• China Launches Military Exercises In South China Sea As Biden Arrives In Asia
  China Launches Military Exercises In South China Sea As Biden Arrives In Asia

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

  China launched military drills in the contested South China Sea as U.S. President Joe Biden arrived in South Korea to meet with President Yoon Suk-yeol and promote his forthcoming economic plan for the region.

  

  Biden is currently touring East Asia to develop better relations with the nation’s partners in the Indo-Pacific and drum up support for his Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which he is expected to announce in Japan on May 23.

  The visits with top leaders in South Korea and Japan also underscore the United States’ efforts to work with allies and partners in the region on countering the rising aggressions from Beijing, which administration officials have described as the leading threat to the United States.

  China’s Maritime Safety Administration subsequently announced that it would be conducting exercises in the South China Sea through Monday. It said non-Chinese aircraft and vessels would be prohibited from entering the area but gave no further details.

  China claims that it has historic rights throughout virtually all of the South China Sea and has conducted a massive campaign to build artificial islands throughout the region to superficially expand its borders. It has also used the islands to stage military equipment.

  The U.S. State Department, drawing upon a 2016 ruling by an international court, maintains that there is “no coherent legal basis” to China’s claims in international law. The United States also maintains that it has the right to operate freely in the sea, which constitutes international waters.

  Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Taiwan all also lay claim to parts of the South China Sea.

  As such, the region has become something of a flashpoint for conflict.

  White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One on the way to South Korea, and reiterated that the United States would continue to uphold international access to the region and seek stability in the nearby Taiwan Strait.

  “Our view, as we’ve expressed many times, is that we are concerned about peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and the ratcheting up of tensions,” Sullivan said. “And we believe that China is contributing to the ratcheting up of those tensions through provocative military activities around Taiwan and around the Strait.”

  “But we’ve been equally clear that our policy towards Taiwan has not changed … we remain committed to supporting peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and to ensuring that there are no unilateral changes to the status quo.”

  Sullivan also said that Biden would likely hold another virtual summit with Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping. The two leaders had last met virtually in March, when Biden warned Xi of unspecified consequences if the Chinese regime were to provide material support to Russia in its war efforts.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the coming weeks, President Biden and President Xi speak again,” Sullivan said.

  The national security advisor added that the president would be working to build local relationships with leaders in South Korea and Japan to better develop resources for trade infrastructure, and that there would be significant developments in trade and the possibility of rulesetting for the digital economy.

  “We think this event on Monday is going to be a big deal and is going to be a significant milestone in U.S. engagement in the Indo-Pacific,” Sullivan said. “And at the end of the President’s first term, I think we will look back and say this was a moment where the U.S. engagement in the Indo-Pacific got kicked into a different gear.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/21/2022 – 23:30

• These Are The Most-Downloaded Apps So Far In 2022
  These Are The Most-Downloaded Apps So Far In 2022

  Whether they’re providing a service like ride-sharing or acting as a mere source of entertainment, mobile apps have become an integral part of many peoples’ day-to-day lives.

  But which apps are most popular among users?

  In the graphic below, Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang uses data from a recent report by Sensor Tower to show the top 10 most downloaded apps around the world in Q1 2022 from the Google Play and Apple App Store.

  

  Social Reigns Supreme

  According to the report, total app downloads reached 36.9 billion in Q1 2022, a 1.4% increase compared to Q1 2021.

  A majority of the top 10 most downloaded apps were social media platforms, with Meta and ByteDance owning six of the top 10.

  

   

  Meta’s four platforms on the list are Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Messenger, while ByteDance owns TikTok and video-editing platform CapCut.

   

  Just outside the top 10 are Zoom and WhatsApp Business (yet another Meta-owned app).

  TikTok’s Winding Road to the Top

  In Q1 2021, TikTok exceeded 3.5 billion all-time downloads, becoming the fifth app (and the first non-Meta app) to reach this milestone. This is impressive considering the app has been banned in India as of June 2020. Prior to the ban, India accounted for 30% of TikTok’s downloads.

  India’s not the only country that’s banned the use of TikTok. Pakistan has blocked TikTok multiple times because of concerns over “inappropriate” content. However, it’s worth noting that the bans in Pakistan only lasted a few days before being lifted, and currently, Pakistanis are able to access the platform.

  Top 10 Highest Grossing Apps

  TikTok isn’t just the most downloaded app in the world—it’s also the highest-grossing non-game app, based on Q1 2022 revenue from the App Store and Google Play:

  

   

  TikTok generated an impressive $821 million in consumer spending in the last quarter. The video-sharing platform was the top-grossing app on the App Store, and the second-highest-grossing on Google Play, coming just after Google One.

   

  While none of Meta’s platforms made it onto the top 10 list for gross revenue, these platforms make a ton of money that doesn’t necessarily flow through app stores. In 2021, Meta generated more than $117.9 billion in revenue, with over 97% of that coming from ads.

  Growth’s on the Horizon

  The pandemic had a massive impact on the app market.

  In 2020, app spending on things like premium access, in-app purchases, and subscriptions surged by 30% year-over-year to reach $111 billion.

  And while COVID-19 restrictions are easing in most places around the world, app spending isn’t likely to taper off anytime soon. By 2025, spending is expected to grow to $270 billion.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/21/2022 – 23:00

• "Crop Scouts" Scour Midwest Ahead Of Wheat Harvest Amid Menacing Megadrought  
  “Crop Scouts” Scour Midwest Ahead Of Wheat Harvest Amid Menacing Megadrought  

  Droughts, flooding, heatwaves, and even war threaten wheat production worldwide, pushing up the price of bread, pizza crust, pastries, and noodles. Just about every major producer is facing some issue, and the latest is in the US, where ‘crop scouts’ have begun to scour arid fields across the Midwestern US.

  Bloomberg reports crop scouts from the wheat industry have begun to examine plants in farm fields in Kansas to Oklahoma to Nebraska. Harvest is just a few weeks away, and there are concerns devastating droughts have caused damage in US wheat country.

  Some farmers already are writing off losses from parched grains. The US Department of Agriculture expects lower yields in Kansas, the top-growing state for hard red winter wheat, a staple relied on for bread flour. The shortfall is seen by USDA as pushing national production to the smallest since 1963, fueling fear of global food shortages as war in Ukraine and weather challenges elsewhere puts supplies at risk. -Bloomberg

  It’s very clear the world is now looking at North America for robust wheat production, and with that, there need to be optimum conditions and strong yields. However, that may not be the case. 

  “This is a very challenging year with not a lot of good news,” said crop scout Romulo Lollato, a wheat specialist at Kansas State University. He pointed out that minimal rainfall and freezing temperatures in early April could have damaged crop yields.

  Aaron Harries, vice president of research and operations for Kansas Wheat, said, “it’s been a weather roller coaster” across the Midwest.

  Some scouts see bright spots after recent rains. Though a megadrought continues to consume large swathes of farmland. 

  

  Meanwhile, wheat futures in Chicago are soaring, near all-time highs, as traders are pricing in what could be a year of low harvest production. 

  

  Last week, the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report published by the USDA showed wheat production in Ukraine is expected to plunge by one-third this season compared with last year. 

  AGRICULTURAL MARKETS: The USDA just published its first really detailed look at 2022-23 crop year, painting a tight outlook for corn and wheat, with production down. On the other hand, rice will enjoy a larger — and record high — harvest | #OATT #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/MJgXcZRje4

  — Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) May 12, 2022

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

  There are also concerns in Canada, India, and China about harvest declines due to adverse weather conditions. Then there’s the Black Sea region, plagued by war that will plunge crop production this year and next. 

  The final production numbers for the US won’t be known for months, though crop scouts will have an idea of what wheat supplies could look like after they wrap up their inspections. USDA’s expected to release its estimate based on hundreds of samples on Thursday. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/21/2022 – 22:00

• Feds Halt Sales Of Homemade Guns Before August Rule Is Implemented
  Feds Halt Sales Of Homemade Guns Before August Rule Is Implemented

  Authored by Beth Brelje via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has told one of the nation’s largest homemade firearms parts retailers, JSD Supply, to stop selling its products.

  

  The move comes more than three months before President Joe Biden’s controversial “ghost gun” regulation goes into effect on Aug. 24, 2022.

  The new rule, which is expected to be challenged in court, bans the business of manufacturing unserialized “buy-build-shoot” kits that can be purchased without a background check. The so-called ghost guns contain parts that can be assembled into a gun.

  These kits will now be considered firearms under the Gun Control Act.

  Pennsylvania-based JSD Supply received a letter from ATF dated May 9, 2022, ordering the company to immediately cease and desist the sale of full sets and parts that could be converted into a functioning firearm.

  The letter has caused the company to shut down its operation.

  “ATF has held that kits which include all components necessary to produce a functional firearm, including the jig or template used to finish the unfinished frame or receiver, the slide assembly, and the necessary components to complete the frame or receiver are themselves properly classified as firearms under the Gun Control Act,” the letter says.

  “Specifically, these kits are a weapon that may be readily converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive. These kits are firearms under the gun Control Act and have always been firearms pursuant to statute.”

  For years, the ATF has provided guidance on the definition of a gun. Those who sell parts such as 80 percent receivers do not need a Federal Firearms License. But the letter shows the ATF has changed its mind and is following the new regulation before it has gone into effect.

  “Those engaged in the business of selling these complete kits, as your company does, are in fact engaged in the business of dealing firearms,” the letter says.

  “Further, selling the necessary components to produce a functional firearm to the same person through multiple purchases or structure to transactions at different times instead of a single sale is equivalent to selling the complete kit to the customer. That is, the complete set of component parts necessary to create a firearm need not be packaged or sold in a single container or a single transaction in order to be considered a firearm. These piecemeal sales circumvent requirements of the Gun Control Act and are unlawful.”

  

  JSD Supply has filed a case in the U.S. District Court against ATF and the U.S. Department of Justice, seeking an injunction to remain open.

  The court filing says the ATF has recognized and expressly sanctioned, the unregulated sale of every single product that JSD Supply offers for sale.

  “ATF has specifically and repeatedly explained that firearm parts such as barrels, triggers and springs are not firearms under federal statutory law including the Gun Control Act,” the company’s complaint says. The ATF also has specifically and repeatedly determined that the 80 percent frames and receivers which the company sells are not firearms under the act and are entirely unregulated by the ATF.

  “This court’s intervention to protect the firearms industry and gun owners is necessary to reign in a branch of the federal government that is acting without any legal authority, and return the constitutional lawmaking power to the Congress, the only branch of government to which it was entrusted by Article I of the U.S. Constitution,” the complaint says.

  This appears to be the first U.S. case of a company receiving such a letter, but another company in Missouri has now been told by the ATF to stop selling their products, according to Gun Owners of America.

  “JSD Supply was just the first domino to fall in the ATF’s latest unwarranted action. Frustratingly, we have confirmed at least one additional company forced to halt sales and we expect more to follow,” Erich Pratt, senior vice president of Gun Owners of America (GOA) said in a statement.

  “Make no mistake, this is the beginning of a political crusade against homemade firearms. Forcing small businesses across the country to close their doors with no legal authority to do so, is wrong and a blatant abuse of power,” Pratt said.

  GOA is preparing a lawsuit challenging the new regulation.

  “With a gun there’s only one regulated part, the frame or the receiver, and you do a background check on the frame or the receiver,” Aidan Johnston, GOA director of federal affairs told The Epoch Times. JSD Supply sells, not the regulated frame, but unfinished frames that are 80 percent complete. The company also sells all the other parts for a gun.

  “JSD Supply asked the ATF if they could just stop selling the 80 percent frame and continue to sell all the other gun parts, and ATF won’t let them,” Johnston said.

  “But what’s really important is not just the other companies that are selling 80 percent receivers and gun parts, but there are hundreds of websites that sell only gun parts. No regulated part from before or after this final rule. And the question is, if I 3D print the frame and then I order a barrel and a trigger from one of those websites that only sells gun parts, is ATF trying to say that that company illegally helped me complete a firearm?”

  The answer is unclear. ATF was unavailable for comment.

  “In order to engage in the constitutionally protected activities of keeping and bearing firearms, weapons first must be acquired,” the JSD Supply court complaint says.

  “It is thus beyond serious debate that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to make their own privately made firearms, and thus to acquire the parts and materials with which to do so. The Constitution protects the corresponding right to sell firearm components, magazines, ammunition, and accessories, just as the freedoms of speech and press protect the right to buy and sell newspapers, books, paper, and ink. Indeed, it would not mean much if there was a right to make a firearm, but no ability to purchase the materials necessary to do so.”

  JSD Supply did not respond to the Epoch Times.

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

• "No Quick Fix" – Severe Pilot Shortage Reduces Flights, Sends Ticket Prices Soaring 
  “No Quick Fix” – Severe Pilot Shortage Reduces Flights, Sends Ticket Prices Soaring 

  A severe pilot shortage in the US slashed flights just as the travel season ramps up, which will cause ticket prices to skyrocket this summer, according to CNBC.  

  The origins of the shortage began in the early days of the virus pandemic when pilot hiring, training, and licensing came to a stall. Then airlines forced thousands of pilots into early retirement to slash labor costs as travel demand cratered. 

  Now lawmakers on Capitol Hill are proposing legislation to increase the retirement age for airline pilots from 65 to 67 to extend pilots’ flight time as the industry scrambles for solutions. 

  United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told investors during an earnings call in April that the shortage could last for years. 

  “The pilot shortage for the industry is real, and most airlines are simply not going to be able to realize their capacity plans because there simply aren’t enough pilots, at least not for the next five-plus years,” Kirby said. 

  The shortage has hit regional carriers the hardest. Phoenix-based Mesa Air Group, which flies for American and United, lost tens of millions of dollars last quarter because of flight reductions due to the lack of pilots. 

  “We never fathomed attrition levels like this,” said Mesa CEO Jonathan Ornstein. “If we don’t fly our airplanes, we lose money. You saw our quarterly numbers.”

  Ornstein said, on average, it takes five months to replace a pilot. He expressed his airline “could use 200 pilots right now.” 

  Regional carrier Republic Airways, which flies for American, Delta, and United, requested US government aviation authorities to allow pilots with 750 hours, half of the 1,500 required, to fly for the airline. 

  The shortage has also caused Alaska Airlines and JetBlue Airways to reduce flights. 

  Kit Darby, a pilot pay consultant and a retired United captain, said airlines are trying to hire more than 12,000 pilots. Training new pilots take years, and demand might overwhelm the number of flights available, ultimately sending ticket prices higher. 

  Travel demand is already soaring as the latest TSA checkpoint data traveler throughput returns to pre-COVID levels. 

  

  The latest CPI data showed the most significant MoM increase for airline fares, at 18.6% in April. 

  

  However, new sales data from Adobe Digital Insights suggests consumers spent $1 billion less on airline tickets in April than in March, a sign that rampant airfare inflation could crimp demand this summer.  

  Darby said the shortage could indicate flights to small metro areas might be reduced or cut entirely. He also said, “there is no quick fix.” 

  Add travel by plane becoming increasingly more unaffordable. Forget about traveling by car, gasoline prices are at record highs.

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

• Clinton Supporter Who Led Disinformation Board Until Resignation Says She Wasn’t A Partisan Actor
  Clinton Supporter Who Led Disinformation Board Until Resignation Says She Wasn’t A Partisan Actor

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

  The woman who led the Biden administration’s Disinformation Governance Board until resigning this week is claiming she was going about her job in a nonpartisan way despite previously declaring publicly her support for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

  “To say that I’m just a partisan actor was wildly out of context,” the woman, Nina Jankowicz, said on MSNBC on May 18.

  “There are 250,000 employees at the Department of Homeland Security, I was one of them. We all have different political inclinations. And we all checked them at the door,” Jankowicz added on CBS on May 19.

  

  The board was first disclosed by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas during a congressional hearing in late April. He said it was aimed at preventing false or misleading information from being used in the electoral process ahead of the midterm elections.

  The effort quickly drew criticism, in part due to Jankowicz’s past.

  Jankowicz not only has donated to Democrat candidates, but volunteered for Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. She has also repeatedly praised Democrat officials on social media while denigrating Republican ones.

  Jankowicz also in the past promoted dubious claims, including the claim that reports on the laptop computer owned by President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden were part of a Russian disinformation scheme.

  Mayorkas called Jankowicz a “neutral” and “renowned” expert who was “eminently qualified” to lead the board. Jankowicz worked for the Woodrow Wilson Center, a think tank, before joining the administration. But Mayorkas, under questioning, also said he was not aware of all of Jankowicz’s posts, including statements she’d made defending the dossier compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele that has not held up under scrutiny.

  “I wasn’t adjudicating on what was true or false, but just trying to equip people with information they could use in issues of national security. I don’t think that my political convictions really come into play here,” Jankowicz said on CBS when asked about the criticism of her social media posts.

  “I think it’s quite ironic that Republicans would decontextualized a couple of tweets in a career that has been marked by reasonableness, nuance and bipartisanship.”

  She also said that after her position became known, she received an onslaught of violent threats.

  The Department of Homeland Security, after reports emerged of Jankowicz’s resignation, confirmed that the board’s work would be “paused” while a group reviewed its mission.

  The review is being conducted through the Homeland Security Advisory Council, which includes figures that have also spread misleading claims that some have described as disinformation.

  A group of House Republicans, meanwhile, introduced a resolution on Thursday that would compel the Biden administration to turn over documents relating to the creation, implementation, and pause of the board.

  “While I welcome the news that the board has been paused, the Administration hasn’t provided the American people with any information on how long this pause will last, let alone how the board was created, which specific activities it is intended to conduct, or what prevents the board from violating the Constitution,” Rep. Dave Joyce (R-Ohio) said in a statement. “I’m proud to introduce a resolution of inquiry to demand answers from the Biden Administration on this un-American creation. We cannot allow the federal government to undermine the First Amendment with political tools that referee free speech.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/21/2022 – 20:30

• Fed Mission Accomplished: Real-Time Indicators Show The Labor Market Just Cratered
  Fed Mission Accomplished: Real-Time Indicators Show The Labor Market Just Cratered

  How much longer will the Fed keep hammering stocks and pushing the market – and the US economy – lower?

  That is the question every trader is asking now that the S&P has brushed against a bear market three times in just the past week and threatening to careen lower, especially as it now appears that the Fed has given up on a soft landing, and is willing to gamble everything to contain inflation, even if it means a hard-landing, which according to a SocGen strategist can only happen if rates rise to 4.5% or higher.

  

  The answer is simple: now that Wall Street is convinced that inflation has peaked, both on the sellside (as this Goldman chart shows)…

  

  … and the buyside, with the latest Fund Manager Survey showing a record 68% of respondents expect inflation to drop in coming quarters…

  

  … with GDP on the verge of a technical recession (just one more negative quarter and you’re out), and with housing about to crater…

  

  … only strong employment remains.

  In other words, those who want to know when the Fed will capitulated on its market-crushing tightening are exclusively focused on negative inflections in the labor market, because as even Bank of America’s economists wrote last week (the note is available to professional subscribers), the Fed will be hard-pressed to drive inflation down towards its 2% target without raising the unemployment rate meaningfully, which in turn will require a significant downshift in labor demand. In other words, the Fed wants a mild recession (but certainly not a depression) to hammer labor demand and short-circuit the wage-price spiral.

  So what data should traders be looking at? Well, job postings are perhaps the best leading indicator of unfilled labor demand. The official government source is the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) from the BLS, which we profiled every month. As of March, the latest available data, there were a record 11.5M total job postings, nearly double the number of unemployed persons.

  

  A drawback of JOLTS is that the data are rather lagged (it tracks one month behind the latest payrolls report) and, in the current environment, trends can change quickly.  To get a more accurate answer,Bank of America has used data from Revelio labs on job postings to get a better sense of incremental labor demand in real-time. Unlike JOLTS, Revelio measures new instead of total job postings, which tracks total job postings closely with a correlation of 93%.

  So here is the big news: in April, new job postings fell by 2.0M to 6.6M according to Revelio’s data. This is a huge deal as it represents the largest monthly drop in the available history going back to May 2019! 

  Furthermore, the decline was broad-based with 146 of the 147 industries – virtually everyone – reported by Revelio recording a sequential decline in new postings. Moreover, the share of industries with a Y/Y decline in new postings rose to 22.5%, highest since last Feb.

  

  In short, as BofA economist Stephene Juneau writes, the drop in job postings is a sign that labor demand is beginning to cool, although there will be a distinct lag between the crack seen by such 3rd party data collectors as Revelio and the US Department of Labor (just like a year ago we warned that housing inflation was about to soar by looking not at lagging government housing data but real-time metrics from Apartment List and Zillow, see our June 2021 article “And Now Prices Are Really Soaring: June Rent Jump Is Biggest On Record“).

  Furthermore, the gap between new postings and voluntary separations will likely narrow when we get the April data from JOLTS, but it is unlikely to close completely (unless the BLS kitchen sinks the April/May data ahead of the midterms). The upshot is that we will likely need to see new job postings fall much further in order to cool down the labor market, and subsequently wage and price pressures.

  Fine, the skeptics will counter, “this is just one indicator. What about other real-time reads of the job market?”

  Well, aside from the Revelio data, there are plenty of other signs of moderating labor demand. Consider the following:

  • 1) The share of businesses planning to increase employment in the NFIB small business survey has fallen by 8%  since December 2021 to 20% in April.
  • 2) Challenger Job cuts increased by 6% Y/Y in April, the first annual increase in fifteen months.

  

  • 3) In an ominous return to the “normlacy” that defined the stagnating Obama presidency, the number of workers with multiple jobs continues to pick up. This is the clearest indicator yet that the “Great Resignation” post-covid trends are now actively in retirement.

  

  • 4) Even clearer proof that “unretirements” continue to rise is the latest data from Indeed, which shows that 3.3% of the workers who “retired” a year ago are once again employed.

  

  5.) It’s not just Revelio seeing a drop in job posting. Bank of America’s own analysts (in this case in a note from Sara Senatore) show that job posting growth across restaurant categories decelerated sharply on a sequential basis. Job postings growth slowed most in Beverages – to +23% y/y from +268% in March. For the remaining categories, y/y growth in postings slowed most in Fast Food (-16% y/y vs +126% in Mar), followed by Full Service (-67% y/y vs +13% in Mar) and Fast Casual (-66% y/y vs +7% in Mar). In April, y/y growth in job postings for engineers increased for Beverages & Snacks and Fast Casual while Full Service categories and Fast Food postings growth decreased (the full BofA note is available to pro subs in the usual place) .

  

  Last but not least, there is growing anecdotal evidence that the labor market just hit a brick wall, with the likes of Amazon, Facebook, Walmart, Target, and Netflix all recently giving negative guidance on employment. Indeed, last week, Bank of America’s trading desk called it “the end of the labor shortage” to wit:

  “Did co’s double-order people? WMT and AMZN are the 2 biggest private employers… and both have made comments on their calls… on being “overstaffed.”

  The desk’s conclusion: “the ‘labor shortage’ narrative officially died in the past week.” And from there to a spike in the unemployment rate and a collapse in wages it’s at most a few months. Which confirms what we (and Morgan Stanley and BofA’s Michael Hartnett) said previously: the recession will begin in the second half of 2022, with the Fed ending its rate hike cycle well ahead of schedule, and proceeding to cuts rates and launch its latest QE some time in early 2023.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/21/2022 – 20:00

• Biden's Job Disapproval Rate Among Hispanics Soars To 60%: Poll
  Biden’s Job Disapproval Rate Among Hispanics Soars To 60%: Poll

  Authored by Rita Li via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Less than half of Hispanic Americans, compared to a result from last year, told pollsters that they like the job President Joe Biden is doing, against the backdrop of the ongoing baby formula shortage, border crisis, skyrocketing inflation, and fuel crisis.

  

  Three-fifths or 60 percent of Hispanics disapprove of Biden’s performance, while 26 percent approve and 13 percent said they did not know or had no opinion, according to a Quinnipiac University poll (pdf) published on May 18.

  A similar survey from a year ago found that 55 percent of Hispanic voters—more than twice the current rate—approved of Biden, while only 29 percent disapproved.

  Making up about 18 percent of the U.S. population, the group has seen a lean conservative trend, according to the study, as almost half of Hispanic registered voters said they would like to see the GOP take control of the Senate, while 36 percent said they hope Democrats would keep control of the chamber.

  It also shows that 48 percent of Hispanic voters want to see Republicans win the House of Representatives if the election were under its way, compared to only one-third who wanted Democrats to seize the power.

  The survey interviewed 1,586 adults nationwide, including 1,421 registered voters, with a margin of error of 2.6 percentage points.

  “Americans give President Joe Biden a negative 35–57 percent job approval rating with 7 percent not offering an opinion,” according to the findings.

  The recent findings come as the November midterm elections are fast approaching as the Biden administration wrestles with a series of crises including the domestic economy and national security.

  The poll also shows black Americans are losing faith in the administration.

  The 63 percent of polled black Americans who currently approve of the president has seen a year-on-year drop from 85 percent in 2021. By contrast, the 28 percent disapproval rate has soared up from 5 percent.

  An April poll (pdf) by the Convention of States Action and Trafalgar Group shows that a majority of U.S. voters, including nearly two-thirds of Hispanic voters, believe that the Biden administration should close the southern border until a solution is reached.

  Earlier this month, another poll conducted by ABC News/Washington Post found that less than a third of Americans approve of the way that Biden is dealing with the economy, while 94 percent expressed concerns about spiking prices as inflation hits a 40-year high.

  White House officials didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/21/2022 – 19:30

• Bill Maher Slams Gender Reassignment For Kids, LGBTQ+ Everything
  Bill Maher Slams Gender Reassignment For Kids, LGBTQ+ Everything

  Bill Maher slammed the relatively new trend of kids coming out as transgender because it’s ‘trendy’ – as simply being gay ‘is not hip enough.’

  

  The “Real Time” host began by noting that before 1946, just 0.08% of the population identified as LGBTQ, which shot up to 2.6% among Baby Boomers, 4.2% with Gen X, 10.5% among Millennials, and 20.8% among Gen Z.

  “It wasn’t that long ago that when adults asked children what they wanted to be when they grew up, ‘They meant what profession,'” Maher joked, after asking why it’s off-limits to even ask if it’s strange that the number of Americans identifying as LGBTQ has doubled with each passing generation.

  “If we follow this trajectory, we will all be gay in 2054,” Maher continued.

  The HBO host also noted a recent claim by the ACLU that the Roe v. Wade controversy is affecting LGBTQ people more than heterosexual couples – saying that while we should always be respectful of people’s lifestyle choices, “Someone needs to say it – not everything’s about you. It’s okay to ask questions about something very new.”

  Maher then brought up hormone therapy for children.

  “We’re literally experimenting on children,” he said, adding that we have no idea what the long-term effects will be. “but logic tells you there’s going to be problems” including bone density and fertility.

  “It’s not a lifestyle decision.”

  “Never forget children are impressionable and very, very stupid,” Maher continued. “A boy who thinks he’s a girl maybe is just gay – or whatever ‘Frazier’ was,” adding “being a girl doesn’t mean you have to act like a Kardashian.”

  “There are other solutions than ‘hand me the dick saw.’“

  “I understand that being trans is different, it’s innate,” the host said. “But kids do have phases. Kids are fluid about everything. If they know at age 8 what they wanted to be, the world would be filled with cowboys and princesses … I wanted to be a pirate. Thank God no one scheduled me for eye removal and peg leg surgery.”

  Watch:

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/21/2022 – 19:00

• Erdogan Tells Finnish & Swedish Leaders To Get "Serious" About Terrorism In Tense Call
  Erdogan Tells Finnish & Swedish Leaders To Get “Serious” About Terrorism In Tense Call

  Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan raised objections directly with the leaders of Finland and Sweden over their twin bids to join the NATO alliance in separate phone calls on Saturday. Both leaders had met with President Joe Biden at the White House two days prior where they attempted to give assurances that they would “commit to Turkey’s security” if admitted to NATO.

  In the calls with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto and Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, Erdogan stressed that they must get serious about dealing the “terrorist” Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK. In prior days both the Turkish president and his foreign minister have issued a firm ‘no’ on the possibility of the Scandinavian countries joining the alliance.

  The Turkish presidency’s office said Erdogan conveyed to Sweden that Stockholm must take “concrete and serious steps” against the PKK and other linked Kurdish groups. Ankara has long seen them as ‘terrorists’ despite much of the West allying with the Syrian YPG in Syria, which Turkey sees as but an extension of the PKK.

  

  And additionally he told Finland’s Niinisto “that an understanding that ignores terrorist organizations that pose a threat to an ally within NATO is incompatible with the spirit of friendship and alliance,” according to a statement. Both countries were also asked to lift EU arms restrictions to Turkey imposed in 2019.

  Turkey’s Daily Sabah summarized the demands laid out in what were clearly tense phone calls as follows:

  Ankara expects Stockholm to take serious steps to address its concerns with regards to the terrorist groups, he said, adding that the claim that PKK/YPG terrorists were fighting the Daesh terrorist group, did not reflect reality.

  Sweden’s arms restrictions on Turkey was another subject brought up during the conversation. Erdoğan said Turkey’s cross-border military campaigns in northern Syria were a result of a necessity caused by a terrorist threat in the region, and Ankara expects Stockholm to lift the restrictions.

  Erdogan had also reportedly called NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to convey Turkey’s position, to which the NATO chief said the alliance would take the security concerns seriously.

  In response to Turkey’s latest days of official protests and amid the diplomatic maneuvering seeking to smooth its concerns, the US Statement Department described that the dispute is not being approached as a “bilateral issue”. 

  As Reuters reported, “Turkey’s approach to the NATO accession process of Sweden and Finland is not a bilateral issue between Washington and Ankara, the U.S. State Department said on Friday, but added that Washington was speaking with Ankara and it remained confident that the dispute would be overcome.”

  Last week Turkey’s foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu conveyed to a meeting of NATO diplomats that majority of Turkish citizens – which is the country that also happens to possess the alliance’s second largest military – are adamantly opposed to Sweden and Finland’s membership. Thus Erdogan’s AK Party government in its attempt to block their paths to NATO is also playing heavily to its domestic base.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/21/2022 – 18:00

• US Drawing Up Plans To Sink Russia's Black Sea Fleet: Ukrainian Official
  US Drawing Up Plans To Sink Russia’s Black Sea Fleet: Ukrainian Official

  Authored by Kyle Anzalone via AntiWar.com,

  Shortly after Reuters published an exclusive story that the White House was looking to move advanced anti-ship missiles to Ukraine, an official in Kiev said that the US is making a plan to sink Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

  Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs adviser Anton Gerashchenko tweeted (and later deleted), “The US is preparing a plan to destroy the [Russian] Black Sea Fleet. The effective work of the Ukrainians on [Russian] warships convinced [the US] to prepare a plan to unblock the [Ukrainian] ports. Deliveries of powerful anti-ship weapons are being discussed.”

  

  Gerashchenko cited the Reuters report on Washington’s effort to ship Harpoon and Naval Strike Missiles to Ukraine. The missiles have a range of up to 300 km and cost $1.5 million each.

  Three US officials and two Congressional sources told the outlet the White House was still working out the details for sending the advanced weapons to Ukraine. Logistical issues and the possibility the US would have to remove a launcher from one of its ships to send to Ukraine are current obstacles to completing the transfer.

  Responding to a question from Newsweek, the State Department did not deny it was working on a plan to take out the Russian fleet. “As the conflict is changing, so too is our military assistance to deliver the critical capabilities Ukraine needs for today’s fight as Russia’s forces engage in a renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine,” a spokesperson said.

  However, the Department of Defense issued a sharp denial of the claims made by the Ukrainians official. “I can tell you definitively that that’s not true,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters Thursday afternoon. The Pentagon denial applied only to the Ukrainian official’s assertion the US was helping sink the Black Sea fleet, and did not refer to the proposed anti-ship weapons transfer.

  

  Gerashchenko said the attack would help to open up Ukraine’s ports. Russia currently controls the Black Sea and maintains a blockade. The UN has called for an easing of restrictions in the sea to allow food exports from Ukraine to help alleviate global food shortages.

  Moscow has offered a diplomatic solution to the Black Sea standoff. On Thursday, the Kremlin proposed lifting the blockage in exchange for sanctions relief. The Russian Foreign Ministry said the problem goes beyond the blockade and includes Western sanctions restricting fertilizer exports.

  “three U.S. officials and two congressional sources said two types of powerful anti-ship missiles, the Harpoon … and the Naval Strike Missile…were in active consideration for either direct shipment to Ukraine, or through a transfer from a European ally” https://t.co/3oMdbLMCL6

  — Shashank Joshi (@shashj) May 21, 2022

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

  “You have to not only appeal to the Russian Federation but also look deeply at the whole complex of reasons that caused the current food crisis. [Sanctions] interfere with normal free trade, encompassing food products including wheat, fertilizers and others,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko said.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/21/2022 – 17:30

• "We're In A Crisis": American Farmer Warns Of Impending Food Shortages 
  “We’re In A Crisis”: American Farmer Warns Of Impending Food Shortages 

  NewsNation’s Leland Vittert asked one American farmer: “How close are we to the next food crisis?”

  The answer: “We are in a crisis right now as far as the food chain goes with the farmer in this country,” John Boyd Jr., the President of the National Black Farmers Association, said. 

  Boyd points out some farmers are unable to plant because of adverse weather conditions. He said farmers in the Northern Plains haven’t been able to get tractors in the fields because of soggy conditions, and the war in Ukraine has knocked out an entire region of food production. 

  

  He warned, “We’re going to see a lot of empty shelves and a lot more high food prices.” 

  In his forty-year career as a farmer, Boyd said he never imagined he would be “paying $5.63 for a gallon of diesel fuel, $900 a ton for fertilizer, and all-time high prices for soybean seeds.” All of the prices he mentioned are at record highs, pressuring farmers’ margins. 

  He said the American people need to wake up to the crisis in the farming industry, adding, “farming isn’t Republican or Democratic, it’s food, the land is neutral … this is the time the American people need to support the American farmer and put pressure on the Biden administration to put things in place to help farmers.”

  He mentioned that banks need to provide emergency funding to farmers to get their crops in the ground. Out-of-control inflation has left some farmers unable to plant because of soaring costs. 

  Boyd said, “We only have a short window of opportunity to give farmers funding.”

  He stated the worst-case scenario is “a lot of shortages” of food that could materialize later this year. 

  Boyd’s dire warning comes after the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report published by the USDA last week showed global production of corn and wheat is expected to decline. 

  Watch the full interview here. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/21/2022 – 17:00

• Hillary Clinton's Trump/Russia Media Strategy Revealed In Day 4 Of Sussmann Trial
  Hillary Clinton’s Trump/Russia Media Strategy Revealed In Day 4 Of Sussmann Trial

  Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

  Yesterday morning we saw the continued testimony of former FBI general counsel James Baker and Hillary Clinton Campaign manager Robby Mook. (As we previously observed, Mook had already admitted to being briefed on “general updates concerning” Fusion GPS findings – though he has denied knowing who Fusion GPS was.)

  

  I’m traveling this weekend and can’t do the deepest dive into yesterday’s testimony – including that of the CIA agent in the afternoon session – but here are the highlights from Baker and Mook.

  The Baker examination, continued.

  Baker testified that Sussman did not notify him that the discredited Trump-Russia Alfa Bank allegations had been shared with the New York Times. (For a refresher, here are the transcript excerpts from his Thursday testimony.)

  Q: Did he [Sussman] tell you anything about whether he had a client when he went to The New York Times?

  A: I guess the answer to that question is no.

  Q: And you don’t know, sir, whether they were his clients for purposes of attempting to get this story placed in The New York Times, do you?

  A: That’s fair. I do not know that, that’s correct. 

  Q: You don’t know whether he was working with the Clinton Campaign to do that, do you?

  A: I do not.

  The Robby Mook testimony.

  Robert Mook, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager, also testified before the jury Friday. In his testimony, he stated that Hillary Clinton personally approved a plan to spread the lie that Trump was colluding with Russia via secret servers to the media. He also admitted to being briefed on the conspiracy.

  Q: Okay. In connection with the general focus on Mr. Trump and Russia, did there come a time when you learned of potential links between the Trump organization, Mr. Trump’s business, and a Russian bank called Alfa-bank?

  A: I did. Yes, I was briefed on that. 

  Q: Approximately when were you first briefed on that, if you remember?

  A: I honestly can’t recall. 

  Q: Who participated in the briefing, if you remember?

  A: Myself, Marc Elias, Jen Palmieri, Jake Sullivan, John Podesta. There might have been others, but those are the ones I definitely recall being there.

  Mook also admitted that the Clinton campaign was focused on Trump’s relationship with Russia before Summer of 2016. 

  Q: In the Summer of 2016, was Mr. Trump’s relationship with Russia something that the campaign focused on?

  A: Yes. I mean, it was frankly something we were focused on before that time. But absolutely.

  Mook however did deny that the Clinton campaign directed Sussman to go to the FBI, despite admitting that Clinton approved the Trump-Russia allegations to be shared with the media.

  Q: Were you aware that Mr. Sussman went to the FBI in September of 2016 to give them a heads-up about a New York Times story about Trump and Alfa-Bank?

  A: No. 

  Q: Do you have any recollection of anyone talking to you about going to the FBI on behalf of the campaign on the Trump/Alfa-Bank issue?

  A: No. 

  Q: Did you direct Mr. Sussman to go to the FBI on behalf of the campaign?

  A: Absolutely not.

  Q: Did you authorize Mr. Sussman to go to the FBI on behalf of the campaign?

  A: No.

  Q: Did anyone else from the campaign, to your knowledge, direct or authorize Mr. Sussman to go to the FBI on behalf of the campaign?

  A: To my knowledge, no.

  Mook also said the decision to push the debunked Russia conspiracy to the media was made by himself, Sussman, John Podesta, and Palmeri, and that Hillary Clinton agreed with the decision.

  Q: And once you learned about it [the Trump-Russia allegations], you started discussing with the campaign whether the campaign should affirmatively push it in the media, right?

  A: Correct. 

  Q: And you had that discussion with Mr. Sullivan?

  A: Correct. 

  Q: With Mr. Podesta?

  A: Just to be clear. This is what – I recall those people, correct. 

  Q: Okay. You had a discussion with Mr. Sullivan?

  A: Yes, I recall, yes. 

  Q: Whether to push it in the media right?

  A: Correct. 

  Q: With Ms. Palmieri? 

  A: Correct. 

  Q: With Mr. Podesta?

  A: Correct.

  Q: But in any event, the decision to provide this to the media was authorized by the campaign, correct?

  A: We authorized a staff member of the campaign to provide it to the media.

  Regarding Hillary Clinton, Mook said:

  Q: Mr. Mook, before the break you had testified that there was a conversation in which you told Ms. Clinton about the proposed plan to provide the Alfa-Bank allegations to the media; is that correct?

  A: Correct. 

  Q: And what was her response?

  A: All I remember is that she agreed with the decision.

  Some final thoughts: while this trial is about Sussmann’s false statements to the FBI, it’s also more than that.

  This is Special Counsel John Durham telling the public the story of the Clinton opposition research machine, and how the campaign, through their lawyers and contractors (Fusion GPS), developed and spread lies to the media to influence the election. It’s the story of Clinton Campaign lawyers to using the FBI to further that strategy of deception.

  With that in mind, do not forget the Igor Danchenko case. Is it the case that Charles Dolan, a Hillary Clinton friend and supporter, was coincidentally feeding false information to Christopher Steele’s primary sub source?

  And on that thread, what are the odds that another Clinton ally – Alexander Downer – took his “info” to the FBI? Downer’s tip was referenced in the opening of the Alfa Bank-Trump investigation, seen below. (Note that the FBI misrepresents both the Downer tip and Mifsud’s purported statement to George Papadopolous.)

  

  Are we to believe the Clinton Campaign and it’s agents had nothing to do with Dolan and Downer? When it comes to the broader Trump/Russia matter, there are too many Clinton links to ignore. Let’s hope that Durham is unraveling that thread.

  Subscribe now

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/21/2022 – 16:30

• Economic Indicators, Led By Mortgage Rates, Are Flashing Red
  Economic Indicators, Led By Mortgage Rates, Are Flashing Red

  The signs that the U.S. economy is starting to fall apart are rising to the surface, further indicating that a recession is likely on its way.

  In addition to both Target and Walmart plunging this past week on earnings reports that missed Wall Street’s expectations, other indicators that the country is heading toward recession are also starting to surface. 

  For example, American households are taking on “record amounts of debt”, according to BNN Bloomberg, as higher prices make it tougher for the consumer to pay for staples like gasoline and food. Mortgage rates on the rise are also squeezing the budgets of consumers while businesses both big and small grapple with increased raw material costs.

  Ethan Harris, head of global economics research at Bank of America, told Bloomberg: “I don’t think you can have a completely benign soft landing of the economy at this point. We’re either going to have a weak economy or a recession.”

  The report notes that many economists believe there is enough momentum and demand in the economy to make it through the end of this year without beginning to falter. But the outlook isn’t as rosy for next year. 

  For example, JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief US economist Michael Feroli said last week that he sees growth falling to 2.4% in the second half of this year before moving to 1% in the second half of 2023. Economists at Goldman Sachs also downgraded their 2023 outlook last week. 

  

  Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi thinks things could wind up being much worse: “We put the odds that the economy will suffer a downturn beginning in the next 12 months at one in three with uncomfortable near-even odds of a recession in the next 24 months.”

  “You can still have quite a strong labor market if unemployment were to move up a few ticks,” Jerome Powell said last week, while talking about the economy. He also said that engineering a “soft landing” may rely on events outside the control of the Fed. 

  One major key in helping determine the future, of course, will be whether or not the Fed holds course on interest rates.

  The slowdown in the economy is also being helped along by the housing market. Mortgage rates have risen at the fastest clip in nearly four decades, the report notes. 

  National Association of Home Builders Chairman Jerry Konter said: “Housing leads the business cycle and housing is slowing.”

  Doug Duncan, chief economist at Fannie Mae, said he expects a “modest recession” and sees unemployment rising to 4.4% in 2023. 

  Goldman Sachs’ Jan Hatzius concluded: “Consumer borrowing supports spending in the short term but ultimately is not going to be a sustainable source of big increases in spending. So it builds in a slowdown, sort of down the road.” 

  And that’s an iceberg we’re heading straight towards…

   

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/21/2022 – 16:00

• Japan Nuclear Regulator Greenlights Radiactive Water Release From Fukushima
  Japan Nuclear Regulator Greenlights Radiactive Water Release From Fukushima

  Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

  The Japanese Nuclear Regulator Authority has given its initial approval to Tepco to start releasing irradiated water from the Fukushima plant that collapsed during a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

  

  Plans were revealed last year to pour the water from Fukushima into the sea after an assessment that would check whether there were any safety issues with such a plan. According to the Nuclear Regulator Authority, there are none. Final approval will be granted in a month after the public has had the opportunity to comment on the issue.

  The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency will also carry out safety reviews of the water release.

  There are about a million tons of contaminated water from Fukushima that Tepco, the operator of the nuclear plant, has been looking for ways to dispose of for several years now.

  Releasing the water into the ocean has emerged as the most viable solution to the problem despite opposition both from inside Japan and its neighbors.

  

  Despite the absence of viable options, environmental groups and fishing industry organizations are against the release of the liquid into the sea, even with assurances from scientists that the risk of contamination is low.

  The water will be first filtered and then diluted to reduce the concentration of radioactive material 40 times, according to some of the reports from last year that were confirmed this year as well. The release is scheduled to begin this year if the Nuclear Regulator Authority gives its final go-ahead to Tepco.

  Back in 2018, official calculations by the Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corp pegged the cost of decommissioning the Fukushima nuclear power plant at some $75 billion, which was a sum four times larger than the initial estimate of how much it would cost to put Fukushima out of commission.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/21/2022 – 15:30

• Tesla Unsecured? Bluetooth Hack Allows Thieves To Steal Vehicle 
  Tesla Unsecured? Bluetooth Hack Allows Thieves To Steal Vehicle 

  Tesla vehicles are some of the most sophisticated driving machines in the world. Owners of the futuristic electric cars don’t use keys but rather their smartphone’s Bluetooth or a backup keycard to gain access. One cybersecurity firm found a way to exploit Tesla’s Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology, in which they were able to remotely unlock the vehicle without the owner’s smartphone or keycard, according to Reuters. 

  UK-based NCC Group researcher Sultan Qasim Khan published a video of him standing in a parking lot next to his 2021 Tesla Model Y. He had a small relay device connected to a laptop. The device could replicate his smartphone’s Bluetooth signature that was in the range of the relay connected to the computer (but out of range of the vehicle) to unlock the car and drive off. 

  Khan has proved car thieves can remotely unlock and steal a Tesla by exploiting the car’s BLE connection — something that might not be easy to fix with a software patch. 

  “Model 3 and Model Y vehicles are at risk from a vulnerability in the technology, which is powered by Bluetooth, which allows thieves to unlock a Tesla from 25 meters away,” The Telegraph said. 

  NCC added: “This research illustrates the danger of using technologies for reasons other than their intended purpose, especially when security issues are involved.”

  Tesla owners can prevent criminals from gaining access to their cars by possibly turning off the Bluetooth from the smartphone to the vehicle when exiting. Also, there’s another level of authentication called a PIN, in which a four-digit number must be entered into the vehicle’s main center touchscreen. 

  And it’s not just the most sophisticated electric cars. Newer vehicles are being outfitted with technology that car thieves have found ways to steal remotely, such as using a high-tech Game Boy. Thieves also place Apple AirTags on vehicles to track and then steal later. 

  As for the Tesla — each car comes with no physical keys — owners don’t have to fret over someone picking their locks but instead worry about high-tech car thieves. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/21/2022 – 15:00

• Five Warning Signs The End Of Dollar Hegemony Is Near… Here's What Happens Next
  Five Warning Signs The End Of Dollar Hegemony Is Near… Here’s What Happens Next

  Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,

  It’s no secret that China and Russia have been stashing away as much gold as possible for many years.

  China is the world’s largest producer and buyer of gold. Russia is number two. Most of that gold finds its way into the Russian and Chinese governments’ treasuries.

  Russia has over 2,300 tonnes—or nearly 74 million troy ounces—of gold, one of the largest stashes in the world. Nobody knows the exact amount of gold China has, but most observers believe it is even larger than Russia’s stash.

  Russia and China’s gold gives them access to an apolitical neutral form of money with no counterparty risk.

  Remember, gold has been mankind’s most enduring form of money for over 2,500 years because of unique characteristics that make it suitable to store and exchange value.

  Gold is durable, divisible, consistent, convenient, scarce, and most importantly, the “hardest” of all physical commodities.

  In other words, gold is the one physical commodity that is the “hardest to produce” (relative to existing stockpiles) and, therefore, the most resistant to inflation. That’s what gives gold its superior monetary properties.

  Russia and China can use their gold to engage in international trade and perhaps back the currencies.

  That’s why gold represents a genuine monetary alternative to the US dollar, and Russia and China have a lot of it.

  Today it’s clear why China and Russia have had an insatiable demand for gold.

  They’ve been waiting for the right moment to pull the rug from beneath the US dollar. And now is that moment…

  

  This is a big problem for the US government, which reaps an unfathomable amount of power because the US dollar is the world’s premier reserve currency. It allows the US to print fake money out of thin air and export it to the rest of the world for real goods and services—a privileged racket no other country has.

  Russia and China’s gold could form the foundation of a new monetary system outside of the control of the US. Such moves would be the final nail in the coffin of dollar dominance.

  Five recent developments are a giant flashing red sign that something big could be imminent.

  Warning Sign #1: Russia Sanctions Prove Dollar Reserves “Aren’t Really Money”

  In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the US government has launched its most aggressive sanctions campaign ever.

  Exceeding even Iran and North Korea, Russia is now the most sanctioned nation in the world.

  As part of this, the US government seized the US dollar reserves of the Russian central bank—the accumulated savings of the nation.

  It was a stunning illustration of the dollar’s political risk. The US government can seize another sovereign country’s dollar reserves at the flip of a switch.

  The Wall Street Journal, in an article titled “If Russian Currency Reserves Aren’t Really Money, the World Is in for a Shock,” noted:

  “Sanctions have shown that currency reserves accumulated by central banks can be taken away. With China taking note, this may reshape geopolitics, economic management and even the international role of the U.S. dollar.”

  Russian President Putin said the US had defaulted on its obligations and that the dollar is no longer a reliable currency.

  The incident has eroded trust in the US dollar as the global reserve currency and catalyzed significant countries to use alternatives in trade and their reserves.

  China, India, Iran, and Turkey, among other countries, announced, or already are, doing business with Russia in their local currencies instead of the US dollar. These countries represent a market of over three billion people that no longer need to use the US dollar to trade with one another.

  The US government has incentivized almost half of mankind to find alternatives to the dollar by attempting to isolate Russia.

  Warning Sign #2: Rubles, Gold, and Bitcoin for Gas, Oil, and Other Commodities

  Russia is the world’s largest exporter of natural gas, lumber, wheat, fertilizer, and palladium (a crucial component in cars).

  It is the second-largest exporter of oil and aluminum and the third-largest exporter of nickel and coal.

  Russia is a major producer and processor of uranium for nuclear power plants. Enriched uranium from Russia and its allies provides electricity to 20% of the homes in the US.

  Aside from China, Russia produces more gold than any other country, accounting for more than 10% of global production.

  These are just a handful of examples. There are many strategic commodities that Russia dominates.

  In short, Russia is not just an oil and gas powerhouse but a commodity superpower.

  After the US government seized Russia’s US dollar reserves, Moscow has little use for the US dollar. Moscow does not want to exchange its scarce and valuable commodities for politicized money that its rivals can take away on a whim. Would the US government ever tolerate a situation where the US Treasury held its reserves in rubles in Russia?

  The head of the Russian Parliament recently called the US dollar a “candy wrapper” but not the candy itself. In other words, the dollar has the outward appearance of money but is not real money.

  That’s why Russia is no longer accepting US dollars (or euros) in exchange for its energy. They are of no use to Russia. So instead, Moscow is demanding payment in rubles.

  That’s an urgent problem for Europe, which cannot survive without Russian commodities. The Europeans have no alternative to Russian energy and have no choice but to comply.

  European buyers must now first buy rubles with their euros and use them to pay for Russian gas, oil, and other exports.

  This is a big reason why the ruble has recovered all of the value it lost in the initial days of the Ukraine invasion and then made further gains.

  In addition to rubles, the top Russian energy official said Moscow would also accept gold or Bitcoin in return for its commodities.

  “If they want to buy, let them pay either in hard currency—and this is gold for us… you can also trade Bitcoins.”

  Here’s the bottom line. US dollars are no longer needed (or wanted) to buy Russian commodities.

  Warning Sign #3: The Petrodollar System Flirts With Collapse

  Oil is by far the largest and most strategic commodity market.

  For the last 50 years, virtually anyone who wanted to import oil needed US dollars to pay for it.

  That’s because, in the early ’70s, the US made an agreement to protect Saudi Arabia in exchange for ensuring, among other things, all OPEC producers only accept US dollars for their oil.

  Every country needs oil. And if foreign countries need US dollars to buy oil, they have a compelling reason to hold large dollar reserves.

  This creates a huge artificial market for US dollars and forces foreigners to soak up many of the new currency units the Fed creates. Naturally, this gives a tremendous boost to the value of the dollar.

  The system has helped create a deeper, more liquid market for the dollar and US Treasuries. It also allows the US government to keep interest rates artificially low, thereby financing enormous deficits it otherwise would be unable to.

  In short, the petrodollar system has been the bedrock of the US financial system for the past 50 years.

  But that’s all about to change… and soon.

  After it invaded Ukraine, the US government kicked Russia out of the dollar system and seized hundreds of billions in dollar reserves of the Russian central bank.

  Washington has threatened to do the same to China for years. These threats helped ensure that China cracked down on North Korea, didn’t invade Taiwan, and did other things the US wanted.

  These threats against China may be a bluff, but if the US government carried them out—as it recently did against Russia—it would be like dropping a financial nuclear bomb on Beijing. Without access to dollars, China would struggle to import oil and engage in international trade. As a result, its economy would come to a grinding halt, an intolerable threat to the Chinese government.

  China would rather not depend on an adversary like this. This is one of the main reasons it created an alternative to the petrodollar system.

  After years of preparation, the Shanghai International Energy Exchange (INE) launched a crude oil futures contract denominated in Chinese yuan in 2017. Since then, any oil producer can sell its oil for something besides US dollars… in this case, the Chinese yuan.

  There’s one big issue, though. Most oil producers don’t want to accumulate a large yuan reserve, and China knows this.

  That’s why China has explicitly linked the crude futures contract with the ability to convert yuan into physical gold—without touching China’s official reserves—through gold exchanges in Shanghai (the world’s largest physical gold market) and Hong Kong.

  PetroChina and Sinopec, two Chinese oil companies, provide liquidity to the yuan crude futures by being big buyers. So, if any oil producer wants to sell their oil in yuan (and gold indirectly), there will always be a bid.

  After years of growth and working out the kinks, the INE yuan oil future contract is now ready for prime time.

  And now that the US has banned Russia from the dollar system, there is an urgent need for a credible system capable of handling hundreds of billions worth of oil sales outside of the US dollar and financial system.

  The Shanghai International Energy Exchange is that system.

  Back to Saudi Arabia…

  For nearly 50 years, the Saudis had always insisted anyone wanting their oil would need to pay with US dollars, upholding their end of the petrodollar system.

  But that could all change soon…

  Remember, China is already the world’s largest oil importer. Moreover, the amount of oil it imports continues to grow as it fuels an economy of over 1.4 billion people (more than 4x larger than the US).

  China is Saudi Arabia’s top customer. Beijing buys over 25% of Saudi oil exports and wants to buy more.

  The Chinese would rather not have to use the US dollar, the currency of their adversary, to buy an essential commodity.

  In this context, The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Chinese and the Saudis had entered into serious discussions to accept yuan as payment for Saudi oil exports instead of dollars.

  The WSJ article claims the Saudis are angry at the US for not supporting it enough in its war against Yemen. They were further dismayed by the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the nuclear negotiations with Iran.

  In short, the Saudis don’t think the US is holding up its end of the deal. So they don’t feel like they need to hold up their part.

  Even the WSJ admits such a move would be disastrous for the US dollar.

  “The Saudi move could chip away at the supremacy of the US dollar in the international financial system, which Washington has relied on for decades to print Treasury bills it uses to finance its budget deficit.”

  Here’s the bottom line.

  Saudi Arabia—the linchpin of the petrodollar system—is flirting in the open with China about selling its oil in yuan. One way or another—and probably soon—the Chinese will find a way to compel the Saudis to accept the yuan.

  The sheer size of the Chinese market makes it impossible for Saudi Arabia—and other oil exporters—to ignore China’s demands to pay in yuan indefinitely. Moreover, using the INE to exchange oil for gold further sweetens the deal for oil exporters.

  Sometime soon, there will be a lot of extra dollars floating around suddenly looking for a home now that they are not needed to purchase oil.

  It signals an imminent and enormous change for anyone holding US dollars. It would be incredibly foolish to ignore this giant red warning sign.

  Warning Sign #4: Out of Control Money Printing and Record Price Increases

  In March of 2020, the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, exercised unfathomable power…

  At the time, it was the height of the stock market crash amid the COVID hysteria. People were panicking as they watched the market plummet, and they turned to the Fed to do something.

  In a matter of days, the Fed created more dollars out of thin air than it had for the US’s nearly 250-year existence. It was an unprecedented amount of money printing that amounted to more than $4 trillion and nearly doubled the US money supply in less than a year.

  One trillion dollars is almost an unfathomable amount of money. The human mind has trouble wrapping itself around such figures. Let me try to put it into perspective.

  One million seconds ago was about 11 days ago.

  One billion seconds ago was 1988.

  One trillion seconds ago was 30,000 BC.

  For further perspective, the daily economic output of all 331 million people in the US is about $58 billion.

  At the push of a button, the Fed was creating more dollars out of thin air than the economic output of the entire country.

  The Fed’s actions during the Covid hysteria—which are ongoing—amounted to the biggest monetary explosion that has ever occurred in the US.

  When the Fed initiated this program, it assured the American people its actions wouldn’t cause severe price increases. But unfortunately, it didn’t take long to prove that absurd assertion false.

  As soon as rising prices became apparent, the mainstream media and Fed claimed that the inflation was only “transitory” and that there was nothing to be worried about.

  Of course, they were dead wrong, and they knew it—they were gaslighting.

  The truth is that inflation is out of control, and nothing can stop it.

  Even according to the government’s own crooked CPI statistics, which understates reality, inflation is rising. That means the actual situation is much worse.

  Recently the CPI hit a 40-year high and shows little sign of slowing down.

  I wouldn’t be surprised to see the CPI exceed its previous highs in the early 1980s as the situation gets out of control.

  After all, the money printing going on right now is orders of magnitude greater than it was then.

