, home mining black boxes that dump excess heat into your house during the cold season all exist. A secondary market in software and hardware emerges in firmware, machine management, maintenance and lifetime extension.

    Everything is designed around a single goal, the identification and utilization of the lowest priced energy in the most efficient way possible. That lowest priced energy is not the electricity you’re using to charge your iPhone, or watch Netflix — it lives far off and away in a substation with excess capacity, or a natural gas plant with underutilized turbines. In this way Bitcoin mining brings a market to everywhere there isn’t one in the energy supply chain.

    At nearly every point in the energy supply chain there is some waste or excess that is better priced and consumed than left idle.

    So when your Bitcoin curious friends next corner you to ask about those terrible megawatts that the bitcoin miners are using, your first reply might most productively be:

    Which energy do those Bitcoin miners use?

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/13/2022 – 18:20

  • "Severe Adverse Effects": Doctors Warn Pfizer's Paxlovid Can Interact With Common Medications
    “Severe Adverse Effects”: Doctors Warn Pfizer’s Paxlovid Can Interact With Common Medications

    Pfizer’s Covid-19 treatment that’s definitely not a profitable Ivermectin knockoff (despite both functioning as protease inhibitors) turns out to pose an increased risk of severe illness in Covid-19 patients who have a history of cardiovascular disease.

    Paxlovid – Pfizer’s Covid medication notably taken by Joe Biden, Jill Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauci – before all three had “rare” (and then not-so rare) cases of “rebound Covid” – can have dangerous interactions with some of the most common medications for cardiovascular disease, including various statins and heart failure therapies, according to a Wednesday paper published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

    In it, researchers found that the combination of nirmatrelvir and ritonavir, two antivirals which comprise Pfizer’s Paxlovid, can interact with a number of commonly prescribed cardiovascular medications. According to the paper, Ritonavir, which was approved to treat HIV in 1996, impacts the CYP450 pathway that’s involved in metabolizing a number of medications—as well as the P-glycoprotein drug efflux pump, the Epoch Times reports.

    “Co-administration of [Paxlovid] with medications commonly used to manage cardiovascular conditions can potentially cause significant drug-drug interactions and may lead to severe adverse effects,” reads an abstract. “It is crucial to be aware of such interactions and take appropriate measures to avoid them.”

    The paper also notes that interactions between Paxlovid and some blood thinners can cause a higher risk of bleeding, while interactions between Paxlovid and cholesterol medications such as Statins can be toxic, CNN reports, citing the paper.

    “Awareness of the presence of drug-drug interactions of Paxlovid with common cardiovascular drugs is key. System-level interventions by integrating drug-drug interactions into electronic medical records could help avoid related adverse events,” said lead author Saru Ganatra, MD, who works at Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts.

    “Paxlovid could be incorporated into an order set, which allows physicians, whether it be primary care physicians or cardiology providers, to consciously rule out any contraindications to the co-administration of Paxlovid,” Ganatra continued, adding that there needs to be “consultation” with healthcare providers and pharmacists to avoid interactions.

    As the Epoch Times notes, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) fact sheet (pdf) of Paxlovid for health care providers goes into detail about possible drug interactions that can prompt life-threatening reactions.

    The medications include but aren’t limited to anti-seizure medications, drugs for irregular heart rhythms, drugs for high blood pressure and high cholesterol, antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications, antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications, steroids, HIV treatments, blood thinners, and erectile dysfunction medications.

    “The importance of medication reconciliation before initiation of nirmatrelvir/ritonavir cannot be overemphasized to avoid serious drug-drug interactions,” the authors of the paper wrote Wednesday, referring to Paxlovid.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/13/2022 – 18:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Oct 13

Today’s News 13th October 2022

  • The Left Calls For A Ban On Germany's AfD Party Just As The Party Surges In Popularity
    The Left Calls For A Ban On Germany’s AfD Party Just As The Party Surges In Popularity

    Authored by John Cody via Remix News,

    Despite Germany’s claims of democracy, politicians are calling to ban the AfD party…

    Members of the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Left party (Die Linke) are calling for a ban on the conservative Alternative for Germany (AfD) party just as it surges in the polls, raising fears that Germany, which prides itself on being democratic, will attempt to completely ban one of the largest parties in the country.

    Dorothea Marx (SPD), a member of the Thuringian state parliament, is one of the politicians calling for the AfD party to be banned.

    “The time is ripe,” Marx told the dpa news agency. Above all, she said, the Thuringian state assembly must act quickly.

    She said that although numerous state branches of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution were monitoring the party, it was only logical for the state to take further measures and exclude it from party funding.

    “The next logical thing then is a ban procedure,” the SPD politician stressed. According to Marx, it would also be possible to ban individual state associations.

    “AfD’s hatred and agitation must no longer be equated with democratic freedom of expression.”

    As Remix News has previously reported, AfD is currently facing extreme surveillance and monitoring, which interferes with the party’s ability to operate. The powerful Office for the Protection of the Constitution domestic intelligence agency has deemed AfD a “suspected threat” to democracy, which enables agents to read emails and listen to phone calls of members without a warrant. It would be the equivalent of the FBI in the United States deeming the Republican Party a “suspected threat” to the constitution and having the power to surveil any party member merely on the basis that they belong to the party.

    AfD’s leadership has long warned that the country’s left-liberal ruling bloc would move to ban the party entirely. Given AfD’s surging popularity, with the party rising to 16 percent in the polls, its highest level ever, many of these rival parties would like to see the opposition party removed entirely from the democratic system.

    SPD”s Marx received support from Thuringia’s Left party politician Katharina König-Preuss, who is known for her connections to Antifa.

    “A ban can help deprive AfD of state funding,” said the state parliament member.

    “A ban can also help to disarm AfD members more quickly. We know of demonstrably around 50 AfD actors armed with live firearms in the state.” The party, she said, is no less “fighting against human dignity, the principle of democracy, and the rule of law than NPD.”

    The idea that banning a party to save democracy is widespread in Germany’s left-wing circles; however, AfD has argued that nobody in the party has ever advocated anti-democratic principles. In fact, there is evidence the party wants to strengthen it by introducing Swiss-style citizen referendums, which would allow citizens to vote on specific issues, which is currently only allowed in some states such as Berlin.

    As Germany’s entire political leadership has moved to slap sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine, AfD has pushed for Germany to reopen the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and repair any damage. Germany’s industrial sector is highly reliant on cheap Russian energy, and surging inflation is threatening political unrest. As a result, politicians may be seeking to head off the party before it grows in popularity, as the economic crisis is only expected to worsen.

    Can AfD be banned?

    The far-left is not the only political force seeking to ban AfD, with the center-left Christian Democratic Union (CDU) also calling for a ban on the party in the past. However, despite many of these parties looking to eliminate their rival, there is only one institution, the Federal Constitutional Court, that can truly ban the party.

    In the past, only the Socialist Reich Party (1952) and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD, 1956) were banned. Corresponding proceedings against the ultra-nationalist NPD failed after Germany’s highest court was unable to clarify in the first attempt how great the influence of informers from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution was. In the second attempt, the Karlsruhe body ruled that although NPD wanted to abolish the free democratic state order, it was ultimately too insignificant.

    AfD has never promoted any of the ultra-nationalist policies of NPD, but given its recent success, the party is certainly not insignificant.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 10/13/2022 – 02:00

  • Escobar: Terror On Crimea Bridge Forces Russia To Unleash Shock'n'Awe
    Escobar: Terror On Crimea Bridge Forces Russia To Unleash Shock’n’Awe

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

    The western narrative of a ‘losing Russia’ has just been decimated by Moscow’s blitzkrieg against Ukraine and its foreign-backed terror operations…

    The terror attack on Krymskiy Most – the Crimea Bridge – was the proverbial straw that broke the Eurasian camel’s back.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin neatly summarized it: “This is a terrorist attack aimed at destroying the critical civilian infrastructure of the Russian Federation.”

    The head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, confirmed face-to-face with Putin that Terror on the Bridge was carried out by the SBU – Ukrainian special services.

    Bastrykin told Putin, “we have already established the route of the truck, where the explosion took place. Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, North Ossetia, Krasnodar… The carriers have been identified. With the help of operatives of the FSB, we managed to identify suspects.”

    Russian intel leaked crucial info to military correspondent Alexander Kots. The cargo was ordered by a Ukrainian citizen: explosives packed in 22 pallets, in rolls of film under plastic wrap, were shipped from Bulgaria to the Georgian port of Poti. Afterwards, the cargo was loaded onto a truck with foreign license plates and proceeded overland to Armenia.

    Clearance at the Armenia-Russia border was smooth – according to the rules of the Eurasian Customs Union (both Russia and Armenia are members of the Eurasian Economic Union, or EAEU). The cargo evidently avoided detection through X-rays. This route is standard for truckers traveling to Russia.

    The truck then re-entered Georgia and crossed the border into Russia again, but this time through the Upper Lars checkpoint. That’s the same one used by thousands of Russians fleeing partial mobilization. The truck ended up in Armavir, where the cargo was transferred to another truck, under the responsibility of Mahir Yusubov: the one that entered the Crimean bridge coming from the Russian mainland.

    Very important: the transport from Armavir to a delivery address in Simferopol should have happened on October 6-7: that is, timed to the birthday of President Putin on Friday the 7th. For some unexplained reason, that was postponed for a day.

    The driver of the first truck is already testifying. Yusubov, the driver of the second truck – which exploded on the bridge – was “blind:” he had no idea what he was carrying, and is dead.

    At this stage, two conclusions are paramount.

    • First: This was not a standard ISIS-style truck suicide bombing – the preferred interpretation in the aftermath of the terror attack.

    • Second: The packaging most certainly took place in Bulgaria. That, as Russian intel has cryptically implied, indicates the involvement of “foreign special services.”

    ‘A mirage of cause and effect’

    What has been revealed in public by Russian intelligence tells only part of the story. An incandescent assessment received by The Cradle from another Russian intel source is way more intriguing.

    At least 450 kg of explosives were employed in the blast. Not on the truck, but mounted inside the Crimea Bridge span itself. The white truck was just a decoy by the terrorists “to create a mirage of cause and effect.” When the truck reached the point on the bridge where the explosives were mounted, the explosion took place.

    According to the source, railroad employees told investigators that there was a form of electronic hijacking; the terror operators took control of the railway so the train carrying fuel received a command to stop because of a false signal that the road ahead was busy.

    Bombs mounted on the bridge spans were a working hypothesis largely debated in Russian military channels over the weekend, as well as the use of underwater drones.  

    In the end, the quite sophisticated plan could not follow the necessarily rigid timing. There was no alignment by the millimeter between the mounted explosive charges, the passing truck and the fuel train stopped in its tracks. Damage was limited, and easily contained. The charges/truck combo exploded on the outer right lane of the road. Damage was only on two sections of the outer lane, and not much on the railway bridge.

    In the end, Terror on the Bridge yielded a short, Pyrrhic PR victory – duly celebrated across the collective West – with negligible practical success: transfer of Russian military cargo by railway resumed in roughly 14 hours.

    And that brings us to the key information in the Russian intel source assessment: the whodunnit.

    It was a plan by the British MI6, says this source, without offering further details. Which, he elaborates, Russian intel, for a number of reasons, is shadow-playing as “foreign special services.”

    It’s quite telling that the Americans rushed to establish plausible deniability. The proverbial “Ukrainian government official” told CIA mouthpiece The Washington Post that the SBU did it. That was a straight confirmation of an Ukrainska Pravda report based on an “unidentified law enforcement official.”

    The perfect red line trifecta

    Already, over the weekend, it was clear the ultimate red line had been crossed. Russian public opinion and media were furious. For all its status as an engineering marvel, Krymsky Most represents not only critical infrastructure; it is the visual symbol of the return of Crimea to Russia.

    Moreover, this was a personal terror attack on Putin and the whole Russian security apparatus.

    So we had, in sequence, Ukrainian terrorists blowing up Darya Dugina’s car in a Moscow suburb (they admitted it); US/UK special forces (partially) blowing Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 (they admitted and then retracted); and the terror attack on Krymsky Most  (once again: admitted then retracted).

    Not to mention the shelling of Russian villages in Belgorod, NATO supplying long-range weapons to Kiev, and the routine execution of Russian soldiers.

    Darya Dugina, Nord Streams and Crimea Bridge make it an Act of War trifecta. So this time the response was inevitable – not even waiting for the first meeting since February of the Russian Security Council scheduled for the afternoon of 10 October.

    Moscow launched the first wave of a Russian Shock’n Awe without even changing the status of the Special Military Operation (SMO) to Counter-Terrorist Operation (CTO), with all its serious military/legal implications.

    After all, even before the UN Security Council meeting, Russian public opinion was massively behind taking the gloves off. Putin had not even scheduled bilateral meetings with any of the members. Diplomatic sources hint that the decision to let the hammer come down had already been taken over the weekend.

    Shock’n Awe did not wait for the announcement of an ultimatum to Ukraine (that may come in a few days); an official declaration of war (not necessary); or even announcing which ‘”decision-making centers” in Ukraine would be hit.

    The lightning strike de facto metastasizing of SMO into CTO means that the regime in Kiev and those supporting it are now considered as legitimate targets, just like ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra during the Anti-Terror Operation (ATO) in Syria.

    And the change of status – now this is a real war on terror – means that terminating all strands of terrorism, physical, cultural, ideological, are the absolute priority, and not the safety of Ukrainian civilians. During the SMO, safety of civilians was paramount. Even the UN has been forced to admit that in over seven months of SMO the number of civilian casualties in Ukraine has been relatively low.

    Enter ‘Commander Armageddon’

    The face of Russian Shock’n Awe is Russian Commander of the Aerospace Forces, Army General Sergey Surovikin: the new commander-in-chief of the now totally centralized SMO/CTO.

    Questions were being asked non-stop: why didn’t Moscow take this decision way back in February? Well, better late than never. Kiev is now learning they messed with the wrong guy. Surovikin is widely respected – and feared: his nickname is “General Armageddon.” Others call him “Cannibal.” Legendary Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov – also a colonel general in the Russian military – lavishly praises Surovikin as “a real general and warrior, an experienced, strong-willed and far-sighted commander.”

    Surovikin has been commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces since 2017; was awarded the title of Hero of Russia for his no-nonsense leadership of the military operation in Syria; and had on the ground experience in Chechnya in the 1990s.

    Surovikin is Dr. Shock’n Awe with full carte blanche. That even rendered idle speculations that Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov were removed or forced to resign, as speculated by the Wagner group Telegram channel Grey Zone.

    It is still possible that Shoigu – widely criticized for recent Russian military setbacks – could be eventually replaced by Tula Governor Alexei Dyumin, and Gerasimov by the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces, Lieutenant General Alexander Matovnikov.

    That’s almost irrevelant: all eyes are on Surovikin.  

    MI6 does have some well-placed moles in Moscow, relatively speaking. The Brits had warned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the General Staff that the Russians would be launching a “warning strike” this Monday.

    What happened was no “warning strike,” but a massive offensive of over 100 cruise missiles launched “from the air, sea and land,” as Putin noted, against Ukrainian “energy, military command and communications facilities.” 

    MI6 also noted “the next step” will be the complete destruction of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. That’s not a “next step:” it’s already happening. Power supply is completely gone in five regions, including Lviv and Kharkov, and there are serious interruptions in other five, including Kiev.

    Over 60 percent of Ukrainian power grids are already knocked out. Over 75 percent of internet traffic is gone. Elon Musk’s Starlink netcentric warfare has been “disconnected” by the Ministry of Defense.

    Shock’n Awe will likely progress in three stages.

    • First: Overload of the Ukrainian air defense system (already on).

    • Second: Plunging Ukraine into the Dark Ages (already in progress).

    • Third: Destruction of all major military installations (the next wave).

    Ukraine is about to embrace nearly total darkness in the next few days. Politically, that opens a completely new ball game. Considering Moscow’s trademark “strategic ambiguity,” this could be a sort of Desert Storm remixed (massive air strikes preparing a ground offensive); or, more likely, an ‘incentive’ to force NATO to negotiate; or just a relentless, systematic missile offensive mixed with Electronic Warfare (EW) to shatter for good Kiev’s capacity to wage war.

    Or it could be all of the above.

    How a humiliated western Empire can possibly raise the stakes now, short of going nuclear, remains a key question. Moscow has shown admirable restraint for too long. No one should ever forget that in the real Great Game – how to coordinate the emergence of the multipolar world – Ukraine is just a mere sideshow. But now the sideshow runners better run for cover, because General Armageddon is on the loose.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/12/2022 – 23:25

  • Watch: Boeing Dreamlifter's Wheel Falls Off After Takeoff
    Watch: Boeing Dreamlifter’s Wheel Falls Off After Takeoff

    Aviation blog FlightGlobal posted a video of a Boeing 747-400 Large Cargo Freighter, known as the Dreamlifter, experiencing a landing-gear malfunction that resulted in the loss of a wheel. 

    The Dreamlifter took off from Taranto-Grottaglie Airport in Italy on Tuesday when trailing black smoke poured from the plane’s main landing gear. This happened in a split second as one of the wheels fell off and plunged to the ground. 

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

    The world’s longest cargo aircraft is operated by Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings Inc. Flightradar24 data showed the cargo plane continued with its planned flight path and landed safely eleven hours later at a Boeing production facility in Charleston, South Carolina.

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

    After the wheel hit the runway, it bounced to a nearby vineyard. It was found shortly after the incident. 

    In a statement to the British online newspaper The Independent, a Boeing spokesperson confirmed the plane landed safely after encountering a landing gear issue: 

    “A Dreamlifter cargo flight operated by Atlas Air landed safely earlier today at Charleston International Airport, after losing a wheel assembly from its landing gear on takeoff from the Taranto-Grottaglie Airport in Italy this morning.

    “We will support our operator’s investigation.”

    The cause of the incident isn’t yet clear… 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/12/2022 – 23:05

  • Will The Supreme Court End Affirmative Action?
    Will The Supreme Court End Affirmative Action?

    Authored by Peter Van Buren via TheAmericanConservative.com,

    If you thought the Supreme Court threw up some dust overturning Roe v. Wade, watch this current term as the Court considers overturning Grutter v. Bollinger and decides whether “race-conscious” admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are lawful.

    The two cases the Court might use to overturn Grutter, Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina, pose three questions. First, can race be a factor in admissions? Second, has Harvard violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by penalizing Asian-American applicants? And third, quoting the Court, can a university “reject a race-neutral alternative because it would change the composition of the student body, without proving that the alternative would cause a dramatic sacrifice in academic quality or the educational benefits of overall student-body diversity?”

    The essential question, then, is this: can race continue to be a factor in university admissions?

    In 2003, the Court in Grutter upheld affirmative action in academic admissions, saying race can indeed be considered in admissions decisions alongside things like tests and grades. After being denied admission to University of Michigan Law School, white student Barbara Grutter sued the school, alleging it discriminated against her on the basis of race in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s right to equal protection, as well as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. She claimed, in the words of the Court, that she was rejected because the law school “used race as a ‘predominant’ factor, giving applicants belonging to certain minority groups a significantly greater chance of admission than students with similar credentials” from disfavored racial groups such as whites and Asians.

    Precedent was not on her side. The earlier Bakke case was seen as binding precedent establishing that fostering diversity was a “compelling state interest.” The Grutter Court similarly claimed that, in light of Bakke, the “Law School’s use of race was narrowly tailored because race was merely a potential ‘plus’ factor.” Viewing a candidate’s race as a “bonus” was allowed, but using race as the predominant criteria for admission was not.

    The Court found the Law School’s “narrowly tailored use of race” in admissions decisions furthered “a compelling interest in the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body and is not prohibited by the Equal Protection Clause.” What some came to call “reverse discrimination” was allowed within certain boundaries because it furthered the “compelling interests” of a more diverse student body and broader access to higher education.

    The premise behind the Grutter decision is that disparities between groups in things such as admissions are always the result of discrimination. In this view, the focus on individual rights (such as Barbara Grutter’s) distracts from the more important struggle against systemic racism.

    The problems with this idea are manifold. Space at all academic institutions, and especially at the top tier ones, is limited. To explicitly favor one group necessarily means excluding other groups. That is why Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College has amici groups that believe Harvard is violating the Civil Rights Act by penalizing Asian American applicants in favor of blacks. These groups include Chinese American Citizens Alliance, the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty, the Asian American Coalition For Education, and the Asian American Legal Foundation. Also included is the Coalition for TJ, a group representing Northern Virginia’s super magnet school Thomas Jefferson High, which won a suit recently that deemed the school’s race-based admissions policy illegal.

    The tide is turning around the nation. In addition to the win for a return to merit-based admissions at Thomas Jefferson High, the San Francisco School Board returned the admissions policy at Lowell, the city’s most prestigious public high school, to the merit-based system it had used for more than a century. New York City’s most sought-after high schools, including Stuyvesant, held on to their merit-based system even as other high schools switched to a lottery system.

    If Grutter is overturned, that would end 45 years of precedent holding that race could be used as one factor among many in evaluating applicants. The universities argue race-based decisions are lawful, and serve an important national interest.

    Colleges have a long, sordid history of discriminatory admissions policies. Kenneth Marcus, assistant secretary for civil rights at the Trump administration’s education department, said Harvard’s treatment of Asian students was reminiscent of its efforts to limit Jewish enrollment. 

    “Just as Harvard in the 1930s thought that Jewish students lacked the character to make them good Harvard men,” he said, “so today they often view Asian students as lacking the appropriate character.” 

    One defender of affirmative action in admissions almost seemed to confirm the opposition’s point, telling the New York Times that “Race-conscious admissions policies are a critical tool that ensures students of color are not overlooked in a process that does not typically value their determination, accomplishments and immense talents.”

    Like Roe, Grutter and Bakke represent efforts by the Supreme Court to remake society through judicial fiat. With Grutter, the Court took it upon itself to endorse the use of race in admissions by claiming the nation had a “compelling interest” in a racially diverse higher-education system. 

    And the potential fallout from overruling Grutter is huge. According to documents filed with the Supreme Court, a reversal of the current race-conscious standard could shrink the percentage of black students admitted to Harvard by more than two-thirds.

    While they are significantly more likely on a proportional basis to be enrolled at Harvard than whites, black applicants’ SAT scores were significantly lower than those of whites. Harvard’s existing policies roughly quadruple the likelihood an African-American applicant would be accepted relative to a white student with similar academic qualifications. Most African Americans fell into the bottom 20 percent of all applicants to both Harvard and UNC, but were admitted at the highest rate in almost every performance decile.

    In the two upcoming cases, the Court has a chance to realign itself and college admissions with popular opinion. A 2019 survey found 73 percent of Americans said colleges and universities should not consider race or ethnicity when making decisions about student admissions. Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson will not recuse herself from these cases despite having been involved with one of them in the lower courts. She will join liberals Kagan and Sotomayor in likely support of affirmative action. Those justices will be largely unsupported by the public and their Court colleagues. The next class at Harvard and other sought-after schools may look very different from the one that starts this fall ahead of the Court’s decision.

    *  *  *

    Peter Van Buren is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, Hooper’s War: A Novel of WWII Japan, and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the 99 Percent.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/12/2022 – 22:45

  • CPI Preview: Another Market Freakout On Deck?
    CPI Preview: Another Market Freakout On Deck?

    The most important day of the week – and month – is finally here. After a stronger than expected employment print, and a stronger than expected PPI report today both hammered stocks sending them tumbling to fresh 2022 lows after falling for 6 consecutive days, we finally get the September CPI report, a number which as we reported previously could send stocks soaring as much as 3% or tumbling more than 5%. One thing is certain: if we are going by recent historical precedent, expect lots of digital red ink tomorrow (see below).

    For those who missed our market matrix, here it is again courtesy of JPM’s Andrew Tyler: 

    •  CPI prints above 8.3% ->  this will be another -5% day. The Sep 13 CPI print, when the whisper number was a miss but got a beat instead (8.3% vs. 8.1% consensus; 8.5% prior) triggered a 4.3% decline in the SPX as Credit outperformed.
    • CPI prints 8.1% – 8.3% -> also a negative outcome, with SPX -1.5% – 2%, potentially characterized by a buyers strike. The bigger concern here, according to JPM, is the bond market repricing to increase the probability of a 75bps hike in December.
    • CPI prints 7.9% – 8.0% -> this is likely enough to stage a rally, perhaps +75bps – 100bps. Currently, Bloomberg’s mash up of economic forecasts show 2022 Q4 averaging 7.2%, meaning that if we see an 8.0% print this week, then the next two prints need to average 6.9%.
    • CPI prints below 7.9% -> should this come to fruition, JPM thinks a +2-3% day is most likely, though if we see CPI gap down more than 60bps (largest is the move from 9.1% to 8.5%) the move could be larger; then calls for a Fed pause/pivot may become deafening.

    Now that we know how the market should react, here is what Wall Street expects: 

    • Headline YoY, 8.1% for October, vs 8.3% in September
    • Headline MoM, 0.2% for October, vs 0.1% in September
    • Core YoY, 6.5% for October, vs 6.3% in September
    • Core MoM, 0.4% for October, vs 0.6% in September

    What about the banks? Here are the big ones, starting with Goldman:

    “We expect a 0.41% increase in the core CPI in September, corresponding to a 0.2pp increase in the year-over-year rate to 6.50%, and expect a 0.26% increase in headline CPI, corresponding to a 0.2pp decline in the year-over-year rate to 8.10%”

    … Deutsche Bank:

    Our US economists expect the headline to show a +0.3% MoM gain (+0.1% in August) and core to gain +0.5% (+0.6% in August). They also recently published a note on inflation here, pointing to an array of metrics indicating that pressures remain elevated and broad-based. Our economics team forecasts a +0.4% print for core (+0.4% in August).

    … and JPM:

    • Headline YoY, 8.1% for October, 7.1% for November, and 6.4% for December.
    • Headline MoM, 0.3% for October, 0.0% for November, and 0.0% for December.
    • Core YoY, 6.5% for October, 5.9% for November, and 5.5% for December.
    • Core MoM, 0.45% for October, 0.2% for November, and 0.2% for December

    A detailed breakdown by Bank reveals that most expect a core CPI print between 0.3% and 0.5% (which probably means a print either below or above this range).

    • Wrightson ICAP: 0.5%
    • Morgan Stanley: 0.5%
    • HSBC: 0.5%
    • Societe Generale: 0.5%
    • TD Securities: 0.5%
    • Wells Fargo: 0.5%
    • UniCredit: 0.5%
    • Jefferies: 0.5%
    • Bank of Montreal: 0.5%
    • JP Morgan: 0.5%
    • Citigroup: 0.5%
    • Credit Suisse: 0.5%
    • BofA: 0.4%
    • Deutsche Bank: 0.4%
    • Barclays: 0.4%
    • Nomura Securities: 0.4%
    • BNP Paribas: 0.4%
    • Goldman Sachs: 0.4%
    • Pantheon Macroeconomics: 0.4%
    • Capital Economics: 0.3%
    • UBS Securities: 0.3%
    • Evercore ISI: 0.3%

    A relatively tame distribution across an average estimate of 0.43% and a 0.4% median.

    Not surprisingly, most traders are bearishly biased ahead of the CPI print (we will note some more on this in a subsequent post) because with only one exception – the CPI report for July –  the S&P 500’s response has been to slide every time the data was released as inflation came in mostly hotter than expected. Another reason: the S&P has fallen on 7 out of 9 CPI release days in 2022, which is likely the result of core CPI prints that have been almost uniformly higher than estimates. In fact, as shown in the chart below, core CPI has come in at or above expectations on 9 of the past 11 occasions.

    Confirming that at a time when the “data-dependent” Fed only cares about taming inflation, the CPI has become the most important driver of short-term returns, Barclays strategists plotted the S&P 500 performance against top 10 economic indicators such as monthly payrolls and quarterly GDP; they found that over the past decade never have stocks been so negatively reactive to an economic indicator as they are now to CPI.

    From a purely fundamental perspective, JPM chief economist Michael Feroli laid out the following reasons for his CPI forecast:

    “We estimate that the consumer price index (CPI) rose 0.3% in September. This would be the firmest print since June, in part because we think that the September decline in the energy CPI (forecast: -2.4%) will be more modest than the drops that were reported for July and August. We believe headline inflation will remain strong on an over-year-ago basis, but we do expect some cooling relative to recent prints, with the headline CPI up 8.1%oya in September. We believe that food price inflation remained strong in September, but we do expect some softening relative to recent gains with the food CPI up 0.7% in September. Away from food and energy, we forecast another solid print for the core CPI index (0.5%), with this measure up 6.5%oya in September (up from 6.4% in August).

    For the core index, we think the September monthly change will be right on the cusp between rounding to 0.4% and 0.5% with a 0.45% reading expected. We think the firmness in this index will continue to be tied to strength in the rent measures, and we forecast that tenants’ rent rose 0.72% in September while owners’ equivalent rent increased 0.69%. But we do expect declines in prices for a few other categories to help the monthly change in core inflation to step down between August and September. Industry data signal cooling in vehicle prices and we forecast that new vehicle prices edged down 0.1% in September while used vehicle prices fell 1.2%. We also look for a 0.7% decline in lodging prices as the jump in prices reported earlier in the year continues to come undone. Communication prices have been trending lower lately and we forecast a 0.1% decline for this CPI measure for September.

    Rent isn’t the only area for which we expect firmness in September and we estimate that medical care prices in the CPI rose 0.5%, continuing their solid upward trend. We also believe that public transportation prices rose 0.8% in September, undoing a portion of the 3.2% drop reported for August.”

    What about Goldman? Well, as the bank writes in its CPI preview note (available to pro subs here), Goldman expects a 0.41% increase in the core CPI in September (just below that of JPM), corresponding to a 0.2% increase in the year-over-year rate to 6.50% (in line with consensus), and expects a 0.26% increase in headline CPI, corresponding to a 0.2% decline in the year-over-year rate to 8.10%, also on top of expectations.

    The bank’s sellside researchers are looking for strength in new car prices & services inflation (due to wage pressures, labor shortages, and elevated short-term inflation expectations). Specifically, they also look for a strong set of shelter readings (rent +0.70% and OER +0.64%), a 2% rebound in airfares, and a 0.5% rise in education prices; they also expect more gains in the car insurance category, as carriers push through price increases to offset higher repair and replacement costs. The bank highlights three key component-level trends this month.

    1. Timely auction data suggests that used car prices likely fell about 2.5% in September, while reduced dealer incentives suggest new car prices likely rose about 1%.
    2. Education prices are expected to increase 0.5% this month, as schools pass through higher costs to consumer prices at the start of the new school year.
    3. Rent inflation will increase by 0.7% as the official index continues to catch up to the price levels implied by alternative web-based measures of asking rents on new leases.”

    Curiously, contrary to prevailing consensus, Goldman notes that “whispers are for a softer than consensus print hence some asymmetry to the downside for stocks.“

    Finally, in yesterday’s market wrap note from Goldman’s John Flood (also available to pro subscribers), he lays out his own market reaction matrix which is not that far off from what JPMorgan expects: here is his framework:

    • Above 8.2%, S&P loses 3+%
    • 8 – 8.2%, S&P loses 1 – 2%
    • 7.8 – 7.9%, S&P gains 1 – 2%
    • Below 7.8%, S&P gains 3+% (which should be faded as fed is going 75bps in Nov regardless)

    Another somewhat bullish take comes from Goldman flow trader, Nohshad Shah:

    MARKETS ARE AT A PIVOTAL JUNCTURE…if CPI misses, then we can easily take out a rate hike from 2023 pricing…and the FOMC may be more inclined to signal the end is in sight. Stocks would rally hard as we approach the peak of the cycle, and we would see a drop in implied vols across the rates, fx and equity complex. If we transition into a “post peak-hawkishness” world whereby the Fed delivers the forwards but doesn’t continue to out-hawk the market, then I think two key things happen to rates…firstly, the front-end gets pinned and the 10y leads the move in either direction. This is a marked shift from the year-to-date dynamics whereby the curve traded with an inverse beta to rate level…relatedly, if central banks do indeed signal the end of the hiking cycle in Q1 23, then the market moves to trade “inflation tolerance” – the idea that a somewhat higher level of inflation is accepted. This means steeper rate curves and higher inflation breakevens. NEVERTHELESS…a big beat in core inflation will set the market loose again…and one should be prepared to re-engage in this year’s dominant market themes: higher US rates, stronger $, lower stocks…

    Finally, perhaps the most dovish take comes from JPM economist Michael Hanson who says that inflation (away from Europe) appears to have peaked:

    From a global perspective, headline inflation looks to have peaked outside of Europe and is now slowing as we have anticipated. We also forecast a gradual deceleration in core inflation as well, although September releases thus far look to be running slightly above expectations on net. Based on a combination of available September CPI data and our forecasts, the %3m rate in global core inflation ticked up to a 4.9%ar in September from a 4.8%ar in August. Monthly gains in core prices are still strong by historical standards and are expected to remain above central bank comfort zones into early next year.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/12/2022 – 22:25

  • Joe Biden Defends Hunter On Possible Criminal Charges
    Joe Biden Defends Hunter On Possible Criminal Charges

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

    President Joe Biden on Tuesday said he has “great confidence” in his son, downplaying reports that federal investigators have enough evidence to charge the first son with tax crimes and a false statement on a gun purchase.

    U.S. President Joe Biden (L) waves alongside his son Hunter Biden after attending mass at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Johns Island, South Carolina, on Aug. 13, 2022. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

    Biden made the remark during an interview with CNN, when the president was asked to comment about an Oct. 6 article by The Washington Post, which cited anonymous sources who said that federal agents had “determined months ago” that they had put together a viable criminal case against Hunter Biden.

    “Personally and politically, how do you react to that?” CNN host Jake Tapper asked Biden.

    “Well, first of all, I’m proud of my son,” Biden said in response. “This is a kid who got, not a kid—he’s a grown man. He got hooked on—like many families have had happen, hooked on drugs. He’s overcome that. He’s established a new life.”

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

    Biden added that he is “confident” that what his son “says and does are consistent with what happens.” To provide an example, he pointed to his son’s memoir “Beautiful Things” and said Hunter Biden was “straightforward” in his book.

    Hunter Biden walks to Marine One on the Ellipse outside the White House in Washington on May 22, 2021. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

    The president defended his son over allegations that Hunter Biden lied on a background check before buying a handgun in October 2018.

    “This thing about a gun—I didn’t know anything about it,” Biden said. “But turns out that when he made application to purchase a gun, what happened was … you get asked a question, are you on drugs, or do use drugs? He said no. And he wrote about saying no in his book.”

    According to the Post, Biden answered “no” to the question of whether he was “an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?” The question appears on the Firearms Transaction Record (Form 4473), a six-page form (pdf) prescribed by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that needs to be filled out when people buy a firearm.

    Lying on Form 4473 is a federal violation punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

    Hunter Biden wrote in his memoir that he was battling with addiction in 2018.

    “So, I have great confidence in my son,” Biden continued. “I love him and he’s on the straight and narrow, and he has been for a couple years now. And I’m just so proud of him.”

    In response to the Post’s report, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Chris Clark, did not say whether he believes his client will be charged. In a statement, Clark said, “That is the job of the prosecutors. They should not be pressured, rushed, or criticized for doing their job.”

    The decision of whether to charge Hunter Biden rests with U.S. Attorney David Weiss,  a holdover from the Trump administration who is overseeing the investigation of the president’s son.

    ‘Tip of the Iceberg’ 

    Republicans on the House Oversight Committee took to Twitter on Oct. 6 to say that Hunter Biden’s alleged tax and gun-purchase crimes as reported by the Post are “just the tip of the iceberg.”

    “Hunter & the Biden family have peddled access to enrich themselves, racking up 150 SARs for shady deals,” the GOP lawmakers wrote. “Even worse, we know Joe was involved in selling U.S. natural gas to China. We’ll keep pushing for transparency & accountability.”

    U.S. banks are required by law to flag cash transactions exceeding $10,000 per day and automatically file Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) in an effort to prevent criminal activities, such as money laundering and tax evasion.

    Ranking member Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) speaks at a hearing with the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington on Nov. 16, 2021. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

    “Text messages show that Hunter Biden was aware of these SARs and took steps to avoid detection in his financial dealings,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), wrote in a letter to Hunter Biden’s financial adviser in July, pointing to 150 SARS flagged by 13 banks including Bank of America, Citi Bank, and Bank of China.

    Comer, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, revealed in September that the Biden family was selling U.S. natural gas to China in 2017. At the time, Biden was aware of how his son was making the sale possible.

    On Oct. 8, GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) took to Twitter to list off what he said are facts about the Biden family.

    “Joe Biden’s family members profited in foreign regions where he had influence as vice president. Hunter Biden sat on the board of a Ukrainian company in an industry in which he had no experience,” McCarthy wrote. “The Biden family targeted foreign ventures—including deals with the Chinese Communist Party.”

    “Contrary to Joe Biden’s statement that he never spoke to Hunter about his foreign business dealings, there is evidence of a direct sum of money set aside for ‘the Big Guy’—who witnesses have identified as Joe Biden—from foreign nationals,” McCarthy added.

    House Republicans have said that they’ll launch an investigation into Hunter Biden if they regain a majority in the chamber in November.

    “Hunter Biden has gotten away with too much for too long,” Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote on Twitter on Oct. 6. “It’s time for him to be CHARGED! No more delays!!”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/12/2022 – 22:05

  • Thousands Of US Officials Trade Shares Of Companies They Regulate: WSJ
    Thousands Of US Officials Trade Shares Of Companies They Regulate: WSJ

    More than 2,600 executive branch officials have bought and sold shares of companies whose fortunes rise and fall on the policies their agencies enact, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found. 

    While controversy about insider trading by members of Congress has occasionally stirred major headlines, this phenomenon has quietly endured across Democratic and Republican administrations alike — and it involves more than 20% of senior officials among the 50 agencies covered by the Journal’s research so far.

    The findings are based on the Journal‘s study of more than 31,000 disclosure forms filed between 2016 and 2021 by 12,000 senior career employees, presidential appointees and political staffers. 

    Some riskier trades — involving options and short sales, for example — were valued between $5 million and $25 million. 

    Though it’s illegal for officials to work on issues in which they have a direct financial interest — and though regulations even prohibit the mere appearance of conflicts of interest — the Journal found many such instances. For example: 

    “A top official at the Environmental Protection Agency reported purchases of oil and gas stocks. The Food and Drug Administration improperly let an official own dozens of food and drug stocks on its no-buy list. A Defense Department official bought stock in a defense company five times before it won new business from the Pentagon.”

    Often, ethics officials have simply waived the rules, or certified that an official’s trade qualifies for an exception.  

    More than 40% of the Treasury Department’s senior officials traded in companies touched by their agency — the highest among the 50 agencies studies by the Journal. Treasury was followed by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Defense, the IRS, SEC and the Fed — each of which had an above-average percentage of officials implicated.  

    Some agencies sought to thwart the Journal‘s scrutiny, and at least one is still stonewalling completely: 

    “Some [agencies] made it difficult to obtain the forms, and several agencies haven’t turned over all of them. The Department of Homeland Security hasn’t provided any financial records,” the Journal reports.