  Warning Sign #5: Fed Chair Admits Dollar Supremacy Is Dead

  “It’s possible to have more than one reserve currency.”

  These are the recent words of Jerome Powell, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

  It’s a stunning admission from the one person who has the most control over the US dollar, the current world reserve currency.

  It would be as ridiculous as Mike Tyson saying that it’s possible to have more than one heavyweight champion.

  In other words, the jig is up.

  Not even the Chairman of the Federal Reserve can go along with the farce of maintaining the dollar’s supremacy anymore… and neither should you.

  Conclusion

  It’s clear the US dollar’s days of unchallenged dominance are quickly ending—something even the Fed Chairman openly admits.

  To recap, here are the five imminent, flashing red warning signs the end of dollar hegemony is near.

  • Warning Sign #1: Russia Sanctions Prove Dollar Reserves “Aren’t Really Money”

  • Warning Sign #2: Rubles, Gold, and Bitcoin for Gas, Oil, and Other Commodities

  • Warning Sign #3: The Petrodollar System Flirts With Collapse

  • Warning Sign #4: Out of Control Money Printing and Record Price Increases

  • Warning Sign #5: Fed Chair Admits Dollar Supremacy Is Dead

  If we take a step back and zoom out, the Big Picture is clear.

  We are likely on the cusp of a historic shift… and what’s coming next could change everything.

  *  *  *

  The economic trajectory is troubling. Unfortunately, there’s little any individual can practically do to change the course of these trends in motion. The best you can and should do is to stay informed so that you can protect yourself in the best way possible, and even profit from the situation. That’s precisely why bestselling author Doug Casey and his colleagues just released an urgent new PDF report that explains what could come next and what you can do about it. Click here to download it now.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/21/2022 – 14:30

• Russian Media Says Head Of Azov In Custody After 2,439 Total Fighters Surrender At Steel Plant
  Russian Media Says Head Of Azov In Custody After 2,439 Total Fighters Surrender At Steel Plant

  Late Friday Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that the last Ukrainian fighters holed up in the giant Azovstal steelworks plant emerged, days after there were reports that top Azov commanders still holding out.

  The ministry said it counted 2,439 defenders had emerged and surrendered over the past few days. The final holdout group that was last to come out was tallied at 531. The Russian military’s now total control over the sprawling plant and city of Mariupol is considered the be its greatest victory over three months of war.

  The final 500+ came out Friday, after Azov regiment commander Denys Prokopenko giving the order to stop defending the city. “The higher military command has given the order to save the lives of the soldiers of our garrison and to stop defending the city.” Prokopenko had said in a video posted to Telegram.

  The Ukrainian side has presented it as an end to the “combat mission” while Moscow emphasized the Azov militants, who are neo-Nazi in ideology, were defeated and surrendered. Prokopenko those under him to preserve “life and health … and stop defending the city.”

  Russia announced that “The territory of the Azovstal metallurgical plant … has been completely liberated.” Further, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu informed President Putin of the city’s complete ‘liberation’.

  Crucially, there are Russian and other international press reports saying that the head of Azov is now in Russian military custody: “The Russian Defense Ministry also confirmed the surrender of Denis Prokopenko, the commander of the so-called Azov battalion – a far-right military unit of neo-Nazi volunteers operating in Ukraine as a reserve force of the country’s Armed Forces,” according to the reports.

  

  Though there’s been little in the way of confirmation, Russia’s Channel One correspondent Irina Kuksenkova said that Azov leaders Denys Prokopenko, Sviatoslav Palamar and Serhiy “Volyna” (Ukrainian Marine commander) have now all surrendered.

  The Guardian wrote the following of at least one of these high-level commanders:

  Pro-Kremlin telegram channels also released a video with Sergei Volynsky, the commander of the 36th Marine Brigade unit, in which he said that his unit has surrendered. The unit was one of the main forces defending the steelworks.

  A number of Ukraine war observers have noted that there’s yet to be visual proof or confirmation, including video, of Prokopenko’s arrest by Russian forces. Additionally there’s speculation he may still be in the plant, or seeking to escape past Russian lines.

  Whatever your views on Ukraine, the war and the US role: it’s just amazing that the Western press — which spent a full decade in unison calling the Azov Battalion neo-Nazi fanatics — now speak of them in admiring terms and will only say that their Nazism is a “Russian claim.” https://t.co/izx0ssgdyg

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 20, 2022

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

  Meanwhile, Western mainstream media has remained silent on the fate of the Azov leaders – likely also as few or none of its correspondents are on the ground at Azovstal, and Kiev has yet to confirm whether or not Prokopenko and others are now in Russian detention.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/21/2022 – 14:00

• Dem Rep. Joyce Beatty Blames "White Supremacy Replacement Theorist" For Shooting Carried Out By Black Suspect
  Dem Rep. Joyce Beatty Blames “White Supremacy Replacement Theorist” For Shooting Carried Out By Black Suspect

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  Dem Rep. Joyce Beatty gave a speech with Nancy Pelosi in attendance during which she blamed a shooting at a hair salon in Dallas on a “white supremacist replacement theorist,” the only problem being the gunman was black.

  

  Whoops!

  The chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) referenced the shooting, which took place at a Korean hair salon, during a press conference yesterday.

  After stating the incorrect date on which the shooting took place, Beatty tried to spin a false narrative that the attack was a white supremacist hate crime.

  “On Monday, three people in a Korean-owned hair salon in Dallas were gunned by yet another White supremacy replacement theorist,” Beatty told the crowd.

  “We are sick of the pipeline from racist rhetoric to racist violence,” she added.

  One problem with that – the suspect is a black man.

  37-year-old Jeremy Smith walked into Hair World Salon on May 11 and opened fire on the 7 people inside. He has been charged with three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

  The FBI is investigating the shooting as a hate crime because Smith held a grudge against Asians having been involved in a car accident with an Asian male. He was also fired from a job for attacking his Asian boss.

  Beatty has so far failed to comment on the issue and the video of the speech is still posted on her official Twitter account.

  As we previously highlighted, the ‘great replacement theory’ is a topic that has been given legitimacy by Democrats, including Joe Biden, on numerous occasions.

  From Charleston to Pittsburgh to El Paso to Atlanta to Buffalo to Dallas, we are seeing the pipeline from racist rhetoric to racist violence.

  The “great replacement” theory is a hateful lie rooted in old school colorism and eugenics.

  We must call it out at every opportunity. pic.twitter.com/XQEO38hV8B

  — Rep. Joyce Beatty (@RepBeatty) May 19, 2022

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

  *  *  *

  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 behinds the scenes stuff by following me on Locals.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 05/21/2022 – 13:30

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• Conrad Black: The Swamp Must Be Drained
  Conrad Black: The Swamp Must Be Drained

  Op-Ed authored by Conrad Black via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Democrats are increasingly desperate as the return of Donald Trump becomes more likely each week.

  

  They are muddling the sequence of events that got us to the present impasse: Trump ran against the corrupt back-scratching, log-rolling society of the OBushintons—the Clinton pay-to-play schemes, the Biden sales of influence and access, the semi-disguised socialist racism elitism of the Obamas, and the flabby sameness and ineffectuality of the Bush–McCain–Romney–McConnell–Ryan Republicans. Trump sensed the people were dissatisfied with the bipartisan Swamp, and he ran as strenuously against the Bushes and McCain and Romney in 2016 as he did against the Clintons and Obamas.

  The anti-Trumpers of both parties, in the most legally questionable presidential election in U.S. history, eased Trump out in 2020 with the aid of 4.8 million harvested ballots, 95 percent of the national political media, and 70 percent of the campaign money, to bring in (unintentionally, one assumes, although there was plenty of warning) the most incompetent regime in the country’s history.

  In 2020, the Washington establishment demonstrated the accuracy of Trump’s claims of how corrupt and unscrupulous it was, and Biden has demonstrated that it’s even more incompetent at government than Trump alleged.

  The Swamp must be drained, and distasteful though he might be in some ways, probably no one less formidable in his egocentricity and demagogic talents than Trump could drain the Swamp. The Republicans between Reagan and Trump were all inducted into it themselves, and the Republican “Never-Trumpers” are as fierce in their animosity toward the former president as toward the Democrats, and as the Democrats are toward Trump. Only Trump can finish the job.

  This is why the latest anti-Trump wheeze is to send Biden and Trump out to pasture together, as if it were an even trade: The Democrats get rid of their two biggest problems, and the Republicans return to being doormats, awarded the White House and the speaker’s chair at times as long as they don’t interrupt the majestic slide into the Democratic socialist paradise (with a permanent free tax-lunch for their rich friends in Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood).

  Biden is irrelevant and Trump has the stamina of a 40-year-old; the call for joint retirement is bunk on all counts.

  Pennsylvania illustrates the political polarization of the country and also provides the solution. The Democrats will nominate a Sandersite leftist for U.S. senator and the Republicans will almost certainly win with a Trumpite—a description that fits all four of their front-runners, and all four are more or less carpetbaggers. The Republican nominee will be another senator whose loyalty is to Trump, if he returns as president, and not to Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell.

  The walls are closing in on the Democrats, to use one of their favorite, completely dishonest phrases about Trump when they were trying to sell the gigantic fraud that he had colluded with the Russians in the 2016 election.

  The Democrats hid their innocuous candidate in 2020 in his basement on grounds of COVID-19, while using the same justification for drastic changes in key states of voting and vote-counting rules, changes that were often effected illegally, and the judiciary abdicated and refused to judge any of the serious complaints on their merits. It was the most dangerously illegal assault on the integrity of the election process and on the constitutional balance of powers in the country’s history.

  The problem is not that both 2020 candidates are now too elderly. The problem is that 2020 and the run-up to it demonstrated that the Swamp is as venal and self-interested and corrupt as Trump said in 2016, and they are back. If we go back to business as usual—a stronger Democrat than Biden and a compliant consensus Republican—the rot of 2016 accelerates.

  When the congressional Republicans, though most of them weren’t really supporters of his, appreciated his program, and between the Republican majority in Congress in the first two years and the prerogatives of executive action, Trump got much of his program through, despite unprecedented harassment. The authors of the perfidious fraud of the 2020 election were rescued by Trump’s inept response and the abdication of the judiciary.

  Trump inadvertently collaborated with his enemies by bungling the daily COVID-19 briefings, bungling the first debate by his belligerency, and warning about ballot harvesting but not challenging it legally from the outset, comprehensively, and only sending poor Rudy Giuliani out on a trick or treat show when the battle was over.

  These were the circumstances that caused Trump to call 250,000 of his supporters to the Ellipse adjacent to the White House on Jan. 6, 2021. He enumerated his grievances against the electoral process and the courts’ failure to try the important cases, and having unsuccessfully urged the mayor of Washington and the speaker of the House of Representatives to provide enhanced security for the Capitol on that day, he urged the crowd to demonstrate at the Capitol but to do so “peacefully and patriotically.” This provoked the second asinine stab at impeachment, now ostensibly to remove Trump from an office that he had already vacated.

  Trump thus provoked in four years a 100 percent increase in the number of presidential impeachments that had occurred in the previous 228 years of its history—the march of the criminalization of policy differences. (None of the four was justified.)

  The House of Representatives committee to investigate Jan. 6, stuffed with pathological Trump-haters of both parties and from which Nancy Pelosi barred a couple of Trump’s more prominent defenders, will excavate a new low in malicious partisanship and will televise its hearings in June. No one believes them and no one cares; Jan. 6 isn’t the point and wasn’t an insurrection.

  There were many months of arrests and interrogations in which it must be assumed that prosecutors resorted extensively to their widespread practice of grossly abusing the plea-bargain rules to suborn and extort perjured inculpatory evidence against their real target, Trump and his organization, with promises of minimal sentences and immunity from prosecution for perjury. This has not turned up anything, and the last thing Trump wanted was anything that could be imputed to him as an attack on constitutional government. That charge is a bit rich coming from this gang of Democrats.

  The Democrats have tried to distract the country with the abortion question, but it isn’t working any more than the country believes that Russian leader Vladimir Putin and the oil companies are responsible for the highest gasoline price in American history. Their latest gambit is to try to whip up hysteria one more time on COVID-19, but that won’t fly either. The only person who had anything right about COVID-19 was Trump with his imaginative and determined pursuit of a vaccine.

  The Trump-haters of both parties who rattled the windows of Washington when they heaved a sigh of relief at Trump’s departure are only now emerging from denial that he’s about to run over them with a steamroller much larger and more fueled by righteousness than the one they drove over him.

  Woke, 1619 revisionism, racist disinformation, and violent protest: All have to be torn up, root and branch. But if Trump does return, he must give less ammunition to his enemies. American history and public policy are not all about him, and the presidency of the United States is such a great office it requires its occupants to behave with a higher level of civility and dignity than Donald Trump often did when he was president.

  He will return to that office and do better in it if he’s less needlessly abrasive and self-obsessed.

  The country can start again in 2028 with new leaders, a fully house-trained post-Trump Republican Party, and a rebuilt Democratic Party over the Ozymandian wreckage of Biden–Sanders–Harris–Schumer–Pelosi.

  Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or Zero Hedge

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 23:40

• America's Appetite For Guns Has Soared Since Dot-Com Bubble
  America’s Appetite For Guns Has Soared Since Dot-Com Bubble

  Thanks to executive orders from Joe Biden, the ATF has released its annual report on the firearms industry and commerce.

  According to that report, there has been a massive increase in firearms ownership and a significant increase in firearms manufacturing.

  The report, titled “Firearms Commerce in the United States – Annual Statistical Update 2021,” sheds light on the number of firearms manufactured per year, firearms imports & exports, NFA forms filed, and more.

  According to the report, firearms manufacturing has tripled since the year 2000. It continues to increase over time, with manufacturing reaching a high of 11,497,441 firearms made in 2016, likely due to the demand caused by the 2016 election (there is no data for 2020 or 2021 in the report).

  

  Clearly, Americans’ appetite for firearms has increased dramatically over the years, with demand being met by a huge rise in imports…

  

  Handguns dominated the imports…

  

  Additionally, based on background check data, one would expect that the numbers for 2020 & 2021 would be significantly higher than previous years as well…

  

  This fits with the fact that many Americans who have traditionally opposed firearms-ownership bought guns in the face of civil unrest and the COVID-19 pandemic during those years.

  ATF releases report on firearms commerce and trafficking. Between 2000 – 2020, # of GCA firearms & NFA weapons domestically manufactured increased 187%, guns exported by U.S. increased 240%, and # guns imported into U.S. increased by 350%. https://t.co/v4HDopLKTy pic.twitter.com/DoTO19s3si

  — ATF Los Angeles (@LosAngelesATF) May 18, 2022

  Interestingly, the amount of tax revenue stemming from the National Firearms Act is also included in the report. The NFA, as it is commonly known, is a 1934 law that regulates and taxes the purchase of machine guns, short-barreled rifles, and silencers.

  ATF reports that since 2000 the revenue from NFA tax has increased from around $2 Million to $51.6 Million in 2020, including a 635% increase in Form 4 applications alone. (The ATF Form 4 is used to transfer a suppressor, machine gun, or SBR from a dealer to an individual.)

  This increase could represent a significant change in market demand as more and more Americans dive into serious firearms ownership.

  In the introduction to the report, the ATF’s current interim director, Gary M. Restaino, noted that the purpose was to: “prevent diversion of these firearms from the legal to the illegal market.”

  Is it possible that ATF published this data to support gun control legislation?

  *  *  *

  Read the ATF’s report here. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 23:20

• USAF Successfully Tests Hypersonic Weapon As It Races To "Field Weapon To Warfighters"
  USAF Successfully Tests Hypersonic Weapon As It Races To “Field Weapon To Warfighters”

  After several failed tests, the U.S. Air Force successfully tested a hypersonic missile off the Southern California coast last week. 

  USAF reports on May 14, a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress belonging to the 419th Flight Test Squadron and the Global Power Bomber Combined Test Force at Edwards Air Force Base, California, successfully released an AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW, in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of southern California. 

  

  Brig. Gen. Heath Collins, the USAF’s program executive officer, said the ARRW test was a “major accomplishment by the ARRW team, for the weapons enterprise, and our Air Force.” 

  “The team’s tenacity, expertise, and commitment were key in overcoming the past year’s challenges to get us to the recent success. We are ready to build on what we’ve learned and continue moving hypersonics forward,” Heath said.

  Lt. Col. Michael Jungquist, 419th FLTS commander, said, “the test team executed this test flawlessly.” 

  

  The test follows three consecutive failed tests, while both Russia (see: here) and China (see: here) have completed successful tests and or fielded the super fast weapons on the modern battlefield. 

  It’s no secret the U.S. is falling behind the hypersonic weapons race as the largest military in the world, in terms of size and defense budget, has yet to field hypersonic weapons that travel five times greater than the speed of sound. 

  The Biden administration revealed a new trilateral security pact between Australia – United Kingdom – United States (AUKUS) partnership, a move to “accelerate the development of advanced hypersonic and counter-hypersonic capabilities,” the White House said last month. 

  Jungquist said, “We’re doing everything we can to get this game-changing weapon to the warfighter as soon as possible.” 

  The USAF did not mention when the ARRW would enter series production or a timeline on when it would be fielded. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 22:40

• Victor Davis Hanson: Is Biden's "Success" Our Mess?
  Victor Davis Hanson: Is Biden’s “Success” Our Mess?

  Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

  If an administration deliberately wished to cause havoc on the border, to ensure fuel was nearly unaffordable, to create a crime wave, to spark 1970s hyperinflation, and to rekindle racial tensions, what would it have done differently than what President Joe Biden has done?

  

  So is Biden malicious, incompetent, or a wannabe left-wing ideologue?

  When pressed about inflation and fuel price hikes, Biden either blames someone or something else, gets mad at the questioner, or claims former President Donald Trump did it.

  His administration apparently believes things are going well and according to plan.

  When polls disagree, his team either believes the American people are brainwashed or that they themselves have not supplied sufficient propaganda. So they never pivot or compromise, but rededicate themselves to continued failure.

  Why? Apparently, what most in the country see as disasters, Biden envisions as success.

  Take the border – or rather its disappearance.

  Never in U.S. history has an administration simply canceled immigration laws, opened the border, and welcomed in millions of illegal aliens. All arrive illegally, and without audit, or vaccinations and tests in times of a pandemic.

  Cartels now import lethal drugs at will into the United States. We have no idea how many terrorists walk across the border each day.

  Almost all the entering millions who break the law are poor, without high school diplomas or English skills, and in dire need of massive federal and state housing, food, education, legal, and health subsidies.

  Do the leftists in Washington believe that millions of dependent new residents will look to the Left for decades of support and soon find ways to reciprocate with fealty at the polls? Is that why Democrats brag in unapologetic tribalist fashion about changing the demography of the electorate?

  Former President Barack Obama’s energy secretary-designate Steven Chu once gaffed in the 2008 campaign when he openly wished that U.S. gas prices would reach European levels.

  In truth, the Left has always believed the only way to achieve their objectives of discouraging driving, forcing middle-class Americans onto trains and buses, and persuading them to live in urban high-rises rather than drive carbon-spewing cars from spacious suburban ranch-style homes was to encourage high fuel prices.

  Is that agenda why Biden, during the current energy crisis, simply canceled new federal oil and gas leases? As diesel hits $7 a gallon in California, why else did he refuse to finish the Keystone XL pipeline or reopen Alaskan oil fields?

  Inflation continues officially to exceed 8% per annum. Most consumers feel it is double that when they pay for food, fuel, building materials, houses, or rent – the essential stuff of life.

  What did the Biden Administration expect would follow from keeping real interest rates at near zero, while printing trillions of dollars at the moment supplies were short and demand was spiking?

  Or did it think inflation more fairly “spreads the wealth”? Does it prompt new necessary attacks on “corporate greed?” Does it demand more federal intervention and socialist policies?

  If inflation is “bad” for most, it may not seem so to this left-wing administration.

  Violent crime is on its way to 1970s levels. The combination of defunding the police, radical city and county prosecutors who don’t charge or lock up criminals, and emptying jails and prisons have ignited a national crime wave.

  The Biden Administration shrugs. It offers no new federal help to fund more police or charge freed criminals under applicable federal statutes.

  Does it think it is more socially just to let criminals free than incarcerate them?

  Does it buy into “critical legal theory” that laws do not reflect ancient ideas of right and wrong, but instead are “constructed” by the privileged to oppress the already oppressed?

  Is what Americans see as dangerous crime something the Biden zealots applaud as tough social karma?

  Americans are tired of the new woke tribalism. Judging individuals on the basis of their race, gender, or superficial appearance is amoral, and contrary to the entire civil rights movement, and the U.S. Constitution.

  It destroys any idea of meritocracy and divides the country artificially into supposed victims and victimizers.

  But do the Biden people see it that way?

  Or do they promote racial tensions and tribalism, as welcome revolutionary fervor?

  In that regard, the Bidenites promote identity politics as a good way to stir up the pot, to demonize supposed oppressors and deify the oppressed – all as a way of retaining political power. For the Left, living in a socialist nation controlled by an elite is far preferable to living in a free and prosperous one answerable only to the people.

  The public believes the Biden Administration has failed America, with disastrous results due either to its incompetence, belligerence, or left-wing zealotry.

  But Biden and his delusional team seem delighted with what they have wrought.

  In sum, what Americans see as an abject catastrophe, they cheer on as a stunning and planned success.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 22:20

• Indonesia Lifts Palm Oil Export Ban As Supply Improves  
  Indonesia Lifts Palm Oil Export Ban As Supply Improves  

  After nearly a month, Indonesia will lift an export ban on palm oil starting Monday, which could ease tight edible oil markets worldwide and reduce some of the pressure on soaring food prices. 

  “Based on the current supply and price of cooking oil and considering that there are 17 million workers in the palm oil industry, both working farmers and other supporting staff, I have decided that the export of cooking oil will reopen on Monday, May 23,” President Joko Widodo said in a statement on Thursday. 

  

  Indonesia is the world’s biggest shipper of edible oils, accounting for nearly 60% of global palm oil production. Palm oil is used in everything from food manufacturing to beauty products to biofuel. The export ban was the most significant act of crop protectionism globally following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that choked the world off of edible oil supplies from the Black Sea region. Sending prices sky-high. 

  

  Widodo decided in late April to impose the export ban because domestic prices were rising and stockpiles were shrinking. The ban authorized shipments of palm oil to be rerouted into domestic supplies. The president expects domestic prices to ease in the coming weeks. 

  “Consumers can breathe a sigh of relief now,” Gnanasekar Thiagarajan, head of trading and hedging strategies at Kaleesuwari Intercontinental, told Bloomberg. 

   

  Presidential ratings for the Widodo have slid to a six-year low due to Indonesians’ growing discontent with soaring food prices. 

  Bloomberg notes the ban was lifted after hundreds of farmers protested the government, “saying their incomes have suffered because prices of their fresh fruit bunches plunged.” 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 22:00

• Louisiana's Department Of Education Shifts From CRT To American Exceptionalism
  Louisiana’s Department Of Education Shifts From CRT To American Exceptionalism

  Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Louisiana public schools are closing the door to woke ideologies in social studies curricula and turning instead to American exceptionalism.

  “If you look throughout the course of American history, you see that we have always been on a quest for freedom, whether it was the signers of the Declaration of Independence or the abolishment of slavery,” Louisiana Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley told The Epoch Times.

  

  Brumley oversaw the process that led to the adoption of the Louisiana Department of Education’s new social studies standards, which were approved by the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education in March 2022 and will go into effect in 2023.

  Though content standards are supposed to be revised every seven years, Brumley said they hadn’t been changed since 2011.

  “That’s something I wanted to take on because, frankly, the children deserve better,” he said.

  The current standards made it difficult for students to look at history chronologically, Brumley said, with fourth graders learning about the American Revolution, then not studying the French Revolution until late in the fifth grade.

  Because of this, better sequencing of content became one of the goals for the new standards, as well as the incorporation of multiple historical perspectives that told “the whole story,” he said.

  Accessibility for the public was also a top priority, Brumley said.

  “We recognized how politically combustible these conversations are in our society, and we wanted to get it right for every American,” Brumley said.

  This began a year-long process involving community members, parents, and students workshopping draft standards, the first set of which were produced by a steering committee.

  “It initially began with a couple of different workgroups that wrote a set of draft standards independent from the department, and we just facilitated the process,” Brumley said.

  That draft received “overwhelmingly negative” criticism, one of the reasons being the incorporation of critical race theory (CRT), which Brumley had said he would not allow in the K–12 school system.

  Based on the feedback taken from public comments, the drafts were revised into something called the Freedom Framework.

  “We have the quest for freedom embedded in the American story throughout the course of our history, and for me, instead of approaching a set of standards through other ideologies, we felt like the sweet spot for us was the Freedom Framework, because that sets the tone for the greatness of our country,” Brumley said.

  That greatness includes recognizing where there has been the need to eradicate barbaric institutions like slavery and racist policies, he said.

  Proponents of teaching CRT in schools have said CRT teaches “real, black history,” and that the removal of CRT from schools is as an attempt to “whitewash” history.

  However, Brumley said the entirety of America’s history will be taught, including its mistakes.

  “We did not shy away from some of the most challenging points in American history,” he said. “In fact, we went above and beyond to capture those moments in history when we needed to self-correct, but at the same time, we weren’t going to allow for any form of indoctrination to be a part of these standards,” he said.

  Telling the whole story doesn’t just mean obsessing over the ugly chapters of American history, Brumley said, but instead examining its innate exceptionalism.

  “That’s the beauty of a constitutional republic as opposed to other forms of government, because in order to form a more perfect union, over the course of time we’ve had to self-correct,” he said. “This is what our Founding Fathers intended.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 21:40

• "I Am Indeed Out For Blood": Musk Says 2016 Hillary Tweet 'Absolutely' Disinformation, Asks Parag To Weigh In
  “I Am Indeed Out For Blood”: Musk Says 2016 Hillary Tweet ‘Absolutely’ Disinformation, Asks Parag To Weigh In

  Update (1645ET): Elon Musk has waded into the Sussmann trial – tweeting on Friday that it’s “absolutely correct” that a 2016 tweet from Hillary Clinton was “misleading disinformation.”

  

  A week before the 2016 election, Clinton notably tweeted “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank,” to which user @veespike asked Musk: “@elonmusk I have reported this tweet as misleading disinformation to the powers that be at @twitter. I would be interested to know if, when you receive control over the company, anything was done with this at any level. Pls advise soonest.”

  “You are absolutely correct,” Musk replied, adding “That tweet is a Clinton campaign hoax for which their campaign lawyer is undergoing a criminal trial.”

  Musk then asked Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and top Twitter attorney Vijaya Gadde to weigh in.

  @elonmusk I have reported this tweet as misleading disinformation to the powers that be at @twitter . I would be interested to know if, when you receive control over the company, anything was done with this at any level. Pls advise soonest.

  — VeeSPIKE (@veespike) May 20, 2022

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  .@paraga and @vijaya, what say you?

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 20, 2022

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  Musk then got into an argument with a pro-Hillary account, “Tesla Facts” (@truth_tesla), which suggested Elon was lying.

  ??

  Sussmann himself admitted billing Clinton Campaign to pay for him to present Russia hoax to FBI! This is not even questioned by the defense.

  Btw, I donated to & voted for Hillary, so am doubly pissed off about those funds being used for lying.https://t.co/PtFgYzpXQN

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 20, 2022

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  The richest man in the world replied to several other people in the thread. He’s gone all-in folks.

  I only heard about it last month and was blown away

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 20, 2022

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  !!

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 20, 2022

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  I am indeed out for blood

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 20, 2022

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  *  *  *

  Former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook dropped a bombshell in court on Friday – testifying that Hillary Clinton approved the dissemination of allegations that then-candidate Donald Trump had a covert communications channel with a Russian bank, despite campaign officials not being “totally confident” in the rumor, according to Fox News.

  

  Mook, who was called to the stand by the defense team for former Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann, was asked under cross-examination about the campaign’s understanding of the allegations against Trump, and whether the campaign planned to release it to the media.

  He told prosecutor Andrew DeFillippis that he was first briefed by campaign general counsel Marc Elias, who was a partner with Perkins Coie at the time, adding that he was told the data had come from “people that had expertise in this sort of matter.”

  Mook said the campaign was not totally confident in the legitimacy of the data, but had hoped to give the information to a reporter who could further “run it down” to determine if it was “accurate” or “substantive.”

  He also said he discussed whether to give the information to a reporter with senior campaign officials, including campaign chairman John Podesta, senior policy advisor, now White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and communications director Jennifer Palmieri. -Fox News

  “I discussed it with Hillary as well,” said Mook, who added “I don’t remember the substance of the conversation, but notionally, the discussion was, hey, we have this and we want to share it with a reporter.”

  When asked how Clinton responded, Mook said: “She agreed to that.“

  “A reporter could vet the information and then decide to print it,” he added.

  And then of course, Hillary did this:

  Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank. pic.twitter.com/8f8n9xMzUU

  — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 1, 2016

  Of note, after previously denying the prosecutions request to include the tweet into evidence, he approved it on Friday.

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsSussman has been charged with lying to the FBI when he told General Counsel James Baker in September 2016 – less than two months before the US election – that he wasn’t doing work “for any client” when he presented the Alfa Bank “purported data and ‘white papers’ that allegedly demonstrated a covert communicates channel” between the Trump organization and the Kremlin-linked Alfa Bank.

  Special Counsel John Durham alleges that Sussman was in fact working for the Clinton Campaign and tech executive Rodney Joffe. He has pleaded not guilty.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 21:38

• Anti-Government Protests Spread In Iran After Flour-Based Food Staples Jump 300%
  Anti-Government Protests Spread In Iran After Flour-Based Food Staples Jump 300%

  Large-scale street protests have been raging in Iran since last week, as inflation and the war in Ukraine have driven flour-based food staples to jump by as much as 300% – this also after the government moved to cut food subsidies.

  Amid the soaring prices, already in an economy devastated by years of US sanctions gong back to the Trump administration’s pullout of the JCPOA nuclear deal, the central government has few options in terms of relief for the populace given assets abroad remain frozen.

  

  Demonstrators have been outraged over food prices and lack of urgent supplies such as medicines, leading to clashes with police deploying riot control measures. 

  According to the latest reports, “Social media footage not verified by Reuters showed at least six people killed and dozens injured in past days. There has been no official comment on any death toll.” However, these widespread reports have been hard to verify.

  Reuters observed that “On Thursday footage posted on social media showed intense clashes in cities including Farsan in central Iran, where riot police fired live rounds at demonstrators. In Shahr-e Kord and Hafshejan, security forces used teargas and clubs to disperse the protesters.”

  Over the past several days sporadic internet cuts have been reported in some provinces, which is part of the central government’s playbook for preventing large-scale street rallies from taking place.

  New video of #Iran protests in Golpayegan, which is in Esfahan. Protesters are chanting “death to the dictator.” #IranProtests pic.twitter.com/j8pXHKSLS9

  — Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) May 17, 2022

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  “Iranian officials have also blamed the price hikes on the smuggling of heavily subsidized flour into neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan,” The Guardian wrote of recent street clashes.

  Last Sunday saw demonstrations break out reportedly across 40 cities and towns, chiefly concentrated in the south and southwest, and a handful of cities in the north. They’ve reportedly spread to or near the capital of Tehran, according to a Friday report in Middle East Monitor:

  Anti-government protests sparked by rising food prices in Iran have spread to at least six provinces including the capital, Tehran.

  Earlier this month, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi approved subsidy reforms aimed at controlling commodity prices in a bid to mitigate the impact of rising global wheat prices and US sanctions on the Iranian economy.

  Another evening, another round of protests in Iran. The video below shows protesters in Shahr-e Kord chanting “death to Raisi” after a sharp rise in the prices of food staples. There are now reports of internet disruptions in the city. https://t.co/N9G5Rvg3tz

  — Kian Sharifi (@KianSharifi) May 15, 2022

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  Other countries in the region, particularly Lebanon and Syria, have seen people’s ability to access affordable food products and basic staples worsen. Middle East and North Africa populations are expected to be hit hardest by supply blockages out of both Ukraine and Russia. In particular war-torn Ukraine was the fourth-largest exporter of maize (corn) in the 2020/21 season, and the sixth-largest wheat exporter in the world, according to the International Grains Council.

  Prior to the Russian invasion, there were 6 million tons of wheat and 15 million tons of corn ready for export.  Farmers in top growing areas in the southern part of the country, such as Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, have halted sowing operations due to the lack of farm equipment, shortage of diesel, fertilizer, and seed as the disruptions caused by the conflict.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 21:20

• Pentagon Clears Itself Of Blame In Syria Strike That Killed 'Piles' Of Women & Children
  Pentagon Clears Itself Of Blame In Syria Strike That Killed ‘Piles’ Of Women & Children

  Authored by Brett Wilkins via Common Dreams,

  No US personnel will be held accountable for a March 2019 airstrike that killed scores of Syrian civilians including women and children, the Pentagon said this week in announcing that an internal investigation into the massacre found that no laws of war were broken and that there was no cover-up of the incident as alleged in a New York Times exposé.

  An executive summary of a classified investigation led by U.S. Army Gen. Michael Garrett stated that “no rules of engagement (ROE) or law of war (LOW) violations occurred” in connection with the March 18, 2019 strike near the Syrian town of Baghuz that, according to an initial battle assessment, killed around 70 people.

  While finding that “policy compliance deficiencies at multiple levels of command led directly to numerous delays in reporting” the civilian casualties, and that “administrative deficiencies contributed to the impression” that the Pentagon did not take the incident seriously, the probe concluded there was “no malicious or wrongful intent” by the military, and that there was “no evidence” to support allegations of a cover-up.

  

  However, a former evaluator in the Defense Department inspector general’s office who attempted to investigate the Baghuz strike said he personally witnessed Pentagon brass trying to bury reports of the bombing.

  “It’s the standard government line: Mistakes were made but there was no wrongdoing,” Eugene Tate told the Times in response to Garrett’s summary. “But if the same mistakes were being made over and over again for years, shouldn’t someone have done something about it? It doesn’t sit well with me, and I’m not sure it should sit well with anyone else.”

  “The investigation says the reporting was delayed,” Tate added. “None of the worker bees involved believe it was delayed. We believe there was no reporting.”

  The airstrike remained concealed from the public until the publication of a November 2021 Times investigation, which also revealed that a secretive Special Forces unit, Task Force 9, was responsible for the attack. One strike cell within the task force known as Talon Anvil reportedly killed and wounded Syrian civilians at 10 times the rate of similar units’ airstrikes.

  According to Pentagon officials familiar with the contents of Garrett’s classified report, the military concluded that 56 people died in the Baghuz strike—52 Islamic State militants and four civilians—when a U.S. F-15E attack jet dropped a single 500-pound bomb on a large group of people.

  However, evaluators appear to have used a standard adopted during the administration of former President Barack Obama under which all military-aged males in a blast zone are classified as combatants regardless of their actual status. The officials’ claim stands in stark contrast with what U.S. personnel quoted in the Times exposé reported seeing at the time of the attack. According to the report, U.S. troops watching real-time footage of the strike “looked on in stunned disbelief,” according to an officer who was there, with one military analyst stating that “we just dropped on 50 women and children.”

  The New York Times details the operations of top secret unit Talon Anvil, which committed dozens upon dozens of war crimes in Syria.

  Talon Anvil is the unit that massacred around 70 women and children in the Baghuz strikes on March 18, 2019 https://t.co/0hIqwpdLn0

  — Kevin Gosztola (@kgosztola) December 12, 2021

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  After the strike, civilian observers “found piles of dead women and children,” according to Times reporters Dave Philipps and Eric Schmitt, who spent months investigating the attack. “A legal officer flagged the strike as a possible war crime that required an investigation. But at nearly every step, the military made moves that concealed the catastrophic strike,” the pair explained. “The death toll was downplayed. Reports were delayed, sanitized, and classified. United States-led coalition forces bulldozed the blast site. And top leaders were not notified.”

  Responding to Garrett’s summary, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a memorandum Tuesday that “our efforts to mitigate and respond to civilian harm resulting from U.S. military operations are a direct reflection of U.S. values,” and that “protecting innocent civilians is fundamental to our operational success and is a strategic and moral imperative.”

  However, U.S. bombs and bullets have killed more foreign civilians than those of any other armed force in the world in recent decades. According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, at least 900,000 people—including nearly 400,000 civilians—have died during the course of the 21-year U.S.-led War on Terror. 

  Throughout the war, few US troops—and even fewer people higher up the chain of command—have been held accountable for harming civilians. When asked during a Tuesday press conference why no one being held accountable for the Baghuz strike, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby replied, “I understand the questions about accountability, I get it.”

  “In this case, Gen. Garrett found that the ground force commander made the best decisions that he could, given the information he had at the time, given a very lethal, very aggressive threat, in a very confined space,” he added. “It is deeply regrettable… we apologize for the loss of innocent life.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 21:00

• Quick Shot Of Heat To Roast 100 Million People In Northeast
  Quick Shot Of Heat To Roast 100 Million People In Northeast

  About 100 million people in the Northeast will be blasted with a quick shot of heat and humidity this Saturday and Sunday. High temperatures are expected to range between the upper 80s and mid-90s from Ohio to Washington, D.C. to Baltimore to Philipehia to New York City. 

  AccuWeather meteorologists say some cities in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast could see the hottest conditions since last August. In some metro areas, record highs for this time of year that have stood the test of time could be broken. 

  

  Daily record highs that have stood since the World War II and Great Depression eras will be challenged at a number of locations. At Philadelphia, temperatures could approach the record of 95 set in 1934 on Saturday. In both Raleigh, North Carolina, and Albany, New York, the daily records for Saturday, May 21, were set in 1941. The record in Raleigh is 96, while the record in New York’s state capital is 91. -AccuWeather

  

  “Early season heat with likely record high temperatures will spread from the South into the Ohio Valley, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast on Friday, Saturday, and perhaps Sunday,” the National Weather Service said. The agency has issued a Heat Advisory along the I-95 corridor in the Northeast. 

  

  It’s the first time since 2006 that a Heat Advisory for New York City has been issued for this time of year. Tomorrow, high temps in Central Park could reach 93 degrees, tying a record for the date. The quick blast of heat comes as temperatures in the urban park between the Upper West and Upper East Sides of Manhattan haven’t even breached 80 degrees yet this year. 

  “The brunt of it should just be a one-day thing … at the minimum, we will be close to all the records in NYC,” Matt Wunsch, a weather service meteorologist on Long Island, told Bloomberg.

  Wunsch said it’s difficult for temperatures in the Northeast to get so hot this time of year because the Atlantic Ocean water temperatures are still very cool. However, the heat is coming from Great Plains, where a megadrought continues to ravage the area. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 20:40

• Is The Woke Corporate 'Worm' Finally Turning?
  Is The Woke Corporate ‘Worm’ Finally Turning?

  Authored by Scott Shepard via RealClearMarkets.com,

  More than a few executives appear to be glimpsing the high costs of politicized corporate management…

  

  A chief driver of these revelations is surely the rolling market correction that has characterized 2022. At one point last week, the Nasdaq was down 29 percent from its December 31st close.

  Adam Smith once noted that “there’s a lot of ruin in a nation,” by which he meant that a country can screw up very many things while still trudging along. In good financial times there can be a lot of ruin in a company, too. When profits are high (or speculative backing is fulsome) and share prices are rising, companies can afford to indulge the whims of their executives or bow to the demands of pressure groups, even if there’s a lot of ruin in those whims or demands. When things get tight, though, the ruin becomes clearer – and thus less supportable. As Jack Kennedy did not but might have said as a corollary: “a falling tide reveals many barnacles.”

  In this lowering tide, woke is revealing itself as a barnacle, and companies are responding accordingly. The revelation is being assisted, and the response hastened, by external events that have uncovered even to the unthoughtful what should have been clear: taking a highly partisan role in American politics will engender (and is engendering) a political response from those who oppose the partisan stance. Exhibit one is the case of DeSantis & Florida v. Chapek & Disney, but the parade of horrible consequences that increasingly append to corporate wokeness is lengthening speedily, as has been considered in these pages before. Consider, for instance, exhibit two: Disney’s reputation has declined substantially since Chapek stood up for, you know, “all stakeholders.” Funny, that.

  Given those prime exhibits, it seems proper to start with Disney. Chapek somehow remains as CEO, but a (potentially only interim) fall guy for the hurray-for-grooming debacle was found: Geoff Morrell, the company’s chief corporate affairs officer, who had been at Disney for all of about three months. (Mind, mice might be slow learners. Morrell’s replacement is Kristina Schake. Her resume suggests that she might not have been the candidate best suited to address a problem of pandering too much to the far Left, while paying too little attention to market and civic realities.)

  Perhaps more to the point, because less performative: Hulu, mostly owned by Disney, has just cancelled a project, two years in the making already, that would have fantasized about the career of an imaginary Hillary Clinton who had become a Northwestern University law professor. Naturally in this rendering, she becomes president – or she would have, until this partisan gagfest was cancelled.

  In this move Disney and Hulu followed Netflix, which amid rounds of layoffs, informed its less objective (and less stable) employees that it would no longer bow to their “demands” that nothing air on Netflix that offends their precious sensibilities. In a display of maturity that can be summonsed by a 70 percent stock-value crash and evidence that there is no more market to gain on current trajectories, Netflix declared to employees that “depending on your role, you may need to work on titles you perceive to be harmful. If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.”

  It turns out that Dave Chappelle is popular, while Hannah Gadsby is not. Extrapolate that to everything, and the impetus of Netflix’ abrupt race up the knowledge curve becomes clear.

  Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav likewise looks set to turn CNN into … something profitable, which means something other than the unhinged falsehood and embarrassment factory it became under the recently fired and disgraced CNN chief Jeff Zucker. And the CW, Warner’s co-owned television station (the successor, in fact, to the WB, or Warner Brothers network), has lain waste to its woke-teen servicing, ratings-repelling schedule. Perhaps more recognition that blue-check Twitter and Tik-Tok are unreliable guides to public sentiment, or leading economic indicators.

  The muted response to the draft of the Dobbs opinion likewise stands in deep contrast to the race to condemn Georgia’s election-integrity law last spring, and to the response to previous state efforts to make U.S. abortion laws resemble those of most European countries. While hundreds of companies condemned the Georgia law without reading it, only to look fairly foolish afterward, few have made any statements in response to Dobbs. Even Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, who regularly mistakes his personal political preferences for revealed truth, remembered, when asserting that Roe is “settled law,” that his personal political opinions, or legal hot-takes, do not always transmutate instantly into formal company policy.  (Moynihan, a rich white guy who’s a big fan of equity-based discrimination again poorer white guys, would do well to remember the “settled law” precedent in that regard, given the very settled law that race- and sex-based discrimination is unconstitutional, whatever the excuse for it.)

  The few companies that have leapt into the abortion debate include Starbucks and Amazon, which both presently battle incipiently successful unionization efforts. It seems at least plausible that their eagerness to move sprang from their desire to appease woke employees who would otherwise have been the most potentially willing to sign up for a union – failing to recognize the distinct possibility that they would thereby also sign their own pink slips, as their unions priced their shops out of competition. If so, this seems like another move that misunderstands the imperatives of the moment.

  Other companies have moved to reinforce company protections for viewpoint diversity – a necessity in difficult times, when the luxury of static thinking becomes unaffordable – and against employment discrimination, whether equity-based or not. Salesforce and Dell agreed (disclosure: with the shop I lead) to add “political viewpoint” to their enforceable nondiscrimination policies. Target agreed to add an explicit protection against the company’s using forbidden characteristics like race, sex and orientation in its employment, promotion and retention processes or determinations. Each of these companies stated that the equal-employment policy changes reflected already established and standard company practices, which made it a simple and wise move for them to amend their policies accordingly.

  Finally, it’s possible that even BlackRock may be humbling itself just enough to recognize reality. The company recently announced that it was “not likely to support those (shareholder proposals) that in our assessment, implicitly are intended to micromanage companies. This includes those that are unduly prescriptive and constraining on the decision-making of the board or management, call for changes to a company’s strategy or business model or address matters that are not material to how a company delivers long-term shareholder value.”

  While this could mean anything or nothing, it does appear as though BlackRock is supporting a smaller share of climate-catastrophist proposals this year. Mind you, this does not mean that BlackRock has come to its senses, or to moral sense, in its ESG activities. CEO Larry Fink has just been slavering in hope that monstrously high fuel prices will push consumers to “green” energy, failing to recognize the total costs of such energy (including the environmental harms) while continuing to confuse climate and weather. What galloping energy costs will do is simply to force the poor and middle class to live wildly more constrained and less fulfilled lives. But that’s lagniappe for Larry, who can travel the world in his temperature-modulated private jet without having even to glimpse the hoi polloi, shackled by energy poverty in their immediate neighborhoods and their insufficiently heated and cooled homes.

  BlackRock and Fink still cling to the illegal and immoral discrimination of “equity,” and try to force it on other American corporations by misusing the proxy votes generated by their investors’ capital. At the same time they collude with the SEC to keep BlackRock shareholders from even having a vote on a proposal about whether BlackRock should protect against viewpoint discrimination at its shop – where viewpoint discrimination is clearly a massive concern. This holistic endorsement of across-the-board discrimination by BlackRock, in sharp contrast to the dedication to nondiscrimination shown by Target, Dell and Salesforce, provides sufficient evidence that BlackRock and Fink are about the last people who should be dictating social, environmental and moral policy to anyone at all.

  Well, ok. So maybe BlackRock and Fink haven’t learned anything yet, and will require more direct tutelage. And certainly the remaining evidence doesn’t run entirely in the good direction either. But as my sainted grandmother used to put it, if she found herself first behind and then catching up in one of our endless games of rummy, “the cheese is more binding.” And if she pulled ahead, she noted that the worm had turned.

  The worm has not yet turned, but the cheese begins to bind.

  *  * *

  Scott Shepard is a fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research and Director of its Free Enterprise Project.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 20:20

• Another Long Shot? Last-Minute Addition Fenwick Has 50-1 Odds In Preakness
  Another Long Shot? Last-Minute Addition Fenwick Has 50-1 Odds In Preakness

  The next leg in the Triple Crown will be on Saturday at the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland. Since Kentucky Derby winner “Rich Strike” is out of this race, the owner’s choice, another long shot has entered and sparked a lot of buzz in the horse community. 

  On Monday morning, a last-minute addition to the Preakness was Villa Rosa Farm and Harlo Stable’s Fenwick, trained by Kevin McKathan.

  “Fenwick has the longest odds of any horse in the field of nine for Saturday’s Preakness,” according to AP News. The horse finished last in the most recent race in April and has only one once in a six-lifetime start. 

  

  Similar to Rich Strike, both horses only won once. Rich Strike then became the second-biggest long shot (80-1) to win the Derby. 

  After Fenwick was added to the Preakness, owner Jeremia Rudan said, “this is one of those deals where you can stop and take a breath and say: ‘You know what, we can do this’… It can happen.”

  Here are the odds for the upcoming race. 

  

  “You’re going to need that racing luck to have something like an 80-1 win again,” said trainer Tim Yakteen, who has Armagnac running in the face. “It doesn’t happen very often.”

  Derby runner-up Epicenter has 6-5 odds and is the favorite for the race in Baltimore this weekend. After the Preakness, the last leg of the Triple Crown will be held in New York at the Belmont Stakes on June 11, where Rich Strike will make a return. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 20:00

• Argentina's Inflation Problem
  Argentina’s Inflation Problem

  Authored by Jack Raines via Young Money,

  This article is based on a combination of my own experiences in Argentina and my subsequent research after I came back to the US. I know some of my readers are from Argentina, and others are probably much more knowledgeable than me on this topic. If I’m dead wrong about something, or if you have a good personal anecdote, let me know. I would love to learn more about my favorite South American nation.

  

  What Inflation?

  In March 2022, the US CPI reading showed an 8.5% year-over-year inflation print, the highest since 1981. Pretty rough, right? Well in March 2022, Argentina recorded a 6.7% month-over-month inflation print. The country’s year-over-year print was 55.1%.

  Argentine bank accounts pay 45% interest on deposits, which sounds great if the value of your currency isn’t getting cut in half every year. Used cars, a depreciating asset in most of the world, are investments that retain value better than the national currency in Argentina.

  Trust in the government is minimal at best, and the ultra-wealthy store their capital in international bank accounts. 

  What does everyone else do? Hoard dollars. When you are dealing with 50% inflation every year, 8% inflation is a dream come true. Those that have enough money to save extra cash exchange their pesos for dollars as quickly as possible, as the dollar is the best inflation hedge they have.

  These dollars aren’t stored in bank accounts. They’re kept in safes, under mattresses, and anywhere else that the government can’t touch them.

  The constant exchanging of pesos for dollars has created a vicious cycle: an already weak currency continues to lose value as consumers dump it as quickly as possible.

  Two years ago, the Argentine government sought to stop this flight to dollars by instituting a $200 peso-dollar monthly exchange limit, but this rule simply expanded the black market for dollars.

  Argentina now has two currency exchange rates:

  • The quoted rate
  • The informal rate

  The quoted rate, which sits around 100 pesos per dollar right now, is what any bank will pay you for your dollars. However, demand for dollars is so high that the unofficial exchange rate trades at a 100% premium: 200 pesos per dollar. Because inflation is so rampant, the local population will pay double the market price to get their hands on dollars.

  If you are an American tourist, it’s a great deal. Bring a few thousand bucks and you can live like a king. If you are a local Argentine, this exchange is born out of desperation. Without access to dollars, your purchasing power will quickly diminish.

  So how did we get here?

  What Went Wrong

  Argentina is a unique case study in economic development, because as recently as 80 years ago it was poised to rival the US in global influence. During the first three decades of the 20th century, the South American nation outgrew both Canada and Australia in population, total income, and per capita income. In fact, in 1913 Argentina was the 10th wealthiest country per capita. (For perspective, Argentina was 89th in 2020, and the United States was 10th).

  Yet the rest of the world has largely flourished since the end of World War II, while Argentina has floundered. What went wrong?

  In the 1940s, it seemed like the South American nation would be a superpower for the rest of the 20th century. Argentina was one of the world’s leading agriculture exporters, the country was industrializing quickly, and unlike war-torn Europe, it had remained relatively stable since gaining its independence. Italians, Spaniards, and other Europeans immigrated to Argentina by the millions, seeking opportunity in a new land. Buenos Aires was becoming the New York of the southern hemisphere.

  However, in 1946 Juan Perón came to power, setting in motion 75 years of decline and stagnation. On a global scale, the first four decades of the 20th century were filled with war and economic depression. As a result, Perón implemented a series of import substitution policies, such as high tariffs, to make the country less dependent on international markets.

  However, the timing couldn’t have been worse, as the post-WW2 era brought us an explosion of international trade. Consumers around the world benefited from cheap imports, while businesses had access to exponentially larger customer bases. Argentina missed the bus.

   While the goal was to make Argentina an independent nation, the reality was a blossoming world power exited international markets before the biggest expansion of global trade in history.

  The consequences of protectionism cannot be overstated. Argentina was previously an agriculture superpower, but protectionist policies forced the country to divert resources away from its strongest sector to increase industrial production. Domestic production couldn’t compete with the lower prices of international goods, and consumers suffered.

  Peronist economic policy didn’t stop here. Rent and price controls were pervasive, with the government going as far as setting menu price limits for restaurants.

  Government spending exploded as companies across a variety of sectors were nationalized, and Perón distorted property rights and the freedom to contract.

  Heavy government spending, widespread nationalization, and minimal international trade were a recipe for disaster.

  Peronist policies stifled economic growth, locked Argentina out of international markets, sowed seeds of distrust, destroyed their currency, and created a 70+ year cycle of hyperinflation and economic stagnation.

  Perón was overthrown after a decade in power, but Argentina’s fate had been sealed. 

  Over the next 50 years, governing power shifted hands several times through coups and “elections,” the nation repeatedly defaulted on its debts and changed currencies, and inflation wreaked havoc on the purchasing power of local consumers.

  Perspective

  8% inflation sucks. Inept government policies suck. But our problems in the US are minute compared to elsewhere in the world. The reality is that we live in a country with a stable currency, a stable government, and unlimited opportunities. 

  In the US, we are worried about whether the market is going to maintain its 9% annual returns. In Argentina, they worry about whether or not their currency will exist tomorrow. Americans invest in stocks, bonds, index funds, and real estate. Argentines hoard dollars under their mattresses and buy used vehicles as investments to fight hyperinflation.

  The craziest part about this whole thing? There is an alternative timeline where Argentina rivals the US in global influence in 2022.

  Just a few generations ago, Argentina was poised to be the world power of the southern hemisphere. The peso was as stable as the US dollar and British pound, Buenos Aires was one of the world’s premier cities, and immigrants moved to the nation by the millions in search of opportunity.

  However, a single decade of government incompetence led to generations of decline.

  Despite the issues that we do have in the US, we won the lottery of opportunity by being born here. We don’t have to worry about our dollars being worthless or our government being overthrown by a coup. Had a few events in history been different, we could be looking at a different reality right now.

  Life in the US isn’t perfect, but it’s important to have a little perspective about this stuff. If our biggest problem is 8% inflation, are our problems really all that big?

  – Jack

  If you liked this piece, make sure to subscribe!

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 19:40

• Melvin Capital Investors "Fuming" At Fund's "Fairweather Money Management" Strategy And "Abrupt" Shut Down
  Melvin Capital Investors “Fuming” At Fund’s “Fairweather Money Management” Strategy And “Abrupt” Shut Down

  While the meme stock “apes” may be cheering the demise of Melvin Capital, the fund’s LPs aren’t quite as thrilled about its decision to call it quits.

  After returning “roughly 30% in annualized gains” for years, the fund is “abruptly” shutting down – and some investors were caught by surprise, according to a new report from Bloomberg. 

  The report says that the investors were hopeful that Melvin – and its CIO Gabe Plotkin – could recoup its losses. They referred to shutting the fund down as “fair-weather money management”. 

  Plotkin, meanwhile, has already started winding down the fund’s positions and “effectively freeing some 40 employees at the firm from working below the so-called high-water mark that they’d have to crest to resume performance fees,” Bloomberg wrote.

  Andrew Beer, managing member of New York-based Dynamic Beta Investments, commented: “Only in hedge-fund-land does someone get paid hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars on Jan. 1, incinerate half of clients’ capital a few weeks later, fail to recover over the next year or so, then suddenly shut the doors.”

  

  He added:

  “There are plenty of hedge fund managers who were paid a lot one year, went through difficult drawdowns then worked for years to claw their way back. Melvin obviously isn’t one of them.”

  In a letter to clients, Melvin called the last 17 months “incredibly trying” and stated:

  “I have given everything I could, but more recently that has not been enough to deliver the returns you should expect. I now recognize that I need to step away from managing external capital.”

  Despite this, one investor told Bloomberg they were confident Plotkin could return and be successful again some day. 

  Plotkin had previously toyed with the idea of reworking the fund’s high water mark, but ditched the plans after some investors “fumed” over the idea.

  One of his backers, Citadel’s Ken Griffin, concluded: “If his heart’s not in it, he did the right thing to return money to investors.” 

  As we noted hours ago, Plotkin started Melvin at the end of 2014 after leaving Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management, and posted returns of about 30% a year through 2020, thanks to the Fed’s QE.

  The party rapidly ended when the Steve Cohen protege was outsmarted by a few thousands “apes” in January 2021 – that’s when a group of ragtag retail investors instituted a short squeeze (orchestrated by Senvest Partners) against Melvin’s shorts, including GameStop, pushing the hedge fund to a 55% loss.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 19:20

• Jack Dorsey's Block Wants To Create Economic Empowerment With Bitcoin
  Jack Dorsey’s Block Wants To Create Economic Empowerment With Bitcoin

  Authored by ‘NAMCIOS’ via BitcoinMagazine.com,

  Among Block’s initiatives to further the Bitcoin ecosystem shared in its 2022 Investor Day is the development of an open-source bitcoin mining ASIC chip.

  

  Block’s overarching purpose is to drive economic empowerment in the world and Bitcoin plays a central role in that mission, its chief executives said during the firm’s first Investor Day since 2017 on Wednesday.

  “We believe Bitcoin is going to have a profound impact on financial services, particularly as a tool for economic empowerment and as a global currency for the internet,” Block’s finance lead Amrita Ahuja said during the online event following a statement that the company has “just scratched the surface” for driving further adoption of bitcoin in the U.S. and globally.

  Ahuja shared her thoughts after Block chief Jack Dorsey opened the event with an introductory panel explaining the broader goal of the company and how it plans to achieve it.

  Dorsey, a long-time Bitcoin proponent, said that Block’s approach is to create “an ecosystem of ecosystems” – with each business sector being dedicated to building an ecosystem on itself that can not only scale but feed back into other ecosystems across the organization.

  CASH APP AND SPIRAL – A CASE STUDY

  Cash App’s recent integration of the Lightning Network, Bitcoin’s overlay protocol for faster and cheaper payments, is an example of how Block seeks to have different business units producing products that can feed back on each other.

  The money transmitting app added support for Lightning payments through the Lightning Development Kit (LDK), software developed by Spiral, an independent subsidiary of Block focused on developing and funding open-source Bitcoin projects.

  “Bitcoin is the best version of money,” said Spiral lead Steve Lee.

  “With our help, we believe it can become the world’s preferred currency.”

  Cash App was one of the first business units of the company that was then Square to integrate Bitcoin. The application added bitcoin buying and selling capabilities along with a custody solution for customer funds back in 2018, its lead Brian Grassadonia said in the event.

  Since launching the feature, Cash App has had more than 10 million monthly active users buying bitcoin in the app and the spread fees charged by Block on such purchases have become one of the main revenue drivers for Block. Cash App’s gross profit has grown by 44x since 2017, Ahuja showed in the event.

  The integration of Bitcoin into Block’s business model has become more widespread since Dorsey left his post as Twitter CEO – and now goes beyond a bitcoin exchange in-app.

  THE BITCOIN ECOSYSTEM

  A core aspect of Block’s business is what it calls the Bitcoin ecosystem, which falls under the “emerging initiatives” of the company that are not as established as Square or Cash App – which have both found product-market fit and managed to scale their business model, according to Ahuja.

  In addition to previously-mentioned Spiral, Block’s Bitcoin ecosystem is composed of an open-source business called TBD, and the company’s Bitcoin wallet and mining initiatives.

  BITCOIN WALLET

  Block seeks to create a Bitcoin wallet for the masses, uniting security and ease of use to make self-custody accessible to those new to Bitcoin.

  The product aims to encourage regular folks to hold the keys to their bitcoin funds as opposed to resorting to custodians amidst more complicated self-custody setups that are popular today. In the same way that Spiral’s LDK helps developers and businesses more easily integrate Lightning to their applications, Block wants to facilitate self-custody for end users, explained Block’s Bitcoin hardware wallet lead Jesse Dorogusker.

  “If you don’t have the key, you don’t have the money,” said Dorogusker.

  “We want to build a safe and easy way for people to custody their own bitcoin. Our wallet breaks up the secret key into three pieces: mobile app, hardware device and a self-service recovery tool.”

  The company seeks to avoid single points of failure with this approach, which it claims could improve the user experience around bitcoin self-custody – which currently revolves around 12 or 24 seed words.

  BITCOIN MINING ASIC

  Block’s Bitcoin ventures also extend to the mining industry.

  The company said it is focused on creating an open system that would cut back on the concentration around Chinese manufacturers of bitcoin mining ASIC chips. The approach – an open-source setup – has the potential to reduce risks and increase competition, Dorogusker said.

  “We want to build our own bitcoin ASIC,” Dorogusker, who also leads the mining initiative, explained.

  “Our ASICs will be available for sale and will all be open source.”

  The company had previously stated that it would develop an open bitcoin mining system, and a job post by Block was spotted in January seeking a team to produce a “next-generation” bitcoin mining ASIC. However, this was the first time that the company shared that it would be producing an actual bitcoin ASIC which would be open source.

  DECENTRALIZED BITCOIN EXCHANGE

  In addition to a bitcoin wallet and a bitcoin miner, Block is also tip-toeing into bridging the traditional finance world with the burgeoning system through the cryptic TBD unit.

  “TBD’s mission is to bridge the old to the new,” TBD lead Mike Brock said.

  “We are building a new open-source company from the ground up focused on open protocols and open standards that all participants in the economy can benefit from. What Red Hat did for Linux, TBD can do for money, payments and identity.”

  Brock went on to explain that under the “old” model as he calls it, which relies on centralized entities, 1.1 billion people are unable to prove their identities. TBD wants to bring a secure, decentralized identity standard to enable not only such customers to benefit from a more accessible and fair protocol but also for businesses to lower their costs.

  “Under the new financial system, you can create your own digital identity and use all of those services that require identity verification,” Brock said.

  “You can also create a digital wallet to hold bitcoin or stablecoins, and you can convert stablecoins into bitcoin directly without leaving the app because it is integrated to tbDEX.”

  “If we’re going to have an internet-native currency, we need trust, and trust comes from time, openness and transparency which are principles that are embodied in the Bitcoin system,” Brock said when asked by Dorsey why he believed in Bitcoin in the first place.

  “We are building a network that provides better experiences for financial access around the world,” Brock said in closing thoughts.

  FROM BUSINESSES TO CONSUMERS

  Just as Square caters to businesses and Cash App targets consumers, so Block’s Bitcoin ventures seek to provide a round-up of solutions that collectively empower retail and institutional investors in the decentralized and digital economy.

  Amidst a sea of early-stage Bitcoin initiatives, most of the details remain unknown as the company takes steps toward building its products by iterating between ideation and feedback-gathering from the community. It remains to be seen whether Dorsey will be able to stir the corporate ship to enhance economic empowerment with open Bitcoin systems beyond the independent work of Spiral.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 19:00

• "Who Cares If Miami Is Underwater In 100 Years" – HSBC Global AM Head Slams "Nut Job" Climate-Alarmists
  “Who Cares If Miami Is Underwater In 100 Years” – HSBC Global AM Head Slams “Nut Job” Climate-Alarmists

  What do the world’s richest person [Elon Musk] and a top HSBC Asset Management global head have in common? Well, they both called out the absurdity behind ESG investing. 

  On Tuesday, Tesla was removed from the ESG version of the S&P 500 Index. Musk went on a tweet rant on Wednesday, calling out ESG investing as a “scam,” noting “phony social justice warriors have weaponized it.” 

  He said, “S&P Global Ratings has lost their integrity,” considering companies like Exxon Mobil (fossil fuels), Apple (China slave labor), and Amazon (which is working against unions) remain in the index. 

  Exxon is rated top ten best in world for environment, social & governance (ESG) by S&P 500, while Tesla didn’t make the list!

  ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 18, 2022

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

  On Thursday, in London, at a Financial Times Moral Money conference, Stuart Kirk, global head of responsible investing at HSBC Asset Management, questioned the risk climate change plays on financial markets, arguing investors shouldn’t worry about it. 

  

  Kirk said the drumming up of climate change problems is similar to Y2K, explaining that “some nutjob” has always told him the “end of the world” is nearing. 

  Titled “Why investors need not worry about climate risk,” he asked: “Who cares if Miami is six meters underwater in 100 years?”

  Kirk noted: “Amsterdam has been six meters underwater for ages and that is a really nice place. We will cope with it.”

  He doesn’t disagree with climate science but said “there will be fires” and humans are good at adapting and navigating challenging times. 

  Kirk said HSBC spends too much time on ESG: 

  “One of the tragedies of this whole debate, which we obsess about at HSBC, is that we spend way too much on mitigation and financing and not enough on adaption financing.” 

  He then points out some climate alarmists traveling around the world, promoting apocalyptic warnings, such as those from ex-BoE head Mark Carney. 

  “I completely get that at the end of your central bank career there are still many, many years to fill in. You have to say something, you have to fly around the world to conferences, you have to out-hyperbole the next guy, but I feel like it is getting a little bit out of hand.”

   Here are some of the nut jobs he lists off, spouting impending climate doom. 

  

  He noted that ex-central bank climate alarmists had skewed their climate-related financial models with interest rate shocks to get an apocalyptic scenario they were looking for: A way to manipulate statistics to get a scary outcome: Fear sells. 

  “What they have done is [factor] a gigantic interest rate shock on all the Bank of England and central bank scenarios to get a nasty number.” 

  He said with a big bank like HSBC — the average loan length is around six. So at year seven, “what happens to the planet in year seven is actually irrelevant to our loan book.” 

  Watch Kirk’s full interview here. 

  Musk is not a lone wolf decrying the ESG nonsense in financial markets as the top HSBC investment head makes a valid point why investors need not worry about climate risk. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 18:40

• "Anything We Touch Is A Weapon": New US PsyOps Recruitment Video Casts Spotlight On China Threat
  “Anything We Touch Is A Weapon”: New US PsyOps Recruitment Video Casts Spotlight On China Threat

  Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times,

  The phrase “A threat rises in the east” is superimposed over rolling footage of Chinese and Russian military parades. Ethereal, eerie music plays as cinematic impressions of the Eurasian alliance between China and Russia are interspersed with images of the last century’s most emblematic struggles for democratic values.

  

  There is footage of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a free speech protest in Hong Kong, the toppling of a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad, and the resolute stand of Tiananmen Square’s “Tank Man.”

  This is not some documentary about the myriad threats democracy has faced time and time again, but a new video created by the Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group and shared on social media by U.S. Special Forces Command.

  Equal parts recruiting video and actual psychological warfare, the project might best be described as a proof-of-concept for the military’s capability to build confidence at home and to instill fear abroad.

  The video, aptly titled “Ghosts in the Machine,” opens with a quote from “The Art of War,” written by Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu some 2,500 years ago:

  “If your opponent is of a choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.”

  At first glance, one might think that the quote suggests that the Chinese Communist Party has been pretending to be weak for years in order to lull the United States into a false sense of superiority. By the end of the three and a half minutes of growing unease, however, one wonders whether it has not been the other way around all along.

  Indeed, that may be just the purpose of Ghost in the Machine. After all, the video itself is psychological warfare.

  The Sugar-Coated Pill

  To realize the importance of psychological operations such as Ghosts in the Machine, one needs to look beyond its visage of cinematic splendor and intentional creepiness, and penetrate to the threat that the video is working against.

  According to innumerable reports from the nation’s think tanks and institutions of higher learning, the United States is in a war, though its leadership seems largely unaware of it. It is a war without conventional weapons, but that is nevertheless being fought in hearts and minds everywhere. Indeed, it is a war on the minds of Americans everywhere.

  It is the psychological campaign of unrestricted hybrid warfare perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with the purpose of eradicating the United States’ will to defend itself and preserve democratic values.

  According to one report (pdf) published by the Washington-based think tank Hudson Institute earlier this month, this psychological warfare is one part of a suite of so-called cognitive operations used by China’s communist regime to undermine U.S. security.

  “Cognitive operations involve using psychological warfare to shape or even control the enemy’s cognitive thinking and decision-making,” the report stated.

  Indeed, the report quotes directly from the primary propaganda organ of the Chinese military, the PLA Daily, that the ultimate aim of cognitive operations is to “manipulate a country’s values, national spirit/ethos, ideologies, cultural traditions, historical beliefs, etc., to prompt them to abandon their theoretical understanding, social system and development path, and achieve strategic goals without victory.”

  In not so many words, it is a military campaign against the United States to convince Americans to give up their society without fighting.

  It is, according to a report by the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (pdf), a “long-standing Chinese government strategy to exploit foreign media to deliver Chinese propaganda.” The goal of which is to destabilize and otherwise interfere in the political processes of the United States by offering a “sugar-coated pill,” something easy to swallow but lethal to consume, often in the form of anti-American propaganda disguised as domestic information and reproduced online.

  “According to the PLA, China is already in constant battle over the narrative of China’s rise and the PLA’s intentions with other nations, both inside and outside of China, and, most prominently, against the United States,” the report said, referring to the acronym for the People’s Liberation Army, the official name of the regime’s military.

  The roots of the CCP’s psychological warfare go deep, and their tendrils can be seen crawling rampant across Western media in the form of Twitter bots, sponsored newspaper articles, and state-sponsored misinformation. And the onslaught has been going on for decades.

  Unrestricted Warfare

  The CCP’s current efforts can be traced back to the 1999 book “Unrestricted Warfare.” Written by two retired PLA colonels, the book described the strategy and operations through which China could overcome the United States—without being embroiled in kinetic warfare.

  Unrestricted Warfare argued that the United States’ weakness was the widespread belief among American military and political leadership that military dominance was solely dependent on technological means, rather than legal, economic, or social factors.

  The book, therefore, advocated the use of lawfare, economic warfare, terrorism, and data and supply chain network disruption as various means of undermining the U.S. military.

  Much of the book’s proposed strategy was later codified as the “Three Warfares Strategy” in a 2003 document published by the PLA and titled “Political Work Guidelines of the People’s Liberation Army.”

  Since then, the CCP has worked tirelessly to adapt the Three Warfares Strategy to the social media era, using social networking platforms as tools of war to combat the minds of the party’s enemies. Moreover, the introduction of Three Warfares has helped to underscore the promulgation of military-civil fusion, a CCP strategy that seeks to erode any boundary between civilian and military spheres, thus accelerating the erosion of distinctions between war and peace.

  To that end, it is vital to understand that the PLA is not a military of the Chinese state, but a wing of the Chinese Communist Party. Thus, the entire military apparatus of China is designed to defend and promote communism first and foremost.

  Party Above All

  How the Chinese military serves the whims of the CCP rather than the interests of the Chinese people was elucidated by retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding during an interview with EpochTV’s “China Insider” on May 12.

  “The People’s Liberation Army is the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party,” Spalding said. “In the West, we consider the military to be a protector of the state, which in a democracy includes the people. In China’s case, the People’s Liberation Army is actually a party army, so it protects the party’s prerogatives.”

  “Unlike a national army dedicated to the defense of a state and its people, the Chinese military’s purpose is to create political power for the party.”

  According to a report (pdf) by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, U.S. leadership believed for years that the CCP’s psychological warfare efforts were a thing of the past.

  Such beliefs were proven wrong, however, with the rise of CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping in 2012, whose rule has overseen a resurgence of party initiatives pushing psychological operations as a core part of Chinese national strategy.

  Xi has referred to the work of organizations that engage in psychological operations for the CCP as China’s “magic weapons.” Those organizations include, most predominantly, the General Political Department within the PLA and the United Front Work Department, the latter of which is charged with overseeing the regime’s overseas influence operations and answers directly to the CCP’s Central Committee.

  Indeed, since the ascension of Xi, Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua has gone so far as to explicitly characterize the PLA’s psychological warfare and political work as “thoroughly implement[ing] Xi Jinping’s thoughts on socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era.”

  Importantly, according to the Johns Hopkins report, the CCP’s psychological warfare units under Xi have sought to leverage social media as a key component of “cognitive domain operations” in order to scale Chinese propaganda to a global audience, and to sway, anger, and misinform the citizens of foreign nations to the benefit of the party.

  “China uses the tools of information and finance to advance political warfare on a global scale,” Spalding said.

  “It’s a type of warfare that is completely alien to the way that we think of warfare.”

  Thus, while U.S. military leaders and members of Congress have harped on budget proposals and the number of ships being built for the Navy, the CCP has already committed itself to winning a war without firing a shot.

  Brave New World

  At the heart of the CCP’s efforts to assault the minds of the American public, then, is the critical ability of social media and related technologies to create content that can have a real-world effect.

  “[T]he PLA is developing technologies for subliminal messaging, deep fakes, overt propaganda, and public sentiment analysis on Facebook, Twitter, LINE, and other platforms,” according to a report by the RAND Corporation (pdf).

  “Other articles also suggest that the PLA could blackmail or tarnish the reputation of politicians as well as co-opt individual influential civilian social media users to extend the reach of Chinese propaganda while obfuscating its Party origins.”

  It is through this “hostile social manipulation on foreign platforms” that the CCP can essentially launder state-backed propaganda through proxy channels in the way a mobster might launder ill-gotten gains through a front organization. By obfuscating the origin of social media posts and using technologies such as deep fakes, the party can more effectively diminish American confidence in the United States’ ability and worthiness.

  “What they’ve been able to do is use proxies in the West to have the same control over the narrative in the West that they have within China,” Spalding said.

  “We have no institution in the West that is tasked with understanding this form of warfare.”

  Spalding’s comments were in line with recent remarks made by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said that the CCP was exploiting the United States’ free and open information channels and social media networks to promote authoritarianism abroad and strike at the heart of American democracy.

  Ghosts in the Machine

  The sudden appearance of a recruitment video for psychological warfare units in the U.S. military is perhaps not such a mystery, given the battles being waged against the American mind.

  The primary objective of the CCP’s efforts is to create doubt, fear, and exhaustion to such an extent that American leadership will make mistakes in planning and executing strategy. Likewise, the U.S. Army’s “Ghosts in the Machine” video lifts the mirror at the effort.

  “Anything we touch is a weapon,” the video says, before flashing the motto of the 4th Psychological Operations Group, “Verbum Vincet”—”the word will conquer.”

  The message is clear enough, China’s transnational campaign of repression and psychological terror is not without recourse. The psychological warfare apparatus of the American military and intelligence communities have changed history before and can do it again.

  It is surely not by accident that images of the famous Tiananmen Square protests were interlaced with videos of pro-democracy revolutions, or that footage of the PLA marching was juxtaposed with the fall of the Soviet Union.

  The United States has toppled great powers from within and from without, the video implies, and can do so again.

  As the video so abruptly states, “We are everywhere.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 18:20

• Federal Judge Blocks Biden Admin's Termination Of Title 42
  Federal Judge Blocks Biden Admin’s Termination Of Title 42

  With Title 42 – the Trump-era border management policy that allowed officials to quickly expel foreign nationals at the border due to health concerns – due to end on Monday (as part of the Biden admin’s overhaul of the immigration system – that is clearly working so well), a Federal Judge from Louisiana issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Biden admin from terminating the Trump-era policy.

  As we detailed previously, U.S. District Judge Robert Summerhays, a Trump appointee, announced on April 25 his intent to enter a temporary restraining order that forces the administration to keep enforcing Title 42.

  

  He delayed the actual decision because he took issue with some of the language proposed by the states, and out of a desire to ensure the order doesn’t interfere with the “legitimate use of law enforcement discretion” afforded to immigration enforcement officials. He offered that he wanted the order to, “in the least disruptive way” address the states’ concerns.

  Summerhays directed the parties to confer and try to reach an agreement on certain issues and, if they couldn’t, he said they would hold another status conference to hammer out the differences.

  They apparently have not and so Summerhays granted a preliminary injunction to a group of GOP state attorneys general challenging the policy change.

  In an earlier hearing, Summerhays said the plaintiff states, which include Missouri and Louisiana, have demonstrated that the federal government likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) with its April 1 announcement that the emergency order would be terminated in May, according to the transcript.

  “I also find that the record supports a showing of immediate and irreparable harm. The states contend that the termination of the Title 42 suspension orders will result in increased costs and burdens, including increased healthcare costs. The Court concludes that the record supports these allegations and that the fact of those increased costs is sufficient to support injunctive relief,” Summerhays said.

  “The Court also finds, as far as the balance of harms, that a temporary restraining order restoring the status quo to immediately prior to the April 1st order will result in little injury to the defendants, and that any such injury is outweighed by the injury caused by a result of the implementation of the April 1st order without the states having an opportunity to fully vet their APA claims, and that a temporary restraining order will not disserve the public interest.”

  The states had argued in filings that the Biden administration wouldn’t suffer from a block against scaling back the order, since the administration itself delayed the termination until May 23.

  As The Hill notes, the injunction is a political victory for the red states that brought suit, but it could also help the Biden administration ease pressure on immigration, as high numbers of crossings are expected to continue throughout the summer.

  Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last week that his agency is preparing for a possible flood of immigrants attempting to enter the United States through its southern border when Title 42 border restrictions were supposed to be lifted next week.

  

  As we noted previously, the head of the Border Patrol union warned that drug cartels would seize “complete control” of the southern border, as a Trump-era public health order to expel illegal immigrants is to expire on Monday.

  “That we just don’t have anybody in the field, that we just can’t patrol the border,” National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd said during Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom,” after being asked about the “worst-case scenario” once the law ends on May 23.

  He said the Border Patrol system is running out of capacity as overwhelmed border agents will be largely held up by processing asylum-seeking illegal immigrants, either refereeing their claims or expelling them back to their home countries.

  “When you look right now, we already start our shifts with 50 percent of our resources not even performing enforcement activities. They’re in administrative duties. Once this explodes, we’re going to have nearly 100 percent of our people doing administrative duties rather than enforcement duties.”

  “That’s going to give complete control to the cartels. That’s a scary situation to be in,” he added.

  Finally, we note that timing of the block could be very good for the Biden administration as anxiety over MonkeyPox spread begins to build.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 18:00

• FBI Lawyer Admits Knowing Clinton Was Behind Trump Allegations Would Have Changed Things
  FBI Lawyer Admits Knowing Clinton Was Behind Trump Allegations Would Have Changed Things

  Authored by John Haughey and Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

  The FBI lawyer who served as a conduit for flimsy allegations against Donald Trump said May 19 he would have acted differently if he knew Trump’s rival for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, was behind the claims.

  

  James Baker, who now works for Twitter, said that he likely would not have have met with Michael Sussmann, who is accused of passing on data that allegedly linked Trump’s business to a Russian bank, if he knew Sussmann was acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign.

  “I don’t think I would have,” Baker said on the stand in federal court in Washington.

  Knowing Trump’s opponent was behind the allegations “would have raised very serious questions, certainly, about the credibility of the source” and the “veracity of the information,” Baker said. It would also have heightened “a substantial concern in my mind about whether we were going to be played.”

  The testimony bolsters a key piece of special counsel John Durham’s case against Sussmann—that knowing the sources propelling Sussmann to meet with Baker would have altered how the FBI analyzed the information, which the bureau ultimately found did not substantiate the claims of a secret backchannel between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank.

  “Absent Sussmann’s false statement, the FBI might have taken additional or more incremental steps before opening and/or closing an investigation,” prosecutors said in Sussmann’s indictment, which charged him with lying to the FBI.

  Defense lawyers have argued that the impact of Sussmann’s alleged lie was “trivial or negligible.”

  Sussmann met Baker in the FBI lawyer’s office on Sept. 19, 2016, just weeks before the presidential election. No other persons were present.

  Baker said Thursday that would not have been the case if he knew the Clinton campaign’s involvement. He said he likely would have directed Sussmann to other FBI personnel—bureau lawyers don’t typically receive information—or would have still met with Sussmann, but made sure other personnel were present.

  “I was willing to meet with Michael alone because I had high confidence in him and trust,” said Baker, who has described Sussmann as a friend. “I think I would have made a different assessment if he said he had been appearing on behalf of a client.”

  

  Sussmann told Baker in a text message the night before the meeting that he had sensitive information he wanted to pass on but that he was doing so on his own accord, not on behalf of any clients. Baker testified that Sussmann repeated the lie during the meeting. Sussmann later told a congressional panel that the information was given to him by a client.

  “I think it’s most accurate to say it was done on behalf of my client,” Sussmann said, apparently referring to Rodney Joffe, a technology executive who has said he was promised a position in the government if Clinton won the election.

  While Sussmann, Joffe, and others worked on the white papers that he ultimately passed to Baker, the lawyer was billing the Clinton campaign, according to billing records. Sussmann also told the campaign about the allegations before he met with Baker, though the campaign allegedly did not approve the meeting.

  Sussmann was well-known to the FBI, having worked with the bureau on multiple cases, including the alleged hack of Democratic National Committee servers. Sussmann “had a vibrant national security practice that had contact with the FBI a lot,” Baker said. Sussmann worked for Perkins Coie, which was the Clinton campaign’s law firm during the 2016 election, and has a long history of working with Democrats.

  On cross-examination, Sean Berkowitz, representing Sussmann, hammered Baker over inconsistencies in his testimony and what he’s said before.

  Baker, for instance, told the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General in 2019 that Sussmann said he had information stemming from “people that were his clients.” Baker said he was using a “shorthand way” of describing the cyberexperts with whom Sussman was working.

  In 2018, testifying to a House of Representatives panel behind closed doors, Baker said he couldn’t remember whether he knew at the time that Baker was representing the Clinton campaign. “I don’t know that I had that in my head when he showed up in my office,” Baker said at the time.

  “I just find that unbelievable that the guy representing the Clinton campaign, the Democrat National Committee, shows up with information that says we got this, and you don’t ask where he got it, you didn’t know how he got it,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) responded.

  “I was uncomfortable with being in the position of having too much factual information conveyed to me, because I’m not an agent. And so I wanted to get the information into the hands of the agents as quickly as possible and let them deal with it. If they wanted to go interview Sussmann and ask him all those kinds of questions, fine with me,” Baker said.

  According to Baker’s testimony and previous remarks from Sussmann, no agents ended up asking those kinds of questions.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 17:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• The Internet Crime Business Is Booming
  The Internet Crime Business Is Booming

  The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has released its 2021 Internet Crime Report which found that 2021 was another record year for both victims of internet crime and dollar losses in the United States.

  847,376 complaints were logged by IC3 in the last calendar year with total losses amounting to $6.9 billion. As Statista’s Martin Armstrong reports, the most frequent internet crimes recorded in 2021 were some form of Phishing/Vishing/Smishing/Pharming.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  2020 was notable for the emergence of schemes exploiting the Covid-19 pandemic with both individuals and businesses targeted.

  Some 28,500 complaints were received relating to Covid-19 scams that year with most of them aimed at the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act). In 2021, the pandemic is still being taken advantage of, as IC3 reports:

  “The pandemic and the restrictions on in-person meetings led to increases in telework or virtual communication practices…

  IC3 has observed an emergence of newer BEC/EAC schemes that exploit this reliance on virtual meetings to instruct victims to send fraudulent wire transfers.”

  Business Email Compromise and Email Compromise schemes (BEC/EAC) were the costliest internet crimes last year with adjusted losses of nearly $2.4 billion.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 02:45

• Biden Reverses Course On Plans To Ship Long-Range Rockets To Ukraine
  Biden Reverses Course On Plans To Ship Long-Range Rockets To Ukraine

  Authored by by Kyle Anzalone & Will Porter via The Libertarian Institute,

  President Joe Biden is resisting demands from Kiev to supply long-range rocket launchers to the Ukrainian military, Politico reported, suggesting the White House is concerned the weapons could be used for strikes inside Russia.

  Ukrainian officials have requested increasingly advanced weaponry from Washington in recent months – even before Moscow’s invasion commenced earlier this year – and are currently urging the US government to send M270 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS), among other hardware.

  

  While Biden was reportedly willing to consider the request during a trip to Germany last month, where dozens of countries met to discuss aid for Ukraine, a congressional staffer told Politico the plan is not moving forward. 

  “There was momentum on it at Ramstein, but that seems to have cooled,” they said, adding that “There’s definitely a frustration building” among officials in Kiev over a perceived reluctance to send heavier arms. 

  The staffer did not offer a reason for the change of heart, but according to three other sources cited by the outlet, Kiev believes the White House is “holding back over worries the weapon could be used to launch strikes inside Russia, thereby expanding and prolonging the conflict.”

  Though the war raging in Eastern Europe has largely been confined to Ukrainian territory and separatist-controlled areas in the Donbass region, a number of mysterious blasts have erupted on Russian soil over the last month, including in the Belgorod, Kursk and Bryansk regions bordering Ukraine. Kiev has stopped short of taking credit for the apparent attacks, but US officials have confirmed that Ukrainian forces were behind at least one of the incidents.

  Depending on the munitions used, the M270 MLRS has a range of between 20 and 40 miles, though more advanced rockets can travel up to 100 miles, potentially putting them far beyond the range of the American M-777 Howitzers supplied to Ukraine in recent weeks. Even with special rocket-assisted rounds, the latter artillery pieces have a maximum range of just over 18 miles. The M270 is also a self-propelled platform and was specifically designed to evade Russian artillery strikes, capable of rapidly firing up to 12 rockets before moving to a new position. 

  

  Washington has sent billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine since the Russian invasion began in late February, including attack helicopters, artillery, tank-killing Javelin missiles and Stinger anti-aircraft platforms. Moreover, a massive new aid package currently moving through the Senate will bring total US assistance since March to nearly $54 billion if passed, much of it devoted to arms and other military gear. 

  Despite the complaints from Ukrainian officials, however, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland recently suggested Kiev may be receiving US-made multiple-launch rockets after all, telling European Pravda in April that “we already supply MLRS systems.” The comments prompted speculation that Washington could be sending the M142 HIMARS, a lighter-weight, wheeled variant of the M270. President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly mentioned both systems by name in public appeals for additional armaments.

  An unnamed White House official cited by Politico also indicated that Biden’s reluctance to send the M270 did not mean a final decision had been made, stating that Washington and Kiev are still “in active discussion” about the weapon.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 02:00

• Stop The Denial: Ukraine Is A Proxy War That Will Lead To Wider World War
  Stop The Denial: Ukraine Is A Proxy War That Will Lead To Wider World War

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

  At the onset of the Russian incursion into Ukraine I argued in my article ‘Order Out Of Chaos: How The Ukraine Conflict Is Designed To Benefit Globalists‘ that US boots would be on the ground within a few months. I was wrong – As it turns out, US and European military boots were ALREADY on the ground. Ukraine was a proxy war from the very beginning.

  

  But what is a proxy war, really? It means that Russian troops are fighting Ukrainian soldiers that are intermingled with western “advisors” and most likely US and European special forces, not to mention US intelligence operatives utilizing all the information gathering technology at the disposal of the Department of Defense. In other words, Russian soldiers are being killed by Western assets. Some pro-Ukraine people might ask why this is a problem?

  To understand the gravity of this situation we have to first examine the historical significance.

  The closest event in history that I could approximate Ukraine to is Vietnam, when communist elements within the country were receiving constant aid, weaponry and even some troops from China, along with monetary and technological aid from the Soviet Union. Vietnam was essentially a “safe” arena or cage match between the West and Communism; a place where the paradigm players could fight it out without risk of a larger nuclear exchange. The globalists could sit back, relax and watch the show while Americans sacrificed their lives over a conflict that did not need to exist.

  Ukraine is similar, but the stakes this time are much higher. This is probably why the mainstream media and the White House have been in full denial that Ukraine is a proxy war at all, and have consistently downplayed the complex involvement of Western military assets. The fact is that Ukraine would have fallen completely by now had it not been for the fact that Russia is not really facing Ukraine; it is facing a proxy force of US and European support elements feeding intel, weaponry and likely direct kinetic support.

  In my article ‘Ukraine Learns The Value Of An Armed Citizenry, But Far Too Late,’ published on March 2nd, I noted that the Ukrainian “militia” programs being instituted at the last minute while Russia troops swiftly marched across the Donbass were a side show. The media was acting as if citizens with no more than a couple of weeks of training were going to make some kind of difference in the war; this was nonsense. In my view, the insurgency narrative was meant as cover for well trained Western assets already in place with advanced anti-tank and anti-aircraft technology. As I stated in that article:

  “Today, as Russia invades, the Ukrainians don’t even have basic [defense] measures in place. Their ability to hold off the Russians at all is predicated on American missile systems like the Javelin which are being steadily funneled into the Ukrainian military.

  Also, the methods which Ukrainian forces are using to ambush Russian armor columns are rather advanced and familiar. I suspect the possibility that there are outside military “advisers” (perhaps US advisers) on the ground right now in Ukraine. The advanced guerrilla-style ambush tactics and the results look similar to training that is often given to Green Berets or SAS. The UK did send anti-tank weapons along with a small group of “trainers” to Ukraine in January.

  Maybe I am mistaken, but if this is the case it would be diplomatically disastrous if such adviser teams were ever discovered to be involved in the fighting…”

  Not long after I wrote this, a stream of information leaks revealed that US and EU military involvement was far deeper than I had expected.

  French journalist and Le Figaro senior international correspondent Georges Malbrunot came back from Ukraine with revelations that Americans are “directly in charge” of the war on the ground. He added that he and the volunteers he was with “almost got arrested” by the officials and that they were forced to sign a contract “until the end of the war” which denied then the right to tell the public about the circumstances they witnessed.

  Citing a French intelligence source, Malbrunot also tweeted that British SAS units “have been present in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, as were the American Deltas.”

  This was obvious from the advanced tactics being used by “Ukrainian” forces to stall the Russian advance, but the first hand accounts confirm the problem is real. The New York Times and other media outlets have been publishing rare admissions of US involvement in intelligence sharing with Ukrainians which have led directly to the deaths of multiple Russian generals as well as the destruction of major assets such as troop transport planes and the Russian flagship Moskva.

  In the meantime, Pentagon officials and Joe Biden have incessantly denied that Ukraine is a “proxy war.” If it’s not a proxy war, then I don’t know what is. Without US, UK and EU involvement, there is NO WAR. It would already be over and Ukraine would have surrendered weeks ago.

  People can argue whether or not this is a good thing or a bad thing. As I have mentioned in multiple articles, I have no feelings either way because the entire event appears to be a distraction from the much more important threat of global economic decline and the inflationary crisis. The thing to remember here is that this is indeed a proxy war and that the very presence of American and European military assets on the ground in Ukraine could be used as a rationale by Russia to expand their operations far beyond the Donbass region.

  Not only that, but it also justifies wider tactics that directly target the US and Europe. For example, a proxy war allows Russia to reasonably argue in favor of completely cutting off the EU from oil and natural gas resources, which Europe relies on for around 40% of its energy needs. It justifies Russian economic strategies including alliances with China to cut out the US dollar as the world reserve currency. And, I continue to expect cyberwarfare attacks sometime this year as a result of the Ukraine situation. At the very least, such attacks will be blamed on Russia and China whether or not they are actually responsible.

  Does the presence of US and European troops in Ukraine mean a global nuclear war is imminent? It;s unlikely. Just as Vietnam did not lead to a nuclear war between Russia, China and the US despite the NVC receiving steady supplies and training from Soviet and Chinese forces, there is minimal chance that global nuclear war will erupt from the Ukraine. Mutual destruction does not serve the interests of the globalists, at least not if they hope to predict the outcome in the slightest.

  That said, I would not be surprised to see at least one mushroom cloud somewhere in the world this decade within a regional conflict. Also, world war does not have to become nuclear to be disastrous.

  Sadly, because of Hollywood movies a large number of people have misguided notions of what World War III might actually look like. Entertainment media always depict WWIII as happening in a flash, an instant in which missiles are launched and a broken civilization of survivors is left to pick up the pieces. What they never show is a long grinding war of financial attrition, supply chain disruptions, cyber attacks, and drawn out regional battles in which Americans are shipped overseas to die for no purpose other than to pretend that these territorial disputes are somehow “our responsibility.”

  What I see in Ukraine is the beginnings of a war unlike any other; a war in which the weapons are primarily indirect and financial rather than kinetic. Because of global interdependency in trade many Western nations have been left utterly defenseless in this kind of conflict. We don’t have the ability to fight back because our economic systems are built around a model that demands we abandon domestic production and rely on the resources and industry of other nations.

  This is never more true than in our relationship with China, which controls around 20% of all export goods into the US. China has closely allied with Russia. This is not going to change because they know that there is nothing the West can do to about it; there is far too much economic leverage involved. Furthermore, the events in Ukraine are probably a precursor to China’s own invasion of Taiwan.

  If this is the plan, then China would have to wait for optimal weather conditions after the monsoon season, sometime in September. This would start with missile bombardment and infrastructure attacks, followed by an amphibious assault sometime in early October.

  The proxy war in Ukraine is a key moment in history going forward (along with the potential invasion of Taiwan), because it offers global power interests with dreams of a “Great Reset” the ability to offload the worldwide economic crisis they created years ago onto the “tides of fate.” They can say that the collapse only happened because of the hubris of sovereign nations and “meaningless borders.” If the US and Europe are directly involved in the killing of Russian troops, and this is widely exposed, then the Russian side of the narrative become clarified and the Western side becomes muddled. Direct Russian retribution becomes logical and rational rather than the crazed reaction of a nation led by a madman as the mainstream media claims.

  Both sides of the Kabuki theater have to feel as though they are justified in escalating a small war into a world war. That is how this has always worked. When the working class population gets a little too unruly and the threat of rebellion against the establishment is at hand, the elites start a war. It’s like clockwork. This tactic weakens the general population, wears down the number of fighting age men that might have otherwise presented a threat to the ruling class and creates enough fear and panic to convince the public to trade away more of their freedoms.

  The wild card right now is the US and European populations, and to some extent the Russian citizenry, and how they respond. The old joke is “What if they held a war and nobody showed up to fight?” This is a potential reality right now as it is in the hands of the public how far the Ukraine issue goes. Are most Americans and Europeans willing to send their sons and in some cases daughters to fight and die over the Donbass? Are Russian citizens willing to fight and die beyond the borders of Ukraine?

  A lot of people are engaging in big talk lately, but is this really the hill they are ready to die on? I think not. Why? Because deep down most people know that this war is a farce, a play on the global chess board by elitists with nefarious aspirations. They know that the reasons for the war are not pure, on either side. They virtue signal in favor of Ukraine, but they will never be willing to go and risk their lives for Ukrainian soil. Nor are they willing to risk a family member’s life for Ukraine.

  I suspect that the globalists know this by now, as the narrative has been shifting away from trying to convince Americans that open military involvement is needed. They will switch to the economic side of the conflict in the hopes that fiscal disaster will fog the minds of the public and make them more willing to support wider war tomorrow.

  *  *  *

  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
  Fri, 05/20/2022 – 00:00

• Hamptons Pool Craze Has Some Homeowners Waiting Years For A Dip 
  Hamptons Pool Craze Has Some Homeowners Waiting Years For A Dip 

  Hamptons, New York’s summer playground for Wall Street execs and Hollywood celebrities, has an extremely tight housing inventory — following two years of city-dwellers fleeing cities for the cozy beach town. During the pandemic, residents expanded backyards and many desired luxury pools. There has been a backlog of pool building, with some residents waiting at least one year or more for their backyard oasis. 

  Pools and spas are in high demand that has inundated pool builders in the Hamptons. The pool industry has never had this much demand in the area, mainly due to the work-at-home lifestyle and influx of new residents. 

  

  Greg Darvin, the owner of East Hampton, New York-based company, Pristine Pools, told Bloomberg that massive backlogs and long waitlists would persist for the next few years. “If you haven’t planned your 2023 pool yet, you’re too late,” he said. 

  Before the pandemic, Darvin said clients wouldn’t commit until they were ready for a new pool. “Now we book one year ahead, and we immediately go into hard contract,” he added. 

  Supply chain shortages and soaring material costs have also been an issue. “Now we buy anything we can find and store it,” he added. 

  The high-end pool market hasn’t slowed down (yet) and could remain robust through 2023. With so much pool building demand pulled forward in the last few years, the question remains what happens after 2024. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 05/19/2022 – 23:40

• California To Spend $5.2 Billion On 'Electricity Reserve' To Avoid Blackouts
  California To Spend $5.2 Billion On ‘Electricity Reserve’ To Avoid Blackouts

  Authored by Julianne Geiger via OilPrice.com,

  California has proposed spending $5.2 billion on creating a “strategic electricity reliability reserve” that would help the state avoid blackouts when its electric grid is stressed, a 2022-2023 budget revision document showed on Friday according to Bloomberg.

  California has weathered a fair amount of criticism over its electric grid, which contributed to rolling blackouts as recently as 2020. California warned last week that it could run into electricity shortages this summer with drought, heatwaves, and wildfires continuing to stress the grid.

  

  But renewables and California’s electricity exports have also stressed the grid.

  The Reserve will be developed using existing generation capacity that was scheduled to retire, new generation, new storage projects, clean backup generation projects, customer side load reduction capacity that is visible to and dispatchable by CAISO during grid emergencies, and diesel and natural gas backup generation projects – which the budget document stressed would have emission controls and all required permits.

  Of note were two items in that list: “existing generation capacity that was scheduled to retire” and “diesel and natural gas backup generation projects”.

  California is set to retire 6,000 MW of nuclear and gas-fired energy production.

  The Reserve will be capable of providing up to 5,000 MW that will be available whenever the grid is stressed.

  The new budget would also earmark $8 billion over five years to increase the state’s system reliability and provide relief to consumers as electricity rates rise.

  The budget now calls for $22.5 billion in funds for the purpose of “climate resilience and integrated climate, equity, and economic opportunity across the state’s budget to mobilize a coordinated all-of-government response to the climate crisis.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 05/19/2022 – 23:20

• Maersk & Goldman Warns China Restart Will Spark Renewed Supply Chain Congestion
  Maersk & Goldman Warns China Restart Will Spark Renewed Supply Chain Congestion

  A.P. Møller – Maersk A/S, the world’s largest container shipping company by capacity, and Goldman Sachs’ supply chain congestion analysis (in separate reports) indicate if China restarts, renewed supply chain congestion will be seen worldwide. 

  Maersk told its Asia-Pacific customers that China’s zero COVID policy to lockdown Shanghai, the world’s largest port and China’s financial hub, for nearly two months, will “have an effect all over the world in the coming months.” 

  For seven weeks, a massive parking lot of vessels has been building outside Shanghai ports as operations came to a crawl because of the lockdown of 26 million residents. 

  

  Since the lockdown began in late March, Goldman Sachs’ weekly congestion index has slid as US West and East Coast port congestion plunged. This is because the trans-Atlantic volume of vessels from China to the US declined as port capacity was restricted due to lockdowns. 

  

  Maersk told clients, “statically speaking, the virus is under control,” and this could soon indicate Chinese port capacity may expand and sailings could increase to the US, which will only complicate things down the line for US West Coast ports as a backlog of goods will flood US ports. 

  Goldman also agrees and warns: “We could see a resurgence of ship bottlenecks if sudden restarts in China lead to renewed sailings all at once.”

  A forward leading indicator of Chinese port activity and if a resurgence of bottlenecks is ahead for the US are global container freight rates. 

  Weekly changes of the World Container Index show that when China went into lockdown, container rates for 40-foot boxes dropped. 

  

  By shipping lane, if there’s a tick-up in freight rates between China and the US West Coast, then it would be safe to assume China is restarting. 

  

  If China restarts and container rates begin to rise, the countdown will be about 1-2 months until a massive backlog hits US ports, renewing port congestion right before midterm elections. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 05/19/2022 – 23:00

• NY Governor Announces New Gun Control Plans After Buffalo Shooting, Signs Order On Domestic Terrorism
  NY Governor Announces New Gun Control Plans After Buffalo Shooting, Signs Order On Domestic Terrorism

  Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times,

  New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday proposed new measures and signed an executive order to “strengthen and close loopholes” in the state’s gun laws in the wake of the deadly shooting in Buffalo, New York.

  

  The governor also signed a separate executive order to “combat the steady rise in domestic terrorism and violent extremism” and “crack down on social media platforms that host and amplify content that promotes and broadcasts violent, lawless acts,” according to a press release from her office.

  Payton Gendron, 18, is accused of having opened fire at a supermarket in Buffalo on May 14, killing 10 people and injuring three others. He surrendered to police who confronted him at the site. Gendron was arraigned on a first-degree murder charge to which he has pleaded not guilty. As of May 19, he is jailed under a suicide watch.

  

  Gun Control Proposals

  Hochul said her office will work with legislators to propose a package of laws that will strengthen current gun control measures and tighten any loopholes in the state.

  The suspected shooter had legally bought his weapon, a Bushmaster XM-15 rifle, and later modified it with an extended magazine, which is illegal to own in New York.

  “The gun the individual purchased in our state was legal,” Hochul told reporters. “But what happened was, is that you can go literally across the border to Pennsylvania and buy a magazine with 30 bullets in it. And that’s what happened. You can get the base gun here legally in the state of New York, go buy a high capacity magazine, and just attach it. That’s what happened.”

  “So, we have to deal with this. And we will, we will. We have announced there is a package of gun laws that we’re going to be proposing. We have more guns to deal with.”

  As part of a slew of measures, Hochul said her office will address “AOW” or “any other weapons,” which refers to a new category of weapons with characteristics that fall between rifles, shotguns, and pistols. Such weapons were “specifically designed to fall outside the realm of regulation, so they’re not subject to [New York] laws,” Hochul said.

  “We are introducing legislation that revises the definition of a firearm to include those weapons, which means we’ll be able to charge and prosecute people accordingly,” she said.

  Hochul also said New York’s red flag law needs to be strengthened. Red flag laws allow law enforcement to confiscate guns from those who are believed to pose a danger to themselves or others.

  “People are wondering how you had the right to acquire the weapon in the first place when you are this individual. We have red flag laws in place to prevent exactly this situation,” Hochul said.

  The governor issued an executive order to require the New York State Police to file an extreme-risk order of protection under New York’s red flag law when they have probable cause to believe that an individual is a threat to themselves or others.

  “Previously, current law, it’s an option to do so. And now, it’ll be a requirement,” Hochul noted.

  Gendron was able to purchase his weapon in part because he was never reported under New York’s red flag law, which would have prevented the store from selling him the weapon.

  Officials said on May 15 that last year, Gendron had made a reference to a murder-suicide in a paper he submitted at his high school, after which New York State Police took him into custody and had him undergo a mental health evaluation in June 2021. He was released about a day-and-a-half later, and was not charged criminally.

  According to a 180-page manifesto posted online that is alleged but not confirmed to have been written by Gendron, the Buffalo area was chosen as the target of the shooting because of strict laws governing gun ownership there and because it has a large black population.

  The Epoch Times has not been able to independently verify whether the manifesto was written by Gendron. The Erie County DA’s office told The Epoch Times that they are investigating the manifesto.

  

  Domestic Terrorism

  The author of the manifesto had identified themselves as a white supremacist. Authorities said Gendron live-streamed the shooting online. Police have called the shooting a “hate crime and racially motivated violent extremism.”

  Hochul told reporters on Wednesday that the suspect shooter was “radicalized by white supremacists and white nationalist beliefs.” She said such messages and racist philosophies are “easily accessible on social media platforms.”

  The incident was “white supremacy in this nation at its worst,” Hochul said, adding, “The most serious threat we face as a nation is from within … It’s white supremacism.”

  Hochul is signing another executive order to “fight the troubling surge in domestic terrorism and violent extremism frequently inspired by, planned on, and posted about on social media platforms and Internet forums,” her office said.

  The order will establish a unit within the Office of Counter-Terrorism at the Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Service to focus exclusively on domestic terrorism.

  “First time ever. They’ll develop the best practices for law enforcement, for mental health professionals, for school officials to address the rise in homegrown extremism. And we’ll make sure that they’re trained to know how it occurs, where it occurs, and how to stop it,” Hochul said.

  She said a “Threat Assessment Management Program” will be launched that will include multi-disciplinary teams in counties throughout New York State that will identify and assess the domestic terrorism threats.

  “This coordination is critical, it does not exist now,” Hochul said. “It does not exist, that these stakeholders need to be communicating and sharing information … Who heard what, who saw something? And then you get the law enforcement, and the mental health professionals, in some cases, school professionals, actually communicating about what they’re seeing. We have a much better opportunity to be in the prevention business, instead of just the cleanup business.”

  

  Social Media

  Hochul said the executive order she’s signing will also establish a dedicated domestic terrorism unit in the New York State Intelligence Center to track domestic violent extremism through social media.

  “We’re going to ensure that we have the best-in-the-nation cybersecurity teams to monitor the places where radicalization occurs,” Hochul said.

  She said the suspected shooter’s live-stream of the shooting had “created an opportunity for people to see this and share what he was doing,” after which people would “create platforms so they can share their demented ideas with each other in the hopes that this continues to spread, the virus spreads,” thereby “radicalizing more.”

  The governor said that algorithms on some social media platforms can serve to “elevate hateful incendiary speech.”

  “There’s algorithms in place that ramp up and share this [hateful speech] even more, with higher frequency than other messages. So this incendiary content is pushed out to more people in 2022,” she said. “That’s how radicalization is occurring, through the social media echo chamber. … These social media platforms have to take responsibility. They must be more vigilant in monitoring the content, and they must be held accountable for favoring engagement over public safety.”

  Hochul said she has requested New York State Attorney General Letitia James’s office to investigate the social media platforms that broadcast the attack and that “promote and elevate hate speech.”

  James announced on Twitter on Wednesday: “My office is launching investigations into the social media companies that the Buffalo shooter used to plan, promote, and stream his terror attack. We are investigating Twitch, 4chan, 8chan, and Discord, among others, all platforms that the shooter used to amplify this attack.”

  Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 05/19/2022 – 22:40

• China In Talks To Buy Cheap Russian Oil For Strategic Reserves
  China In Talks To Buy Cheap Russian Oil For Strategic Reserves

  China is in talks with Russia to buy its cheap oil to replenish strategic reserves, in the latest indicator of deepened energy ties between the two large powers and rivals to the United States. It’s also the latest sign that a mulled EU Russian oil embargo may in the end be blunted before it ever gets off the ground, amid continuing inter-EU resistance led by Hungary.

  Bloomberg reports Thursday that “The crude would be used to fill China’s strategic petroleum reserves, and talks are being conducted at a government level with little direct involvement from oil companies, said a person with knowledge of the plan.”

  

  Currently the EU is negotiating toward a phased embargo, seeking to find compromise with those central and eastern European members which are heavily dependent on Russian energy.

  The prior US ban on imports of Russian oil, which came early in the invasion of Ukraine, has already served to push more Russian oil tankers east towards Asia, diverting from Western markets. India too has reportedly been taking advantage of the comparatively cheaper prices.

  A source privy to the talks said they aren’t close enough that a deal is guaranteed to be signed, nor is an estimated volume of crude Beijing is reportedly seeking known at this point.

  “There is still room to replenish stocks and it would be a good opportunity for them to do so, if they can be sourced on commercially attractive terms,” a senior oil analyst at industry firm Kpler, Jane Xie, told Bloomberg.

  The report cites the data analytics firm to estimate that China’s “overall stockpiles are at 926.1 million barrels, up from 869 million barrels in mid-March — but still 6% lower than a record in September 2020.” And by way of comparison, “the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve has a capacity of 714 million barrels. It currently holds about 538 million barrels.”

  

  Chart via Reuters

  China remains the world’s single biggest buyer of Russian oil, with official Chinese government figures for 2021 showing it imported almost 1.6 million barrels per day of Russian crude that year.

  But the immediate impact of Western punitive action targeting Moscow has seen more shipments sent to Asia. “China is now clearly buying more Ural cargoes. Ural exports to China have more than tripled. This is despite a weakening of Chinese imports,” said Homayoun Falakshahi, senior analyst at Kpler, as cited in Reuters

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 05/19/2022 – 22:20

• The Fed Has Crossed The "Hard Landing" Rubicon So How High Will It Hike? One Bank Crunches The Numbers
  The Fed Has Crossed The “Hard Landing” Rubicon So How High Will It Hike? One Bank Crunches The Numbers

  One month ago, a SocGen strategist calculated something remarkable: at a time when the Fed is warning of multiple 50bps hikes in coming FOMC meetings and Powell is threatening to take fed funds above neutral – somewhere in the great unknown zone between 2.0% and 4.5% – and even the gradually fading market consensus still expects just under 8 hikes this cycle…

  

  … quant Solomon Tadesse calculated that according to his analysis, if the Fed i focused on preserving growth (at the expense of higher inflation), then Fed Funds will peak at just around 1.0%, which combined with a QT programme to the tune of about $1.8tn, means the Fed will very soon be forced to reverse.

  Furthermore, as Tadesse has since pointed out, with the Fed’s recent bold 50bp hike, “there does not seem much room left for manoeuvring for the desired soft-landing.” He then echoes what we have been saying in recent weeks, namely that the “type of week-long market meltdown witnessed since the recent hike often precedes a policy about-face in line with our projection.”

  Ok but what if having decided to push the US into a recession, growth be damned, the Fed is now focusing only and entirely on inflation?  After all, current rates are far, far below the prevailing CPI which is around 8%, and while many argue whether CPI has peaked, there is a significant possibility CPI could hit double digits in the coming months.

  This is the question that Tadesse addresses in his latest must-read note (available to pro subs in the usual place), in which he writes that “an inflation-fighting impulse is currently in the air, begging the question of what it could take to stamp out the current trend for good, even at the cost of a hard landing.”

  According to the SocGen quant, given the rising inflation prints and accompanying political pressure, if the pro-growth tightening threshold is breached – which it likely will be as soon as the next FOMC meeting, making a hard landing inevitable, and unleashing the Fed in favor of a single-minded inflation-fighting policy stance, Tadesse’s analysis suggests that it “could take overall monetary tightening of as much as 9.25% to arrest inflation, with the policy rate going up to 4.5% and the balance coming from QT of about $3.9tn, which would slash the current Fed balance sheet by about half.”

  

  Here is some more detail from the SocGen quant on this potential “alternative” in which the Fed single-mindedly pursues inflation containment, going Volcker-style with accelerated rate hikes reminiscent of the 1970s and early 1980s, when the average MTE (tightening to easing) ratio was about 1.5x (left-hand chart below).:

  Such aggressive monetary tightening with a focus solely on inflation containment, even at the cost of inducing recession, according to our analysis, would require overall monetary tightening of about 11.6%. Given that rates have already been tightened by 2.5%, another 9.25% of monetary tightening might be expected via policy rate hikes and an aggressive QT program. The policy rate could go up by as much as 4.5%, with the remainder coming from QT (right-hand chart above). These projections are all before the 4 May rate hike of 50bp, which lowers the balance proportionately.

  

  At a rate of 12bp per $100bn of QT, this also amounts to a QT program of about $3.9tn, roughly equivalent to the net growth in the Fed’s balance sheet during the pandemic. An important caveat in the analysis is the presumption that current inflation levels resemble those of the late 1970s through the 1980s. As recent inflation prints are the highest in 40 years, this might be a reasonable assumption, particularly in reference to the rates seen in the early 1980s. In addition, in interpretating the results, there is an implicit assumption that the current inflation prints are persistent and demand driven. However, as our earlier analysis shows, the current inflation dynamics are driven both by transitory supply-related disruptions and demand-driven price pressures. Should the supply bottlenecks ease over time, the degree of monetary tightening needed to contain inflation through demand destruction could turn out to be lower.

  

  The above-left chart shows monetary policy frontiers (MPF). These are all the policy-rate hike and QT combinations that could generate the inflation-containing overall tightening of upwards of 9pp and the growth-conscious overall tightening discussed earlier, with the most likely outcomes of policy combinations identified with stars. Thus, our analysis suggests that while it might only take another 25-50bp for growth-conscious tightening to peak before a hard landing, an aggressive inflation-containing policy could mean additional policy rate hikes of up to 4.0pp.

  As noted earlier, the above analysis assumes that the Fed is resigned to a hard-landing. Does it mean that a soft-landing is now inevitable? Pretty much. Here is Tadasse again:

  In an earlier research note, we argued that if current monetary policy follows a pro-growth impulse, as has been the case over the past four decades, the current tightening phase could peak with only 0.75-1pp of rate hikes, combined with a QT program to the tune of about $1.8tn. After the Fed’s recent bold 50bp hike, there now does not seem to be much room left for manoeuvring toward a soft landing. Moreover, the type of week-long market meltdown witnessed since the hike has often preceded a policy about-face, which is what we expect.

  Summarizing the above, the SocGen quant writes that “monetary policy is thus at a crossroads, with a stark choice between a ‘growth’ conscious, albeit inflationary, rate-hike cycle, peaking after 300bp of tightening (with a mix of QT and FFR) or an inflation-containing, albeit recessionary, rate-hike cycle, peaking at about a 925bp of overall tightening (with a mix of 450bp in policy rate and the balance from QT).”

  And while there could be possibilities in between these two extremes, the middle ground may not, in general, be an admissible rational strategy. Such an intermediate path, plausible due to political pressure or a mid-course reversal in policy priorities between price stability and full employment, would likely fail to accomplish either mandate and could damage central bank credibility.

  

  What does this mean for traders? Nothing good – as Tadesse concludes, equity strategies do not fare well in scenarios of high inflation and declining growth (i.e. stagflation), as companies struggle with falling revenues and rising costs, lower growth causes lower earnings, and higher rates combined with an increase in the equity-risk premium negatively impact valuations. And while SocGen notes, that “cash flow and balance-sheet strength would matter for relative performance here”, we would add that the real question is how fast does the market expect inflation to shrink back to the 2-3% range. The answer to that question will determine most investing strategies for the next year or so.

  For those unable or unwilling to answer, a simple heuristic is that strategies that pay high dividends at cheap valuations (such as quality income) should do well in this environment. So should equity strategies dominated by firms with pricing power, such as those in the upstream of the production chain, as should defensive equity strategies with stable cash flows and relative pricing power (such as utilities, the quality and quality income factors). Pair trades can use these as the long legs, offset with shorts among cyclical and aggressive growth strategies.

  The full note quantifying how high Powell will raise rates is available to pro subs.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 05/19/2022 – 22:00

• 68% Of CEOs Say Fed Policy Is About To Trigger A Recession
  68% Of CEOs Say Fed Policy Is About To Trigger A Recession

  No matter how many Tom Lees and Marko Kolanovics CNBC wants to roll out to try and play things off like everything is fine, most CEOs – who spend their time in the real world instead of “analyzing” it – are bracing for a recession. 

  In fact, “CEO confidence has tumbled to the weakest level since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic”, a new report from CNN, citing The Conference Board, said this week.

  CEO confidence is now negative for the first time during the economic expansion, the report notes. The C suite is bracing for a turndown as a result of Fed policy, the report notes. 

  68% of CEOs expect that Fed policy is going to trigger a recession, according to a survey fielded between April 25 and May 9 which looked at the responses of 133 CEOs.

  

  Despite this, only 11% of these CEOs are predicting a “hard landing”. Most CEOs said they expect a “very short, mild” recession. We’ll make sure to keep an eye on this figure as we progress further into 2022, especially if the Fed decides to hold course. 