    The Journal has indicated these initial revelations are just the start of an investigative series. For a deep dive into several examples of questionable trading by federal officials, read the Journal‘s first installment here.   

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/12/2022 – 21:45

  • Alberta's New Premier Says Unvaxx'd Are The "Most Discriminated-Against Group" She Has Seen
    Alberta’s New Premier Says Unvaxx’d Are The “Most Discriminated-Against Group” She Has Seen

    Via The Epoch Times,

    Alberta’s new premier Danielle Smith says those who chose not to get a COVID-19 vaccine are the “most discriminated-against group” she has seen in her lifetime.

    “The community that faced the most restrictions on their freedoms in the last year were those who made a choice not to be vaccinated,” Smith said at her first press conference as premier on Oct. 11.

    “I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a situation in my lifetime where a person was fired from their job, or not allowed to watch their kids play hockey, or not allowed to go visit a loved one in long-term care or hospital, or not allowed to go get on a plane to either go across the country to see family or even travel across the border.

    “They have been the most-discriminated group that I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime.”

    Alberta Premier Danielle Smith holds her first press conference in Edmonton on Oct. 11, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Jason Franson)

    Smith made the remarks shortly after being sworn in as premier in Edmonton.

    During the leadership race, Smith had promised to bring fundamental changes to Alberta Health Services and to strengthen laws to avoid “discrimination” based on medical decisions.

    “This has been an extraordinary time in the last year in particular, and I want people to know that I find that unacceptable,” she said told reporters. “We are not going to create a segregated society on the basis of a medical choice.”

    Similar to other provinces, Alberta brought in a vaccine passport system during the pandemic, and closed down businesses and places of worship.

    Chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw provides a COVID-19 update in Edmonton, on Sept. 3, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Jason Franson)

    Smith also said she won’t be seeking advice from Chief Medical Health Officer Dr. Deena Hinshaw, and will instead form a new team of public health advisers.

    When asked for further details including whether she is firing Hinshaw, a spokesperson for the premier said details haven’t been determined yet, repeating that Smith will be seeking to form a new team of public health advisers.

    Rachel Emmanuel contributed to this report. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/12/2022 – 21:25

  • Chinese Job Prospects 'Worst On Record' As Economy Slows
    Chinese Job Prospects ‘Worst On Record’ As Economy Slows

    Chinese workers are experiencing the worst job market prospects on record amid an economic slowdown that will give CCP policymakers much to talk about during a key political meeting next week, Bloomberg reports.

    The Chinese central bank’s Employment Sentiment Index – a survey of 20,000 households’ employment outlook – plummeted to 35.4 in the third quarter – its lowest level since the index was launched in 2010, according to a Sunday report published by the People’s Bank of China.

    Around 42% of households reported that finding a job had been “tough” or “hard to judge,” while just 9.7% of those asked said it was ‘easy’ to find work.

    According to economist Tommy Xie of Singapore-based Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp, the deteriorating confidence will likely delay an economic recovery, as weak sentiment is the result of several factors which include regulatory crackdowns, Covid restrictions and a softened real estate market.

    “The continually weakening household sector is the biggest challenge in the economy,” said Xie, adding “A comprehensive policy package that takes both Covid and industry regulation into considerations will be needed to boost people’s confidence.”

    The survey underlines dwindling confidence as growth is dragged down by repeated Covid flare-ups and a property market slump that has lasted for more than a year. Job prospects for young people are especially bleak, with the unemployment rate for those aged 16-24 at nearly 19%, almost four times the official urban jobless rate of 5.3%. Separate data from the purchasing managers surveys last week showed ongoing job losses in the services sector, a major employer.

    Top officials have highlighted the importance of employment as a key focus for the government as they downplay growth targets. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg predict gross domestic product will grow just 3.3% this year, well below the official goal of around 5.5%. -Bloomberg

    Meanwhile, private investment in fixed assets only expanded 2.3% in the first 8 months of 2022, the slowest pace since the end of 2020, while retail sales posted month-on-month declines for two straight months – only the second time since 2011 this has happened. Holiday spending over last week’s National Day break was also lower than a year ago.

    Adding to the sour outlook, the PBOC survey revealed that just 14.8% of respondents think home prices will rise in the next quarter – the lowest since 2010, while 16.3% said they expect home prices to fall – the highest percentage since the first quarter of 2015. 56.6% of those surveyed forecast no change.

    “The property sector may be nearing an inflection point,” said Liu Peiqian, chief China economist at NatWest Group Plc. “The industry may be bottoming out in terms of policies, and once that happens, the sector may start to stabilize and gradually improve.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/12/2022 – 21:05

  • How Winners Are Losing In American Elections
    How Winners Are Losing In American Elections

    Authored by Madeline Malisa via RealClear Wire (emphasis ours),

    Who exactly are the winners of this new and confusing electoral system called ranked-choice voting (RCV)? It’s not the thousands of voters that show up to the polls in RCV elections only to have their votes thrown out. The winners of RCV are partisans and special interests who use the system’s design to manipulate election outcomes and undermine states’ efforts to safeguard election integrity. 

    Own work MB298

    Take Maine, for example. In the 2018 2nd Congressional District election, Jared Golden, the Democrat, was declared the winner despite losing in the first round of tabulation with 45.58 percent to the Republican Bruce Poliquin’s 46.33 percent. To declare Golden the winner, more than 8,000 votes were systematically thrown out.  

    Take also Alaska, the most recent example. In the 2022 special election to fill the seat of the late Congressman Don Young, nearly 15,000 Alaskan votes were tossed out before the Democrat Mary Peltola was declared the winner. In fact, 60 percent of voters voted Republican in the first round, but by the last tally, Peltola came out ahead by just 5,129 votes. Conveniently for the Democrats, more than 11,000 ballots were exhausted – or tossed – by the second round simply because they only voted for the other Republican candidate instead of ranking all of the candidates.  

    If this sounds unfair, it’s because it is. 

    For all of our electoral history, candidates have been elected by a plurality of votes. Yet, RCV now requires a candidate to receive a majority of votes in order to be declared the winner. But the only way to create that majority is by systematically removing ballots from the final tally. If voters don’t rank every candidate — even those they would absolutely never support — they risk having their vote being removed from the final vote count. This is because even if a voter’s first choice earned the most votes in the first round, by the second, third, fourth, and subsequent rounds, that candidate — and the voter’s ballot — could be eliminated, as if the voter never showed up to the polls. Even in a runoff election, which is what RCV seeks to prevent, voters are given another chance to choose between candidates. 

    RCV therefore creates a fake majority, not a true majority. Not only does this fly in the face of our American principles of “one-person, one-vote,” it allows candidates to effectively “fail-up” to beat the candidate that had the most votes in the first round.  

    If this sounds complicated, it’s because it is.  

    Is it reasonable to think that voters will be adequately educated on every single candidate to rank each of them? Yet this is the burden placed on voters under the RCV system. And voters must comply with it, or risk having their vote thrown out.  

    To make matters worse, RCV threatens fast and accurate ballot counting. The results of Alaska’s special election weren’t officially announced for more than two weeks, leaving Alaskans without its at-large representation in Congress even longer than necessary. Complicated and delayed results further diminish voter confidence and lend themselves to accusations of voter fraud. And when the system itself promotes delayed results, as RCV does, it should be rejected. Florida and Tennessee have become the first states to pass legislation banning RCV for all state and local elections, and more states should follow suit. 

    RCV isn’t just a solution in search of a problem. It’s a confusing and unfair problem in and of itself. And our historic, simpler system of plurality voting works extremely well. Just look at our history. Our plurality system has given us leaders like President Abraham Lincoln, who received just 39.8 percent of the popular vote in the 1860 presidential election. And as others have rightly pointed out, under an RCV system, Lincoln likely would have lost.

    Americans win when their votes count. One-person, one-vote, and we should keep it that way.  

    Madeline Malisa is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/12/2022 – 20:45

  • All Global Energy Infrastructure At Risk After This "Most Dangerous Precedent": Putin
    All Global Energy Infrastructure At Risk After This “Most Dangerous Precedent”: Putin

    Russia’s President Vladimir Putin addressed a Moscow energy forum on Wednesday and issued a grim forecast following last month’s sabotage attack on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines under the Baltic Sea on September 26. 

    Putin in the fresh comments warned that this “most dangerous precedent” means any and all energy infrastructure in the world is now at risk. Describing acts of state-sponsored terror and sabotage, the Russian leader explained, “It shows that any critically important object of transport, energy or utilities infrastructure is under threat irrespective of where it is located or by whom it is managed.”

    Danish Defense Ministry/AFP

    He pointed the finger at “beneficiaries of the blasts” – which Putin named specifically as the United States, Poland, and Ukraine, though which entity or entities were behind it remains a mystery, and with little in the way of conclusive known evidence at this point.

    The Wednesday remarks by Putin follow his assessment in the days after the sabotage incident which grabbed the world’s attention and shook global energy. He said at that time, “It’s obvious to everyone who benefits from it… Those who benefit are the ones who have done it.”

    But US and Western officials, as well as the media, has blamed Russia for sabotaging its own pipelines in a bit of ‘conspiracy tit-for-tat’ speculation. An American military news outlet reviews, “The culprit behind the attacks on Nord Stream 2 has been widely speculated, with Western sources near unanimously blaming Russia while others have highlighted that the U.S. and possibly Britain or Poland are likely culprits.”

    But then US Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised eyebrows when he called the sabotage attacks “a tremendous opportunity”…

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

    He said in the surprisingly blunt Sept.30 press briefing while alongside Canada’s foreign minister that “ultimately this is also a tremendous opportunity. It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.”

    He at the same time touted that the Untied States has now become “the leading supplier of LNG [liquefied natural gas] to Europe,” stressing too that the Biden administration is helping to enable European leaders to “decrease demand” and “speed up the transition to renewables.”

    Many pundits have said this shows who most stands to benefit by the Nord Stream pipelines’ destruction and disruption; however, again there’s as yet no clear “smoking gun” evidence as to who was behind it.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/12/2022 – 20:25

  • US Imports Sink In September, Suffer Steepest Drop Since 2020 Lockdowns
    US Imports Sink In September, Suffer Steepest Drop Since 2020 Lockdowns

    By Greg Miller of FreightWaves

    First came the pullback in spot shipping rates from their historic peak. Then came reports of plunging Asian bookings and mass retail order cancellations, with spot rates falling even faster. Now, all of this is finally showing up at America’s ports.

    According to Descartes, which aggregates U.S. Customs data, inbound volumes to all U.S. ports totaled 2,215,731 twenty-foot equivalent units in September. That’s down 11% year on year and 12.4% from August.

    Last month’s imports came in below September 2020 levels, albeit still up 9% from September 2019, pre-COVID. Imports this September were down 15.5% versus May, the month inbound volumes hit an all-time high, according to Descartes data.

    September’s 313,311-TEU decline versus August was the steepest month-to-month drop recorded by Descartes since the 364,454-TEU plunge in February 2020 versus the month before, back when Chinese authorities first locked down Wuhan.

    “We’ve had a pretty significant correction here,” said Chris Jones, executive vice president of industry and services at Descartes Systems Group, in an interview with American Shipper on Monday.

    This is normally the time of year when imports seasonally decline — but not by this much. “There was an inflection, and it was a big one,” he said. “In some respects, this is not inconsistent with other years [pre-COVID]. It’s just more severe.”

    If the usual seasonal pattern holds true from here, Jones added, imports “should slow down for the rest of the year.”

    Descartes: Imports decline on all three coasts

    This summer, overall U.S. imports remained stubbornly high, hovering near record levels even as West Coast volumes declined. West Coast losses were offset by East and Gulf Coast gains, reportedly due to shippers shifting cargoes eastward due to fears of West Coast peak season congestion and labor unrest.

    Ports on all three coasts saw volumes drop versus August, according to Descartes. Most surprisingly, it found that imports fell 21.5% in Savannah, Georgia, from 285,341 TEUs to 223,966 TEUs.

    Savannah, along with New York/New Jersey, has been one of the big winners of the eastward shift. Savannah posted record imports in August. It has had the country’s longest queue of waiting ships for months. As of Monday, ship-position data showed 35 ships still waiting. The presence of so many vessels offshore confirms there is no shortage of cargo waiting to be unloaded in Savannah, so how could its import numbers fall so steeply in September?

    The answer appears to be: Hurricane Ian. Official Savannah numbers have yet to be released. A spokesperson for the Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) told American Shipper: “September volume was impacted due to Hurricane Ian and the suspension of vessel service for roughly three days. GPA has since been accommodating that volume, which will be reflected in October numbers.”

    Meanwhile, official data released Tuesday by South Carolina Ports conflicts with Descartes data. South Carolina Ports said loaded imports were up 16% year on year in September, implying that Charleston import volumes were flat versus August, whereas Descartes said they fell 6.5% month on month.

    Data from PIERS also conflicts with Descartes. PIERS data shows only a 0.8% year-on-year decline in U.S. imports in September, and an 8.2% sequential drop in September versus August.

    Supply chain crunch not over yet

    According to Descartes, U.S. imports from China totaled 820,329 TEUs in September, down 22.7% year on year and 18.3% versus August. Declines from China accounted for 61.5% of last month’s drop compared to the month before.

    “If you think about the lockdowns in China, some of those things have now had a chance to flush themselves out and you now see that in the numbers,” said Jones, noting the lag effect between the lockdowns and the import decline. “These Chinese numbers are way down.”

    Commenting on the timing of the September plunge, Jones pointed to multiple lag effects between initial demand weakness and import data weakness, ranging from lags on the origin side to those at America’s ship queues. “Imports are a completely lagging indicator because of the lead times,” he emphasized. “These supply chains are so extended.”

    Supply chain crunch not over yet

    Declining import volumes should give terminals breathing room to clear out more containers from their yards in the months ahead. Even so, Jones agreed that “it’s too soon to declare victory” when it comes to the supply chain crunch.

    Imports and consumer spending are still above pre-pandemic levels. Rail congestion remains high. Both import and empty container levels at terminals remain elevated.

    As of Monday morning, there were still 103 container ships waiting offshore of North American ports. Waiting times off East and Gulf Coast ports remained over 10 days in September, according to Descartes. Meanwhile, there has yet to be a breakthrough in the West Coast port labor negotiations and the new rail labor contract still requires approval. (One union has just rejected the proposal.)

    The complexity of the situation makes it very difficult for U.S. retailers and importers to plan ahead. “There’s too much and not enough,” said Jones. “Things like personal gaming systems come in the door and they’re out the door, while you have seasonal [goods] where you just get crushed.”

    Overall, “consumption has not slowed down as much as people thought,” he continued. Importers “have to make bets and the longer the lead time [due to supply chain delays] the less accurate” those bets turn out. As a result, he said, “we’ll see some cases where too much inventory shows up and others where you can’t get enough of what you need.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/12/2022 – 20:05

  • Biden "Actively Pushing Us To Brink Of A Nuclear Holocaust": Tulsi Gabbard Goes Off In Tucker Interview
    Biden “Actively Pushing Us To Brink Of A Nuclear Holocaust”: Tulsi Gabbard Goes Off In Tucker Interview

    Former presidential candidate and recent Democratic Rep from Hawaii Tulsi Gabbard appeared on Fox’s Tucker Carlson Tonight on Tuesday to discuss her decision to leave the Democratic Party. Gabbard, who has proudly served her country in uniform (and still is with the Army National Guard), announced the very morning of her appearance on Tucker’s show that she’s exiting the Democratic Party after serving in Congress (Hawaii) from 2013 to 2021. 

    At a moment Gabbard was already subject of intense pushback and online hate for her contrarian stance on the Russia-Ukraine war, she blasted the Democratic Party as “an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness” in a prior Twitter video post. She went on to tell Carlson in the evening appearance that these same leaders are “actively pushing us to the brink of a nuclear holocaust.”

    Hitting on the familiar “Chicken hawks” theme that Ron Paul has long emphasized, she continued “they may have their bunkers where they’ll be safe…“

    “But we the American people will have no shelter, no place to go, no place to hide and face the consequences that could destroy all of humanity and the world as we know it.”

    That’s when she detailed reasons for being fed up with the Democratic party, explaining she’s seen first-hand that Dem leadership despises the Constitution and is essentially at war with the Bill of Rights-enshrined concept of freedom of speech. 

    “It speaks to the whole environment of fear that those in power, these elitists in power, have fomented to where people are afraid to speak the truth,” Gabbard continued.

    “[People are] afraid to exercise their right to free speech because, hey, you might lose your job, you might be canceled, you might get trashed, and God forbid in Washington, you might not be invited to the cool kids’ party.”

    Gabbard herself has long been subject to repeat smears of being “pro-Kremlin” or also an “Assadist” (given she met with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in a controversial 2017 trip at the height of the war) for her principled stance of ‘non-interventionism’ and longtime criticism of the post-9/11 Global War on Terror.

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

    Without doubt, her latest words to Tucker Carlson in affirmation of her formal exit from Democratic Party membership will only heighten the intensity of the ongoing Left-Centrist outrage targeting her. Many within Republican Party leadership also have mounted political attacks against her.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/12/2022 – 19:45

  • IMF Draws Up Nightmare Scenario Of Housing Crisis
    IMF Draws Up Nightmare Scenario Of Housing Crisis

    By Ye Xie, Bloomberg Markets reporter and analyst

    China’s housing market has a reputation as the most-important sector in the universe (in late 2021, Goldman estimated it as the world’s largest asset class at over $60 trillion)

    So its continued slump naturally raises concerns among officials, even those beyond China’s borders. The International Monetary Fund, for instance, this week painted a bleak picture of how China’s housing slump may morph into a banking crisis. In one scenario, 15% of small banks may go under.

    Such a scenario remains a left-tail risk, but it underscores what’s at stake as President Xi Jinping attempts to keep the economy afloat.

    Recent lending data showed that long-term household loan demand, a proxy for home mortgages, remains fairly weak, even as broad credit growth shows signs of improvement. In the debt market, the struggles of a Chinese developer that until recently was able to access state-backed funding shows there’s no light at the end of the tunnel of the crisis.

    In its global financial-stability report, the IMF devoted one section to a discussion of China’s housing woes. The underlying problem is well-documented. Declining home sales and a lack of access to financing are worsening the credit crunch among developers. That reduces their ability to complete the construction of apartments. The stalled projects lead home buyers to boycott mortgage payments, which puts pressure on banks, which causes them to turn more cautious in lending to the sector.

    In such a vicious cycle, many developers are on the brink of collapsing. The IMF’s analysis showed that 45% of developers might not be able to cover their debt obligations with earnings, and 20% of them could become insolvent if their inventory value is marked to current property prices.

    It’s small wonder, then, why about 70% of offshore bonds of developers trade at 40 cents on the dollar or less, suggesting that debt restructuring may be inevitable for a large share of the sector.

    Source: IMF

    More importantly, property developers’ failures could spill over into the banking sector, particularly small banks. If 10% of banks’ exposure to distressed developers and 10% of the mortgages related to unfinished homes become non-performing loans, the IMF estimates that 15% of the banks in its study, which represents 10% of China’s total banking assets, would fail to meet minimum capital requirements and require bailouts. (The 15% estimate is close to what other economists are saying.)

    Source: IMF

    The chain reaction doesn’t end here. Constrained by falling revenue from land sales, local governments have limited resources to support the real-estate sector. If so, “there could be adverse spillovers to the broader corporate sector, where vulnerabilities are already high,” the IMF warned.

    As a watchdog, the IMF’s job is to be the Cassandra who sounds the alarm. Understanding the risk, Beijing has already stepped up its support for the market. But so far, there are few signs of a meaningful turnaround in the market, with consumer confidence stuck at rock bottom. The longer the crisis drags on, the more likely the nightmare scenario becomes a reality.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/12/2022 – 19:25

  • Mexico's Oil Hedging Program Begins, Expected To Protect Against 2023 Downside
    Mexico’s Oil Hedging Program Begins, Expected To Protect Against 2023 Downside

    Mexico has started hedging its 2023 oil production in the world’s most secretive and largest oil hedge, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

    The source told Bloomberg that the Mexican government is hedging for the downside in crude oil markets. The hedge covers production (between 200 million and 300 million barrels) in the first half of 2023 and would shield any losses if crude tumbles below $75 a barrel. 

    As one of the most secretive hedging transactions typically costs around $1 billion, the sources provided no information on hedging products Mexico is using. Though the source said trading desks via oil majors are executing the hedge. Usually, Mexico has bought put options from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan & Chase Co., and Citigroup Inc., but in recent years, oil majors have increasingly done the hedging. 

    For some years, Mexico has scored big on its oil hedge. In 2020, the hedge earned $2.38 billion when crude prices crashed and $6 billion in 2015. 

    The $75-a-barrel level would mean Brent prices would need to fall 20% from current levels of $93. 

    Future and forward contracts point to increasing downside risks in crude markets through next year. 

    A souring macroeconomic outlook could drive crude prices down next year, according to a note via RBC Capital Markets, which warned about the rising global recession risks. 

    RBC’s Michael Tran said there’s a 15% chance that a significant slowdown in economic growth could result in Brent prices falling 37% from the $94 handle down to the $60 level. 

    Macroeconomic drivers include “stickier than expected inflation wreaking havoc on consumer demand, to China’s reluctance to pivot from consumption hindering COVID policies, to a Fed overreach by moving fast and breaking things,” Tran said.

    “Such macro threats are realized and lead to a recession-like backdrop where correlations between risk asset classes move sharply together as investors seek safe havens,” he added.

    If Tran’s bear case is correct, this would mean Mexico is well hedged for the coming crude plunge. He also noted a bull case scenario where prices could jump 25% to $115-$120 as Russia continues to reduce crude supply to Europe. 

    Meanwhile, OPEC Plus, the coalition of oil-producing nations led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, slashed production by 2 million barrels per day last week due to fears of a global economic downturn. OPEC+ has also warned of limited spare production capacity. 

    In any case, Mexico is preparing for the downside. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/12/2022 – 19:05

  • 'Lies The FBI Should Have Uncovered': Day 1 Of The Igor Danchenko Trial
    ‘Lies The FBI Should Have Uncovered’: Day 1 Of The Igor Danchenko Trial

    Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

    We have the transcripts from day 1 of the Igor Danchenko trial. Pretrial matters and jury selection took up all of yesterday morning; openings and the prosecution’s case-in-chief, led by Special Counsel Durham, started in the afternoon.

    Let’s dig in and start with the opening statements.

    Special Counsel Prosecutor Michael Keilty opened with explanations of Danchenko’s lies to the FBI and discussed some FBI misconduct:

    In fact, he went so far as to accuse the FBI of engaging in “troubling conduct” based on the Steele dossier and, as an extension, Danchenko’s misrepresentations:

    Special Counsel Keilty also provided context as to why Danchenko was opened as a confidential human source:

    How will the government prove part of its case against Danchenko? Keilty lays it out:

    1. Danchenko’s e-mails “The defendant’s very own words will show that there was never a call to say nothing of a meeting in New York which Millian supposedly skipped out on.”

    2. “The defendant’s own phone records will make it abundantly clear to you that he never received a call from somebody he claimed to believe was Sergei Millian.”

    Being a false statement case, the Special Counsel must prove that the lies were material. The Special Counsel provides insight into how it will meet that burden:

    • “You will learn that lies can cause the FBI to wield their powers too aggressively, and you will also learn that lies can cause the FBI to not act aggressively enough. And you will see examples of both — both of those situations here in this trial.”

    • If Danchenko had been truthful, the FBI would have been under an obligation to correct its own misrepresentations to the FISA court.

    Danchenko’s Opening

    Opening statements also provided insight into Danchenko’s defenses. To summarize, they will argue Danchenko was being truthful and that his purported lies – if they were lies – were immaterial.

    In doing so, they provided some new information on FBI malfeasance:

    Steven Somma (who was “primarily responsible for some of the most significant errors and omissions in the FISA applications”) told Agent Auten “not to probe or ask a lot of follow-up questions with Mr. Danchenko” in order to get him to cooperate.

    They also stated that Danchenko provided “critical intelligence to the Russian government’s efforts to conduct influence operations in the U.S. . . He provided the FBI [] insight into individuals, into areas it was otherwise lacking.” (We suspect this might have to do with Maria Butina.)

    Direct Examination of FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten

    Auten was the first witness to testify, and his direct examination was conducted by Special Counsel Durham. Here are the highlights.

    Auten became aware of Crossfire Hurricane in early August 2016, after a conversation with section chief Jonathan Moffa. 144. Within days he was assigned to the Crossfire Hurricane, where he helped lead the analysts involved in that investigation. Here’s his description of how it worked:

    “So the Crossfire Hurricane team was structured — it was an integrated combination of analysts and agents. It was structured whereby the — the authority structure was done both on the agent side and the analyst side, or one might say the operational side and the analytical side.

    The analysts — the line analysts reported to me. I reported to, again, Jonathan Moffa was his name, who was a section chief at the time, and then Jonathan Moffa reported up to, at that point, it was Deputy Assistant Director Bill Priestap.

    And on the agent side, it was my operational counterpart by the name of Joe Pientka. Joe reported up through Peter Strzok, who was DAD, and then up to Assistant Director Priestap.”

    He explained that the investigation was run from FBI headquarters. Here’s is Auten’s description of the chain of reporting:

    1. Section Chief Moffa and Peter Strzok both reported to Deputy Assistant Director Bill Priestap.

    2. Priestap reported directly to Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

    3. McCabe reported to FBI Director James Comey.

    Durham asks a pointed question about Comey:

    Durham also asks about Crossfire Hurricane, his questions critical of the FBI’s opening of a “full investigation” based on “suggestions of some kind of suggestion” (the George Papadopoulos allegations):

    Durham asked about the significance of opening full investigations, to which Auten responded: “There are investigative tools that are allowed at the full investigation that aren’t allowed at the preliminary investigation.”

    Auten also discussed his involvement in the Carter Page investigation – and the Carter Page FISA applications.

    • He was “involved with providing information that went into the [FISA] application.”

    • He supervised the analysts in the Carter Page investigation and reviewed the application’s footnotes and did “a bit of ad hoc review of the application itself.”

    • His analysts helped to gather material and assisted “with providing language for the application.”

    The Crossfire Hurricane team decided “fairly early on” – at the end of July 2016, if not soon after – that they would try to put together a FISA warrant on Carter Page. According to Auten, “There was talk about a FISA on Mr. Papadopoulos as well.”

    Auten described September 19, 2016 as being a significant date for the Carter Page investigation because that is when the Crossfire Hurricane team received what was “collectively known as the Steele dossier.” Before that, the FBI had put together material on Carter Page but didn’t have enough to “secure” a FISA warrant. (Auten acknowledged that FBI Agent Mike Gaeta, located in Rome, was the first to get the Steele dossier.)

    Auten was asked about the FBI’s efforts to corroborate the Steele allegations just before the first FISA application was submitted. He stated they looked through “FBI systems to determine whether or not we could verify, corroborate, confirm, or disconfirm the information in those reports.”

    Durham then asked about corroboration:

    Q:       And between September 19th of 2016 and October 21st, when the FBI submitted the FISA application, were you able to confirm or corroborate in any of the FBI system the very serious allegations that were contained in the dossier reports?

    A:        No.

    The FBI also made inquiries with other members of the intelligence community to find corroborative information. They came up empty.

    Q:        And what can you tell the jurors about whether or not any of the intelligence agencies that the FBI contacted for corroborative information produced any corroborative information?

    A:        We did receive information back from a number of different agencies.

    Q:        Then, as to the information that you received back from the agencies, did they corroborate the specificity of specific allegations that were contained in the dossier reports?

    A:        Not corroborating the specific allegations, no.

    Auten was also present for the FBI’s interview of Steele in October 2016, just weeks before the first FISA application was submitted.’

    Q:        When you and Mr. Varacalli, and Mr. Gaeta, and Mr. Guessford met with Christopher Steele in early October of 2016, did Christopher Steele provide any corroborative information for the information that was contained in his reports, in the dossier reports?

    A:        Not for the allegations, no.

    Then Durham asked about the FBI offer to pay Steele to corroborate his information – what we might call the “million dollar” question. Here is Auten’s testimony on that matter:

    As to Steele’s sources, Auten admitted Steele didn’t provide the FBI with the names of any sources back in October 2016.

    Q:        So you talked to Mr. Steele about sourcing. Do you recall whether or not Mr. Steele, in early October of 2016 provided you or your colleagues with the names of any of the sources?

    A:        Sources, no.

    Months later, in “late December of 2016”, the FBI finally learned that there was one primary source of Steele’s allegations. That person was Igor Danchenko. (Auten would go on to interview him in January 2017.)

    Before getting to that January 2017 interview of Danchenko, Durham walked Auten through the first FISA application against Carter Page. He specifically asked about whether the information was corroborated. Auten conceded that it was not.

    Durham also asked Auten about Sergei Millian, whose name had been discussed in the October 2016 Steele interview. Auten stated that Millian had previously been a confidential human source (CHS) for the FBI’s Atlanta Field Office.

    Q:        And what was that relationship?

    A:        Mr. Millian, at one time, had been a source.

    Q:        When you say “source,” that’s the same thing as confidential human source, correct?

    A:        That is correct.

    Q:        In common parlance, might be known as an informant?

    A:        In common parlance, yes.

    Q:        And do you remember for how long Mr. Millian had been a confidential human source for the FBI?

    A:        I don’t recall that.

    Q:        Do you recall or do you know in German what the nature of the assistance was that Millian provided?

    A:        I know where he had provided the assistance. I don’t know exactly what type of assistance it had been.

    Q:        Okay. So you know that he has helped as a CHS?

    A:        Correct.

    Q:        For a period of time?

    A:        Correct.

    Q:        And you said you knew where he was providing that information?

    A:        Correct.

    Q:        And where was that?

    A:        I believe it was the Atlanta — the Atlanta field office.

    Q:        Okay. Do you know, again, personal knowledge, do you know whether or not at some point in time Millian’s status as a CHS ended, he was closed?

    A:        Yes.

    Q:        And why was it closed, if you know?

    A:        I believe it was closed because he moved out of the area of responsibility for the Atlanta field office.

    Q:        Now, with respect to Mr. Millian, you heard about Millian from Steele, you knew he had a relationship with the bureau, correct?

    A:        Correct.

    As an aside, let’s briefly discuss the importance of Millian’s prior relationship with the FBI. Most significantly, it put the FBI on notice that Millian would be willing to corroborate any Steele/Danchenko allegations. The FBI never took advantage of that prior relationship. Again, here we have the FBI failing to follow-up on leads because it knew such steps would blow-up its investigation.

    As an aside, let’s briefly discuss the importance of Millian’s prior relationship with the FBI. Most significantly, it put the FBI on notice that Millian would be willing to corroborate any Steele/Danchenko allegations. The FBI never took advantage of that prior relationship. Again, here we have the FBI failing to follow-up on leads because it knew such steps would blow-up its investigation.

    Back to the transcript. Auten said the FBI opened an investigation on Millian after the October 2016 interview of Christopher Steele. He admitted the FBI found no evidence Millian had “assisted in the interference” of the 2016 presidential election.

    Q:        Would you tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury whether or not — again, to your personal knowledge – whether or not the bureau opened some file on Mr. Millian?

    A:        Yes.

    Q:        And was that a matter investigated by the Bureau?

    A:        Yes.

    Q:        And to your personal knowledge, was it at some point closed?

    A:        Yes.

    Q:        Were any charges brought against Millian?

    A:        No.

    Q:        Was there any wrongdoing in terms of him assisting in the interference in some way with the 2016 presidential election?

    A:        No.

    However, the Millian allegations – which arose from Danchenko’s claims to Steele – were still included in original FISA application and all subsequent renewals:

    From there, Durham spent a good deal of time asking about the specific allegations in the FISA applications. The purpose of this line of questioning is materiality of Danchenko’s lies: to lay the foundation the FISA applications relied on uncorroborated information from the Steele Dossier, and to later argue the FBI had the duty to correct this false information.

    In fact, by the fourth FISA application (the Mueller application), the FBI was still trying to corroborate the allegations. And it still couldn’t.

    Q:        Between October 21 of 2016 and when the FBI submitted its fourth FISA applications on a United States citizen, did the FBI continue to try to corroborate information?

    A:        Yes, it did.

    Q:        It was never able to — it didn’t corroborate. That information came from that dossier report, correct?

    A:        Correct.

    In fact, Auten and others from the FBI made additional trips overseas to try to talk to Steele and others to try to get corroborative information. Auten said he was not able to get such corroborative information through these efforts.

    Auten also testified that he identified Igor Danchenko as Steele’s primary subsource in December 2016. He made the connection “Through a number of searches through databases, a number of making connections of existing material that we had.” Some of this relates to the prior counterintelligence investigation of Danchenko – something Durham can’t get into, yet.

    What followed was Danchenko’s January 24-26 interviews in 2017. From the FBI side, Deputy Assistant Director Jennifer Boone was involved in helping set up the interview. So was Jonathan Moffa, Stephen Somma, and Auten. (Author note: also involved was the DOJ National Security Division’s David Laufman.)

    Auten described the purpose of the Danchenko interviews, which were handled by himself and Stephen Somma:

    “We were there to go through to determine, you know, who the sub-sources were in these reports and what he could tell us about the reports in general.”

    After walking Auten through the immunity agreement provided to Danchenko, Durham admitted a LinkedIn message from Danchenko to an associate, where he took credit for much of the allegations in the Steele dossier:

    “Yes, I collected some 80 percent of raw Intel and half the analysis for the Chris Steele dossier and went through debriefings with the FBI on the collusion matters, period.”

    Then there was a discussion about the FBI’s plans to bring Danchenko into the fold as a confidential human source. According to Auten, this was the FBI’s plan prior to the January 2017 interviews.

    Q:        Even prior to actually approaching Mr. Danchenko in January of 2017, that was the FBI’s plan, wasn’t it, to see if they could get him — bring him on as CHS?

    A:        Yes, that was part of the thinking.

    Q:        And you wanted to bring him on — the bureau wanted to bring him on for what purpose?

    A:        To get as much information as we could to corroborate or understand the sourcing of this material.

    Here’s how the process worked.

    Q:        Okay. And tell the jurors what happened with respect to the handling of Mr. Danchenko as a confidential human source for the Federal Bureau of Investigation?

    A:        Mr. Danchenko was subsequently a confidential human source out of the Washington Field Office. Mr. Somma had gone back to New York.

    Q:        Tell the — he left — Somma left Washington, went back to New York, somebody else took over?

    A:        Correct.

    Q:        And that person who took over, do you recall who that person was?

    A:        That was Special Agent Kevin Helson.

    Q:        Okay. So Kevin Helson was assigned to the Washington field office, correct?

    A:        Yes.

    Q:        And did he have a particular expertise or area in which he worked?

    A:        Yes.

    Q:        And what was that?

    A:        Russian counterintelligence.

    Q:        Okay. So Helson comes on. He’s going to be the handler. When he did take over — he, Mr. Helson, did take over, was the Crossfire Hurricane personnel — were they cut out of this or what was the relationship between Crossfire Hurricane, you, Somma and company, and then Special Agent Helson?

    A:        No, there was back-and-forth between Mr. Helson and Mr. Helson’s embedded analyst as well as the analyst on my team.

    Q:        And, indeed, when this — this arrangement was initially set up, do you recall, sir, whether or not Helson was to pose questions for Mr. Danchenko on behalf of the Crossfire Hurricane people?

    A: In some cases, yes.

    The use of Danchenko as a CHS – with Agent Helson being the go-between by the Crossfire Hurricane team – overlapped into the Mueller investigation. (At that time, FBI Special Agent Amy Anderson was assisting with corroborating the Dossier information.) What a convenient arrangement. The Mueller Special Counsel could make use of Danchenko while he was protected on other matters.

    Before the first day wrapped-up, Auten discussed the January 2017 interviews with Danchenko and Danchenko’s claim he spoke with Millian over the phone. Auten was curious about that phone call and about the information relayed in that phone call, calling it a “very strange part of the interview.” Specifically, Auten wondered how the information that came from the Steele dossier “had come out of the very short phone call like this.”

    From there, the first day of trial saw a close. We’ll be providing daily updates with transcript excerpts. Thank you for the support – transcripts aren’t cheap.

    Techno.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/12/2022 – 18:45

  • Is Dementia Contagious?
    Is Dementia Contagious?

    It appears US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has some very concerning short-term memory problems, just like her boss.

    Yesterday, during an interview with CNBC, she offered the following reassuring comments about the state of US financial markets… “… we really haven’t seen any of these signs of financial instability in the United States financial markets…”

    Today, answering questions following a speech in Washington, she said:

    “We are worried about a loss of adequate liquidity in the market,” adding that the balance-sheet capacity of broker-dealers to engage in Treasuries market-making hasn’t expanded much, while the overall supply of Treasuries has climbed.

    So just to summarize (via Bloomberg headlines):

    • 1638ET Today: YELLEN: WORRIED ABOUT LOSS OF ADEQUATE LIQUIDITY IN TREASURIES

    • 1623ET Yesterday: YELLEN: NOT CONCERNED ABOUT LIQUIDITY IN MARKETS

    And in case you were wondering which Janet Yellen is right, it’s simple…

    Bloomberg’s measure of prevailing liquidity conditions in the US Treasury market is at its most stressed since the peak of the COVID lockdown crisis.

    The last time Treasury liquidity was this bad, The Fed injected $1 trillion every day to unlock the bond market and launched $120BN in QE to short circuit a catastrophic USD short squeeze.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/12/2022 – 18:25

  • Tulsi Gabbard To Stump For GOP Candidate A Day After Leaving Democratic Party
    Tulsi Gabbard To Stump For GOP Candidate A Day After Leaving Democratic Party

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

    Former 2020 presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party this week, will campaign for a Republican Senate candidate ahead of the 2022 midterms.

    Then-Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard speaks during the 2020 Public Service Forum hosted by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees at UNLV in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Aug. 3, 2019. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

    Retired Army Gen. Don Bolduc, who won the Republican primary and is campaigning against Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), confirmed in a statement Wednesday that Gabbard will be stumping for him.

    “We don’t agree on every issue, but I am honored to have the support of Tulsi Gabbard who shares my view that the status quo is broken, and we need a change of direction,” Bolduc said in a statement. 

    “Tulsi is a fellow change agent and independent-minded outsider willing to speak truth to power.”

    Bolduc, notably, was endorsed by former President Donald Trump earlier this year.

    He added, “I am going to spend every day between now and election day building a wide coalition of supporters that includes Republicans, independents, and even disaffected Democrats who know that Senator Hassan is a career politician and must be retired.”

    Gabbard drew headlines on Tuesday when she announced she was leaving the Democratic Party. The former Hawaii congresswoman was a candidate for the Democrats in the 2020 presidential election after having served multiple terms in the House of Representatives.

    “If you can no longer stomach the direction that the so-called woke Democratic Party ideologues are taking our country, then I invite you to join me,” she in a video posted on Twitter. Democrats, Gabbard added, “divide us by racializing every issue & stoking anti-white racism, who actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms enshrined in our Constitution.”

    Although Gabbard ultimately endorsed Joe Biden for president in 2020, she’s later been critical of his administration. The former lawmaker continued to target Biden in Tuesday’s video message.