  Dana Peterson, The Conference Board’s chief economist, said: “Businesses are being challenged on so many fronts right now and CEOs have elevated expectations of a recession.”

  61% of CEOs surveyed also said that economic conditions have worsened over the last 6 months. This compares to 35% who said the same in Q1. Only 14% of CEOs said they see “improving economic conditions”. 

  Mike Sommers, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, commented: “Recessionary-concerns are real.” He added that recessions often follow interest rate hikes. 

  Despite this, there are some “economists” who continue to argue that recession isn’t necessarily imminent. RSM chief economist Joe Brusuelas concluded: “Concerns about an immoderate near term recession are generally overblown. The Fed is attempting to thread the needle while wearing boxing gloves and a mouth guard which reduces its degrees of freedom to act without causing damage to the real economy.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 05/19/2022 – 21:40

• Rickards: "We Are On The Precipice"
  Rickards: “We Are On The Precipice”

  Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

  I don’t believe many people grasp the enormity of the global food crisis we’ll be facing in the months ahead. But the world could be on the verge of a massive humanitarian crisis. Let’s dive in…

  

  The supply chain collapse preceded the war in Ukraine, but the war has only intensified the problems. You can see it with your own eyes when you walk into a supermarket and find long stretches of empty shelves in stores that used to be chock-full of food and other merchandise.

  Even goods that are available such as gasoline are being sold at much higher prices. Prices for gasoline (and diesel, which is critical for goods transportation) have more than doubled in the past nine months. All of this is clear. The question is will it get worse from here?

  Unfortunately, the answer is yes.

  Bob Unanue is the CEO of Goya Foods, which is one of the largest food distributors in the world. Few people are better positioned to assess the global food situation than Unanue, who deals with raw food deliveries on the one hand and retail customers on the other.

  Unanue is now warning, “We are on the precipice of a global food crisis.” Other experts are quoted making a similar point. That’s not hyperbole or fearmongering, but a serious analysis. Here’s why…

  29% of All Wheat Exports in Jeopardy

  In the Northern Hemisphere, the planting season for 2022 is well underway. Crops were planted (or not) in March and April. Based on that, you can already form estimates of output next September and October during the harvest season (subject to some variability based on weather and other factors).

  Plantings have been far below normal in 2022, either due to a lack of fertilizer or to much higher costs for fertilizer where farmers simply chose to plant less. This predictable shortage is in addition to the much greater shortages due to the fact that Russian output is sanctioned and Ukrainian output is nonexistent because it’s at war.

  Russia and Ukraine together account for 29% of global wheat and 19% of global corn exports.

  Russia and Ukraine together produce 29% of all the wheat exports in the world. That doesn’t mean they grow 29% of the wheat in the world. It means they grow 29% of the wheat exports.

  The U.S., Australia, Canada and others grow a lot of wheat but consume most of it themselves. They export relatively little. Importantly, they don’t simply eat it. They feed it to their farm animals. People don’t often make the connection between grain and animal products, but it’s critical.

  Many countries get 70–100% of their grains from either Russia or Ukraine or both. Lebanon gets 100%. Egypt is over 70%. Kenya, Sudan, Somalia, many central African countries and Jordan and other Middle Eastern countries receive much of their grain from Russia or Ukraine.

  No Planting, No Crops

  But it’s worse than that because not only are many Ukrainian exports shut down now, but the planting season is nearly over. And you’re not going to get any grain in October if you didn’t plant it in April or May. And they didn’t for obvious reasons.

  What that means is you project ahead to October, November, December of this year, those countries I mentioned are not going to be able to get their grain supplies. There simply aren’t going to be any, or they’ll be greatly reduced. The combined population of countries that get between 70% and 100% of their imports from Russia or Ukraine is 700 million people.

  That’s 10% of the global population. So you’re looking at mass starvation. You’re looking at a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented proportions, probably the worst since the Black Death of the 14th century. That’s coming down the road, even if most people can’t see it coming or fully fathom the depths of the coming crisis.

  In short, we know enough now to predict much higher prices, empty shelves and, in some cases, mass starvation in the fourth quarter of this year and beyond.

  Beyond the humanitarian aspect of the coming food shortages, there are also potentially serious social and geopolitical ramifications.

  Another Arab Spring?

  You remember the “Arab Spring” starting in 2010. It started in Tunisia and spread from there. Well, it was triggered by a food crisis. There was a shortage of wheat, which triggered the protests.

  There were underlying problems in these societies, but a food crisis was the catalyst for the protests.

  Now, many poorer countries in the Middle East and Africa are facing a much greater crisis as the impact of shortages manifests itself later this year and into next year. Will we see even more social unrest than in 2011?

  It’s very possible, and it could be even more destabilizing than the Arab Spring. We could also see waves of mass migration from Africa and the Middle East as desperate and hungry people flee their homelands.

  Europe endured a wave of mass immigration in 2015. Many migrants were attempting to flee the war in Syria, but there were great amounts of people who weren’t affected by the war. They were just seeking better lives in the welfare states of Europe.

  Mass starvation could trigger an even greater migration, which would present Europe with enormous challenges.

  The United States could also witness another wave of migration at the southern border, which is currently being inundated by migrants. A global food crisis could send the numbers spiraling to uncontrollable limits.

  What if the War Drags On?

  And what if the war in Ukraine drags on well into next year? Next year’s growing season would also be disrupted and the shortages could extend into late 2023 and beyond.

  Well, maybe some would argue that other nations could pick up the slack and grow additional grain. That’s nice in theory, but it’s not that simple.

  Russia is the largest exporter of fertilizer, and sanctions are cutting off supplies. Many farmers cannot get fertilizer at all, and those who can are paying between twice and three times last year’s price.

  That means that crops actually produced will have much higher prices because of the higher price of inputs such as fertilizer, and the higher transportation costs due to higher prices for diesel and gasoline.

  Like I said earlier, we’re looking at a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented proportions, probably the worst since the black death of the 14th century.

  And we’re not prepared to handle it.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 05/19/2022 – 21:20

• '76' Gas-Station Chain Repograms Washington State Pumps For $10 A Gallon 
  ’76’ Gas-Station Chain Repograms Washington State Pumps For $10 A Gallon 

  Gas station pumps in Washington state are being reprogrammed to accommodate $10 a gallon and even higher as the summer driving season begins amid tight fuel supplies, according to a report. 

  The Post Millennial has learned gas station chain “76” has reprogrammed its pumps to include double-digit numbers in “price per gallon” at Washington state gas stations.

  A 76 spokesperson confirmed to The Post Millennial they added an extra digit to pumps, noting the change doesn’t necessarily imply the company was anticipating prices above $10 a gallon. 

  The 76 gas station in Auburn, Washington, located at 1725 Auburn Way North, is one of the stations that has had reprogrammed pumps. It also sells high-octane race fuel, which tends to be more expensive, though the special fuel is sold at separate pumps than regular, plus, premium, and diesel. 

  The Post Millennial also reports Washingtonians in the eastern part of the state, specifically in Kennewick, Pasco, and West Richland, are experiencing fuel shortages. 

  

  According to AAA, the average price of gas at a pump in Washington State is $5.18 — above the national average of $4.59 as of Thursday morning. Some of the most expensive gas in the US can be found just south of the state in California, where prices outside of San Francisco range between $6-7 a gallon for regular. 

  76’s move for double-digit prices comes as JPMorgan’s commodity strategist Natasha Kaneva warns the national average for gas can rise another 37% by August to around $6.20. Since much of the West Coast is priced above the national average, this may suggest double-digit prices could be seen in some areas. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 05/19/2022 – 21:00

• Biden's Big Lie: 'Green' Energy Doesn't Save Money, It's 4-6 Times More-Expensive
  Biden’s Big Lie: ‘Green’ Energy Doesn’t Save Money, It’s 4-6 Times More-Expensive

  Op-Ed authored by Stephen Moore via The Epoch Times,

  President Joe Biden keeps claiming that wind and solar energy are going to save money for consumers. But more government subsidies to “renewable energy” is a key feature of the White House anti-inflation strategy recently announced by Biden.

  

  He probably got that idea from John Kerry, the administration’s climate czar, who recently claimed that “solar and wind are less expensive than coal or oil or gas.” Pete Buttigieg, the Biden Transportation secretary, makes the same claims about the thousands of dollars that motorists can save if they buy electric cars.

  This couldn’t be more wrong.

  Proponents of “green” energy boondoggles are often masters at playing with the numbers, because that is the only way that wind and solar electricity generation make any sense. Advocates such as Kerry love to focus on the low operating costs of solar and wind since they don’t require constant purchases of fuel. Ignoring the relatively short lifespan of solar and wind components, as well as the high initial investment, can make it appear as though solar and wind operate at lower costs than fossil fuels or nuclear power.

  Let’s get the facts straight. The cost isn’t just what you pay at the retail level for gas or power. It also includes the taxes you pay to subsidize the power. A 2017 study by the Department of Energy found that for every dollar of government subsidy per BTU unit of energy produced from fossil fuels, wind and solar get at least $10.

  That’s anything but a money saver.

  The reason the subsidies are so high is that solar and wind have additional costs compared to their more reliable competition. “Green” energy sources are non-dispatchable, meaning their output can’t be changed to match demand. The wind doesn’t blow harder, and the sun doesn’t shine brighter, just because electricity use is peaking.

  Conversely, fossil fuel entities—such as a coal plant—can ramp up generation when we need it most and ramp down when demand falls.

  Widespread adoption of solar and wind generation would necessitate expensive batteries on a large scale to ensure that people still have power when the wind stops blowing or when the sun stops shining—like it does every single night.

  So, unlike reliable and flexible natural gas, solar and wind require large-scale storage solutions: massive banks of batteries that are hardly environmentally friendly but are also extremely expensive. And since batteries don’t last forever, they add to both the initial expense and maintenance costs during the life of a solar or wind energy generating station.

  The same problem exists with electric cars. The sticker price on EVs is considerably higher than for conventional gas-operated cars, and the so-called savings over time assume that the electric power for recharging is free. But it isn’t and power costs are rising almost as fast as gas prices.

  Factors such as these are consistently ignored by Kerry and other “green” energy activists.

  To genuinely evaluate dissimilar energy sources and provide an apples-to-apples comparison, the U.S. Energy Information Administration uses the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) and the Levelized Cost of Storage (LCOS). These measures consider the initial costs, the lifespan of generation and storage systems, maintenance and fuel costs, decommissioning expenses, subsidies, etc., and compare that to how much electricity is produced over a power plant’s lifetime.

  The numbers don’t lie: “green” energy is a complete waste of resources.

  The LCOE and LCOS for solar and on-shore wind farms are four times as expensive as natural gas. But offshore wind takes the cake—it’s six times as expensive as natural gas.

  Imagine paying four to six times as much every month for the same electricity! That’s the green paradise world that the Biden administration wants for America.

  Yet, it’s even worse than that because electric power costs greatly affect the cost of producing nearly everything else. In the case of producing aluminum, for example, a third of the total production cost is electricity alone.

  Imagine what quadrupling electricity prices would do to the prices of all the goods and services that people buy. If you think inflation is bad now, just wait until the nation is dependent on wind and solar—then you’ll see REAL price increases.

  And despite official government data contradicting their own claims, the Biden administration—including Kerry—continues spouting simple untruths on wind and solar. They hope that no one will check their fantastic facts.

  To the left, wanting it to be true, makes it true.

  All the while, the middle class is being crushed by $4-a-gallon gasoline and businesses everywhere are buckling under $5-per-gallon diesel. The Wall Street Journal warns that electric power blackouts could be coming because of overreliance on wind and solar power.

  At some point, if this push for green energy continues, the whole nation will start to look like California, where gas is $6 a gallon, the lights go out, and electric cars are stranded because of rolling blackouts.  If that’s our “green” future, then Americans should want nothing to do with it.

  Stephen Moore is a distinguished fellow in economics at the Heritage Foundation, and E.J. Antoni is a research fellow in Heritage’s Center for Data Analysis. Moore is a co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, where Antoni is a senior fellow.

  Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or Zero Hedge.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 05/19/2022 – 20:40

• "Build Blackouts Better": Half Of America Faces Power Blackouts This Summer, Regulator Warns 
  “Build Blackouts Better”: Half Of America Faces Power Blackouts This Summer, Regulator Warns 

  Tens of millions of Americans could be thrown into a summer of hell as a megadrought, heatwaves, and reduced power generation could trigger widespread rolling electricity blackouts from the Great Lakes to the West Coast, according to Bloomberg, citing a new report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), a regulatory body that manages grid stability. 

  NERC warned power supplies in the Western US could be strained this summer as a historic drought reduces hydroelectric power generation due to falling reservoir levels and what’s expected to be an unseasonably hot summer. Compound the hellacious weather backdrop with grids decommissioning fossil fuel power plants to fight climate change and their inability to bring on new green power generation, such as solar, wind, and batteries, in time, is a perfect storm waiting to happen that will produce electricity deficits that may force power companies into rolling blackouts for stability purposes.

  

  The regulatory body pointed out that supply-chain woes are delaying major Southwest solar projects, while some coal plants have trouble procuring supplies because of increased exports. They said there’s also an increasing threat of cyberattacks from Russia. 

  By region, the Midwest power grid will be extremely tight. Across the Western US, power generation capacity has declined 2.3% since last summer, even as demand is expected to increase. Grids in the region may have to source power from neighboring grids as extreme heat will cause people to crank up their air conditioners. A situation of low wind speeds could trigger blackouts, according to NERC. They outlined how the Midwest could face power shortfalls due to the removal of power capacity from retiring fossil fuel power plants. 

  NERC issued a similar warning last year, stating power grids that serve 40% of the US population were at risk of blackouts. One year later, there was only one notable blackout last June during a heatwave in the Pacific Northwest that left 9,000 customers without power. But with reduced electricity generation capacity outpacing new green power sources, the risks of blackouts are increasing this year. 

  In Texas, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)has already warned multiple times of grid stress as early summer-like heatwaves sent temperatures in certain parts of the state into triple-digit territory. 

  California’s grid operators have also warned of rising blackout threats –for the next three summers — as the state transitions to greener forms of energy. The drought and shrinking reservoir levels have reduced hydroelectric power generation on top of decommissioned fossil fuel power plants. “We know that reliability is going to be difficult in this time of transition,” said Alice Reynolds, president of the California Public Utilities Commission, during a May 6 press conference. 

  NERC’s report is an eye-opener for those living in the Western US. Many households face out-of-control inflation, soaring fuel prices, and food shortages ahead of what could be a summer of unrest as the Biden administration is bracing for a wave of violence upon the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe V. Wade. 

  America is slipping into the abyss as households get a taste of what it’s like to live in Venezuela. It’s not that far off from what people are experiencing today: soaring inflation, shortages, a ruling regime which so many claim was not elected by the majority and soon, rolling blackouts. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 05/19/2022 – 20:20

• Japan Probably Needs To Move To The Pro-China Camp
  Japan Probably Needs To Move To The Pro-China Camp

  By Russell Clark of the Capital Flows and Asset Markets Substack

  Japan has benefited massively from the free trade world that the US conjured into existence 40 years ago.

  

  Japanese industry and particularly its auto industry benefited hugely from access to the US auto market. For this reason, I expected US new car CPI moved higher (car prices rising after years of stagnation) that this would be Yen bullish. Instead the Yen has weakened considerably.

  

  From a macro and micro perspective, the idea of a stronger Yen with surging automobile prices makes sense. However, from a political point of view, I think this is probably wrong. Japan has for many years had a huge imbalance in auto markets with the US. Nissan, Toyota and Honda all have huge operations in the US, but you barely see a US auto brand in Japan.

  In a competitive democracy like the US, how could politicians possibly be elected pushing policies that expose domestic labour to foreign competition? I suspect after the inflationary 70s, politically there seems to me to be a coalition of consumers who wished to see inflation tamed, as well as business and capital owners that wanted to see union power crushed. Allowing first Japanese, and then other producers destroy the unionized US auto makers was a political win. That is the Japanese automakers were the spear tip of a policy to destroy US unions.

  

  However, the rise of “populism” everywhere in the West has shown is that the electorate has tired of “pro-capital” policies. For someone my age, pro-capital policies, or Washington Consensus policies were implemented by governments of all stripes, regardless of any political promises that were made. And I learned to ignore politics when investing, but 2016 I think has changed that calculation. Perhaps the best graph I can find to show the political change manifesting in real world change is US tax collections from Customs (ie tariffs). This is still a small number, but the political implications are huge. The US now cares when its imports come from, after decades of not caring, and will use tariffs to achieve political ends.

  

  Why is this a negative for Japan? Well of the three big economic blocs, Japan only runs a trade surplus with the US.

  

  At what point do political calculations, lets say for Candidate Trump, move to the idea of supporting US unionised workers in electorally competitive North East? As this map of unionisation in the US shows, unions members are more prevalent in the north east and California. Republicans candidates running on socially conservative issues, while protecting US businesses from foreign competition looks like an election winner to me, as it has been in the UK.

  

  On this analysis, Japan has real problem. The market it generates its trade surplus with looks to be changing politically. The current economic policy of weak yen and export lead growth looks to be an economic and politically dead end to me. The question is whether Japan will change policies? The biggest possible change they could embrace would be to come to a détente with China. The biggest sign that such a change was in the offing would be Japan beginning to build up gold reserves instead of treasuries, as this would allow them to facilitate trade with China, while avoiding any possible US sanctions. Maybe the small increase in gold holdings in Japan are a sign of this change?

  

  Japan is often considered Western, but culturally it is much closer to China than the US. The US/Japan military and economic alliance made Japan Western. If the US is unable to defend the Asia Pacific, which is increasingly likely, and US politics is turning against free trade, Japan is going to have to come to an “understanding” with China. If Japan builds gold reserves instead of treasuries, the financial effects will be profound.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 05/19/2022 – 20:00

• $18 For A Michelob Ultra: 'Beer-Flation' Hits PGA Championship
  $18 For A Michelob Ultra: ‘Beer-Flation’ Hits PGA Championship

  This week’s beer prices at the 2022 PGA Championship at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma, shocked many who attended the event (and even players) and sparked just as much buzz as Tiger Woods. 

  After spending hundreds of dollars for a basic ticket to walk around the course, watching players tee off or sink a putt (or miss a crucial putt), many craved a refreshing cold beer. However, ‘beer-flation’ hit the PGA as it costs $18 for a Michelob Ultra and $19 for a Stella Artois. 

  Pro-golfer Justin Thomas, who is in the tournament, tweeted Monday, “$18(!!!!!!) for a beer… uhhhh what. Gotta treat the fans better than that!”

  $18(!!!!!!) for a beer… uhhhh what. Gotta treat the fans better than that! 🤦🏽‍♂️ https://t.co/7DeyC7WTJE

  — Justin Thomas (@JustinThomas34) May 17, 2022

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  When asked about his Tweet, ESPN quoted Thomas saying, “I was blown away … You want people to come to the tournament. If I’m on the fence and I’m looking at the concession stand, that’s not the greatest thing.” 

  

  Twitter golf wasn’t pleased with the PGA. 

  Who really benefits from this gouging?..The rich golfer or the average sucker fan? https://t.co/M5NmiVlkxH

  — Louis Barbosa (@Spanaird50) May 18, 2022

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  @PGAChampionship how the hell do you justify this?😂 https://t.co/LinyUavrEo

  — Shastor (@lShastorl) May 19, 2022

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  It’s a rich man’s game lol https://t.co/VACYiFsx49

  — Wosny Lambre (@BigWos) May 17, 2022

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  Kerry Haigh, PGA of America chief championships officer, told ESPN beer prices are somewhat “comparable to stadium events” and that the organization is comfortable with prices. 

  And, of course, the PGA can charge an entire Andrew Jackson for a Michelob Ultra because those attending the event are wealthy people who have so far survived the worst inflation in four decades because they own assets, unlike the working poor who own nothing and have been crushed under negative real wage growth. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 05/19/2022 – 19:40

• Hunter Biden Took In $11 Million Over 5 Years According To NBC Analysis
  Hunter Biden Took In $11 Million Over 5 Years According To NBC Analysis

  Hunter Biden and his company brought in around $11 million over a five-year span, most of which was while his father was Vice President of the United States, according to an analysis by of his abandoned laptop by NBC News obtained through Rudy Giuliani.

  

  Perhaps most interesting is the harsh tone NBC takes with the first son…

  “Biden and his company brought in about $11 million via his roles as an attorney and a board member with a Ukrainian firm accused of bribery and his work with a Chinese businessman now accused of fraud.”

  The documents and the analysis, which don’t show what he did to earn millions from his Chinese partners, raise questions about national security, business ethics and potential legal exposure. In December 2020, Biden acknowledged in a statement that he was the subject of a federal investigation into his taxes. NBC News was first to report that an ex-business partner had warned Biden he should amend his tax returns to disclose $400,000 in income from the Ukrainian firm, Burisma. GOP congressional sources also say that if Republicans take back the House this fall, they’ll demand more documents and probe whether any of Biden’s income went to his father, President Joe Biden. -NBC News

  $5.8 million of Biden’s income – more than half his total earnings over the five years – came from two deals with Chinese business interests. The most lucrative of the two was a consulting relationship with a powerful (and now missing) CCP-linked Chinese businessman, Ye Jianming, who’s company, CEFC, paid $4,790,375.25 to Biden’s Owasco PC over the course of about one year. Jianming was accused by Chinese prosecutors of “economic crimes” in 2018, and hasn’t been seen in public since he was detained.

  

  “No government ethics rules apply to him,” said Walter Shaub, a former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics who is now an ethics expert with the Project on Government Oversight, who added that “it’s imperative that no one at DOJ and no one at the White House interfere with the criminal investigation in Delaware.”

  Shaub has previously raised questions over Hunter’s lucrative ‘art’ sales being a method for laundering influence.

  And according to the FBI’s former assistant director for counterintelligence, Frank Figliuzzi, there’s a national security risk when the CCP can get close to people like Biden.

  “It’s all about access and influence, and if you can compromise someone with both access and influence, that’s even better,” he said, adding “Better still if that target has already compromised himself.”

  An analysis of Hunter’s expenses reveal over $200,000 per month from October 2017 through February 2018 on everything from Porsche payments, dental work, cash withdrawals and luxury hotel rooms – which Biden has admitted he used on drugs and partying with strangers who often stole from him.

  

  Hunter also struggled to keep current on multiple mortgages, alimony, and child support payments to his ex-wife.

  Things got so bad that Hollywood attorney Kevin Morris, who began advising Hunter in 2020, arranged to pay off around $2 million owed to the IRS (which legal experts say doesn’t let Hunter off the hook for criminal liability, or necessarily erase his debts).

  NBC News analyst Chuck Rosenberg, a former Justice Department official, said that Biden’s paying what he owes could even be seen as an admission of criminal violations. Not paying taxes for many years, rather than one or two, Rosenberg said, helps establish intent, which can otherwise be a struggle for prosecutors in white-collar cases.

  Paying the bill, Rosenberg said, might help Biden if he faced sentencing and “mitigate some of the damage, but it doesn’t undo the crime. That would be like returning money to a bank that you robbed. You still robbed the bank.” -NBC News

  According to a Senate GOP report on Hunter’s finances, CEFC was one of three firms involved in certain transactions that were “among those identified as potential efforts to layer funds.”

  The U.S. Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network describes the layering of funds as “separating the illegally obtained money from its criminal source by layering it through a series of financial transactions, which makes it difficult to trace the money back to its original source.”

  But the report doesn’t say whether or not Hunter Biden was personally involved in any transactions that were suggested to involve “layering.” -NBC News

  Hunter also worked for Jianming associate Patrick Ho, who was convicted in US federal court of bribery in relations to oil deals in Chad and Uganda starting in September 2014. A jury found that Ho – while employed by CEFC – bribed or attempted to bribe officials to the tune of $2 million, and was sentenced to three years in prison on March 2019.

  Biden has denied any illegal activity and says he’s “cooperating completely” with a federal investigation in Delaware.

  “And I’m absolutely certain, 100 percent certain,” said Hunter, “that at the end of the investigation, I will be cleared of any wrongdoing.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 05/19/2022 – 19:22

• Is The Global Debt Bubble About To Burst?
  Is The Global Debt Bubble About To Burst?

  Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,

  Is the debt bubble supporting the world economy in danger of collapsing?

  The years between 1981 and 2020 were very special years for the world economy because interest rates were generally falling:

  

  Figure 1. Yields on 10-year and 3-month US Treasuries, in a chart made by the Federal Reserve of St. Louis, as of May 10, 2022.

  In some sense, falling interest rates meant that debt was becoming increasingly affordable. The monthly out-of-pocket expense for a new $500,000 mortgage was falling lower and lower. Automobile payments for a new $30,000 vehicle could more easily be accommodated into a person’s budget. A business would find it more affordable to add $5,000,000 in new debt to open at an additional location. With these beneficial effects, it would be no surprise if a debt bubble were to form.

  With an ever-lower cost of debt, the economy has had a hidden tailwind pushing it long between 1981 to 2020. Now that interest rates are again rising, the danger is that a substantial portion of this debt bubble may collapse. My concern is that the economy may be headed for an incredibly hard landing because of the inter-relationship between interest rates and energy prices (Figure 2), and the important role energy plays in powering the economy.

  

  Figure 2. Chart showing the important role Quantitative Easing (QE) to lower interest rates plays in adjusting the level of “demand” (and thus the selling price) for oil. Lower interest rates make goods and services created with higher-priced oil more affordable. In addition to the items noted on the chart, US QE3 was discontinued in 2014, about the time of the 2014 oil price crash. Also, the debt bubble crash of 2008 seems to be the indirect result of the US raising short term interest rates (Figure 1) in the 2004 to 2007 period.

  In this post, I will try to explain my concerns.

  [1] Ever since civilization began, a combination of (a) energy consumption and (b) debt has been required to power the economy.

  Under the laws of physics, energy is required to power the economy. This happens because it takes the “dissipation” of energy to perform any activity that contributes to GDP. The energy dissipated can be the food energy that a person eats, or it can be wood or coal or another material burned to provide energy. Sometimes the energy dissipated is in the form of electricity. Looking back, we can see the close relationship between total energy consumption and world total GDP.

  

  Figure 3. World energy consumption for the period 1990 to 2020, based on energy data from BP’s 2021 Statistical Review of World Energy and world Purchasing Power Parity GDP in 2017 International Dollars, as published by the World Bank.

  The need for debt or some other approach that acts as a funding mechanism for capital expenditures (sale of shares of stock, for example), comes from the fact that humans make investments that will not produce a return for many years. For example, ever since civilization began, people have been planting crops. In some cases, there is a delay of a few months before a crop is produced; in other cases, such as with fruit or nut trees, there can be a delay of years before the investment pays back. Even the purchase by an individual of a home or a vehicle is, in a sense, an investment that will offer a return over a period of years.

  With all parts of the economy benefiting from the lower interest rates (except, perhaps, banks and others lending the funds, who are making less profit from the lower interest rates), it is easy to see why lower interest rates would tend to stimulate new investment and drive up demand for commodities.

  Commodities are used in great quantity, but the supply available at any one time is tiny by comparison. A sudden increase in demand will tend to send the commodity price higher because the quantity of the commodity available will need to be rationed among more would-be purchasers. A sudden decrease in the demand for a commodity (for example, crude oil, or wheat) will tend to send prices lower. Therefore, we see the strange sharp corners in Figure 2 that seem to be related to changing debt levels and higher or lower interest rates.

  [2] The current plan of central banks is to raise interest rates aggressively. My concern is that this approach will leave commodity prices too low for producers. They will be tempted to decrease or stop production.

  Politicians are concerned about the price of food and fuel being too high for consumers. Lenders are concerned about interest rates being too low to properly compensate for the loss of value of their investments due to inflation. The plan, which is already being implemented in the United States, is to raise interest rates and to significantly reverse Quantitative Easing (QE). Some people call the latter Quantitative Tightening (QT).

  The concern that I have is that aggressively raising interest rates and reversing QE will lead to commodity prices that are too low for producers. There are likely to be many other impacts as well, such as the following:

  • Lower energy supply, due to cutbacks in production and lack of new investment

  • Lower food supply, due to inadequate fertilizer and broken supply lines

  • Much defaulting debt

  • Pension plans that reduce or stop payments because of debt-related problems

  • Falling prices of stock

  • Defaults on derivatives

  [3] My analysis shows how important increased energy consumption has been to economic growth over the last 200 years. Energy consumption per capita has been growing during this entire period, except during times of serious economic distress.

  

  Figure 4. World energy consumption from 1820-2010, based on data from Appendix A of Vaclav Smil’s Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects and BP Statistical Review of World Energy for 1965 and subsequent. Wind and solar energy are included in “Biofuels.”

  Figure 4 shows the amazing growth in world energy consumption between 1820 and 2010. In the early part of the period, the energy used was mostly wood burned as fuel. In some parts of the world, animal dung was also used as fuel. Gradually, other fuels were added to the mix.

  

  Figure 5. Estimated average annual increase in world energy consumption over 10-year periods using the data underlying Figure 4, plus similar additional data through 2020.

  Figure 5 takes the same information shown in Figure 4 and calculates the average approximate annual increase in world energy consumption over 10-year periods. A person can see from this chart that the periods from 1951-1960 and from 1961-1970 were outliers on the high side. This was the time of rebuilding after World War II. Many families were able to own a car for the first time. The US highway interstate system was begun. Many pipelines and electricity transmission lines were built. This building continued into the 1971-1980 period.

  

  Figure 6. Same chart as Figure 5, except that the portion of economic growth that was devoted to population growth is shown in blue at the bottom of each 10-year period. The amount of growth in energy consumption “left over” for improvement in the standard of living is shown in red.

  Figure 6 displays the same information as Figure 5, except that each column is divided into two pieces. The lower (blue) portion represents the average annual growth in population during each period. The part left over at the top (in red) represents the growth in energy consumption that was available for increases in standard of living.

  

  Figure 7. The same information displayed in Figure 6, displayed as an area chart. Blue areas represent average annual population growth percentages during these 10-year periods. The red area is determined by subtraction. It represents the amount of energy consumption growth that is “left over” for growth in the standard of living. Captions show distressing events during periods of low increases in the portion available to raise standards of living.

  Figure 7 shows the same information as Figure 6, displayed as an area chart. I have also shown some of the distressing events that happened when growth in population was, in effect, taking up essentially all of energy consumption growth. The world economy could not grow normally. There was a tendency toward conflict. Strange events would happen during these periods, including the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union and the restrictions associated with the COVID pandemic.

  The economy is a self-organizing system that behaves strangely when there is not enough inexpensive energy of the right types available to the system. Wars tend to start. Layers of government may disappear. Strange lockdowns may occur, such as the current restrictions in China.

  [4] The energy situation at the time of rising interest rates in the 1960 to 1980 period was very different from today.

  If we define years with high inflation rates as those with inflation rates of 5% or higher, Figure 8 shows that the period with high US inflation rates included nearly all the years from 1969 through 1982. Using a 5% inflation cutoff, the year 2021 would not qualify as a high inflation rate year.

  

  Figure 8. US inflation rates, based on Table 1.1.4 Price Index for Gross Domestic Product, published by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis.

  It is only when we look at annualized quarterly data that inflation rates start spiking to high levels. Inflation rates have been above 5% in each of the four quarters ended 2022-Q1. Trade problems related to the Ukraine Conflict have tended to add to price pressures recently.

  

  Figure 9. US inflation rates, based on Table 1.1.4 Price Index for Gross Domestic Product, published by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis.

  Underlying these price spikes are increases in the prices of many commodities. Some of this represents a bounce back from artificially low prices that began in late 2014, probably related to the discontinuation of US QE3 (See Figure 2). These prices were far too low for producers. Coal and natural gas prices have also needed to rise, as a result of depletion and prior low prices. Food prices are also rising rapidly, since food is grown and transported using considerable quantities of fossil fuels.

  The main differences between that period leading up to 1980 and now are the following:

  [a] The big problem in the 1970s was spiking crude oil prices. Now, our problems seem to be spiking crude oil, natural gas and coal prices. In fact, nuclear power may also be a problem because a significant portion of uranium processing is performed in Russia. Thus, we now seem to be verging on losing nearly all our energy supplies to conflict or high prices!

  [b] In the 1970s, there were many solutions to the crude oil problem, practically right around the corner. Electricity production could be switched from crude oil to coal or nuclear, with little problem, apart from building the new infrastructure. US cars were very large and fuel inefficient in the early 1970s. These could be replaced with smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles that were already being manufactured in Europe and Japan. Home heating could be transferred to natural gas or propane, to save crude oil for places where energy density was really needed.

  Today, we are told that a transition to green energy is a solution. Unfortunately, this is mostly wishful thinking. At best, a transition to green energy will need a huge investment of fossil fuels (which are increasingly unavailable) over a period of at least 30 to 50 years if it is to be successful. See my article, Limits to Green Energy Are Becoming Much Clearer. Vaclav Smil, in his book Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects, discusses the need for very long transitions because energy supply needs to match the devices using it. Furthermore, new energy types are generally only add-ons to other supply, not replacements for those supplies.

  [c] The types of economic growth in (a) the 1960 to 1980 period and (b) the period since 2008 are very different. In the earlier of these periods (especially prior to 1973), it was easy to extract oil, coal and natural gas inexpensively. Inflation-adjusted oil prices of less than $20 per barrel were typical. An ever-increasing supply of this oil seemed to be available. New machines (created with fossil fuels) made workers increasingly efficient. The economy tended to “overheat” if interest rates were not repeatedly raised (Figure 1). While higher interest rates could be expected to slow the economy, this was of little concern because rapid growth seemed to be inevitable. The supply of finished goods and services made by the economy was growing rapidly, even with headwinds from the higher interest rates.

  On the other hand, in the 2008 to 2020 period, economic growth is largely the result of financial manipulation. The system has been flooded with increasing amounts of debt at ever lower interest rates. By the time of the lockdowns of 2020, would-be workers were being paid for doing nothing. World production of finished goods and services declined in 2020, and it has had difficulty rising since. In the first quarter of 2022, the US economy contracted by -1.4%. If headwinds from higher interest rates and QT are added, the economic system is likely to encounter substantial debt defaults and increasing breakdowns of supply lines.

  [5] Today’s spiking energy prices appear to be much more closely related to the problems of the 1913 to 1945 era than they are to the problems of the late 1970s.

  Looking back at Figure 7, our current period is more like the period between the two world wars than the period in the 1970s that we often associate with high inflation. In both periods, the “red” portion of the chart (the portion I identify with rising standard of living), has pretty much disappeared. In both the 1913 to 1945 period and today, it is nearly all the energy supplies other than biofuels that are disappearing.

  In the 1913 to 1945 period, the problem was coal. Mines were becoming increasingly depleted, but raising coal prices to pay for the higher cost of extracting coal from depleted mines tended to make the coal prohibitively expensive. Mine operators tried to reduce wages, but this was not a solution either. Fighting broke out among countries, almost certainly related to inadequate coal supplies. Countries wanted coal to supply to their citizens so that industry could continue, and so that citizens could continue heating their homes.

  

  Figure 10. Slide prepared by Gail Tverberg showing peak coal estimates for the UK and for Germany.

  As stated at the beginning of this section, today’s problem is that nearly all our energy supplies are becoming unaffordable. In some sense, wind and solar may look better, but this is because of mandates and subsidies. They are not suitable for operating the world economy within any reasonable time frame.

  There are other parallels to the 1913 to 1945 period. One of the big problems of the 1930s was prices that would not rise high enough for farmers to make a profit. Oil prices in the United States were extraordinarily low then. BP 2021 Statistical Review of World Energy reports that the average oil price in 1931, in 2020 US$, was $11.08. This is the lowest inflation-adjusted price of any year back to 1865. Such a price was almost certainly too low for producers to make a profit. Low prices, relative to rising costs, have recently been problems for both farmer and oil producers.

  Another major problem of the 1930s was huge income disparity. Wide income disparity is again an issue today, thanks increased specialization. Competition with unskilled workers in low wage countries is also an issue.

  It is important to note that the big problem of the 1930s was deflation rather than inflation, as the debt bubble started popping in 1929.

  [6] If a person looks only at the outcome of raising interest rates in the 1960s to 1980 timeframe, it is easy to get a misleading idea of the impact of increased interest rates now.

  If people look only at what happened in the 1980s, the longer-term impact of the spike in interest rates doesn’t seem too severe. The world economy was growing well before the interest rates were raised. After the peak in interest rates, the world economy generally continued to grow. As a result of the high oil prices and the spiking interest rates, the world hastened its transition to using a bit less crude oil per person.

  

  Figure 11. Per capita crude oil production from 1973 through 2021. Crude oil amounts are from international statistics of the US Energy Information Administration. Population estimates are from UN 2019 population estimates. The low population growth projection from the UN data is used for 2021.

  At the same time, the world economy was able to expand the use of other energy products, at least through 2018.

  

  Figure 12. World per capita total energy supply based on data from BP’s 2021 Statistical Review of World Energy. World per capita crude oil is based on international data of the EIA, together with UN 2019 population estimates. Note that crude oil data is through 2021, but total energy amounts are only through 2020.

  Since 2019, our problem has been that the total energy supply has not been keeping up with the rising population. The cost of extraction of all kinds of oil, coal and natural gas keeps rising due to depletion, but the ability of customers to afford the higher prices of finished goods and services made with those energy products does not rise to match these higher costs. Energy prices probably would have spiked in 2020 if it were not for COVID-related restrictions. Production of oil, coal and natural gas has not been able to rise sufficiently after the lockdowns for economies to fully re-open. This is the primary reason for the recent spiking of energy prices.

  Turning to inflation rates, the relationship between higher interest rates (Figure 1) and annual inflation rates (Figure 8) is surprisingly not very close. Inflation rates rose during the 1960 to 1973 period despite rising interest rates, mostly likely because of the rapid growth of the economy from an increased per-capita supply of inexpensive energy.

  Figure 8 shows that inflation rates did not come down immediately after interest rates were raised to a high level in 1980, either. There was a decline in the inflation rate to 4% in 1983, but it was not until the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union in 1991 that inflation rates have tended to stay close to 2% per year.

  [7] A more relevant recent example with respect to the expected impact of rising interest rates is the impact of the increase in US short-term interest rates in the 2004 to 2007 period. This led to the subprime debt collapse in the US, associated with the Great Recession of 2008-2009.

  Looking back at Figure 1, a person can see the effect of raising short-term interest rates in the 2004 to 2007 era. This eventually led to the Great Recession of 2008-2009. I wrote about this in my academic paper, Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis, published in the journal Energy in 2010.

  The situation we are facing today is much more severe than in 2008. The debt bubble is much larger. The shortage of energy products has spread beyond oil to coal and natural gas, as well. The idea of raising interest rates today is very much like going into the Great Depression and deciding to raise interest rates because bankers don’t feel like they are getting an adequate share of the goods and services produced by the economy. If there really aren’t enough goods and services for everyone, giving lenders a larger share of the total supply cannot work out well.

  [8] The problems we are encountering have been hidden for many years by an outdated understanding of how the economy operates.

  Because of the physics of the economy, it behaves very differently than most people assume. People almost invariably assume that all aspects of the economy can “stay together” regardless of whether there are shortages of energy or of other products. People also assume that shortages will be immediately become obvious through high prices, without realizing the huge role interest rates and debt levels play. People further assume that these spiking prices will somehow bring about greater supply, and the whole system will go on as before. Furthermore, they expect that whatever resources are in the ground, which we have the technical capability to extract, can be extracted.

  It is important to note that prices are not necessarily a good indicator of shortages. Just as a fever can have many causes, high prices can have many causes.

  The economy can only continue as long as all of its important parts continue. We cannot assume that reported reserves of anything can really be extracted, even if the reserves have been audited by a reliable auditor. What actually can be extracted depends on prices staying high enough to generate funds for additional investment as required. The amount that can be extracted also depends on the continuation of international supply lines providing goods such as steel pipe. The continued existence of governments that can keep order in the areas where extraction is to take place is important, as well.

  What we should be most concerned about is a very rapidly shrinking economic system that cannot accommodate very many people. It seems that such a situation might occur if the debt bubble is popped and too many supply lines are broken. There may be a time lag between when interest rates are raised and when the adverse impacts on the economy are seen. This is a reason why central bankers should be very cautious about the increases in interest rates they make as well as QT. The situation may turn out much worse than planned!

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 05/19/2022 – 19:20

• "Utter Nonsense": Hawley Eviscerates Energy Secretary For Blaming Inflation On 'Putin Price Hike'
  “Utter Nonsense”: Hawley Eviscerates Energy Secretary For Blaming Inflation On ‘Putin Price Hike’

  Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) ripped into Biden’s Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Thursday after she tried to blame soaring inflation on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

  

  Hawley asked Granholm whether she thought the rising price of gasoline was “acceptable,” to which she said “it is not, and you can thank the activity of Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine, and pulling–“

  To which Hawley said “With all due respect, Madame Secretary, that’s utter nonsense,” adding “The average gas price in my state was $2.07. Eight months later, eight months later, long before Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, that price was up over 30%, and it’s been going up consistently since.”

  “What are you doing to reverse this administration’s policies?” Hawley asked, to which Granholm replied: “It is not the administration policies that have affected supply and demand.”

  Hawley didn’t let her get away with it – shooting back: “From January to August, the price of gasoline was up 30% in my state alone. It’s been a continuous upward tick since then. And here’s what your president did when he first came to office; he immediately re-entered the Paris Climate Accord, he canceled the Keystone pipeline, he halted leasing programs in ANWAR, he issued a 60-day halt on all new oil and gas leases and drilling permits on federal lands and waters – that’s nationwide, that accounts by the way for 25% of US oil production, he directed federal agencies to eliminate all support for fossil fuels, he imposed new regulations on oil and gas and methane emissions.

  Those were all just in the first few days! Are you telling me it’s had no effect?”

  Visualizing the “utter nonsense”…

  

  Watch:

  Secretary Granholm tries to repeat Biden’s bogus “Putin Price Hike” talking point and it… does not end well for her…

  “That’s utter nonsense,” says @HawleyMO. Long before Putin invaded Ukraine, “from January to August the price of gasoline was up over 30% in my state…” pic.twitter.com/nM809xJove

  — Abigail Marone 🇺🇸 (@abigailmarone) May 19, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsFull clip below:

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 05/19/2022 – 19:20

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• European Auto Sales Plunge 20% In April, Extending 10 Month Losing Streak
  European Auto Sales Plunge 20% In April, Extending 10 Month Losing Streak

  In an ominous sign for the auto industry overseas, new vehicle sales in Europe shrank by 20% – falling for the 10th month in a row – according to a Wednesday morning Bloomberg wrap up. 

  Registrations for April fell 20% to 830,447 vehicles, the report noted. The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association noted that it was the steepest decline this year. Year to date, the Stoxx 600 Automobiles and Parts Index is down 16%.

  Stellantis suffered the worst in April, with a 31% drop. Names like Mercedes-Benz Group, BMW, Volkswagen, Renault and Volvo will also be on watch heading into the back end of this week. 

  The cause of the slumping sales continues to be supply chain woes, though a strapped consumer in a rising rate environment may also likely contribute to tightening going forward.

  

  The losing streak continues months after Goldman had opined that European automakers had already priced in a “stressed” scenario. The Stoxx 600 Auto and Parts Index was around the same level back in March and appears to be consolidating since then.

  The bank had predicted that energy inflation wouldn’t have a “material impact” on COGS and that impacts of energy prices were “low at this point”. The bank still cut its EBIT estimates by 2%/4% and 14%/11% on average for 2022/23 for carmakers. 

  Despite cuts, the bank said back in March that auto names like BMW and Stellantis “do not look expensive even under our stress scenario”. In March, we also highlighted when Volkswagen’s CEO said that the Ukrainian war could be worse for European autos than Covid was:

  “The interruption to global supply chains could lead to huge price increases, scarcity of energy and inflation,” Herbert Diess, chief executive of the German carmaker, told the Financial Times.

  “It could be very risky for the European and German economies.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 05/19/2022 – 02:45

• Major NATO War Games Set To Begin Miles From Russian Base
  Major NATO War Games Set To Begin Miles From Russian Base

  Authored by Kyle Anzalone & Will Porter via The Libertarian Institute,

  The North Atlantic Treaty Organization will soon conduct large-scale exercises in the Baltics, with thousands of troops from more than a dozen nations set to take part in war games just 40 miles from the nearest Russian military base.

  Dubbed “Hedgehog,” the drills will kick off later this week in Estonia and run until June 3, meant to simulate a Russian invasion. They will involve 15,000 troops from 14 countries – including the United States, Britain, Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Norway, as well as non-NATO members Ukraine, Georgia, Sweden and Finland. 

  

  According to Major General Veiko-Vello Palm, deputy commander of the Estonian Defence Forces, the exercise will take place just 40 miles from a Russian military base, a facility hosting Moscow’s 76th Guards Air Assault Division in the border city of Pskov. 

  The size of the war games – among the largest in the Baltics since the fall of the USSR – their proximity to the Russian border, and the inclusion of non-NATO states are likely to escalate tensions with Moscow. Though the exercises were planned before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, they will no doubt serve as an additional show of force as NATO members flood the Ukrainian battlefield with billions of dollars in weapons and gear.

  The drills come as US lawmakers move ahead on a massive $40 billion aid package for Kiev, around half of which will be devoted to arms shipments. That bill follows more than $14 billion in aid already delivered or authorized by the US government.

  The Hedgehog exercise will also overlap with two major NATO and allied military drills currently being held in the region, “Defender Europe” and “Swift Response,” which together involve around 18,000 soldiers from 20 countries. A flurry of additional war games are planned for Germany, Finland, Poland and elsewhere in the coming months.

  Large-scale NATO military exercises Siil 2022 (Hedgehog 2022), start in Estonia and will last from 16 May to 3 June involving 15,000 troops from 14 countries. These are one of the largest drills in the country since 1991https://t.co/lKjikgwkQS

  — Hromadske Int. (@Hromadske) May 16, 2022

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

  Major General Palm noted that Hedgehog would include more participants than originally planned due to the war in Ukraine, though declined to go into specifics about how many Ukrainian and Georgian troops would take part. “I would like not to go into details, but we are talking about a few people, not tens or hundreds of people,” he said.

  It’s unclear if Finland or Sweden were initially meant to participate in the latest drills, but both countries recently applied for membership in the NATO bloc, citing security concerns stemming from Moscow’s attack on its neighbor.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 05/19/2022 – 02:00

• Get Ready To Be Muzzled: The Coming War On So-Called 'Hate Speech'
  Get Ready To Be Muzzled: The Coming War On So-Called ‘Hate Speech’

  Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech.”

  – Benjamin Franklin

  Beware of those who want to monitor, muzzle, catalogue and censor speech.

  

  Especially be on your guard when the reasons given for limiting your freedoms end up expanding the government’s powers.

  In the wake of a mass shooting in Buffalo, NY, carried out by an 18-year-old gunman in military gear allegedly motivated by fears that the white race is in danger of being replaced, there have been renewed calls for social media monitoring, censorship of flagged content that could be construed as dangerous or hateful, and limitations on free speech activities, particularly online.

  As expected, those who want safety at all costs will clamor for more gun control measures (if not at an outright ban on weapons for non-military, non-police personnel), widespread mental health screening of the general population and greater scrutiny of military veterans, more threat assessments and behavioral sensing warnings, more surveillance cameras with facial recognition capabilities, more “See Something, Say Something” programs aimed at turning Americans into snitches and spies, more metal detectors and whole-body imaging devices at soft targets, more roaming squads of militarized police empowered to do random bag searches, more fusion centers to centralize and disseminate information to law enforcement agencies, and more surveillance of what Americans say and do, where they go, what they buy and how they spend their time.

  All of these measures play into the government’s hands.

  As we have learned the hard way, the phantom promise of safety in exchange for restricted or regulated liberty is a false, misguided doctrine that serves only to give the government greater authority to crack down, lock down, and institute even more totalitarian policies for the so-called sake of national security without many objections from the citizenry.

  Add the Department of Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Governance Board” to that mix, empower it to monitor online activity and police so-called “disinformation,” and you have the makings of a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.

  After all, it’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth.

  Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.

  If the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.

  It’s been a long time since free speech was actually free.

  On paper—at least according to the U.S. Constitution—we are technically free to speak.

  In reality, however, we are only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow.

  That’s not a whole lot of freedom, especially if you’re inclined to voice opinions that may be construed as conspiratorial or dangerous.

  This steady, pervasive censorship creep clothed in tyrannical self-righteousness and inflicted on us by technological behemoths (both corporate and governmental) is technofascism, and it does not tolerate dissent.

  These internet censors are not acting in our best interests to protect us from dangerous, disinformation campaigns. They’re laying the groundwork now to preempt any “dangerous” ideas that might challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.

  The internet, hailed as a super-information highway, is increasingly becoming the police state’s secret weapon. This “policing of the mind” is exactly the danger author Jim Keith warned about when he predicted that “information and communication sources are gradually being linked together into a single computerized network, providing an opportunity for unheralded control of what will be broadcast, what will be said, and ultimately what will be thought.”

  What we are witnessing is the modern-day equivalent of book burning which involves doing away with dangerous ideas—legitimate or not—and the people who espouse them.

  Where we stand now is at the juncture of OldSpeak (where words have meanings, and ideas can be dangerous) and Newspeak (where only that which is “safe” and “accepted” by the majority is permitted). The power elite has made their intentions clear: they will pursue and prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that challenge their authority.

  Having been reduced to a cowering citizenry—mute in the face of elected officials who refuse to represent us, helpless in the face of police brutality, powerless in the face of militarized tactics and technology that treat us like enemy combatants on a battlefield, and naked in the face of government surveillance that sees and hears all—we have nowhere left to go and nothing left to say that cannot be misconstrued and used to muzzle us.

  Yet what a lot of people fail to understand, however, is that it’s not just what you say or do that is being monitored, but how you think that is being tracked and targeted.

  We’ve already seen this play out on the state and federal level with hate crime legislation that cracks down on so-called “hateful” thoughts and expression, encourages self-censoring and reduces free debate on various subject matter. 

  With every passing day, we’re being moved further down the road towards a totalitarian society characterized by government censorship, violence, corruption, hypocrisy and intolerance, all packaged for our supposed benefit in the Orwellian doublespeak of national security, tolerance and so-called “government speech.”

  Little by little, Americans have been conditioned to accept routine incursions on their freedoms.

  This is how oppression becomes systemic, what is referred to as creeping normality, or a death by a thousand cuts.

  It’s a concept invoked by Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist Jared Diamond to describe how major changes, if implemented slowly in small stages over time, can be accepted as normal without the shock and resistance that might greet a sudden upheaval.

  Diamond’s concerns related to Easter Island’s now-vanished civilization and the societal decline and environmental degradation that contributed to it, but it’s a powerful analogy for the steady erosion of our freedoms and decline of our country right under our noses.

  As Diamond explains, “In just a few centuries, the people of Easter Island wiped out their forest, drove their plants and animals to extinction, and saw their complex society spiral into chaos and cannibalism… Why didn’t they look around, realize what they were doing, and stop before it was too late? What were they thinking when they cut down the last palm tree?”

  His answer: “I suspect that the disaster happened not with a bang but with a whimper.”

  Much like America’s own colonists, Easter Island’s early colonists discovered a new world—“a pristine paradise”—teeming with life. Yet almost 2000 years after its first settlers arrived, Easter Island was reduced to a barren graveyard by a populace so focused on their immediate needs that they failed to preserve paradise for future generations.

  The same could be said of the America today: it, too, is being reduced to a barren graveyard by a populace so focused on their immediate needs that they are failing to preserve freedom for future generations.

  In Easter Island’s case, as Diamond speculates:

  “The forest…vanished slowly, over decades. Perhaps war interrupted the moving teams; perhaps by the time the carvers had finished their work, the last rope snapped. In the meantime, any islander who tried to warn about the dangers of progressive deforestation would have been overridden by vested interests of carvers, bureaucrats, and chiefs, whose jobs depended on continued deforestation… The changes in forest cover from year to year would have been hard to detect… Only older people, recollecting their childhoods decades earlier, could have recognized a difference. Gradually trees became fewer, smaller, and less important. By the time the last fruit-bearing adult palm tree was cut, palms had long since ceased to be of economic significance. That left only smaller and smaller palm saplings to clear each year, along with other bushes and treelets. No one would have noticed the felling of the last small palm.”

  Sound painfully familiar yet?

  We’ve already torn down the rich forest of liberties established by our founders. It has vanished slowly, over the decades. Those who warned against the dangers posed by too many laws, invasive surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids and the like have been silenced and ignored. They stopped teaching about freedom in the schools. Few Americans know their history. And even fewer seem to care that their fellow Americans are being jailed, muzzled, shot, tasered, and treated as if they have no rights at all.

  The erosion of our freedoms happened so incrementally, no one seemed to notice. Only the older generations, remembering what true freedom was like, recognized the difference. Gradually, the freedoms enjoyed by the citizenry became fewer, smaller and less important. By the time the last freedom falls, no one will know the difference.

  This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls: with a thousand cuts, each one justified or ignored or shrugged over as inconsequential enough by itself to bother, but they add up.

  Each cut, each attempt to undermine our freedoms, each loss of some critical right—to think freely, to assemble, to speak without fear of being shamed or censored, to raise our children as we see fit, to worship or not worship as our conscience dictates, to eat what we want and love who we want, to live as we want—they add up to an immeasurable failure on the part of each and every one of us to stop the descent down that slippery slope.

  We are on that downward slope now.

  The contagion of fear that has been spread with the help of government agencies, corporations and the power elite is poisoning the well, whitewashing our history, turning citizen against citizen, and stripping us of our rights.

  America is approaching another reckoning right now, one that will pit our commitment to freedom principles against a level of fear-mongering that is being used to wreak havoc on everything in its path.

  Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, while we squabble over which side is winning this losing battle, a tsunami approaches.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 05/19/2022 – 00:05

• These Companies Had The Most Patents Granted In 2021
  These Companies Had The Most Patents Granted In 2021

  Companies around the world invest billions in R&D to provide cutting-edge innovation to their products and services. In order to protect these investments, companies apply for patents. Therefore, as Visual Capitalist’s Raul Amoros explains below, the number of utility patents a company is granted can be considered a rough measure of its level of innovation.

  Every year, the Patent 300 List identifies America’s most innovative companies within the intellectual property space by analyzing the patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  In 2021, the USPTO granted a total of 327,798 utility patents, down 7% from the previous year. Let’s take a look at which companies generated the most patents in 2021.

  

  For 29 consecutive years, IBM has led U.S. companies in the number of patents received annually.

  In 2021, the company received 8,540 patents, a 9% decline from the previous year.

  IBM’s innovations are focused on solving major global challenges, and cover areas such as sustainable growth, climate change, and preventing future pandemics, as well as initiatives enabling food and energy security. They aim to address these problems through a blend of high-performance computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and quantum computing.

  One of IBM’s most noteworthy innovations in 2021 was their new quantum processor called Eagle, which broke the 100-qubit barrier to bring quantum computing into a new era. This processor has the ability to solve problems that classical computers can’t, giving it the potential to bring real-world benefits to different fields from renewable energy to finance and more.

  Samsung: A Close Second Innovator

  Samsung Electronics is one of the biggest innovators over the last decade. In 2021, the company got 8,517 patents granted by the USPTO, a close second to IBM.

  The company’s patent-winning innovations take place in several areas, including virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR), artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), 5G technologies, and autonomous driving.

  The Technology Sector Dominates Utility Patents

  Unsurprisingly, out of the top 25 companies with the most patents granted in 2021, 16 of them belong to the technology sector.

  However, utility patents are not only limited to tech companies.

  In fact, companies from all sectors apply for patents every year. Patents are great assets for companies since they give them exclusive commercial rights for their inventions and protect them from competition. This is one of the main reasons we see companies getting thousands of new patents every year.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 05/18/2022 – 23:45

• Missouri Bill Prevents Doctors Being Disciplined If They Prescribe Ivermectin Or Hydroxychloroquine
  Missouri Bill Prevents Doctors Being Disciplined If They Prescribe Ivermectin Or Hydroxychloroquine

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

  Missouri lawmakers passed legislation that prevents state licensing boards from disciplining doctors who prescribe ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.

  

  Sponsored by Rep. Brenda Kay Shields (R-Mo.), HB 2149 also bars pharmacists from questioning doctors or disputing patients regarding the usage of such drugs and their efficacy.

  With a convincing 130–4 vote in the House, HB 2149 passed both chambers on May 12 and currently heads to the office of Gov. Mike Parson to be potentially signed into law.

  “The board shall not deny, revoke, or suspend, or otherwise take any disciplinary action against, a certificate of registration or authority, permit, or license required by this chapter for any person due to the lawful dispensing, distributing, or selling of ivermectin tablets or hydroxychloroquine sulfate tablets for human use in accordance with prescriber directions,” reads the draft of the bill (pdf).

  It adds, “A pharmacist shall not contact the prescribing physician or the patient to dispute the efficacy of ivermectin tablets or hydroxychloroquine sulfate tablets for human use unless the physician or patient inquires of the pharmacist about the efficacy of ivermectin tablets or hydroxychloroquine sulfate tablets.”

  Critics of the bill have noted that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not given approval for usage of the drugs. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine have been divisive drugs and politically polarized throughout the pandemic.

  “But, nevertheless, the Missouri legislature has chosen to ‘own the libs’ by issuing a gag order against every pharmacist in this state from offering their medical opinion on taking either one of those medications—even if it could kill their patient,” wrote former Democratic nominee Lindsey Simmons in a May 12 Twitter post.

  Although 22 countries across the world have approved the use of ivermectin in treating COVID-19, the FDA maintains that the current data show the drug to be ineffective. Large doses can be dangerous, it says.

  A recent study published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases analyzed a national federated database of adults that compared ivermectin with the FDA-approved COVID-19 medication, remdesivir.

  “After using propensity score matching and adjusting for potential confounders, ivermectin was associated with reduced mortality vs remdesivir,” researchers wrote. “To our knowledge, this is the largest association study of patients with COVID-19, mortality, and ivermectin.”

  According to The Associated Press, Missouri state Rep. Patty Lewis, a Democrat, agreed to the bill to satisfy a group of conservatives in the Senate. She added that the bill will not change anything significantly as medical boards do not engage in punishing doctors who prescribe drugs legally.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 05/18/2022 – 23:25

• Is The Housing Crash Starting?
  Is The Housing Crash Starting?

  Last week, we shared extensive empirical evidence that the US housing market is starting to crack when we quoted regional managers from John Burns Real Estate Consulting, all of whom agreed on one (or more) of three things: i) Demand is slowing, namely entry-level due to payment shock; ii) Investors are pulling back; and iii) Ripple effect of rising rates starting to hit move-up market. Here are some excerpts:

  • Dallas builder: “Interest lists are shrinking or buyers are truly pausing.”

  • Houston builder: “Many first-time buyers simply no longer qualify with the increase in interest rates, as their debt-to-income ratio gets out of whack.”

  • San Antonio builder: “Traffic has been cut in half since the hike in rates.”

  • Raleigh builder: “Investor activity has slowed dramatically.”

  • Provo builder: “Investors are evaluating the investment more critically than in the past.”

  • Washington DC builder: “Traffic half what it was in March. Worried about first time buyers. Many fewer REAL buyers than number of people collected on interest list last 6 months. Certainly more attempts [from buyers] to negotiate.”

  • Seattle builder: “Pause by a large population of buyers. To achieve our desired [sales] pace, we had to make price adjustments. Rates starting to knock people out of qualification.”

  Needless to say, a housing crash would be a bad thing for the US economy for which the housing sector is of paramount importance: a house is usually the biggest asset in American’s savings, comprises a large chunk of the labor force, and is a large contributor to inflation indices. That’s precisely why the Fed, hell bent on tipping the US economy into a recession as fast as possible to reverse inflation, would want nothing more than a housing recession.

  But what if Powell instead gets a housing crash on par with 2007?

  If that’s what is coming, we may be able to sniff it out soon in this big week for housing data in a US housing market which has been, until now, red hot. As DB’s Jim Reid writes, today’s data showed that building remains strong, with houses under construction hitting an all time high, even if pending home sales tumbled as did mortgage applications.

  Tomorrow it gets even more interesting: on Thursday morning we get a look at how new home construction translates to sales, which, given the precipitous climb in mortgage rates, could start facing some demand destruction. Which brings us to today’s Chart of the Day from Reid, which shows that mortgage rates have taken off with the Fed’s pivot, and the post-Covid boom in existing home sales has started to wobble. Meanwhile, consensus expectations marked by the X show they will decline further tomorrow.

  

  If the chart is correct, Reid warns that “it will be a very painful few months ahead” (for homeowners, not so much for investors as the stock market will sniff out the coming recession and soar, as it frontruns the Fed’s next easing).

  Of course, the bulls will still point to the strong fundamentals which underly housing: like other sectors, there is a big supply versus demand imbalance as inventories available for sale are still near historic lows, labor in the construction sector is constrained with immigration down, and millennials are aging into their peak earning and home-buying years. All while consumer balance sheets are strong.

  So, as Reid concludes rhetorically, will the Fed need to lift rates such that mortgages are far above levels most home buyers have grown accustomed to, ultimately slowing blistering price growth? Or will the cracks appear much sooner (spoiler alert: yes).

  One thing is certain: Housing, and its fate, will serve as the earliest guide to the Fed, rates and the US economy.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 05/18/2022 – 23:05

• Day 2 Rundown Of The Michael Sussmann Trial
  Day 2 Rundown Of The Michael Sussmann Trial

  Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

  Day 2 of the Michael Sussmann trial started with some housekeeping. Here are the rulings of note:

  1. Robby Mook, who has a scheduled vacation in Spain, will testify on Friday. He’s a defense witness.

  2. Evidence of Steele’s meetings with Sussmann and Fusion GPS in July 2016, and his tasking to conduct research on Alfa Bank, according to the judge, “can come in.” The judge observed they are “relevant to Mr. Sussmann’s activities for the campaign and his attorney-client relationship, as far as it went, with the campaign as it relates to Alfa-Bank.”

  

  Onto the witnesses. We start with the short testimony of Deborah Fine.

  Fine began working for the Hillary Clinton Campaign (aka Hillary for America) as “one of several deputy general counsels” in May 2016. She answered to Marc Elias, the campaign’s general counsel.

  After being presented with calendar entries confirming her daily calls with Fusion GPS, she testified that she worked with them as “part of my work for the campaign.” In fact, she regularly interacted with Glenn Simpson and co-founder Peter Fritsch. Fine conceded that Fusion GPS were seemingly free to conduct research on their own, stating she “personally didn’t direct them” to accomplish specific tasks.

  On cross, she admitted she didn’t now if Marc Elias spoke to anyone else at the Clinton Campaign about the activities of Fusion GPS. She was out of the loop regarding efforts to bring the Alfa Bank allegations to the NY Times or to the FBI.

  Testimony of Laura Seago

  Laura Seago worked with Fusion GPS back in 2016, where she reported directly to Fritsch and Simpson. She has been granted immunity by the Special Counsel for her testimony. She understood Marc Elias to be the Fusion GPS contact for the Clinton Campaign.

  Seago stated she was present at a summer 2016 meeting with “Mr. Elias, my colleague Peter Fritsch from Fusion GPS, Mr. Sussmann, and Mr. Sussmann’s client Rodney Joffe.” As to the nature of that meeting:

  “The general purpose, to the best of my recollection, was to discuss allegations of communications between the Trump organization and Alfa-Bank.”

  Once the Alfa Bank allegations were developed, Seago met with journalist Franklin Foer (who would write the October 31, 2016 Alfa Bank article in Slate). The purpose of that meeting was to discuss “the allegations of communication between the Trump Organization and Alfa-Bank.”

  

  They sold Foer on the Alfa Bank data at that meeting, telling him there were “highly credible computer scientists who seemed to think that these allegations were credible.” These “credible computer scientists” would ultimately be cited in Foer’s article. She admitted that Fusion GPS did nothing to validate the DNS records – something she said was “beyond my capabilities.”

  Seago was walked-through a number of e-mails she had with Joffe and other members of Fusion GPS. Some of these were privileged (the Joffe e-mails) so the Special Counsel was unable to discuss with Seago the contents. However, she did know about contents of the Joffe e-mails generally:

  

  Finally, she admitted to understanding whose interests were served by planting the Alfa Bank story.

  

  Now we get to Marc Elias.

  Elias meet weekly with Fusion GPS at his office. Typically Peter Fritsch and Glenn Simpson would be in attendance. Generally, those meetings involved discussions of Elias’s “needs” and Fusion GPS’s “work” – which included what Elias described as the “unusual connections” the Trump Campaign had with Russia. They would also report to Elias on their findings related to Trump during the election.

  Notably, Elias mentioned Jake Sullivan as someone at the Clinton Campaign who knew about the Trump/Russia research (though there is uncertainty as to whether Sullivan knew about Fusion’s activities). Elias would give the campaign these updates.

  

  A brief aside: Jake Sullivan’s wife is Margaret Goodlander – who serves as counsel to Attorney General Merrick Garland. We understand that she has not recused herself from anything having to do with the Special Counsel’s investigation. We further understand that Goodlander is keeping close tabs on Durham’s investigation. We’ll report on that down the road…

  Anyway, Elias also testified that the Clinton Campaign paid them (Perkins Coie) a “flat fee” for their legal services. Why is this important? Because it explains why Sussmann would block bill the Clinton Campaign (see tweet below). (“Block billing” is having a multi-hour entry with a generalized description. Example: “6.5 hours on confidential project.) For flat fee work, attorneys are generally allowed block billing because the client isn’t paying the hourly rate.

  Proceedings have resumed with more of Elias being queried on billing records that show Sussmann toiling on a “confidential project.” July 29, 2016, $4,455 for 5.3 hours, and Aug. 12, 2016, $1,252 for 1.5 hours on “confidential meetings with M. Elias, others.” #SussmannTriaL
  .

  — John Haughey (@JFHaughey58) May 18, 2022

  The Special Counsel then walked Elias through a number of billing entries/emails from and involving Sussmann. These included meetings with Elias, meetings with Joffe, and Fusion – and involved “the Alfa-Bank allegations.”

  That concludes the morning session. We’ll update this post once we receive the afternoon transcript…

   

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  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 05/18/2022 – 22:45

• Will The Buffalo Shooting Thaw Biden's Frozen Gun Control Agenda?
  Will The Buffalo Shooting Thaw Biden’s Frozen Gun Control Agenda?

  “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” 

  In the aftermath of the shooting in Buffalo, New York, politicians both local and nationwide are heeding Winston Churchill’s infamous words and have renewed calls for gun control legislation and more.

  We’re already starting to see the wheels turning in Washington, spurred by the tragic mass shooting event.

  First, as reported by Politico, Biden has renewed his push for Steve Dettelbach to head the ATF in the wake of the Buffalo shooting to get Dettelbach through his rocky confirmation process – which could start right before the Senate leaves for recess on May 27.

  “Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), meanwhile, told POLITICO he expects the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold its first hearing on Dettelbach’s nomination before the Senate leaves for recess at the end of next week.” https://t.co/ZsfTGYkJvz

  — Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) May 17, 2022

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  The ATF has not had a permanent director since 2015, and the last Biden nominee, David Chipman had to withdraw his nomination because of opposition from moderate Democrats and Independents. While Dettelbach is a much different nominee than Chipman on the surface, he still faces an uphill battle to confirmation.

  The Biden administration had already highlighted Dettelbach’s role in fighting hate crimes from his initial nomination, but after the Buffalo shooting seemingly. 

  Biden, who stopped in Buffalo to meet with victims’ families, renewed his calls for gun control, including an assault weapon ban. He also spoke to the fact that during the shooting, armed security for the supermarket engaged the shooter with a handgun. The shots from the security guard’s pistol hit the body armor of the shooter and did not penetrate him.

  will there be a push to regulate body armor next? pic.twitter.com/9ElHPpxENG

  — The Machine Gun Nest (@TMGNMD) May 17, 2022

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  In 2019, H.R. 4568, also known as the Responsible Body Armor Possession Act, was introduced but did not become law. Will we see calls to renew this legislation in the coming weeks?

  While the Biden admin has had to resort to “Regulatory Authority” to pass new gun regulations, this shooting in New York may provide the momentum to pass new gun control through the legislature, or to confirm Steve Dettelbach as ATF director.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 05/18/2022 – 22:25

• California Church Shooting Suspect Had Ties To CCP Nationalist Front Group
  California Church Shooting Suspect Had Ties To CCP Nationalist Front Group

  Authored by Mary Hong via The Epoch Times,

  The man charged with killing one person and injuring five others after a Taiwanese service at Geneva Presbyterian Church in Laguna Woods, California, was once a member of a U.S.-based group controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.

  

  Shooting suspect David Chou on May 16, 2022. (Orange County Sheriff’s Department via AP)

  The Orange County Sheriff’s Department said the shooting by the alleged gunman, 68-year-old David Wenwei Chou of Las Vegas, was “a politically motivated hate incident.” Sheriff Don Barnes said the suspect “was upset about political tensions between China and Taiwan.”

  Barnes also indicated that the suspect, who wasn’t a regular attendee and had no known ties or affiliation with the church, secured the doors within the church with chains and tried to disable the locks with superglue before he opened fire.

  Chou has been charged with one felony count of murder and five felony counts of attempted murder, according to the sheriff’s department. Dr. John Cheng, a 52-year-old family practice physician, was killed when he charged the gunman in an attempt to disarm him.

  Ties to the CCP’s United Front

  Chou, a native of Taiwan, has close ties to the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification (CCPPNR), an entity under Beijing’s United Front Work Department (UFWD), a powerful Chinese Communist Party (CCP) agency charged with overseeing foreign influence operations.

  On April 2, 2019, the CCPPNR established a Las Vegas chapter, with Chou as one of the directors.

  He made a presentation with a banner calling for the “eradication of pro-independence demons” on that day, Radio Free Asia reported.

  The CCPPNR was founded by the CCP in 1988. Its primary mission, as stated on its website, is countering separatist movements such as those calling for Taiwan’s independence. The CCP considers Taiwan to be part of its territory, even though the regime has never ruled the self-governed island.

  The CCPPNR has at least 200 chapters in 90 countries, including 33 U.S. chapters that are registered under somewhat different names, but carrying the same slogan of “peaceful reunification,” according to a 2018 report by the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission (pdf).

  A 2018 Jamestown Foundation report also indicated that the CCPPNR has served to mobilize overseas Chinese communities in support of the CCP’s policies.

  

  The Chinese regime is using Confucius as a cover for infiltration and propaganda. (Frederic Brown/AFP/Getty Images)

  Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a 2020 statement that the UFWD is the CCP organ “tasked with co-opting and neutralizing threats to the party’s rule and spreading its influence and propaganda overseas. The CCP regards this party apparatus as a ‘magic weapon’ to advance Beijing’s policies.”

  In October 2020, the United States designated the National Association for China’s Peaceful Unification, the U.S. branch of the CCPPNR, as a foreign mission.

  CCPPNR Las Vegas Chapter President Gu Yawen said that Chou left the local chapter in the second half of 2019. An old report containing a photo of Chou on the chapter’s founding day was no longer available on its website.

  When asked about the suspect’s political hatred associated with the political tensions between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, CCP Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin defined the incident as an immigrant and domestic gun violence issue on U.S. soil.

  Condemnation

  Barnes said Cheng charged at the suspect and attempted to disarm him before he was fatally wounded, buying time for other witnesses to subdue the shooter.

  “Without the actions of Dr. Cheng, [there] is no doubt that there would be numerous additional victims in this crime,” he said.

  Taiwan’s official representative in Los Angeles, Louis M. Huang, condemned the act of hate and violence, expressed his condolences to the families of the victims, and said assistance to the victims’ families is already on the way.

  He told the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times that whether in Taiwan or abroad, most Taiwanese are compatible with each other and care about each other.

  “Respect each other, rule of law, is what’s shared in Taiwan,” Huang said.

  Many Taiwanese commentators also described the incident as the indiscriminate killing of Taiwanese civilians, a result of the ideological war of hate that the CCP has spread around the world.

  Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen also offered her sincere condolences on Cheng’s death and her hopes for a prompt recovery of those who were injured in the shooting.

  “Violence is never the answer,” she posted on Twitter.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 05/18/2022 – 22:05

• $87.8 Million Bel Air Mansion Horribly Flops At Auction
  $87.8 Million Bel Air Mansion Horribly Flops At Auction

  Crashed crypto markets, plunging stocks and bonds, looming housing market meltdown, interest rate shock, and the threat of a recession have spooked speculators, including ones bidding on a massive Bel Air mansion that flopped at auction, according to CNBC. 

  The mood among ‘movers and shakers’ is sheer pessimism as financial markets are stuck in a doom loop of turmoil thanks to the Federal Reserve embarking on one of the most aggressive tightening cycles in decades, if not ever. 

  So the timing of dermatologist-turned-developer Alex Khadavi to auction off 777 Sarbonne Road, located in a residential neighborhood on the Westside of Los Angeles, was particularly bad. Though listing the modern mansion wasn’t his choice considering he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection before listing the mansion last year. 

  

  Khadavi owes several creditors tens of millions of dollars. The mansion sat on the market for a year and was just auctioned off with Concierge Auctions. He was hoping for $87.8 million, though the highest bid came in just under $45.8 million, falling short of the $50 million reserve.

  

  The bankruptcy court will now decide if the highest bid is an acceptable offer and determine if the home sale will move forward in early June. The sale would help Khadavi satisfy his debt with creditors. 

  Despite controversy between Khadavi and the auctioneer for not starting the bid at the reserve, Concierge’s president, Chad Roffers, said:

  “After a spirited auction, the bidding is closed and the high bid is in the hands of the Trustee. With over 80 qualified showings in the last 60 days, we are confident market value was delivered.” 

  Co-listing agent, Aaron Kirman of Compass, said he wasn’t pleased with the highest bid, though, “at the end of the day, the highest bidder is the highest bidder.” It just so happens it’s a 50% haircut from the initial list price one year ago. 

  The auction results suggest a souring mood among wealthy elites generally viewed as smart money. Perhaps this is an example of the shifting tide in real estate markets and how a broader market cooling is just ahead. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 05/18/2022 – 21:45

• "They Shut Us Down": Michigan Businesses Sue Whitmer For Losses Due To COVID Lockdowns
  “They Shut Us Down”: Michigan Businesses Sue Whitmer For Losses Due To COVID Lockdowns

  Authored by Steven Kovac via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A coalition of five bowling alleys and family entertainment centers is suing Michigan’s Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, for losses incurred due to her mandatory COVID-19 shutdowns in 2020.

  

  Michigan Dept. of Health and Human Services director Robert Gordon is also a defendant in the case.

  The plaintiffs allege that the shutdowns imposed by Whitmer and Gordon were a “taking” of their businesses without just compensation in violation of both the state and the U.S. Constitution.

  The case has been winding its way through the federal courts since January 2021.

  

  The coalition lost the first round of the legal battle when the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan ruled against it.

  Oral arguments were recently held before a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit.

  Plaintiff’s chief counsel David Kallman told The Epoch Times after the appeals court hearing, “The oral arguments from both sides were vigorous. The judges asked a lot of questions. It was the kind of proceeding that makes you proud to be a lawyer.

  “Even the defense acknowledges that we are presenting ‘novel’ arguments.

  “Michigan is the only state in the nation where a governor’s public health emergency powers were overturned as unconstitutional.

  “If we lose in the court of appeals, we will take this case to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

  Scott Bennett, executive director of the Independent Bowling and Entertainment Centers Association, told The Epoch Times,

  “The governor’s actions were devastating to our industry.

  “Things went from ‘two weeks to slow the spread’ to indefinite shutdowns.”

  Bennett said that the forced closures were not based on solid scientific proof that bowling alleys and family entertainment centers would spread the virus any more than the Walmart stores or the GM plants that were allowed to remain open.

  “They were allowed to operate with hundreds and even thousands of people in them but we had to shut down. We feel our industry was unfairly singled-out.

  “We cannot stand for a repeat of such arbitrary treatment and don’t want the people of Michigan to forget what was done to them.”

  With the recent uptick in COVID cases and the approaching mid-term elections, Bennett said his members that survived the 2020 shutdowns feel like it can happen all over again.

  “It’s like operating day-to-day with a hammer held over your head. The uncertainty is altering business plans. The value of our businesses is dropping through the floor,” Bennett said.

  

  Fred Kautz, the proprietor of Kautz’s Shore Lanes in Lexington, Michigan, started working in the family business when he was 13.

  The business has 12 bowling lanes, a bar, an arcade, a restaurant, and living quarters upstairs.

  “We’ve owned this place for 42 years. For me and my family, it’s more than a place to work. It’s a way of life. And it has become an institution in our community—a real gathering place,” said Kautz.

  He said he is still smarting from what happened after Whitmer’s executive actions were ruled unconstitutional by the Michigan Supreme Court in the fall of 2020.

  “We got a little reprieve. We thought we were in the clear until she came back with another round of forced closures, this time under the authority of the Michigan Department of Public Health.

  “The first 30 days knocked us right on our butts. But we were willing to cooperate, to do our part. We were all scared and we did not want to see harm come to anybody.

  “We lost a lot of money at the time. We are coming back slowly, but our overall revenue is still down 20 percent from pre-pandemic days. That’s hard to make up.

  “In the spring of 2020, I tried to do what was recommended and go along. Never again!

  “If my Dad was still alive, he’d have never closed at all,” said Kautz.

  Brian and Mindy Hill, owners of I.C. Strikes, a 16-lane bowling alley, bar, and snack bar in Imlay City said their business was hit hard by the shutdowns.

  Brian was the town barber for 25 years, before purchasing the bowling alley where he learned to bowl as a child.

  “We took over in December 2018. We’d saved up money to buy this place and make some upgrades. When COVID hit, we were forced to close down. It took all the money we saved for improvements just to survive,” said Brian.

  The Hills said they never thought they’d see the day when their own government could do something like that to them.

  

  “They shut us down. They took away our livelihood with no end date in sight. Then they wanted to loan us money. Think about that. They first put us in a situation where we had zero income to pay our previous debt. And then they wanted to loan us more money.

  “Lots of small business people lost their businesses but kept their debt. It ruined them,” said Brian.

  The Hills did apply for and receive a Small Business Administration loan at 3.25 percent interest for 30 years, and they participated in the Paycheck Protection Program which helped their business survive.

  Up the road from the Hill’s bowling alley is Jump City, a large indoor recreation center offering an array of bouncy houses and arcade games for children.

  Assistant manager Mary Bacon told The Epoch Times, “We lost a lot of business. We were forced to close for 15 months and had to make our payments with no income.”

  Bacon remembers the morning of March 16, 2020, when many area businesses were gearing up for big St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.

  “By afternoon everybody had to close. All that food went to waste.

  “The shutdown was supposed to be for a couple of weeks. Nobody foresaw it would drag on for a year and three months.

  “Oh, they said we could open again, but they so severely restricted the number of customers that we lost all of our big birthday parties. With so few kids allowed in, we couldn’t operate. We were losing too much money.”

  Bacon said people are coming back to the center but are still scared, even though the games and bouncy houses are continuously cleaned and sanitized.

  

  Before the pandemic, Danny Brown owned a roller rink in Grand Blanc and Owasso, two south-central Michigan towns.

  “The lockdowns forced us to sell the Owasso rink for less than half of what we paid for it. We will be trying to make up our loss for years to come.”

  Brown, who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, told The Epoch Times, “To keep going I had to decide to triple our debt. Since the shutdown, I am three-quarters of a million dollars deeper in debt.

  “Small businesses put everything on the line. All of our personal and family money. I am personally responsible for our debt. If I die my children will have to pay it.”

  Brown said Michigan’s government acted without a real understanding and regarded the state’s small businesses as “nonessential throwaways.”

  “One of the reasons we filed suit is to push the government to think differently,” he said.

  According to Brown, family entertainment centers like skating rinks, bowling alleys, arcades, pool halls, miniature golf, and go-cart tracks have been nearly wiped out.

  “A few years ago, there were 3,500 roller skating rinks in the United States. Now there are 700. There were five rinks in Genesee County, now there are two.” he said.

  Brown attributes the decrease to years of ongoing government mandates and interference that led up to the COVID-19 lockdowns.

  “They took, they stole our businesses!” he said.

  Donn Slimmen, another plaintiff in the case, owns Spartan West Bowling in the west Michigan resort town of Ludington.

  “The lockdown just about killed us. It was 14 to 15 months of agony. Our bank payments and utility bills didn’t stop. We went from being two to three months behind to more months behind.

  “We entered into survival mode. We ate a lot of pork and beans and hotdogs. We’re still trying to work ourselves out of the hole. By the end of this summer, we might be solvent again.

  “We were lucky to survive. We are still hanging on by threads,” said Slimmen.

  Along with 16 bowling lanes, Slimmen operates a full-service restaurant.

  “It’s never come back. Pre-pandemic, we’d serve 200 customers at an ordinary Friday fish fry. Now our best night is 100.

  “Our restaurant went from a thriving seated-guest business to a take-out operation grossing only two to three percent of the seated sales.

  “We were spending $400 to take in proceeds of $100.

  “The politicians and bureaucrats don’t understand. They never cleaned a toilet seat or climbed into a bowling machine to fix it,” said Slimmen.

  Slimmen blames Gov.Gretchen Whitmer for the plight of his community and the state.

  “You didn’t see Republican governors closing businesses. Their states did so much better.

  “Drive through downtown Ludington or Muskegon and look at all the boarded-up storefronts. So many places are out of business. Michigan is in terrible shape,” Slimmen said.

  The Tomassoni family has been in the bowling business for 84 years in the western Upper Peninsula town of Iron Mountain, Michigan.

  “We had to close bowling and our banquet facility a total of 161 days in two different periods of time in 2020. After the second shutdown, we could operate at 25 percent occupancy and only during restricted hours. No wedding receptions, no special events. It was a disaster.

  “It ripped my heart out. I am so bitter towards my government,” said owner Pete Tomassoni.

  Tomassoni’s business suffered further because of its proximity to Wisconsin which is only minutes away.

  “Wisconsin closed for just 30 days. For the most part, they were wide open. That really hurt us.

  “Our governor was picking and choosing which of our state’s businesses could operate. To force a business to close with no notice and without proven science is straight out wrong.

  “I think that she came down so hard on small business because we, by and large, lean to the right.

  “The state dangled the threat of yanking business licenses to keep people in line.

  “Some of our businesses tried to defy the state and stayed open

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 05/18/2022 – 21:25

• US, Japan Prepare Statement Pledging To Jointly 'Deter' China Militarily
  US, Japan Prepare Statement Pledging To Jointly ‘Deter’ China Militarily

  Tensions between Beijing and Tokyo are about to ratchet further amid widespread reports that the United States and Japan have prepared a statement calling for both to “deter and respond to” China’s aggressive military activities in the Indo-Pacific region.

  The statement is expected to be released as President Joe Biden visits Tokyo to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida early next week. Biden will travel to South Korea and Japan from May 20 to May 24, the White House previously announced.

  

  Crucially, according to Nikkei, “The statement to be released after their Monday meeting in Tokyo will also clarify America’s resolve to defend Japan if it is attacked, including with nuclear weapons.”

  The meeting will mark Biden’s first face-to-face meeting with the Japanese PM Kishida, coming at a crucial moment that the anti-China stance of both countries have steadily growing over recent years.

  When Biden last year met with then-Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, the two issue a joint statement calling for stability in the “Taiwan Strait” – which was viewed as a provocative term by China given it was the first joint US-Japan statement to invoke Taiwan in many decades.

  Next week’s Asia trip will include Biden rolling out his administration’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework – which is a plan to counter China economically.

  Anticipating the Tokyo meeting, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Wednesday warned Japan, stressing that US-Japan cooperation must not “hurt China’s sovereignty, security and development interests” – as quoted in Bloomberg. “China hopes that Japan acts cautiously and learns a lesson from history,” the Chinese foreign ministry was cited further as saying.

  It seems Japan is too peaceful — so Australia will help out:
  “In the case of confrontation with #China, Japan has pretty strict limits on what it can do.”#AUKUS
  Australia-US-Japan defence exercises expected to increase https://t.co/TVwUIWkemN via @ABCaustralia

  — Peter Cronau (@PeterCronau) May 18, 2022

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  Early this year the US administration pledged to help Japan’s fledgling military and coast guard defend the contested Senkanu Islands in the event of a Chinese attack. Biden at the time stressed that the islands are covered under Article V of the Japan-US Security Treaty, related to mutual defense.

  Japan has recently voiced that it wants to take its military from a purely defensive posture (which was stipulated under its post-WWII constitution), to one with the capability of being able to launch offensive operations.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 05/18/2022 – 21:05

• "Big Lebowski Syndrome" – Why Haven't Californians Demanded Change?
  “Big Lebowski Syndrome” – Why Haven’t Californians Demanded Change?

  Authored by Michael Shellenberger via Substack,

  Over the last few weeks, a number of journalists and commentators have pushed back against my criticisms of Governor Gavin Newsom. Crime and homelessness have been increasing everywhere, they say, not just in California. Covid interrupted Newsom’s ambitious plans to address homelessness, they note. And California’s high cost of living long predated Newsom’s election in 2018.

  With all due respect to the people rushing to the governor’s defense, those claims are ridiculous. We Californians pay more for taxes than anyone else in America. We have a nearly $100 billion surplus. And yet we have the worst public services.

  Just take crime and homelessness. You can’t walk safely through many neighborhoods in our largest cities. Street addicts feel entitled to sleep, smoke meth, and terrorize passengers on mass transit and public parks. And despite spending more on homelessness and mental health, per capita, than any other state, homelessness increased 31% in California and declined 18% in the rest of the U.S., over the last ten years.

  The guy walked away bloody. Cops have been called. Will they show up? Happy #HerbaLife24Tri everyone! #venice #homeless #encampment #centennialpark pic.twitter.com/osHCiQTRCZ

  — The Venice Wasteland (@VeniceWasteland) May 15, 2022

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  It’s not like Newsom was an outsider to politics before becoming governor. In truth, it’s been the statewide implementation of the homeless policies he pioneered in San Francisco 20 years ago that — by attracting addicts from across the U.S. with the offer of free housing, low-cost drugs, and the freedom to camp anywhere — worsened the problem.

  It’s true covid occupied a significant amount of Newsom’s time in 2020 and 2021, and that crime is rising nationwide. Newsom gave an excellent “State of the State” speech in January 2020, laying out a new agenda on homelessness.

  But rather than pursuing a new strategy on homelessness, Newsom doubled down on the same failed policies, and Newsom has done nothing of significance to increase policing, psychiatry, and probation, the “Three Key Ps” needed to prevent crime. Instead, he oversaw a reduction in the prison population from 127,000, when he took office, to 96,000, today, and intends to close two more prisons and release, wily-oily, another 76,000 prisoners.

  Newsom frequently boasts that California is a “nation-state” and that we are “leading the world.” In truth, Newsom is leading other progressive cities to make things worse not better, not just on crime and homelessness but also cost of living and quality of life issues, too.

  The massive taxpayer subsidies that resulted in California’s electricity prices rising seven times more than they did in the rest of the U.S.? Newsom is proposing more of them. The big, unconditional spending increases for public schools that coincided with a decline in student performance? Newsom wants more of them. The housing shortage he promised to solve? He’s only made it worse, and is proposing nothing new to address it.

  After I criticized Newsom of either playing a double game, or being incompetent, in claiming to support the building of a desalination plant, even as the Coastal Commission killed it, several people pointed out that Newsom only appoints four of the 12 commissioners.

  California’s in extreme drought & yet @GavinNewsom won’t act. People ignored his plea to reduce water use, which has spiked. Now, his appointees have rejected a desalination plant he claims to support, which means he’s lying or incompetent or both https://t.co/2dCnbjlu5K

  — Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) May 13, 2022

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  But Newsom holds extraordinary powers over the eight Coastal Commissioners he does not appoint for the simple reason that they are appointed by the Senate Rules Committee, which is controlled by Democrats, and the Speaker of the Assembly, a close ally to Newsom. And the Coastal Commission voted unanimously to reject the proposed desalination plant, meaning, all four of Newsom’s own commissioners voted against it.

  The bottom line is that Newsom is the puppet of groups who oppose desalination not because of the environmental impacts — the Israelis have proven that there are very few — but rather because they want scarce water and energy because they view scarcity as a way to prevent more people from coming to California.

  Most of us believe that if we work hard and play by the rules, we should own our own home, send our children to good schools, and be able to retire in our sixties. And most of us believe that, if we are going to pay super-high taxes, we should be able to walk or ride safely through our cities without fear of being assaulted.

  Why, then, haven’t Californians demanded change?

  Big Lebowski Syndrome (BLS)

  

  “The Dude abides” — and that’s part of the problem

  Perhaps the main reason Californians have not changed our leaders is because nobody, until now, has offered an alternative to the status quo that is also aligned with our values. Many Californians last year supported the recall of Newsom as a way to shake up the system. But Republicans got behind Larry Elder, a charismatic radio show host who was viciously and wrongly smeared, but nonetheless could not articulate a humane and realistic plan to deal with the homeless crisis.

  Another reason Californians have not demanded change is because many of us are able to escape the chaos in the cities. I am one of those Californians. I live in the Berkeley Hills and, like everyone who lives on a hill, I can go about my days without ever coming across somebody screaming, psychotically, at invisible enemies, overdosing on drugs, or defecating on the sidewalk.

  Over the last two years, when I would tell my neighbors I was writing a book on the homeless crisis, several wrinkled their faces and whispered, “That’s why I don’t go downtown.” On Twitter, many people who claim to be progressive believe they have successfully debunked our documentation of human depravity in downtown San Francisco by posting selfies of themselves in front of Golden Gate Bridge, or atop Lombard Street, where there aren’t homeless encampments.

  But one of the biggest and least discussed reasons that Californians don’t demand change is what one might call “Big Lebowski Syndrome,” or BLS, for short. In the Coen Brother’s 1998 cult classic, the main character, Jeffrey Lebowski (played by Jeff Bridges), calls himself “the Dude” (“or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing”). The Dude captures the liberal slacker energy of many Californians when it comes to homelessness. His signature catchphrase is, “The Dude abides.”

  When I would raise the issue of, say, people camping on sidewalks with my progressive friends in Berkeley, many would say the equivalent of, “Just take it easy, man,” another of the Dude’s aphorisms. When I raised a concern about a guy sleeping under a tarp on the sidewalk next to a children’s playground, a guy I play soccer with said, “Take it easy, Mike! He’s probably mentally ill!” When I pointed out that it was neither compassionate nor safe to let mentally ill people, or addicts, or both, to sleep on sidewalks, many progressives would just shake their heads. Take it easy, man.

  For a period while working on San Fransicko I despaired that there was nothing I could say that would cut through BLS. It finally dawned on me that I needed to explain to people the solution before complaining about the problem. This may seem counter-intuitive, and in some ways is. But the reality is that Californians already know there’s a homeless problem. They’re stuck on the solution. They don’t want to put mentally ill addicts in jail or prison — and rightly so. But they don’t know the alternative. And so we developed one: Cal-Psych.

  I tested it out on my progressive family and friends and it really worked. By the time my friend Leighton Woodhouse and I gathered signatures in Berkeley and Oakland in March, in order to qualify for the ballot, we had boiled down our agenda to a single sentence. The exchanges went like this:

  Me: [cheery] Hi! Are you a registered voter?

  Progressive-looking person: [suspiciously] I am.

  Me: Great! I’m running for governor and wanted to see if you would sign the petition so I can get on the ballot.

  Progressive: [curious but still suspicious] Why are you running?

  Me: [gubernatorially] I’m running to create a state-wide psychiatric and addiction care system to deal with the homeless crisis.

  Seven times out of ten that was enough for people to want to sign the petition. One out of ten would decline. And another two out of ten would ask a few more questions, usually something like this.

  Progressive: [hopeful but still a bit suspicious] That sounds good, but how do you prevent it from being bad?

  Me: You mean bad like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”?

  Progressive: [sounding relieved] Yeah! Like that!

  Me: Most people don’t need hospitals and just need rehab for 90 to 180 days. My aunt had schizophrenia and had good care in a group home. And even the hospitals are much better than they were in the 1950s.

  Having spent the last year explaining Cal-Psych in dozens of articles, podcasts, and TV appearances, hundreds of thousands if not millions of Californians and other Americans — including my progressive friends in Berkeley — have come to understand the basic argument behind the concept. San Francisco and Los Angeles are simply unable to treat the country’s addicts and mentally ill, alone. Lower-cost group homes can be found across the state, outside of the open drug scenes. And services can be more efficiently allocated through a single psychiatric and addiction care system than through the current 58 county model.

  Cal-Psych, in other words, is just the kind of agenda that even the Dude would abide.

  “This Aggression Will Not Stand, Man”

  

  Gina McDonald and Jacqui Berlinn are demanding that Gov. Gavin Newsom shut down California’s open drug scenes

  I’ve proselytized Cal-Psych enough that some on the Right now express concern that I’m going to be too soft on hardened criminals. I’ve thus integrated into my discussion of these issues that there are obviously some hard-core sociopathic violent criminals who need to be in prison and not just released, as Newsom is dead set upon doing.

  But the large majority of the people on the street need psychiatric care or drug rehab. The problem is that many California cities, including previously conservative ones like San Diego, have stopped enforcing laws against public camping, public drug use, and public defecation, and so we can’t easily separate out the really bad guys from people who are just addicts or mentally ill without enforcing basic laws.

  In my recent interview with Quillette, I explained that Californians needed to grow up. We not only need to take responsibility, and shut down the open drug scenes, we also need to trust that we can discern between hard core criminals who need prison and ordinary addicts who just need rehab. That’s not just about getting more compassionate. It’s also about getting angry.

  For our super-high taxes we not only deserve basic public safety, we also deserve nice things, like beautiful, livable, and walkable cities. Or, as the Dude would say, “This will not stand, ya know. This aggression will not stand, man.”

  The Californians who are most challenging the BLS are Jacqui Berlinn and Gina McDonald of Mothers Against Drug Deaths. They generated international publicity last month after putting up a billboard in Union Square in San Francisco and warning foreign tourists, particularly families, not to visit the city, given readily-available and deadly fentanyl that city officials allow to be sold and used freely. San Francisco’s mayor rebuffed the mothers and today the open drug scene, dominated by violent and heavily armed drug dealers, has spread to cover much of downtown.

  

  Undeterred, Berlinn and McDonald last week launched a new advertising campaign, this one in Sacramento and aimed at Newsom. “Welcome to Camp Fentanyl,” the headline reads, using the state’s iconic parks typeface and billboard style. “Open to kids everywhere.” The ad contains a demand: “Gavin Newsom: Shut Down Open Air Drug Markets Now.”

  The campaign generated an immediate impact. “I’m a parent,” said Newsom on Friday. “All of you are concerned about what’s happened with opioid overdose deaths, concerned about what’s happening with fentanyl in particular.” Newsom’s policy response was grossly inadequate: just $8 million (with an “m”) for the Attorney General to form a task force. If Newsom’s past task forces are any guide, this one will make the problem worse. But at least he acknowledged, for the first time, the problem.

  I’m supporting Shellenberger, an independent, for California governor. He would easily be the most substantive, solutions-oriented governor we’ve ever had. https://t.co/yzIcmRtQiF

  — David Sacks (@DavidSacks) May 14, 2022

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  None of it’s enough and it’s time for a change. As I noted yesterday, a growing number of Republicans are acknowledging that a Republican can’t be elected governor, but I can be. Since writing that column I picked up the endorsement of two influential center-Right Californians: David Sacks, a co-founder of PayPal and famous venture capitalist, and Scott Adams, the creator of the “Dilbert” cartoon and influential commentator. Sacks said I “would easily be the most substantive, solutions-oriented governor we’ve ever had” and Adams said I am an “Easy choice if you want solutions.”

  I’m all in on @ShellenbergerMD too. Easy choice if you want solutions. https://t.co/kZUDHIHa6O

  — Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 15, 2022

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  Now it’s up to the electorate to change. We must start seeing things like public safety, good schools, and well-managed forests not as merely nice things but necessary ones. And most of all we must push back against the BLS and get a little angry. We won’t take it easy, man. Not until we start getting the public services we’ve more than paid for with our super-high taxes.

  *  *  *

  Subscribe to Michael Shellenberger

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 05/18/2022 – 20:45

• Massive Saharan Dust Plume Over Atlantic, Headed For US By Weekend 
  Massive Saharan Dust Plume Over Atlantic, Headed For US By Weekend 

  A massive plume of dust referred to as a Saharan Air Layer (SAL) could reach U.S. Gulf Coast states this weekend, according to AccuWeather. 

  On Tuesday, weather models show SAL traversing the Atlantic. The expectation is this enormous plume of dust will sweep across the Caribbean and into the Gulf of Mexico by the end of this week, reaching the U.S. Gulf Coast by Saturday. 

  

  “A large batch of dust was evident on satellite photos from the start of this week and was beginning to enter the Caribbean. 

  “It is possible, but not a certainty, that this dust will make the trip as far as the Gulf and south-central U.S. late this week or this weekend,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said. 

  This is the trans-Atlantic SAL of the year and could bring hazy skies and extra color to sunrises and sunsets for parts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. 

  The first Saharan dust plume of the season rolling off Africa will reach the U.S. by this weekend

  Meteorologist @StephenMorganTV explains what it means.

  Read more about it: https://t.co/9TtugBBDiI pic.twitter.com/AUj8yJgApq

  — FOX Weather (@foxweather) May 17, 2022

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  “While NASA’s dust forecast model shows some dust in the skies over the western Gulf coast from Louisiana to Texas on Sunday, the Copernicus satellite model says the dust will dissipate before it reaches the United States, except for southern Florida,” AccuWeather Senior Weather Editor Jesse Ferrell said. 

  If the SAL does reach the U.S. this weekend, it may also bring health hazards, such as a surge in air pollution and agitating health issues for those with respiratory issues. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 05/18/2022 – 20:25

• NYC "Afraid" Of Possible Pro-Gun Supreme Court Win
  NYC “Afraid” Of Possible Pro-Gun Supreme Court Win

  Submitted by The Machine Gun Nest (TMGN).,

  As if we needed any more evidence that the Supreme Court case, NYSRPA v. Bruen, will expand gun rights, New York politicians are sounding the alarm that a pro-gun ruling could have a significant impact.

  We’ve been covering NYSRPA v. Bruen for a while now, for those unaware. The case deals with what’s known as “may issue” licensing schemes regarding concealed carry permit issuance in liberal states.

  In states with a “may issue” system, you as a citizen must provide a “good and substantial reason” as to why you “need” to carry a firearm. Often this system is used to deny average citizens a permit to carry, as self-defense is not a “substantial” enough reason.

  In contrast to the rest of the United States, where the vast majority of states are “shall issue.” Also, in comparison to “May Issue,” a “Shall Issue” system leaves the burden of proof on the State as to why a citizen shouldn’t have a permit. Simply, “Shall Issue” means that you can receive a license if you can legally own a firearm.

  Also worth mentioning is that now in 25 States, “constitutional carry” has been implemented, making the need for a permit completely irrelevant. If you can legally own a gun, you can lawfully carry that gun. We’re currently seeing a push for more states to nix their permit requirements, including Florida.

  “We should be very afraid,” said New York City Mayor Eric Adams when asked about a possible pro-gun victory in NYSRPA v Bruen. But what is there to be afraid of?

  Reports from the corporate media seem to twist language to make the idea of law-abiding citizens gaining easier access to concealed carry permits a scary and dangerous occurrence. But, we know from multiple studies that concealed carry permit holders are some of the most law-abiding citizens out there. 

  Take, for example, a recent study conducted by the Philadelphia Police Department (and highlighted by the good folks over at The Reload).

  In the study, it seems that on a week-by-week basis since the city of Philadelphia made their concealed carry permit more accessible, homicides have decreased, while defensive shootings have increased.

  I probably won’t remember to follow up on this every week, but I figured I’d check in again on Philly. Down an additional 1% in homicide vs. 2021. It was 13.95% when the article ran.

  Robbery numbers continue to be terrible though compared to other violent crime, which is down. https://t.co/sutF4e1dyZ pic.twitter.com/8WVdyxz1Np

  — Konstadinos Moros (@MorosKostas) May 16, 2022

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  It’s also worth noting that even in response to the recent tragedy in Buffalo, NY, many people are looking to arm themselves to defend their communities. Currently, in New York, getting a permit to carry is tough. NYSRPA v. Bruen could change that.

  This is why I advocate for people in my community to arm and protect ourselves. We’re not in the 1950s and will not be killed like cattle.

  Stop blaming it on mental illness. The disgusting animal who murdered 10 people knew exactly what he was doing he should have ZERO sympathy!

  — Shermichael Singleton (@Shermichael_) May 16, 2022

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  This gentleman puts it perfectly: if more people were armed and knew how to use firearms, this killer may have been stopped sooner. States must give law-abiding Americans the ability to defend themselves, and hopefully SCOTUS will issue a ruling that will do just that. pic.twitter.com/FjKlaZ5vFT

  — Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) May 16, 2022

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  Overall, there doesn’t seem to be any benefit to restricting law-abiding citizens’ access to self-defense. It’s just common sense; criminals don’t follow the law and will continue to have guns regardless of the rules and regulations that are passed and implemented. Why not let the average citizen have the ability to defend themselves if they choose to do so?

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 05/18/2022 – 20:05

• US Navy Amasses 'Show Of Force' Near China Amid Taiwan Invasion Threats
  US Navy Amasses ‘Show Of Force’ Near China Amid Taiwan Invasion Threats

  The US Navy amassed a show of force in the waters near China. Top Western officials worry that Beijing could launch a military takeover of Taiwan after learning lessons from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

  The USS Ronald Reagan carrier and USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike groups, the USS America expeditionary strike group, and the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli operate around the Philippine Sea to Japan to Western Pacific, according to the latest fleet tracking report by USNI News. 

  

  China’s Tencent News reports the US Navy’s increasing show of force “means that the US military will conduct more military operations in the waters surrounding our country in the next few weeks.” 

  The arrival of warships in the region comes as the USS Port Royal, a Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser, was followed by China’s Eastern Theater Command while sailing through the Taiwan Strait on May 10. 

  Earlier this month, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) held a war exercise surrounding the island of Taiwan. PLA’s combat preparedness has concerned top US intelligence officials about mounting risks Beijing is preparing to invade Taiwan. 

  ​”It’s our view that they [the Chinese] are working hard to effectively put themselves into a position in which their military is capable of taking Taiwan over,” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. 

  In the last few months, Beijing has taken notes about lessons from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and how Western powers have reacted. 

  Chinese President Xi Jinping views Taiwan as part of its territory under the “one China” policy. Beijing has become increasingly irritated at Western powers for arming Taipei.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 05/18/2022 – 19:45

• Diesel Costs Deliver Body Blow To Trucking Industry, Impacting Broader Economy
  Diesel Costs Deliver Body Blow To Trucking Industry, Impacting Broader Economy

  By Noi Mahoney of Freightwaves

  With diesel prices remaining elevated — forcing significant costs onto shippers and trucking companies — the impact of fuel costs on inflation could put a dent in consumer spending, according to experts.

  

  Economist Anirban Basu said the elevated price of diesel fuel damages the near-term U.S. economic outlook and “renders the chance of recession in 2023 much greater.”

  “These high diesel prices mean that despite the Federal Reserve’s early stage efforts to curb inflationary pressures, for now, inflationary pressures will run rampant through the economy,” Basu, CEO of Baltimore-based Sage Policy Group, told FreightWaves. 

  Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve announced a half-percentage-point increase in interest rates, the largest hike in over two decades. The U.S. inflation rate is at 8.3%, near 40-year highs.

  Basu said consumer spending remains strong, even with elevated diesel prices, but that could change as shippers and trucking companies eventually must pass higher fuel costs on to the public. 

  “One of the things we’ve been seeing in the U.S., particularly on the East Coast, is that diesel fuel inventories have been shrinking, which suggests that despite all this inflationary pressure, there’s still a lot of consumer activity, still lots of trucks on the road and the supply is unable to keep up with demand,” Basu said. “The higher price of diesel fuel will become embedded in the cost of everything consumers purchase.” 

  Prices of fresh produce rising

  Jordan DeWart, a managing director at RedWood Mexico, based in Laredo, Texas, said the types of consumer goods that could be immediately affected by higher diesel prices include fresh produce. Redwood Mexico is part of Chicago-based Redwood Logistics.

  “With produce, that’s typically more in the spot rate business, and any of those smaller trucking companies are going to be heavily impacted by fuel costs,” DeWart said.

  The U.S. imported more than $15 billion in fresh produce from Mexico in 2021, including avocados, tomatoes, grapes, bell peppers and strawberries, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

  “Everything coming northbound from Mexico through Laredo, the rates have been very sustained, but fuel prices keep going up, presumably with any differences being absorbed by the trucking companies in the spot market,” DeWart said. “When we talk to asset-based truckers, especially the smaller companies, they’re really feeling the pinch.”

  It’s not only cross-border operators feeling the pinch. Growers and shippers in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley are also suffering because of increased fuel costs, said Dante Galeazzi, president of the Texas International Produce Association (TIPA).

  “Our growers, shippers, importers, distributors … basically our entire supply chain has been and continues to be impacted by rising fuel costs,” Galeazzi told FreightWaves. “Between one-third to one-half of the costs for fresh produce is the logistics; you can see how quickly increases in that expense category can impact the base price.”

  The Rio Grande Valley is the epicenter of the Lone Star State’s fresh produce industry, stretching across the southeastern tip of Texas along the U.S.-Mexico border. More than 35 types of fruits and vegetables are grown in the valley, which contributes more than $1 billion to the state economy annually.

  “More concerning is that this wave of fuel increases is in line with the statistic that our industry is paying anywhere from 70% to 150% more year-over-year for OTR shipping,” Galeazzi said. 

  TIPA, which is based in Mission, Texas, represents growers, domestic shippers, import shippers, specialty shippers, distributors and material and service providers. 

  Right now, Rio Grande Valley growers and shippers are absorbing higher input costs instead of passing them on to consumers, but that could soon change, Galeazzi said.

  “While the fresh fruit and vegetable industry continues to experience rising input costs across the board (seed, agrochemicals, labor, fuel, packaging, etc.), we have yet to experience sufficient upstream returns associated with those expense increases,” Galeazzi said. “Our industry is citing an 18% to 22% anecdotal increase to overhead costs. Meanwhile food inflation for fresh produce is hovering around 7%. That means the costs are slowly being felt by consumers, but it’s not yet at a commensurate level with input expenses.”

  Diesel fuel prices at all time highs

  The cost of diesel continues to soar across the country. Diesel pump prices averaged $5.61 a gallon nationwide, according to weekly data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA). That’s 51% higher than diesel prices nationwide in January. 

  California averaged the highest fuel prices across the U.S., at $6 per gallon of gas and $6.56 per gallon for diesel, according to AAA. Diesel prices are also at an all-time high of $6.41 in New York.

  The higher prices of diesel fuel and gasoline are being caused by a combination of factors, including surging demand and reduced refining capacity, along with the disruption to global markets caused by COVID-19, the current lockdown in China and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, said Rory Johnston, a managing director at Toronto-based research firm Price Street.

  “The overarching oil market is feeling much tighter because of the Russian-Ukraine situation,” Johnston, also writer of the newsletter Commodity Context, told FreightWaves. “What we’ve seen is a larger immediate impact from the loss of Russian refined products; in addition to exporting millions and millions of barrels a day of crude oil, Russia also exported a lot of refined products, most notably middle distillates, like gasoline or diesel.”

  Several refineries on the East Coast — including facilities in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada — scaled back during the early days of the pandemic, which has hurt diesel capacity, Johnston said.

  “There was also a refinery in Philadelphia that exploded just prior to the COVID-19 period starting,” Johnston said. “There’s not enough refining capacity on the global level, and particularly in the West right now and particularly in the northeastern U.S.”

  He said he doesn’t foresee any relief from increasing diesel prices over the next few months or more.

  “Things are going to be really tight for at least the next year, barring any kind of economic recession and some kind of demand slowdown materially,” Johnston said. 

  DeWart said trucking companies that don’t have a fuel surcharge component or contract in place and are depending on spot rates could be in big trouble over the next several months as diesel prices either keep rising or stay higher than average. 

  “Their fuel costs keep going up, but they’re really not able to negotiate higher rates right now with a really tight spot market,” DeWart said. “It’s really impacting small trucking companies, anyone that decided to kind of play the spot market, rather than being locked in contracted rates. They’re really feeling the pain right now.”

  DeWart said for trucking companies, it’s critical to get some type of fuel reimbursement program in place “just to protect themselves in case the cost of fuel goes even higher.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 05/18/2022 – 19:25

• Biden Admin Bracing For Wave Of Summer Violence Over Roe v. Wade
  Biden Admin Bracing For Wave Of Summer Violence Over Roe v. Wade

  The Biden administration is bracing for a wave of violence this summer, assuming the US Supreme Court follows through in June on a leaked opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, according to Fox News.

  

  According to a May 13 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memo, threats have been made to “burn down or storm” the Supreme Court building.

  The threats come as protesters have spent weeks outside the homes of conservative justices, who have been relocated along with their families for their protection.

  The DHS memo carefully explains that rhetoric supporting violent extremism does not itself constitute extremism.

  “The mere advocacy of political or social positions, political activism, use of strong rhetoric, or generalized philosophic embrace of violent tactics does not constitute domestic violent extremism or illegal activity and is constitutionally protected,” it reportedly reads.

  A DHS spokesperson told Fox News that the agency is “committed to protecting Americans’ freedom of speech and other civil rights and civil liberties, including the right to peacefully protest,” adding “DHS is also committed to working with our partners across every level of government and the private sector to share timely information and intelligence, prevent all forms of violence, and to support law enforcement efforts to keep our communities safe.”

  Last week the Senate voted unanimously to increase security for USSC justices following the leak. It allows Supreme Court police to arrest individuals who interfere with the court’s duties.

  “Attempts to intimidate Supreme Court Justices by the Radical Left are sadly nothing new, but dangerous nonetheless,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) who instroduced the legislation. “We must protect the Justices and their families in case these protests do turn violent.”

  We’re sure this summer’s protests will be ‘mostly peaceful.’

  

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 05/18/2022 – 19:05

• Mortality Among White Collar Workers Jumped 24 Percent Between 2020 And 2021, Life Insurance Data Show
  Mortality Among White Collar Workers Jumped 24 Percent Between 2020 And 2021, Life Insurance Data Show

  Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The increase in deaths not attributed to COVID-19 in the working-age population during the summer and into the fall of last year hit white-collar workers more than the blue- and grey-collar ones, according to life insurance data.

  

  In the white-collar sector, mortality jumped 24 percent in the period the data pertained to (April 2020-September 2021). Less than 64 percent of those were attributed to COVID-19. In the blue-collar sector, mortality increased by 19 percent, of which over 80 percent was attributed to COVID-19.

  Insurance company Q1 group life loss ratios vs 2019. Down from mandate death spikes but still elevated at 20%-30%. $SCI funeral contract volume was 17% above Q1 2020. $HIG 24%$LNC 32%$MET 22%$PRU 24%

  So looks like 20% excess deaths in Q1. If that continues very no bueno.

  — Ed ☯️Free Thinker & Oracle (@DowdEdward) May 7, 2022

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

  As The Epoch Times previously reported, prime-age mortality was particularly elevated in the 12 months ending October 2021, where there was an excess death spike of more than 40 percent in ages ranging 18–49, compared with the same period in 2018–2019, based on death certificate data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The majority of the excess deaths weren’t attributed to COVID-19.

  

  A recent study by the Society of Actuaries (SOA), an international professional organization, corroborates the CDC data. It relies on a survey of group term life insurance providers that yielded data on claims made from 2017 to 2021 and reported to insurers by Sept. 30, 2021 (pdf).

  The life insurance data show an increase in excess mortality since the second quarter of 2020, along with the COVID-19 pandemic, including a particularly sharp hike in the third quarter of 2021—39 percent above what would have been expected based on 2017–2019 data. That quarter was exceptionally devastating for age groups 25–34, 35–44, 45–54, and 55–64, in which mortality soared 81 percent, 117 percent, 108 percent, and 70 percent above the baseline respectively.

  Deaths attributed to COVID-19 accounted for about three-quarters of the excess mortality during the 18 months the study looked at. But among those under the age of 45, COVID-19 accounted for less than 38 percent of the excess deaths, the study says.

  🚨🚨Met Life $MET Group life loss ratio remains very elevated at 22% higher than 2019 levels & down only 200 bp from Q4. More importantly they are citing elevated excess non-Covid 19 mortality while also saying less Covid deaths under age 65 in Q1 versus Q4. So not Covid 🤔🤡 pic.twitter.com/rSN7cCknOr

  — Ed ☯️Free Thinker & Oracle (@DowdEdward) May 7, 2022

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

  Among industries with the largest number of COVID-19 deaths, the worst hit was public administration with nearly 13,000 life insurance claims related to the disease. Yet those only accounted for less than 52 percent of the sector’s excess mortality, which rose 24 percent during the pandemic months.

  Several other white-collar industries also experienced high excess mortality—22 percent in both doctors’ offices and educational services. COVID-19 claims accounted for nearly 80 percent and 70 percent of the spike respectively.

  

  By contrast, in heavy and steel manufacturing mortality rose by 9 percent, with COVID-19 more than accounting for the entire spike. In fact, non-COVID-19 mortality dropped by a few percent in this sector.