    “President [Joe] Biden campaigned on a message of unity, healing the partisan divide bringing the country together. He just gave a big speech saying supporters of President Trump are the most extremist group in our country and a threat to our democracy. That’s half the country,” Gabbard remarked.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/12/2022 – 18:05

  • "What Hell's Like" – Jury Orders Alex Jones To Pay Sandy Hook Families, FBI Agent $1 Billion
    “What Hell’s Like” – Jury Orders Alex Jones To Pay Sandy Hook Families, FBI Agent $1 Billion

    Late this afternoon, the jury in Alex Jones’ second defamation trial awarded the families of eight victims in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and one FBI agent, $965 million.

    “Today, a jury representing our community rendered a historic verdict, a verdict against Alex Jones’ lies and their poisonous spread, and a verdict for truth and our common humanity,” Chris Mattei, the families’ lead attorney said outside the courthouse.

    The plaintiffs sought a sum of $550 million to match the total views his claims received, per CNN Business.

    Ultimately, the jury awarded the plaintiffs nearly double the already enormous sum.

    In the first trial earlier this year, Jones was ordered to pay nearly $50 million in punitive and compensatory damages to the families of one victim.

    This brings the total award above $1 billion as Jones awaits to hear damages in a third defamation trial he lost to the parents of another victim.

    Testimony from an employee of Jones pegged his total earnings from the sale of dietary supplements, books and survival gear at $100 million to $1 billion since the shooting, with $810,000 in sales on a single day in 2020.

    Jones, primarily through his website and radio show Infowars, has claimed the shooting was a “false flag” operation using “crisis actors” to undermine gun rights. He admitted during the Texas trial in August that he believes it was “100% real.”

    Speaking on his website InfoWars, Jones said:

    “This must be what Hell’s like, they just read out the damages even though you don’t got the money,” adding “why not make it trillions?”

    During another sidewalk press conference Jones denounced the judge and jury as “rigged” and mocked the trial as a “kangaroo court,” adding that:

    “they could get a $1 billion verdict, and they wouldn’t get a dime.”

    Jones’ attorney, Norm Pattis, said outside the courthouse on Wednesday: “We very, very, very much look forward to an appeal.”

    “We disagree with the basis of the default, we disagree with the court’s evidentiary rulings. In more than 200 trials in the course of my career I have never seen a trial like this,” Pattis added.

    “Today is a very, very dark day for freedom of speech.”

    Free Speech Systems, the parent company of Infowars, declared bankruptcy in August for a second time this year in a bid to limit the cost of litigation damages.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/12/2022 – 17:25

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Oct 12

Today’s News 12th October 2022

  • Russia Building Floating Nuclear Reactor Fleet To Power Remote Projects
    Russia Building Floating Nuclear Reactor Fleet To Power Remote Projects

    Authored by Katie Spence via The Epoch Times,

    China’s Wilson Heavy Industry shipyard held a keel-laying ceremony in August for the first of four barges that’ll eventually employ not one but two nuclear reactors.

    Once completed, the barge will become Russia’s second floating nuclear power plant.

    The first, the Akademic Lomonosov, was commissioned in 2020 and was the world’s first floating nuclear power plant since the 1960s. It’s also currently the only floating atomic reactor and a key component in Russia’s plan to open a significant shipping lane through the Arctic.

    But a shipping lane is only the beginning of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s plan for floating nuclear power plants. Last year, Rosatom, a Russian state nuclear energy corporation, presented Putin with a reported $2.3 billion proposal to build up to five floating nuclear reactors.

    Along with opening a Northern Sea Route, Russia’s easternmost province is home to a copper and gold mine that’s said to be the world’s largest unexploited deposit. The area has no roads and little power, necessitating a creative power source.

    A view shows Russia’s floating nuclear power plant Akademik Lomonosov and tugboat Dixon before the departure from the service base of Rosatomflot company for a journey along the Northern Sea Route to Chukotka in Murmansk, Russia, on Aug. 23, 2019. (Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

    Nuclear Fuels Expansion

    In the 1960s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers converted a former World War II Liberty Ship into the first floating nuclear power plant. Containing a single-loop pressurized water reactor, the MH-1A STURGIS generated electricity in the Panama Canal at a time when building a new energy plant wasn’t cost-effective or feasible.

    While the STURGIS proved practical and reliable for supplying power to an onshore grid for military and civilian use, the Army Corps shut it down in 1976 after the Panama Canal Company installed permanent power supplies in the area. From 1976 to Russia’s latest endeavors, no floating nuclear power plants were built or proposed, according to the American Nuclear Society.

    In 2020, Russia finished building and launched its first floating nuclear power plant in Pevek, a remote and sparsely populated Russian port off the northern coast of Siberia. Pevek is a strategic location for Putin’s expansion plans because he views it as a future central shipping hub and because Pevek is close to Chukotka, an area rich in copper, lithium, gold, and silver.

    A merchant ship sails along the Panama Canal on March 23, 2015. (Rodrigo Arangua/AFP via Getty Images)

    In 2019, Putin stated at the International Arctic Forum in St. Petersburg, “[Artic expansion] is a realistic, well-calculated, and concrete task. We need to make the Northern sea route safe and commercially feasible,” RadioFreeEurope reported.

    Currently, Pevek’s harbor is only accessible for four months a year. Still, Putin believes a changing climate will eventually enable a Northern Sea route and an economically viable North-East passage between Russia and the West, the Arctic Institute reports.

    More importantly, Putin isn’t alone in his belief. The United States, Norway, Denmark, and Canada also believe in a Northern Sea route future and have realized the need to compete for jurisdiction in the area.

    In 2017, then-U.S. defense secretary Jim Mattis said of Russia’s Arctic expansion, “The Arctic is key strategic terrain. Russia is taking aggressive steps to increase its presence there. I will prioritize the development of an integrated strategy for the Arctic.”

    Floating Nuclear Power

    Chukotka is the farthest northeastern portion of Siberia and is said to be where the world’s day begins. It also borders Alaska by the sea and is heavily populated with reindeer. Reindeer herding is the main focus of agriculture in the region, which is something Putin hopes to change with his Arctic mining venture.

    Located within Chukotka is Baimskaya, a mining project, which the company in charge of the project, Kaz Minerals, reports has “the world’s most significant undeveloped copper assets with the potential to become a large scale, low cost, open pit copper mine.” The deposit was discovered in 1972 but remained undeveloped due to a lack of infrastructure and roads. Russia is using its floating nuclear power plants to address part of the problem.

    The Academic Lomonosov won’t reach full ramp-up until 2023, and even then, it won’t be enough to supply all the necessary power for Putin’s Arctic expansion plan in Chukotka. Consequently, Russia commissioned four more floating nuclear power plants.

    The Academy Lomonosov passes by the island of Langeland, off the coast of Spodsbjerg in Denmark, on May 4, 2018. (Tim Kildeborg Jensen/AFP/Getty Images)

    “The required infrastructure is being processed with the Russian government in accordance with the Complex Development Plan for the Chukotka region. … Carbon-free power will be supplied to the site from a nuclear facility to be constructed and operated by Rosatom, enabling the Group to produce very low-carbon copper,” Kaz Minerals reports.

    It adds, “The project is located in a region identified by the Russian Government as strategically important for economic development and is expected to benefit from the provision of tax incentives.”

    According to the World Nuclear Organization, the Baimskaya development requires approximately 300 megawatts of electricity. Rosatom plans to provide the power via its scheduled three floating nuclear power plants. Each ship will have a pair of pressurized water nuclear reactors designed to produce 55 megawatts of electricity. The fourth ship will be held in reserve and used for emergencies and repairs.

    Realizing the potential for Arctic expansion made possible through floating nuclear power plants, Danish start-up Seaborg Technologies is developing a Seaborg Power Barge. The development was made possible by a grant from the European Union.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 10/12/2022 – 02:00

  • Biden Says Recession Possible But "Very Slight", Believes He Can Beat Trump Again
    Biden Says Recession Possible But “Very Slight”, Believes He Can Beat Trump Again

    With the NYT engaging in pre-emptive damage control, calling Biden’s demented torrent of fabrications and lies “folklore, with dates that don’t quite add up and details that are exaggerated or wrong, the factual edges shaved off to make them more powerful for audiences”, and then going so far as comparing Trump with Biden and concluding that “with Biden, people have decided these are not the kind of lies that matter,” Mr. Alterman added. “These are the kinds of lies that people’s grandfathers tell”, you knew that something epic was about to come out of Biden’s mouth.

    And that’s precisely what happened late on Tuesday, when Joe Biden spoke to CNN and said that a recession in the US is possible but that any downturn would be “very slight” (why note even “transitory”) and that the US economy is resilient enough to ride out the turbulence.

    “I don’t think there will be a recession. If it is, it’ll be a very slight recession. That is, we’ll move down slightly,” Biden said sparking chaos at the Fed for blowing up their carefully planted narrative that the Fed will somehow not push the economy into a recession.

    Responding to a question about his age, Biden ticked through legislative accomplishments intended to cut costs for US households, such as drug price provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, and said they would cushion the blow of any stagnation or downturn and signaled a distrust in experts’ warnings. Of course, the reality is once again the polar opposite with real wages under the Biden administration falling for a record 17 consecutive months, inflation at a 40 year high, consumer confidence at record lows, the stock market crashing, and with 7% mortgage any home is now unaffordable to all but those who can pay cash up front for the purchase. In short, both the US economy and stock market are a total disaster. Oh, and as for Biden’s foreign policies, well there’s always World War 3 to look forward to.

    “Every six months they say this,” he said of recession warnings. “There’s so much that’s been accomplished that the idea that there’s something — there’s an automaticity to a recession, and it’s just not — it’s just not there.”

    Asked flatly if the American people should prepare for a recession, Biden replied: “No.” What he meant is that there is no need to prepare for a recession before the midterms; because on November 9, the BLS will suddenly discover that there were 10 million previously uncounted unemployed workers and… well, the rest is history.

    Hilarious, for Biden – who has repeatedly said he doesn’t expect a recession, often disagreeing with Republicans or analysts who have warned that a downturn of some measure is a possibility, if not a near-certainty – having a recession is equivalent to failure. And yet, it is his own Fed that is now doing everything in its power to push the economy into recession and spark millions in layoffs, which apparently are urgently needed to contain soaring inflation… even though the Fed has precisely zero control over supply side inflation which is the primary source of exploding costs.

    The president told the Associated Press in June that a recession was “not inevitable”; but since then, the Fed has maintained aggressive rate increases and inflation has remained stubbornly high, narrowing the path for a so-called soft landing that cools price growth without a downturn. A month later, Biden said he thought the low jobless rate would carry the economy through without a contraction.

    “We’re not going to be in a recession,” he said in July. “We’ll see some coming down. But I don’t think we’re going to — God willing, I don’t think we’re going to see a recession.”

    And therein lies the rub: because as long as Biden orders the Bureau of Labor Statistics to signal a manipulated job market that is artificially rosy, markets will keep crashing and the final collapse will be far worse than if Biden had agreed to controlled demolition.

    Needless to say, the dire state of the economy is a huge liability for Democrats heading into the November midterm elections, in which Biden and his party are hoping to hold on to slim majorities in both chambers of Congress. Unfortunately for Biden, warnings abound that the US economy is poised for a slowdown or contraction: none other than JPM’s far more expected and non-dementia ridden CEO Jamie Dimon said this week that headwinds are “likely to put the US in some kind of recession six-to-nine months from now.”

    And while the Fed isn’t officially forecasting a recession, it is poised to deliver its fourth-straight 75-basis-point hike when it meets early next month, just days before the midterms, in the process pushing the average credit card rate to new record highs and crushing what little purchasing power the middle class may have.

    A Monmouth poll conducted in late September showed 82% of Americans called inflation an extremely or very important issue and 30% approve of Biden’s handling of the issue; it wasn’t immediately clear if those 30% can walk and breathe at the same time. On jobs and unemployment, 68% said the issue was extremely or very important, with 43% approving of the president. Of course, it’s easy to be dismissive of unemployment when it is just allegedly 3.5%. Wait until it hits 7% and everyone in your family is unemployed: something tells us that inflation will suddenly be a far small threat than finding a new job.

    It wasn’t just the coming depression that was discussed, however.

    Asled if he would meet with Vladimir Putin during the upcoming G20 summit in Bali next month to discuss the release of detained basketball star Brittney Griner, Biden said yes, but he would not talk with the Russian leader about resolving the war in Ukraine without Kyiv’s involvement.  

    “Look, I have no intention of meeting with him,” Biden said, most likely forgetting who “he” is. “But for example, if he came to me at the G-20 and said I want to talk about the release of Griner, I’d meet with him. I mean, it would depend.”

    During the same interview, Joe Biden downplayed a report that federal investigators believe they have enough evidence to charge his son Hunter with tax and gun crimes, saying he “has confidence” in him.

    “I’m confident,” Biden said that “what he says and does are consistent with what happens.” The Washington Post reported that Hunter Biden purchased a handgun and allegedly filled out a federal form in October 2018 stating that he was not a user of or addicted to drugs. By his own account in a memoir, the younger Biden was using drugs heavily that year. The tax investigation has focused on whether he did not declare income related to his business ventures, including overseas endeavors that dogged his father’s 2020 presidential campaign, according to the Post.

    President Biden told CNN he “didn’t know anything” about the situation involving Hunter’s gun purchase but acknowledged his son “wrote about saying no” on the gun form.

    “I love him and he’s on the straight and narrow, and he has been for a couple of years now. I’m just so proud of him,” President Biden said.

    Of course, charging Biden for an illegal gun purchase is a slap on the wrist compared to his real crimes of selling access to Joe Biden, first in Ukraine (where “energy guru” Hunter was paid tens of thousands to sit on the board of the local energy company, Burisma) and later in China.

    Next, the president rambled on, touching on his latest nemesis that humiliated him on the global arena, namely OPEC head Saudi Arabia, and warning that there “will be consequences” after Saudi’s decision last week to side with Vladimir Putin and cut oil production.

    “There’s going to be some consequences for what they’ve done, with Russia,” the US president said in an interview on CNN. “I’m not going to get into what I’d consider and what I have in mind. But there will be – there will be consequences.” He wouldn’t get into it because there is nothing planned for the best customer of the US military industrial complex (except for Ukraine of course).

    Earlier in the day, John Kirby, the national security council spokesperson, said Biden believed that the US ought to “review the bilateral relationship with Saudi Arabia and take a look to see if that relationship is where it needs to be and that it is serving our national security interests”, adding that the re-evaluation was “in light of the recent decision by Opec, and Saudi Arabia’s leadership”.

    Naturally, Biden’s archnemesis, Vladimir Putin was also discussed; here the president said he doesn’t think Russian President Vladimir Putin will use nuclear weapons despite repeated threats to do so — even as the Russian leader continues to press on in the war in Ukraine. “Well, I don’t think he will,” Biden said in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper that was aired Tuesday. “But I think that it’s irresponsible for him to talk about it.” Well, let’s hope Joe is right.

    Putin has indirectly threatened to use nuclear weapons. In a televised speech in September, he announced a partial military mobilization and said he would “certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people.” He added that he was not bluffing.

    * * *

    The punchline of Biden’s long-winded, rambling interview, however, was his preview of the main event in 2024. Biden told CNN’s Jake Tapper that he’ll focus on whether he’ll seek another term after the midterm elections in November.

    “Is one of the calculations that you think you’re the only one who can beat Donald Trump?” Tapper asked.

    “I believe I can beat Donald Trump again,” Biden responded.

    Biden has in the past indicated he would welcome a rematch with Trump, whom he defeated in the 2020 election. The president told reporters at a NATO summit in March that he would be “very fortunate” to run against Trump again.

    While we very much doubt such a rematch will take place – Biden will be 81 on Election Day in 2024, while Trump would be 78 – since a recent CAPS/Harris poll found 67% of voters said Biden should not seek another term, while 57% said Trump should not run for another term, we are confident that with enough mail-in ballots Biden could be a two-term president. Maybe even three.

    Biden’s full interview for the insomniacs is here.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/11/2022 – 23:48

  • NASA's Suicide Spacecraft Changed Asteroid's Path As Planetary Defenses Strengthened
    NASA’s Suicide Spacecraft Changed Asteroid’s Path As Planetary Defenses Strengthened

    Last month, NASA’s first mission to deliberately crash a spacecraft into an asteroid was an overwhelming success. The technology could one day go into practice to defend Earth against threatening objects.

    “This is a watershed moment for planetary defense and a watershed moment for humanity,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson stated in a press release, adding that the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission “shows NASA is trying to be ready for whatever the universe throws at us.”

    Dart’s accomplishment shows NASA’s strategy to catapult a suicide spacecraft at an asteroid to alter the primary path of the object through sheer kinetic force could be a future strategy to defend the planet. 

    “The impact was perfectly executed,” Megan Bruck Syal, the planetary defense project lead at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and a co-investigator of the $325 million mission, told WSJ. 

    NASA released data that shows DART’s impact on the asteroid named Dimorphos, about double the height of the Empire State Building and 525 feet wide, orbiting an asteroid about five times larger called Didymos, was reduced by 23 minutes to 11 hours and 23 minutes. This was confirmed by Webb and Hubble space telescopes, as well as ground-based telescopes. 

    “DART has given us some fascinating data about both asteroid properties and the effectiveness of a kinetic impactor as a planetary defense technology. 

    “The DART team is continuing to work on this rich dataset to fully understand this first planetary defense test of asteroid deflection,” Nancy Chabot, the DART coordination lead from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, said in a statement released by the space agency. 

    This was the last image captured by DART seconds before impact. 

    BBC News quoted Chabot, who said protecting Earth from threatening asteroids would mean launching suicide spacecrafts into space years before estimated impacts to alter paths. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/11/2022 – 23:20

  • The End Of Debate
    The End Of Debate

    Authored by Daniel Greenfield via The Gatestone Institute,

    In New York City, world leaders dodged traffic, deranged panhandlers and the city’s unique fall funk, to lecture the planet about their views at the United Nations General Assembly.

    Their theme was the threat that “misinformation” or “disinformation” poses to their power.

    “Hate speech, misinformation and abuse – targeted especially at women and vulnerable groups – are proliferating,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres claimed.

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov blamed his country’s PR problems on, “disinformation, crude staging, and provocations”.

    “Today I have listened to further instalments of Russia’s catalogues of distortions, dishonesty, and disinformation,” UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly retorted.

    Catherine Colonna, minister for Europe, countered that, “Where Russia employs disinformation and propaganda, justice must be grounded in facts.”

    The one thing the Russians and Europeans can agree on is that the whole matter of the war can be reduced to “disinformation”: bad speech that we would all be better off without. The only issue, as Vladimir Lenin put it, is “Who, whom”. Who gets to censor whose speech?

    No regime, no matter how debased, hesitated to rant about “disinformation” at the UN.

    Nigeria’s Islamist tyrant, President Muhammadu Buhari, argued that, “Nigeria has had many unsavoury experiences with hate speech and divisive disinformation” and urged “efforts to protect communities from the scourge of disinformation and misinformation.”

    New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, whose destructive Christchurch Call to Action had already been used to eliminate political dissent and suppress speech in a variety of countries, including the United States, had her own disinformation take.

    “As leaders, we are rightly concerned that even those most light-touch approaches to disinformation could be misinterpreted as being hostile to the values of free speech we value so highly,” she argued, before tossing away the highly valued values of free speech.

    “After all, how do you successfully end a war if people are led to believe the reason for its existence is not only legal but noble? How do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists?”

    How indeed? If only it were possible for us to use free speech to debate these ideas. But whether it’s Europe or Russia, Nigeria or New Zealand, world leaders seem united in turning their backs on the very notion of debate. The only difference is that the ex-liberal leaders like Ardern pay some sort of lip service to free speech before taking it out back and shooting it.

    “If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work. And by definition our democracy doesn’t work,” Barack Obama complained a few years ago.

    “I can have an argument with you about what to do about climate change,” he explained his limitations. “I don’t know what to say if you simply say, ‘This is a hoax that the liberals have cooked up, and the scientists are cooking the books.'”

    Debate is hard. Especially to leftists like Obama or Ardern who have lost the ability to recognize that anyone can fundamentally, rather than procedurally, disagree with them in good faith.

    Disinformation rapidly became a catch-all term for delegitimizing disagreement on moral grounds using conspiracist fig leaves to depict dissent as an existential threat. To the political establishment, there are no legitimate grounds for disagreeing with it on any issue.

    The establishment designates experts to establish a manufactured consensus, and denounces those who disagree as pawns of some larger conspiracy whose ideas endanger us all. When everything is either a public health crisis (COVID-19, racism, transgender mutilation) or a threat to the survival of the human race (war, global warming) the threat is too serious for democratic norms. The only thing to be done is to expose the conspiracy and silence its perpetrators.

    An AP story quotes a Stanford University academic who claims to track ‘fossil fuel disinformation’. “We are living within an extended multi-decade campaign executed by the fossil fuel industry,” he insists. “The debate was manufactured by the fossil fuel industry in the 1990s.”

    The rhetoric, “they faked the moon landing”, “they killed JFK”, and “they invented doubt about our pet cause” is familiar from a thousand conspiracy theorists, but the difference is that it’s a conspiracy endorsed by the establishment to end the debate. If the opposition is really part of a conspiracy, then there’s no point in debating them, is there? Or even allowing them to be heard.

    Disinformation charges rapidly move from delegitimization to criminalization. World leaders like Ardern insist that we could solve problems if people didn’t insist on disagreeing with us. Obama contends that a society can’t function if we can’t all agree on what’s true. Someone has to decide that. And who better than the leaders who gather at world conferences? As Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock put it at the G7:

    “It is disinformation that prevents an open debate. It discredits. It suffocates those who hold a different view. Disinformation is an attack on the very values of our liberal democracies: our openness, our transparency, our ability to debate and to argue fairly and freely.”

    The only way to protect free speech is through censorship. Censorship becomes freedom. And free speech is the ultimate censorship. Only by destroying free speech can we save it.

    Disinformation is the ultimate ad hominem argument. It’s become the first resort of echo chamber establishments that have lost the ability to debate because they don’t understand how anyone can or should be allowed to think differently than they do. The obsession with fighting disinformation just takes the safe space university model nationally and internationally.

    And in the perfect example of horseshoe theory, it brings together totalitarians from across the world who don’t agree on anything except that different opinions are a threat to their regimes.

    The rejection of debate is the ultimate in illiberalism. And yet the war on disinformation is being championed by western leftist governments that warn about illiberalism from their opponents.

    Governments and individuals can and do lie, they can argue in bad faith, spread propaganda, and demonize the other side. That is what debate looks like. Speech isn’t just good speech, it’s all speech. That includes the exchange between two British 18th century notables, “You must either die of the pox, or on the gallows” to be met with, “That depends upon whether I embrace your Lordship’s mistress, or your principles.”

    If the only legitimate kind of free speech is truthful, good or fair, that’s just censorship with lipstick. Someone will have to decide what kind of speech needs to be censored and the invented class of experts put forward by leftists to fight disinformation will ensure that their speech will be protected and those of their political opponents will be suppressed.

    Speech, like elections, is either free or it’s not. The closing of political systems encompasses general principles and specific applications like the Bill of Rights. An international censorship coalition is growing. Its purpose is to ensure that the only debate to be allowed anymore will consist of world leaders reading from prepared speeches at the UN General Assembly before returning home to oversee countries where free speech and all freedoms have been eliminated.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/11/2022 – 23:00

  • CCP Runs Police Outpost In New York City, Part Of Global Network Of Transnational Repression: Report
    CCP Runs Police Outpost In New York City, Part Of Global Network Of Transnational Repression: Report

    Authored by Dorothy Li via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Chinese authorities have opened at least one “overseas police service station” in the United States as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) global transnational repression, according to the human rights group Safeguard Defenders.

    “These operations eschew official bilateral police and judicial cooperation and violate the international rule of law, and may violate the territorial integrity in third countries involved in setting up a parallel policing mechanism using illegal methods,” the Spain-based group said in a recent report.

    Chinese police officers wear protective masks at Beijing Railway Station on April 4, 2020 in Beijing, China. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

    The report, titled “110 Overseas: Chinese Transnational Policing Gone Wild,” examined the initiative, which was begun by 10 “pilot provinces” in 2018. These stations also are called 110 Overseas, named after the country’s police emergency services phone number.

    An outpost in New York City was among the “first batch” of 30 overseas police service stations in 21 countries set up by the Public Security Bureau in Fuzhou, the capital city of the southern coastal province of Fujian. Other Chinese cities also set up their own outposts abroad.

    The Chinese police authorities’ division in New York opened on Feb. 15, according to Dongnan News, a media outlet backed by the Fujian provincial government. The center, called Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station, is located at 107 East Broadway, inside the headquarters of the American ChangLe Association (ACA), a nonprofit with close ties to the Chinese regime.

    Safeguard Defenders identified 54 overseas police service stations across five continents, including in cities from Toronto to Dublin.

    The total number of such stations is unclear.

    “There is no complete list of such “110 Overseas” police service stations available,” the report states. “[T]he number is undoubtedly larger and such stations more widespread.”

    The America ChangLe Association in New York City on Oct. 6, 2022. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

    ACA

    Established in 1998, the ACA is one of the most influential communities for immigrants from Fujian Province in the United States, according to its website.

    The ACA cooperated with Fuzhou’s Public Security Bureau to set up the Fuzhou police service station this year, the association’s chairman said in April during an event at the group’s office while hosting the deputy Chinese consulate general in New York, Wu Xiaoming, Dongnan News reported at the time. Wu, according to the report, recognized the association’s contribution to “promoting Sino-U.S. friendship and supporting China’s peaceful reunification.”

    The New York community group, as with many purportedly grassroots Chinese organizations, is linked to the Chinese Communist Party’s sprawling “united front” system. That refers to a network of thousands of overseas groups loosely overseen by the United Front Work Department, a powerful Party agency that works to advance the regime’s interests abroad, including by carrying out foreign influence operations, suppressing dissident movements, gathering intelligence, and facilitating the transfer of technology to China.

    The ACA maintains close ties to the regime and has been praised for its efforts in supporting CCP and its leaders. Photos displayed on its website include a certificate of appreciation from the Chinese consulate in New York in 2015. The consulate praised the ACA for playing an active role in organizing overseas Chinese nationals to welcome Chinese leader Xi Jinping when he traveled to New York to attend United Nations meetings at that time.

    The group’s former president, Zhang Zikuo, in 2019 attended an official ceremony in Beijing to mark the 70th year of CCP rule over China as a representative of overseas Chinese nationals in the United States, according to a 2020 report by the Fuzhou City Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese.

    In May 2020, Zhang, then-president of the ACA, attended an online seminar organized by the United Front Department of Fuzhou’s Changle District, during which they had an “in-depth study of the spirit of the two sessions,” the report reads. “Two sessions” refers to annual meetings held by the regime’s rubber-stamp legislature and political advisory body.

    ‘Sinister Goal’

    Ostensibly, the overseas police service stations serve administrative purposes, with many tasks the report said that would be “traditionally considered of a consular nature.”

    For example, the New York station’s most popular service was assisting overseas Chinese in renewing driver’s licenses without having to return to the country, according to an August report by Dongnan News. The report said that from March 1 to April 27, 36 applications completed an online physical examination at the station and had their driver’s licenses renewed.

    The stations make overseas Chinese feel the “care and love” of the motherland, ACA Chairman Lu Jianshun told Dongnan News. The report mentions that Lu also is a staff member at the New York station.

    Safeguard Defenders, however, said such 110 overseas have a “more sinister goal, as they contribute to ‘resolutely cracking down on all kinds of illegal and criminal activities involving overseas Chinese.’” Some of the stations have already been “implicated in collaborating with Chinese police in carrying out policing operations on foreign soil,” the group said.

    One example provided in the report was the successful return of a Chinese fugitive surnamed Xia, who was accused of fraud and fled to Serbia.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/11/2022 – 22:20

  • Georgia Inmate Scams Billionaire For Over $11 Million In Wild Tale: Prosecutors
    Georgia Inmate Scams Billionaire For Over $11 Million In Wild Tale: Prosecutors

    An inmate at a Georgia maximum security prison is accused of impersonating and stealing $11 million from a billionaire movie mogul, and may have scammed millions more out of other billionaires, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

    The story involves gold coins, a private plane, duffel bags stuffed with cash and a Buckhead mansion.

    And it adds up to potentially one of the biggest heists ever pulled off from inside an American prison – made even more startling by the fact that the inmate was in the Georgia Department of Corrections’ Special Management Unit, a maximum security facility designed to house the state’s most hardened criminals. -AJC

    The man, 31-year-old Arthur Lee Cofield Jr., assumed the identity of LA mogul Sidney Kimmel and stole $11 million from his Schwab account, according to federal agents and attorneys, who have spent more than two years sifting through evidence. 

    Kimmel is the CEO of Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, which was behind such films as “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Moneyball.”

    Cofield allegedly used contraband cell phones, with which he convinced customer service representatives at Schwab that he was Kimmel – who then transferred $11 million into an Idaho company for the purchase of 6,106 American Eagle one-ounce gold coins.

    Then, Cofield allegedly arranged for a private plane to transport the coins to Atlanta, where someone used them to buy a $4.4 million house in Buckhead.

    “Cofield was a shrewd, intelligent individual who could con you out of millions,” said Jose Morales, who was the warden at the Special Management Unit when Cofield was there.

    Cofield has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and money laundering. Two others, 65-year-old Eldridge Bennett and his 27-year-old daughter, Eliayah Bennett, have also pleaded not guilty to charges that they worked on the outside to further the scheme.

    Little has been reported about the case since federal authorities first uncovered it in 2020. But recent court filings and other documents reviewed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reveal significant new details, including the fact that Kimmel was the victim and that he may not be the only one. -AJC

    “Mr. Cofield has figured out a way to access accounts belonging to high net worth individuals, frankly billionaires, located across the country,” said federal prosecutor, Scott McAfee during a December 2020 bond hearing, during which he added that the government had evidence that Cofield accessed an account belonging to the wife of Florida billionaire Herbert Wertheim – an optometrist worth $4 billion, stealing $2.25 million – which he also turned into gold coins. Criminal charges were not filed in that case.

    According to the report, Georgia prison officials knew that Cofield – who was serving a 14-year sentence for armed robbery – had the ability to procure cell phones and use them for illegal activity. After allegedly ordering a shooting in Atlanta, Covield was moved from Georgia State Prison to the Special Management Unit after a warrant was issued for his arrest. In Oct. 2021 he was released from GDC custody, and was placed into federal custody where he remains.

    Sidney Kimmel

    Kimmel, 94, is worth $1.5 billion according to Forbes. Before becoming involved in Hollywood, he sold an apparel company he founded – Jones New York – for $2.2 billion.

    Matthew Kamens, an attorney advising the billionaire told AJC that if there was fraud, the victim was Charles Schwab – not Kimmel.

    “Mr. Kimmel was unaffected by whatever occurred, and we have no knowledge of what occurred, either in terms of background or context,” Kamens wrote.

    Schwab, meanwhile, said it has fully reimbursed Kimmel and alerted the authorities.

    “As soon as Schwab was aware of suspected fraudulent activity, we launched an investigation, initiated measures to protect the client’s account and notified the authorities,” the bank said in a statement.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/11/2022 – 22:00

  • ESG Cancel Culture Comes For State Financial Officers
    ESG Cancel Culture Comes For State Financial Officers

    Authored by Derek Kreifels via RealClear Wire,

    As the leader of a nonprofit group whose mission is to promote economic freedom, sound public policy, and responsible financial management at the state level, I’m honored to help our nation’s financial officers practice good stewardship of taxpayer dollars. Their work often includes managing pension funds that are vital to millions of Americans’ retirement security. Over the past few years, a growing threat called ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) has been negatively impacting state pension systems, ultimately putting retirees at risk. Sadly, our nation’s state financial officers and the retirees they have a fiduciary responsibility to protect are increasingly under siege by ESG ideologues who are motivated by politics rather than economics. 

    http://www.public-domain-image.com/public-domain-images-pictures-free-stock-photos/objects-public-domain-images-pictures/electronics-devices-public-domain-images-pictures/solar-panels-installed.jpg Gentry George, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

    For instance, U.S. Rep. Sean Casten, a Democrat from a competitive district in Illinois who has come under fire for allegedly lining his own pockets with taxpayer-funded energy dollars, devoted more than half of his time in a recent congressional hearing to defaming our organization. Casten accused the State Financial Officers’ Foundation (SFOF) of “spreading disinformation” – a claim he made without evidence – while ignoring his own conflicts of interest and the catastrophic failures of his own energy strategy.

    Casten is trying to strongarm bank CEOs into blacklisting us. He asserts that we are trying to “[block] the capital sector from freely allocating capital.” But our goal is precisely the opposite. We trust free people and free markets to allocate scarce resources more effectively than politicians in Washington.

    History and economics are on our side. What Casten and other far-left politicians refuse to acknowledge is that economic freedom is by far the best policy for the planet and its people. As Nick Loris, vice president of Public Policy at C3 Solutions argues, free economies are twice as clean as less free economies. What Casten and others are attempting to do is to centralize the economy by using ESG principles as their manifesto. By embracing ESG cancel culture, Casten is blocking the development of affordable energy.

    The one thing Casten gets mostly right is when he says SFOF is advancing “policies that are encouraging [financial institutions] to invest in areas that are struggling to attract capital.” Those areas have names – West Virginia, Texas, Utah, etc. – and the reason they are struggling to attract capital isn’t because the businesses aren’t financially sound. Indeed, 2022 has been a banner year for conventional energy sources that abound in these states. The reason they are challenged is because investment firms and financial institutions in recent years have implemented de facto boycotts of American energy producers. Firms like BlackRock have used their market power to “force behaviors,” sometimes by penetrating corporate boards, sometimes by starving unfavored businesses of capital, all in obeisance to an agenda based on subjective and ephemeral criteria, divorced from historical markers of a company’s financial strength. 

    It’s not surprising that many state financial officers are fighting back against ESG ideologues who are attempting to end investment in industries they find objectionable, American energy producers in particular, regardless of the impact it has on communities and states across the country. And SFOF has never argued that institutions should not invest in clean energy companies. Unlike Casten, we trust free markets and free people and deplore command-and-control policymaking.

    Casten apparently believes that castigating state financial officers will be politically beneficial. We support his First Amendment right to be wrong. Polls show that Casten is on the wrong side of not just the American people but also Democrats when it comes to demonizing American sources of energy. A strong majority of Democrats (71%) support an “all of the above” energy strategy that rejects the “everything but American-produced fossil fuel” ESG mantra.

    In the meantime, SFOF and its members will continue to stand up to what we see as a destructive ESG movement, which advances a progressive agenda outside the democratic process. We’ve made a consistent argument to financial institutions that are driving ESG while being cheered on by radical, left-wing politicians. It is simply this: return to fulfilling your fiduciary duty and focus on returns, instead of making investment decisions based on subjective criteria unrelated to business profitability. 

    By embracing economic freedom, returning to sound financial principles, and embracing the innovation of the free market, we can create prosperity for our communities, protect the planet, and build a future of which we can all be proud.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/11/2022 – 21:40

  • Intel To Fire Thousands Just Weeks After Biden Signs CHIPS Stimulus Bill
    Intel To Fire Thousands Just Weeks After Biden Signs CHIPS Stimulus Bill

    With the personal computer market crashing at an unprecedented pace, and with Intel stock losing two-thirds of its value in the past year and plunging to 10-year lows…

    …  Intel – which is just days from becoming the target of some activist hedge fund campaign – is planning a “major reduction” in headcount, numbering in the thousands according to Bloomberg, to cut costs and cope with the suddenly disintegrating PC market.

    The layoffs will likely be announced around the time the company reports its Q3 earnings on Oct. 27, said Bloomberg sources. And there will be quite a few to pick from: the chipmaker had 113,700 employees as of July, or a roughly 1 worker for every market cap in value (INTC’s market cap closed at a 8-year-low of $102.8 billion today). Some divisions, such as Intel’s sales and marketing group, could see cuts affecting about 20% of staff, the report noted.

    Besides the dismal macro environment which has crippled demand for PC processors, its main business, Intel has also struggled to win back market share lost to rivals like AMD and Nvidia. In July, the company warned that 2022 sales would be about $11 billion lower than it previously expected. Expect another ugly last-minute preannouncement, or even uglier Q4 and full year guidance. Analysts are predicting a third-quarter revenue drop of nearly 20%; meanwhile Intel’s once-enviable margins have also shriveled: amid the ongoing inventory liquidations and surging commodity prices, they’re about 15 percentage points narrower than historical numbers of around 60%.

    During its second-quarter earnings call, Intel acknowledged that it could make changes in its business to improve profits. “We are also lowering core expenses in calendar year 2022 and will look to take additional actions in the second half of the year,” Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger said at the time.

    Intel’s last big wave of layoffs occurred in 2016, when it trimmed about 12,000 jobs, or 11% of its total. The company has made smaller cuts since then and shuttered several divisions, including its cellular modem and drone units. Like many companies in the technology industry, Intel also froze hiring earlier this year, when market conditions soured and fears of a recession grew. And now it is moving to the inevitable final stage of rightsizing: mass layoffs.

    As Bloomberg notes, “it’s a particularly awkward moment for Intel to be making cutbacks. The company lobbied heavily for a $52 billion chip-stimulus bill this year, vowing to expand its manufacturing in the US. Gelsinger is planning a building boom that includes bringing the world’s biggest chipmaking hub to Ohio.”

    Well, so much for Biden’s stimulus. Oh well, at least it can be redirected to support the pristine, uncorrupted administration in Ukraine.

    US tensions with China also have clouded the chip industry’s future. The Biden administration announced new export curbs on Friday, restricting what US technologies companies can sell to the Asian nation.

    David Zinsner, Intel’s chief financial officer, said after the company’s latest quarterly report that “there are large opportunities for Intel to improve and deliver maximum output per dollar.” The chipmaker expected to see restructuring charges in the third quarter, he said, signaling that cuts were looming. 

    What about others? Well, notable chipmaker competitors such as Nvidia and Micron have said they’re steering clear of layoffs for now, but expect that to change very soon. But other tech companies, such as Oracle Corp. and Arm Ltd., have already been cutting jobs.

    Of course, none of this will impact the absolute datamockery which the BLS engages in every month and we fully expect the October jobs report, due just days before the midterm election, to show hundreds of thousands of farcically bullshit job gains. And just as predictably, once the midterms are in the rearview mirror and the government can again report the truth, we expect revisions will confirm that the US economy is currently losing several hundred thousand workers every month, a number which will only rise as the Fed triggers the worst global recession since the financial crisis.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/11/2022 – 21:20

  • Who's Afraid Of Tulsi Gabbard? Everyone…
    Who’s Afraid Of Tulsi Gabbard? Everyone…

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

    This isn’t the biggest news of the week but it may turn out to be so if I’m right about what this means and where it leads. Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard formally left the Democratic Party in a public announcement this morning on Twitter.

    Here’s Gabbard’s full statement:

    I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, are…

    …hostile to people of faith & spirituality, demonize the police & protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, believe in open borders, weaponize the national security state to go after political opponents, and above all, dragging us ever closer to nuclear war.