  The insurance data aren’t directly comparable to the CDC data because the population covered by group life insurance policies differs from the general population. Since the policies are commonly offered by employers, the overall population weighs disproportionately toward working-age adults.

  The study didn’t go into detail on non-COVID-19 causes of the excess deaths.

  The CDC has not yet released fully detailed cause-of-death data for the recent period, but a previous analysis by The Epoch Times, informed by conversations with state authorities and experts, revealed several potential causes of the excess mortality, including undercounted COVID-19 deaths, drug overdoses, alcohol-related disease, and injuries possibly caused by the COVID-19 vaccines.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 05/18/2022 – 18:45

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Mapped: The State Of Global Democracy In 2022
  Mapped: The State Of Global Democracy In 2022

  The world’s (almost) eight billion people live under a wide variety of political and cultural circumstances. As Visual Capitalists’s Nick Routley, Sabrina Fortin, and Raul Amoros detail below, in broad terms, those circumstances can be measured and presented on a sliding scale between “free” and “not free” – the subtext being that democracy lies on one end, and authoritarianism on the other.

  This year’s Democracy Index report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), is one such attempt to apply a score to countries based on how closely they measure up to democratic ideals.

  According to EIU, the state of democracy is at its lowest point since the index began in 2006, blamed in part on the pandemic restrictions that saw many countries struggling to balance public health with personal freedom.

  

  In this year’s report, the EIU reported a drop of the average global score from 5.37 to 5.28, the biggest drop since 2010 after the global financial crisis. This translates into a sobering fact: only 46% of the population is living in a democracy “of some sort.”

  Let’s dive a bit deeper into what this means.

  Percentage of Population by Regime Type

  In 2021, 37% of the world’s population still lived under an authoritarian regime. Afghanistan tops this list, followed by Myanmar, North Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Syria. Of course, China has a big share of the population living under this style of regime.

  On the other side of the spectrum we have full democracies, which only account for 6.4% of the population. Norway tops this list, followed by New Zealand, Finland, Sweden, and Iceland.

  

  Let’s explore the characteristics of each of the four types of regime according to the EIU:

  Full democracies are nations where:

  • Civil liberties and fundamental political freedoms are respected

  • Valid systems of governmental checks and balances exist

  • There are limited problems in democratic functioning

  • Media is diverse and independent

  Flawed democracies are nations where:

  • Elections are fair and free

  • Basic liberties are honored but may have issues

  • There are issues in the functioning of governance

  Hybrid regimes are nations where:

  • Electoral fraud or irregularities occur regularly

  • Pressure is applied to political opposition

  • Corruption is widespread and rule of law tends to be weak

  • Media is pressured and harassed

  • There are issues in the functioning of governance

  Authoritarian regimes are nations where:

  • Political pluralism is nonexistent or limited

  • The population is ruled by absolute monarchies or dictatorships

  • Infringements and abuses of civil liberties are common

  • Elections are not fair or free (if they occur at all)

  • Media is state-owned or controlled directly or indirectly by the ruling regime

  • The judiciary system is not independent

  • Criticism of the government is censored

  Global Democracy Index by Region

  As mentioned earlier, in 2021, the global democracy score declined from 5.37 to 5.28. This was driven by a decline in the average regional score, but every region has a different reality. Let’s take a look at the democratic state of each region in the world.

  Americas

  North America (Canada and U.S.) is the top-ranked region in the Democracy Index with an average score of 8.36, but this dropped significantly from 8.58 in 2020.

  Both countries have dropped their positions in the global ranking, however, Canada still maintains the status as a full democracy.

  

  The U.S. is still classified by EIU as a flawed democracy, and has been since 2016. The report points to extreme polarization and “gerrymandering” as key issues facing the country. On the bright side, political participation in the U.S. is still very robust compared with the rest of the world.

  Latin America and the Caribbean experienced the largest decline in regional scores in the world. This region dropped from 6.09 in 2020 to 5.83 in 2021. This decline shows the general discontent of the population about how their governments have handled the pandemic.

  In this region, the only country that falls under a full democracy is Costa Rica. On the other side of the spectrum, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba fall under the authoritarian regime classification.

  Europe

  In 2021, Western Europe is the region with the most full democracies in the world.

  In fact, four out of the top five full democracies are in this region: Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Iceland. A notable downgrade in this region happened in Spain; the country is now considered a flawed democracy.

  

  Eastern Europe paints a different picture, where there is not a single full democracy. Three countries (Moldova, Montenegro, and North Macedonia) were upgraded from being considered hybrid regimes to flawed democracies.

  Ukraine’s score declined to 5.57, becoming a hybrid region. Russia’s score also declined to 3.24 keeping the authoritarian regime status. It’s important to note that this report by the EIU was published before the invasion of Ukraine began, and the conflict will almost certainly impact scores in next year’s report.

  Africa

  Sub-Saharan Africa has the most countries at the bottom of the Democracy Index rankings.

  The fact is that 23 countries are considered “authoritarian regimes”. Meanwhile, there are 14 countries that are hybrid regimes, six countries under flawed democracy, and only one country, Mauritius, is considered a full democracy.

  

  In North Africa, four countries are considered authoritarian regimes: Sudan, Egypt, Libya, and Algeria. Only Morocco and Tunisia fall into the hybrid regime classification.

  Middle East and Central Asia

  This region concentrates a substantial number of countries classified as authoritarian regimes. In fact, the region’s overall democracy score is now lower than what it was before the start of the Arab Spring in 2010.

  

  There are no countries falling under the category of full democracy in this region. Only Israel (7.97) and Cyprus (7.43) are considered flawed democracies. Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, and Pakistan fall under the category of hybrid regimes, and the rest of the countries in the region are considered authoritarian regimes.

  East Asia and Oceania

  This is broad region is full of contrasts. Aside from Western Europe, East Asia and Oceania contains the most full democracies: New Zealand, Taiwan, Australia, South Korea, and Japan. There are also a high number of countries that fall under the category of flawed democracies.

  

  It’s worth noting that some of the most contentious geopolitical relationships are between neighbors with big differences in their scores: China and Taiwan, or North and South Korea are examples of this juxtaposition.

  Decline in Global Democracy Levels

  Two years after the world got hit by the pandemic, we can see that global democracy is in a downward trend.

  Every region’s global score experienced a drop, with the exception of Western Europe, which remained flat. Out of the 167 countries, 74 (44%) experienced a decline in their democracy score.

  As pandemic restrictions continue to be lifted, will democracy make a comeback in 2022?

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 05/18/2022 – 02:45

• Orbán Warns West Is Subjecting Itself To "Suicide Waves" Of Decline
  Orbán Warns West Is Subjecting Itself To “Suicide Waves” Of Decline

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  In a speech to mark him taking the oath of office, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán warned that the west is subjecting itself to “suicide waves” of decline in the form of self-inflicted economic wounds, mass migration and an obsession with identity politics.

  

  Orbán’s conservative Fidesz party swept to victory in the election last month with another two-thirds majority, despite a massive effort by globalist interests to derail his candidacy.

  During a speech in parliament, Orbán cautioned that the continent faced perilous times ahead.

  “Everything that has happened since 2020 points in one direction: Europe and the Hungarian people in it have entered an age of danger,” said Orbán.

  “The decade began with the coronavirus epidemic and continued with the war. The sanctions from the war brought an economic downturn.”

  “The war and sanctions policy caused an energy crisis, and U.S. interest rate hikes brought an age of inflation,” he added.

  The Hungarian leader went on to lament that Europe was entering an “age of economic downturn” and a worsening mass migration problem.

  Orbán said we are now witnessing the “suicide waves of the Western world” characterized by the replacement of Christianity with a vacuous cult of identity politics.

  “Such is the program of the great European population exchange, the essence of which is to replace the missing Christian children with migrants. Such an experiment is a program of gender madness and a liberal Europe that transcends nation-states and Christianity, and puts nothing in their place,” said Orbán.

  “They forget that man alone can never be free, only lonely,” he added.

  Orbán expressed hope that his own people could fight back, “because the Hungarians were carved out of hard wood, so we stubbornly resist the decline.”

  As we previously highlighted, the EU imposed sanctions on Hungary, directly afflicting the poor, because Hungarians dared to vote for a leader the globalists don’t like.

  *  *  *

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  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 05/18/2022 – 02:00

• Are Putin And Xi 'Gray Champions'? Part 2
  Are Putin And Xi ‘Gray Champions’? Part 2

  Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

  In Part 1 of this article I examined previous Fourth Turnings and the Gray Champions who won and lost, but made a difference in the course of history. Now I will try to peer through the fog of disinformation, lies, and false narratives to try and determine which Gray Champions will make a difference in this Fourth Turning.

  

  The U.S. and NATO are playing with fire by poking the bear. This is no longer a limited conflict between Russia and the Ukraine. In the early days of the conflict, there were constant talks between both sides, with the possibility of a negotiated resolution. The American Empire nixed those talks. The neo-cons, representing the interests of the military industrial complex uni-party, see an opportunity to further enrich themselves, while believing they can bleed and weaken Putin. But who is really being weakened in the long run?

  

  Putin’s military operation began on February 24. Oil was $93 a barrel. It is up 13% and despite economic sanctions, Russian oil revenue is higher, and the ruble is at a two year high versus the USD and Euro. Natural gas prices are up 69%. Diesel prices are up 89%. Gasoline prices are up 29%. Wheat prices are up 31%. The stock market is down 5% and at a one year low. As an exporter of oil, natural gas, and wheat, is Russia really suffering from these price increases, or are the citizens of the EU and U.S. bearing the brunt of the pain? Russians are paying $2.80 a gallon for gasoline, while Americans are paying $4.65 per gallon. Who’s winning this proxy war?

  Russian oil exports are up 50% in 2022. The Biden administration is amateur hour on steroids. The State Department and Defense Department are led by inept woke lightweights who are stumbling and bumbling our country into World War 3. They keep pushing Putin, attempting to instigate him into an action they can use as a basis for officially declaring war against Russia.

  

  Make no mistake about it, the U.S. is already at war with Russia and Putin knows it. Economic sanctions, even though they have backfired and hurt Europe and the U.S. far more than Russia, are an act of war. Providing the Ukraine with tactical information so they can target generals and naval ships is an act of war. Shipping high tech military weaponry, in addition to enriching U.S. arms makers, to the Ukraine is an act of war.

  Sending $54 billion, printed out of thin air by Powell and his cronies and exacerbating our already 40-year high inflation, to the corrupt Zelensky so he can buy U.S. arms, is an act of war. I wonder if the “Big Guy” will get his 10%. Calling for the overthrow of a world leader, who has 6,000 nuclear weapons at his disposal, is a reckless act of war. This isn’t a video game, where you get to start over if you make the wrong move. This game of Risk could end life on this planet as we know it if someone makes the wrong move.

  Fourth Turnings have a life of their own, with the generational juxtaposition driving events towards conflict rather than towards a negotiated resolution. The Prophet Generation leaders are sure of themselves, even when the facts argue against their plans. They will plunge forward, as their arrogance and self-absurdness convince them they are destined to achieve immortality in history books as the leader who changed or saved the world.

  We are in the midst of an era where events are being orchestrated by evil men whose agendas, while not totally coordinated, all coalesce around a future world of authoritarian domination by the few and passive subjugation by the many. It is clear Gates and Clinton are active conspirators in the Great Reset scheme being implemented by the billionaire global oligarchs.

  

  Trump is an enigma, as his rhetoric appears to be against these forces of evil, but his actions speak otherwise. His assessment and selection of key personnel, endorsement of candidates, and continued full throated support of the blood clot inducing Big Pharma experimental gene therapies that don’t keep you from catching or transmitting a low-risk flu, classifies him as either a clueless dupe or just controlled opposition, paid to keep half the masses distracted from their conspiracy to implement their Build Back Better New World Order.

  His actions in not doing everything in his power to free the January 6 hostages, rotting in government dungeons, passive support for Biden’s reckless Ukraine provocations, and endorsement of left wing lunatics like Oprah talk show host and Turkish citizen Mehmet Oz for Senate in a state where he doesn’t reside, prove his true colors. A Trump victory in the 2024 presidential election would ensure a chaotic whirlwind of domestic violence as a likely global conflict would already be underway.

  

  Is Putin the world’s last hope in derailing the WEF Great Reset agenda or is he just playing his part in enslaving the global population in squalor and debt within a techno-gulag dystopian surveillance federation, where you will own nothing and be happy while your overlords own everything and dole out your rations depending upon your level of subservience? Even though there have been tenuous links between Putin and the WEF globalist cabal, the reaction of these globalists to his military operation reveals he is not on their side.

  The U.S. controlled NATO has been slowly encircling Russia with missiles and the imminent admission of Sweden and Finland will put their missiles on Putin’s doorstep. Putin and his closest advisors are clear headed and understand the stakes, as stated by Dimitry Medvedev:

  “The pumping of Ukraine by NATO countries with weapons, the training of its troops to use Western equipment, the dispatch of mercenaries and the conduct of exercises by the countries of the Alliance near our borders increase the likelihood of a direct and open conflict between NATO and Russia instead of their ‘war by proxy. Such a conflict always has the risk of turning into a full-fledged nuclear war. This will be a disastrous scenario for everyone.”

  – Dimitry Medvedev – Former Russian President

  It appears this showdown between the failing and flailing American Empire and Putin will be the existential clash of this Fourth Turning. There is one certainty. Putin will not accept defeat in Ukraine. He plans to attain his objectives, whatever the cost. If the U.S. and NATO are foolish enough to directly intervene, they risk confirming Robert Oppenheimer’s lament – “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. Putin has seen the writing on the wall since the 2014 U.S. orchestrated coup d’état and has shown tremendous restraint in his response.

  His Ukraine invasion has been targeted on military objectives, making all efforts to avoid civilian casualties. The Russian military is methodical, efficient, and boring, as opposed to the Shock & Awe U.S. military that has failed miserably at achieving their objectives for 20 years. The false flag Ukrainian attempts to create atrocity narratives have failed pathetically. But Putin’s restraint should not be mistaken for weakness. He is a man of his word, not one of Biden’s bloviating apparatchiks who got their job based on race, sex, or wokeness credentials. He means what he says and is willing to back up his words with actions.

  

  “If someone intends to intervene in the ongoing events from the outside and create strategic threats for Russia that are unacceptable to us, they should know that our retaliatory strikes will be lightning-fast. We have all the tools for this, and we will use them if necessary. And I want everyone to know that.” 

  – Vladimir Putin – April 28, 2022

  

  There is no doubt in my mind Putin will be the most impactful of the Gray Champions over the last several years of this Crisis. The other Gray Champion who has been biding his time and generally keeping a low profile is Xi Jinping. Like Putin, a dictator for life, he can play the long game, while the U.S. fiddles and burns. He has refused to condemn Putin’s invasion and is tacitly supporting Russia by purchasing their oil and wheat, sanctioned by the West.

  He is also learning the U.S. and the EU are paper tigers, bogged down by immense levels of debt, vacuous leadership, a willfully ignorant populace, and militaries focused on wokeness rather than preparation for war. He continues to rattle his sword towards Taiwan, probing and testing the U.S. reaction. Xi’s aspiration is for China to dominate the 21st Century and he is applauding the foolishness of the American Empire in its death throes as it accelerates its fall by seeing its currency and military domination degraded rapidly.

  

  Xi is a serious man, on par with Putin, when it comes to tenaciously implementing his agenda. Both Russia and China have major demographic issues and as dictators, they always have the possibility of being overthrown by an internal adversary. Human rights, gender inclusivity, and choosing preferred pronouns are not high priorities for these men. Xi has been rapidly building up his military, using the hundreds of billions the U.S. has supplied buying their cheap crap for decades.

  China’s CCP has infiltrated American universities and stolen our technological innovations, bribing corrupt politicians, greedy corporate CEOs, spineless college administrators, and our dishonest whore media, to gain control over key aspects of our economic system. They are truly the enemy within. And the Biden crime family is beholden to both China and Ukraine. Xi played Trump like a fiddle, pretending they were personal friends and making promises he never intended to keep, as shown by our trade deficit with China up 30% from 2021 and on-track to reach an all-time high over $450 billion in 2022.

  

  Both Putin and Xi see the deterioration, degradation, and unseriousness of those steering the American ship of state into a sea of icebergs. They witness the bumbling fool of a president on a daily basis and the dimwitted sycophants running his administration behind the curtain. It would be comical if these amateurs weren’t in the process of tearing the fabric of American society to shreds, while simultaneously pushing the world into a global conflict in which the likelihood of nuclear confrontation grows by the day.

  Xi most certainly plans to enact a takeover of Taiwan when he believes the U.S. is too distracted, militarily stretched and bogged down in their European misadventure. Biden has already pushed Russia and China closer, along with India, while the majority of the world supports Russia in this conflict. You will not hear that from the U.S. media, but it is a fact.

  The U.S. Empire is not loved by the rest of the world. It has been feared, because if you stepped out of line in honoring the USD for all obligations you were summarily bombed into oblivion or cut off from the billions in “foreign aid” (aka bribes) doled out by American politicians. None of the foreign aid ever aids the people of those countries. It aids corrupt foreign leaders, arms dealers, and politicians who have a portion of the funds funneled back into their pockets. It has worked like a charm for decades, but these arrogant psychopaths went too far this time with their Covid scheme, unleashing a tsunami of inflation and destroying the just in time global supply chain they created when they sold off our manufacturing to China.

  The horrific reported inflation of 8.3% is really 17%, if measured as it was during Paul Volcker’s reign as Federal Reserve Chairman. Of course, he took the courageous action of raising rates to 20% in order to crush it and succeeded. The cowardly Powell has rates under 1% and will do as he is told by his globalist overlords, destroying our economy so the Great Reset can move forward unabated.

  

  History seems to be accelerating, with major developments and sudden turns every few weeks. False narratives and engineered distractions (Ukraine war, leaked abortion ruling, covid variant of the month) are designed to divert your attention from the collapse of our economy and financial markets. No one is really in control, though there are many egomaniacal self-absorbed despots who believe they can alter the course of history in the direction they choose.

  Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, and the rest of the World Economic Forum authoritarian evil globalist purveyors of real disinformation want to destroy our way of life so they can implement the way of life they want us to have – owning nothing, eating bugs, obeying their commands, under constant technological surveillance, and in constant fear of being turned in if they voice dissent. Essentially, they want to impose a techno-fascist global regime upon the masses.

  

  Those pulling the strings know the jig is up. They’ve played the debt card to the hilt. It began to unravel in September 2019 when the repo market cracked. Everything since has been part of their exit strategy plan. They know the house of cards is about to come crashing down and are attempting to pull off a controlled demolition in which they retain their wealth, power, and control. Of course, their hubris will ultimately lead to their downfall, as the world is too complex, has too many variables to control, and their malevolent machinations will blow up in their faces and possibly blow up the entire world.

  As we see shortages of baby formula, eggs, wheat, fertilizer, diesel fuel, high tech equipment, vehicles, along with open borders allowing hordes of illegals to pour into the country, and Democrat run urban enclaves encouraging murder and mayhem, all created by purposeful decisions made at the highest levels of government and funded by the likes of Soros and Gates, you can’t help but recognize their real goal is to destroy this country. We’ve reached the point Frank Zappa warned us about a few decades ago.

  “The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”

  – Frank Zappa

  

  I understand what they are trying to accomplish. With little food or fuel, and less than 1% of the population able to grow their own food to sustain themselves, the Build Back Better oligarchs expect the masses to beg them to be saved. This is where the WEF slogan, “You will own nothing and be happy” comes to fruition. You will be doled out a food ration, work menial jobs, live a squalid existence, use their global digital currency, and try to maintain a high social credit score so you are not ostracized and condemned to the gulag, or worse.

  The world is highly complex, and the best laid plans of these psychopaths are likely to go awry. I don’t believe they can pull off this controlled demolition without unleashing a myriad of unintended consequences. There is a pugnacious, heavily armed minority who will refuse to bend the knee to the arrogant, soft, egg head billionaires like Gates. His man boobs and pot belly don’t inspire admiration from average hard working blue collar man. A motivated minority of skilled freedom minded patriots can cause a multitude of problems for globalist totalitarians.

  

  I also believe Putin and Xi are roadblocks to the WEF agenda, explaining the fawning over failed comedic actor Zelensky and his invitation to speak at Schwab’s annual World Economic Forum. The course of this Fourth Turning now hinges upon the actions of Putin and Xi in response to the threats and warlike actions being taken by an American Empire desperately clinging to the mantle as the dominant world power.

  

  In theory I understood this Fourth Turning would ultimately lead to a bloody global conflict, but a few years into this Crisis I didn’t visualize a scenario which would lead to such an outcome. Each Fourth Turning has seen an exponential increase in deaths, as the killing technology has improved. There were approximately 65 million deaths during World War II, with Russia incurring 27 million of those deaths. That means approximately 3% of the global population were killed during the last Fourth Turning.

  Over 4% of the U.S. male population was killed during the Civil War. A similar death toll percentage today would exceed 250 million people. With the killing technology available today to men of dubious intellect and malicious motives, the potential loss of life could exceed our worst nightmares. I hoped for a less dismal route for this inevitable Crisis, but we are now careening towards our own rendezvous with destiny. On the current trajectory, we are running out of time on the Doomsday Clock.

  

  Strauss and Howe laid out four potential outcomes, which I have presented many times before in previous articles. Three of the four are not positive. If you asked me a few years ago, I would have selected outcome three as the most likely, as the American Empire died with a whimper, much like the British Empire after World War II. Now I realize outcomes three and four are highly unlikely.

  I believe outcome two is inevitable, as the dominant nation (America) has chosen to take a course which will engulf the planet in a war with an unknowable outcome. Once war starts on a grand scale, it could spin out of control and result in outcome number one. We can only hope cooler heads will prevail, but observing what is considered leadership in this day and age, I’m not optimistic.

  1. This Fourth Turning could mark the end of man. It could be an omnicidal Armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing. If mankind ever extinguishes itself, this will probably happen when its dominant civilization triggers a Fourth Turning that ends horribly. For this Fourth Turning to put an end to all this would require an extremely unlikely blend of social disaster, human malevolence, technological perfection, and bad luck.

  2. The Fourth Turning could mark the end of modernity. The Western saecular rhythm – which began in the mid-fifteenth century with the Renaissance – could come to an abrupt terminus. The seventh modern saeculum would be the last. This too could come from total war, terrible but not final. There could be a complete collapse of science, culture, politics, and society. Such a dire result would probably happen only when a dominant nation (like today’s America) lets a Fourth Turning ekpyrosis engulf the planet. But this outcome is well within the reach of foreseeable technology and malevolence.

  3. The Fourth Turning could spare modernity but mark the end of our nation. It could close the book on the political constitution, popular culture, and moral standing that the word America has come to signify. The nation has endured for three saecula; Rome lasted twelve, the Soviet Union only one. Fourth Turnings are critical thresholds for national survival. Each of the last three American Crises produced moments of extreme danger: In the Revolution, the very birth of the republic hung by a thread in more than one battle. In the Civil War, the union barely survived a four-year slaughter that in its own time was regarded as the most lethal war in history. In World War II, the nation destroyed an enemy of democracy that for a time was winning; had the enemy won, America might have itself been destroyed. In all likelihood, the next Crisis will present the nation with a threat and a consequence on a similar scale.

  4. Or the Fourth Turning could simply mark the end of the Millennial Saeculum. Mankind, modernity, and America would all persevere. Afterward, there would be a new mood, a new High, and a new saeculum. America would be reborn. But, reborn, it would not be the same.

  

  I’ve always preached preparedness and combining forces with like-minded people, but can you really prepare for a world where outcome one or two is the climax of this Fourth Turning? I know many bloggers make money off of doom, but I simply cannot conceive of a positive outcome based on the current dynamics driving the world towards war.

  I’d love to give a Knute Rockne speech to inspire the team to rally around someone who can lead us to victory. But all I see are monkeys with matches in a room full of dynamite. It’s only a matter of time until it explodes. The decline of an empire is awful to watch and even worse to live through. I wish you Godspeed and thank you for reading my ramblings. I hope I’m wrong.

  *  *  *

  The corrupt establishment will do anything to suppress sites like the Burning Platform from revealing the truth. The corporate media does this by demonetizing sites like mine by blackballing the site from advertising revenue. If you get value from this site, please keep it running with a donation.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/17/2022 – 23:45

• Kim Mobilizes Military To Tackle "Explosive" North Korean COVID Outbreak, Infected Told To 'Gargle Saltwater'
  Kim Mobilizes Military To Tackle “Explosive” North Korean COVID Outbreak, Infected Told To ‘Gargle Saltwater’

  North Korea first acknowledged an “explosive” outbreak of COVID-19 last week, with health officials instructing residents to ‘gargle’ saltwater to treat the virus as medical supplies remain limited and a non-existent vaccine program, Reuters reports. 

  Leader Kim Jong Un blasted health officials over the slow response to counter the virus and the lack of medication for not reaching people quickly. Kim had to mobilize the army’s medical corps to “stabilize the supply of medicines in Pyongyang City,” according to the state news agency KCNA. 

  On Monday, North Korean health authorities reported more than 1.2 million have been fever-stricken, with 50 deaths.

  With very few COVID treatments, state media have instructed people to use antibiotics, painkillers, and other remedies, such as gargling saltwater and drinking willow leaf tea.

  Kim has placed himself in the spotlight of the country’s infectious disease response team, overseeing daily meetings on the outbreak, which he already said has caused “great upheaval.” 

  

  North Korea has rejected international help and vaccines for the last 2.5 years. Without immediate help, fatality and infection rates could soar in a country with one of the world’s worst hospital systems. 

  Most people in the country remain unvaccinated and don’t have strong immune systems because of poor appetite and depressed living standards. 

  Kim has taken a page out of China’s book and issued a nationwide lockdown to stop the spread. 

  Some suspect North Korea is significantly underestimating infections and fatalities. 

  “When people die, North Korean authorities will say they’ve died of overwork or from natural deaths, not because of COVID-19,” Nam Sung-wook, a professor at Korea University in South Korea, told ABC News. He said Kim is likely understating the outbreak to protect his “dignity.” 

  South Korea’s unification ministry has offered to send masks, test kits, and vaccines, but the North hasn’t acknowledged its neighbor to the south. 

  Considering the lack of medical treatment, malnourishment and chronic poverty of the vast majority of the population, and lack of a credible hospital system, North Korea could be entering COVID hell. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/17/2022 – 23:25

• China’s Protracted Lockdowns Cause Critical Shortages In West
  China’s Protracted Lockdowns Cause Critical Shortages In West

  Authored by Dorothy Li via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Hospitals in the United States are on high alert, with some doctors prioritizing patients in critical condition as the prolonged lockdown in China’s Shanghai has caused a global shortage of chemicals used in medical imaging.

  

  Some of the largest U.S. hospitals said earlier this month they were facing significant shortages of iodinated contrast media products, which are dyes given to patients so that their internal organs and vessels can be picked up by CT scans, X-rays, and radiography.

  The dwindling supply was due to the temporary closure of the production facility of General Electric’s health care unit in Shanghai, a trade hub that has been locked down for nearly two months. Though the factory has been allowed to resume operation gradually, the Greater New York Hospital Association warned that an 80 percent reduction in supply might last through the end of June, according to a May 5 statement.

  Some hospitals have started to conserve use of the medical dye. For example, the University of Alabama at Birmingham Health System said they activated a response to aggressively ration the supply of intravenous contrast to address the shortage, according to a May 7 statement. The efforts mean doctors are prioritizing urgent scans and postponing elective tests.

  

  U.S. health care facilities are not alone in feeling the economic consequences. From Apple, Microsoft, and Tesla, to Adidas, Estée Lauder, and Starbucks, global companies have warned of the spillover effects of China’s protracted COVID-19 lockdowns.

  As the fast-moving Omicron variant spread across the country, Chinese cities, from large to small, have imposed various degrees of restrictions under the regime’s “zero-COVID” playbook. The biggest lockdown in Shanghai led to many of the city’s 25 million residents enduring a food shortage. Officials on May 15 signaled that the city started reopening, but residents said they still could not step out of their homes.

  As of May 10, some 41 cities across the country are under partial or full lockdown, according to estimates by Japanese bank Nomura, accounting for almost 30 percent of China’s economic output.

  

  Production Disrupted

  With factory workers and consumers stuck at home and many businesses forced to suspend operations, China’s export growth last month was at a 2-year low. Exports in dollar terms decelerated to 3.9 percent in April from a year earlier, tumbling from the 14.7 percent growth in March, China’s customs reported on May 9.

  The sluggish figures from the trade sector, which accounts for about a third of gross domestic product (GDP), added to a string of signs that the world’s second-largest economy is slowing down. Factory activity had already contracted at a sharper pace in April, industry surveys showed.

  Chinese authorities promised to allow some businesses to resume operations within a so-called “closed loop” system where workers live where they work. But only 19 percent of 460 German companies have permits to operate under such conditions, according to a survey by the German Chamber of Commerce in China published on May 12. Of those allowed to produce under lockdown, facilities are running at less than half of their capacity on average.

  “Closed loop productions are inacceptable as a long-term solution for German companies to operate in China,” said Maximilian Butek, the executive director of the chamber, in a statement.

  The flash survey, echoing the results of recent findings by the U.S. and European business groups in China, underscored signs that foreign employees are increasingly planning to leave the country due to the regime’s strict COVID-19 strategy.

  Wary Investors

  Strict COVID-19 curbs and the resulting supply chain chaos have rattled foreign business confidence, according to several surveys by foreign lobby groups.

  A recent survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China found that over half of its 121 members have already delayed or reduced investments as a result of the lockdown. Some 51 percent have already decreased their revenue projections for the year, according to the poll conducted from late April to early May.

  “Revenue forecasts for this year are down, but, more worryingly, members don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel,” said AmCham China Chairman Colm Rafferty in the statement.

  A gloomier picture was painted by European businesses in the country. The number of companies weighing a shift of investments out of China reached its highest proportion in a decade, according to a survey by the European Chamber of Commerce in China published on May 5.

  The survey, conducted in late April, found nearly a quarter of the 372 respondents were considering moving current or planned investments out of China, more than double the number at the beginning of the year. About 60 percent of businesses have cut their business revenue projections this year, while 92 percent stated that they had been affected by recent port closures, a decline in road freight, and rising sea freight costs.

  

  China’s zero-COVID policy is the last straw for foreign investors, who have already been dealing with headwinds like trade conflicts and a deteriorating business environment, said Frank Tian Xie, an associate professor of marketing at the University of South Carolina Aiken.

  Stronger Reverberations

  At a May 5 meeting of the Chinese Communist Party’s most powerful body, the Politburo Standing Committee, Chinese leader Xi Jinping issued warnings against anyone who criticized, questioned, or distorted the regime’s zero-COVID policy.

  “We have won the battle to defend Wuhan,” Xi said, according to the official news outlet Xinhua. “We can certainly win the battle to defend greater Shanghai.”

  Economists have repeatedly warned of the consequences of the strict COVID-10 curbs. A top Chinese economist Xu Jianguo warned at a May 8 webinar that the economic impact of the latest outbreak is ten times more severe than in early 2020, when the regime initially locked down Wuhan, South China Morning Post reported. He estimated the curbs, including lockdown and travel restrictions, have cost the country $2.68 trillion this year, said the report.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/17/2022 – 23:05

• Ransomware Gang Threatens To "Overthrow" Costa Rica's Government As Attack Deepens
  Ransomware Gang Threatens To “Overthrow” Costa Rica’s Government As Attack Deepens

  Last week, Costa Rica declared a state of emergency after a Conti Group ransomware attack infected government computer networks. Now, the ransomware gang responsible for the attack said its objective is to overthrow the government, according to AP News. 

  On Monday, newly elected President Rodrigo Chaves told reporters that the Russian-speaking cyber gang had increased ransom payment to $20 million. He said the ransomware had impacted 27 government institutions, including federal agencies, state-run utilities, and municipalities. 

  “We are at war, and that’s not an exaggeration,” Chaves said, adding officials believe they’re dealing with a national terrorist group with collaborators inside Costa Rica. 

  

  Also, on Monday, Conti said: “We have our insiders in your government … are also working on gaining access to your other systems, you have no other options but to pay us. We know that you have hired a data recovery specialist, don’t try to find workarounds.”

  The ransomware attack was first discovered in April, infecting the Finance Ministry, including customs and tax collection networks. AP notes other government networks have been infected and have not worked properly in a month. 

  Conti has also said: “We are determined to overthrow the government by means of a cyber attack, we have already shown you all the strength and power, you have introduced an emergency.”

  If the ransomware is not paid promptly, the cyber gang said they would delete the decryption keys, effectively paralyzing critical networks that run certain government agencies. 

  Brett Callow, a ransomware analyst at Emsisoft, said, “the threat to overthrow the government is simply them making noise and not to be taken too seriously.” 

  However, Callow did say, “We haven’t seen anything even close to this before, and it’s quite a unique situation.” 

  Could this be the first instance a cyber gang attempts to overthrow a government with ransomware? 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/17/2022 – 22:45

• Chinese Investors Remove Hedges For Downside Risks
  Chinese Investors Remove Hedges For Downside Risks

  By Ye Xie, Bloomberg markets live commentator and reporter

  While the news flow in China and Hong Kong has been grim, there have been some positive developments, most notably on the policy front for real estate and tech companies. So far, it’s more piecemeal than a complete policy U-turn.

  By the same token, a lot of bad news seems to be reflected in the markets. In fact, bearish options in Hong Kong stocks are dwindling to the lowest level in two decades, suggesting investors see limited downside.  

  Tuesday saw some new data and news developments. Let’s start with bonds and the currency. Chinabond’s data showed foreign outflow from Chinese government bonds slowed to 42 billion yuan ($6.2 billion) in April, from a record 52 billion yuan in March. Noticeably, foreign holdings of policy banks’ notes, which offer higher yields with limited credit risk, tumbled by a record 41 billion yuan. So sentiment toward Chinese bonds remains poor.

  Yet the currency settlement data showed that the portfolio outflow was more than offset by China’s trade surplus. That resulted in a net currency inflow of around $9 billion in April, according to Goldman Sachs’ estimate. The yuan’s record 4% decline in April, therefore, seems to have been driven more by sentiment than faster deterioration in balance of payments. Some currency depreciation may be welcome and tolerated by Beijing, but a repeat of the depreciation at a similar speed and magnitude is less likely.

  

  Shifting gears to the tech front, Vice Premier Liu He gave an unusual public show of support for digital-platform companies on Tuesday. At a symposium with the heads of some of the nation’s largest private firms, Liu said that the government will support the development of digital-economy companies and their public listings. Platform companies are encouraged to participate in major national scientific and technological innovation projects.

  The show of support after a yearlong crackdown is more symbolic. After all, some actions – such as anti-monopoly measures, the delisting of Didi and the crackdown of after-school tutoring companies – are irreversible. Indeed, the nearly 5% gain in the Nasdaq Golden Dragon Index of Chinese ADRs in the U.S. on Tuesday is in-line with its normal relationship with the Nasdaq Composite, suggesting the rally is more about the global sentiment than China specific.

  What it does show is that a lot of bad news seems to be priced in and the stocks are susceptible to marginal good news. Indeed, the implied volatility of China’s stocks has been lower than realized volatility, suggesting traders don’t see markets becoming even more volatile. In Hong Kong, the put/call open-interest ratio for the Hang Seng Index has dropped to the lowest level in two decades. That shows downside hedges have been steadily removed as the market cratered. Historically, that tends to mark the bottoming process.

  

  Where we go from here depends on what happens next with Covid in China. But the soaring unemployment rate may alarm Beijing enough that more substantial policy counterattacks are in the making, giving beaten-down assets such as tech stocks and real estate some reprieve.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/17/2022 – 22:25

• Vancouver Arby's Manager Accused Of Urinating In Store's Milkshake Mix For "Sexual Gratification"
  Vancouver Arby’s Manager Accused Of Urinating In Store’s Milkshake Mix For “Sexual Gratification”

  Police have accused an Arby’s manager in Vancouver of urinating in his store’s milkshake mix for “sexual gratification” on at least two occasions.

  We know what you’re thinking…but hey, at least it’s not more terrible news about inflation though, right?

  The manager, Stephen Sharp, was already being investigated for child pornography, according to a new report by the NY Post. He made the admission to police while being questioned, the report says. 

  Sharp was arrested by Vancouver police and confessed to downloading and distributing child pornography on May 10, the Post reported.

  

  When officers executed a search warrant on Sharp, they uncovered “dozens of photos and videos depicting the sexual exploitation of children as well as the urine video on his digital devices”. 

  They say Sharp downloaded the images “at least once” while he was working. 

  And now, the search for the urine drinkers has commenced. The Post writes that authorities are “looking for any unlucky customers” who “purchased a milkshake from the Arby’s at 221 Northeast 104th Ave. on Oct. 30 or Oct. 31 and has a receipt.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/17/2022 – 22:05

• Day 1 Rundown Of The Michael Sussmann Trial
  Day 1 Rundown Of The Michael Sussmann Trial

  Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

  Day 1 of the Michael Sussmann trial is a wrap.

  It started with disclosure by Special Counsel DeFilippis informing the Court that government witness Dr. Manos Antonakakis (identified as Researcher-1 in the Sussmann indictment) “has decided to invoke his Fifth Amendment right.” He would not be called to the stand. More background on Manos here.

  

  From there it was time for opening statements.

  Special Counsel Brittain Shaw made clear that this case is “about privilege: the privilege of a well-connected D.C. lawyer with access to the highest levels of the FBI; the privilege of a lawyer who thought that he could lie to the FBI without consequences.” Using that privilege, Sussmann:

  “went straight to the FBI general counsel’s office, the FBI’s top lawyer. He then sat across from that lawyer and lied to him. He told a lie that was designed to achieve a political end, a lie that was designed to inject the FBI into a presidential election.”

  Circumventing the political leanings of the jury, the Special Counsel explained that “we are here because the FBI is our institution that should not be used as a political tool for anyone.” She elaborated that Joffe, on behalf of his clients – the Hillary Clinton Campaign and Rodney Joffe – planned to manipulate the FBI, and trigger negative news stories, “to create an October surprise on the even of the presidential election.” As to the evidence:

  You’re going to see emails and phone records that show that beginning in the summer of 2016 the defendant worked with Fusion GPS to develop the Trump/Alfa story and plant it in the press.

  She also gave us this preview:

  

  The attorney for Sussmann, in their opening, argued there was no lie. Instead, Sussmann “went to the FBI to help the FBI” – so they wouldn’t be “caught flat-footed” by a New York Times story discussing the purported Alfa Bank/Trump connections. Of course, they admitted as a result of the Sussmann/Baker meeting, the FBI decided it wanted “to investigate.” To condense Sussmann’s defense: no lie and no reason to lie.

  FBI Supervisory Special Agent David Martin.

  Agent Martin was the first government witness to testify. He explained the technicalities of the DNS data which alleged to have shown a secret back channel between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.

  Sussmann’s attorney asked Martin if he knew Rodney Joffe a “confidential human source for the FBI.”

  Martin replied “I was told that after the fact.”

  On redirect, the Special Counsel offered this interesting bit of information relating to Joffe: “Are you aware that Mr. Joffe was closed for cause as a source?”

  FBI Special Agent Scott Hellman

  Hellman was involved in investigating the Alfa Bank allegations. He testified that the evidence (data and white papers explaining the data) provided to then-FBI general counsel James Baker from Sussmann was passed off to none other than the infamous Peter Strzok. One of these white papers stated:

  “The only plausible explanation for this server configuration is that it shows the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank to be using multiple sophisticated layers of protection in order to obfuscate their considerable recent email traffic.”

  Hellman disagreed with that finding, and the general Trump/Alfa allegations presented by Joffe/Sussmann, stating they “were not supported by the technical data.” Their methodology was “questionable” and the purported secret communications “just didn’t ring true at all.” He further questioned the timing of the data, stating he found it suspicious that these researchers “started looking, and they found that the activity had just started three weeks prior.”

  This gets us to the issue of materiality. Sussmann’s attorneys argue that even if there were lies, they weren’t material to the investigation. The Special Counsel asked why sources matter. The key exchange:

  

  We’ll be updating this page once we get the afternoon transcript, which includes additional witness testimony. Stay tuned…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/17/2022 – 21:45

• Feds Begin 'Major Radiological Incident' Drill In Austin 
  Feds Begin ‘Major Radiological Incident’ Drill In Austin 

  Dozens of local, state, and federal agencies have begun conducting “a major radiological incident exercise” in Austin, Texas. 

  The Cobalt Magnet 22 exercise is led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration in partnership with the Austin Homeland Security and Emergency Management Office, bringing 30 agencies together in a field training exercise to combat threats of radiological attacks

  Reminder: This week, @NNSANews radiological incident response personnel, with Austin HSEM and other federal, state and local partners, will participate in Cobalt Magnet, a large consequence management field training exercise. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/P3BD8Ei1UN

  — Austin Emergency Management (@AustinHSEM) May 16, 2022

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

  Austin Emergency Management tweeted the exercise will take place in various locations around the metro area this week. “You may see people in protective clothing using equipment and/or low-flying aircraft,” the local agency said, adding “It’s just an exercise.” 

  Cobalt Magnet 22 will take place at various locations around Austin this week. You may see people in protective clothing using equipment and/or low-flying aircraft. Remember: It’s just an exercise! (2/2)

  — Austin Emergency Management (@AustinHSEM) May 16, 2022

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

  The exercise is considered regular training and will help scientists and technical experts with radiological monitoring and assessment. It began on Monday and will last through Friday. 

  “The City of Austin is pleased to welcome NNSA and the numerous local, state and federal agencies participating in Cobalt Magnet.

  “Our goal in this exercise is to test our procedures and make improvements to ensure we’re keeping the Austin/Travis County community protected,” Juan Ortiz, Director of Austin’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Office, told Austonia. 

  So the bigger question … WHY is the government preparing for a dirty bomb or radiological dispersal device attack on a city now? 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/17/2022 – 21:25

• Commerce Cronyism: Inside Deals, Conflicts Of Interest And Chinese Connections
  Commerce Cronyism: Inside Deals, Conflicts Of Interest And Chinese Connections

  By Peter Schweizer of the Gatestone Institute

  • The Commerce Department is the fourth most lobbied federal office, behind only the Treasury Department, Health & Human Services, and the White House itself. It is more lobbied than the bigger budgeted Department of Defense and Department of Transportation, despite managing a far smaller budget. This is no accident, because Commerce makes what can be life-and-death decisions for particular industries and businesses.

  • Yet the mission of this “hodgepodge” of administrative agencies, bureaus, and offices could not be more important. The Commerce Department’s broad purpose is “to create the conditions for economic growth and opportunity.”

  • Through its Bureau of Industry and Security, Commerce regulates what are known as “dual use” technologies, which have potential military applications for foreign powers, another sore spot in the US-China relationship.

  The US Department of Commerce seldom grabs headlines or congressional scrutiny. It does not become “weaponized” against political opponents of the incumbent party. After the 2016 election, an article on Vox about incoming power-players of the Trump administration dismissed the department as a “hodgepodge of agencies,” and a “Cabinet backwater.”

  

  Yet the mission of this “hodgepodge” of administrative agencies, bureaus, and offices could not be more important. The Commerce Department’s broad purpose is “to create the conditions for economic growth and opportunity.” The department has an important role in setting and executing US domestic and international trade policy. It administers tariffs and even arms control, through its regulatory oversight of military exports. These functions receive quite a bit more attention than the activities of such workaday agencies as the National Weather Service, the Bureau of the Census, and the US Patent and Trademark Office.

  The Government Accountability Institute (GAI), (full disclosure: of which I am president) just released an investigative report called “Commerce Cronyism: Inside Deals, Conflicts of Interest & Chinese Connections,” that takes a close look at this rarely scrutinized “backwater.” We found that, as in most backwaters, a lot of strange things happen there.

  The Commerce Department is the fourth most lobbied federal office, behind only the Treasury Department, Health & Human Services, and the White House itself. It is more lobbied than the bigger budgeted Department of Defense and Department of Transportation, despite managing a far smaller budget. This is no accident, because Commerce makes what can be life-and-death decisions for particular industries and businesses.

  The trade war with China gave the Commerce Department tremendous influence over this critical policy area. The Trade Expansion Act of 1962 gave the Commerce Department authority to investigate the effect of imports on US national security. Effectively, the department creates the groundwork for tariffs. Through its Bureau of Industry and Security, Commerce regulates what are known as “dual use” technologies, which have potential military applications for foreign powers, another sore spot in the US-China relationship.

  As one aspect of its report, GAI investigated the personal financial benefits that accrued to the past several Secretaries of Commerce — how they benefited their own interests through department decisions. GAI also found that China has learned how to tap into the Commerce Department for its own benefit. They have been doing it for years, across several different administrations, among Democrats and Republicans alike.

  Let’s start with the current Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo. A previous governor of Rhode Island, Raimondo comes with a background in finance. She founded the venture capital firm Point Judith Capital in 2000. She is worth roughly $10 million, based on her financial disclosure and as reported by Forbes magazine. Raimondo’s husband, Andrew Moffit, spent 20 years at the consulting firm McKinsey & Co, leaving in 2020 to become “Chief People Officer” of a software company called PathAI. This company applies artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to the field of medical diagnostics.

  In February of this year, Moffit exercised his PathAI stock options and purchased at least $50,000 worth of its stock. He left his full-time job with the company and became instead its “strategic adviser,” thus deepening his financial ties to the firm while creating an appearance of greater distance between his role with the company and his wife’s duties as Commerce secretary.

  Artificial intelligence is the focus of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security because it often has direct military applications, making it sensitive for US national security. Possible restrictions include the sharing of AI technology with foreign employees, an area in which Moffit could well be responsible as “Chief People Officer.” In 2019, US-based venture capital firm Danhua Capital Management (doing business as DHVC) participated in a $60 million fundraising round for PathAI. DHVC not only has holdings in sensitive technology sectors, but also has ties to a Chinese state-owned entity. Therefore, DHVC’s relationship with PathAI “could raise conflict-of-interest and/or national security concerns,” according to GAI’s report. Danhua is part of a pattern of companies established by the Chinese government in order to “penetrate” Silicon Valley, a Reuters report noted.

  In addition, Raimondo’s department has loosened restrictions on Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant that Trump administration regulators had sanctioned, because of the company’s ties to the Chinese government and particularly its military. Huawei’s founder, Ren Zhengfei, is a party loyalist who urged his workers to “surge forward, killing as you go, to blaze us a trail of blood,” in their efforts to sell Huawei products to the West. Huawei has been identified as a security threat by the governments of Japan, Taiwan, France, Great Britain, the US, Australia, and Germany, among others.

  Then there was Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce under President Trump. Ross was a successful businessman with huge commercial ties to China. He had shipping companies that had major Chinese investment. In fact, Trump criticized him for being too soft on China while Ross ran the department.

  Wilbur Ross kept investments in companies directly affected by tariff policy, even as the Commerce Department handed out tariff exemptions and negotiated new trade agreements. Wendy Teramoto, his chief of staff, simultaneously served on the boards of some of these companies, GAI’s report notes.

  According to our own 2018 analysis, 62 percent of the cargo carried into the US by one of Ross’s shipping firms was South Korean steel for which Ross had helped to negotiate a tariff exemption.

  Before joining Commerce, Ross founded and chaired an auto parts company with operations around the world, including Mexico and China. Ross helped renegotiate the US’s trade deal with Mexico and Canada, which lowered import duties on the automotive industry, and later refused to release the results of the Department’s investigation into the effects of foreign imports on the domestic automotive industry.

  Before Ross, President Obama’s Commerce Secretary was Penny Pritzker, part of the prominent Illinois family that is heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune. In the years immediately before she was tapped by her fellow Chicagoan, Obama, Pritzker had focused on her own business ventures, launching PSP Capital Partners and Artemis Real Estate Partners, two investment firms.

  While she was Secretary of Commerce , buildings owned by Pritzker’s companies were leased to Commerce Department agencies, such as the US Patent and Trademark Office, and to Commerce Department contractors. In 2015, the Clean Energy Trust, a Chicago-based not-for-profit supporting clean energy start-ups through business development, received $10 million of funding through a grant program administered by the Department of Commerce. It was the only Chicago-area group to receive such funding. Its board of directors was co-chaired at the time by Penny Pritzker’s cousin, Nick Pritzker.

  GAI’s report, which is available here, discusses a number of other issues, personalities, and programs that are of questionable merit but generate high interest from Washington insiders who see their potential. The cronyism of past and present Secretaries of Commerce is but one part of the story the report tells. It is worth your attention.

  *  *  *

  Peter Schweizer, President of the Governmental Accountability Institute, is a Gatestone Institute Distinguished Senior Fellow and author of the new book, Red Handed: How American Elites are Helping China Win.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/17/2022 – 21:05

• Border Patrol Migrant Encounters Hit All-Time Record In April
  Border Patrol Migrant Encounters Hit All-Time Record In April

  Illegal migration into the United States hit an all-time high in April, with US Customs and Border Protection logging more than 234,000 migrant encounters, topping March’s previous high of more than 221,000 migrants, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

  

  The April 2022 figure is 30% higher than April 2021, with more than 7,800 migrants encountered on average per day.

  Imagine how many more they didn’t encounter.

  One should also note that this absolute flood of migrants comes before the Biden administration drops the Trump-era pandemic measure, Title 42, which allowed for the rapid deportation of migrants to waiting camps in northern Mexico, will be lifted on May 23, when even more migrants are expected.

  “While we will likely see an increase in encounters after the CDC’s Title 42 public health Order ends, I have a great degree of confidence that the dedicated men and women of CBP and our multiple agency partners will meet this challenge,” said CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus in a press release.

  As the Post Millennial notes:

  Last month, members of the Texas National Guard were seen running training exercises involving riot gear in preparation for an anticipated significant jump in illegal border crossings if Title 42 is repealed.

  Judges in Louisiana and Texas may issue orders this month that would temporarily keep Title 42 in place.

  In April, 117,989 migrants were released into the United States and 113,248 were removed. 96,908 migrants were deported under Title 42.

  Last week, a massive amount of illegal migrants were reportedly gathering at the port of entrey in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. As of Monday, it is estimated that there are at least 5,000 people gathered there. They are expecting a greater chance of being able to get legal permission to stay and work in US territory due to the Biden administration’s policy changes if Title 42 is repealed.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/17/2022 – 20:45

• OPEC Ministers Warn No Increase In Supply Is Coming Online
  OPEC Ministers Warn No Increase In Supply Is Coming Online

  According to OPEC, the oil markets are so askew at the moment that adding capacity would fail to materially stave off high prices.

  Saudi Arabia’s energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, has said there are “physical impediments that no producer can solve” at work right now in the oil market, according to the Financial Post/Bloomberg.

  The move shows OPEC posturing up at a time when U.S. lawmakers have been rushing to try and solve the problem of exploding gas prices. Bin Salman’s comments come at a time when exports out of Russia, a major player on the global oil and gas stage, have been disrupted. 

  “There is no refining capacity commensurate with the current demand and the expectation of the demand in the summer,” Bin Salman said this week.

  

  His thoughts were echoed by Bahrain’s Oil Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Khalifa Bin Ahmed, the report said.

  As a result, OPEC is expected to continue to raise output by 432,000 barrels a month. 

  Bahrain’s oil minister commented this week: “There’s no new capacity coming. Even if you produce more crude, there isn’t demand for it, there aren’t any more refineries.”

  And OPEC seems to be happy with the job they are doing – which means Sleepy Joe is going to have to turn to another page in his “big book of micromanaging the oil market to try and manipulate prices”.

  Iraqi Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar even commented that OPEC was putting in its “best performance in maybe more than 50 years” in achieving balance in the oil market.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/17/2022 – 20:05

• Tonga Volcanic Eruption Was Largest Ever Documented, Say Scientists
  Tonga Volcanic Eruption Was Largest Ever Documented, Say Scientists

  Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Tonga volcanic eruption in January was the largest atmospheric explosion documented since the 1883 Krakatoa eruption in Indonesia, according to scientists.

  

  Tonga was hit by an underwater eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai volcano and subsequent tsunami on Jan. 15, which wiped out an entire village on one of Tonga’s small outer islands and killed at least three people.

  Robin Matoza, an associate professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, led 76 scientists in a study on the volcanic eruption in Tonga, which was published on May 12 in Science Journals.

  The study described the volcanic eruption as an “unusually energetic explosion” that generated “a broad range of atmospheric waves observed globally by various ground-based and spaceborne instrumentation networks.”

  Scientists observed that the low-frequency atmospheric pressure waves, known as Lamb waves, had circled the Earth at least four times in one direction and three times in the opposite direction over six days following the eruption.

  “Lamb wave peak-to-peak pressure amplitudes as a function of distance indicate that the atmospheric pressure pulse generated by the Hunga event is comparable to that of the 1883 Krakatau eruption,” they stated.

  The Tonga volcanic eruption generated ionospheric perturbations and long-range audible sound that could be heard 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles) away in Alaska, where a sequence of booms could be heard.

  “Atmospheric waves from the main Hunga eruption had far more extensive impacts. Unusual sea-level changes or tsunamis were observed in the Pacific earlier than predicted, and in the Caribbean and Mediterranean without direct ocean routes,” the research reads.

  Meanwhile, data from NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer mission and the European Space Agency’s Swarm satellites suggest that the eruption generated “hurricane-speed winds” and “unusual electric currents” in the ionosphere hours after it happened.

  

  NASA stated on May 10 that the volcano eruption sent “a giant plume of gases, water vapor, and dust into the sky,” causing large pressure disturbances in the atmosphere that led to the formation of strong winds.

  A group of scientists led by Brian Harding, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, revealed the findings in a study published in Geophysical Research Letters.

  “The volcano created one of the largest disturbances in space we’ve seen in the modern era,” Harding said in a statement. “It is allowing us to test the poorly understood connection between the lower atmosphere and space.”

  The eruption also severed Tonga’s sole fiber-optic communication cable connecting the country to the outside world. NASA said in April that the undersea volcano eruption was “hundreds of times” stronger than the Hiroshima nuclear explosion.

  “For comparison, scientists estimate Mount St. Helens exploded in 1980 with 24 megatons and Krakatoa burst in 1883 with 200 megatons of energy,” NASA said in a statement.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/17/2022 – 19:45

• Yuan Surges On Speculation China's Covid Lockdowns Will End Soon
  Yuan Surges On Speculation China’s Covid Lockdowns Will End Soon

  Three weeks ago, when looking at the pattern in China’s covid data, we said that China’s covid panic is almost over…

  China’s covid panic is almost over pic.twitter.com/H4jOSqXApM

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 29, 2022

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

  … a view we repeated a week ago when we warned all those who were short oil – on the “thesis” that China’s lockdowns would last indefinitely – to cover.

  Still short oil? China covid cases almost back to 0 pic.twitter.com/GHPDIh9Bqa

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 11, 2022

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

  Fast forward to today when after more than a month of growing lockdown (and mangled supply chain) fears, there was finally a glimmer of hope at the end of China’s covid tunnel and possibly for Chinese markets.

  As Bloomberg notes, Chinese lockdown conditions have improved over May 1-11, versus the April average, with the Goldman Effective Lockdown Index declining to 33.1 points for data so far in May, versus an average of 37.3 over April 1-25. The index is on a declining trend, and bits and pieces of news are mildly encouraging.

  Most recently, Shanghai reported no new Covid-19 infections in the broader community for a third consecutive day, a long-awaited milestone which authorities have said will allow them to start unwinding the lockdown (even though most residents will have to put up with confinement for a while longer before resuming more normal life).

  The commercial hub of 25 million set out on Monday its clearest timetable yet for exiting a lockdown now in its seventh week, but the plan was met with scepticism by many residents who have seen isolation extended time and again. “Normality is very far away,” said one Shanghai resident still stuck at home.

  Still, Shanghai plans to resume outdoor activities in stages, with some shops reopening this week, but with most restrictions on movement remaining in place until May 21, after which public transport and other services will resume gradually.

  By June, the lockdown should be lifted, but residents will still be asked to get tested frequently. More people were allowed out of their homes this week, with some joggers and dog walkers spotted. One man was seen fishing in a Shanghai creek. But tall fences remained around many residential compounds and there were almost no private cars on the streets, with most people still confined to their homes.

  For other cities in China that have been under lockdown, three days with no new cases in the community usually means “zero COVID” status and the beginning of the lifting of restrictions. This suggests that activity will improve in May, albeit at a depressed level.  The correlation in levels terms between the official PMIs and the lockdown index since 2021 have been -67% and -95% for manufacturing and non-manufacturing respectively. In changes terms, correlations are -47% and -93%.

  Beijing’s latest daily case count was 52, with authorities discovering a few dozen new infections on an almost daily basis despite gradually tightening restrictions over the past three weeks or so. Dine-in services are banned in the capital, some malls and other businesses are shut, public transport is curtailed and many residents have been advised to work from home. Residents in some COVID-affected parts of Beijing’s Fengtai district were ordered not to leave their neighbourhoods, state television reported on Tuesday. In Beijing’s largest district, Chaoyang, some compounds have closed side exits while main gates are manned by volunteers checking health credentials on the mobile app authorities use to track COVID.