    I believe in a government that is of, by, and for the people. Unfortunately, today’s Democratic Party does not. Instead, it stands for a government of, by, and for the powerful elite. I’m calling on my fellow common sense independent-minded Democrats to join me….

    …in leaving the Democratic Party. If you can no longer stomach the direction that so-called woke Democratic Party ideologues are taking our country, I invite you to join me.

    Click the link to watch my full statement on why I’m leaving the Democratic Party:

    Originally tweeted by Tulsi Gabbard  (@TulsiGabbard) on October 11, 2022.

    Gabbard’s statement is a big deal given the timing, less than a month out from the mid-term elections.

    I know a lot of people are really torn on Gabbard. She elicits from the “patriot or “MAGA” crowd the same kind of unthinking division that Donald Trump elicits from the world.

    There are few nuanced takes on either of these people. This is because they represent threats to the people who are desperately trying to maintain control over the political and economic system. It doesn’t matter if they are competent or not.

    Since that system is failing, rapidly, the socio-political immune system must be vaccinated against all foreign ideas.

    So, the modus operandi is always the same. As they rise in popularity seed and amplify their faults to gaslight some would be supporters. In the case of Gabbard it was her invitation to the 2015 WEF Young Leaders conference and her positions on key domestic policy issues.

    People don’t like Gabbard for these reasons. Some of them are valid criticisms. Her voting record is Progressive on domestic economic issues. But, like a lot of young people, they come in with certain ideas and they leave with others after peaking behind the curtain.

    This focus on past specifics keeps many projecting personal anxieties onto them rather than assessing their personal journey.

    This precludes thinking strategically about how they can be an asset and only knee-jerk rejecting them for failing to pass some purity test.

    Might I remind you what that type of behavior is reminiscent of?

    It’s Left-Brain dominance bordering on possession. This is threat assessment, a function of the left-brain, taken to its extreme. It’s what drives wokeness as well as the opposite. We live in times designed for maximal anxiety.

    There are threats to our being and livelihoods multiplying seemingly by the day. President “Biden” is casually talking about nuclear war, FFS. We’re all stressed out. I get it.

    But too much of anything is a bad thing. The mechanisms of paranoia are the same for all parts of the political spectrum. And the anxiety pimps (H/T Dexter White for that) with their hands on the levers of the psy-ops understand this very, very well.

    Giving into those anxieties leads to only looking at how something can only be a threat rather than an asset. And if you are triggered by me saying this now, QED.

    This is no different than those who can only see the Fed as a threat and, for example, any/all past relationships Jerome Powell had with ‘the bad guys’ becomes prima facie evidence that fuckery is afoot.

    It looks like reasoning and analysis, when it’s just pattern recognition from previously being programmed.

    This is my primary point when it comes to Gabbard and her announcement this morning. The real psy-op isn’t that she’s some Klaus von Commie Schnitzel Triple Agent leading us like a pied piper to our own doom.

    The real psy-op is that many can’t consider her as anything else BUT THAT.

    If you doubt me, look on my Twitter feed this morning after I pointed this exact thing out. Tulsi Gabbard triggers people because they can’t believe she walked up to the WEF mountain, was offered “the Precious!” and turned them down.

    But that is exactly what it looks like she did.

    This woman was the perfect Davos Trojan Horse. She was young, attractive, well-spoken.

    She’s also a “woman of color” who joined the army after 9/11 to serve for patriotic reasons and, on top of all of this, a freaking Democrat!

    Yahtzee!

    When you look at the landscape for 2024 who do the Democrats have who aren’t completely loony tunes?

    Their rejection of her in 2020 was the big tell and it had nothing to do with the Clintons.

    This was a woman who in 2016 after being ‘groomed’ for greatness resigned from the DNC over Hitlary’s corruption of the primaries at a moment in time everyone, and I mean EV-ER-Y-ONE, thought Hitlary would be the next president.

    Even I didn’t believe my own arguments that Trump would win in May 2016.

    Gabbard defied the most vindictive woman in US political circles.

    A woman with a presumed body count that measures in the dozens who was supposed to seal Davos’ deal to sell the US out to the globalists and their planned Great Reset.

    That takes immense stones and speaks to a lot of personal integrity.

    Now, you can construct some MI-6/John LeCarre narrative that she was just playing the long game for Klaus, but seriously folks, Occam’s Razor is almost always valid.

    When she ran for President in 2020, was she promoted to be the one who would stand with Joe Biden? No. If she was Klaus’ girl she would have been.

    She would have gotten more than 1 delegate. She wouldn’t have been given the Ron Paul treatment at the convention.

    No, what she actually did was destroy the presidential ambitions of the woman-of-color who had been chosen, Kamala Harris.

    And she did it without any DNC support whatsoever. She did it with almost no speaking time. It was the most effective political takedown in history save Ron Paul’s destruction of Rudy Guiliani in 2008.

    To believe this narrative that Gabbard is a WEF Trojan Horse means you have to believe in a stage play so stupid and complicated it beggars belief. So, I ask everyone in the audience, if you are triggered by Tulsi Gabbard, reflect on why that is and where those feelings come from.

    Because they ain’t coming from her.

    She endorsed Biden, very reluctantly. It made sense. She didn’t like Trump personally and she was still nominally a party member. She’s not perfect. I don’t need perfect in this environment.

    But, per my previous arguments in January, Gabbard can position herself as a moderate populist, a kind of John Anderson figure from the 1980 election that ensures that no Democrat has a prayer of winning the 2024 election.

    If the GOP was smart, as big an ‘if’ if there ever was one, they would begin the process of saying this recession is regrettable but necessary. Embrace it and build on the anger at Brandon for screwing everyone in the wake of COVID.

    They can see Gabbard coming in to pull centrist votes from Hillary (or whomever) back towards the GOP or worse, advocating for real fiscal and foreign policy reform in D.C. as she runs as a kind of John Anderson figure against Jimmy Carter.

    In fact, the more I think about this the more likely John Anderson is the best analogue for her role in 2024. She’s the sane Democrat who’s interested in practical solutions, pulling in a very important 5-7% of swing voters tired of the outright lying, the destruction of communities and leadership turning a blind eye to violence and the coming rape of those same suburbs by Larry Fink and Blackrock.

    That was then. Today my thinking is even more insane.

    As the GOP VP candidate she can be a voice of sanity on foreign policy and human rights (vaccines, social credit score, etc.), leaving her running mate to focus on domestic issues and rebuilding America.

    So, what does this announcement actually mean for the future?

    It means that my off the cuff hope for a Florida Governor Ron DeSantis/Tulsi Gabbard 2024 unity ticket I discussed with Garland Nixon on my podcast back in May is taking shape… and right on schedule.

    I know that Robert Barnes believes and/or has real information that the 2024 ticket is Trump/DeSantis. And that may still be the default plan. I’m not privy to anything, just reading the tea leaves.

    But Trump has to navigate serious opposition as the Democrats try to take him out of the equation. Generals always fight the last war. Davos is fighting Trump when they should be fighting the generational shift just over the horizon, from Boomers to Gen-X.

    The Democrats really think they can win in 2024 by taking Trump out of the picture through lawfare and blaming the country’s ills on us not accepting their lunatic spending packages. Gavin Gruesome is clearly positioning himself for this role.

    The fallback plan if Trump is invalidated would be DeSantis at the top of the ticket with someone else to soften the edges and bring the country together.

    There is no one else in American politics poised to do just that than Tulsi Gabbard.

    If you can’t see the script of Gabbard giving a unifying, edifying speech about healing the divisions and getting back to work at the GOP convention then I’ve taught you not one thing in five years about how screenwriting actually works.

    DeSantis is killing it as Florida governor. Davos and the Democrats truly hate him because Ron’s so damn competent and willing to play Alinsky games to win. They’ve never had one of those guys before.

    Joe Biden had to publicly praise a Republican Florida governor for his handling of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Ian on the eve of an election.

    That’s a big deal, folks. More evidence Joe shouldn’t be allowed to speak off script.

    For this to work, however, there has to be a quid pro quo. The GOP will demand it. Gabbard switching sides can’t happen all at once. First she has to walk away from the Democrats and help the GOP win a few seats in the House for the mid-terms. Check.

    Then she continues to build her credibility as a moderate who speaks against the things that Presidential candidates can’t speak on or lose the support of the current crop of Davos-controlled Congresscritters — anti-war, the MIC, etc.

    She’ll be on Tucker Carlson very soon now and a lot more going forward.

    By the time the 2024 party conventions occur, the Fed’s tight monetary policy, the sovereign debt crisis in Europe and war with Russia over Ukraine will have the people focused almost wholly on domestic issues.

    We’ll be in the worst recession/depression since the 1970’s.

    Ukraine will quickly morph into Vietnam as a political albatross.

    If you think Americans don’t want a war with Russia today, go out another 20 months or so when they can’t feed their families or afford to drive to work.

    This is why the neocons and Davos are desperate to upgrade the conflict in Ukraine NOW. They have to flip the switch with the American electorate that Putin is our problem.

    He needs to be the scapegoat for the collapse.

    And that only happens with a casus belli that is incontrovertible.

    Putin continues to refuse to give that to them.

    If they can’t get their Just War and blame it on the GOP then they have only the economy to run on. But “Biden” takes that heat while the GOP simply keeps pointing to being fiscally responsible in the face of Democrat insanity.

    By this logic, the best thing that could happen for this country is for the DNC to indict Trump and block his nomination for president. It paves the path to flipping the psychology of the whole center of the country to rejecting everything they are.

    Gabbard can make that case as an independent, a former DNC insider who walked the walk, as either VP or as the second coming of John Anderson — the man who ensured that Reagan couldn’t be stopped.

    DeSantis does not trigger moderates the way Trump does. If anything he’s the governor most people want, even if they tell their friends they don’t.

    Gabbard’s strategic value to this situation should be obvious.

    *  *  *

    Join my Patreon if this post triggered you

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/11/2022 – 21:00

  • Putin's New Ukraine Commander Dubbed "General Armageddon" For Ruthless Track Record
    Putin’s New Ukraine Commander Dubbed “General Armageddon” For Ruthless Track Record

    “Russia and Russia’s commanders are worried about the state of their military machine,” the head of British intelligence agency GCHQ Jeremy Fleming, told BBC Radio on Tuesday. “We can see that desperation at many levels inside Russian society and inside the Russian military machine,” he described in an assessment which comes days after a big Russian military command shake-up.

    Following the past weeks of a rapid roll-back of Russian positions in Ukraine’s east, President Vladimir Putin sacked two of his senior military commanders and appointed General Sergey Surovikin to lead the next the next phase of the war effort in Ukraine, which began with Monday’s major escalation in airstrikes on over a dozen cities, which was a response to the Kerch Bridge bombing. 

    Russian General Sergey Surovikin

    Pundits and journalist in the West are widely casting Gen. Surovikin’s appointment as part of a new “gloves off”, more brutal offensive to come on the heels of last month’s partial mobilization order which has involved calling up some 300,000 reservists to support the “special operation”. He was previously head of the air force.

    Mainstream press reports have already labeled him “General Armageddon” for his reputation as being “absolutely ruthless” – particularly in the prior command role which saw him gain most battlefield experience: Syria. 

    Within Russian establishment media circles which lean hawkish, Surovikin has been hailed as a “legendary” commander and as the country’s “most competent” general. According to a brief review of his rise through top echelon ranks in Al Jazeera:

    The general, born in 1966 in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, was announced as the head of Russia’s southern military grouping in its war on Ukraine in June.

    Surovikin received the title of Hero of Russia and was awarded a medal for his service in Syria in 2017, where he led the Russian military expedition as commander of the Aerospace Forces.

    He is known for being totally “ruthless” in the Russian military, according to a report (PDF) by the Jamestown Foundation, a US defence policy think-tank.

    “Surovikin made a stellar career in the top echelons of the General Staff and defence ministry after 2008, during the radical military reform that required ruthlessness,” read the report, adding that his “readiness to vigorously execute any orders trounced any potential questions about his checkered curriculum vitae”.

    Now in succeeding Gen. Aleksandr Dvornikov in the role of top commander over the Ukraine operation, Surovkin faces the immense pressure of seeking to deliver Putin’s key objectives, even as NATO backers of Kiev ramp up their own intelligence-sharing and arms resupply efforts.

    This week UK intelligence put out an assessment saying Surovikin “will likely have to contend with an increasingly factional Russian defense ministry which is poorly resourced to achieve the Kremlin’s objectives in Ukraine.”

    Kremlin image/EPA-EFE

    According to more on his checkered past reaching back to the political discord of 1990’s post-Soviet struggles, he spent “two stints in jail for allegedly selling weapons and for leading a military column against protesters during the 1991 coup,” The Guardian reviews. “He has also previously served in Tajikistan and Chechnya.” And more: 

    “For over 30 years, Surovikin’s career has been dogged with allegations of corruption and brutality,” wrote British intelligence officials in a recent report on Surovikin’s likely promotion to lead the southern military group.

    During the 1991 coup d’état attempt launched by Soviet hardliners, Surovikin, then a captain, led a rifle division that drove through barricades erected by pro-democracy protesters. Three men were killed in the clash, including one who was crushed.

    The report further speculates that “With the appointment, the Kremlin may also be seeking to combat criticism from nationalists who have accused the army of mismanaging the war in Ukraine and of failing to use harsh tactics to try to force the Kyiv government to submit.” Some of those ‘harsher tactics’ have been on display with Monday into Tuesday’s large-scale bombing waves of major Ukrainian cities, particularly focused on energy infrastructure.

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

    FT in a new profile playing up his brutality in Syria, writes of the top general that the 56-year old “is notorious for his campaigns in Syria, where he served two stints as commander of Russian forces supporting Bashar al-Assad’s regime.” The report further underscored:

    Human Rights Watch named him among officials who “may bear command responsibility” for attacks on civilians, alleging in a 2020 report that he had ordered attacks on homes, schools and hospitals. In line with those tactics, Russian missiles on Monday and Tuesday hit civilian infrastructure, including a playground in Kyiv, despite continuing claims by Moscow that only military sites were targeted.

    As for those already calling Surovikin the “butcher of Aleppo” who they say destroyed Syria’s largest city and ultimately enabled Bashar al-Assad’s survival, some are pointing out that the Russian military entered the conflict in 2015, significantly after fierce fighting had long been raging. 

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

    Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK Vadym Prystaiko also emphasized the purpose of intimidation in Putin’s appointing Surovikin: “Every escalation, they bring in more dangerous people. This guy was known as the Butcher of Syria. They brought in a bad guy to scare us. But we won’t be scared.” Prystaiko added: “They finally understood they can’t do anything on the ground… So they brought in an air forces guy to try. To me, this means Putin is really frustrated, really desperate.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/11/2022 – 20:40

  • Has The USA Reached Another Historical Inflection Point?
    Has The USA Reached Another Historical Inflection Point?

    Authored by Kevin Duffy via The Mises Institute,

    “At the rate things are going, we are all going to end up working for the Japanese.”

    – Lester Thurow, MIT economist, 1989

    “The United States is rapidly becoming a colony of Japan.”

    – Congresswoman Helen Bentley, 1990

    “The Japanese can buy our buildings, our Wall Street firms, and there’s virtually nothing to stop them. In fact, bidding on a building in New York is an act of futility, because the Japanese will pay more than it’s worth just to screw us. They want to own Manhattan.”

    – Donald Trump, March 1990

    During the late 1980s, Japan had the Midas touch. In the eyes of the mainstream media, Wall Street strategists, economists and politicians, the Japanese could do no wrong. America’s brand of capitalism—self-centered, greedy, chaotic, and unplanned—was no match for Japan’s unique brand of state capitalism, with the long-term-oriented government bureaucrat, aggressive businessman and diligent, loyal employees all working in perfect harmony for the common good. Newspaper headlines routinely lamented America’s decline as much as they feared Japan’s rise.

    While a whole slew of Keynesians and mercantilists confused a liquidity bubble for an economic miracle, a handful of contrarians, including Jim Grant, John Templeton and Marc Faber, parted ways with the crowd. At the end of 1988, I wrote, in a letter to the editor that was published in the Wall Street Journal,

    By the end of this century, the question may not be “Will the U.S. be No. 1?” but “Will Japan still be No. 2?”

    That was a pretty bold prediction at the time. (I was young, naïve and didn’t know better.) There was some luck, no doubt. My study of financial bubbles, including Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, implanted the idea that a frenzied crowd is almost guaranteed to be wrong. And my discovery of Austrian economics, especially Murray Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, provided the economic rationale for why government intervention would not only fail in Japan, but likely intensify with the downturn and usher in a decade or more of stagnation. My sense was that the world’s financial markets were at a major inflection point and that sticking my neck out and flaunting the consensus would lead to significant returns.

    A 239-Year History of Inflection Points in America

    Does the everything bubble suggest a similar inflection point today? To try to answer this question, I’ve constructed a table of major financial turning points in the US, with coinciding political and foreign policy events, to see if a pattern emerges (see below).

    Major US Inflection Points

     

    At first glance, our table reveals some obvious patterns:

     

    Timing—The best time to buy stocks is at the point of maximum pessimism about the economy. The onset of wars tends to build the wall of worry further and ensure key bottoms: Spanish-American War (1898), World War II (1941) and the first Iraq War (1990). The start of the second Iraq War (2003) pinpointed a four-year bull run. One notable exception was US involvement in the Vietnam War, which began covertly right after World War II and escalated from 1965 (first combat units introduced) to 1969 (five hundred thousand US military personnel stationed in Vietnam). Adjusted for inflation, the Dow Jones Industrials Average peaked in 1966 and didn’t bottom until 1982. Meanwhile, peace and prosperity generally coincide with stock market tops. E.g., the roaring ’20s (1929) and dot-com bubble (2000) witnessed an absence of external enemies.

    Duration—Inflection points alter the course of stocks, bonds and gold for long periods of time, often decades. E.g., the 1946–81 bear market in bonds (thirty-five years) was replaced by a thirty-nine-year bull market.

    Conflict vs. cooperation—The 1946 inflection point ended a long period of conflict between nations: centuries of imperial rivalry culminating in two world wars separated by a massive trade war. The end of World War II ushered in a seventy-year period of decolonization, globalization, expanding division of labor and relative peace. (While President Trump’s trade war with China arguably arrested this trend, at least in the short run, I believe the long-term trend will reassert itself.)

    Megatrend: Big Government

    The overarching trend in the US since 1789 has been an ever-expanding and centralized government. That year marked the scrapping of the Articles of Confederation for a more centralized federation of sovereign states with George Washington its first president. The new government was the outcome of a heated debate between competing visions for the United States, with the federalists (led by Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s first treasury secretary,) prevailing over the Anti-Federalists who were thrown a bone with the Bill of Rights to try to keep the central state in check.

    (The federalists were clustered in commercial centers; their message was amplified by the press. The more agrarian anti-federalists included such luminaries as Patrick Henry, Melancton Smith, William Grayson, George Clinton, and Richard Henry Lee; most have since faded into oblivion.) Importantly, the new government’s Constitution opened the door to direct taxation and enforcement at the national level, roles confined to the states under the Articles. This was a boon to speculators in government bonds which had become practically worthless after the war with Britain.

    Where the founders did agree (including Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson) was on national greatness and expansionism. According to Sheldon Richman in America’s Counter-revolution,

    Even the government’s schools teach … that America’s founders had—let us say—an expansive vision for the country they were establishing…. Clearly, these men had empire on their minds. Indeed, in the eyes of the founders, the American Revolution was largely a war between a mature, exhausted empire and a nascent one. Many—but assuredly not all—Americans of the time would have cheerfully agreed.

    In other words, the dramatic shift from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution was the ultimate inflection point. As historian Vernon L. Parrington (1871–1929) wrote:

    [It] marked the turning point in American development; the checking of the long movement of decentralization and the beginning of a counter movement … The history of the rise of the coercive state in America, with the ultimate arrest of all centrifugal tendencies, was implicit in that momentous counter movement.1

    A key step on the path to centralization occurred in 1861 as state sovereignty became a casualty of the misnamed “Civil War.” The bloodiest conflict in US history, which took the lives of roughly 2 percent of the population—seven times the death rate of World War II—was over the South’s right to secede (taken for granted seventy years earlier), not a struggle between factions over who would run the government. As Tom DiLorenzo, author of The Real Lincoln and Lincoln Unmasked, wrote shortly after the 9/11 attacks:

    Lincoln’s war established myriad precedents that have shaped the course of American government and society ever since: the centralization of governmental power, central banking, income taxation, protectionism, military conscription, the suspension of constitutional liberties, the “rewriting” of the Constitution by federal judges, “total war,” the quest for a worldwide empire, and the notion that government is one big “problem solver.”

    The next giant leap took place in 1898. According to Stephen Kinzer in Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq:

    Historic shifts in world politics often happen slowly and are hardly even noticeable until years later. That was not the case with the emergence of the United States as a world power. It happened quite suddenly in the spring and summer of 1898.

    The seeds, however, were planted five years earlier with the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy:

    In the months after the 1893 revolution in Hawaii, that country’s new leaders sought annexation to the United States, but [anti-imperialist] President Grover Cleveland … would not hear of it. He was quite right when he declared that most Americans rejected the seizure of faraway lands “as not only opposed to our national policy, but as a perversion of our national mission.” Five years later, this consensus evaporated. Almost overnight, it was replaced by a national clamor for overseas expansion. This was the quickest and most profound reversal of public opinion in the history of American foreign policy.

    The April 21, 1898, invasion of Cuba began with a false flag incident (the Maine explosion) providing fodder for prowar yellow journalists (notably William Randolph Hearst), was sold to Congress and the American people as a mission to liberate the Cuban people from Spanish rule (Teller Amendment) and ended with broken promises and betrayal of the original cause:

    In the United States, enthusiasm for Cuban independence faded quickly. Whitelaw Reid, the publisher of the New York Tribune and the journalist closest to President McKinley, proclaimed the “absolute necessity of controlling Cuba for our own defense,” and rejected the Teller Amendment as “a self-denying ordinance possible only in a moment of national hysteria.” Senator Beveridge said it was not binding because Congress had approved it “in a moment of impulsive but mistaken generosity.” The New York Times asserted that Americans had a “higher obligation” than strict fidelity to ill-advised promises, and must become “permanent possessors of Cuba if the Cubans prove to be altogether incapable of self-government.”

    The long-term consequences of America’s interventions in Cuba would prove to be as profound as they were tragic.

    The 1898 inflection point put the rest of the world on notice:

    Outsiders watched the emergence of this new America with a combination of awe and fear … The Manchester Guardian reported that nearly every American had come to embrace the expansionist idea, while the few critics “are simply laughed at for their pains.” Some of these journalists were unsettled by what they saw … The Frankfurter Zeitung warned Americans against “the disastrous consequences of their exuberance” but realized that they would not listen.

    Endgame

    Is the megatrend towards big government in the US nearing an end? For starters, history has not been kind to empires. The British empire had its day, peaking with the first world war. By the time of the 1947 partition of India it was in full retreat, ushering in a bipolar world with the United States pitted against the Soviet Union. The collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989–91 created a vacuum with the US assuming the mantle of global hegemon. The American empire appears to have peaked somewhere between 1988 with the absurdity of presidential candidate Michael Dukakis’s failed photo-op in a tank and 2003 with the hubris of President George W. Bush’s staged declaration of “mission accomplished” aboard an aircraft carrier just weeks into the second Iraq War. Public debt–to-GDP was 58 percent when Bush declared victory; today it stands at 123 percent.

    To keep the game going, the political class has increasingly relied on borrowing, inflation and diversions like victimology, covid and climate change. “War is the health of the state” needs updating. The modern state has evolved, learning the lesson that any conflict feeds the Leviathan. Conflict is not limited to “us versus them” and “good versus evil,” but left vs. right, black vs. white, male vs. female, straight vs. LGBTQ, rich vs. poor, entrepreneurs vs. employees, young vs. old and even man vs. the planet. Wars have morphed into abstractions—e.g., war on poverty, war on drugs, war on terrorism, and now a war on a virus. The justifications for protecting party A against the predations of party B are endless.

    This presents a problem for the state, however: the web of lies becomes infinitely more complex and impossible to keep stitched together. The truth is an ever-present nuisance, as Lew Rockwell, founder of the Mises Institute, so passionately argues:

    The truth, no matter how seemingly battered and bruised, still shines through. It can never be wiped out, no matter how rotten the regime. In the end, the truth will triumph over deceit.

    One sign that Americans are beginning to see through the lies: a record number are rejecting both major political parties.

    Interventionists Jump the Shark

    Perhaps the most convincing argument that a major change is at hand is the nature of bubbles and their ability to reverse long-running trends. If the everything bubble is unraveling, the game has changed. In classic form, a timeline of the past two and a half years reveals a burst of euphoria accompanied by peak absurdities, followed by increasingly visible warning cracks and general denial by the interventionists:

    • March 2020—As covid-19 arrives and panicked investors dump stocks for safe haven assets, US thirty-year T-bond yield hits all-time low of 0.84 percent (now 3.52 percent); President Trump signs $2.2 trillion economic stimulus bill (CARES Act);

    • April 2020—Fed Chairman Jerome Powell urges Congress to unleash “great fiscal power” to defeat covid, claims “we won’t run out of money”;

    • May 2020—President Trump unleashes Operation Warp Speed to fast track a vaccine for covid; the death of George Floyd, a forty-six-year-old black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police, ignites months of “fiery but mostly peaceful protests”;

    • June 2020—Quaker Oats cancels “Aunt Jemima” image from syrup brand to fight “racial stereotypes”;

    • November 2020—Joe Biden narrowly defeats Donald Trump in disputed election;

    • December 2020—President Trump signs $2.3 trillion stimulus bill (Consolidated Appropriations Act);

    • January 2021—First wave of meme stock craze ends with GameStop topping out at split-adjusted 81.25 (now 28.64, down 65 percent);

    • February 2021—Growth-at-any-price manager Cathie Wood’s ARK ETFs rake in $8.3 billion in new money, third behind fund giants Vanguard and BlackRock; ARK Innovation ETF peaks at 158.82 (now 42.58, down 73 percent); assets hit $23.3 billion as inflows total $8.8 billion over previous three months;

    • March 2021—President Biden signs $1.9 trillion stimulus bill (American Rescue Plan Act); nonfungible token by a digital artist known as Beeple sells for $69 million;

    • April 2021—Sri Lanka government bans all chemical fertilizers to make farming 100 percent organic, reverses course seven months later after mass protests by farmers and a surge in food price inflation;

    • May 2021—Price inflation hits thirty-year high, with the year-over-year Consumer Price Index (CPI) +5.0 percent;

    • June 2021—Italian artist sells “invisible” sculpture for more than £12,000; tiny activist investor Engine No. 1 wages successful battle to install three directors on Exxon Mobil’s board with goal of reducing company’s carbon footprint;

    • August 2021—US ends twenty-year war in Afghanistan; Federal Reserve assets total $8.3 trillion, double prepandemic levels;

    • September 2021—El Salvador adopts bitcoin as legal tender;

    • November 2021—Bitcoin hits all-time high of $68,790 (now $20,040, down 71 percent);

    • December 2021—University of Pennsylvania swimmer Will Thomas (identifying as “Lia”) qualifies to compete as a woman after taking a year of hormone treatments, records fastest national times in the 200- and 500-yard freestyle, and wins 1,650-yard freestyle by forty seconds;

    • January 2022—S&P 500 hits all-time high of 4,819 (now 3,873, down 20 percent); New York City mayor Eric Adams takes his first paycheck in cryptocurrency;

    • February 2022—Canadian truckers protest Trudeau government’s vaccine mandate; price inflation hits forty-year high, with year-over-year CPI +7.9 percent; Engine No. 1 launches climate change ETF; Russia invades Ukraine;

    • March 2022—Federal public debt tops $30 trillion, up $7.2 trillion from prepandemic levels, and Lia Thomas becomes first transgender athlete to win NCAA Division I championship in any sport;

    • April 2022—President Biden’s approval rating sinks to new low, Nasdaq Composite enters bear market territory; Federal Reserve assets peak at $8.9 trillion (now 1.5 percent lower);

    • May 2022—Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen admits she didn’t see inflation coming, Sri Lanka defaults on its national debt; Solomon Islands signs new security agreement with China;

    • June 2022—Two-thirds of economists anticipate a recession while Jerome Powell sees “no sign of a broader slowdown;” the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci tests positive for covid-19 despite being fully vaccinated and twice boosted; Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, returns power to the states; Sri Lanka government collapses; and

    • August 2022—Anthony Fauci announces his resignation, effective in December; California plans to ban sales of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035, two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo helps launch ESG fund.

    Investment Implications

    “It has been 241 years since Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. Being short America has been a loser’s game. I predict to you it will continue to be a loser’s game.”

    – Warren Buffett, CNBC interview, September 21, 2017

    “In the beginning of the QE period, I became convinced that the system was going to destroy the nature of money itself. I became convinced that the rules of the game had changed completely. When the rules change, the basic framework with which you make decisions need to change.”

    – Tony Deden, Q&A with Grant Williams, July 5, 2018

    With all due respect to Warren Buffett, if we are at a major inflection point reversing a 239-year megatrend in government growth, the last thing you want to do as an investor, entrepreneur, or young person launching a career is to play by the old rules and blindly emulate past winners. Government bonds should be avoided; likewise, the stocks of companies sucking up to government, looking for favors, and peddling official narratives. Under the new rules, investors will likely pay a premium for independence—i.e., companies that can stand on their own.

    While Warren Buffett and John Bogle have had great runs (fifty-seven and forty-eight years, respectively), their playbooks are widely copied. Imitation is the sincerest path to subpar returns. Admittedly, much of their wisdom is likely to stand the test of time—e.g., the circle of competence, patience over activity, and keeping fees and turnover low. However, I suspect paying attention to macroeconomic issues will pay dividends because this is largely dismissed by the Buffett faithful as an exercise in futility. Likewise, active investing will be rewarded because Bogle’s brainchild, the index fund, is far too popular.

    At the end of 1988 I suggested looking forward, not backward:

    The world is still in the early stages of a third economic wave—the transition from an industrial to an information-based economy. Innovators tend to lead, whereas imitators tend to lag such waves. As the world’s best imitators, the Japanese capitalized on the ending of the industrial age. As the world’s best innovators, Americans should be the main beneficiaries of the beginning of the information age.

    That advice still holds today. The information age is thirty-four years older, but shows no signs of slowing down (although it has become far more global and not nearly as concentrated in Silicon Valley). Likewise, the “hockey stick of human prosperity” is still early, having begun just 250 or so years ago, up against five thousand years of recorded history. “You can’t afford not to be invested in the relentless ascent of man,” advises Dan Ferris in so many wise words.

    All bubbles are destructive in nature and based on a false belief that must be exposed and repudiated. In this case, the bad seed is government as universal problem solver. Bear markets have their place, to impart lessons, change behavior, restore health, and introduce the deluded to reality.

    Major tops are a process, not an event. The trend in centralized power was a long time in the making. Its reversal could play out over a century or more (with plenty of heart-wrenching rallies along the way). The transition will be messy and painful for those who are unprepared or live in the past, but wildly bullish long-term as the government parasite withers and dies.

    If I am right, the everything bubble helped seal the fate of big government. The state will increasingly be seen as an impediment to human progress and vestige of the past.

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

  • Trans-Pacific Shipping Rates Plunge 75% As US Retail Demand Falters
    Trans-Pacific Shipping Rates Plunge 75% As US Retail Demand Falters

    The problem with price inflation is that it often makes it impossible to track the true health of consumer demand.  For example, in August of this year Walmart reported a jump is overall sales, but also a decline in profits.  How is this possible?  Spiking inflation in most goods means people have to pay more for the same amount of stuff they usually buy.  But, Walmart also has to deal with higher wholesale prices and declining customer purchases as people start to make cuts to their retail budgets.

    In other words, inflation makes it seem like sales are increasing when in reality profits are plummeting.

    Another way to track actual retail performance without price inflation obscuring reality is to examine shipping volume and shipping rates.  In the summer, import volumes to the US began dropping off a cliff, indicating that consumer demand was indeed being affected by inflation/stagflation.  Now, trans-pacific shipping rates have also plunged at least 75%.  Shipping companies are reporting that empty cargo containers are becoming frequent in freight to the US, with companies scrambling to adjust after two years of boats overflowing with goods.

      

    One thing that is important to note is that this process has been ongoing and has very little to do with the Federal Reserve’s rate hike program.  It is a separate issue tied directly to price inflation and Fed rate hikes have been ineffective in dealing with this problem.

    Another issue that needs to be addressed is that prices are still high.  Faltering consumer demand is not dragging inflation back down to Earth as many economists expect, and this is a direct consequence of a stagflationary environment rather than a purely deflationary one.  Prices on many goods (necessities in particular) stay high or continue to climb while demand falls.  This is caused by high costs in raw materials, manufacturing and wages translating over to high prices in wholesale.  Retailers cannot lower prices much despite falling demand because profit margins are so thin.

    The huge decline in volumes and shipping rates signal an important shift in the US economy and are a warning of changes to come.  Most importantly, the drop indicates that the $8 trillion in covid stimulus money that was helicopter dropped on the public in 2020 and 2021 is now gone, or at least, the effects are finally ending.  But what does this mean?

    First, it means job demand is going to explode.  The millions of workers that were happy to live off of unemployment, covid welfare and their parents rather than participate in the economy are now going to be searching for work.  And, for now, there are plenty of empty job positions for them to fill.  This means a continuing jump in employment as job availability sees declines.  

    However, with profits slumping and demand falling the US will then see actual job losses and mass layoffs.  Stagflation will continue to hold until unemployment hits a level that affects manufacturing and costs in raw materials.  This will likely take some time.

    The point is, the economy is not going to behave within the traditionally accepted mechanics.  We are not dealing with a standard inflationary crisis or a standard deflationary crisis.  There are elements of both at play, and the instability is much worse than was witnessed during the stagflationary event of the 1970s.  

    The US is now entering a stage of implosion in demand, inevitably followed by rising unemployment.          

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/11/2022 – 20:00

  • Microplastics Detected In Human Breast Milk, Raising Concerns Over Health Impact On Babies
    Microplastics Detected In Human Breast Milk, Raising Concerns Over Health Impact On Babies

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

    A new study has detected microplastics in human breast milk for the first time, sparking concerns over the potential toxic effects and health impact they may have on infants.

    Microplastics have been detected in rice, an Australian research paper has found.(Joker/Alexander Stein/Getty Images)

    Researchers in the study found microplastics composed of polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and polypropylene with sizes ranging from 2 to 12 micrometers in the breast milk of women.

    Microplastics (MPs) are extremely small plastic particles composed of mixtures of polymers and functional additives.

    The majority of MPs are unintentionally released into the environment during the disposal and breakdown of larger plastic products or industrial waste, although they are also deliberately manufactured and added to products like exfoliating facial scrubs.

    Researchers in the study took breast milk samples from 34 healthy new mothers who were lactating a week after giving birth in Rome, Italy. Their milk was then analyzed by Raman microspectroscopy, which found MPs in 26 of the 34 women.

    The researchers recorded the women’s consumption of food and drink in plastic packaging and of seafood, as well as their use of personal care products containing plastic compounds.

    However, they did not find any significant relationship between the two, which they said suggested “that the ubiquitous MP presence makes human exposure inevitable.”

    The researchers pointed to a previous study they had conducted in 2020 that found microplastics in human placentas and said that this discovery, coupled with the latest findings of MPs in human breast milk, “represents a great concern since it impacts the extremely vulnerable population of infants.”

    “In fact, the chemicals possibly contained in foods, beverages, and personal care products consumed by breastfeeding mothers may be transferred to the offspring, potentially exerting a toxic effect,” the study authors wrote.

    “Hence, it is mandatory to increase efforts in scientific research to deepen the knowledge of the potential health impairment caused by MP internalization and accumulation, especially in infants, and to assess innovative, useful ways to reduce exposure to these contaminants during pregnancy and lactation,” researchers added.

    Breastfeeding Benefits Outweigh Disadvantages

    Valentina Notarstefano at the Universita Politecnica delle Marche, in Ancona, Italy, told The Guardian that it is crucial to find ways for pregnant women to reduce exposure to these contaminants, both during pregnancy and breastfeeding.

    However, she pointed to the advantages of breastfeeding, which she said outweighed the disadvantages caused by the presence of polluting microplastics.

    “Studies like ours must not reduce breastfeeding of children, but instead raise public awareness to pressure politicians to promote laws that reduce pollution,” Notarstefano said.

    “We would like to advise pregnant women to pay greater attention to avoiding food and drink packaged in plastic, cosmetics, and toothpaste containing microplastics, and clothes made of synthetic fabrics,” Notarstefano added.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/11/2022 – 19:40

  • Saudi Arabia Defied Biden's Threats Ahead Of OPEC+ Production Cut
    Saudi Arabia Defied Biden’s Threats Ahead Of OPEC+ Production Cut

    We already know that the Biden administration was humiliated on the international scene last week when OPEC+ cut oil output by 2 million barrels (really more like 1 million when netting out reduced Russian capacity) in stark contrast to the position held by the White House and thus driving a stake through the admin’s plan to keep draining the SPR until the midterms thus delivering the lowest possible gas price on November 8 (with zero regard for what happens the next day now that the US emergency oil reserve is one-third smaller), but we didn’t know just how much delight the Saudi crown prince derived from snubbing George Soros’ closest circle.

    We now do: according to the WSJ, days before last week’s major oil-production cut by OPEC and its Russia-led allies, Biden admin officials called their counterparts in Saudi Arabia and other big Gulf producers with an urgent appeal — delay the decision for another month, according to people familiar with the talks. The answer, as we already know, “a resounding no.”

    But this wasn’t your kindly, ole grandpa Biden politely asking Riyadh for a favor: instead, in US officials unleashed full-blown threat mode and warned Saudi leaders that “a cut would be viewed as a clear choice by Riyadh to side with Russia in the Ukraine war and that the move would weaken already-waning support in Washington for the kingdom.”

    Of course, as everyone knows by now, Saudi officials dismissed the requests “which they viewed as a political gambit by the Biden administration to avoid bad news ahead of the U.S. midterm elections” on which control of Congress hangs. High gas prices and inflation have been central issues in the campaign; in fact it is safe to say that with the midterms in the rearview mirror, both Biden’s and Powell’s urgency in “containing” inflation will disappear, and we may well experience the first official pivot just days after November 8.

    However, instead of complying with Biden’s threats of lumping Saudi Arabia in the same group of “baddy” nations as Russia and China, the kingdom leaned on its OPEC allies to approve the cut, which is precisely what happened as OPEC+ became the latest global front to opposite the Biden admin.

    The White House denounced the move and vowed to fight OPEC’s control of the energy market. Lawmakers from across the political spectrum called on the U.S. to cut off arms sales to Saudi Arabia. And U.S. officials started looking for ways to punish Riyadh. Earlier today, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said that Biden is re-evaluating the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia: “I think the president’s been very clear that this is a relationship that we need to continue to re-evaluate, that we need to be willing to revisit. And certainly in light of the OPEC decision, I think that’s where he is”, he told CNN.

    According to the WSJ, in one of its first responses to follow,  the Biden administration is weighing whether to withdraw from participation in Saudi Arabia’s flagship Future Investment Initiative investment forum later this month (surely that will teach them the lesson of a lifetime).

    Biden’s henchmen said the OPEC+ decision was unhelpful as inflation driven by high energy prices threatens global growth and represents an economic weapon against the West for Russian President Vladimir Putin. It threatens to drive up American gasoline prices ahead of the Nov. 8 midterms. And apparently in Biden’s mind (really Soros’ mind), it’s inconceivable that Saudi Arabia will put its own interest ahead of those of the democratic party.

    The one-month delay requested by Washington – which once and for all shows that to Biden the only thing that matters is the price of gas on Nov 7 – would have meant a production cut made in the days before the election, too late to have much effect on consumers’ wallets ahead of the vote.

    In response, Adel al Jubeir, Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs, said the kingdom is committed to ensuring oil-market stability and noted that OPEC+ had increased output through much of the year. He said global economic headwinds justified the decision to cut production.

    He blamed the Washington reaction on “the emotions that have to do with the upcoming elections,” in an interview that aired on Fox News on Sunday. “The idea that Saudi Arabia would do this to harm the U.S. or to be in any way politically involved is not correct at all.”

    Well… maybe a little, especially when considering the aftermath of the fistbumb optics:

    Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia in July was meant to repair relations after the president entered office with a vow to treat the kingdom as a “pariah” over human rights, particularly the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi agents. Images of the president’s fist bump with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman became a polarizing symbol of the trip, especially when contrasted with historical photos of MBS with Putin.

    According to people inside the Saudi government, Biden’s July visit did little to change Prince Mohammed’s determination to chart a foreign policy independent of U.S. influence, in a break from almost 80 years of American-Saudi partnership.

    If anything, the WSJ sources said, the visit enraged Prince Mohammed, who was upset that Biden went public with his private comments to the Saudi royal over Khashoggi’s death, which prompted Saudi officials to publicly contradict Biden’s characterization of their interaction. Naturally, US officials – as always clueless to diplomatic nuance – said they saw no indications in their talks with Saudi leaders in recent months that Biden’s comments about Mr. Khashoggi had been damaging to ties.

    Prince Mohammed, who runs the kingdom day to day for his father, King Salman, has tried to maximize Saudi Arabia’s economic strength. With high energy prices, the kingdom’s economic growth this year is estimated by the IMF at more than 10%—making it one of the best performers globally. According to the WSJ, Prince Mohammed has told advisers that he isn’t willing to sacrifice much for the Biden administration, or anything it appears, citing its critical view of the Saudi war in Yemen, bid to close a nuclear deal with Iran that Riyadh opposes and Biden’s own comments on the prince.

    It gets even more humiliating:

    In August, the Saudis had planned to push OPEC+ to raise oil production by 500,000 barrels a day in an effort to please Mr. Biden, but Prince Mohammed ordered the increase lowered to a token 100,000 barrels a day after the Biden visit, the people inside the Saudi government said.

    And it only went downhill from there:

    The U.S. State Department’s energy-security envoy, Amos Hochstein, sent the Saudi energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, an email that suggested he had broken his word promising a larger increase, people familiar with the matter said.

    The email angered Prince Abdulaziz and strengthened his resolve to forge an oil policy independent of the U.S., the people said.

    Which brings us to today when the US is thinking what, if anything, it will do in response:

    The White House has said the OPEC+ decision shows that the group is clearly aligned with Russia now. U.S. officials warned that the Saudi move could imperil more than $100 million in active foreign military sales that Riyadh is seeking from the U.S.

    U.S. lawmakers announced plans to reintroduce a bill to immediately suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Any hopes the Saudis had of securing more precision guided missiles from the U.S. have been all but quashed, U.S. officials said.

    Some U.S. lawmakers want to pull American troops out of Saudi Arabia. And Senate leaders from both parties are backing a bill that would allow the Justice Department to sue Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations for illegal price fixing.

    In other words, what goes around comes around, as the US is gradually realizing as it also realizes that it has successfully alienated majority of the world’s population.

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

    More in the full WSJ report (link here).

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/11/2022 – 19:20

  • "Medical Censorship": Dr. Peter McCullough Responds To Twitter Ban
    “Medical Censorship”: Dr. Peter McCullough Responds To Twitter Ban

    Authored by Zachary Stieber and Steve Lance via The Epoch Times,

    Dr. Peter McCullough says Twitter banned him despite there being no change in how he’s been posting on the Big Tech platform.

    “Twitter claimed that I violated the community rules after thousands of consistent posts on scientific abstracts, and manuscripts. This was very carefully done. I was bringing the world the truth on pandemic response through the media and this was purely of the highest scientific integrity and analysis, and my tweeting pattern didn’t change,” McCullough told NTD’s “Capitol Report.”

    According to images shared with the Epoch Media Group, which includes NTD, Twitter removed all of McCullough’s followers.

    After McCullough’s legal team interacted with Twitter workers, “Twitter is backing off,” according to McCullough, though he has still not been restored to the social media website.

    “They initially didn’t allow me to download the data. They wiped out all the users in my account, and now they’re backpedaling. We’ll see what happens this week. But this is just another example of medical censorship by Big Tech on doctors who have the freedom, according to the First Amendment, to express their scientific views through freedom of speech,” McCullough said.

    McCullough, a former vice chief of internal medicine at Baylor University Medical Center and now the chief medical adviser for the Truth for Health Foundation, said that he’s been providing updates on COVID-19 vaccines and related pandemic issues due to a feeling of responsibility.

    “I felt I had the medical authority and professional responsibility to lead the nation. I’ve testified twice now in the U.S. Senate, multiple state senates. I’ve messaged the best I can through the peer reviewed literature as well as with podcasts and now Substack formats. People look to me for my analysis because I’ve been accurate and I’ve been conservative and reasonable in my statements,” he said. “And we haven’t seen any of that type of professional activity, any of that level of excellence, from our public health officials. They’ve let us down greatly.”

    McCullough has already turned to Twitter competitors like Truth Social but is optimistic about Twitter as Tesla founder Elon Musk pursues a purchase of the platform.

    “The Twitter story is not over. Elon Musk back on purchasing Twitter offers some hope that this really dark time of of censorship and Twitter manipulating people’s accounts to advance the government false narrative, hopefully, this era is coming to the close with the acquisition and new management of Twitter,” McCullough said.

    McCullough, a cardiologist, has warned against the COVID-19 vaccines for months, pointing to studies that have found an elevated risk of post-vaccination heart inflammation and other serious conditions.

    “Now we have hundreds of manuscripts published on myocarditis, heart inflammation,” McCullough added, indicating a recent paper that found a higher risk for young people after COVID-19 vaccination than after COVID-19 itself, and autopsies conducted on fatal cases of heart inflammation, some of which have suggested a causal link between the issues and the vaccines.

    “So when we see young people now dying, unexpectedly dying, either during sports or during sleep, in my view it should be considered COVID-19 subclinical myocarditis and sudden cardiac death until proven otherwise,” McCullough said.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/11/2022 – 19:00

  • China Gives Clearest Sign Yet It Will Stick With Zero-COVID Strategy
    China Gives Clearest Sign Yet It Will Stick With Zero-COVID Strategy

    One of the most prevalent pipe dreams in markets in recent months, even more widespread than the inevitable – if not imminent – Fed pivot is that China will capitulate on its long-standing Zero-COVID policy (despite it being a perfectly convenient scapegoat for Xi to deflect anger at the slowing economy) during this month’s 20th party Congress, despite skeptical insiders such as China Beige Book warning that this isn’t going to happen.

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

    Well, it appears that the market will be disappointed yet again.

    According to SCMP, for the second day in a row, China’s Communist Party mouthpiece, People’s Daily, urged the country to stick with its zero-Covid strategy, “dampening hopes that controls would ease after a pivotal political meeting this month.” The commentary was the clearest sign yet, according to the SCMP editor, that the party is determined to continue with the stringent zero-Covid approach after its twice-a-decade national congress, which starts this Sunday. On Monday, the newspaper called for confidence and patience with the zero-Covid strategy, which aims to cut all virus transmission chains.

    Xi Jinping has been portrayed by state media as leading a national pandemic control effort that has resulted in few deaths. He has staked considerable political capital on the purported superiority of China’s handling of the pandemic compared with the West.  Still, the public and countless investors had hoped for a shift from the present measures after the 20th party congress, where Xi is expected to secure a precedent-breaking third term as the party’s top leader.

    According to Tuesday’s commentary, China’s dynamic zero-Covid approach has balanced pandemic control with economic and social development, allowing China to achieve “extremely low” mortality and “smooth” social and economic functioning.

    “Dynamic zero is the anti-epidemic strategy with the lowest overall social cost and is the best option for the timely control of epidemics in China at this stage,” it said.

    State news agency Xinhua also joined the chorus on Tuesday and called for the country to “build resilience and stamina” and not to “lie flat” – a term Chinese officials and media use for coexisting with the virus. To be sure, pressure for China to abandon its Covid zero strategy has been mounting as the world’s second-largest economy faces a historic slowdown. The most recent World Bank projections put China’s GDP growth for the year at 2.8%, down from its initial forecast of 5% and well below the rest of Asia.

    The recent National Day holiday, traditionally a week-long spending and travel spree, saw trips drop 18 per cent from a year earlier and 39% compared to 2019 levels. Tourism revenues fell 26 per cent from the same period last year and totalled less than half of those earned in 2019. The country’s people, who have cooperated with frequent testing, sudden lockdowns and travel restrictions, have grown increasingly frustrated by the disruptions to daily life.

    Meanwhile, China has seen a rebound in Covid-19 cases in recent weeks fuelled by stealthier and more transmissible variants.

    Case counts have slowly climbed, with nearly new 2,100 local infections reported on Tuesday, though total cases remain much lower than in countries that have opted to coexist with the virus. In response, local governments have doubled down on efforts to contain the spread. Some cities in eastern Zhejiang province have asked travellers to complete testing within 1½ hours of arrival or face restrictions that would ban them from entering public places.

    Other cities have imposed lockdowns even when there are few infections. In the city of Yongji in Shanxi province, a three-day lockdown was imposed as a precaution, though no local infections were reported.

    In Beijing, some primary school pupils were sent home after infections were found at a game shop in the downtown Qianmen area. The capital city has had 54 local infections since September 29, and local party chief Cai Qi vowed to handle the outbreak as if “facing an abyss and walking on thin ice”.

    “We must make every effort to guard against new outbreaks and quickly and decisively handle it … to ensure the safety of the capital,” Cai said at a meeting on Saturday.

    Tuesday’s commentary recognized the challenge of containing outbreaks across the country, but said “the more this happens, the more we must appreciate that dynamic zero is sustainable and must be adhered to”.

    The epidemic is a big test. If the epidemic can be prevented, the economy can be stabilised, people’s lives can be safe and secure, and economic and social development can be smooth and healthy,” it said.

    “Compared to some countries that have relaxed travel and mask restrictions, China lags behind when it comes to vaccination and booster shot rates among the elderly. Some 90 per cent of China’s population received a primary dose of a vaccine, but only about 57 per cent received a booster shot. Among people 60 years or older – a group more vulnerable to severe Covid-19 – only 70 per cent received a booster jab.

    Citing the country’s large population and imbalanced healthcare resources, People’s Daily said relaxed controls would inevitably raise the risk of infections in susceptible populations, and the spread of cases would deal a serious blow to the economy and social development.

    “[We] will end up paying a higher price and suffer bigger losses,” it said, almost hinting that China will keep using covid zero as a scapegoat for all economic weakness for years to come…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/11/2022 – 18:40

  • Conservatives Should Be More Brave, Proactive, And Leverage Weaknesses Of The Left: Professor
    Conservatives Should Be More Brave, Proactive, And Leverage Weaknesses Of The Left: Professor

    Authored by Ella Kietlinska and Joshua Philipp via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    In the face of extreme policies peddled by the radical left, conservatives need to respond more boldly by using the power of institutions and leverage the weaknesses shown by the left to stop its destructive policies, according to a professor and researcher at a school of government.

    David Azerrad, assistant professor and research fellow at Hillsdale College’s Van Andel Graduate School of Government in Washington, on Dec. 17, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

    Extreme politics that brought about pushing transgender ideology on children, the southern border crisis, and crime surges in big cities requires “strong, real, self-confident men and women to say ’absolutely no’ to this,” said David Azerrad, an assistant professor and research fellow at Hillsdale College’s Van Andel Graduate School of Government.

    Many young people at colleges and universities who advocate for woke principles do not truly believe in them, Azerrad told EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program in an interview on Sept. 12.

    “The kids who are at these elite universities are careerists. They’re ambitious … So they do the woke posturing because they feel pressure to their left,” Azerrad said, “but they never pay a price.”

    “If you started putting pressure [on them], a lot of them would fold in line and collapse like a deck of cards,” the professor said.

    For example, if a prestigious university institutes a policy that any student who disrupts a speaker is immediately expelled from the university with no diploma, the students’ behavior would change as they will not be willing to sacrifice a diploma for their woke principles, Azerrad explained.

    Not True Believers

    Students walk through Sproul Plaza on the University of California–Berkeley campus in Berkeley, Calif., on April 23, 2012. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

    Some say that wokeness is a religion, Azerrad continued, but religions “produce people who sacrifice their lives for the cause.”

    “I don’t see a lot of that with our wokeness. I see a lot of signaling. I see a lot of performative wokeness,” Azerrad noted, “and this gives me hope because it means they could be crushed more readily because they’re not genuine fanatics.”

    There are, however, young people who are true believers, Azerrad said, making it clear that he could not provide the percentage of them.

    Supporting the woke stuff is for young people the way to get into good universities to climb the corporate ranks. Azerrad said, but ultimately” the ruling passion in their soul is not a passion for social justice–it’s comfortable living.”

    Azerrad said he believes that if they are forced through the power of the institutions to make a choice, many of them would fall in line. But this approach has not been tried on them all that much, he added. “This is another thing that gives me hope.”

    The pollings do not indicate that Millennials and Generation Z, also known as Zoomers, have turned conservative, but there is a mounting backlash of millennials and Zoomers who are much more right-wing than the Boomers or Generation X, Azerrad noted.

    “Right now, it’s not a large number,” but polling is static and can change, Azerrad said. “Don’t discount the power of statesmanship and effective governance and powerful rhetoric to move hearts and minds. … There’s more and more appetite and energy, and more dissent amongst them that I think could be harnessed, channeled, deepened, and broadened.”

    Putting Pressure on Ruling Class

    Azerrad thinks that the ruling class is much weaker than perceived because they hire and promote government servants based on diversity criteria instead of competence level.

    Therefore, they are not capable of running these major institutions as efficiently and ruthlessly as they could, Azerrad pointed out.

    “The right needs to just learn from the left,” said Azerrad, who teaches students his thoughts on the new left, including its theorists from Herbert Marcuse and the Frankfurt School.

    Herbert Marcuse was a prominent Marxist scholar of the Frankfurt School, a group of Marxist theorists first associated with the University of Frankfurt in Germany and later with Columbia University in New York upon relocating to the United States in 1935.

    “[The new left] view themselves as a minority, which they were at the time, who want to take over institutions that are hostile to their beliefs,” Azerrad said.

    It would be helpful for the right to think in terms of defunding adversary institutions, having them bear the consequences of their woke actions, and rewarding and honoring friendly institutions, Azerrad said. “Know who your political enemies and friends are, and send money and honor only to your friends.”

    Guests are seen at Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, in a file photo. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Feb. 24, 2022. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP; Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

    For example, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis revoked a tax break for a multi-billion corporation over its woke actions, Azerrad said.

    In April, DeSantis signed a legislature-passed bill to dissolve Walt Disney World’s self-governing status in central Florida. The revocation could have significant tax implications for Disney.

    The move came after Disney issued a critical statement about a DeSantis-backed bill, the Parental Rights in Education bill, that prohibits teachers from instructing about sexual orientation and gender identity topics to children under the third grade.

    There should be more governors taking similar actions. Azerrad said. “[This is] using the power of institutions we control to put the corporations back in their place.”

    However, the right should not copy the left in their actions aimed at attacking their political opponents, Azerrad said.

    “You should not attack a Democratic elected official who’s dining with their family at a restaurant. That’s unacceptable” Azerrad warned. “You shouldn’t issue death threats to sitting Justices of the Supreme Court, who are appointed by a Democratic president.”

    Republicans Need to Play Active Role

    The right usually focuses in its policies on tax cuts, school choice, and bolstering the military with money, Azerrad said. It also did some occupational licensing reform, but it “has not dealt some devastating blows to the left” that would be equivalent to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Azerrad pointed out.

    The Civil Rights Act ended segregation in public places and prohibited employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/11/2022 – 18:20

  • Nobody Has Traded 10Y Japanese Govt Bonds For 3 Days!
    Nobody Has Traded 10Y Japanese Govt Bonds For 3 Days!

    No trades (none!) were reported overnight in the benchmark 10Y Japanese Government Bond (JGB) for the third straight day.

    This is the longest such occurrence since 1999 when it became the benchmark.

    Trading volumes in JGBs have dried up over the years as the BOJ scooped up sizable chunks of the debt to keep a cap on yields, now holding just shy of 50% of all JGBs.

    Simply put, as one veteran JGB trader remarked privately to us, “there is no [cash] market anymore.”

    Traders also lack the incentive to trade benchmark 10-year notes because they expect yields to rise as the Fed aggressively tightens monetary policy, according to Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities.

    “The BOJ’s fixed-rate operations have become the JGB trading floor,” said Katsutoshi Inadome, a strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ in Tokyo.

    “Players are guaranteed to find a solid buyer who also buys large lots.”

    Bid-ask spreads for JGBs have exploded since March as inflation fears ripped through global bond markets (but BoJ remains stuck in its easing policy framework)…

    Finally, we note that the issue of diminishing liquidity isn’t limited to Japanese bonds.

    Bank of America analysts warned in a note this month that shrinking trading volumes in the US Treasury market may be one of the greatest threats to global financial stability.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/11/2022 – 18:00

  • What If The Truth Never Comes Out?
    What If The Truth Never Comes Out?

    Authored by Julie Ponese via The Epoch Times,

    This is the question that seems to be on the minds of many these days.

    The attempt to reach “zero-COVID” was a colossal failure. Original claims of mRNA vaccine efficacy have reportedly been shown to be based on falsified data. Excess mortality is spiking across the globe. And the Canadian government finally admits they have a multi-million dollar contract (pdf) with the World Economic Forum for Traveler Digital ID. What was fiction and then conspiracy theory is now reality.

    Many believe we are approaching a tipping point, that we are on the verge of a revelatory storm, that the truth is finally coming out.

    And yet most people still believe in the narrative, still cling to the idea that lockdowns and masking were necessary and effective, that their questioning friends are unstable “anti-vaxxers,” that government is noble and mainstream media unimpeachable. And from the files of the truly unfathomable, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) is now urging doctors to prescribe drugs and even psychotherapy to their noncompliant patients. The tipping point is hardly a sure thing.

    What if we never reach it? What if the guilty are never held to account? What if we forget only to transgress again and again?

    Anecdotes of the harms of the last two years are palpable but ignored. Patients complain of symptoms their doctors won’t acknowledge. Citizens tell stories the media ignores. Family members try to open dialogue only to be shut down. The stories are told but, for the most part, they aren’t being heard.

    I recently interviewed Trish Wood who moderated the Citizens’ Hearing about the harms of our public health response to COVID-19. She wrote that, a week later, she still felt shaken by the magnitude of what she heard: the damage done to careers, families, and children by the blinkered approach of public health experts. She heard the stories of doctors who were silenced when trying to advocate for patients, people whose lives were forever changed by vaccine injury, and, most tragically, stories of those like Dan Hartman, whose teenage son died following mRNA vaccination.

    Trish wrote powerfully about the importance of taking account of embedding the acknowledgment of these harms in our collective moral conscience. Her words are, dare I say, reminiscent of Elie Wiesel’s.

    In the aftermath of the Holocaust, at a time when the world was so morally injured, so eager for a new start, Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel saw it as his responsibility to speak for those who had been silenced. At a time when most could not bear to remember, Wiesel could not bear to forget. He wrote:

    “I believe firmly and profoundly that whoever listens to a witness becomes a witness, so those who hear us, those who read us must continue to bear witness for us. Until now, they’re doing it with us. At a certain point in time, they will do it for all of us.”

    Weisel’s words are hauntingly poignant for our time.

    Those who tell the stories of the injured knowing they will be ignored, who advocate for patients only to be censured, who highlight the children who have died by suicide rather than from COVID-19 only to be silenced do it because they believe that a cry in the dark will eventually be heard. And even if it isn’t, they feel obligated to testify on behalf of those who can’t speak for themselves.

    I apologize if my reference to Nazi atrocities offends you. My aim in making the comparison is not to be irreverent but purposeful. True, the atrocities of our time are not identical to those of 1930s and ’40s Europe. But they don’t need to be to learn important moral lessons from them. Wiesel’s promise of “never again” was not just to past victims of atrocities but to all future victims as well.

    This is how the battle will be fought now, whether the truth about the last two years will be dragged into the open or revised into oblivion. We are already seeing backpedaling among our officials, whose mishandling of the pandemic is undeniable.

    But that is beyond my point. We have relied for too long on institutions to do the remembering for us, to generate moral responsibility on our behalf. In the era of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, personal accountability has been trained out of us. We were taught to believe that institutions would act as our surrogate moral conscience, taking account and making apology for us. I don’t deny the importance of collective responsibility. But sometimes moral injury is personal, done by individuals to one another, and the accountability needs to happen in kind.

    There are few who are not personally complicit in the harms of the last two years. And the temptation to put on the armor of the bystander is powerful, to say we weren’t involved, that we “had no choice.” But complicity is a form of moral action, sometimes the most powerful there is.

    Wouldn’t it be lovely if our moral slate could be wiped clean, if we could be absolved of all the hurt we have caused? But this doesn’t honor the truth, and it’s not the way we exercise our humanity.

    What if the truth never comes out?

    It may not.

    But if it doesn’t, it shouldn’t be because we ignored those crying out to us, because we stood behind a shield of compliance and deference. The road back to freedom, unity, and reconciliation starts with testimony and accountability, and we need to take those painful first few steps now.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 10/11/2022 – 17:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Oct 11

Today’s News 11th October 2022

  • Shellenberger: Biden Is Failing The World
    Shellenberger: Biden Is Failing The World

    Authored by Michael Shellenberg via Substack,

    The world desperately needs energy and yet President Joe Biden is preventing sufficient quantities of oil and gas from being produced…

    Below is the written transcript of the above video. Additional slides and graphs are in the video.

    Many people in the U.S. are still unaware of just how dire the situation is in Europe. They have started logging their old-growth forests for wood fuel to stay warm during the winter. You can see in a tweet that just came out today from somebody in Denmark that “people are stealing each other’s wood pellets and their wood briquettes as soon as they’re delivered.” To make matters worse, “There’s constant reports of cars having their tanks drilled and their gas stolen.” Remember, it’s not even winter yet. Winter’s actually over 72 days away. So this is a very serious situation.

    You can see that in Poland people are actually burning trash to stay warm. Burning trash in your fireplace creates toxic smoke. It’s hazardous. The government’s considering handing out masks so people can breathe more safely when they’re outdoors.

    Recall that natural gas is the reason the United States reduced its carbon emissions more than any other country in the world. Carbon emissions have been on the decline globally, in large measure, because of the transition from coal to gas. Natural gas is something that most reasonable people agree is a superior fuel to coal. Natural gas is the reason the United States reduced its emissions by 22% between 2005 and 2020, which is five percentage points more than the United States had agreed to reduce our emissions under cap and trade legislation, which nearly passed Congress in 2010 and under the UN Paris Climate Agreement.

    The above is a graph that was produced by Matthew Yglesias, a well-known progressive blogger. He tweets it out whenever somebody points out that President Biden isn’t doing all he can to expand oil and gas production. It’s accurate. It does show that oil production increased on a daily average under Biden from under Trump. But it’s deeply misleading. You have to remember that under Trump, the Coronavirus pandemic, for several months, massively slashed oil production.

    You can see from the below chart of the EIA data on crude oil production that we still haven’t gotten back to where we were before the pandemic. Now consider how the need is much greater for US oil now that Europe and the United States are rejecting Russian oil.

    The United States is the biggest liquified natural gas exporter, it’s true. But it takes five years to bring online new LNG capacity in the United States.

    So all of the new LNG that’s come online during Biden’s presidency was due to past presidents.

    And Biden has leased less land than any President since World War II. It’s a shockingly small amount of land: 130,000 acres as opposed to seven million acres under Obama, four million acres under Trump, during the first 19 months of their administrations.

    It’s a huge reduction in the amount of land being leased.

    You can see that in some particular cases, like a very large oil and gas sale in Alaska, the Department of Interior claimed there wasn’t any industry interest in the lease. This turned out not to be the case. The Senator from Alaska, Lisa Markowski said, “I can say with full certainty based on conversations as recently as last night, that Alaska’s industry does have an interest in lease sales and the Cook Inlet to claim otherwise is simply false, not to mention stunningly shortsighted.”

    People point out the oil and gas industry does have many thousands of leases, and that’s true, but there’s a high degree of uncertainty about whether the leases they have will produce oil and gas at levels that make sense economically to produce from.

    So increasing oil and gas leasing at a time of an energy crisis in Europe seems like a no-brainer, but the Biden administration is not doing that. In fact, it’s been preventing the expansion of gas in many other ways.

    You can see the Biden administration denied a request to have a formaldehyde regulation exempted. All else being equal, you’d wanna reduce that pollution. But I think a little bit of formaldehyde is gonna be a less toxic airborne event than having people breathing toxic wood and plastic smoke in Europe. The right thing to do, in terms of aiding our allies, would be to wave that regulation. But the Biden administration refused.

    You can see that the Biden administration is actively considering forgoing all new offshore drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific. It may do no offshore leases at all for oil and gas.

    Instead, the Biden administration has sought to give sanctions relief to Venezuela in the hopes that Venezuela would produce more oil. And of course, most famously Biden went to Saudi Arabia to ask the Saudis to produce more oil in July. Now, everybody agrees that was a huge foreign policy failure. The Saudis announced they would be cutting production with the rest of OPEC+. The Biden administration’s pressure on the Saudis apparently annoyed them. Now, they’ve been pushed closer into the arms of Russia. This is a pretty significant setback for the Biden administration.

    At the same time Biden was going to Venezuela and Saudi Arabia to produce more oil. Biden administration was refusing to even meet with oil and gas executives. That’s a pretty serious snub when you consider that it’s an industry you want to expand production.

    An oil and gas analyst on Twitter criticized a Senator from Wisconsin for suggesting the Democrats are responsible for the lack of refining capacity. He said, “What — do you also blame a political party for a flat tire?”

    I pointed out that a single oil refinery outage would have little impact if we had sufficient refinery capacity, and the reason we don’t is that politicians, mostly Democrats have used regulations to prevent their construction. When I interviewed executives one said to me, “If you were an oil company, why would you invest hundreds of millions of dollars into expanding refining capacity if you thought the federal government would shut you down in the next few years? The narrative coming out of this administration is absolutely insane.”

    So you can see here that refinery capacity was increasing all the way through 2020. It then declined due to the pandemic. And it has not risen since then. When the analyst was asked, why don’t we get more refineries? He clearly didn’t know. Or at least he said he didn’t know. But it’s clear the Biden administration has not wanted more refineries.

    There was a chance to retrofit a major refinery in the US Virgin Islands. It was a refinery that was older. It needed pretty significant upgrades. It was polluting. But these are machines that can be fixed. Several billion dollars of investment would’ve fixed it and it goes back many years. This is an article from 2008. It describes how, at that time, the Democrats in the Senate killed a proposal for refinery expansion.

    Go back to 2006. The same thing happened. The House was in the hands of the Republicans who passed a piece of legislation to expand refineries. And it was the Democrats who killed it. And, incidentally, they’re using the exact same arguments today that they used back then.

    More recently, we’ve seen an attack on expanded natural gas pipeline capacity, including from Pennsylvania to the Northeast, particularly to Boston. The result of not having pipeline capacity is that they’ve been burning more oil for electricity in New England. In fact, oil-fired power jumped to a four-year high earlier this year. And they’ve been having to import liquified natural gas to New England rather than just pipe it in, which is significantly cheaper. Probably half as expensive.

    Grassroots advocacy and lawsuits have prevented pipelines from being built. You can see there’s a strong correlation between the price of natural gas and the ability to get pipelines built. We stop building pipelines and gas gets more expensive. Globally, the impact is that we’re gonna return to coal. This is the consequence of stifling oil and gas production.

    One could argue that we just need more scarcity in order to accelerate the transition to electric cars. But it’s notable that the major figures in this, including President Biden, supporters of President Biden, and representatives of his administration aren’t defending a pro-scarcity position. They’re instead claiming that they’re doing all they can to bring down oil and gas prices and expand production.

    I think this data, and the historical chronology, paint a picture that shows that there has, in fact, been a war on natural gas and oil United States and that it is impacting global supplies, and leaving Europe vulnerable.

    *  *  *

    Subscribe to Michael Shellenberger. Thousands of paid subscribers. Reporting on cities, energy, and the environment.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 23:40

  • "Glock Switch Epidemic" May Be Rippling Through America's Inner Cities
    “Glock Switch Epidemic” May Be Rippling Through America’s Inner Cities

    Gangsters in American cities are increasingly “modifying their firearms to enable fully automatic fire, converting simple handguns into tiny machine guns,” according to The Epoch Times. 

    Called a “switch,” “chip,” or auto sear, these illegal gun parts are being bought from China and can transform a standard semi-automatic Glock into a fully automatic weapon. 

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

    The Trace, a nonprofit news organization focused on gun violence, reported earlier this year that illegal switches could be purchased online for as little as $20. 

    A 2017 report from The Firearm Blog said Glock switches were once available on Amazon. The gun blog continued:

    “Given the size of the Amazon marketplace, it isn’t surprising that some unscrupulous sellers slip through the cracks. Nothing that I saw on the seller’s page indicated they are affiliated with Amazon beyond having a presence on the e-commerce giant’s marketplace.” 

    Though the switches are banned from all e-commerce websites, many were imported from China. 

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

    On the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) website, the federal agency describes these devices as “a relatively simple, albeit illegal, device that allows a conventional semi-automatic Glock pistol to function as a fully automatic firearm. The switch is classified as a machine gun under federal law.”

    This means that anyone possessing a Glock switch that doesn’t have a license to own one will face serious jail time. But this hasn’t stopped gangsters from buying switches from China or illegally making them. 

    While there are no comprehensive national statistics on the proliferation of Glock switches used in violent crime, a story count for the device mentioned in all US media has erupted in the last 12 months. 

    The only issue for the ATF is the 3D printing community has already learned how to make switches — making the need for Chinese ones obsolete.  

    A Glock switch allows the firearm to dump a 30-round magazine in about 2 seconds. Any gangster trying to use the switch will easily miss their target because of rapid recoil. 

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

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

    And why does YouTube allow kids to publish rap videos about illegal gun devices? 

    … 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 23:20

  • It's Time To Tell Biden We Say "NO!" To Nuclear War!
    It’s Time To Tell Biden We Say “NO!” To Nuclear War!

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

    Last week the New York Times ran a shocking article claiming that the US intelligence community believes the Ukrainian government to be responsible for the August attack that killed Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian philosopher.

    Surely the established narrative that Ukraine is a model western democracy standing strong for our shared values against an aggressive Russian invader is damaged with reporting that Kiev conducted an al-Qaeda style attack on an innocent civilian inside Russia.

    The murder of Dugina was a textbook definition of terrorism, which is, “the use of violence or the threat of violence, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political goals.”

    Just over a month later, the Nordstream pipelines were blown up, seemingly ending at least in the near term the possibility that Germany may find a way to save its economy by mending fences with its main energy supplier.

    A leading Polish politician thanked the US for doing the job.

    Then over the weekend, the bridge connecting mainland Russia to Crimea was bombed, killing at least six civilians and leaving part of the bridge under water.

    Traffic was restored hours after the attack, but Russian President Vladimir Putin placed the blame on Ukraine’s intelligence service. We all know that Ukraine relies on its US masters, so we can assume the US provided the intelligence allowing the targeting of the bridge.

    There is a pattern here.

    More and more brazen attacks are being launched against Russia and Washington is doing little to hide US fingerprints. Why?

    The Biden Administration seems to be moving us closer to nuclear war over Ukraine and Biden himself seems to know it. Last week he said, Putin “is not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons…” For the “first time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use [of nuclear weapons] if in fact things continue down the path they are going.”

    So the question is if he knows that his proxy war against Russia is moving us closer to the unthinkable – nuclear annihilation – why does his Administration persist in crossing red line after red line? Apparently, Biden’s “experts” believe that Putin is bluffing and will do nothing about the Dugina assassination, the Nordstream pipeline sabotage, and the Kerch Bridge attack.

    But what if they’re wrong?

    Normally foreign policy action should be weighed on a cost/benefit basis. Will adopting one particular policy benefit the United States more than the risks involved? In this case there is absolutely nothing on the positive side of the ledger. Will the security and prosperity of the United States benefit more from regime change in Russia than it would suffer should nuclear war break out?

    It doesn’t seem all that hard. No.

    So what’s going on here? Why does the US Administration – with the support of most Republicans in Congress – continue to send tens of billions of dollars in military aid and move us toward nuclear war over a conflict that has nothing at all to do with the United States?

    The time to end US participation in this war is yesterday. And if it takes millions of Americans in the streets peacefully protesting while demanding that their representatives stop this madness, then bring it on. Tomorrow may be too late.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 23:00

  • Belarus & Russia Deploying "Regional Grouping" Of Troops, Lukashenko Announces
    Belarus & Russia Deploying “Regional Grouping” Of Troops, Lukashenko Announces

    Belarus appears to be playing a larger role in Russian operations in neighboring Ukraine following the weekend Crimean bridge attack. For starters, Ukraine on Monday charged Belarus with hosting Iranian-made suicide drones which Russian forces used it its major air assault on Kiev. 

    “The enemy used Iranian Shahed-136 UAVs in strikes launched from the territory of Belarus” and the Crimean peninsula, the Ukraine military said in statement, claiming further to have intercepted at least nine of the drones, which were “destroyed.”

    Via kremlin.ru

    But the Ukrainian government and its Western backers are now more alarmed at recent signaling by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who on Monday accused Ukrainian forces of plotting an attack on his territory.

    “I’ve said already that today Ukraine is not just discussing but planning strikes on the territory of Belarus,” state-run Belta quoted Lukashenko as saying. He then indicated Russian troops are being mustered on Belarusian soil, according to the two countries’ longstanding joint security agreement:

    “We have agreed to deploy a regional grouping of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus,” he added.

    These reports have been accompanied by unverified claims which circulated Monday of huge numbers of Russian troops being transferred to Belarus, such as the following: 

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

    It remains as yet unknown the degree to which a large amount of Russian troops are mustering inside Belarusian territory. While Belarus assisted with the initial invasion launch on February 24th, hosting Russians for what were dubbed “training exercises” just before the assault was launched, it hasn’t played a significant role in Putin’s “special operation” since then.

    As for other countries in the region, Poland is growing more nervous about the role of Minsk in executing the war. On Monday the Polish government urged all of its citizens to leave Belarus: 

    “We recommend that Polish citizens staying on the territory of the Republic of Belarus leave its territory with available commercial and private means,” the government said in guidance for travellers published on its website.

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

    As for Warsaw’s new advisory, no specific reasons were given other than continued deteriorating relations amid general tensions related to the ongoing war. But this and other indicators strongly suggest that Minsk could be on the brink of escalating its involvement.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 22:40

  • Hunter Biden's Lawyer Responds To Reports He'll Be Indicted Soon
    Hunter Biden’s Lawyer Responds To Reports He’ll Be Indicted Soon

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

    An attorney for Hunter Biden responded to reports claiming the president’s son may be charged soon over alleged tax crimes.

    “As is proper and legally required, we believe the prosecutors in this case are diligently and thoroughly weighing not just evidence provided by agents, but also all the other witnesses in this case, including witnesses for the defense,” Chris Clark, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, said in a statement to the Washington Times on Friday in response to the reports.

    Then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden at the reviewing stand to watch President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Parade from in front of the White House in Washington on Jan. 20, 2009. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

    Reports suggested that U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss is nearing a decision on whether to charge Hunter Biden and is in discussions with the Department of Justice (DOJ) on how to proceed. Namely, the Washington Post, citing unnamed law enforcement officials, alleged that federal agents have found enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden with tax crimes and making a false statement relating to the purchase of a firearm.

    Clark did not say whether he believes his client will be charged, stating: “That is the job for prosecutors. They should not be pressured, rushed, or criticized for doing this job.”

    Responding to the Washington Post, Clark noted that “it is a federal felony for a federal agent to leak information about a Grand Jury investigation such as this one.”

    “Any agent you cite as a source in [the Post’s] article apparently has committed such a felony,” he said. “We expect the Department of Justice will diligently investigate and prosecute such bad actors.”

    The Epoch Times has contacted the DOJ and Hunter Biden’s lawyer for comment.

    More Details

    For months, there have been rumors and reports suggesting that the younger Biden could face indictment.

    Neither the DOJ nor FBI have gone on record to publicly issue a comment about the progress investigation or what it even entails. Instead, alleged anonymous sources have provided purported information about the probe to the Washington Post, New York Times, and other corporate media outlets.

    About a month after the 2020 election, Hunter Biden and Joe Biden both confirmed Hunter is being investigated due to his tax affairs.

    “I learned … for the first time that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs,” Hunter Biden said in a statement in December 2020. “I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors.”

    U.S. President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden depart from Holy Spirit Catholic Church after attending Mass on St. Johns Island, S.C., on Aug. 13, 2022. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

    It’s not clear if the investigation is linked to business deals in China or Ukraine. Several years ago, Hunter Biden sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings, while his father was the vice president and a key individual handling the Obama administration’s Ukraine affairs.

    While the younger Biden has asserted that he did nothing wrong, during a 2019 interview, he told ABC News in October 2019 that those business arrangements were “poor judgment on my part.”

    “I gave a hook to some very unethical people to act in illegal ways to try to do some harm to my father. That’s where I made the mistake. So I take full responsibility for that. Did I do anything improper? No, not in any way. Not in any way whatsoever,” he insisted.

    Those business deals became the subject of intense interest in late 2020 after the New York Post published messages obtained from a laptop he allegedly left at a computer repair shop in Delaware. Contents of the laptop showed that he had overseas business ties, including with individuals that had links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 22:20

  • World Food Prices Are "Decisively Rolling Over"
    World Food Prices Are “Decisively Rolling Over”

    Global food prices have been tumbling in the back half of the year after nearly two years of soaring.

    Liz Ann Sonders, the chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab, tweeted Monday that the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) global food price index has fallen for six consecutive months after the latest monthly decline of 1.1% in September. 

    Sonders said global food prices are “decisively rolling over,” though some on Twitter disputed her, as she replied: “Decisive seems appropriate given 6-month change is fastest (worst) since GFC.” 

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

    Others said even though food prices around the world appear to be rolling over, US inflation remains stubbornly high. 

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

    Someone complained: “Sure doesn’t feel like it in the grocery store.” 