  Security personnel patrolled the banks of the Liangma canal, which has become a picnic spot in recent weeks for residents not allowed to go elsewhere. Signs had been put up asking people to “avoid crowds, gatherings and eating together”.

  * * *

  China’s uncompromising “zero-COVID” policy has placed hundreds of millions of consumers and workers under various restrictions at a time when the rest of the world is lifting them to “live with the virus” even as infections spread. Data this week showed the havoc wreaked on the economy by Shanghai’s lockdown and the curbs in dozens of other major cities, with retail sales and industrial output plunging at their fastest pace in more than two years in April.

  The capital Beijing saw a 16% plunge in retail sales in April, the beginning of its current outbreak, according to Reuters calculations based on January-April data released on Tuesday. Property sales dropped 26%.  The American Chamber of Commerce warned that COVID controls would hamper foreign investment in China for years to come as travel curbs disrupt due diligence on projects. Big firms are also exploring alternatives for supply chains, it said.

  News that China “finally” appeared to be getting over its second covid crisis sent the onshore yuan sharply higher, with the USDCNY falling as much as 0.7% to 6.7377, its biggest decline since October.

  

  It followed the 9th consecutive stronger-than-expected yuan fixing by the PBOC, at 6.7854 per dollar, stronger than the 6.7872 average estimate in a Bloomberg survey where forecasts ranged from 6.7830 to 6.7911.

  

  Market sentiment was also boosted by optimism that a meeting Tuesday between the Chinese regulators and tech giants would result in Beijing dialing back its yearlong clampdown of the industry.

  “The easing restrictions is a driver for yuan gains, but just as important is the general USD retreat,” says Alvin Tan, head of Asia currency strategy at RBC Capital Markets

  In light of the bullish reversal in sentiment, it is not surprising why Bloomberg’s Simon Flint echoed what we have been saying for much of the past few weeks: “to the extent that markets should be focused on the second derivative of activity, there is some hope that the worst is over.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/17/2022 – 19:25

• Over 120,000 Hunter Biden Emails Uploaded To Searchable Database
  Over 120,000 Hunter Biden Emails Uploaded To Searchable Database

  A former Trump White House staffer has uploaded more than 120,000 emails found on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop to a searchable database this week, which can be found at the (slowly loading) website: BidenLaptopEmails.com. In addition to searching, visitors can download the emails as well.

  

  Set up by former Peter Navarro aide Garrett Ziegler, who worked in the Trump administration Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, the emails contain infamous hits such as the “10 for the big guy,” in which Hunter Biden’s business partner James Gillar suggested he should hold 10% of a multi-million-dollar deal with the Chinese. Ziegler posted the emails through his organization, Marco Polo.

  Another email in the database, previously published by DailyMail.com, shows Hunter describing an extraordinary apparent quid pro quo with a Mexican billionaire’s son, outlining how he got him into the White House and inauguration, and thanking him for visits to his villa.

  Some messages did not appear to be included in the database. One email published by DailyMail.com shows Hunter inviting his foreign business partners and associates to a 2015 dinner at Washington DC restaurant Café Milano.

  In the email he reveals that his father will secretly be joining – and says that the dinner is ‘ostensibly to discuss food security’. The White House at first denied the then-vice president was there, but eventually admitted it when photographs emerged from the event.-Daily Mail

  That said, the Daily Mail notes that the above email is not included in Ziegler’s database, which contains 14,603 fewer emails than a batch of 142,838 analyzed by cyber forensic firm Maryman & Associates last year for the Mail.

  “Here are the 128k emails from the Biden Laptop, which is a modern Rosetta Stone of white and blue collar crime under the patina of “the Delaware Way,”” reads the website, referring to a term frequently used by Joe Biden. “Prior to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, a number of ancient languages were mere gibberish and hash marks. Similarly, the emails on the Biden Laptop illuminated previously convoluted webs of the people you see leading the charge for global governance; truly, the emails can be considered a translation tool for Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) gathering.”

  

  The “legalese” section at the bottom of the website reads: “Having seen the lengths that the FBI and other entities in the apparatus have gone to harass citizens who expose corruption, and pursuant to 18 USC § 119, Marco Polo testifies that the contents of the Biden Laptop were abandoned property. Furthermore, Marco Polo unequivocally disclaims any intention to cause any threat, intimidating action, or incitement of harm to any person covered by 18 USC § 119 and we do not condone, encourage, intend, or have any knowledge that any other person will or may use the information herein for any unlawful purpose. Marco Polo’s motive is to see justice delivered—to all criminals—by those whose responsibility it is to carry out that duty.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/17/2022 – 19:05

• Biden Will Ease Sanctions On Venezuela's Maduro Amid Scramble For Alternative Oil
  Biden Will Ease Sanctions On Venezuela’s Maduro Amid Scramble For Alternative Oil

  The Biden administration will ease sanctions on Venezuela and its strongman President Nicolás Maduro, senior admin officials have told several media outlets, in yet another reversal of a key Trump policy. The Miami Herald is reporting that in exchange for a softening of sanctions, which have included blocking the government’s access to US debt and equity markets – and have particularly targeted state-run oil company PDVSA in an oil embargo – Caracas has committed to a formal dialogue with the Venezuelan opposition in Mexico City.

  During the middle of Trump’s term in office, especially by 2019, it was widely reported and understood that the US had an unofficial policy of aiming at regime change in the socialist Latin American country. It’s been no less than three years since the US ceased formal diplomatic relations with Caracas. 

  

  Significantly prior to Biden taking office, opposition leader Juan Guaidó was recognized by Washington and a handful of allies as ‘interim president’. This status has ironically continued even as Guaidó’s visibility and influence with the media has waned. Once a ‘superstar’ in the West, he’s become increasingly irrelevant as as a real contender for power in Caracas.

  A Biden admin official sought to stress in Tuesday statements that this doesn’t mean Guaidó has been ditched in favor of normalizing Maduro. “It is very important to stress that this was done in coordination with the interim president, Juan Guaidó, to move the talks forward,” the official said.

  But this of course has less to do with Maduro changing any domestic policies or also its posture vis-a-vis Washington, and much more to do with the scramble to free up alternative supplies of oil at a moment the White House is urging Europe to block Russian oil imports as a means of inflicting maximum punishment on Moscow for its war in Ukraine. 

  Meanwhile, the ironies haven’t been lost on many…

  Though the State Department denies it, the U.S. may be seeking a deal with Venezuela’s dictator to increase the world’s oil supply, writes ⁦@WSJ⁩ If this is true, Biden would be leaving a dictator for another dictator. Unbelievable https://t.co/N3NcUBXTty

  — Luis Carlos Vélez 🌎 (@lcvelez) May 17, 2022

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

  The other irony is that Maduro has only continued seeking deeper ties with Russia, and the Biden admin is likely content to look the other way:

  News of sanctions relief comes just three weeks before the United States hosts the Summit of the Americas for the first time since the inaugural summit in 1994. Several leaders in the region are encouraging the administration to invite a representative from the Maduro government to participate.

  Meanwhile, there are few indications that Caracas will turn away from Russia as it engages with the United States. Maduro announced on Monday that his ambassador to Moscow, Carlos Faría, would become Venezuela’s new foreign minister.

  In March, the White House first dispatched a team to Caracas where they engaged in “cordial” dialogue with Maduro officials. “We have agreed to work on an agenda going forward, issues of interest,” Maduro said at the time. “It seemed to me very important to be able, face to face, discuss issues of maximum interest to Venezuela and the world. And I ratify, as I said to the delegation, all our will to advance in an agenda of well-being and peace through diplomacy, respect and the highest hope for a better world.”

  Additionally NBC noted at the time that the socialist ‘anti-imperialist’ strongman “seemed to indicate he was willing to accede to U.S. demands that he resume negotiations with his opponents as a first building block for any relief from U.S. sanctions that have been punishing the OPEC nation for years.”

  All of this primes the administration for a political fight with GOP Venezuela hawks in Congress. Over the last two months Sen. Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Florida’s Marco Rubio have blasted any level of rapprochement with Maduro.

  Biden continues his effort to appease anti-American communist dictators

  Yesterday it was #Cuba, now today Biden will announce removing sanctions on #MaduroRegime in #Venezuela

  — Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) May 17, 2022

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

  “If the reports are true that the Biden administration is brokering the purchase of Venezuelan oil, I fear that it risks perpetuating a humanitarian crisis that has destabilized Latin America and the Caribbean for an entire generation,” Menendez said in a March statement. “… As such, I would strongly oppose any action that fills the pockets of regime oligarchs with oil profits while Maduro continues to deprive Venezuelans of basic human rights, freedoms, and even food.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/17/2022 – 18:45

• Mood On Wall Street Has Never Been More Apocalyptic; Tech Short Is Biggest Since 2006
  Mood On Wall Street Has Never Been More Apocalyptic; Tech Short Is Biggest Since 2006

  One month after the April Fund Manager Survey was downright “apocalyptic” with the majority seeing a bear market and stagflation – yet nobody rushing to sell – and with optimism plunging to levels right before Lehman, today Bank of America published the latest, May FMS (available to pro subscribers in the usual place) in which the bank’s doom-and-gloomy Chief Investment Strategist Michael Hartnett (who most recently warned that the bear market will end when the S&P hits 3,000 in October) found that his view is shared by a growing number of even more apocalyptic Wall Street professionals, because the survey which polled 331 panelists managing $986 billion in AUM, revealed global growth expectations plunged even more compared to last month, and dropped to fresh all-time lows (net -72%) …

  

  … with profit expectations slumping past the COVID lows to net -66% (from 63%), the weakest since Oct’08, smack in the middle of the Global Financial Crisis. (note lows in global profit expectations consistent with other crisis moments such as LTCM, Dotcom bubble burst, Lehman bankruptcy, and COVID)…

  

  … and stagflation fears soaring to 77% (from 66%) the highest since August 2008.

  

  And while the mood has rarely been more pessimistic, with the FMS signaling the highest cash levels in 20 years, since Sept 11, indicative of major risk aversion…

  

  … as Wall Street finds itself most short tech – everyone’s darling sector as recently as 2021 – since Aug 2006…

  

  … as a big rotation out of tech drives the relative investor overweight in tech vs staples (really underweight) to Oct 2008 lows…

  

  …. sparked by the biggest equity underweight since May 2020 (at net 13% UW vs net 6% OW in Apr)….

  

  … and a BofA Bull & Bear Indicator at 2.0, just on the verge of the ‘contrarian buy” level, which would give a brief all-clear window to buy, we are still missing what Hartnett calls the “full capitulation” piece. 

  As such, while stocks are prone to imminent bear rallies – like today for example- but as Hartnett writes echoing what he said in his latest Flow Show note last Friday, “the ultimate lows have not yet been reached” as investors expect rate hikes not cuts.

  

  Digging deeper into the FMS survey, we first find that even Wall Street is urging corporations to ease back on the buybacks (and CapEx spending, but nobody really spends on CapEx) and investors want CEOs to improve balance sheet not spend capex or buybacks for 1st time since Jan’21.

  

  The next part came as a surprise to us, because it confirms that peak inflation is now consensus: that’s because 68% expect inflation rates to drop coming quarters…

  

  … with fewer and fewer (net 34%, down from 53% in April) expect bond yields to rise from here (but big difference with prior “big lows” Is 78% expect short rates to rise)…

  

  … as investors still expect a total of 7.9 Fed hikes this cycle (up from 7.4 in April).

  

  There was less surprise in the latest monthly estimate of where the Fed “put” is: it slid again (along with the market), dropping to 3529 on S&P500 (-12% from current levels).

  

  Turning to risk, the survey said that the #1 tail risk in May are hawkish central banks, followed closely by #2 recession; with risks from inflation and Russia/Ukraine dropping surprisingly to third.

  

  Overall, monetary (i.e, central bank) risk has overtaken geopolitical as the biggest risk to market stability, at net 52%, a record high…

  

  … while geopolitical risk moves to the second biggest risk to financial market stability at net 87% (from 92%) followed by business cycle risk (75%) and EM risk (57%).

  

  Broken down on a monthly basis, the chart of the global FMS biggest tail risk shows more of the same: fears that central banks will blow it all up.

  

  Hartnett next turns to his trademark Financial Market Stability Risk indicator, which continues to rise as stocks slide. According to the BofA CIO, “our FMS Financial Market Stability Risks Indicator is currently at 7.5, a record high. Elevated levels of risk aversion comparable to prior crisis moments (GFC, COVID shock). The high perceived risk to financial market stability also points to a further decline in equity prices This chart is the sum of the z-scores (from Chart 12) to create our FMS Financial Market Stability Risks Index.”

  

  And speaking of what could spark a crash, the May FMS founds that speculative tech and zombie corporations are tied at 18% for the most likely source of a future credit event or default.

  

  Some other notable questions in the FMS suggest that peak oil may be coming and that it is again time to rotate into bitcoin. Why? Because 56% of FMS investors think oil will produce the best returns in 2022 but only 2% think bitcoin will outperform. Expect the opposite.

  

  … especially since Long oil/commodities remains the most crowded trade.

  

  Looking at consensus positioning, Hartnett finds that investors are very long cash, commodities, healthcare, staples…

  

  … and very short tech, equities, Europe, EM.

  

  How to trade this? Go long what is underinvested and short what everyone is long, or do the opposite of the latest rotation where investors have gotten more defensive (i.e. staples, cash, healthcare) while at the same time cut exposure to tech, US, equities and
  EM. To wit, since in May, FMS investors rotated out of tech, banks, and energy…

  

  …while getting slightly less negative on EU. Investors also got more negative on US, UK, and EM equities, and are currently still underweight EM equities on a historical basis but want to increase their exposure as well in the next 12 months.

  

  Ironically, that means going long tech since the allocation to tech is the lowest since Aug’06, and to defensives on par with GFC, Euro-crisis, COVID-crisis levels, while the allocation to stocks is lowest since May’20 (but not as low as prior crisis levels).

  Finally, here are the contrarian trades recommended by Hartnett:

  • to express H2 recession…long bonds-short commodities, long utilities-short energy;
  • to express H2 soft landing…long EM/Europe-short cash, long tech- short healthcare, long discretionary-short staples

  There is much more in the full fund manager survey available to professional subscribers at the usual place.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/17/2022 – 18:35

• A Drinking Man's Guide To Monetary Policy
  A Drinking Man’s Guide To Monetary Policy

  Authored by Gary Galles via The American Institute for Economic Research,

  There is an old expression—to drive someone to drink—which means to annoy them to distraction. My favorite version of it is George Thorogood and the Destroyers’, “Son, you’re gonna drive me to drinkin’ if you don’t stop drivin’ that Hot Rod Lincoln” (which, now that I have thought of it, I can’t seem to get out of my head). That expression birthed multiple books entitled A Drinking Man’s Guide to topics from Scotland to Cambridge, women to marriage.

  

  As far as Google tells me, however, there has never been such a guide to monetary policy. Given that recent monetary policy issues have been vexing enough to qualify—from a long period of near-zero interest rates (often negative in real terms), flaps over “transitory” inflation that wasn’t so transitory but seems to have been a massive surprise to monetary authorities, to only semi-scrutable Federal Reserve plans, modifications and messaging—perhaps it is worth considering a few connections that might appear in a drinking man’s guide to monetary policy.

  Just like drinking, expansionary monetary policy can provide a temporary (or transitory) high at first (faster real output growth and reduced unemployment). However, the ill effects come later (in an inflation “hangover”). 

  If you continue expansionary monetary policy long enough, you can do serious, lasting damage to yourself (cirrhosis of the economy). Just as imbibers build up a tolerance for alcohol, people build up a tolerance for expansionary monetary policy via adapting expectations, requiring ever increasing amounts of monetary expansion to keep people fooled enough to stay “high” for a bit longer, with compounding damage and greater difficulty in undoing those consequences later.

  Once a tolerance to drink or expansionary monetary policy is established, withdrawal symptoms worse than any hangover can result if you stop (as in a stagflation scenario that haunts the dreams of all those making fearful references to the 1970s), especially if it is unexpected. Further, that hangover is likely to persist awhile (to decelerate inflation) before you feel better again and can get back to a “normal” life.

  Such withdrawal symptoms also mean efforts to stop either expansionary monetary policy or drinking are often short-lived, as the adverse effects tend to come first, while the positive effects come later. That may tempt decision-makers to yield to short-run pressures to feel better now (drink again, possibly excused as taking a “hair of the dog” cure) or by returning to inflationary policies, despite the adverse long-run consequences.

  As with some alcoholics who don’t deliver on their promises to quit, if monetary authorities fail to fulfill promises to restrain inflation (i.e., they continue to deliver excessive monetary growth or restart it, after slowing monetary growth for a while, when political pressures on them build), observers learn not to believe such promises, or even come to see them as harbingers of the opposite (we become very hard to convince that monetary restraint will persist long enough to do much good about inflation before a reflation scenario occurs). Ask Paul Volcker how costly it is to slow inflation once such expectations have been deeply ingrained into the American psyche. 

  Some alcoholism counselors have suggested that drinking is hard to quit despite its known adverse effects because the hangovers come enough later that your subconscious doesn’t connect cause and effect. Consequently, when the decision to drink or not is made, the subconscious takes over and often results in the decision to drink. Similarly, expansionary monetary policy may be hard to quit because the long and variable lags between policy changes and their impacts, not to mention all the other variables that can also alter what happens, make it hard to definitively connect a specific policy decision to a particular result, especially when so many discussants in the conversation are political partisans fighting tooth and nail to deny any responsibility on their part.

  Just as it may be hard for a drunken sailor to precisely determine where he is going (or for an observer to accurately predict where he is going) because of indecisiveness or imperfect control over his movements, it may be hard for the Fed to precisely determine (or Fed-watchers to accurately guess) the future path of monetary policy. That can be because of disagreements or indecisiveness, made worse by the Fed’s dual mandate for real output growth and low unemployment, when there are often unavoidable tradeoffs between them in the short run. Unless we know what the Fed is aiming at today and will be aiming at in the future, we will be hard-pressed to predict its policy intentions and actions.

  Just as alcoholics hope their affliction will not need to be dealt with, which can make them suckers for promises of a painless “cure,” policy makers and their supporters can assert that there is no problem that needs solving, or that they can deliver an almost painless “cure” for inflation (a promised “soft or softish landing”) if people just elect, appoint or follow the right person or prescription (a promised change that will magically rejigger the necessary tradeoffs).

  Because there is a lag before all the effects of alcohol intake register, it adds to the difficulty of a drinker’s knowing when to stop. Similarly, the lag before the effects of monetary policy are fully felt always seems to provide some policy makers and commentators sufficient ammunition to assert that now is never the time to stop.

  There may well be more analogies between drinking and monetary policy worth noting, but my relative lack of drinking experience keeps me from recognizing them. The ones we have seen, however, provide us with plenty of reasons for monetary caution, and for suspicion of “experts” whose analyses are highly inexpert and whose “cures” aren’t. Unfortunately, such knowledge that current monetary policy may be far from ideal might drive many of us to drink when we wouldn’t otherwise.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/17/2022 – 18:25

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• The NHS's Most Serious (and Avoidable) Errors Of 2021
  The NHS’s Most Serious (and Avoidable) Errors Of 2021

  If you’re about to go under the knife, you’d like to think that you will be in safe hands. And while you almost certainly are, with millions of operations being correctly performed each year in England alone, as Statista’s Anna Fleck details below, doctors and nurses still slip up in a small number of cases.

  According to new data released by the UK’s National Health Service, a total of 379 medical malpractices called ‘Never Events’ were recorded between April 1, 2021, and February 28, 2022.

  The term is defined by the service as “serious, largely preventable patient safety incidents that should not occur if healthcare providers have implemented existing national guidance or safety recommendations.”

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  The most frequently seen malpractice in this stretch of time was surgery being performed on the wrong part of the body. The records reveal a range of severity and include details of how one patient had their ovaries removed when the surgical plan was to conserve them, while another patient underwent surgery on the wrong eye and others had skin tags and hemorrhoids removed when another surgery had been intended. In terms of injections, 27 were administered in the wrong part of the body. Of these, the highest number recorded was six incidents of injections into the wrong eye. Meanwhile, there were also eleven incisions in the wrong part of the body, presumably where surgeons had begun the process before realizing they were cutting into the wrong spot.

  As Statista’s chart above shows, while it’s rare, a number of patients received procedures intended for someone else. This included one person who received a sigmoidoscopy (a kind of colonoscopy), which wasn’t meant for them, while another had a rectal drain intended for another patient.

  In addition to these cases, a total of 90 foreign objects were recorded as having been accidentally left in the body after a procedure, ranging from a scalpel blade, to part of a pair of wire cutters, and even part of a drill that had not been identified as missing at the time of the procedure. The most commonly seen items to be left behind in patients were 31 vaginal swabs, as well as 19 surgical swabs.

  According to the NHS, the release of the list of Never Events is not to encourage a ‘blame culture’, but rather to acknowledge red flags, highlighting when an organization’s systems for implementing existing safety alerts may not be up to standard. The report adds that all data is provisional and subject to change.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/17/2022 – 02:45

• Escobar: Death By A Thousand Cuts – Where Is The West's Ukraine Strategy?
  Escobar: Death By A Thousand Cuts – Where Is The West’s Ukraine Strategy?

  Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

  The pounding, daily western narratives on ‘Ukrainian wins’ and ‘Russian losses’ underpins the lack of an actual, cohesive Grand Strategy against Moscow…

  

  While we are all familiar with Sun Tzu, the Chinese general, military strategist and philosopher who penned the incomparable Art of War, less known is the Strategikon, the Byzantium equivalent on warfare.

  Sixth century Byzantium really needed a manual, threatened as it was from the east, successively by Sassanid Persia, Arabs and Turks, and from the north, by waves of steppe invaders, Huns, Avars, Bulgars, semi-nomadic Turkic Pechenegs and Magyars.

  Byzantium could not prevail just by following the classic pattern of Roman Empire raw power – they simply didn’t have the means for it.

  So military force needed to be subordinate to diplomacy, a less costly means of avoiding or resolving conflict. And here we can make a fascinating connection with today’s Russia, led by President Vladimir Putin and his diplomacy chief Sergei Lavrov.

  But when military means became necessary for Byzantium – as in Russia’s Operation Z – it was preferable to use weaponry to contain or punish adversaries, instead of attacking with full force.

  Strategic primacy, for Byzantium, more than diplomatic or military, was a psychological affair. The word Strategia itself is derived from the Greek strategos – which does not mean “General” in military terms, as the west believes, but historically corresponds to a managerial politico-military function.

  It all starts with si vis pacem para bellum: “If you want peace prepare for war.” Confrontation must develop simultaneously on multiple levels: grand strategy, military strategy, operative, tactical.

  But brilliant tactics, excellent operative intel and even massive victories in a larger war theater cannot compensate for a lethal mistake in terms of grand strategy. Just look at the Nazis in WWII.

  Those who built up an empire such as the Romans, or maintained one for centuries like the Byzantines, never succeeded without following this logic.

  Those clueless Pentagon and CIA ‘experts’

  On Operation Z, the Russians revel in total strategic ambiguity, which has the collective west completely discombobulated. The Pentagon does not have the necessary intellectual firepower to out-smart the Russian General Staff. Only a few outliers understand that this is not a war – since the Ukraine Armed Forces have been irretrievably routed – but actually what Russian military and naval expert Andrei Martyanov calls a “combined arms police operation,” a work-in-progress on demilitarization and denazification.

  The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is even more abysmal in terms of getting everything wrong, as recently demonstrated by its chief Avril Haines during her questioning on Capitol Hill. History shows that the CIA strategically blew it all the way from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq. Ukraine is no different.

  Ukraine was never about a military win. What is being accomplished is the slow, painful destruction of the European Union (EU) economy, coupled with extraordinary weapons profits for the western military-industrial complex and creeping security rule by those nations’ political elites.

  The latter, in turn, have been totally baffled by Russia’s C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) capabilities, coupled with the stunning inefficiency of their own constellation of Javelins, NLAWs, Stingers and Turkish Bayraktar drones.

  This ignorance reaches way beyond tactics and the operational and strategic realm. As Martyanov delightfully points out, they “wouldn’t know what hit them on the modern battlefield with near-peer, forget about peer.”

  The caliber of ‘strategic’ advice from the NATO realm was self-evident in the Serpent Island fiasco – a direct order issued by British ‘consultants’ to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, thought the whole thing was suicidal. He was proven right.

  All the Russians had to do was launch a few choice anti-ship and surface Onyx missiles from bastions stationed in Crimea on airports south of Odessa. In no time, Serpent Island was back under Russian control – even as high-ranking British and American marine officers ‘disappeared’ during the Ukrainian landing on the island. They were the ‘strategic’ NATO actors on the spot, doling out the lousy advice.  

  Extra evidence that the Ukraine debacle is predominantly about money laundering – not competent military strategy – is Capitol Hill approving a hefty extra $40 billion in ‘aid’ to Kiev. It’s just another western military-industrial complex bonanza, duly noted by Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia Dmitry Medvedev.

  Russian forces, meanwhile, have brought diplomacy to the battlefield, handing over 10 tons of humanitarian assistance to the people of liberated Kherson – with the deputy head of the military-civil administration of the region, Kirill Stremousov, announcing that Kherson wants to become part of the Russian Federation.

  In parallel, Georgy Muradov, deputy prime minister of the government of Crimea, has “no doubts that the liberated territories of the south of the former Ukraine will become another region of Russia. This, as we assess from our communication with the inhabitants of the region, is the will of the people themselves, most of whom lived for eight years under conditions of repression and bullying by the Ukronazis.”

  Denis Pushilin, the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, is adamant that the DPR is on the verge of liberating “its territories within constitutional borders,” and then a referendum on joining Russia will take place. When it comes to the Luhansk People’s Republic, the integration process may even come earlier: the only area left to be liberated is the urban region of Lysychansk-Severodonetsk.

  The ‘Stalingrad of Donbass’

  As much as there’s an energetic debate among the best Russian analysts about the pace of Operation Z, Russian military planning proceeds methodically, as if taking all the time it needs to solidify facts on the ground.

  Arguably the best example is the fate of Azov neo-Nazis at Azovstal in Mariupol – the best-equipped unit of the Ukrainians, hands down. In the end they were totally outmatched by anumerically inferior Russian/Chechen Spetsnaz contingent, and in record time for such a big city.

  Another example is the advance on Izyum, in the Kharkov region – a key bridgehead in the frontline. The Russian Ministry of Defense follows the pattern of grinding the enemy while slowly advancing; if they face serious resistance, they stop and smash the Ukrainian defensive lines with non-stop missile and artillery strikes.

  Popasnaya in Luhansk, dubbed by many Russian analysts as “Mariupol on steroids”, or “the Stalingrad of Donbass,” is now under total control of the Luhansk People’s Republic, after they managed to breach a de facto fortress with linked underground trenches between most civilian houses. Popasnaya is extremely important strategically, as its capture breaks the first, most powerful line of defense of the Ukrainians in Donbass.

  That will probably lead to the next stage, with an offensive on Bakhmut along the H-32 highway. The frontline will be aligned, north to south. Bakhmut will be the key to taking control of the M-03 highway, the main route to Slavyansk from the south.

  This is just an illustration of the Russian General Staff applying its trademark, methodical, painstaking strategy, where the main imperative could be defined as a personnel-preserving forward drive. With the added benefit of committing just a fraction of overall Russian firepower.

  Russian strategy on the battlefield stands in stark contrast with the EU’s obstinacy in being reduced to the status of an American dog’s lunch, with Brussels leading entire national economies to varying degrees of certified collapse and chaos.

  Once again it was up to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov – a diplomatic master – to encapsulate it.

  Question: “What do you think of Josep Borrell’s (Lavrov’s EU counterpart) initiative to give Ukraine frozen Russian assets as ‘reparations?’ Can we say that the masks have come off and the west is moving on to open robbery?”

  Lavrov: “You could say it is theft, which they are not trying to hide … This is becoming a habit for the west … We may soon see the post of the EU chief diplomat abolished because the EU has virtually no foreign policy of its own and acts entirely in solidarity with the approaches imposed by the United States.”

  The EU cannot even come up with a strategy to defend its own economic battlefield – just watching as its energy supply is de facto, incrementally turned off by the US. Here we are at the realm where the US tactically excels: economic/financial blackmail. We can’t call these ‘strategic’ moves because they almost always backfire against US hegemonic interests.

  Compare it with Russia reaching its biggest surplus in history, with the rise and rise of commodity prices and the upcoming role of the stronger and stronger ruble as a resource-based currency also backed by gold.

  Moscow is spending way less than the NATO contingent in the Ukrainian theater. NATO has already wasted $50 billion – and counting – while the Russians spent $4 billion, give or take, and already conquered Mariupol, Berdyansk, Kherson and Melitopol, created a land corridor to Crimea (and secured its water supply), controls the Sea of Azov and its major port city, and liberated strategically vital Volnovakha and Popasnaya in Donbass, as well as Izyum near Kharkov.

  That doesn’t even include Russia hurling the entire, collective west into a level of recession not seen since the 1970s.

  The Russian strategic victory, as it stands, is military, economic, and may even coalesce geopolitically. Centuries after the Byzantine Strategikon was penned, the Global South would be very much interested in getting acquainted with the 21st century Russian version of the Art of War.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 05/17/2022 – 02:00

• The Battle For Control Of Your Mind
  The Battle For Control Of Your Mind

  Authored by Aaron Kheriaty via The Brownstone Institute

  In his classic dystopian novel 1984, George Orwell famously wrote, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.” This striking image served as a potent symbol for totalitarianism in the 20th Century. But as Caylan Ford recently observed, with the advent of digital health passports in the emerging biomedical security state, the new symbol of totalitarian repression is “not a boot, but an algorithm in the cloud: emotionless, impervious to appeal, silently shaping the biomass.”

  

  These new digital surveillance and control mechanisms will be no less oppressive for being virtual rather than physical. Contact tracing apps, for example, have proliferated with at least 120 different apps in used in 71 different states, and 60 other digital contact-tracing measures have been used across 38 countries. There is currently no evidence that contact tracing apps or other methods of digital surveillance have helped to slow the spread of covid; but as with so many of our pandemic policies, this does not seem to have deterred their use.

  Other advanced technologies were deployed in what one writer has called, with a nod to Orwell, “the stomp reflex,” to describe governments’ propensity to abuse emergency powers. Twenty-two countries used surveillance drones to monitor their populations for covid rule-breakers, others deployed facial recognition technologies, twenty-eight countries used internet censorship and thirteen countries resorted to internet shutdowns to manage populations during covid. A total of thirty-two countries have used militaries or military ordnances to enforce rules, which has included casualties. In Angola, for example, police shot and killed several citizens while imposing a lockdown.

  Orwell explored the power of language to shape our thinking, including the power of sloppy or degraded language to distort thought. He articulated these concerns not only in his novels Animal Farm and 1984 but in his classic essay, “Politics and the English Language,” where he argues that “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

  The totalitarian regime depicted in 1984 requires citizens to communicate in Newspeak, a carefully controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary designed to limit the individual’s ability to think or articulate subversive concepts such as personal identity, self-expression, and free will. With this bastardization of language, complete thoughts are reduced to simple terms conveying only simplistic meaning.  

  Newspeak eliminates the possibility of nuance, rendering impossible consideration and communication of shades of meaning. The Party also intends with Newspeak’s short words to make speech physically automatic and thereby make speech largely unconscious, which further diminishes the possibility of genuinely critical thought.

  In the novel, character Syme discusses his editorial work on the latest edition of the Newspeak Dictionary:

  By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak [standard English] will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of The Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like Freedom is Slavery when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

  Several terms of disparagement were repeatedly deployed during the pandemic, phrases whose only function was to halt the possibility of critical thought. These included, among others, ‘covid denier,’ ‘anti-vax,’ and ‘conspiracy theorist’. Some commentators will doubtless mischaracterize this book, and particularly this chapter, using these and similar terms—ready-made shortcuts that save critics the trouble of reading the book or critically engaging my evidence or arguments.

  A brief comment on each of these may be helpful in illustrating how they function.

  The first term, ‘covid denier,’ requires little attention. Those who sling this charge at any critic of our pandemic response recklessly equate covid with the Holocaust, which suggests that antisemitism continues to infect discourse on both the right and the left. We need not detain ourselves with more commentary on this phrase.

  The epithet ‘anti-vax,’ deployed to characterize anyone who raises questions about the mass vaccination campaign or the safety and efficacy of covid vaccines, functions similarly as a conversation stopper rather than an accurately descriptive label. When people ask me whether I am anti-vax for challenging vaccine mandates I can only respond that the question makes about as much sense to me as the question, “Dr. Kheriaty, are you ‘pro-medication’ or ‘anti-medication’?” The answer is obviously contingent and nuanced: which medication, for which patient or patient population, under what circumstances, and for what indications? There is clearly no such thing as a medication, or a vaccine for that matter, that’s always good for everyone in every circumstance and all the time.

  Regarding the term “conspiracy theorist,” Agamben notes that its indiscriminate deployment “demonstrates a surprising historical ignorance.” For anyone familiar with history knows that the stories historians recount retrace and reconstruct the actions of individuals, groups, and factions working in common purpose to achieve their goals using all available means. He mentions three examples from among thousands in the historical record.

  In 415 B.C. Alcibiades deployed his influence and money to convince the Athenians to embark on an expedition to Sicily, a venture that turned out disastrously and marked the end of Athenian supremacy. In retaliation, Alcibiades enemies hired false witnesses and conspired against him to condemn him to death. In 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte violated his oath of fidelity to the Republic’s Constitution, overthrowing the directory in a coup, assumed full powers, and ending the Revolution. Days prior, he had met with co-conspirators to fine-tune their strategy against the anticipated opposition of the Council of Five Hundred.

  Closer to our own day, he mentions the March on Rome by 25,000 Italian fascists in October 1922. Leading up to this even, Mussolini prepared the march with three collaborators, initiated contacts with the Prime Minister and powerful figures from the business world (some even maintain that Mussolini secretly met with the King to explore possible allegiances). The fascists rehearsed their occupation of Rome by a military occupation of Ancona two months prior.

  Countless other examples, from the murder of Julius Caesar to the Bolshevik revolution, will occur to any student of history. In all these cases, individuals gathering in groups or parties to strategize goals and tactics, anticipate obstacles, then act resolutely to achieve their aims. Agamben acknowledges that this does not mean it is always necessary to aver to ‘conspiracies’ to explain historical events. “But anyone who labelled a historical who tried to reconstruct in detail the plots that triggered such events as a ‘conspiracy theorist’ would most definitely be demonstrating their own ignorance, if not idiocy.”

  Anyone who mentioned “The Great Reset” in 2019 was accused of buying into a conspiracy theory—that is, until World Economic Forum founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab published a book in 2020 laying out the WEF agenda with the helpful title,Covid-19: The Great Reset. Following new revelations about the lab leak hypothesis, U.S. funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, vaccine safety issues willfully suppressed, and coordinated media censorship and government smear campaigns against dissident voices, it seems the only difference between a conspiracy theory and credible news was about six months.

  *  *  *

  Originally posted at ‘Human Flourishing’ Substack.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 23:45

• Biden Orders US Troops Back To War-Torn Somalia, Reversing Trump Withdrawal
  Biden Orders US Troops Back To War-Torn Somalia, Reversing Trump Withdrawal

  White House officials have announced that President Biden will reverse Trump’s Somalia withdrawal of US forces as the fight with al-Shabaab Islamic militants heats up. This includes talk of a return to a policy of indefinite “boots on the ground” – or as one senior official was quoted as saying – “a persistent US military presence” there.

  “President Biden has approved a request from the Secretary of Defense to reestablish a persistent U.S. military presence in Somalia to enable a more effective fight against al-Shabaab, which has increased in strength and poses a heightened threat,” a senior admin official said to The Hill Monday.

  

  “This is a repositioning of forces already in theater who have travelled in and out of Somalia on an episodic basis since the previous administration made the decision to withdraw in January 2021,” the official added.

  Further The New York Times has also confirmed that “Biden secretly signed an order in early May authorizing the military to redeploy 100s of Special Forces into Somalia and to target about a dozen Al Shabab leaders” underscoring too that it’s reversal of a “last minute” Trump policy that went into effect within that last two months of his administration. The report said additionally that likely no more than 450 troops would be deployed.

  Upon Trump’s ordered December 2020 withdrawal of US troops from Somalia, there had been an estimated 700 there in support of counterterror operations. The country has suffered from decades of intermittent civil war, and running conflicts between competing warlords.

  Over the past three decades the war-torn country in the Horn of Africa only sporadically hits the news when things go horribly wrong, such as with major pirate attacks on tankers in the Gulf of Aden, or the November 2020 death of a CIA officer reportedly during a raid on a suspected al-Shabaab bomb-maker, and then there’s the disastrous ‘Black Hawk Down’ 1993 mission wherein 18 American soldiers were killed.

  US intelligence officials have in the past months been vocalizing their concerns that the terrorist organization al-Shabaab is spreading due to their being no significant military pressure on them. In recent years the Pentagon has established dozens or even perhaps hundreds of small forward operating bases across the African continent, ostensibly as part of broadly defined ‘counterterror’ support given to allied host nations.

  If you had told me when I was a teenager, full of rage towards the Republican party for what they were doing to Iraq and Afghanistan, that it would be the Democrats who started most of the wars in my lifetime, I would have laughed in your face. https://t.co/FJJRLCqZeH

  — Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) May 16, 2022

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

  Critics, however, have denounced the rapid growth of AFRICOM as part of continued post-9/11 ‘imperialist’ US expansion, pointing also to US-NATO military intervention in Libya against Gaddafi as part of regime change operations, and as a new “scramble” for influence over the continent in competition with China grows, and even to a lesser degree towards thwarting a growing Russian presence in unstable countries like Mali. Are we witnessing the return to a (failed) Global War on Terror (GWOT) posture across the Mideast/North Africa region under the Democratic administration? It appears so.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 23:25

• Pilot Writes "Make Beer Not War" Over Skies Of Poland 
  Pilot Writes “Make Beer Not War” Over Skies Of Poland 

  “Make Beer Not War,” read the plane’s flight path over the skies of Poland, a country that shares a 332-mile border with Ukraine. 

  According to FlightRadar, a creative pilot operating a Tecnam P2008JC (single-engine aircraft) spent nearly four hours in the skies above Poland writing a protest message against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

  Meanwhile over Poland#MakeBeerhttps://t.co/LT2rLJxAsb pic.twitter.com/YrgzyuEs4t

  — Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) May 14, 2022

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

  The pilot switched on the emergency beacon, sending a notification to FlightRadar users, where flight observers worldwide were able to watch the pilot Saturday write “Make Beer Not War.” 

  

  Last month, a FlightRadar user spotted another pilot in the central European country that wrote “FckPutin.”

  

  Over the years, pilots around the world were obsessed with drawing sky penises (see: here & here), though now, some write ant-war messages. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 23:05

• JPMorgan's Humiliation Is Complete: Bank Turns Overweight On Same Chinese Stocks It Called "Uninvestable" Just Weeks Ago
  JPMorgan’s Humiliation Is Complete: Bank Turns Overweight On Same Chinese Stocks It Called “Uninvestable” Just Weeks Ago

  Remember when back on March 14, JPMorgan – easily the staunchest bull on US stocks – stunned Wall Street when its analyst Alex Yao told the truth about Chinese tech stocks, saying they were “uninvestable“? For those who have forgotten, this is what the bank said:

  As risk management becomes the most important consideration for global investors in relation to their China Internet investment strategy as they price in China’s geopolitical risks and incremental concerns about regulatory risks, we find China Internet uninvestable on a 6-12 month view with an unpredictable share price outlook, depending on the market perception of China’s geopolitical risks, macro recovery and Internet regulation risk. The sector-wide sell-off might continue given lack of valuation support in the near term, in our view. We downgrade 28 coverage stocks to Neutral or Underweight. The only name with an OW rating in our coverage universe is Kuaishou.

  Well, just two days later JPM was fed a horse dose of humiliation when a rally sparked by PBOC jawboning sent all these “uninvestable” stocks soaring as much as 40% (a move which we had predicted just hours earlier, when we said that the JPM downgrade “confirms the price action and if anything suggests that with the bottom having fallen out of the sector, now is the time to buy China internet stocks”).

  

  Of course, while JPMorgan was ultimately right and Chinese tech stocks did continue to crater, China decided to punish JPM and its clients, and as the PBOC’s jawboning sent stocks surging days after the JPM record, all those who listened to the bank got stopped out of their short positions.

  JPMorgan’s humiliation was not done yet, however, and China continued to dole out punishment to Jamie Dimon’s bank for daring to bash its tech stocks – something Beijing has been doing with impunity for the past two years as it seeks to teach the country’s home grown start up billionaires a lesson – and back in April, Bloomberg reported that JPMorgan was removed as the most senior underwriter for Kingsoft Cloud Holdings’ Hong Kong stock offering after one of the bank’s analysts cut the share-price target for the Chinese technology company by half.  The bank remains a sponsor of the IPO, but is now ranked behind UBS Group AG and China International Capital Corp on the deal.

  But the humiliation wasn’t done, and last week an even more embarrassing moment emerged when Bloomberg reported that JPMorgan’s harshly written “uninvestable” note was never meant to be published in the first place.

  According to Bloomberg, “JPMorgan editorial staff in charge of vetting the bank’s research asked for “uninvestable” to be removed from 28 reports penned by technology analyst Alex Yao and his team before they were published on March 14.” But while the word was cut from most of the reports  – in some cases replaced with “unattractive” – it appeared in the published version of four, including one on JD.Com Inc.:

  “As risk management becomes the most important consideration among global investors in relation to their China investment strategy, as they price in China’s geopolitical risks, we view China Internet as uninvestable on a six-12-month view with a binary share price outlook.”

  According to Bloomberg, JPMorgan has concluded that it was an editorial error that allowed the word to slip through even though the editors, analysts and supervisors involved had all agreed before publication that it wasn’t the best choice of word. And indeed, while Yao’s team was undoubtedly turning more cautious on Chinese Internet companies, its prediction of share-price gains for at least 10 of them by year-end suggested the sector wasn’t entirely “uninvestable.”

  Today, however, JPMorgan’s humiliation was complete, because now that it has become all too clear just how political the bank’s sellside notes are, JPM analysts miraculously turned bullish on the same Chinese Internet stocks they recently called “uninvistable”, and upgrading at least 15 companies just two months after their bearish report on the industry triggered a market selloff, an even more powerful short squeeze, and a bout of internal hand-wringing at the biggest US bank.

  On Monday, the same team of analysts led by Alex Yao raised their ratings on companies including Tencent and Alibaba, a move that even Bloomberg said would “raise eyebrows on Wall Street” after reports from the team in mid-March called the sector “uninvestable.”

  Monday’s upgrades mark the latest twist in the closely watched drama that has highlighted the tough “balancing act” banks face as they try to expand their businesses in China while still giving clients access to candid research (i.e., factual reports instead of worthless propaganda) on the country’s turbulent markets.

  “Significant uncertainties facing the sector should begin to abate on the back of recent regulatory announcements,” Yao and his colleagues wrote in their May 16 note, in which they forgot all about just how uninvestable the same sector was two shorts months ago. Shares of Meituan, NetEase and Pinduoduo were also among those upgraded to overweight from underweight.

  Naturally, Yao’s team couldn’t just pull a “deus ex machina” and pretend it never said its own call would be garbage just a few weeks ago, and so to cover up its tracks, the JPM analysts said their bearish view in March reflected the first of a three-stage-cycle. The second phase — where the selloff abates and share prices stabilize — has arrived earlier than expected, the analysts wrote, not that anyone would believe them of course. Still, to preserve the last shred of credibility, they added that risk appetite could remain low and it may be difficult for speculative growth names to outperform.

  The JPM analysts also said that policy developments since mid-March have been supportive, diminishing risks related to regulation, the potential delisting of American depositary receipts and geopolitics, as they scrambled to come up with some way to soothe China’s anger and make Beijing forget that the downgrade ever happened. They also mentioned a March 16 meeting led by China’s Vice Premier Liu He, where authorities vowed to ease their crackdown on the tech sector, as one of the key triggers behind the change in view.

  

  The analysts cautioned that they still expect “significant downside risk” to consensus earnings for the second quarter for some stocks including Meituan and Alibaba as Covid containment measures take a toll on Chinese businesses. That did not prevent them from upgrading both companies from Sell (UW) to Buy (OW).

  

  The Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index hit its closing low for the year on the day of JPMorgan’s March report and just two days later point rallied more than 50% as the PBOC sparked a short squeeze to stop out all those who had shorted Chinese stocks on JPM’s advice. It has since given up some of those gains amid persistent worries about regulatory risks and Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes.

  And speaking of outright JPMorgan propaganda, we got the latest installment from the bank’s US facing team earlier today when Marko Kolanovic, who has been horrifically wrong with his recos in 2022, telling clients to buy stocks for 20 consecutive weeks…

  

  … decided to keep digging the hole he is in, and earlier today did what he has done very single week, saying that he “maintains a pro-risk stance” because he thinks that equity markets price in too much risk of a near-term recession (somehow he calculated this as being 70% even though if that was truly the case, the S&P would be trading around 3,000 right now) and being from JPMorgan, Kolanovic of course believes there will be no recession so you must buy stocks. Hopefully you still have some money left after having bought stocks for the past 19 weeks after listening to Marko play the same old broken record week after week after week…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 22:25

• At Least 300 Azov Fighters Surrender To Russians At Azovstal Plant, Ending Lengthy Siege
  At Least 300 Azov Fighters Surrender To Russians At Azovstal Plant, Ending Lengthy Siege

  The more than month-long standoff at Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks plant is finally over, after for many weeks the siege of the large complex by Russian forces remained the focus of international headlines, and following a series of high-risk civilian evacuations, some of them under the auspices of UN and Red Cross emergency teams.

  The remnant hundreds of armed Ukrainian Azov battalion militants which had refused to come out have now surrendered in the Monday night hours. “Reuters saw about a dozen buses apparently carrying Ukrainian fighters leaving the plant on Monday. It was not possible to determine how many people were aboard.”

  

  Widespread reports say that some 300 Ukrainian fighters have laid down their weapons and emerged from the cavernous facility. “More than 260 Ukrainian soldiers were evacuated from the besieged Azovstal steel plant in the port city of Mariupol,” Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Ganna Malyar said. Another “53 heavily wounded (soldiers) were evacuated from Azovstal to the medical mortgage near Novoazovsk for medical aid,” according to Malyar’s statement.

  Azov issued a statement on Telegram saying they are “implementing the approved decision of the Supreme Military Command” in order to “save lives”. 

  And the Russian side has since confirmed that “An agreement has been reached on the removal of the wounded,” according to a Russian defense ministry statement. “A humanitarian corridor has been opened through which wounded Ukrainian servicemen are being taken to a medical facility in Novoazovsk.”

  Russian media is also widely reporting the surrender at Azovstal, with RT airing some of the first footage of the evacuation of the last fighters to leave…

  Surrender at #Azovstal – #Ukraine Deputy Defense Minister Anna Malyar confirms that 53 wounded #Ukrainian soldiers were taken from #Mariupol‘s Azovstal steel plant to the hospital in #Novoazovsk, another 211 people were taken to #Yelenovka – both cities in the #DPR. Total 264. pic.twitter.com/XzYNCInwAA

  — tim anderson (@timand2037) May 16, 2022

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

  The Moscow Times is quoting confirmation from Ukraine’s president – who is applauding the safe surrender: 

  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “we hope to save the lives of our boys.”

  “I want to underline: Ukraine needs its Ukrainian heroes alive. This is our principle,” he said in a video statement.

  Crucially, Novoazovsk – where the wounded Ukrainian fighters are being taken – is in Russian-controlled territory about 40km east of Mariupol. The surrendered troops are reportedly now in the custody of the pro-Moscow Donetsk People’s Republic. Likely Kiev will seek to negotiate their return for captured Russians currently in Ukrainian military custody.

  Azov battalion, which has long been widely acknowledged even in prior mainstream media reporting as a neo-Nazi group, is asking the Ukrainian public for continued “support” – given this surrender (after previously vowing multiple to times to ‘fight till the end’) will likely be viewed by some as premature capitulation. During the long siege, all that were stuck in the facility had been running out of food, supplies, and ammunition as Russian forces had them completely surrounded. Last month President Putin is said to have ordered the military to simply wait them out, as opposed to what would have likely been a high death toll operation to enter the underground complex beneath the huge plant.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 22:05

• Senator McConnell Expects Wednesday Vote On $40 Billion Ukraine Aid
  Senator McConnell Expects Wednesday Vote On $40 Billion Ukraine Aid

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Sunday that he expects the Senate will hold a vote on the nearly $40 billion aid package for Ukraine on Wednesday.

  “We expect to invoke cloture — hopefully by a significant margin — on the motion to proceed on Monday, which would set us up to approve the supplemental on Wednesday,” McConnell said in Sweden after visiting Ukraine on Saturday.

  

  By invoking cloture, the Senate can limit the debate on an issue to 30 hours and hold a vote after that time. This past Thursday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) blocked the Senate from voting on the massive aid package, which had already passed in the House.

  The Pentagon has said Congress needs to pass the $39.8 billion aid package to avoid delays in weapons shipments to Ukraine. “May 19 is the day we really — without additional authorities — we begin to not have the ability to send new stuff in,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said.

  He stressed that: “It’ll start impacting our ability to provide aid uninterrupted.”

  Paul blocked the vote because he wanted to add text to the bill that would create a new inspector general for oversight of the billions in weapons that are being poured into Ukraine, but he also noted the economic pain Americans are feeling due to the 40-year high inflation and soaring gas prices.

  “Americans are feeling the pain and Congress seems intent only on adding to that pain by shoveling more money out the door as fast as they can,” Paul said.

  Despite Paul’s delay, the aid is expected to easily pass through the Senate once a vote is held. In the House, the measure passed in a vote of 368-57, with only Republicans voting against the legislation.

  Once signed by President Biden, the new aid package will bring the total US expenditure on the war in Ukraine to over $53 billion.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 21:45

• Supreme Court Rebuffs Biden Admin, Sides With Ted Cruz Over Campaign-Finance Caps
  Supreme Court Rebuffs Biden Admin, Sides With Ted Cruz Over Campaign-Finance Caps

  The Supreme Court struck down a federal campaign-finance regulation limiting politicians from repaying loans above $250,000 from supporters more than three weeks after Election Day.

  

  As The Wall Street Journal reported, at issue was a $260,000 loan Mr. Cruz, a Republican, made to his campaign in 2018 when he was locked in a down-to-the-wire race against Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke.

  The senator challenged a federal $250,000 cap on the reimbursement of a candidate’s personal loans with money his or her campaign receives after the election.

  Lawyer Charles Cooper, representing Mr. Cruz at the high court, said the limits were an unlawful burden on political candidates’ free-speech rights that couldn’t be justified by government claims that the rules guarded against corrupt influence by donors.

  The Justice Department, representing the Federal Election Commission, argued the government had legitimate anti-corruption interests in limiting the ability of candidates to be repaid with money that donors contribute to a political campaign after they know an election’s outcome.

  The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ideological split sided with Senator Cruz with Chief Justice John Roberts explaining in his opinion for the court that “The question is whether this restriction violates the First Amendment rights of candidates and their campaigns to engage in political speech.”

  “[T]here is no doubt that the law does burden First Amendment electoral speech, and any such law must at least be justified by a permissible interest,” he wrote.

  “When the government restricts speech, the government bears the burden of proving the constitutionality of its actions,” Roberts wrote, quoting directly from the 2014 plurality opinion in McCutcheon v. FEC.

  The government “is unable to identify a single case of quid pro quo corruption … even though most states do not impose a limit on the use of post-election contributions to repay candidate loans.”

  The rule “burdens core political speech without proper justification.”

  Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

  Kagan wrote in her dissenting opinion that the Supreme Court was making a mistake.

  “In striking down the law today the court greenlights all the sordid bargains Congress thought right to stop … In allowing those payments to go forward unrestrained, today’s decision can only bring this country’s political system into further disrepute.”

  Kagan embraced the bribery argument advanced by the Biden administration.

  “Repaying a candidate’s loan after he has won election cannot serve the usual purposes of a contribution: The money comes too late to aid in any of his campaign activities. All the money does is enrich the candidate personally at a time when he can return the favor—by a vote, a contract, an appointment.

  “It takes no political genius to see the heightened risk of corruption—the danger of ‘I’ll make you richer and you’ll make me richer’ arrangements between donors and officeholders.”

  The ruling adds to a line of recent Supreme Court rulings striking down campaign-finance restrictions as violating the First Amendment.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 21:25

• Is There Hope For The Mainstream Media?
  Is There Hope For The Mainstream Media?

  Submitted by reader “Prison Mike”

  It was hard to disagree with the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times when he called social media the “cancer of our time.” A free society needs a robust, competitive, self-sustaining news media landscape, and social media seems to have corrupted that. If social is cancer, and the LA Times horrible readership are any diagnosis, that paper is a terminal case.

  The Times is just once instance of the vicious cycle in news media. Radical technological changes have disrupted traditional funding models, making traditional types of reporting too unprofitable to sustain. Newsroom staffing has been slashed by one-quarter since 2008, with those left standing horrified they’ll be next.

  This creates newsrooms full of anxiety, with many reporters trying to leverage sensationalism on social media. While reporters 20 years ago might have tried to bury – or at least hide – the biases that informed their reporting, now they brag about those biases on Twitter in the purity-spiral battle to prove who’s the wokest.

  Traditional news outlets have lost credibility, and for good reason. In a recent survey, the US ranks dead last in trust of domestic media. And desperate attempts to tack into these headwinds is making things worse.

  Just getting it right doesn’t matter to so many in the industry nowadays as seen with NBC’s recidivistic problem with improperly sourcing articles.

  We can also see so much hypocrisy when it comes to the reporting on potential conflicts of interest after people leave the White House. When former Trump administration staffers left to pursue media opportunities, they were attacked for conflicts of interest but with White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki leaving to join MSNBC and former deputy press secretary for Vice President Kamala Harris, Symone Sanders launching her own MSNBC show, we have not heard a peep.

  Traditional news values don’t even enter into editorial decisions when you’re paid by the click, or worse, subsidized by corporate overlords.

  One particularly galling example is Business Insider. While one wouldn’t immediately think it would suffer from some of these aforementioned problems, indeed it’s been a leader.

  All the way back in 2013, reporters were deriding Business Insider for “slideshows and other crap meant not to inform, but merely to generate clicks.” When its ownership changed hands in 2016, there was a mass exodus of staff who objected to the way “traffic took precedence over enterprise reporting.”

  Some of their reporting has even led to public fights and litigation, accusing Insider’s corporate masters of using the news outlet to slander their competitors. After hit pieces against Barstool Sports’ owner – and direct media competitor – Dave Portnoy over alleged sexual misconduct, he filed a lawsuit against Business Insider for defamation and printing “outright fabrications.” Bogus “Me Too” allegations are very useful for getting rid of competitors in a world where we unquestionably “believe survivors.”

  Comparable allegations have been made about the website’s coverage of real estate mogul and head of real estate data company CoStar, Andrew Florance, who’s been accused of misconduct ranging from making female subordinates at his company CoStar feel uncomfortable to pointing a gun at people!  While the accuracy and severity of the claims made in the reporting is best left up to those involved, Insider’s reporting never once mentioned that their parent company Axel Media also owns multiple real estate marketing portals across the globe that are direct competitors to CoStar. Most notably Axel Springer bought France’s number 3 property platform Logic-Immo for $115 million in 2017 and also in 2011 bought online property advertising firm SeLoger for $846 million.  

  Insider’s reporting is immediately brought into questions based on the fact their CEO has a lifetime ban from the SEC, a point that Portnoy has made publicly multiple times. Their questionable ethics should receive even more scrutiny when reporting on their owner’s competition without making basic disclosures.

  At the very least, it’s reasonable to wonder if these undisclosed conflicts are motivating factors of what Insider chooses to cover. Even for as horrible as the once-great Washington Post has become since Jeff Bezos bought it, whenever the paper reports on Amazon, they are quick to disclose their ownership.

  The sad truth is that media neutrality and reliability seems to be a product of 20th Century television reporting. Because the Big Three – ABC, NBC, CBS – had to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, they all were all fighting to be the one that shot best toward the middle.

  As demographics have become more diverse, so too has our media consumption. News outlets have reverted to the kind of biases we’d previously seen for hundreds of years, whether it was corrupt Gilded Age political bosses or Thomas Jefferson hiring a newspaper to call John Adams a hermaphrodite.

  The challenges of the modern media environment are hard, but it’s hard to feel bad for almost any modern, mainstream media outlet.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 21:05

• Why Are Watches Usually Set To 10:10 In Advertisements?
  Why Are Watches Usually Set To 10:10 In Advertisements?