    “Apparently, our local supermarket hasn’t gotten the message,” another Twitter user said. 

    Someone else said: “None reflected in good old Texas where prices continue to go up daily, especially on n all staples. Milk, eggs, meat all up over 20% and still climbing in major chain.” 

    One user noted the reversal in prices is “Great news for those facing food insecurity,” though we must add world food prices remain above levels that triggered 2010/11 Arab Spring. 

    Recall we pointed out World Food Prices Crash The Most Since 2008 in August. The trend appears welcoming, but the UN warned not too long ago that fertilizer affordability could slash future harvests in the next planting season. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 22:00

  • Trump Asks CNN To Prove His 'Big Lie' About 2020 Elections Is False
    Trump Asks CNN To Prove His ‘Big Lie’ About 2020 Elections Is False

    Authored by Venus Upadhayaya via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Former President Donald Trump, who sued CNN for defamation early this week, said in an interview on Wednesday that the media should prove his allegations about the 2020 presidential election being rigged are false.

    Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Hispanic Leadership Conference in Miami on Oct. 5, 2022, in a still from video. (NTD)

    CNN had termed Trump’s allegations a “big lie,” a term that Trump claimed was coined by anchors to malign his reputation. While talking to hosts John Solomon and Amanda Head on the Real America’s Voice network show “Just The News No Noise” on Oct. 5, Trump said CNN should “prove the big lie.”

    “They’ll say whatever comes to mind. They talk about the big lie. I said, well prove the big lie. The big lie is not a big lie at all. The big lie is the opposite,” said Trump.

    “All the stats—we have everything. Unfortunately, we haven’t had judges that want to look at it. They don’t want to change elections.”

    The former President filed a lawsuit against CNN on Monday, alleging defamation and seeking $475 million in punitive damages.

    “And so we sued CNN for a lot of money and we’ll see how that goes. I think it should go very well,” Trump said.

    The 29-page lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, accuses CNN of having “sought to use its massive influence—purportedly as a ‘trusted’ news source” to defame Trump “for the purpose of defeating him politically.”

    The effort resulted in CNN claiming credit for “[getting] Trump out” in the 2020 presidential election, attorneys for Trump said in the complaint (pdf) adding that the “libel and slander” against Trump has only escalated in recent months because CNN fears Trump’s presidential campaign for 2024.

    “CNN has been given the dreaded ‘Pants on Fire!’ designation by PolitiFact for its stories comparing Trump to Hitler,” said the attorneys.

    They were referring to two psychiatrists discussing coverage of Trump on CNN’s now-canceled “Reliable Sources” program. Allen James Frances, the chairman emeritus of Duke University’s department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, had said on the show: “Trump is as destructive a person in this century as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were in the last century. He may be responsible for many more million deaths than they were. He needs to be contained, but he needs to be contained by attacking his policies, not his person.”

    Politifact, a fact-checking website operated by the Poynter Institute of MediaStudies had done a fact-check on the claim and rated it as “Pants on Fire” on its “Truth-O-Meter,” which means “the statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 21:40

  • 2022 Republican Voters Being Undercounted Again: Trafalgar
    2022 Republican Voters Being Undercounted Again: Trafalgar

    A top independent pollster says Republican voters will be undercounted in the lead-up to the 2022 midterm elections next month – which will likely skew polls in favor of Democrats.

    “These submerged voters aren’t answering polls, they aren’t putting stickers on their cars, or signs in their yard—they’re not even posting on social media,” said Robert Cahaly, the head of the Trafalgar Group, in a Daily Wire podcast – noting that Republicans may not be inclined to reveal their political views after President Biden’s Sept. 1 speech targeting “MAGA Republicans.”

    “They are underwater. They’re not saying a word to anybody until election day.“

    Cahaly added that voters should not trust mainstream polls in the coming weeks – citing previous polls weighted towards Democrats.

    “Polls have two purposes,” he said. “They’re either to reflect the electorate, or they’re to affect the electorate—and too many of these media and university-based polls are designed to affect the electorate and are trying to create a false narrative quite often when there’s not one.”

    Cahaly made reference to the Biden speech in Philadelphia that accused supporters of former President Donald Trump of being a threat to U.S. institutions, coming just a few weeks after the FBI’s raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. While he spoke in front of a dark red-lit background next to two Marines, Biden said Trump and his followers “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations” of the United States. –Epoch Times

    During the 2020 election cycle there were “hidden voters,” Cahaly wrote on Twitter several weeks ago.

    “Now [the] Biden administration has essentially classified ‘MAGA Republicans’ as a threat to democracy marshaling federal law enforcement to focus on them,” he said. “This move has created a new type of voter that will be even harder to poll or even estimate.”

    In Nov. of 2020, Pew Research noted; “It’s clear that national and many state estimates were not just off, but off in the same direction: They favored the Democratic candidate.”

    Pew added that polls “overestimated the Democratic advantage by an average of about 4 percentage points” in 2020. “When looking at national polls, the Democratic overstatement will end up being similar, about 4 points, depending on the final vote count.”

    And in 2016, polls were also inaccurate and were biased in favor of Democrats, Cahaly argued.

    “In 2016, Trump supporters were called ‘Deplorables’ and other unflattering names,” Cahaly said on Twitter, referring to Hillary Clinton’s now-infamous “basket of deplorables” remark. “This was a major contributor to the ‘shy Trump voter’ phenomenon that ‘most’ polling missed, which resulted in a major loss in public confidence for polling flowing the election.” -Epoch Times

    “National polls can misrepresent the electoral college, and statewide polls can obscure outcomes in congressional districts,” former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote in the Epoch Times last month. “In early October 2016, Hillary Clinton was only ahead by 3 points nationally—and she was running up huge margins in California and New York (two of our four most populous states). The media believed she would be the next president. But she didn’t have the advantage in the heavily contested states (which meant she wasn’t winning the electoral college).”

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

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 21:20

  • TikTok Bans The Term "White Lives Matter"
    TikTok Bans The Term “White Lives Matter”

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    TikTok has banned users from even searching for the term “white lives matter,” listing the phrase as being associated with “hateful behavior.”

    Apparently, according to the Chinese-owned video app, which is notorious as perhaps the most censorious in existence, white lives don’t matter.

    When searching for videos or profiles containing the term “white lives matter,” users are met with a message which states, “No results found. This phrase may be associated with hateful behavior. TikTok is committed to keeping our community safe and working to prevent the spread of hate. For more information, we invite you to review our Community Guidelines.”

    TikTok uses the same method to block people from even searching for individuals deemed to be “hateful,” where banning their accounts isn’t enough, mere mention of them must be expunged entirely.

    Naturally, there’s no chance whatsoever that the term “Black Lives Matter” would receive similar treatment.

    Indeed, a previous trend that TikTok allowed to feature prominently on the platform was centered on users threatening to violently kneecap people who didn’t support BLM.

    The platform has also allowed fake news about Trump resigning to go viral, has censored videos that make fun of Dr. Anthony Fauci, has removed videos that highlighted inconsistencies in Amber Heard’s testimony, and has also threatened to censor criticism of Joe Biden.

    The term “white lives matter” rose to prominence again last week after Kanye West unveiled a new line of merchandise featuring the slogan and modeled it with Candace Owens.

    Earlier this year, Instagram temporarily suspended Kanye after an angry rant prompted by his 8-year-old daughter being allowed to perform a pro-LGBT TikTok dance routine.

    The hip hop star had his account blocked for 24 hours for violating the platform’s policies on “hate speech, harassment and bullying” after his eldest daughter North appeared with bright makeup and sang a song about falling in love with a girl in a video that was posted to TikTok.

    Meanwhile, no matter how much the idea is censored and demonized, white lives do indeed matter.

    *  *  *

    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Get early access, exclusive content and behind the scenes stuff by following me on Locals.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 21:00

  • Here Comes The Open Revolt: A Reeling Europe Lashes Out At The Fed For "Bringing Us To A World Recession"
    Here Comes The Open Revolt: A Reeling Europe Lashes Out At The Fed For “Bringing Us To A World Recession”

    As a result of the Fed’s relentless tightening blitz, which on November 2 will have hiked rates by 75bps on four occasions in just 96 trading days, the fastest tightening campaign since Volcker, both US capital markets (the S&P 500 is down -24%, for the 4th worst year on record, only 1931, 1974, and 2002 were worse; and 10Y TSYs are down -17% for the worst year on record… 1987 second worse, and bonds were down -10%) and the US economy have been left reeling.

    However, the damage in the US – whose economy is relatively isolated from the knock-on (or is that out) effects of the soaring global reserve currency – are nothing compared to the devastation unleashed by the Fed in the form of the soaring dollar and exploding interest rates. And yet the outcry against either the Soros Biden administration, or chair Powell has been relatively muted (excluding the occasional scathing oped in China’s Global Times and fake populist rage-tweet by everyone’s favorite “native American“, Liz Warren). To be sure, this was to be expected: after all, the last thing central banks need, when they are seeking to effect an extremely unpopular global economic recession that will leave millions without a job (think inflation is bad? just wait until you have no job and inflation is still bad) is growing discord among the ranks of the technocrats who have a simple script: no matter how unpopular or stupid a given policy is, you never, never, disagree in public, as this risks sparking popular outrage and toppling the entire house of cards at the hands of a suddenly very angry public.

    At least that was the case until now: because today, in a startling outcry breaching the unspoken protocol of “no dissent, never dissent”, Josep Borrell, the high representative of the 27-member EU bloc, lashed out all too publicly at the Fed when he said that central banks (across Europe where the recession will be far, far worse than in the US) are being forced to follow the Fed’s multiple rate rises to prevent their currencies from slumping against the dollar, and compared the US central bank’s influence to Germany’s dominance of European monetary policy before the creation of the euro.

    Of course, back then the solution to the super deutsche mark was simple: pool all nations under a common currency umbrella, even if it means misery for the less productive, and less mercantilist countries (hence the neverending European sovereign debt crisis which remains in hibernation only thanks to the ECB’s bond buying). This time however, there is no simple solution taking advantage of gullible states, instead now that they’ve broken the seal of silence, the “leaders” of Europe admit to just how powerless they truly are when the custodian of the world’s reserve currency has to do what’s best only for itself, allies and friends be damned:

    “Everybody has to follow, because otherwise their currency will be [devalued],” Borrell said to an audience of EU ambassadors, the FT reported. “Everybody is running to increase interest rates, this will bring us to a world recession.”

    The comments which the FT defined as “unguarded” but were are confident were very much pre-cleared with all the proper officials, came in a wide-ranging speech in which he also criticized the EU for failing to listen to foreign countries and seeking to “export” its governance model and standards on to others, and admitted that the bloc failed to anticipate Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine despite what the FT called “warnings from Washington”, because of course for the FT to mention Trump, or heaven forbid, admit he was right, would be inconceivable.

    Borrell’s carefully chosen words on US monetary policy followed the World Bank’s warning last month that rate rises by multiple central banks could trigger a global downturn in 2023, as it argued the “degree of synchronicity” by central banks was unlike anything seen in five decades.

    Yes, the artificial facade of calm agreement propping up the world’s most aggressive tightening cycle in history is starting to crack and quite violently at that.

    Borell’s warnings come as the World Bank and IMF kick off a week of joint meetings in Washington, where officials will discuss the multiple threats to the global economy. The fund is expected to downgrade its global economic forecasts for the fourth consecutive quarter.

    And as a growing chorus of angry voices rises to warn the Fed against even more aggressive tightening, it appears that the message is finally seeping through: top Fed officials have recently more directly acknowledged that their campaign to tighten monetary policy risks creating “spillovers” that could jeopardize weaker economies, and all other economies too. But they underscore that their chief concern remains bringing US inflation under control, suggesting that the global ramifications of their plans are secondary considerations.

    Maybe not: Lael Brainard, vice-chair of the Fed, on Monday said that while the US central bank should continue raising rates it must do so “deliberately and in a data-dependent manner” due to “elevated global economic and financial uncertainty”. Her comments were enough to push risk assets sharply off their session lows, even if they have since slumped back.

    She added that the Fed “takes into account the spillovers of higher interest rates, a stronger dollar, and weaker demand from foreign economies”. Last month she highlighted the risks posed to highly indebted emerging markets as borrowing costs rapidly rise.

    As the FT notes, the Fed’s crushing influence over current monetary policy trends mirrored the situation in Europe before the euro, when countries were forced to follow the policies of Germany’s Bundesbank, said Borrell. “You had to do it. Even if it was not the right policy for your internal reasons.” Of course, the alternative, the Euro was an even worse disaster: at least in the DEM days, European countries could devalue their way out of a fiscal crisis; with the common currency they all have to beg the ECB for bond-buying mercy or else be forced to install another pro-European puppet prime minister.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 20:40

  • Recent North Korean Missile Tests Involved 'Tactical Nukes': State Media
    Recent North Korean Missile Tests Involved ‘Tactical Nukes’: State Media

    Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

    North Korea used “tactical nuclear” missiles in its recent blitz of tests to enhance and warn the enemies of its nuclear counterattack capabilities, state-run media reported on Monday.

    State mouthpiece Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un personally guided the launches, which involved loading tactical nuclear warheads at a silo.

    The recent tactical nuclear drills have demonstrated that North Korea’s nuclear combat forces are “fully prepared to hit and destroy targets at any time from any designated location,” according to the report.

    “Various types of tactical ballistic missiles launched on Sept. 29 and Oct. 1 hit the targets with the combination of air explosion and direct precision and dispersion strike, proving the accuracy of our weapon systems,” KCNA stated.

    According to the report, Kim ordered the drills “under the simulation of an actual war” in response to the United States’ and South Korea’s joint naval drills on the Korean Peninsula, which involved a U.S. aircraft carrier.

    “We should send a clear signal to the enemies escalating the regional situation by involving armed forces with more powerful and resolute action,” the authoritarian leader was quoted as saying by KCNA.

    Kim added that his country has no intention of engaging in dialogue with enemies that pose military threats to North Korea, despite their continued efforts to do so, it added.

    North Korea launched two ballistic missiles into the sea on Oct. 9 after the South Korean navy launched two-day joint naval drills with the United States’ USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group, marking its seventh launch in two weeks.

    Japan’s Defense Ministry said the missiles flew 350 kilometers (217 miles) at a 100-kilometer (62-mile) altitude and landed outside Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

    The U.S. carrier strike group earlier participated in trilateral ballistic missile defense drills alongside Japanese and South Korean warships in response to North Korea’s missile launch over Japan on Oct. 4.

    Nuclear Test Preparations Near Completion

    In its latest report, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) said that North Korea is in the last stages of completing its preparations for a seventh nuclear test, citing the excavation of underground tunnels at the Yongbyon site.

    It claimed that North Korea obtained petroleum products through ship-to-ship cargo transfers, violating the UNSC sanctions, and used non-fungible token technology to raise money for its weapons program, Nikkei Asia reported.

    The U.S. Treasury Department last week sanctioned two individuals and three entities involved in illicit ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum to North Korea, which it said directly supports the authoritarian regime’s weapons program.

    North Korea earlier adopted a new law allowing it to conduct a nuclear strike “automatically” against any “hostile forces” posing an imminent threat. Kim vowed to “never give up nuclear weapons” even if North Korea is subjected to “100 years of sanctions.”

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

  • Huge Barge Logjam On Mississippi Eases; Vessel Shipping Prices Hyperinflate
    Huge Barge Logjam On Mississippi Eases; Vessel Shipping Prices Hyperinflate

    A massive logjam of more than 2,000 barges at various parts of the Mississippi River is being cleared Monday morning. 

    Southbound vessel traffic resumed early morning on the Mississippi River near Stack Island, an island located in Issaquena County, Mississippi after northbound traffic was cleared Sunday, Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. wrote in a note. 

    “We were able to completely clear the Northbound queue,” ADM said. 

    ADM added that once all the southbound congestion is resolved, the Coast Guard will allow one-way traffic moving forward. 

    Bloomberg also reported two choke points: one near Stack Island and the other near Memphis, Tennessee, were reopening after being closed last week due to the lack of rainfall which caused the grounding of barges, blocking parts of the waterway. 

    Source: Bloomberg 

    Last week, we detailed the chaos unfolding on the crucial US water artery for the Midwest economy in “Dangerously Low” Mississippi River Level May Spark Transport Chaos For Farm Goods During Harvest and Barges Grounded By “Near-Historic” Low Water Halt Mississippi River Traffic. 

    The timing of the closure comes as barges transport harvested corn, soybeans, wheat, and other farm goods from Midwest farms to major export terminals in the Gulf of Mexico. 

    Remember, the cause of the weather chaos across the US could be due to a weather phenomenon known as La Nina. Meanwhile, Bloomberg continues to point to “climate change.” 

    Even though congestion begins to ease, barge prices per ton to ship farm goods have hyperinflated from $12 a ton in June to $90 last week. 

    Low water levels reduce the amount of weight a barge can haul, which increases demand for more barges. This is one inflation story the Federal Reserve can’t solve. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 20:00

  • Anthony Blinken Raises The Pucker Factor On Dissent: Taibbi
    Anthony Blinken Raises The Pucker Factor On Dissent: Taibbi

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

    After publishing “On John Lennon’s Birthday, a Few Words About War” last night, old friend and former Moscow Times editor Matt Bivens* and I discovered we’d written on the same topic.

    You can find Matt’s excellent essay here.

    He notes a big thing I missed. A series of ominous statements was buried in Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s recent joint press conference with Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, trumpeting the “tremendous opportunity” the Nord Stream blasts afforded to remove “the dependence on Russian energy.”

    A few public figures questioned those comments, but Blinken said something else that was worse. The relevant passage:

    I also made clear that when Russia made this move, the United States and our allies and partners would impose swift and severe costs on individuals and entities – inside and outside of Russia – that provide political or economic support to illegal attempts to change the status of Ukrainian territory…

    We will hold to account any individual, entity, or country that provides political or economic support for President Putin’s illegal attempts to change the status of Ukrainian territory.  In support of this commitment, the Departments of the Treasury and Commerce are releasing new guidance on heightened sanctions and export control risks for entities and individuals inside and outside of Russia that support in any way the Kremlin’s sham referenda, purported annexation, and occupation of parts of Ukraine.

    There’s no way to know what a State Department official might believe meets the definitions of “political support,” support “in any way,” the “Kremlin’s sham referenda,” or any of a half-dozen phrases in that passage. This is why the negative precedent of government watch lists after the PATRIOT Act was important. By making lists, officials can seriously impacting your life without notice or right of appeal. Even if courts later strike down the activity, it may take nearly 20 years to get there, and that’s assuming a) the state discloses enough to make a court challenge possible and b) they abide by any judicial rulings.

    From Google and Twitter to the Departments of Justice and State, we’ve become a blacklisting society, and it’s beginning to look like the excesses of the Bush years were just a warmup.

    *As editor of the Moscow Times, Matt led an investigation of the 2000 Russian presidential elections that resulted in an eight-page exposé detailing extensive ballot-stuffing and misreporting of vote results in favor of… Vladimir Putin. In one case, for instance, the Times found authorities reported 88,000 more votes for Putin than had actually been collected from certain polling stations in Dagestan. “Fraud and abuse of state power appear to have been decisive,” the paper wrote.

    Meanwhile, this is from the prepared statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Aril 12, 2000 of Stephen Sestanovich, at the time our ambassador-at-large to the former Soviet Union. Sestanovich told the Senate he had six major observations about the election of Vladimir Putin, the second of which was that “voters showed even less interest than 4 years ago in returning the Communists to power.” His main “headline”:

    We witnessed a constitutional process, with multiple candidates, very high turnout, and — according to the many international observers on the scene — few procedural improprieties. I recall the confident forecast of a distinguished Russian analyst after the 1996 election, that Russian voters would never again have the chance to pick their president at the polls. In the past decade, elections have become the only legitimate way to select Russia’s leaders.

    The State Department boasted about Putin’s election as both legitimate and the fruit of a long, U.S.-aided effort to build democratic infrastructure in Russia. They described an event heralding a pluralistic future. I leave it to the reader to decide if that constitutes “support in any way.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 19:40

  • GOP AGs Sue Berenson Foe Andy Slavitt, Other Biden Officials Who Colluded With Big Tech
    GOP AGs Sue Berenson Foe Andy Slavitt, Other Biden Officials Who Colluded With Big Tech

    Two Republican state attorneys general have sued former Biden COVID czar Andy Slavitt and other administration officials as part of an ongoing lawsuit over collusion between the feds and big tech in order to suppress COVID-related free speech.

    Louisiana AG Jeff Landry

    The complaint, requesting the deposition of “key defendants,” was filed by Republican Attorneys General Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Jeff Landry of Louisiana, and cites a third-party subpoena of Twitter, Meta and YouTube, which identified a variety of White House and administration officials, the Daily Caller reports.

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

    Journalist Alex Berenson – who was banned from Twitter on April 21, 2001 and sued his way back onto the platform – called out Slavitt in an August Substack article.

    Andrew Slavitt, senior advisor to President Biden’s Covid response team, complained specifically about me, according to a Twitter employee in another Slack conversation discussing the White House meeting.

    “They really wanted to know about Alex Berenson,” the employee wrote. “Andy Slavitt suggested they had seen data viz [visualization] that had showed he was the epicenter of disinfo that radiated outwards to the persuadable public.”

    According to an interview he gave to the Washington Post in June 2021, Slavitt worked directly with the most powerful officials in the federal government, including Ron Klain, President Biden’s chief of staff, and Biden himself. -Unreported Truths

    Slavitt, meanwhile, has lawyered up.

    “Throughout this case, we have uncovered a disturbing amount of collusion between Big Tech and Big Government,” said AG Landry in the states’ press release. “https://twitter.com/EIGARBARINO/status/1579558520776986624?s=20&t=_d9Z9…;This egregious attack on our First Amendment will be met with an equally full-hearted defense of the rights of the American people.”t=_d9Z9ZhsTYzzFEAnaTCqzghttps://twitter.com/EIGARBARINO/status/1579558520776986624?s=20&t=_d9Z9…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 19:20

  • The Golden Rule And The Hunter Biden Scandal: Turley
    The Golden Rule And The Hunter Biden Scandal: Turley

    Authored by Johnathan Turley via jonathanturley.org,

    President Biden’s hot mic moment during a visit to hurricane-stricken Florida — in which he muttered that “No one f–ks with a Biden” — left many people confused. His Sopranos-like warning might not deter developing hurricanes but it has succeeded for years in Washington as a kind of “Biden Golden Rule.” Neither prosecutors nor the press have seemed interested in pursuing allegations of criminal or corrupt practices by some members of the Biden family.

    Now, after years of investigation, reports indicate that FBI agents are convinced ample evidence exists to charge the president’s son Hunter Biden on gun- and tax-related charges. Those charges (and a possible plea) may be the best-case scenario for the Bidens — and many others in Washington. Indeed, the reported narrow scope of a possible indictment is strikingly similar to what I previously described as the ideal “controlled demolition” of the Hunter Biden scandal.

    Three questions immediately arise from this Justice Department leak, and the concern is that all three may be answered by the Biden Golden Rule:

    For the Bidens, justice delayed is justice

    The first question is why, in an investigation that began in 2018, the Justice Department only now believes it could charge over false statements on a gun registration form and on tax evasion. Both crimes were well established years ago.

    The gun charge is based on the fact that Hunter Biden reportedly answered “no” to a standard question about whether he was an “unlawful user of, or addicted to” a narcotic drug or any other controlled substance. He wrote a book detailing his raging drug and alcohol addictions during this period (ironically, even as his father called for stricter enforcement of gun laws).

    The FBI has long had the gun registration form, the book and other self-incriminating statements, not to mention President Biden’s repeated references to his son being an addict.

    Hunter Biden also apparently did not pay taxes on millions garnered from his foreign business dealings or alleged influence-peddling schemes, and a Hollywood lawyer reportedly paid off as much as $2 million in delinquent taxes on his behalf recently. The FBI has had Hunter Biden’s infamous abandoned laptop since 2019, detailing payments from foreign sources and gifts or benefits, including a diamond.

    Yet the long investigation has worked to the advantage of the Bidens as well as the Democrats in pushing any indictment beyond 2020 and, most likely, after the 2022 midterm elections. Indeed, Hunter Biden’s lawyer insisted after the leak of possible charges that prosecutors “should not be pressured, rushed, or criticized” to act.

    It is often said that “justice delayed is justice denied” — but in politics, justice delayed is simply justice.

    Is this all there is?

    A second question concerns what were not referenced as likely charges against Hunter Biden.

    For years, some of us have said an obvious, overwhelming argument existed to appoint a special counsel in this case. Yet Attorney General Merrick Garland has refused to do so.

    Hunter Biden’s laptop reportedly contained detailed emails about business deals spanning the globe and millions of dollars from foreign sources, including some tied to foreign intelligence operatives. Some of his accounts reportedly were used to pay some of the bills for President Biden.

    Even if the Justice Department is set to decline charges linked to foreign money transfers or influence-peddling, there is the obvious omission of charges under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). The Justice Department has used FARA aggressively in past prosecutions such as that of Trump associate Paul Manafort.

    The omission of a charge under FARA would be glaring and troubling in light of those past prosecutions. And with the refusal to appoint a special counsel, that omission would likely avoid a public airing of any influence-peddling allegations tied to the Biden family.

    A telling leak

    The third question is why this leak occurred in the first place. Hunter Biden’s lawyer is justified in objecting to this leak and noting that it likely would constitute a federal crime. So why would sources at the FBI take the risk of a leak at this time?

    Much like the Supreme Court leaking of the Dobbs decision, this one appears intended to trigger a response. The most obvious motivation would be to lock in the Justice Department if agents feared the department’s leaders might be resisting or delaying any charges.

    It could also be an effort to alert the public about the narrow scope of charges being discussed with Hunter Biden’s defense team as a possible plea deal. There may also be concern that a plea deal might be reached before any Republican takeover of the House of Representatives. GOP leaders have pledged to investigate the influence-peddling allegations, but a plea could be used to say the matter is now considered closed by the Justice Department.

    The focus on the gun charge is likely to highlight the absence of charges related to the reported foreign payments and alleged influence peddling. While the standard registration form warns of a potential 10-year sentence for false statements, it is rare to see significant prison time emerge from such cases. Indeed, prosecutors often choose not to charge on such violations. As a first-time offender, Hunter Biden could avoid prison entirely or plead to a short period of incarceration.

    For those concerned about alleged influence-peddling, such a charge may seem like arresting a bank robber solely for double-parking his getaway car. While the reported charges could result collectively in a few years in jail, the absence of far more serious charges is likely to raise questions about the scope of the investigation.

    The videos and emails reportedly uncovered on Hunter Biden’s laptop show a wide array of alleged criminal acts — a target-rich environment for any prosecutor. Indeed, it would take an amazing marksman to hit the gun charge and a few tax violations while missing other potential crimes. While any eventual indictment might contain other charges, the leak (if accurate) suggests a strikingly narrow focus as a basis for a possible plea.

    The U.S. attorney in charge of this investigation, David C. Weiss, is a respected prosecutor. Even so, many Americans may wonder why Hunter Biden’s case suddenly was downgraded from a Category 5 hurricane to a tropical storm.

    Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 19:00

  • UN 'Human Rights' Panel Votes To Ignore China's Uyghur Abuses In Xinjiang
    UN ‘Human Rights’ Panel Votes To Ignore China’s Uyghur Abuses In Xinjiang

    Last week the United Nations Human Rights Council voted 19-17 to not discuss China’s abuses against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang province – with Cuba, Venezuela, Nepal, Indonesia, Pakistan, Qatar and the UAE among the countries siding with Beijing.

    What’s even more appalling, as the WSJ editorial board points out, is that the last four countries on that list are majority Muslim nations voting to ignore documented abuses against a Chinese Muslim minority group.

    Indonesia is notably the world’s largest Muslim country, while Pakistan’s state religion is Islam.

    In addition to China, the other nations on the dishonor role were: Bolivia, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Eritrea, Gabon, Kazakhstan, Mauritania, Namibia, Senegal, Sudan and Uzbekistan. There were also 11 abstentions, including India, Mexico and Ukraine. Perhaps Kyiv hopes to keep China from giving military aid to Russia’s invaders, but this wasn’t Ukraine’s finest hour. Mexico under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has never met a left-wing dictatorship it didn’t support. -WSJ

    The ‘no’ vote follows an August report by the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights that drew from interviews with former detainees in Xinjiang.

    “A consistent theme was description of constant hunger and, consequently, significant to severe weight loss during their periods in the facilities,” reads the report. “Almost all interviewees described either injections, pills or both being administered regularly.”

    Other victims reported “various forms of sexual violence, including some instances of rape,” while “Several women recounted being subject to invasive gynaecological examinations, including one woman who described this taking place in a group setting.”

    Other forms of abuse; no sleep, no prayer, and being forced to sing Chinese patriotic songs.

    The report said the pattern of maltreatment in Xinjiang “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity,” and asked China to look into “allegations of torture, sexual violence, ill-treatment, forced medical treatment, as well as forced labor and reports of deaths in custody.”

    We’re sure John Cena can explain everything…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 18:40

  • Big Rail Workers Union Rejects Biden-Backed Labor Deal, Renews Strike Possibility
    Big Rail Workers Union Rejects Biden-Backed Labor Deal, Renews Strike Possibility

    Authored by Noi Mahoney via FreightWaves.com,

    Members of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division (BMWED) rejected a labor contract with the freight railroads on Monday, sending the two sides back to the bargaining table and resetting the countdown to a potential work stoppage.

    More than 56% of BMWED membership voted against ratification of the tentative national agreement reached with the Class I freight railroads on Sept. 11.

    The Biden-sponsored deal included a 24% wage increase, $5,000 bonuses and an additional paid day off.

    BMWED represents about 26,000 workers who build and maintain the tracks, bridges, buildings and other structures on railroads across the country, according to its website.

    “The result of the vote indicates there is a lot of work to do to establish goodwill and improve the morale that has been broken by the railroads’ executives and Wall Street hedge fund managers,” BMWED President Tony D. Cardwell said in a statement.

    “I trust that railroad management understands that sentiment as well. Railroaders are discouraged and upset with working conditions and compensation and hold their employer in low regard.”

    BMWED will go back to the bargaining table for additional negotiations with the railroads. If a deal cannot be negotiated, BMWED could go on strike after Nov. 14.

    A new labor deal for union members has been in the works since January 2020, but negotiations with the railroads failed to progress. A federal mediation board took up the negotiations but released the parties from those efforts earlier this summer. 

    Two of the largest labor unions — those representing locomotive engineers and train conductors — were the last to reach a tentative agreement with the railroads. Their agreement averted a rail strike that could have begun as early as Sept. 16.

    So far, only four of the 12 unions have ratified the national agreement with the railroads: the American Train Dispatchers Association, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Transportation Communications Union and the the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 18:20

  • Apple Devices Repeatedly Trigger 'Crash Detection' On Rollercoasters
    Apple Devices Repeatedly Trigger ‘Crash Detection’ On Rollercoasters

    Apple’s new car-crash detection safety feature for the iPhone 14 and new Apple Watch models is causing headaches for emergency services with repeated false positives at theme parks.

    WSJ’s Joanna Stern and Coaster101 report Kings Island and Dollywood amusement parks have reported guests with new Apple devices trigger the safety feature that automatically dials 911 when users are on rollercoasters.

    It has been reported Apple’s algorithm on newly released devices, which factors in G-force measurements, pressure changes, GPS/speed changes, and loud noises, has been tricked numerous times at the theme parks while the owner of the device was on a rollercoaster. 

    Stern provided one 911 call of a false positive while a person was on a rollercoaster at Kings Island amusement park just northeast of Cincinnati in Mason, Ohio. 

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

    In the video, the iPhone revealed to the 911 emergency operator:

    “The owner of this iPhone was in a severe car crash and is not responding to their phone.”

    The phone’s owner wasn’t responsive because they were having a blast on the rollercoaster. Stern said the amusement park reported at least six recent car-crash detection false positives. This prompted local emergency teams to investigate each one for a car crash at the amusement park but found no evidence of a crash. 

    The theme park website Coaster101 reported that the same phenomenon was happening at the Dollywood amusement park in Tennessee. Rollercoaster rides now have signs that warn guests to leave Apple devices off the ride for fear “device may activate emergency call function.” 

    The sign read:

    Cell phones and other devices should not be brought aboard any attraction.

    Due to the dynamic movement you will experience on this ride, Apple Watches and similar devices may activate their emergency call function.

    To prevent your device from making unintended 911 calls, please turn it off or enable airplane mode.

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

    Perhaps Apple engineers could solve this issue with a geofence update around all amusement parks. And why wasn’t this thought of in the first place? 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 18:00

  • Goldman Trader: "The State Of Things Feels Rather Precarious… We Are On The Verge Of Regime Change And Cycle Shift"
    Goldman Trader: “The State Of Things Feels Rather Precarious… We Are On The Verge Of Regime Change And Cycle Shift”

    By Goldman trader and managing director, Bobby Molavi

    The start of last week saw a risk on beta chase across all equities, as the positioning underweight and pervasive bearishness triggered the latest of a long series of 2022 relief bounces. Last week alone a reflection of the challenges of carrying risk efficiently in 2022. Liquidity appeared and disappeared, we had two 3% plus moves at the headline index level and for all the intra week ‘drama’ we pretty much found ourselves at close of play on Friday near where we started on Monday. A painful “nothing done” as one client put it. This week we have CPI, start of Q3 earnings, both of which will be key in terms of setting the tone for the next few weeks. For the second quarter in a row, more than 10% of the S&P500 market cap has preannounced earnings. The last time this occurred was early 2020. The general narrative from my conversations are multiples are still too high, earnings have further to fall and equity ownership remains high.

    Good news is now firmly bad news… Fridays NFP a reflection that any positive indicator is being read as a signal that the FED has more to do in terms of hikes and slowing down demand side of the equation. That being said, we have mixed signals. Employment may be strong, mortgage repayments high and rising and energy prices may remain elevated but elsewhere we are seeing multiple signs of deflation – job openings slowing (JOLTS data), second hand car prices (Manheim used car data), US/China freight rates (-76% from peak), inventory levels at retailers etc. Elsewhere we saw an OPEC cut, adding fuel to the inflationary fire and cost of living pressures the world is facing. Almost impossible to play the game in an environment where the worlds fulcrum risk free rate is moving more and faster than at any point in recent history.

    A market of extremely large tails… If we just focus on the facts. We see:

    • a stock market down ~25% ytd,

    • a bond market experiencing one of it’s worst performance years in history,

    • a housing market that is seeing consistent price falls for first time in a decade,

    • a consumer dealings with cost of living crisis,

    • a global economy experiencing 2 consecutive quarters of negative GDP

    • a slew of central banks that ‘no longer have your back.’

    There is also a worrying reality that an escalation in terms of methods of warfare in Ukraine is now more possibly more likely than the market estimated 3 months ago. Scott Rubner recent piece with some sobering stats on 2022 and how things have panned out. Since 1900, 122 years of data, through Q3, the US 60/40 “worlds and voting retirement” Portfolio is down -21%, for the 2nd worst year on record. From an equity view the S&P 500 is down -24%, for the 4th worst year on record (only were worse 1931 – great depression / 1974 – inflation / 2002 – internet bubble). If we look at Bonds….through Q3, 10 year USTs are down -17% for the worst year on record, 1987 was second worse, and bonds were down -10%. To say that 2022 will go down in historical context would be an understatement. As we approach Q3 Scott argues that retail has started to capitulate….they rotated $89bn into money markets last week and at the same time we saw material retail outflows in consensus mega caps like Apple and Tesla. But…… it’s not all doom and gloom. We’re seeing the highest proportion of insider buying in Stoxx600 for 10 years, cash levels for mutual funds are extremely high, positioning in Europe is extremely low, PE dry powder is at all time highs and employment remains (thus far) sticky and high. US equity futures position % open interest remains at lowest since GFC, vol control funds equity allocation at 5th 10y%ile. Worth noting that CTAs have recently sat on sidelines and are now flipping to buy, which could contribute to a large right tail asymmetry. Our models project CTAs to buy c. $190bn on 2std up tape over the next month. It may not be likely, but there is also the extreme right tail of a positive resolution to Ukraine. A trigger for an immediate relief in terms of inflationary pressures, geo-political risk premia normalization and a likely multi standard deviation rally for equity markets globally.

    The speed of the move is as important as the move itself… There are definitely signals that the withdrawal of liquidity and the shift to a new neutral is having impacts in unexpected segments of the market. The ‘lower for longer’ era of the last decade is clearly over but at the same time the question of at what cost remains. The reality there is leverage and liability in more places than we care to admit. In the housing market sitting with the consumer as they grapple with higher repayments. In the energy market as companies seek to manage their contracts vs cost base and the materially higher volatility of the underlying commodities. Twenty years ago, non-banks held $51 trillion of financial assets, compared with banks’ $58 trillion; on the latest data, non-banks have grown to $227 trillion in scale, outstripping banks at $180 trillion. Among them are asset management firms, pension funds and insurance companies. Unlike 2008/09 leverage exists in different parts of the financial ecosystem. At the end of the day Liquidity in times like these is key. This has been a theme for a while but I think it is now moving to front and center. I’ve noticed stats all year…low top of order book liquidity in the US, bid offer spreads at wides in Europe, SX5E and Stoxx 600 daily volumes vs last year or last 5 years. All signals are pointing to a withdrawal of liquidity from the system and this needs to be monitored. I always ask myself who is the marginal buyer at the moment in size vs the short gamma style trading of CTA (bigger sellers lower, bigger buyers higher). The great hope has been private equity and potential strategic M&A…it has been around but not enough to offset.

    Speaking of M&A… There remains no bid for value with US value trading at 11th %’ile vs history and Europe at the 4th %’ile vs history. It is true that some companies are cheap for a reason…but at some point you’d have to assume that the spread between spot and unrecognised potential value unlock in some of these names triggers activity. We find ourselves in a market with $3.4tr of dry-powder globally across growth, infra, buyout, real estate and buyout. When looking at previous uncertain moments the dry powder stats were ~$800bn in 2016, ~$700bn in 2008, and ~$300bn in 2001.

    The evolution of product segmentation… Years ago…I remember a sales person arguing that Bskyb was not a discretionary product…that it was in fact a staple. Once a consumer was hooked into that entertainment infrastructure there were many many things they would cut first before cutting this. I reflected on that again last week as I read about Pelotons latest round of job cuts and restructuring. I find it interesting (worrying) that we are on the verge (or already in the midst) of regime change and cycle shift. What was normal in 20/21 will cease to be so in 23/24 is my view. The marginal discretionary $ will move to different places and consumers behavior will change and as a result all recent modelling from a time of abundant leverage and a focus on ‘experiences’ may change. I read that in the second hand car data last week there was a clear signal that cars (especially luxury) were becoming an increasingly discretionary item, in the client (and friend) conversations around holidays and travel a shift towards less is more and closer to home as a preference. It will be interesting to see what consumers look to now for sources of entertainment – will terrestrial tv or vanilla sky suffice over 5 additional streaming channels…. will going out and having a few pints in the local replace the £23 smoked bay leaf martini at the trendy cocktail joint… are staycations the new vacation…. and will all things energy consumptive (especially where prices are pushed through the consumer) needing a discount factor we’ve not seen historically.

    Climate….the state of things feels rather precarious at the moment. We seem to be juggling national, political, social and economic dangers and pressures simultaneously. We have discussed the food crisis as a result of Ukraine conflict and the supply shortages of many key staples they produced, but this is only one angle. Climate changes are impacting our eco system…whether it be floods, droughts, fires or more simply the environments where we grow our food. We are seeing harvests across food types being impacted globally as a result of these shifts….Rice shortages in California, corn in Iowa, grains across Europe, fruit in the UK, soy in china. In the short term, just another inflationary pressure but in the long term something even more worrisome. I think there are two vectors by which this will be interesting….firstly the yet to be felt consequence of this inflation and climate impact on our food supply. European farmers in the midst of a fertilizer shortage as access to ammonia and nitrogen fertilizer now scarce or too expensive. Secondly, what innovations will come out of this experience. Electrification and renewable energy might in part help reduce our dependence on fossil fuels but also will we see innovation to optimize will use of sensors, software and alternative feeds to optimize crops.

    From a European perspective…in a very tricky spot if you ask me. Central banks having to deal with inflation having arguably fallen drastically behind the curve. Having to deal with inflation with a heavily bifurcated starting point between the north and the south and the haves and the have nots. A region that is sorely lacking in growth but equally lacking the room to takes risks to encourage it (see uk). On top of all this we are heading into winter with power outages increasingly likely, corporates having to rationalise, move or shut down production. Hard to see this all adding up to incremental investment in the region. (seeing signs of this in corporate narratives at the micro level). We’ve already touched on the material spike in cost of servicing mortgage debt as a % of weekly earnings for most UK households. Worth examining the impact of the materially higher base rate for the broader ‘unfixed’ European community. With variable rates common across Europe (especially in the periphery) the recent 75bps hike passing through to the end consumer who have become accustomed to the ultra low levels of funding available. There are potential political ramifications here. If you look at the eastern EU bloc of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania you see regions with ultra high inflation (close to 25% in Estonia), low savings rates and the need to now absorb the ECB wide rate hike on top. If the emerging parts of the EU are the drivers of growth for the EU this dynamic can’t be helpful.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 17:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Oct 10

Today’s News 10th October 2022

  • Why Zelensky's World War III Gambit Will Fail
    Why Zelensky’s World War III Gambit Will Fail

    Authored by Jordan Schachtel via ‘The Dossier’ Substack,

    None of the major parties involved in this conflict want nuclear armageddon via WWIII.

    A continually unhinged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has spent the past year trying to draw NATO powers into direct conflict with Russia, and he has yet to achieve success, despite many attempts to do so. While the rhetoric between D.C., Brussels, and Moscow has certainly become more fiery, the kinetic pieces on the geopolitical chessboard have remained steadily in place, because the major parties to the conflict do not want to witness World War III breaking out.

    On Thursday, Zelensky ramped up the rhetoric even further, calling on NATO forces to bomb Russia and try to eliminate their nuclear arsenal.

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

    Of course, such a mission, which would launch WWIII, is not even possible, as Moscow retains the nuclear triad and thousands of nuclear weapons at their disposal.

    Zelensky, an actor by trade, doesn’t seem to care about the details. He just wants NATO/US forces on the ground in Ukraine, and he’s willing to accept World War III to make that happen.

    Last week, Zelensky signed an expedited NATO application.

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

    The good news, at least for now, is that none of the major parties involved in this conflict want nuclear armageddon via WWIII.

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

    NATO powers certainly do not want to get thrown into a direct skirmish with Russia. As the past several months have shown, they are only content to pursue the arming and funding of Ukraine from the sidelines of the war.

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

    These powers remain committed to propping up Kiev as the tip of the spear in what they hope is a long, drawn out conflict with Moscow. They do not seek a Ukrainian victory over Russia, but an Afghanistan-like perpetual war that acts both to weaken their foe and facilitate several forms of laundering for the global elite.

    Thankfully, the leaders of Western powers don’t actually believe the hysterical nonsense about Putin being some kind of imperial Hitler-like figure who seeks to conquer the entirety of Europe.

    The Russians don’t want World War III either. Their overt goal, as articulated by the Kremlin, is to eliminate the threats to their territorial integrity. Their more unspoken goal, as proven by Russia’s political and military actions, is to secure territory that is both strategically valuable and populated by citizens who welcome or are indifferent to the idea of switching sovereigns. Russia is a minimally expansionist power, in a limited setting that targets friendly populations.

    Zelensky has miscalculated, badly, because none of the internationalist players involved in propping up Kiev actually care about Ukraine. If they truly did care about Ukraine, they would seek a cessation to hostilities. Instead, the direct opposite is happening, and Ukraine has become the new gold mine for the military industrial cartel.

    Zelensky and his more recent predecessors have completely botched realpolitik. Instead of harnessing Ukraine’s power as a neutral buffer state, his government went all-in on becoming subservient to one coalition while antagonizing its more powerful neighbor. This has had devastating consequences for the Ukrainian people.

    While Ukraine’s political class, headed by Zelensky, is happy to enrich themselves by consuming small drops from the proxy war spigot, the Ukrainian nation is being torn apart by war, and its people remain impoverished.

    While it would certainly be a setback for the NATO coalition if Kiev was lost to Russia’s sphere of influence, their actions showcase that it is not something worth fighting World War III over. This concerns Zelensky, because the game would be up for him and his allies in government. Therefore, hoaxing the world into World War III is the go-to strategy for Kiev. Luckily, for now at least, no major power wants to pursue that route.

    *  *  *

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

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 10/10/2022 – 02:00

  • Michael Hudson: A Roadmap To Escape The West's Stranglehold
    Michael Hudson: A Roadmap To Escape The West’s Stranglehold

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

    The geoeconomic pathway away from the neoliberal order is fraught with peril, but the rewards in establishing an alternative system are as promising as they are urgent

    It is impossible to track the geoeconomic turbulence inherent to the “birth pangs” of the multipolar world without the insights of Professor Michael Hudson at the University of Missouri, and author of the already seminal The Destiny of Civilization.

    In his latest essay, Professor Hudson digs deeper into Germany’s suicidal economic/financial policies; their effect on the already falling euro – and hints at some possibilities for fast integrating Eurasia and the Global South as a whole to try to break the Hegemon’s stranglehold.

    That led to a series of email exchanges, especially about the future role of the yuan, where Hudson remarked:

    “The Chinese whom I’ve talked to for years and years did not expect the dollar to weaken. They’re not crying about its rise, but they are concerned about flight capital from China as I think after the Party Congress [starting on October 16] there will be a crackdown on the Shanghai free-market advocacy. Pressure for the coming changes has been long building up. The spirit of reform to rein in ‘free markets’ was spreading among students over a decade ago, and they have been rising in the Party hierarchy.”

    On the key issue of Russia accepting payment for energy in rubles, Hudson touched upon a point rarely examined outside of Russia: “They don’t really want to be paid just in rubles. That’s the one thing Russia doesn’t need, because it can just print them. It only needs rubles to balance its international payments to stabilize the exchange rate – not to push it up.”

    Which brings us to settlements in yuan: “Taking payment in yuan is like taking payment in gold – an international asset that every country desires as a non-fiat currency that has a value if one sells it (unlike the dollar now, which may simply be confiscated, or ultimately left abandoned). What Russia really needs are critical industrial inputs like computer chips. It could ask China to import these with the yuan Russia provides.”

    Keynes is back

    Following our email exchanges, Professor Hudson gracefully agreed to answer in detail a few questions about the extremely complex geoeconomic processes in play across Eurasia. Here we go.

    The Cradle: The BRICS are studying the adoption of a common currency – including all of them and, we expect, the expanded BRICS+ as well. How could that be practically implemented? Hard to see the Brazilian Central Bank harmonizing with the Russians and the People’s Bank of China. Would that involve only investment – via the BRICS development bank? Would that be based on commodities + gold? How does the yuan fit in? Is the BRICS approach based on the current Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) discussions with the Chinese, led by Sergey Glazyev? Did the Samarkand summit advance, practically, the interconnection of BRICS and the SCO?

    Hudson: “Any idea of a common currency has to start with a currency-swap arrangement among existing member countries. Most trade will be in their own currencies. But to settle the inevitable imbalances (balance-of-payments surpluses and deficits), an artificial currency will be created by a new Central Bank.

    This may look superficially like the Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) created by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), largely to fund the US deficit on military account and the rising debt service owed by Global South debtors to US lenders. But the arrangement will be much more like the ‘bancor’ proposed by John Maynard Keynes in 1944. Deficit countries could draw a specified quota of bancors, whose valuation would be set by a common selection of prices and exchange rates. The bancors (and their own currency) would be used to pay countries in surplus.

    But unlike the IMF’s SDR system, the aim of this new alternative Central Bank will not be simply to subsidize economic polarization and indebtedness. Keynes proposed a principle that if a country (he was thinking of the United States at the time) ran chronic surpluses, that would be a sign of its protectionism or refusal to support a mutually resilient economy, and its claims would begin to be extinguished, along with the bancor debts of countries whose economies prevented their ability to balance their international payments and support their currency.

    Today’s proposed arrangements would indeed support lending among the member banks, but not for the purpose of supporting capital flight (the main use of IMF loans, when “left-wing” governments seem likely to be elected), and the IMF and its associated alternative to the World Bank would not impose austerity plans and anti-labor policies on debtors. The economic doctrine would promote self-sufficiency in food and basic essentials, and would promote tangible agricultural and industrial capital formation, not financialization.

    It is likely that gold also would be an element of international monetary reserves by these countries, simply because gold is a commodity that hundreds of years of world practice already have agreed on as acceptable and politically neutral. But gold would be a means of settling payments balances, not defining domestic currency. These balances would of course extend to trade and investment with western countries that are not part of this bank. Gold would be an acceptable means of settling western debt balances to the new Eurasian-centered bank. That would prove a vehicle for payments that western countries could not simply repudiate – as long as the gold was kept in the hands of the new bank members, no longer in New York or London as has been the dangerous practice since 1945.

    In a meeting to create such a bank, China would be in a similar dominant position to that which the United States enjoyed in 1944 at Bretton Woods. But its operating philosophy would be quite different. The aim would be to develop the economies of bank members, with long-term planning or trade patterns that seem most appropriate for their economies to avoid the kind of dependency relationships and privatization takeovers that have characterized IMF and World Bank policy.

    These development objectives would involve land reform, industrial and financial restructuring, and tax reform, as well as domestic banking and credit reforms. Discussions at the SCO meetings seem to have prepared the ground for establishing a general harmony of interests in creating reforms along these lines.”

    Eurasia or bust

    The Cradle: In the medium term, is it feasible to expect German industrialists, contemplating the coming wasteland, and their own demise, to revolt en masse against the NATO-imposed trade/financial sanctions against Russia, and force Berlin to open Nord Stream 2? Gazprom guarantees the pipeline is recoverable. Don’t need to join the SCO to make that happen…

    Hudson: “It is unlikely that German industrialists will act to prevent their country’s de-industrialization, given the US/NATO stranglehold on Eurozone politics and the past 75 years of political meddling by US officials. German company heads are more likely to try and survive with as much personal and corporate wealth intact as they can in the wake of Germany being turned into a Baltic-state-type economic wreckage.

    There already has been talk of shifting production – and management – to the United States, which will block Germany from obtaining energy, metals and other essential materials from any supplier not controlled by US interests and their allies.

    The great question is whether German companies would emigrate to the new Eurasian economies whose industrial growth and prosperity seem likely to far overshadow that of the United States.

    Of course the Nord Stream pipelines are recoverable. That is precisely why US political pressure from Secretary of State Blinken has been so insistent that Germany, Italy and other European countries double down on isolating their economies from trade and investment with Russia, Iran, China and other countries whose growth the US is trying to disrupt.”

    How to escape “There Is No Alternative”

    The Cradle: Are we reaching the point when the key players of the Global South – over 100 nations – finally get their act together and decide to go for broke and stop the US from keeping the artificial neoliberal global economy in a state of perpetual coma? This means the only possible option, as you have outlined, is to set up a parallel global currency bypassing the US dollar – while the usual suspects float the notion of a Bretton Woods III at best. Is the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) financial casino omnipotent enough to smash any possible competition? Do you envisage any other practical mechanisms apart from what is being discussed by BRICS/ EAEU/ SCO? 

    Hudson: “A year or two ago it seemed that the task of designing a full-fledged alternative world currency, monetary, credit and trading system was so complex that the details hardly could be thought through. But US sanctions have proved to be the needed catalyst to make such discussions pragmatically urgent.

    The confiscation of Venezuela’s gold reserves in London and its US investments, the confiscation of $300 billion of Russia’s foreign-exchange reserves held in the United States and Europe, and its threat to do the same to China and other countries resisting US foreign policy has made de-dollarization urgent. I have explained the logic in many points, from my Valdai Club article (with Radhika Desai) to my recent book on The Destiny of Civilization, the lecture series that I prepared for Hong Kong and the Global University for Sustainability.

    Holding securities denominated in dollars, and even holding gold or investments in the United States and Europe, is no longer a safe option. It is clear that the world is breaking into two quite different types of economies, and that US diplomats and their European satellites are willing to tear up the existing economic order in hopes that creating a disruptive crisis will enable themselves to come out on top.

    It also is clear that subjugation to the IMF and its austerity plans are economic suicide, and that following World Bank and its neoliberal doctrine of international dependency is self-destructive. The result has been to create an unpayable overhead of debts denominated in US dollars. These debts cannot be paid without borrowing credit from the IMF and accepting terms of economic surrender to US privatizers and speculators.

    The only alternative to imposing economic austerity on themselves is to withdraw from the dollar trap in which US-sponsored “free market” economics (markets free from government protection, and free from government ability to recover the environmental damage from US oil companies, mining companies and the associated industrial and food dependency) is to make a clean break.

    The break will be difficult, and US diplomacy will do everything it can to disrupt the creation of a more resilient economic order. But US policy has created a global state of dependency in which literally There is no alternative but to break away.”

    Germanexit?

    The Cradle: What is your analysis on Gazprom confirming Line B of the Nord Stream 2 was not touched by Pipeline Terror? This means Nord Stream 2 is practically ready to go – with a capacity to pump 27.5 billion cubic meters of gas a year, which happens to be half of the total capacity of – damaged – Nord Stream. So Germany is not doomed. This opens a whole new chapter; a solution will depend on a serious political decision by the German government.   

    Hudson: “Here’s the kicker: Russia certainly won’t bear the cost again, only to have the pipeline blown up. It will be up to Germany. I bet the current regime says “No.” That should make for an interesting rise of the alternative parties.

    The ultimate problem is that the only way Germany can restore trade with Russia is to withdraw from NATO, realizing that it is the major victim of NATO’s war. This could only succeed by spreading to Italy, and also to Greece (for not protecting it against Turkey, ever since Cyprus). That looks like a long fight.

    Maybe it’s easier just for German industry to pack up and move to Russia to help modernize its industrial production, especially BASF for chemistry, Siemens for engineering, etc.. If German companies relocate to the US to get gas, this will be perceived as a US raid on German industry, capturing its lead for the US. Even so, this won’t succeed, given America’s post-industrialized economy.

    So German industry can only move eastward if it creates its own political party as a nationalistic anti-NATO party. The EU constitution would require Germany to withdraw from the EU, which puts NATO interests first at the federal level. The next scenario is to discuss Germany’s entry into the SCO. Let’s take bets as to how long that will take.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/09/2022 – 23:30

  • Majority Of GOP Nominees Doubt Legitimacy Of 2020 Election: WaPo
    Majority Of GOP Nominees Doubt Legitimacy Of 2020 Election: WaPo

    A Washington Post analysis has identified 299 GOP candidates for House Senate and key statewide offices that should be called out for wrongthink – namely, questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 US election.

    For example;

    Those who cast doubt over election integrity “are running in every region of the country and in nearly every state.“

    Liberals, prepare thine fainting couches…

    According to the Post – “The implications will be lasting: If Republicans take control of the House, as many political forecasters predict, election deniers would hold enormous sway over the choice of the nation’s next speaker, who in turn could preside over the House in a future contested presidential election.”

    The rest of the report contains multiple instances of the phrases “false claims” , “deniers” , and even includes the most dramatic quote we’ve ever heard regarding the topic;

    “Election denialism is a form of corruption,” according to Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a NY University historian and author of ‘’Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.”

    “The party has now institutionalized this form of lying, this form of rejection of results. So it’s institutionalized illegal activity. These politicians are essentially conspiring to make party dogma the idea that it’s possible to reject certified results.”

    Really Ruth?

    We get it… it’s ok when they do it.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/09/2022 – 23:00

  • Our Deluded Leaders Ignore Reality And Ensure Disaster
    Our Deluded Leaders Ignore Reality And Ensure Disaster

    Authored by Phillip Carl Salzman via The Epoch Times,

    Do you think that without electricity you can charge an electric car? The governor of California Gavin Newsom and the dozen states that follow California’s rules do, and so apparently does Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada. They have mandated electric cars by 2035. But the “green energy” that they also mandate is incapable of supporting an electric grid that will charge anything more than your cell phone.

    Have you tried growing crops without fertilizer? The United Nations Environmental Program demands that you do so. Their advice was tragically made government policy in Sri Lanka and led to the collapse of agricultural production, food security, and the national economy. But Trudeau has adopted UNEP advice and is pressing Canadian farmers to dispense with fertilizer. So much for Canada feeding the hungry of the world. Perhaps if the farmers don’t comply quickly and fully enough, it will be necessary to declare the Emergencies Act once again.

    Do you believe that if the temperature increases several degrees all life on Earth with be extinguished? President Joe Biden does, calling climate change, which has been going on throughout the history of the Earth, an “existential crisis.” Apparent Trudeau believes the same, as he has systematically destroyed the Canadian economy in fear of climate change. All of our left-wing elites believe in this “existential crisis,” notwithstanding the fact that all of the predictions based on fictional computer models—a rise in sea levels flooding all coastal areas and inundating islands, the melting of the polar ice caps and glaciers, the disappearance of polar bears, massive deaths from tornados, hurricanes, and other extreme events—were refuted, as these things never happened, a sure indication that climate catastrophism is nonsense.

    Have our climate extremist leaders ever even heard about the global greening resulting from the increase in CO2, the florescence of vegetation all over the world, and its great boon for agriculture? So what can we conclude? Michael Shellenberger, in agreement with the 1,200 scientists and professionals who signed the World Climate Declaration, says “there is no scientific basis for any claim of climate apocalypse.” He continues, “It is hard to come up with any scenario where temperature changes of 4°C could be world-ending.”

    Another reform advocated by our leaders at the national, state or provincial, and municipal levels has been “justice reform.” The justification for this is that there are too many criminals in prison, and that criminals are really victims of “society,” so should be treated sympathetically. Black and Hispanic criminals, who make up a majority of violent offenders, are, it is alleged, victims of “systemic racism,” so their criminality is not really their fault. Thus, “social justice” requires that they not be incarcerated, or, if currently incarcerated, be released immediately.

    Some members of the U.S. Congress have advocated defunding the police and abolishing all jails and prisons. Democrat governors have released tens of thousands of offenders, including violent offenders.  Some states, New York and Illinois, have done away with cash bail, simply releasing those arrested into the public. Many Soros-funded district attorneys refuse to indict individuals for criminal acts. Laws have been passed in California that essentially legalized theft of up to $950. Though repeatedly attacking random civilians, mentally ill violent offenders among the vast populations of homeless in cities are excused for their crimes because they are homeless and mentally ill, so nothing can be done about them.

    The result of all this, precisely recorded in crime statistics, is the massive increase in crime, particularly violent crime, over the last few years. Recidivism, repeat violent offenses, of those released from prison, unindicted, or released on their own bond is common. In cities particularly, the streets and public transport are unsafe. Anyone walking on the sidewalk can be attacked at any time, either for their valuables or because someone mentally ill is angry. Driving is equally unsafe, as car-jackings are a growth industry. You take your life in your hands taking a bus or subway, both favorite places for the mentally ill homeless. Don’t stand too near the edge of the platform in the subway, or someone might find it too tempting to push you under a train.

    Trudeau’s answer to the increased lawlessness, yes, even in Canada, is to forbid law-abiding civilians from owning firearms and from using them in self-defense. This ensures that only criminals could have and use guns. What could go wrong? Biden and members of his party loudly condemn “gun violence,” but never have anything critical to say about the criminals who use the guns, except of course that they are victims who must be coddled. The real victims of violent crime are never given any thought by our leaders, because they are probably “privileged.” The reality, of course, is quite different. The privileged government officials all have teams of armed bodyguards. The many victims of violent crime are primarily black and Hispanic, but also Asian and Jewish minorities.

    Our leaders know that they must capture the youth in order to ensure their control in the future. Trudeau promulgated in 2017 a mandatory program called “Dimensions: Equity, Diversity, Inclusion,” requiring university presidents to sign it formally on behalf of their universities, and restricted the allocation of national government funds to those institutions that fulfilled their objectives to the satisfaction of national bureaucrats. The three “independent” national funding agencies for medical, natural science, and social science research adopted the EDI guidelines in their funding. The new objectives for higher education were “social justice,” anti-racism, and “decolonialization,” while the old universities’ objective of the disinterested search for truth was rejected, along with its criteria of achievement and merit because they are allegedly the tools of racist white male supremacy and colonialism. With reverse racism and reverse sexism now obligatory, Canadian universities have never been the same. Nor has science, now that biology is canceled in favor of radical gender theory, and non-colonial “indigenous science” is a growth industry.

    …

    Leaders have based their childish actions on ideological delusions and imaginary virtue signaling, regardless of the disastrous consequences for their citizens and for future generations. We are paying for this now, but the consequences will get worse and worse. Our future is a freight train headed for us at top speed.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/09/2022 – 22:30

  • Payrolls Turn Negative Next Quarter And Stay There For All 2023: BofA
    Payrolls Turn Negative Next Quarter And Stay There For All 2023: BofA

    After Friday’s payrolls report once again surprised to the upside, while the unemployment rate unexpectedly slumped near all time lows as the number of unemployed workers dropped sharply in September, sparking a swoon in the S&P on 6 of the past 7 payroll Fridays, Bank of America’s economists summarized the payrolls data noting that there was “little in our BofA Indicator of US Labor Market Conditions and BofA Indicator of US Labor Market Momentum that suggests current and expected Fed tightening have significantly dented the strength of labor markets.” They go on to note that while conditions have moderated somewhat, they remain near all-time highs, and “those that were expecting the Fed to pivot to a slower pace of rate hikes in November may very well be disappointed on the heels of today’s report.”

    But it’s not all good news: momentum – which is the marginal rate of change in labor market conditions – has softened somewhat over the past year, likely reflecting some of the unusual nature of labor market performance during the pandemic. In other words, the BofA framework would normally interpret slower payroll employment and stronger wage growth as late-cycle developments, whereas in the current context they could simply characterize a labor market emerging from the pandemic. The bank’s economists conclude that “notwithstanding this signal extraction problem, we are inclined to take the framework at face value; though recent employment reports would be viewed as robust by any historical standard, they are still less robust than some employment reports received in 2020 and 2021.”

    A far more ominous take on the NFP report was provided courtesy of BofA credit strategist Yuri Seliger who wrote that while the September Payrolls report was strong, “we should start seeing a slowdown in jobs soon.”

    And unlike other banks who still pretend the US can magically avoid a recession with 7% mortgages, record credit card rates and near record low savings rates, the BofA strategist (whose employer recently forecast a recession as a base case) actually put his money where his mouth is and wrote that the bank’s economists are calling for Payrolls to drop to about half the pace in 4Q vs 3Q and then go negative in 1Q-2023, where they will stay until the end of the year.

    This is because financial conditions are tightening fast. Here, BofA economists estimate conditions are already much tighter than at the peak of the prior cycle in 2018.

    Meanwhile, as we discussed earlier, the interest-rate sensitive part of the economy – housing…

    … and autos…

    …  are both showing clear signs of slowing. On the IG credit side the industrial corporate index notional is already shrinking ex. rising stars for the first time since 2005

    In conclusion, Seliger looks ahead and muses that how much growth slows in 2023 will “ultimately determine the impact on credit fundamentals. A stronger than expected US economy now, and the resulting more rapid Fed tightening cycle, create more downside risk to growth in 2023.” The good news for credit investors is that the coming recession matters less for IG spreads, because as long as it is shallow, the impact on IG credit fundamentals is limited. That’s because companies have already been conservative with their balance sheets, with no increases in gross debt in each of the past six quarters. On the other hand GDP growth remaining positive in nominal terms should support earnings, but should growth continue to shrink then after two quarter of dodging the bullet, corporate profits will finally be hit some time in Q4, sparking the long-overdue retail capitulation that Goldman said is finally starting.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/09/2022 – 22:00

  • Top Medical Center To Pause Transgender Surgeries On Minors After Backlash
    Top Medical Center To Pause Transgender Surgeries On Minors After Backlash

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

    A top medical center in Tennessee is pausing the removal of breasts and other procedures that it says were performed on transgender youth in recent years.

    The Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) disclosed the pause in a letter to a state representative on Oct. 7.

    VUMC doctors have performed breast removals and other surgeries for youth who think they’re a different gender, according to lectures given by VUMC doctors. Archived versions of the webpage for the VUMC “pediatric transgender clinic” says that puberty blockers and “gender-affirming therapy” are among the services offered.

    The transgender clinic, which also services adults, has performed “gender-affirming surgical procedures” for an average of five minors per year since it started in 2018, Dr. C. Wright Pinson, deputy CEO, told state Republican Rep. Jason Zachary in the new letter.

    All of the minors were 16 or older, none received “genital procedures,” and parental consent was obtained for all patients, according to Pinson.

    Zachary and 61 other Tennessee House Republicans in September asked VUMC to pause what they described as “surgical mutilations of minor children” until they had a chance to craft and pass legislation that prohibits such procedures.

    Pinson’s letter, a response to the request, said that VUMC would pause the surgeries for minors while the center reviews a new version of recommendations by the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) and consults with local and national experts on the updated recommendations.

    WPATH’s recommendations say that youth should show “several years of persistent gender diversity [or] incongruence” before being given hormones or surgeries but the group also removed any age restrictions regarding transgender surgeries, which include breast removal and womb removal.

    The review may take several months, Pinson said. He also said that if new laws are passed VUMC will comply with them.

    Zachary said in a statement that he appreciated the response.

    “Glad that VUMC has paused surgeries for children at their transgender clinic. This is a win for the safety of our children, but we’re committed to ensuring this never happens in Tennessee again,” Tennessee House Majority Leader William Lamberth, a Republican, said in a statement.

    Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, has called for lawmakers to pass legislation that would not allow “permanent, life-altering decisions that hurt children,” and a number of legislators said they plan to craft bills to that effect and introduce them in January when lawmakers are due to gather.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/09/2022 – 21:30

  • Credit Card Rates Just Hit A Record As The Average Car Loan Rises To Fresh All Time High
    Credit Card Rates Just Hit A Record As The Average Car Loan Rises To Fresh All Time High

    With the 30 Year mortgage now (un)comfortably into 7% territory, the US housing market is already suffering the “sharpest turn since the 2008 crash“, according to Redfin…

    … pushing the average mortgage payment almost 50% to $2,500 from around $1,700 at the start of the year.

    But we won’t focus on mortgage in this post (we have done so excessively on various previous occasions), especially since in a world where most Americans have been forced to rent (with the average house increasingly unaffordable), having a mortgage became a luxury for the middle class long ago. Instead, we will bring readers’ attention to what is no longer a luxury, but with the US savings rate at record lows…

    … and with credit card debt soaring every month by record amounts…

    … to record highs…

    … it is that tiny piece of plastic that has become absolutely indispensable in funding the American way of life, and unfortunately as the latest US consumer credit report showed, the interest rate on all credit card accounts (that were assessed any interest as of Q2), just jumped to the highest since Fed record-keeping started in Q4 1994.

    Yes, between soaring prices, exploding rents (after all, with 7% mortgage which nobody can afford, what’s left of America’s middle class is being pushed into renting), the rate on credit cards – that last lifeline to keeping with exploding inflation – just hit the highest on record. We will leave it to readers to decide what this means for the US economy, but first we just wanted to point out something else.

    As we noted last week, used car prices are finally sliding, and not just sequentially…

    … but also annually.

    That’s a problem if the surge in car prices was the result of soaring auto loans. Which as the final chart in this post shows, was precisely the case as the average new car loan just surpassed $38,000 for the first time.

    Translation: the implosion of the US consumer is coming and it will be spectacular.

    Source: Federal Reserve

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/09/2022 – 21:00

  • A List Of Those Who "F**ked With Biden"
    A List Of Those Who “F**ked With Biden”

    Authored by Rajan Laad via American Thinker,

    My late uncle once told me that there are four kinds of people in the world. 

    The gifted who are aware of their gifts, the gifted who are unaware of their gifts, the imbeciles who know of their imbecility, and finally the imbeciles who are unaware of their imbecility.

    “Beware of the fourth kind, always,” he warned me as he concluded.

    Joe Biden is a perfect illustration of this fourth kind. 

    Not only is Biden a dolt who is unaware of his obvious shortcomings, he is also delusional enough to attribute his achievements, which are a consequence of his good fortune, to his nonexistent talent.

    Many of his gaffes, prior to his impaired cognitive abilities, were a product of this erroneous overestimation of his abilities, coupled with his arrogance.

    In his mind, all he had to do was show up and say whatever occurred to him at that moment, no preparations were required.

    This mindset causes his trademark crude swagger and revolting smugness.

    On some occasions, he paid premature tributes to the living.

    On other occasions, he boasted about getting a Ukrainian prosecutor, who would have exposed his son Hunter’s shady dealing in Ukraine and Biden’s abuse of power and corruption, fired. He knew the establishment was on his side and he had nothing to fear. 

    Recently, during a visit to Florida to assess the damage done by Hurricane Ian, Biden bragged to Fort Myers Beach Mayor Ray Murphy that “no one f–ks with Biden.”

    If Trump had made similar claims while visiting a hurricane-ravaged state, the media would have called him every pejorative epithet known to mankind and House Democrats would have conducted another impeachment.

    But since it is Biden, they ignore it and euphemize the profanity with the claim “Oh that’s just Joe, he means well.”

    Time to fact-check Biden’s claim and look at those not only who dared to f—k with Biden but also lived to tell the story

    Barack Obama

    It happened during his April 2022 visit to the White House.

    Obama knows Biden’s cognitive abilities are impaired. Anyone with the slightest sensitivity would have taken Biden along and ensured that Biden was included in all the fun.

    But no, the narcissistic Obama joked at Biden’s expense during his remarks:

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

    Following the speech, Biden was left all alone on stage, looking on listlessly:

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

    After managing to descend from the stage, Biden attempted to include himself in a conversation that Obama was engaged in with others, but was ignored. 

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

    Back in 2020, when Biden was running for president from his basement, Obama apparently told aides: “‘Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f-things up.” 

    What happened to Obama after humiliating Biden privately and in public?

    He still remains the de facto leader of the Democrats.

    Kamala Harris 

    Among the others who ignored Biden during Obama’s April visit to the White House was Kamala Harris.

    But that wasn’t the worst blow Kamala delivered to Biden.

    During her failed presidential campaign Harris brutally attacked Biden calling him out for his racism:

    What happened to Harris after that vicious attack on Biden?

    She was made Biden’s vice president, the second most powerful individual in the U.S., and next in line to the presidency.

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

    The self-centered champagne socialist and ‘squad’ leader AOC refused to endorse the idea of Biden seeking re-election in 2024.

    What happened to AOC after snubbing Biden?

    She is on track to be reelected during the midterms and she still continues to attract the attention she craves for.

    Prince Mohammed bin Salman

    Back in July, Biden met the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and shared a cordial fist bump with the leader of a nation he once pledged to make a “pariah” owing to its human rights record.

    After waging war on energy in the U.S. by shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline and restricting drilling on U.S. soil, Biden visited Saudi Arabia to plead with Prince Salman to increase the production of oil to combat the resulting energy crisis.

    Biden’s implorings fell on deaf ears

    The kingdom and its OPEC+ allies announced a massive cut to oil production.

    What’s happened to OPEC+ and Saudi Arabia after.they rejected Biden’s plea?

    They continue to be powerful and dictate the price of petroleum and diesel fuel all over the world.

    The Taliban

    On July 08, 2021, following his hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden effectively declared ‘mission accomplished’ by saying the following: 

    “The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese army. They’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy in the—of the United States from Afghanistan.”

    On 26 August 2021, ISIS carried out a suicide bombing at Kabul Airport that killed 183 people including Afghans and United military personnel.

    Biden pledged to ‘not forgive the attack’ and ordered an airstrike that killed an Afghan aid worker and seven children instead of the perpetrators

    What happened to the Taliban after humiliating Biden?

    They continue to be in power in Afghanistan and continue to provide a safe haven to terror groups such as al-Qaida and ISIS.

    Kim Jong-un

    Back in 2019, North Korea called Biden a “rabid dog” that “must be beaten to death with a stick.”

    President Trump met with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un on two occasions, resulting in no major missiles fired in that region.

    Back in May during his trip to South Korea, Biden pledged to do whatever it takes to confront North Korea. Following Biden’s departure, North Korea fired three ballistic missiles.

    What happened to North Korea after personally and symbolically attacking Biden?

    Early in September, North Korea declared itself to be a nuclear weapons state. 

    North Korea recently fired 2 ballistic missiles at Japan and followed that with many other missiles after Kamala Harris visited South Korea.

    Vladimir Putin

    The Democrats concocted their preposterous conspiracy theory that President Trump had colluded with Putin to rig the 2016 elections. They claimed Trump was soft on Russia.

    But the truth is, Putin didn’t conduct any military operations when Trump was in power. He felt that Trump was too unpredictable.

    However, following Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, things were different: Putin was emboldened to engage in a military intervention in Ukraine.

    Biden has responded by dispatching billions worth of aid and advanced arms to Ukraine.

    What happened to Putin after taking on Biden?

    Putin continues to be the President of Russia, the Russian currency continues to rise and the war continues to ravage the region.

    The New York Times

    Back in July, the Democrat mouthpiece, the New York Times carried a piece that made the case that Biden, at 79, is “testing the boundaries of age and the presidency.” The piece had comments from 50 Democrat officials who urged Biden not to run again in 2024.

    What happened to the NYT after attacking Biden?

    They continue to be the foremost outfit that the Democrats go to in order to spread their message.

    Verdict to Biden’s boastful claim:  

    Four Pinocchios

    Biden’s boast is a blatant falsehood to being gravely insensitive.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/09/2022 – 20:30

  • The Effects Of Quantitative Tightening: Less Liquidity, More Volatility
    The Effects Of Quantitative Tightening: Less Liquidity, More Volatility

    How are interest rate hikes and quantitative tightening affecting markets?

    The Federal Reserve’s fast-paced rate hikes and initial reductions of its balance sheet have resulted in liquidity drying up across markets, amplifying volatility and uncertainty.

    As Visual Capitalist’s Advisor Channel shows in this ‘Markets in a Minute’ from New York Life Investments explains how quantitative tightening affects markets, and charts the rise in volatility spurred by the severe decline in S&P 500 futures book depth.

    What is Quantitative Tightening (QT)?

    Quantitative tightening (QT) is the infamous twin to quantitative easing (QE). For context, quantitative easing is the injection of liquidity into bond markets by the Federal Reserve buying Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities which are added onto the Fed’s balance sheet.

    As a result, during periods of quantitative easing, Treasuries and certain mortgage-backed securities have a large-scale buyer providing buy-side liquidity, reducing the impact of sellers in the market. This supports bond prices, and prevents bond yields from rising too quickly.

    Quantitative tightening is a reduction of the assets on the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. This means letting Treasuries mature and not rebuying them, or even selling them on the market. Opposite to quantitative easing, QT removes buy-side liquidity from the market and can result in bond prices falling and yields rising.

    How Rate Hikes and Quantitative Tightening Affect Markets

    Along with quantitative tightening’s reduction of liquidity from markets, interest rate hikes can also result in less market liquidity.

    As interest rates rise, so do borrowing costs for capital. This results in less money being lent out and fewer deals being funded, higher mortgage and other loan rates, and tighter overall purse strings of market participants and everyday consumers. In this way, higher interest rates slow down market and economic activity.

    The Fed’s pace of rate hikes in 2022 has been one of the fastest in history, with the Federal Funds rate starting the year at 0.0-0.25% and projected to end the year somewhere between 4.0-4.5%.

    As rates have continued to rise, the rate of quantitative tightening doubled in September to now let a maximum of $60 billion of Treasuries and $35 billion of mortgage-backed securities roll off its balance sheet without repurchase.

    This acceleration in QT could see market liquidity dry up even more, further amplifying volatility.

    How Low Liquidity and High Volatility Raise Risk

    One of the clearest measures of liquidity is a market’s book depth. Book depth is the amount of available buy and sell orders in a market’s order book.

    More orders stacked up on either side results in thicker book depth, or deeper liquidity for incoming buy and sell orders to tap into, while less orders on either side result in thinner book depth, especially at the top of the book.

    The top of the book is where buy and sell orders are closest to the last traded price:

    • $101 – Closest sell orders
    • $100 – Current/last traded price
    • $99 – Closest buy orders

    In the example above, buy orders at $101 and sell orders at $99 are at the top of the order book since they are closest to the last traded price.

    As liquidity tightens and book depth thins out, orders at the top of the book become smaller, meaning that prices can move around more easily as big trades come into the market to fill orders at the top of the book.

    In this way, tighter liquidity and thinner book depth result in higher volatility, largely raising risk for market participants. This can turn into a self-reinforcing cycle, as investors sit out of the markets to avoid periods of high volatility, resulting in even less liquidity and higher volatility.

    Looking Ahead

    As book depth has thinned out significantly over the past year, volatility began to rise alongside the market’s uncertainty.

    With more rate hikes incoming and the Fed’s QT operations continuing at a faster pace now, market participants may brace for even less liquidity in markets and the possibility for further volatility and heightened risk.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/09/2022 – 20:00

  • Jagmeet Singh Gaslights Canadians On "Greedflation"
    Jagmeet Singh Gaslights Canadians On “Greedflation”

    Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

    He wants Canadians to forget who is propping up Trudeau

    Canada’s NDP leader Jagmeet Singh took Canada’s Thanksgiving weekend as an opportunity to virtue-signal on Twitter, where he blamed corporations and conservatives for causing “greedflation” that is gouging everyday Canadians at the cash register.

    Meanwhile he single-handedly props up the government whose policies brought it about.

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

    It’s not only disingenuous for Singh to be blaming Canadian businesses for inflation, he’s also trying to foist responsibility for it onto the Liberal and Conservative parties – as if the NDP is the blameless voice of reason in the room:

    The reality is that it’s the Conservatives, and their newly elected populist leader  have effectively zero influence on policy in the House of Commons right now.

    Why?

    Because the Liberal government is literally kept in power by a coalition agreement with Jagmeet Singh’s NDPs. That agreement guarantees the Liberals will survive any non-confidence motions brought against them until their present term expires. That means that unless Jagmeet Singh himself, scraps this agreement, he, Jagmeet Singh, and not the Conservatives, much less Pierre Poilievre, is single-handedly keeping the Liberals in power. That means all the prevailing policies and their consequences are on him as much as they are on Trudeau.