  Authored by Ross Pomeroy via RealClear Science (emphasis ours),

  It seems a tad odd, but it’s also true: Take a look at advertisements for traditional watches (you know, the ones with the rotating ‘hands’), and you’ll quickly notice that the time on the watches is almost always set to 10:10. This has actually been the norm since the 1950s, but why?

  

  A simple explanation is that this setting keeps the hands out of the way of the watch’s brand, so ‘Rolex’ or ‘Cartier’ can be placed front and center, but other time settings also accomplish this aim. A different explanation might prompt surprise and understandable skepticism: 10:10 sells more watches because the arrangement of the hands subtly resembles a smile, thus leaving onlookers in a better mood.

  An international team of researchers explored the latter theory in 2017, publishing their results in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. They recruited 46 participants to look at sixty pictures of various watches with their times either set at 10:10, 11:30, or 8:20, asking participants to rate both their emotional response to seeing each picture as well as their likelihood to buy each watch. Subjects rated watches set at 10:10 as slightly more pleasurable compared to watches set to the other times. They also said they would be slightly more likely to buy them.

  

  In a second experiment, the researchers recruited twenty more subjects to each view twelve different images in random order of watches again set at 10:10, 11:30, or 8:20 and rate how much each setting resembled a picture of a smiling or sad face on a scale of one to ten. Overwhelmingly, subjects said that watches set at 10:10 most closely resembled a smiling face while watches set at 8:20 most closely resembled a sad face.

  While the research could have benefited from a larger sample size, particularly for the first experiment, and probably should have compared more time settings, it did decidedly support the hypothesis. Marketers are well known for exploiting any angle they can to sell products, and setting clock hands on traditional watches to 10:10 does indeed seem to subtly influence prospective purchasers.

  Source: Karim AA, Lützenkirchen B, Khedr E and Khalil R (2017) Why Is 10 Past 10 the Default Setting for Clocks and Watches in Advertisements? A Psychological Experiment. Front. Psychol. 8:1410. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01410

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 20:25

• "It Was A Mistake" – Bernanke Says Fed's Fear Of 'Shocking' The Market Delayed Tightening Move
  “It Was A Mistake” – Bernanke Says Fed’s Fear Of ‘Shocking’ The Market Delayed Tightening Move

  With inflation running rampant, unemployment falling, and wages soaring, the Jerome Powell-led Federal Reserve waited too long to reverse its ultra-low interest rate policies and a massive bond-buying program. This delay has now been called a “mistake” by former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. 

  Bernanke spoke with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin in an interview during Monday’s “Squawk Box” show. He told Sorkin, “The question is why did they delay that. … Why did they delay their response? I think in retrospect, yes, it was a mistake.”

  

  Inflation has become one of the most severe threats to the economy. Bernanke said, “And I think they [Fed] agree it was a mistake.” He explains why the Fed missed the window of opportunity to tighten: 

  “One of the reasons was that they wanted not to shock the market.

  “Jay Powell was on my board during the Taper Tantrum in 2013, which was a very unpleasant experience. He wanted to avoid that kind of thing by giving people as much warning as possible. And so that gradualism was one of several reasons why the Fed didn’t respond more quickly to the inflationary pressure in the middle of 2021,” he said. 

  Powell, the defender of financial markets, got it wrong last year when inflation began to run higher than the Fed’s 2% target, though Fed members widely said inflation would be “transitory.” What’s disturbing is inflation was not transitory, and the monetary wonks operating the printing presses clearly didn’t understand. Their inability to tighten last summer has caused the Fed to be way behind the curve, hence today’s oversized rate hikes. 

  So how behind the curve is the Powell-led Fed? The Taylor Rule suggests Fed Funds should be over 11%, not around 1%. The Taylor rule is a formula that can predict or guide how central banks should alter interest rates due to changes in the economy.

  

  Right now, Taylor’s rule recommends that the Federal Reserve should continue to raise interest rates. 

  “There’s a lot of support for the fact that the Fed is tightening now, even though obviously we see the effects in markets,” Bernanke said. “You know, we’ll see the effects in house prices, etc.” 

  Meanwhile, the central bank is attempting to achieve a proverbial “soft landing,” though there’s an increasing risk of a recession in the not-too-distant future. 

  Powell and gang missed the window of opportunity to tighten policy rates and is now considered, well, in one former central banker’s eyes, a “mistake.” And with policy errors, hard landings are usually seen. 

  Watch the full interview here. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 20:11

• Ambassador Says Russian Diplomats In D.C. Being Approached & Harassed by CIA, FBI
  Ambassador Says Russian Diplomats In D.C. Being Approached & Harassed by CIA, FBI

  Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov over the weekend went public with an usual allegation – that Russian diplomats working in Washington are being harassed and increasingly approached by the FBI and CIA, which are said to be seeking information. Without specifying which precise entity is allegedly behind it, Antonov went so far as to say this includes “threats of physical violence” against Russian embassy employees in D.C. amid the ongoing war in Ukraine.

  Antonov described to Russia’s TASS news agency over the weekend: “It’s like a besieged fortress. Basically, our embassy is operating in a hostile environment … Embassy employees are receiving threats, including threats of physical violence.”

  

  “Agents from US security services are hanging around outside the Russian embassy, handing out CIA and FBI phone numbers, which can be called to establish contact,” he claimed.

  The Russian ambassador’s words were picked up by Reuters, which contacted the named agencies in order to seek confirmation or comment. “CIA and the FBI declined comment. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the U.S. State Department did not immediately return messages seeking comment,” the report noted.

  While it’s long been acknowledged as somewhat standard practice among competing foreign intelligence agencies to attempt to quietly recruit agents and assets from the other side (who often work under diplomatic cover at their respective country’s embassy or consulate), what is entirely uncommon is that this type of activity would be done so brazenly just outside embassy grounds, as the Russian ambassador is alleging.

  As for the general atmosphere of harassment and intimidating “threats” that Russian embassy employees might be on the receiving end of – this part of the allegations seems more believable given Russian officials in Europe have already been subject of such attacks. 

  The Russian ambassador to Poland was attacked as he tried to lay a wreath at the Soviet soldiers’ cemetery in Warsaw. pic.twitter.com/FFtBzuRITW

  — RadioGenova (@RadioGenova) May 9, 2022

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

  The foremost latest example was Russia’s ambassador to Poland getting doused in red paint on the occasion of a May 9th ‘Victory Day’ ceremony. Embassies and consulates in various parts of Europe have also been subject of vandalism and property defacement of late.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 20:05

• The New Rift Between WHO And China
  The New Rift Between WHO And China

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

  From the beginning of the pandemic, the World Health Organization and China’s CCP have worked and spoken hand-in-glove, culminating in the Potemkin Village junket of mid-February 2020. The WHO-sponsored travel report—how wonderfully China had performed!—was written and signed by American public health officials who recommended Wuhan-style lockdowns, a disastrous policy that further inspired most governments in the world to do the same.

  

  Twenty-six months later, it turns out that China in fact had not “eliminated the virus fully within its borders,” contrary to the over-the-top claims of TV pundit Devi Sridhar in her new book “Preventable.” They only pushed cases into the future, as the CCP discovered when positive tests appeared all over Shanghai, leading to 7 weeks of brutal lockdowns.

  This move on China’s part has been a disaster for the country and the world economy, and presently endangers the financial and technological future of the entire country.

  For Xi Jinping, lockdowns and zero-covid were his greatest achievement, one which was celebrated the world over, causing his political pride to swell beyond all bounds. Now, he cannot back off lest he face possible losses in upcoming party elections.

  Just this past weekend, he made it clear to the entire government that there would be no backing off the zero-covid policy: the CCP will “unswervingly adhere to the general policy of ‘dynamic zero-Covid,’ and resolutely fight against any words and deeds that distort, doubt or deny our country’s epidemic prevention policies.”

  The problem is acute: vast numbers in China likely need to acquire natural immunity via exposure. The lockdown policy likely puts a damper on the achievement of endemicity. That means long-term damage to China’s future.

  Sensing this problem, the head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, offered a mild criticism:

  “Considering the behavior of the virus, I think a shift will be very important,” adding that he had discussed this point with Chinese scientists.

  What happened next is truly fascinating: Tedros’s comments were censored all over China and searches for the name Tedros were immediately blocked within the country.

  Implausibly, merely by stating the incredibly obvious point, Tedros has made himself an enemy of the state.

  Meanwhile, another WHO/China partisan, Bill Gates, has been sheepishly saying something very similar in interviews, namely that the virus cannot be eradicated.

  It’s not just Tedros and Gates who are trying to flee their advocacy of lockdowns. Anthony Fauci himself denied that the United States ever had “complete lockdowns”—which is technically correct but not because he didn’t demand them.

  On March 16, 2020, Fauci faced the national press and read from a CDC directive: “In states with evidence of community transmission, bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed.”

  In fact, one gets the strong sense that governments around the world are pretending as if the whole pathetic and terrible affair never happened, even as they are attempting to reserve the power to do it all over again should the need arise.

  On May 12, 2022, many governments around the world gathered for a video call and agreed to pour many billions more into covid work, and reaffirm their dedication to an “all-of-society” and “whole-of-government” approach to infectious disease. The U.S. government under the administration readily agreed to this idea.

  Leaders reinforced the value of whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches to bring the acute phase of COVID-19 to an end, and the importance of being prepared for future pandemic threats. The Summit was focused on preventing complacency, recognizing the pandemic is not over; protecting the most vulnerable, including the elderly, immunocompromised people, and frontline and health workers; and preventing future health crises, recognizing now is the time to secure political and financial commitment for pandemic preparedness.

  The Summit catalyzed bold commitments. Financially, leaders committed to provide nearly $2 billion in new funding—additional to pledges made earlier in 2022. These funds will accelerate access to vaccinations, testing, and treatments, and they will contribute to a new pandemic preparedness and global health security fund housed at the World Bank.

  Is it progress to see these people throwing around language from the much-criticized but now wholly vindicated Great Barrington Declaration? Doubtful. You can’t make a bad policy better by tossing around words. There is every indication from this statement that there will be no apologies, no regrets, and no changes in the default position that governments must always and everywhere have maximum power to control any pathogen of their choosing.

  Despite Tedros’s censored words, it’s no wonder that Xi Jinping continues to feel vindicated and affirmed, and sees no real political danger in choosing his own power over the health and well-being of his people. Governments around the world still cannot muster the courage to make a full-throated and solid attack on zero-covid, for fear of the implications of such a concession. Nudges and hints, even from the WHO, will not do it.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 19:45

• 100,000 More Recalls And Even More Shanghai Delays Sting Tesla To Start The Week
  100,000 More Recalls And Even More Shanghai Delays Sting Tesla To Start The Week

  Just as it started to look like everything had finally been sorted out for Tesla in Shanghai, we reported last week that the company once again had to halt its production due to “issues with supplies”. 

  Starting off this week, it doesn’t look like things are getting any better. First, Bloomberg reported that “no vehicles were sold in Shanghai last month” as a result of the lockdown, according to an auto-seller association in the city. 

  Meanwhile, Tesla’s plans to restart Shanghai to its pre-pandemic production levels have been pushed back another week, Reuters reported this weekend. Citing an internal memo, Reuters wrote that Tesla is still planning on just one shift for its plant this week and a daily output of about 1,200 units.

  Tesla is aiming for 2,600 units per day by May 23. 

  

  Additionally, it was reported Monday that Tesla would be recalling over 100,000 vehicles in China. 107,293 vehicles in China will be recalled “due to safety risks”, according to the China People’s Daily. 

  The recall, which relates to a defect in the central touchscreen during fast charging, “involves Model 3 and Model Y vehicles produced in the country between Oct 19, 2021, and April 26, 2022,” the report says. 

  Recall, Tesla’s most recent Shanghai shutdown came just three weeks after the plant resumed production. The plant was closed for a total of 22 days, Reuters noted. Shanghai is now in its seventh week of lockdowns, and we noted last week that it was “unclear when the supply issues can be resolved and when Tesla can resume production”.

  Wire harness maker Aptiv is one supplier who is currently facing issues due to “infections found among its employees”, we reported last week. Meanwhile, Tesla had just started to eye resuming double shifts at its plant, we noted two weeks ago. The plant was making plans to “resume double shifts” at its Shanghai factory as soon as mid-May after starting back up in mid April. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 19:25

• The Post-Roe World: A Reality Check On The Implications Of The Leaked Supreme Court Opinion
  The Post-Roe World: A Reality Check On The Implications Of The Leaked Supreme Court Opinion

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  Below is my column in the Hill on claims being made about the post-Roe world and the sweeping away of such rights as interracial marriage and the use of contraceptives. The “parade of horribles” seems to get longer by the day but it may actually be undermining the good-faith arguments made by pro-abortion advocates.

  

  The Map of Hell painting by Botticelli

  Here is the column:

  The New Yorker magazine ran a cover in 1976 showing the view of the country from 9th Avenue. The map by Saul Steinberg showed civilization largely ending at the New Jersey border with a vast wasteland between New York and the Pacific Ocean.

  It appears that, for some people, not much has changed with that view of America.

  Recently the editors of the New York Times seriously warned that some states likely would outlaw interracial marriage if Roe v. Wade is overturned:

  “Imagine that every state were free to choose whether to allow Black people and white people to marry. Some states would permit such marriages; others probably wouldn’t.”

  It is hard to imagine because it is utterly untrue. Nothing in the Supreme Court’s leaked draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization supports such a dire prediction. To the contrary, the draft expressly states that “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” Indeed, such a motive might come as something of a surprise to Justice Clarence Thomas, given his own interracial marriage, or to Justice Amy Coney Barrett, given her own interracial family.

  The purpose of the Times’ commentary seems to be to inflame rather than inform readers. And that is consistent with the position of politicians and pundits who raised alarms, even before the leak, over the need to reignite anger among voters to avoid a disaster in the midterm election. On MSNBC, for example, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) agreed with John Heilemann that Democrats must “scare the crap out of [voters] and get them to come out.”

  The Times editorial is part of a “parade of horribles” that is becoming increasingly grotesque in its exaggerated claims. MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell and former Clinton Attorney General Eric Holder had a preposterous discussion of how if Roe goes down, Brown v. Board of Education could be next. MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” host Joy Reid falsely told her audience that the decision “could apply to almost anything” in not just prohibiting interracial marriage but overturning the Brown decision.

  An apocalyptic post-Roe hellscape can be a motivating image, but only to the extent that it is credible.

  The problem is that the claims are detached from both legal and political realities.

  Consider three of these claims on interracial marriage, contraception and same-sex marriage:

  Interracial marriage

  With polls showing that 94 percent of Americans support interracial marriage, the Times editors do not bother to name the states that are largely composed of the remaining 6 percent.

  The claim is even less credible legally than it is politically. The leading case on interracial marriage, Loving v. Virginia, was based on different constitutional grounds and would not be negated by this opinion. While the court did discuss the due process right to marriage, it was primarily handed down on equal protection grounds due to the inherent racial classification. Then-Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote: “The clear and central purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to eliminate all official state sources of invidious racial discrimination in the States … There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.”

  None of that, however, deters some pundits from keeping alive the fear that interracial marriages soon could be criminalized. As ABC’s late-night host Jimmy Kimmel declared, “They’ll come for same-sex marriage, they’ll come for interracial marriage, they’ll outlaw that peanut butter that comes with the jelly in the same jar.”

  It might be a good comedic line — but this and similar claims make no constitutional sense. There is no reason to believe that interracial marriages would be banned in a post-Roe world.

  Contraception

  The cries of alarm include other areas expressly addressed in the draft opinion as not impacted by its analysis. For example, many critics claim that contraception could soon be outlawed even though the court’s draft specifically dismisses such claims: “Roe’s defenders characterize the abortion right as similar to the rights recognized in past decisions involving matters such as intimate sexual relations, contraception, and marriage, but abortion is fundamentally different, as both Roe and Casey acknowledged.”

  It is true that some activists have sought to outlaw IUDs and Plan B prescriptions as “abortion-inducing.” However, putting aside that the draft opinion expressly distinguishes the contraception cases, there is no basis for suggesting that the court would eradicate any semblance of personal privacy and intimacy protections under the Constitution. Such sweeping transformation of the private lives of Americans would involve curtailing a host of other rights, including equal protection. Moreover, there would be considerable practical barriers to such bans in preventing interstate availability of contraceptives.

  The polling on this issue is even more lopsided. While the public remains supportive of limits on abortion, some 83 percent support to the availability of contraceptives. Only 6 percent favor making contraception illegal.

  Same-sex marriage

  In 2015, the court voted 5-4 to strike down bans on same-sex marriage. The court’s specific foundation for this right has continued to be mired in controversy. Even some of us who had long supported same-sex marriage raised concerns at the time over the reliance of Justice Anthony Kennedy in his decision on a “right to dignity.”

  Once again, however, the court in this draft opinion distinguishes abortion from other areas as involving claims of an “unborn human life.” Nothing in this opinion endorses a ban on same-sex unions.

  However, even before this draft opinion was leaked, there were calls for a better-articulated foundation than the one laid out in Obergefell v. Hodges. As with interracial marriage, many of us have argued for an equal-protection foundation for the right.

  Putting this aside, the politics on this issue has changed dramatically in the last decade. Polls show that 70 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage.

  Roe is not the basis for all of these rights, and its basis has long been debated. Nevertheless, columnist Maureen Dowd has declared that the “antediluvian draft opinion is the Puritans’ greatest victory since they expelled Roger Williams from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.”

  Such claims, however, ignore that the basis for the original decision was questioned even by liberals. Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe wrote that “one of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” At least some of the court’s justices clearly hold many of the same doubts over the basis for Roe in the Constitution.

  There is ample cause for pro-abortion advocates to organize over the loss of Roe. However, those claims are only undermined by a parade of horribles that leaves both the case law and credibility behind.

  A cynic might wonder if Democratic leaders in Congress truly want to preserve the status quo of Roe. After all, their recent proposed codification of Roe went beyond the draft decision, which the leadership knew would lose critical votes in the Senate — but which may provide what they hope will be a powerful rallying cry for the midterm elections.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 19:05

• Reuters Mocked For Using Paintball Training Photo In Ukraine War Report
  Reuters Mocked For Using Paintball Training Photo In Ukraine War Report

  Reuters is being widely mocked for publishing an article Monday morning which is headlined, Ukraine says it has repelled Russian incursion in Sumy region – given it is accompanied with the below photograph. The photo tweeted by Reuters naturally created some confusion, to put it lightly.

  Yes, a Ukrainian “military photo” showing troops beating back the Russians… apparently with paintball guns.

  Ukraine says it has repelled Russian incursion in Sumy region https://t.co/dE81E0R9P6 pic.twitter.com/une4hkj0M6

  — Reuters (@Reuters) May 16, 2022

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

  The report filed from Kyiv is introduced with the lines, “Ukrainian border guards repelled an incursion by a Russian sabotage and reconnaissance group in the northeastern region of Sumy on Monday, the governor of the Sumy region said.”

  The photo and tweet stayed live for hours throughout the morning, even as social media users expressed in hundreds of comments (and counting) that this demonstrates why it it remains hard to trust mainstream media reporting on complex foreign conflicts, especially Ukraine. Reuters did attempt to clarify in a caption with the photo that it shows “Members of the territorial defense force” attending “training”.

  

  However, the avalanche of comments was triggered by the fact that the Reuters tweet itself was accompanied by no clarifying context.

  Some have also noted that given the ‘fog of war’ already makes it obviously very difficult to ascertain precisely what’s happening with the rapidly developing battlefield situation from day to day, the choice to feature Ukrainian troops paintballing is but the latest in a series of mainstream media fails. Throughout the conflict, big claims have often been made – captured in headlines – but typically with little in the way of actual evidence. “Ukraine claims…” “Russia claims…” “US officials claim…” are the types of introductions that have become commonplace.

  Ummm. pic.twitter.com/0jQM4KRdq6

  — MikeMcKinnon75 (@MikeMcK1975) May 16, 2022

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

  Typically Ukrainian forces are quite open about showing off their US-supplied military hardware, and in particular the Raytheon and Lockheed Martin produced FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile system. These have flooded the battlefield, and have had devastating effect on Russian tanks and armored vehicle convoys.

  But the paintball pic has elicited sarcastic comments suggesting that maybe it’s the paintball industry’s turn to make a pile of cash off the conflict…

  This war is being manipulated by Big Paintball https://t.co/QTbUOggSGL

  — Granite State Texian (@Aquinas71) May 16, 2022

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

  Untrusting observers are also questioning the $40 billion in Ukraine aid that the Senate is expected to again vote on Wednesday at a moment it is being hotly debated following Sen. Rand Paul last week blocking an initial hasty vote.

  Glad they received the shipment of TIPPMENN 98’s and CO2 canisters from the US Taxpayers. https://t.co/pVeQHP3PYZ

  — Hamill Stewart (@stewart_hamill) May 16, 2022

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

  “Maybe Ukrainians really do need the $40 billion if they’re fighting the Russian army with paintball guns?” one Twitter user asked. “And Reuters wonders why nobody trusts legacy media anymore.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 18:45

• Lott: Guess How Many Violent Crimes Actually Involve Guns?
  Lott: Guess How Many Violent Crimes Actually Involve Guns?

  Authored by John R. Lott Jr. via RealClear Politics,

  To President Biden, public health researchers, and the media, violent crime is all about guns. But a new survey finds that people are badly misinformed about how much violent crime involves guns. The average likely American voter is way off, thinking that over 46% of violent crimes involve guns. In fact, the true figure is less than 8%.

  

  Not surprisingly, those who believe that most violent crime involves guns are more likely to view gun control as the solution.

  Biden has given four major speeches on violent crime (here, here, here, and here). Each one of them was focused on enforcement of gun control laws. In the four speeches, he mentioned “gun” or “firearm” 179 times. The term “weapon,” sometimes in connection with “assault weapon,” was used another 31 times.

  The words “crime,” “violence,” or “violent” were mentioned about half as often – 94 times. He only mentions the words “murder” and “homicide” seven times in these four presentations, and entirely omits them from his two most recent talks.

  But this “guns first” approach ignores a basic fact – over 92% of violent crimes in America do not involve firearms. Although Biden blames guns for the increase in violent crime, the latest data show that gun crimes fell dramatically.

  The U.S. Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey, in the latest year available (2020), shows that there were 4,558,150 rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults, and the FBI reports 21,570 murders. Of those, 350,460 rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults (see Table 8) and 13,620 murders involved firearms. So, while it’s true that firearms are the weapon of choice in more than half the murders in this country, it’s also true that only 7.9% of violent crimes were committed with guns.

  The new McLaughlin & Associates survey of 1,000 likely voters from April 20 to 26 for the Crime Prevention Research Center shows how misinformed people are. People across the country, of all races and incomes, have wildly inaccurate beliefs about how frequently violent crime involves guns.

  Even so, there are large differences across groups. The average Democrat estimates that 56.9% of violent crimes involve guns, whereas the typical Republican gave an answer of 37%. Those with the highest incomes (over $250,000 per year) and those who work for the government give the highest numbers – 56.1% and 51% respectively. Women (50%) believe that more violent crimes involve guns than men do (43%). Urban Americans say 48%, whereas rural Americans say 40%. But the biggest difference is between blacks (59%) and Asians (31%).

  The McLaughlin survey also gave people three options on the best way to fight crime: Pass more gun control laws, more strictly enforce current laws, or have police concentrate on arresting repeat violent criminals.

  Some respondents at least got it right that less than 20% of violent crime involves guns. Just 8% prioritized more gun laws, and 15% focused on stricter enforcement of existing laws. An overwhelming 71% thought the best way of fighting crime was to arrest violent criminals.

  Some likely voters thought that more than 80% of the violent crime involved guns. Most supported either more gun control laws (33%) or more strict enforcement of current gun laws (28%). Only 36% of them wanted the focus on arresting violent criminals.

  Those who think that most violent crime is committed with guns consistently support more gun control. Those who don’t believe that instead want to focus on arresting violent criminals and keeping them in jail.

  Perhaps the gun control debate would be very different if the media had done a better job of informing people about crime. The most newsworthy cases, unfortunately, don’t tend to be typical of violent crime. Focusing on how to solve 8% of violent crime does nothing to solve the other 92%.

  John R. Lott Jr. is the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. Until January 2021, he was the senior adviser for research and statistics at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy where he dealt with issues of vote fraud.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 18:25

• Tiger Global Sells, Liquidates Billions: Here Is Its Full Portfolio As Of March 31
  Tiger Global Sells, Liquidates Billions: Here Is Its Full Portfolio As Of March 31

  Heading into today’s 13F filing deadline for the first quarter, we said that it would be the first time that investors actually cared about (and read through) at least some of these filings in years…

  Monday may be the first time in years when people actually read through 13F filings

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 13, 2022

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

  … and none more so than the 13F belonging to the biggest tech-focused fund of them all, Tiger Global, which having accumulated tens of billions in the past two decades, has gotten destroyed in the past few months, losing $17 billion in 2022, and which according to the FT, “has in four months erased about two-thirds of its gains since its launch in 2001, according to calculations by LCH Investments.”

  To be sure, we don’t know what the fund has done in the past 45 days since the 13F covers the period from the start of the year through March 31, but even that is plenty, and below we summarizes the most important changes to what is arguably the most important portfolio for the tech world.

  First, according to its just filed 13F, Tiger Global Management managed just $26.6 billion as of March (in disclosed longs), nearly $20 billion less than the $46 billion it reported as of Dec 31.

  Digging through some of its most notable changes, we find that Tiger liquidated all of its holdings in Netflix and Adobe during the first quarter, which combined were worth more than $1 billion as of Dec 31, while buying more shares of Carvana. NFLX plunged 38% in the first three months of the year.

  The fund also bought shares of beleaguered online used-car retailer Carvana, which plunged 49% during the quarter and has lost an additional two-thirds of its value since March 31. Tiger also added to its holdings in Crowdstrike, Sea Ltd, Snowflake, Servicenow, and others. While not captured by this 13F period, Tiger Global’s losses mounted in April, with the hedge fund declining 15%, extending this year’s drop to 44%.

  As we reported previously, the firm is headed for its worst year since it was founded in 2001 as fast-growing tech companies in the US and China – which were behind the fund’s earlier gains – cratered. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 slid 13% in April, its biggest monthly decline since 2008, while the broader S&P 500 fell 8.8%, the most in more than half a century.

  The full breakdown of changes between Dec 31 and March 31 is shown below (new positions in green), starting with the fund’s top 5 positions: JD.com (it reduced this position by 942K shares), Microsoft (cut by 598K shares), Crowdstrike, NU Holdings, and Sea Ltd. Tiger also slashed its holdings of Facebook Meta by a whopping 25%, and ended the quarter owning just $867.8 million.

  In total, Tiger Global sold out of 83 shares and bought just two new positions: digital banking-services firm Dave (a banking app aimed at people who hate banks. Dave offers products like no-interest cash advance) and Starry Group Holdings Inc. It was left with 88 stocks they’re invested in as of March 31. And the market value of those holdings is $26.6 billion.

  

  … Looking at the liquidations, Tiger Global sold out of Netflix, Adobe, Coupa, Sunrun, Paypal and more. They ditched 83 stocks entirely in the first quarter.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 18:05

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• European Natural Gas Prices To Triple In "Perfect Storm" 
  European Natural Gas Prices To Triple In “Perfect Storm” 

  A top commodity research firm in Norway warns a “perfect storm” is brewing as European energy security worsens following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which could result in the tripling of natural gas prices. 

  “There simply is not enough LNG around to meet demand. In the short term, this will make for a hard winter in Europe. 

  “For producers, it suggests the next LNG boom is here, but it will arrive too late to meet the sharp spike in demand. The stage is set for a sustained supply deficit, high prices, extreme volatility, bullish markets, and heightened LNG geopolitics,” Kaushal Ramesh, a senior analyst for Gas and LNG at Rystad Energy, wrote. 

  Rystad Energy said the EU has an “ambitious target to reduce dependence on Russian gas by 66% within this year – an aim that will clash with the EU’s goal of replenishing gas storage to 80% of capacity by 1 November.” 

  The firm said shunning Russian natgas from the continent destabilizes the entire global natgas market, which had a turbulent 2021 year-end with prices skyrocketing across Europe because of the lack of supplies. EU is currently reducing reliance on Russian natgas and has unveiled the possibility of banning Russian fossil fuels. This will only lead to more trouble for the EU, where prices could rise even higher.

  

  Learn more with Rystad Energy’s GasMarketCube.

  According to the report, 155 billion cubic meters of Russian natgas flowed into Europe in 2021, representing about 31% of the continent’s natgas supply. 

  “Replacing a significant portion of this will be exceedingly difficult, with far-reaching consequences for Europe’s population, economy, and for the role of gas in the region’s energy transition,” Rystad Energy noted.

  In one apocalyptic scenario, the energy firm cautioned about the severe economic implications if Russian natgas flows were immediately halted. They said it would come at a time when natgas stocks (only 35% full) would be depleted by the end of the year, resulting in a tripling of natgas prices from current levels to $100 per million British thermal units (MMBtu).

  

  Such a dramatic price move in natgas would have tremendous implications on the economy, such as “industrial curtailments,” Rystad Energy said, adding, “in an extreme scenario of a severely cold winter, not even the residential sector would be safe.” 

  EU officials have discussed for weeks a potential fossil fuels embargo on Russia. The eurozone is searching for alternative suppliers of both crude oil and natgas to wean itself off Russian energy. 

  Weaning Europe off Russian energy will only mean elevated energy prices are here to stay. Europe’s largest manufacturing hub, Germany, has warned of stagflation risks due to the conflict in Ukraine and resulting Western sanctions on Russian fossil fuels.

  EU’s ambitions to replace Russian fossil fuel dependence with another source will come at a cost that Rystad Energy warns could jeopardize the continent’s energy security. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 02:45

• Russian Lawmaker Says Poland Next In Line For 'De-Nazification'
  Russian Lawmaker Says Poland Next In Line For ‘De-Nazification’

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

  A Russian lawmaker has issued a fiery warning that Warsaw is next in line for “de-nazification” after Poland’s Prime Minister penned an op-ed calling Russia’s imperialist “Russkiy Mir” ideology a “cancer” consuming Russian society and a “deadly threat” to other countries.

  

  Oleg Morozov, chairman of Russia’s State Duma Committee on Control, wrote in a message on Telegram on Friday that the Polish leader’s comments have essentially made Poland a target.

  In his remarks, Morozov resorted to the Kremlin’s rhetoric in its military operation in Ukraine of so-called “de-Nazification,” a label Moscow has used to vilify its geopolitical adversaries and justify the war.

  “With its statements about Russia as a ‘cancer’ and about the ‘indemnity’ that we must pay to Ukraine, Poland encourages us to put it in first place in the queue for de-Nazification after Ukraine,” Morozov wrote, according to a translation of his statement.

  Morozov’s remarks were prompted by statements made by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Polish President Andrzej Duda, who have both been highly critical of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

  Duda has said Russia should be forced to pay compensation to Ukraine for war damages while Morawiecki said Russian President Vladimir Putin is “more dangerous” than both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin because he has nuclear weapons and a massive propaganda machine at his disposal.

  Morawiecki wrote in a column in the British newspaper The Telegraph that “the cursed phantoms of the 20th century have risen again over Ukraine,” alleging that Russia’s invasion of its neighbor bears the hallmarks of fascism, “has already opened the gates to genocide,” and is driven by a “monstrous new ideology” that he called “Russkiy Mir.”

  Morawiecki alleged that in the name of this ideology, Putin and his military entourage have ordered Russian forces into war, “convinced them of their superiority, and encouraged them to commit inhuman war crimes—the murder, rape, and torture of innocent civilians.”

  “Putin’s ‘Russkiy Mir’ ideology is the equivalent of 20th-century communism and Nazism,” Morawiecki wrote, calling it a “cancer which is consuming not only the majority of Russian society, but also poses a deadly threat to the whole of Europe.”

  It’s not enough to help Ukraine fend off Russia’s attack, Morawiecki argued, “we must root out this monstrous new ideology entirely.”

  “Just as Germany was once subject to denazification, today the only chance for Russia and the civilised world is ‘deputinisation.’ If we do not engage in this task immediately, we will not only lose Ukraine, we will lose our soul and our freedom and sovereignty,” the Polish leader wrote.

  Morawiecki argued that, unless it is opposed, Russia will not stop at Kyiv but will continue on a “long march towards the West.”

  The Kremlin has denied it has any intentions of invading other countries. Putin has claimed that what he describes as a “special military operation” in Ukraine comes in response to attempts by Western powers to establish a bulwark in Ukraine that threatens Moscow’s security.

  In particular, Putin has long said that NATO is trying to expand its borders to pressure Russia militarily, claims the defensive alliance has rejected as unfounded.

  Another of the Kremlin’s key justifications for its operation in Ukraine has been to allege that the Russian-speaking population in the separatist-controlled Donbass and Luhansk region were being subjected to repression and what Putin has described as “genocide.”

  A long list of scholars and academics has denounced Russia’s claims of genocide and “de-Nazification” of Ukraine as a false pretext meant to justify “unprovoked aggression” against its southern neighbor.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 05/16/2022 – 02:00

• Biden Push To Turn 'Ultra MAGA' Into Disparaging Epithet Came From 6-Month Study, Was Not 'Organic'
  Biden Push To Turn ‘Ultra MAGA’ Into Disparaging Epithet Came From 6-Month Study, Was Not ‘Organic’

  Authored by Sundance via The Conservative Treehouse,

  The Washington Post is reporting the shift from the White House to disparage their political opposition with the terms “MAGA”, “Ultra-MAGA” and President Trump as the “Great MAGA King,” came from a six-month poll study led by Anita Dunn, the latest senior advisor in the White House.

  

  Keep in mind, a few days ago White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said the terminology “ultra-MAGA” was an “organic utterance” from Joe Biden.  Whoops.

  WASHINGTON DC – […] Biden’s attempt to appropriate the “MAGA” brand as a political attack was hardly accidental.

  It arose from a six-month research project to find the best way to target Republicans, helmed by Biden adviser Anita Dunn and by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a liberal group.

  The polling and focus group research by Hart Research and the Global Strategy Group found that “MAGA” was already viewed negatively by voters — more negatively than other phrases like “Trump Republicans.”

  In battleground areas, more than twice as many voters said they would be less likely to vote for someone called a “MAGA Republican” than would be more likely. The research also found that the description tapped into the broad agreement among voters that the Republican Party had become more extreme and power-hungry in recent years. (read more)

  On May 5th the White House announced Anita Dunn would return to the JoeBama administration as senior advisor.  Dunn’s specific expertise is using pressure, blackmail and political leverage to control information distribution by media organizations.  Apparently “ultra-MAGA” was Dunn’s first branding effort for the White House.

  The reappearance of Anita Dunn aligns with the expressed intent of the DHS ‘disinformation’ board.  Dunn’s professional political skillset surrounds being a paid media fixer.   She has done this for multiple democrat politicians including Obama.  It was Anita Dunn who used her position in the Biden campaign to demand that media stop allowing Rudy Guiliani to explain the Biden family ‘pay to play’ financial system of selling influence.

  Anita Dunn also advised Harvey Weinstein how to remove media stories of his Hollywood rape issues.  Dunn reappearing makes sense, as the U.S. government objective to control information is now in full swing.

  Last point.  The group that spearheaded the six month study, Hart Research, is the same outfit who does all the polling for NBC and CNBC. 

  Partisan much?  lol

  Ultra-MAGA

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/15/2022 – 23:30

• Visualizing The Science Behind Cultured Meat
  Visualizing The Science Behind Cultured Meat

  Cultured foods – also known as cell-based foods – are expected to turn our global food system as we know it on its head.

  In fact, the cultured meat market is estimated to reach an eye-watering $25 billion by 2030 according to McKinsey, but only if it can overcome hurdles such as price parity and consumer acceptance.

  To do so, significant innovation in the science behind these products will be crucial for the industry’s growth.

  In the graphic below from CULT Food Science, Visual Capitalist’s Katie Jones and Sabrina Lam provide a visual overview of some of the technologies behind the creation of cultured meat products.

  

  What is Cultured Meat?

  To start, cultured meat is defined as a genuine animal meat product that is created by cultivating animal cells in a controlled lab environment—eliminating the need to farm animals for food almost entirely.

  “Cultured meat has all the same fat, muscles, and tendons as any animal…All this can be done with little or no greenhouse gas emissions, aside from the electricity you need to power the land where the process is done.”

  – BILL GATES

  Because cultured meat is made of the same cell types and structure found in animal tissue, the sensory and nutritional profiles are like-for-like. Let’s dive into how these products are made.

  The Science and Technology Behind Cultured Meat

  The main challenge facing the cultured meat market is producing products at scale. But thanks to the vast amount of research in the stem cell biology space, the science behind cultured foods is not entirely new.

  Given that we are in the very early days of applying these learnings to producing food products, those looking to invest in companies contributing to the industry’s growth stand to benefit. Here is an overview of some of the technologies that underpin the industry that you should know:

  1. Bioprocess Design

  This is the process of using living cells and their components to create new products. According to experts like the Good Food Institute, bioprocess design holds the key to unlocking cultured meat production at scale.

  Specifically, innovation in bioreactor (where the cells grow) design represents a massive opportunity for companies and investors alike.

  2. Tissue Engineering

  Tissue engineering techniques are used to produce cultured meat that resembles real meat textures and flavors. The first step is taking tissue from the animal for the purpose of extracting stem cells and creating cell lines.

  The extracted stem cell lines are then cultivated in a nutrient rich environment, mimicking in-animal tissue growth and producing muscle fibers inside a bioreactor. The muscle fibers are processed and mixed with additional fats and ingredients to assemble the finished meat product.

  3. Cell Lines

  Cell lines refer to the different types of cells that can be propagated repeatedly and sometimes indefinitely.

  Access to cell lines is a major challenge facing the industry today and is an area that requires significantly more research. This is because there is not just one cell type that can be used in cellular agriculture to produce cultured food products.

  4. Cell Culture Media

  Cells (or cell cultures) require very specific environmental conditions. Cell culture media is a gel or liquid that contains the nutrients needed to support growth outside of the body.

  More research in this space is needed to determine optimized formulations and make these products more affordable.

  5. Scaffolding

  Scaffolds are 3D cell culture platforms that mimic the structure of complex biological tissues, such as skeletal muscle. This platforms can be created through the use of 3D Bioprinting.

  Scaffolds are predominantly made up of collagen and gelatin. The problem is these are both animal-derived ingredients which defeats the purpose of cell-based products. Therefore, more sustainable plant-derived options are also being explored.

  *  *  *

  Soylent Green, here we come?

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/15/2022 – 23:00

• China Economy Crashes Worse Than Expected Amid Covid Lockdowns
  China Economy Crashes Worse Than Expected Amid Covid Lockdowns

  Following Friday’s catastrophic new credit data, which saw the fewest new loans in half a decade, and after this morning’s report that Chinese authorities allowed a further cut in mortgage loan interest rates for first-time homebuyers in another push to prop up its property market and revive a flagging engine of the world’s second-largest economy, few expected any upside surprises from Monday’s economic data dump out of China, but even fewer expected anything quite as bad as what Beijing just reported.

  With Europe, UK and the US all on the verge of recession, China just boldly took the step to get there ahead of everyone, with Beijing reporting that China’s economy contracted sharply in April, as Covid outbreaks and lockdowns dragging the industrial and consumer sectors down to the weakest levels since early 2020 as millions of residents were confined to their homes and factories were forced to halt production, while the local unemployment rate soared to the 2nd highest level in modern history.

  Here are the details:

  • Industrial output fell 2.9% in April Y/Y, far worse than the median consensus estimate of a 0.5% increase, only the second monthly contraction since 1990 and the biggest drop on record!

  Well then. China’s factory output fell the most in 32 years (or since industrial production data began on the terminal). April was only the second monthly contraction for IP since 1990 @BloombergTV pic.twitter.com/fHj1QKRbB0

  — Haidi Lun Stroud-Watts 伦海迪 (@HaidiLun) May 16, 2022

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

  • Retail sales tumbled 11.1% , almost twice as worse as the consensus estimate 6.6% drop.
  • The unemployment rate climbed to 6.1%, higher than the forecast of 6%, and just shy of the 6.2% unemployment rate hit in Feb 2020 during the peak of the covid crisis.
  • Fixed Investment for the YTD period was the only silver lining, rising 6.8%, and while also missing the estimate of a 7.0%, it could have been far worse; the number was supported by the government’s push to expand infrastructure spending.

  

  If that wasn’t bad enough, here’s some even uglier data which confirms that the biggest driver of household wealth in China – housing – remains in a state of shock:

  • Home sales value -32.2% ytd y/y to 3.32 tln yuan
  • Home sales area falls 25.4% ytd y/y to 337m sqm
  • Property sales value -29.5% ytd y/y to 3.78 tln yuan
  • Property sales area falls 20.9% ytd y/y to 398m sqm
  • New property construction falls 26.3% ytd y/y to 397m sqm

  The good news is that the shockingly bad economic data is the direct result of Beijing’s Zero Covid policy, which has taken a huge economic toll from the government’s efforts to keep the virus at bay. Despite growing social outrage and anger, Beijing has insisted on sticking with its Covid Zero strategy to curb infections, even though the high transmissibility of omicron puts cities at greater risk of repeatedly locking down and reopening compared to earlier strains. We say “good” news because as the following chart shows, at this rate, Covid will soon no longer be a factor in China.

  

  “Covid outbreaks in April had a big impact on the economy, but the impact is short-term,” the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement. “With progress in Covid controls and policies to stabilize the economy taking effect, the economy is likely to recover gradually.”

  While the latest collapse in credit was viewed by many as the trigger for more easing and rate cuts, monetary stimulus has proven less effective because of the stringent virus restrictions. Meanwhile, the PBOC left the interest rate on one-year policy loans unchanged on Monday, despite expectations by a growing number of economists that Beijing has no choice but to cut rates more, as inflation pressure and worries about capital outflows reduce the scope for more easing. 

  In kneejerk reaction to the latest dismal news out of China, US futures slumped to session lows, dropping below 3,990 after earlier rising as high as 4,042 with China’s benchmark CSI 300 stock index down 0.3% after earlier rising as much as 0.7%…

  

  … although the data was so bad it was actually good: after all, if China is indeed sliding into contraction, there is no way the Fed will be hiking 5, 6, 7 or more times in a time when the rest of the global economy is about to fall off a cliff, no matter how many times an angry, senile Joe Biden calls Powell.

  There was some more good news: as we hinted above, in the midst of all this terrible economic data out of China, Bloomberg blasted news that suggests China’s Covid plague may be on its way out:

  • Shanghai aims to fully resume normal orders of production and life by mid to late June by normalizing Covid control measures, Vice Mayor Zong Ming says at a briefing.
  • Shanghai will gradually resume rail transit and bus services from May 22, Zong says
  • There have been no community Covid spread in 15 of 16 districts in the city: Zong
  • Around 980,000 of the city’s total population of about 25 million remained under strictest lockdown, says Wu Jinglei, head of the city’s health commission

  Expect a full reversal of the session’s losses by the time US traders get to their desks in a few hours.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/15/2022 – 22:39

• "The Price Is Wrong": Morgan Stanley Says Bear Market Won't Be Over Until One Of Two Things Happens
  “The Price Is Wrong”: Morgan Stanley Says Bear Market Won’t Be Over Until One Of Two Things Happens

  By Michael Wilson, Morgan Stanley’s head of US equity strategy

  In our 2022 year-ahead outlook for US equities, the primary out-of-consensus call centered on valuation. When we published it in mid-November, the price/earnings (P/E) multiple for the S&P 500 was 21.5x, a historical high ex the TMT bubble. However, the median P/E was actually higher than in the late 1990s. Furthermore, we believed at the time that earnings were well above trend and likely to revert over the next several years. If we were right, then valuations looked even more egregious. We argued that P/Es would fall toward 18x in our base case and 17x in our bear case as the Fed responded to 40-year highs in inflation – the “fire” in our scenario – while growth slowed from unsustainable levels – the “ice.”

  Fast forward to today, and it’s fair to say we have achieved our de-rating targets, with the S&P 500 now trading at 17x. However, all of the multiple contraction to date has resulted from the Fed’s very aggressive path on tightening and the subsequent rise in 10-year yields. So, while the P/E is now close to our original bear case and our current base case, the equity risk premium (ERP) is very close to where it was in November. In short, we believe the rates market fully reflects the fire part of our narrative. In fact, rates could have overshot to the upside by incorporating more hikes than the Fed may be able to deliver in this cycle, based on the significant damage to financial asset prices and the approaching slowdown that looks much worse than just a few months ago. This sharper downturn stems from the conflict in Ukraine, the Covid-zero policy in China, and the Fed’s action itself, which has led to a significant rise in the cost of capital, including a 65% increase in 30-year fixed mortgage rates.

  Turning back to the ERP, it has recently made some upward progress after the nearly inexplicable move to post-financial crisis lows over the past few months. We attribute that overshoot on the downside to Russia’s unexpected invasion of Ukraine and the extension of China’s Covid-zero policy, both of which accelerated the flight to safety by global equity investors and asset allocators. With the S&P 500 viewed as the most defensive and liquid equity market in the world, it attracted flows like a magnet.

  But over the last few weeks, it’s become clearer that our ice scenario is now playing out as well. For most of this year we have received strong pushback on our less bullish view on growth, until now. The change is due in part to the events noted above, but the real driver is 1Q earnings season.

  • First, while most companies handily beat consensus EPS forecasts, the bar had been lowered during the quarter more than usual.
  • Second, the ratio of negative to positive earnings revisions spiked.
  • Third, the quality of the earnings deteriorated as incremental operating margins rolled over for many companies and sectors, including many important large-cap technology stocks.
  • Finally, 2Q estimates for the S&P 500 came down while full-year estimates were unchanged.

  This effectively raises the bar for the second half of the year, which is about the time the economy will be feeling the effects of higher rates and other headwinds.

  Needless to say, earnings season raised some eyebrows among investors, and stocks sold off sharply in April – a seasonally strong month for equities. In the last week, P/Es contracted even further but this time due to the sharp rise in the ERP, while Treasury yields fell by less. This combination suggests the market’s focus has shifted to growth concerns – the ice – and quite frankly, it’s what we’ve been waiting for to call an end to this bear market.

  Unfortunately, while we think the equity market has adjusted for higher interest rates, we’re just not there yet with the ERP. At 300bp, ERP is well below our year-end 340bp target, and is underestimating earnings risk ahead. The question is will the equity market go ahead and discount the earnings cuts we think are coming or will it require companies to formally cut guidance? Given the pervasive bearishness now and extreme oversold conditions, we could see it play out either way.

  

  The bottom line is that this bear market will not be over until either valuations fall to levels (14-15x) that discount the kind of earnings cuts we envision, or earnings estimates get cut. However, with valuations now more attractive, equity markets so oversold and rates potentially stabilizing below 3%, stocks appear to have begun another material bear market rally. After that, we remain confident that lower prices are still ahead. In S&P 500 terms we think that level is close to 3,400, which is where both valuation and technical support lie.

  Full note available to professional subscribers.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/15/2022 – 22:30

• The Pandemic-Fueled Bicycle Boom Is Losing Speed
  The Pandemic-Fueled Bicycle Boom Is Losing Speed

  When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States in March 2020, forcing gyms to shutter and public transportation to suspend operation, millions of Americans re-discovered bicycles as a safe, socially-distanced form of physical exercise and transportation. As Statista’s Felix Richter notes, the bike boom hit retailers unprepared, causing new bicycles to become a scarce commodity, exacerbated by the fact that global bicycle supply was also constrained due to Covid-19.

  

  According to inflation-adjusted figures published by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Americans spent $7.0 billion on bicycles and accessories in 2020, up from $6.1 billion the year before. The trend continued in 2021, when consumer spending on bicycles and accessories reached almost $8 billion. Looking at seasonally adjusted quarterly figures, bicycle spending peaked in Q2 2021, when consumers bought bikes and equipment at an annual rate of $8.3 billion compared to pre-pandemic spending of around $6 billion per quarter.

  Starting in Q3 2021, when warmer weather and rising vaccination rates helped lower case counts and enable a return to normal life, bicycle spending started to decrease.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  However, at an annual rate of $7.5 billion, spending remains above pre-pandemic levels; fueling hopes that the industry could remain in a higher gear compared to pre-Covid days.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/15/2022 – 22:00

• If You Thought The Coinbase Bankruptcy Disclosures Were Bad…
  If You Thought The Coinbase Bankruptcy Disclosures Were Bad…

  Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

  Just wait ’til you see your government’s bail-in rules

  One of the subplots that made for a bad week in crypto included a largely manufactured crisis around “The Coinbase bankruptcy disclosure”.  After posting an earnings miss, the next shoe to drop was the discovery in the latest version of the Coinbase Terms of Service, the addition of text that included the following:

  “Custodially held crypto assets may be considered to be the property of a bankruptcy estate, in the event of a bankruptcy, the crypto assets we hold in custody on behalf of our customers could be subject to bankruptcy proceedings and such customers could be treated as our general unsecured creditors”

  This verbiage became a big deal with every corporate media outlet dumping all over it. It trended on Twitter and quickly went viral, almost as if this was some sort of revelation.

  It’s not. It’s basically the oldest adage in crypto, “not your keys, not your coins” spelled out in writing.

  Do you really think if you’re holding your crypto on some exchange that suddenly becomes insolvent it’s going to make a difference if a paragraph to that effect appears in the ToS or not? Good thing Mt Gox or QuadrigaCX didn’t have a paragraph like that in their ToS otherwise everybody with assets in either exchange would have been really fscked, right?

  You’re fscked no matter what. At least Coinbase is calling your attention to it.

  Don’t hold your crypto on the exchange, any exchange, full stop. Even the largest crypto exchange CEOs will tell you that.

  But if you’re one of those people for whom this is something to be up in arms about, I’ve got news for you:

  Your governments have already laid claims to your savings

  If you’re reading this it means you’re probably living in a country where the same exact thing is written into your governing legislation with respect to all the money you have on deposit within the banking system (as covered in The Crypto Capitalist Manifesto)

  Remember back to 2013 with the Cyprus bail-in, which I always maintained was what put Bitcoin above $100 USD for the first time:

  The Cypriots had a portion of their savings accounts confiscated to re-capitalize their failing banking system. In March 2013 Eurogroup president Jeroen Dijsselbloem told interviewers that Cyprus would serve as a template for future bank restructurings in the euro zone.

  By April, the framework showed up in Canada, under then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s budget:

  “The Government proposes to implement a bail-in regime for systemically important banks. This regime will be designed to ensure that, in the unlikely event that a systemically important bank depletes its capital, the bank can be recapitalized and returned to viability through the very rapid conversion of certain bank liabilities into regulatory capital”

  If you haven’t figured it out by now, “certain bank liabilities” are your savings.

  

  The language was preserved in subsequent budgets, even after 2015 when Justin Trudeau came to power. His government made it permanent in 2018 with The Bank Recapitalization (Bail-in) Conversion Regulations.

  This wasn’t unique to Canada.

  In 2017 Australia did it with the Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Crisis Resolution Powers and Other Measures) Bill:

  “The TLAC standard builds on a significant body of international regulatory reform already undertaken by the Financial Stability Board to improve resolution frameworks for globally significant financial institutions. In particular, it builds on the Key Attributes which specifies that Financial Stability Board jurisdictions should have in place legally enforceable mechanisms to implement a ‘bail-in’. (emphasis in original)”

  In the US, provisions for depositor bail-ins existed even before Cyprus, with the “Statutory Bail-Ins” provisions in the 2010 Dodd-Frank bill.

  The fact is, if you’re living in any of the largest economies globally, then your country is party to a supra-national agreement on “flexible bank bail-in bonds” put in place at the G-20 Brisbane Summit in 2014.

  So while you have the ability to choose not to do business with Coinbase (or better, properly custody your digital assets), your country has already granted itself the same ability to bail-in your fiat savings a long time ago, and it isn’t voluntary.

  It’s the one issue that is completely bipartisan and duly ossified into the law of the land. From loose canon populists to far-left Marxist ideologues,  nobody within the corridors or power is talking about getting rid of the government’s authority to confiscate your savings to recapitalize a failing banking system. When this thing blows up subject to the inexorable outcome of their own failed policies and under its own warped incentives, there won’t be any quibbling over it, it’s the law.

  

  “Hell yeah, we’ll take your savings.”

  Given the behaviour of  governments just this year alone, where

  • in Canada having the wrong political views could get your bank accounts seized,

  • The US seized the  foreign reserves of two sovereign nations

  • European banks are frantically seizing assets of persons with surnames ending in ‘-ved’ , ‘-nin’, ‘-tin’, ‘-lin’ or ‘-ov’

  • Russia, for their part, is seizing assets of Western companies within their borders

  Two things become apparent:

  • First, we’re in an age where your assets and savings are considered fair game for everybody else, either as guilt-by-association with somebody else’s political ideology, or as retaliation for government actions you had no involvement with.

  • Second,  seen from this perspective, it’s either ironic or (more likely) disingenuous that the corporate media is feigning shock over Coinbase.

  Holding a portion of your wealth in Bitcoin and properly custodying it solves both problems.

  *  *  *

  Disclosure: Long COIN (screaming buy at these levels).

  Today’s post was an excerpt from the The Crypto-Capitalist Mid-Month Portfolio Review, were we cover the global  transition to decentralization, the inevitability of hyper-Bitcoinization with a tactical focus on publicly traded crypto stocks: currently one of the fattest pitches in value investing going. 

  Get the overall investment thesis free here, follow me on Getter or on Twitter.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/15/2022 – 21:30

• The 10 Largest Nuclear Explosions Ever, Visualized
  The 10 Largest Nuclear Explosions Ever, Visualized

  Just how powerful are nuclear explosions?

  The U.S.’ Trinity test in 1945, the first-ever nuclear detonation, released around 19 kilotons of explosive energy. The explosion instantly vaporized the tower it stood on and turned the surrounding sand into green glass, before sending a powerful heatwave across the desert.

  As the Cold War escalated in the years after WWII, the U.S. and the Soviet Union tested bombs that were at least 500 times greater in explosive power. In the infographic below, Visual Capitalist’s Mark Belan and Govind Bhutada compare the 10 largest nuclear explosions in history.

  

  The Anatomy of a Nuclear Explosion

  After exploding, nuclear bombs create giant fireballs that generate a blinding flash and a searing heatwave. The fireball engulfs the surrounding air, getting larger as it rises like a hot air balloon.

  As the fireball and heated air rise, they are flattened by cooler, denser air high up in the atmosphere, creating the mushroom “cap” structure. At the base of the cloud, the fireball causes physical destruction by sending a shockwave moving outwards at thousands of miles an hour.

  

  A strong updraft of air and dirt particles through the center of the cloud forms the “stem” of the mushroom cloud. In most atomic explosions, changing atmospheric pressure and water condensation create rings that surround the cloud, also known as Wilson clouds.

  Over time, the mushroom cloud dissipates. However, it leaves behind radioactive fallout in the form of nuclear particles, debris, dust, and ash, causing lasting damage to the local environment. Because the particles are lightweight, global wind patterns often distribute them far beyond the place of detonation.

  With this context in mind, here’s a look at the 10 largest nuclear explosions.

  #10: Ivy Mike (1952)

  In 1952, the U.S. detonated the Mike device—the first-ever hydrogen bomb—as part of Operation Ivy. Hydrogen bombs rely on nuclear fusion to amplify their explosions, producing much more explosive energy than atomic bombs that use nuclear fission.

  Weighing 140,000 pounds (63,500kg), the Ivy Mike test generated a yield of 10,400 kilotons, equivalent to the explosive power of 10.4 million tons of TNT. The explosion was 700 times more powerful than Little Boy, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

  #9: Castle Romeo (1954)

  Castle Romeo was part of the Operation Castle series of U.S. nuclear tests taking place on the Marshall Islands. Shockingly, the U.S. was running out of islands to conduct tests, making Romeo the first-ever test conducted on a barge in the ocean.

  At 11,000 kilotons, the test produced more than double its predicted explosive energy of 4,000 kilotons. Its fireball, as seen below, is one of the most iconic images ever captured of a nuclear explosion.

  

  #8: Soviet Test #123 (1961)

  Test #123 was one of the 57 tests conducted by the Soviet Union in 1961. Most of these tests were conducted on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in Northwestern Russia. The bomb yielded 12,500 kilotons of explosive energy, enough to vaporize everything within a 2.1 mile (3.5km) radius.

  #7: Castle Yankee (1954)

  Castle Yankee was the fifth test in Operation Castle. The explosion marked the second-most powerful nuclear test by the U.S.

  It yielded 13,500 kilotons, much higher than the predicted yield of up to 10,000 kilotons. Within four days of the blast, its fallout reached Mexico City, roughly 7,100 miles (11,400km) away.

  #6: Castle Bravo (1954)

  Castle Bravo, the first of the Castle Operation series, accidentally became the most