    It was the NDP who voted alongside the Liberals to enact the Emergency Powers Act in which the bank accounts of  “hardworking Canadians” were seized without due process. It was Jagmeet Singh’s NDP who then voted against a motion to overturn COVID mandates, and it was the NDP who voted against a motion to scrap the planned carbon tax hikes. That tax hike will triple the existing carbon tax, and that will also be paid for by “hardworking Canadians”.

    (Trudeau, for his part, recently took a victory lap for increasing GST rebates on the heels of tripling the carbon tax. He wants you to thank him for giving you some of your own money back).

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

    What really causes “Greedflation”?

    For starters, the money supply (the literal definition of inflation) has doubled since the beginning of the Trudeau administration from 1.2T in 2015 to 2.4T today:

    source: tradingeconomics.com

    To be fair, the Canadian M2 money supply has been increasing steadily under all previous administrations, (because we live in a global fiat ponzi), but we can see that pronounced inflection point at the onset of the Covid pandemic. This happened worldwide as nation states blew out their respective money supplies by an aggregated 30 Trillion USD.

    Against this backdrop, the Canadian dollar (alongside all other global currencies) has been in freefall against the USD – we’re witnessing the so-called “Dollar Milkshake Theory”, except it’s no longer a theory. As I covered in the most recent issue of my premium newsletter, it’s now The Dollar Milkshake Reality.

    For many Canadian businesses, much of their input costs are largely denominated in USD. Their Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) is rising, and as they sell their finished products to Canadians, they’re receiving CAD, which is falling.

    This, coming off of two-years of lockdowns in which politicians and bureaucrats picked and chose which businesses were “essential” and which weren’t. Small and medium businesses were squeezed hard and big box and platform megaliths, the kind whose CEOs rub shoulders with the likes of Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh at Davos confabs, made out like bandits.

    So the lockdowns are over, Covid is also over (like it or not), and the world it attempting to get back to normal. There’s only one problem. The rampant monetary and credit expansion in which the world’s central banks (Canada’s included) whose stated policies were to intentionally ignite inflation, finally got it.

    But it wasn’t transitory, it’s now existential. We see glimpses of the stakes in places like Sri Lanka – where the populace overthrew their government, in Turkey – where the inflation rate is officially 90% and in Lebanon, where armed citizens have taken to storming banks to get their own deposits out.

    It hasn’t gotten to that point here in Canada, yet. But it’s certainly entertaining to be lectured to and sermonized on corporate greed by a millionaire socialist who happens to be the one person in Canada who could single-handedly bring down the current government. The same government who went along with, even led the charge, on deranged Covid policies that got us into this mess.

    *  *  *

    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 if you haven’t been kicked off Twitter yet, there

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/09/2022 – 19:30

  • "Massive Errors" By FBI Undercounted Number Of Armed Citizens Thwarting Active Shootings
    “Massive Errors” By FBI Undercounted Number Of Armed Citizens Thwarting Active Shootings

    Surprise, surprise… It turns out that a ‘good guy with a gun’ stopped a ‘bad guy with a gun’ far more than the FBI admits.

    According to a new report from the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), the FBI’s official data contains “massive errors” when it comes to tracking active shooting incidents – and the agency has undercounted how often armed citizens have thwarted active shootings over the past eight years, Fox News reports.

    The FBI defines an active shooter as “one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area,” but does not include crimes related to criminal activities such as robberies or gang shootouts. At the center of the discrepancy are two variables – misclassified shootings and overlooked incidents.

    “Although collecting such data is fraught with challenges, some see a pattern of distortion in the FBI numbers because the errors almost exclusively go one way, minimizing the life-saving actions of armed citizens,” reads the report, which was provided to Fox by author and CPRC founder John Lott.

    Data released by the nonprofit shows that 34.4% of active shootings were thwarted by armed citizens between 2014 and 2021. However, FBI data show only 4.4% of active shootings were thwarted by armed citizens during that time period.

    All in, 360 active shooter incidents were identified by CPRC between 2014 and 2021, with 124 stopped by armed citizens. The FBI identified 252 active shooter incidents during the same time period, with only 11 thwarted by armed citizens. -Fox News

    “Whether deliberately through bias or just incompetence, the FBI database of active shooters cannot be trusted,” said Gary Mauser, an emeritus professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada, in the report.

    According to the research, the FBI misclassified at least five cases where citizens thwarted the incident, but the FBI didn’t list it in the report because the suspects were ultimately apprehended by the police. In two cases, citizens with valid firearms licenses thwarted shootings. In three other misidentified cases, “the FBI simply failed to mention citizen engagement at all.”

    25 likely mass shootings were not included according to the report – which is in addition to another 83 active shooting incidents excluded from the FBI’s figures. There were several instances of armed individuals thwarting potential mass shootings just this year – including a notable case in Indiana, where 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken took out an active shooter at a mall, undoubtedly preventing more deaths.

    In response to the report, the FBI directed Fox to page 2 of their 2021 active shooting report, which didn’t clear anything up.

    “The FBI works proactively to identify incidents that meet the scope of our study, using internal FBI holdings and repositories, official law enforcement reports (when obtainable), as well as open-source data. There is no mandated database collection or central intake point for reporting active shooter incidents, which exists for other crimes. If additional incidents meeting FBI criteria are identified after the publication of the document, every effort is made to factor those incidents into future reporting,” states the FBI report.

    The CPRC report even differentiated how often armed citizens thwarted potential mass shootings – or mass shootings in areas where guns are allowed, vs. in gun-free zones.

    “When I was at the Department of Justice, they just refused to go and look at this. And that is whether the active shooting event occurred in a place where guns are banned. And the reason why that’s important is that if you have a place where guns are banned, it’s very likely that the law-abiding civilian is going to obey the rules that are there, and you can’t expect them to stop these types of attacks,” Lott told Fox News Digital.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/09/2022 – 19:00

  • "The Fed Is Fuct…" Part 4
    “The Fed Is Fuct…” Part 4

    Via AdventuresInCapitalism.com,

    Read Part 1 here…

    Read Part 2 here…

    Read Part 3 here…

    The Fed is trapped in a box of their own creation. As a result, they may want to talk tough, but their ability to maneuver is severely restricted. The Fed claims that they’re targeting a terminal rate of 4.6% for Fed Funds, but if they did that for any period of time, they’d only succeed in blowing up the Treasury.

    Our government has run obscene deficits over the past two decades. This was only made possible by the Fed suppressing interest rates. Despite a succession of Treasury Secretaries, the US debt was never termed out. The majority of the debt is actually quite short term. During 2021, the Federal government paid $392 billion in interest on $21.7 trillion of average debt outstanding—or an average interest rate of 1.8%.

    Now imagine if Fed Funds actually got to the terminal rate and stayed there for any period of time. What would paying an average rate of 4.6% on year-end 2021 debt do to the interest expense? Well, it rises by $636 billion to $1.028 trillion or the more than the cost of our entire military spending of $801 billion in 2021. Ignoring the budget pressure, the interest cost would then be 4.5% of total GDP, up from 1.7% in 2021. That’s like tying a lead weight around the neck of our economy.

    Both political parties have engaged in a drunken spending spree. There is zero political desire to reduce spending and it seems almost inevitable that deficits will continue and even expand into the future. The question is, “who then funds the increased cost of interest expense in addition to the already egregious annual deficits?”

    Over the past few years, our deficits have increasingly been funded by the Federal Reserve purchasing government bonds through their QE, which is quite inflationary as we’re now learning. Except, QE is now going in reverse as the Fed claims that they’ll be selling off bonds as they conduct QT. If they’re selling bonds while the Treasury needs to accelerate their own debt issuances to cover the increased cost of interest, then rates will be forced higher—potentially much higher. As rates go higher, government interest costs will increase, and the cycle will accelerate the cash drain from the Treasury. At some point, the Fed will be forced to step in and monetize this debt as the buyer of last resort—which is effectively what happens in most Emerging Market crises—often making the crisis much worse. This is a cycle that once started, gets ugly quite fast.

    Just look at how fiercely the Japanese are defending the interest rate on their own sovereign debt. The Japanese must know that once rates rise, the whole game is over. The Bank of England belatedly came to a similar conclusion after only testing QT. Over here in the states, I’m not sure if the Fed has actually done any math on the issue.

    Look, Powell may want to be Volcker. He may want to crush inflation. However, he’s trapped. The Fed simply cannot take rates up beyond a certain point without blowing up the Treasury and then being forced back into even more aggressive QE to absorb the bonds from the Treasury—which would only accelerate inflation. Besides, despite Powell desiring a recession to crimp inflation, he must realize that a recession will certainly crimp tax receipts—only making the deficits worse.

    It’s all quite reflexive and low rates are what’s stopping the snowball from rolling down the hill. Raising rates will set an avalanche in motion. When your debt to GDP exceeds 100%, your ability to maneuver is restricted. The US is on the precipice of an Emerging Markets debt crisis and Powell seems determined to be the one who sets it all in motion, but only after he first blows up every other global Central Bank.

    I am always reminded that the Fed is full of useless academics, but in the end, it’s a highly political institution and they’ll craft the white papers to justify whatever idiotic course they choose to take. As the above scenario begins to unfold, the political class will force Powell to back down. They will decide that increased inflation is preferable to detonating the treasury. The Pause is coming and it will send equities parabolic. There will be a few more nasty moments between then and today.

    The trick is to survive and then max it out when the Fed admits that they’re trapped. It’s going to be one of the great wealth transfers of all time. Who’s ready??

    *  *  *

    If you enjoyed this post, subscribe for more at http://www.adventuresincapitalism.com

    We’ve been chatting about inflation quite regularly in the KEDM Discord channel. Join now athttps://link.kedm.com/AIC

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/09/2022 – 18:30

  • "It's Become A Political Arm Of White House": ATF Gun Store Revocations Hit 16-Year High
    “It’s Become A Political Arm Of White House”: ATF Gun Store Revocations Hit 16-Year High

    Under the Biden-Harris administration, there has been a considerable rise in gun stores having their licenses revoked by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

    The Trace reported that 92 Federal Firearm Licenses (FFLs) had been pulled so far this year — this is the highest number since 2008. 

    And comes nearly a year and a half after President Biden declared war on ‘rogue gun dealers.’

    “The numbers provide the first indication that federal investigators have cracked down on lawbreaking gun dealers following guidance from the Biden administration ordering the agency to take a stricter tack during inspections,” Trace said. 

    The revoked 92 FFLs account for 1.3% of all the gun shops inspected. The revocation rate under Biden has skyrocketed to the highest in 16 years. 

    “The pandemic hobbled the ATF’s ability to conduct compliance inspections at gun stores, and the total number of inspections has yet to rebound to pre-pandemic levels,” Trace said. 

    Anti-gun David Chipman, former ATF agent and Biden’s failed ATF head nomination, who now works for the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins University, commented on the data, saying, “the trendline is good. We should applaud the agency for holding the industry accountable — for doing its job.” 

    However, one gun shop owner in New Jersey told AmmoLand Shooting Sports News that Biden’s crackdown on FFLs “is no longer about pursuing criminals:” 

    “It has become a political arm of the White House. These ATF agents – they’re no longer worried about what’s right and wrong. They’re worried about their jobs. This is all part of Biden’s zero-tolerance policy for gun dealers.”

    So is the surge in FFL revocations under the Biden administration just another back-door attempt to trample the Second Amendment? 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/09/2022 – 18:00

  • Are Central Banks Going Bankrupt? Morgan Stanley Makes A Striking Observation
    Are Central Banks Going Bankrupt? Morgan Stanley Makes A Striking Observation

    By Seth Carpenter, Morgan Stanley Chief Global Economist and former Fed economist

    Quantitative easing (QE) changed central bank balance sheets forever. In August 2007, the Fed’s balance sheet was about $900 billion; this year, it peaked at $9 trillion. The global rates sell-off makes investors look at their P&Ls, and I am getting more questions about central bank P&Ls…a topic I have thought about for a while. Central banks will not go bankrupt, but it is worth considering when losses do and do not matter.

    Starting with the Fed, all the income generated on the System Open Market Account portfolio, less interest expense, realized losses, and operating costs is remitted to the US Treasury. Before the Global Financial Crisis, these remittances averaged $20-25 billion per year; they ballooned to more than $100 billion as the balance sheet grew. These remittances reduce the deficit and borrowing needs. Net income depends on the (mostly fixed) average coupon on assets, the share of liabilities that are interest free (physical paper currency), and the level of reserves and reverse repo balances, whose costs float with the policy rate. From essentially zero in 2007, interest-bearing liabilities have mushroomed to almost two-thirds of the balance sheet. As Exhibit 1 shows, the Fed’s net income has turned negative, and losses will deepen as the policy rate rises. Because the Fed – like most central banks – does not mark its assets to market, losses on the portfolio are unrealized and do not flow through the income statement (although for transparency’s sake, the Fed publishes the unrealized gain/loss position on its portfolio quarterly). But if the Fed sells assets, the losses are realized, reducing net income.

    So, what do losses mean? Is there a hit to capital? Bankruptcy? An inability to conduct monetary policy? No. First, remittances to the Treasury end, and the Treasury issues more debt. The Fed then cumulates its losses and, rather than reducing its capital, creates a “deferred asset.”(The details are tedious. On the weekly H.4.1, a negative liability is reported, but in the financial statement, it is an asset.) When earnings turn positive again, remittances stay at zero until the losses are recouped; imagine the Fed facing a 100% tax rate and offsetting current losses with future income. Profitability will eventually return because currency will keep growing, lowering interest expense, and QT will shrink interest-bearing liabilities.

    There are global variations on this theme. The Bank of England has an explicit indemnification agreement with His Majesty’s Treasury for losses on QE. The effect is essentially the same as with the Fed, but the political economy differs. Where HMT and the BoE share responsibility, the Fed is on its own. Passive unwinding for the BoE is hard, given the lumpy maturity structure of gilt holdings, while the Fed has up to $95 billion per month running off passively. For the BoE, a one percentage point increase in Bank Rate lowers remittances by roughly £10 billion per year, a material sum for a country grappling with fiscal issues. The proposal to lower expense by prohibiting interest payments on reserves deserves scrutiny. If no authority remains, the BoE would have to sell assets to regain monetary control, realizing losses. The losses exist; it is the timing that is in question.

    The ECB’s balance sheet is structured quite differently, but the logic is similar. Our European team projects the depo rate at 2.5% by next March, which implies ECB losses of around €40 billion next year. Bank deposits receive the depo rate, which will be much higher than the yield on the portfolio. The BoJ’s balance sheet has similarly swelled, but as of March (the latest available data), the BoJ was in an unrealized gain position. We think that yield curve control (YCC) will be maintained through the end of Governor Kuroda’s term, but when it ends, if the JGB curve sells off sharply, the losses could be large, though unrealized.

    The most interesting variant is the Czech National Bank. The CNB has had a negative equity position for most of the past 20 years. Managing a small, open economy means focusing on the exchange rate, and most assets are foreign currency-denominated. If the central bank is credible and the Czech koruna rises, the value of its assets falls. The same is true for the Swiss National Bank, whose profits and losses have swung by billions in some years, yet it has not lost control of policy.

    Central bank profits and losses matter…but only when they matter. Before the 1900s, the subject of economics was called “political economy.” Central bank losses that affect fiscal outcomes may have political ramifications, but the banks’ ability to conduct policy is not impaired.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/09/2022 – 17:30

  • Biology Teacher Reinstated After Refusing To Use Trans Student Pronouns
    Biology Teacher Reinstated After Refusing To Use Trans Student Pronouns

    A biology teacher who was suspended last week after refusing to use transgender students’ preferred pronouns was reinstated after over 400 people showed up at the school’s auditorium last Wednesday – most of whom were there to support the educator.

    Darren Cusato

    Biology and anatomy teacher Daren Cusato was suspended by officials at South Side Area School District in rural Beaver County, PA, despite citing religious beliefs for his refusal use the trans students’ pronouns.

    “My uncle Daren is standing up for what is right, even though he is standing by himself. I am thoroughly embarrassed that South Side School District has taken this arbitrary stance in choosing to align with the one percent,” said Cusato’s niece – one of 40 people who spoke at the meeting, most in support of his reinstatement.

    South Side Area School District board

    “I am standing up here tonight to ask you to separate these two things: the very divisive but trendy topic of pronouns and the precedent that you are setting, which is that teachers need to modify their engagement of students based on how that student feels,” said another.

    One speaker slammed the district for acting out of fear of “getting sued,” according to WPXI.

    “We shouldn’t be afraid of being sued. Fine. If you want to sue us, sue us. Let’s take it to the Supreme Court. Let’s take it all the way,” she said.

    Others argued in favor of the school – with one woman insisting that “Transgender students have a right to be identified by their chosen name, their pronouns. School staff must use that name.”

    “If we allow a teacher, particularly one with a highly-regarded reputation, to model that these children don’t deserve acknowledgement of who they are, then the children we are trying to protect are in even greater danger,” said another trans-defender.

    After Cusato’s reinstatement, the district announced plans to rewrite a new policy on the subject at a future meeting.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/09/2022 – 17:00

  • Inflation, High Inflation, & Hyperinflation
    Inflation, High Inflation, & Hyperinflation

    Authored by Thorstein Polleit via The Mises Institute,

    The word “inflation” is heard and read everywhere these days.

    However, since different people sometimes have very different understandings of inflation, here is a definition:

    Inflation is the sustained rise in the prices of goods across the board.

    This definition conveys that inflation means that the increase in prices of goods is not just a one-off but permanently; and that not just some goods prices go up, but all.

    How does inflation arise? The economists have two explanations ready. The first explanation is the “nonmonetary” explanation of inflation. According to this theory, sharply rising energy prices lead to inflation. This is referred to as cost-push inflation.

    Or inflation is caused by excess demand: the demand for goods exceeds the supply, causing prices to rise.

    The second explanation for inflation is monetary. “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon,” as US economist Milton Friedman put it.

    And that’s right. Because in an economy without money, there is simply no inflation. So, you can see: Inflation has something to do with money.

    It can be demonstrated theoretically that an increase in the money supply leads to an increase in goods prices—the prices of goods will be higher compared to a situation where the money supply has not been expanded.

    There is quite some empirical evidence that increasing the amount of money over time is associated with rising goods prices—be it in the form of consumer goods prices and/or asset prices such as stocks and real estate.

    With a view to current developments in the world, however, both explanations can be meaningfully connected.

    The energy price shock triggered by green policies, which has many other commodity prices skyrocketing, combined with lockdown related shortages in many commodities and goods markets, are hitting a huge monetary overhang that central banks have built up over the past few years.

    And it is precisely this monetary overhang that makes it possible in the first place that the goods price shock can translate into inflation—i.e., further increases in goods prices across the board.

    From this perspective, it is the excessive monetary overhang that is responsible for goods price inflation. Without it, this kind of inflation would not have been possible; without it, there would be no continued increase in all goods prices.

    It should therefore be emphasized at this point that when talking about inflation, it makes sense to distinguish between goods price inflation and money supply inflation. Goods price inflation is the symptom, and money supply inflation is its cause.

    We know that inflation means a loss of purchasing power of money: When there is inflation, you get fewer and fewer goods in exchange for your money. In today’s unbacked paper money system—the fiat money system—inflation is chronic, a daily plague, so to speak.

    The reason: state-sponsored central banks, which have the monopoly of money production, have set themselves the goal of delivering inflation of 2 percent per year. This may seem acceptable at first glance, but not at second glance.

    Because in doing so, central banks do not preserve the purchasing power of money over time; they deliberately reduce it! They are not currency guardians but currency destroyers.

    An inflation of 2 percent may seem “small.” But over time, it leads to a considerable reduction in the purchasing power of money.

    For example, with an inflation rate of 2 percent per year, the loss of purchasing power of money is 9 percent after five years and 18 percent after 10 years.

    Inflation of 5 percent will already have destroyed the purchasing power of money by 22 percent after five years and by 39 percent after ten years.

    And with 10 percent inflation, 38 percent of purchasing power is obliterated after five years, and 61 percent after ten years.

    What is high inflation? Well, there is no single definition for that. But it makes sense to speak of high inflation when the goods prices increase by 5, 10, or 15 percent a year.

    We speak of hyperinflation when the rate of increase in the price of goods is very, very high and continues to increase over time; we could also say: when it starts galloping.

    Most modern economics textbooks state that hyperinflation occurs when prices increase by 50 percent or more per month. This definition goes back to the influential work of the US economist Phillip Cagan.

    However, be aware that a price increase of 50 percent per month implies an annual inflation rate of almost 12,900 percent. That’s frighteningly high. It would mean, for example, that the price of a cup of coffee would increase from $3 to $390 within a year.

    In view of the devastating effect of hyperinflation on the purchasing power of money in a very short time, it makes economic sense to set the threshold much lower—and to speak of hyperinflation already when there is a permanent price increase of, say, 3 percent per month.

    How does hyperinflation occur?

    The phenomenon of hyperinflation was brought upon the world with unbacked paper money, with fiat money. Hyperinflation was and is inextricably linked to fiat money.

    The reason is that the state central bank can, simply put, increase the amount of fiat money at any time and by any amount.

    And that usually happens, as currency history painfully shows, when the state is at war or when it is so overindebted that it sees no other way of financing its spending than to literally have its central bank print new money.

    Hyperinflation is usually triggered for political reasons. The economist Ludwig von Mises put it succinctly when he wrote in 1923:

    We have seen that if a government is not in a position to negotiate loans and does not dare levy additional taxation for fear that the financial and general economic effects will be revealed too clearly too soon, so that it will lose support for its program, it always considers it necessary to undertake inflationary measures. Thus inflation becomes one of the most important psychological aids to an economic policy which tries to camouflage its effects. In this sense, it may be described as a tool of antidemocratic policy. By deceiving public opinion, it permits a system of government to continue which would have no hope of receiving the approval of the people if conditions were frankly explained to them.

    I will now briefly outline how inflation escalates into high inflation and hyperinflation.

    Let us assume that the state is heavily indebted and gets into financial difficulties—because, for example, the economy is in recession. The state’s revenue is drying up, and there is a big gap in its budget. To close it, the state issues new bonds, which the central bank buys and pays for with newly created money.

    The state spends the money (on employment programs, social transfers, etc.) And the amount of money in the hands of consumers and producers increases. The recipients of the new money then exchange it for goods, causing the prices of the goods to rise as a result.

    However, people were literally taken by surprise by the sudden increase in money supply and the resulting increase in goods price inflation: actual inflation is higher than originally expected—i.e., higher than the inflation promised to them by the central bank.

    The “surprise inflation” has caused the price of goods to rise more than wages and pensions, making the general population poorer. Their real—i.e., inflation-adjusted—wages and incomes are falling.

    People see the scam and realize they have been tricked by surprise inflation. As a result, they adjust their wage, rental, and loan contracts by renegotiating them based on higher inflation expectations.

    If the state does not cut its spending in this situation, but increases it even further, for example, because the payments for social transfers (housing benefits, food subsidies, etc.) Continue to increase due to higher goods price inflation, an ever-greater expansion of the money supply courtesy of the central bank will be the consequence.

    Suppose the central bank increases the money supply (by, say, buying even more government bonds). In that case, people will be hit by surprise inflation again, and the purchasing power of their money will be eroded even more.

    The ongoing central bank fraud will sooner or later eat away confidence in the currency. As a result, people reduce their cash holdings. They increasingly demand other goods in exchange for their money. This, in turn, amplifies the general rise in goods prices, and the rising goods prices and the falling demand for money reinforce each other.

    It won’t be long before the expectations arise that the central bank will expand the money supply at ever faster rates—from, say, 10 percent this year to 15 percent next year, then to 25 percent the following year, then to 40 percent, and so on—and that it never ends. Eventually, the “flight out of money” sets in.

    A “crack-up boom” unfolds, with people eager to exchange their money for all valuables that are still available (stocks, real estate, watches, precious metals). In extreme cases, the purchasing power of fiat money collapses, it ceases to be used as money, and the money holders and savers suffer a total loss.

    Can the hyperinflation process be stopped? The answer is: theoretically, yes. The central bank just has to stop expanding the money supply. But it is precisely this measure that usually encounters fierce political resistance, especially when high inflation has already set in.

    Above all, people dread national bankruptcy, the economic and social crisis and the chaos that would ensue. The state-appointed central bank councils consider it their duty not to let the state go bankrupt in an emergency, even if that destroys the value of money.

    In highly indebted, extensive welfare states, the danger of hyperinflation is particularly great—because here, very many people depend on the financial handouts of the state and prefer—at least initially—that the state remains liquid, even if it means rising inflation.

    At some point, however, the economic costs of hyperinflation will become unbearable. In that sense, hyperinflation cannot go on forever. Either it ends with stopping any further increase in the money supply, rescuing the currency from complete collapse, allowing a crisis to clean the slate—as happened in Austria in early 1923.

    Or it ends with the purchasing power of money being completely destroyed, and the thus destroyed currency being replaced by a new one as part of a currency reform (as in the Weimar Republic, the deutsche mark was replaced by the rentenmark in November 1923).

    Or by literally removing a lot of zeros from the banknotes—as happened in Turkey in 2005, for example, when six zeros were eliminated from the banknotes, and the bank accounts were adjusted accordingly (e.g., one million Turkish lira became one new Turkish lira).

    Now you may be wondering: Is hyperinflation imminent?

    It cannot be overlooked that inflation has already turned into high inflation. In July 2022, US consumer goods prices rose by 8.5 percent compared to the previous year and by a good 9 percent in the euro area in August. German producer prices shot up a good 37 percent in August 2022.

    This has become possible mainly because—as I said earlier—central banks have created a huge monetary overhang. In the US, it is an estimated 15 percent, and in the euro area, it is of a similar magnitude.

    As a rule of thumb, this means that goods prices will continue to increase at around this rate—in the sense that goods prices will increase by 15 percent in total, or by around 7 percent per year over the coming two years.

    The increase in the money supply in the past and the resulting monetary overhang culminate in high inflation (which is bad enough), but not hyperinflation yet.

    There is certainly no reason to give the all clear, however. Because central banks’ policies in recent years have made it unmistakably clear that printing new money is seen as the least evil in times of distress.

    And this is unmistakably the attitude of inflationism, which promotes inflationary policies.

    Inflationism becomes rampant at a time when the major economies of the world are heavily indebted, essentially overleveraged, after decades of reckless fiat money expansion.

    The coming hardships and political temptations can all too easily trigger ever more unchecked fiat money inflation, which, at some point, might become uncontrollable politically and eventually grow into hyperinflation.

    Looking at it this way, one can say that high inflation is here to stay. Hyperinflation may not be at our doorstep just yet, but it is getting closer to our house every day—if the currently prevailing mentality on economic and sociopolitical matters does not change very soon, hyperinflation will come knocking—and eventually kick in the door.

    While it is impossible to say when that might happen, in my opinion, the occurrence of hyperinflation in the fiat money system is very likely; in fact, I fear it is almost inevitable.

    My advice to you is do not trust the official currencies US dollar, euro and co. Adopt the working hypothesis that the purchasing power of the official currencies will be drastically debased, some even becoming a total loss.

    Keep as little money as possible. It is best to reallocate amounts of money you do not need for current payments, such as time and savings deposits. For example, put them in physical gold and silver, in the form of coins and bars. And buy stocks (if you’re not an expert, buy a world diversified stock market exchange-traded fund or certificate).

    And yes, there are other investment options, and greater investment portfolio diversification can also make sense. But investing in productive capital (i.e., stocks) and holding precious metals in physical form (i.e., as coins or bars) is an easy, viable, and inexpensive investment strategy for many people that will help at least partially escape the consequences of the ongoing and even accelerating destruction of the purchasing power of money.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/09/2022 – 16:30

  • How QT Broke The Market: As Tail Risk Has All But Disappeared, The Dow Jones is Now More Volatile Than Bitcoin
    How QT Broke The Market: As Tail Risk Has All But Disappeared, The Dow Jones is Now More Volatile Than Bitcoin

    Something is breaking in the market, and it is not only making trading via options virtually impossible, it is also flipping legacy, post-QE trading patterns.

    As one of Goldman’s top derivatives traders, Brian Garrett, wrote over the past few days, “for much of my career, if you would mentioned “spot vol correlation” in conversation, you lose would lose 95% of your audience by the third word… this was is until investors started to feel the impact to your convexity book’s performance … depending on the market regime, this dynamic can lead to periods of both large outperformance and large underperformance.“

    What does he mean by this? The two charts below help frame what once was (low vol, high skew, index upside attractive) vs what now is (high vol, low skew, index upside less attractive)

    Regime 1 (then): “spot up vol up” became part of the investing vernacular in 2017-2019. In the first chart below, you can see why – calls went bid as the market rallied, and owners saw both a delta and vol bloom in upside convexity.

    Regime 2 (now):  in the last two years, a higher implied vol regime has manifested and the attractiveness of convexity has quickly diminished. For traders who are bullish, Garrett would recommend against buying outright call options as your carry will be quite difficult, and spot up vol up is (for now) a thing of the past (chart 2)

    Garrett’s conclusion: “keep your index vega exposure in the right tail at a minimum for now, spot up vol down is here.”

    Does this sound all too Greek (no pun intended) to you? Luckily, one of the financial all-time greats, Citigroup’s Matt King is out with a brief note (available to pro subs), putting the above arcane view into far more understandable terms: while the QE era suppressed day-to-day vol risk, it boosted tail risk; now, with QT, both trends have reversed.

    As King puts it, “sharp spikes higher in vol, especially in rates, have been accompanied by widespread concern about illiquidity.” But in many ways King thinks of this “as part of a return to a more healthy, less unbalanced, market. QE saw day-to-day vol suppressed unnaturally, at the expense of increased tail risk and OTM skew.” i.e., this is what Garrett defined as “Regime 1.” Not surprisingly, to King, “QT means the opposite”, i.e. “Regime 2“

    Obviously, the removal of the large, off-market, price-insensitive bid for risk courtesy of the Fed that resulted from QE has left a giant void beneath market prices, and to King, who has for much of the past 13 years been a tacit critic of how central banks have broken market, “it may take forced issuance or outflows to precipitate true price discovery.” However, until this point is reached, King,  like Hartnett and Wilson, finds it “hard to be bullish on risk. Indeed, just as QE almost forced investors to be short vol and long risk, so under QT there is a case your default position should be short risk and long vol.”

    Going back to Garrett, the Goldman trader also had some ideas how to monetize this growing market discrepancy, starting with index trades…

    • Index ideas:  spreads, KO calls, and call flies are the trades to put in the book for now … or a slightly nuanced version, one could go long puts on a heavy delta (ie, buy 30 delta put and run on 50delta – i believe skew should go bid if the market rally continues)

    … and then looking at single stock derivatives, where an especially interesting trade opportunity has opened up:

    • singles ideas … at this moment in time, the cost of a single stock call (3m25d) is at one of the lowest levels in the last decade  (chart 3) relative to the index. Said another way, the cost of “idiosyncratic” upside has rarely been cheaper.

    There is one more chart that the Goldman trader posted earlier last week that was quite stunning that: given the rally in yields (fwds higher) and the level of implied volatility, this is one of the first times in 20y that the 12 month 10% OTM put is funded by a call that is greater than 10% OTM (i.e, uneven risk reversals line up for costless and the vol market is daring you to sell the index call)

    Fast forward a few days until after last week’s payrolls report, when we saw Garrett’s trade recos pan out very much as expected. As mentioned above, the hurdle for spx realized to pay is extremely high, and Friday’s “underperformance of convexity is one of the most severe we have seen since March of 2020”, or as Garrett puts it, “following up from earlier this week, just as you can’t own calls for a rally, it appears you also can’t own puts for a sell off.“

    This broken derivatives market may explain why on Friday, Garrett noted that “the floor is extremely quiet despite an almost 4% (not a typo) sell off in NDX … cash 1 delta volumes are down 3% vs the 20d avg (our desk is almost 400bps better for sale, very much driven by asset managers) … option volumes are up small // mostly has been monetization and vol for sale (hence, the underperformance).”

    Then again, as King explained above while tail risk has collapsed in the QT era, day-to-day vol risk has exploded, and as Garrett notes, “if it feels like rates are completely driving the equity bus, it’s because they are… SPX and 10y yield rolling correlation (50 day) has not been this negative in 20 years … truly does not feel like this is going to change, we have had seen spx down rates up trades printing.”

    But the clearest visualization of just how broken (or is that unbroken) the market is now that QT is the dominant market force, look no further than what Garrett said is the “chart for the weekend” – “the dow jones (30 largest industrial stocks on planet earth) if officially more volatile than bitcoin.”

    More in the full note available to pro subs in the usual place.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/09/2022 – 16:11

  • Biden's Options To Counter OPEC+ Are Limited
    Biden’s Options To Counter OPEC+ Are Limited

    Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

    • Despite repeated requests from the Biden Administration not to cut oil production, OPEC+ went ahead and did just that.

    • The geopolitical rationale behind OPEC+’s move might be more worrying than the output cut itself.

    • Besides suspending deliveries of weapons to Saudi Arabia, there’s little that the U.S. can do to raise the pressure on the Kingdom.

    This week, OPEC+ made a decision unprecedented in its history and the history of OPEC. The extended cartel approved production cuts of 2 million bpd at a time of steady demand, tight supply, and runway inflation in the world’s biggest economies.  More significantly, perhaps, OPEC+ made this decision despite Washington’s numerous attempts to change the mind of the cartel leaders, notably Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

    Just a day before the OPEC+ meeting, CNN reported that all available human resources in the administration had been mobilized, with the White House “having a spasm and panicking,” per one unnamed official.

    Top officials such as Amos Hochstein and Janet Yellen had been tasked with talking the Saudis and the Emiratis out of a production cut. Talking points included a not too thinly veiled threat of reputational and foreign relations damage: “There is great political risk to your reputation and relations with the United States and the west if you move forward.” Yet the Saudis and the Emiratis did just that. They went forward.

    Commentators were quick to note the move was a slap in the face of the United States and the collective West. It is the West that needs cheaper oil the most right now as the European Union embargoed Russian crude and fuels and the U.S. Democratic administration needs cheap gasoline ahead of the midterms to have a chance of retaining its party majority in Congress, however slim.

    In a symbolic affirmation of a major geopolitical alignment change, the Saudi energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, accused Reuters of bad reporting and refused to answer questions from the agency at a news conference after the OPEC+ meeting and pretty much waved off suggestions by CNBC’s Hadley Gamble that OPEC+ was siding with Russia and weaponizing oil at a time when the global economy needed it.

    In short, OPEC+ bluntly demonstrated it can do whatever it feels it needs to do to protect its own interest, even if this means going against the interests of its traditional allies, including its biggest one.

    As Bloomberg’s Javier Blas put it in a commentary piece after the meeting,

    “The US and its Western allies need to pay attention. For the first time in recent energy history, Washington, London, Paris and Berlin don’t have a single ally inside the OPEC+ group.”

    One might argue that this tectonic change in geopolitics is more important for the future of the world than the war in Ukraine, although these are certainly not isolated from each other.

    Saudi Arabia has already stated its desire to join the BRICS alliance in what can hardly be interpreted as anything less than a declaration of support for the Russia/China bloc. Its closest ally at home, the UAE, tends to follow Riyadh’s foreign policy, so it is on board with this distancing from the West and forging closing relations with a symbolic East and a very literal group that represents a substantial portion of global GDP.

    So, the world’s largest oil producers after the U.S. are turning their backs on their once geopolitical friends and siding with the enemy, to put things bluntly and simply. That talking point for the Biden top team cited above may sound like a threat, but what specific form would that threat take?

    So far, the response has been quite general. In an official statement, President Biden said on Wednesday that he was “disappointed by the shortsighted decision by OPEC+ to cut production quotas” and threatened to consider moves to “reduce OPEC’s control over energy prices.”

    The only way to reduce OPEC’s control over energy prices would be to boost domestic production, but this is something Biden has vowed he will not do and even pledged to prevent. This, however, would leave even fewer options on the response table, such as the end of arms deliveries to Riyadh.

    Indeed, some congressional Democrats have already called for a sharp reduction of arms deliveries to the Kingdom in response to the OPEC+ output reduction decision. Yet such a move would make the military-industrial complex quite unhappy with the White House, which would make such a decision difficult to sell.

    Besides suspending deliveries of weapons to Saudi Arabia, there is the political pressure campaign approach, with some on social networks already joking that it’s only a matter of time before Washington begins noticing human rights abuse and the absence of democracy in the desert Kingdom.

    Other than this, there is little Washington can do to “punish” Riyadh—OPEC’s leader and co-leader of OPEC+ along with Moscow—for the slap in the face. Sanctions would hardly be a smart decision given Saudi Arabia’s weight as an oil producer at a time when oil supply is short in the West. Coaxing didn’t work and seems unlikely to work going forward, at least for the time being.

    It is beginning to look increasingly wise to sit this one out to avoid risking an even greater alienation with former allies that can do a lot of damage to the U.S. economy—and it won’t be reputational damage. After all, Saudi Arabia is the United States’ third-largest foreign supplier of crude.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/09/2022 – 15:30

  • Hong Kong Giving Out 500,000 Free Airline Tickets To Re-Start Tourism Industry Post-COVID
    Hong Kong Giving Out 500,000 Free Airline Tickets To Re-Start Tourism Industry Post-COVID

    Hong Kong seems to be serious about getting its airline industry “off the ground” – literally – now that the pandemic (or its restrictions, should we say) is officially in the rearview mirror.

    The country was bringing in close to 56 million visitors per year before the pandemic and now, it attempting to boost its tourism industry back to towards those pre-pandemic numbers by giving away 500,000 airline tickets. 

    The move comes only days after the country did away with its mandatory hotel quarantine requirement, CNN Travel wrote this week. 

    The country’s Airport Authority Hong Kong (AAHK) told CNN that the half million tickets would be earmarked for global visitors and residents. The tickets are worth about $254,8 million when combined. 

    A spokesperson for the AAHK said: “Back in 2020, Airport Authority Hong Kong purchased around 500,000 air tickets in advance from the territory’s home-based airlines as part of a relief package to support the aviation industry.”

    “The purchase serves the purpose of injecting liquidity into the airlines upfront, while the tickets will be given away to global visitors and Hong Kong residents in the market recovery campaign,” they continued. 

    As the report notes, Hong Kong has cut off from the rest of the world due to its stringent Covid-19 quarantine rules, which made it nearly impossible to travel to the country. Hong Kong’s rules “at one stage required incoming travelers to spend 21 days in a hotel room at their own expense, with only Hong Kong residents permitted entry,” CNN wrote.

    The hotel quarantine had been reduced from seven to three days and was eventually done away with entirely on September 26. When the regulations were scrapped “droves of residents” logged on to airline websites in unison to book flights. 

    “Expedia saw a nine-fold surge in search for flights from Hong Kong to Tokyo and 11-fold for flights from Hong Kong to Osaka,” the report says. 

    Hong Kong’s Chief Executive John Lee concluded Friday: “We hope to give the maximum room to reconnect Hong Kong, and to revitalize our economy.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 10/09/2022 – 15:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest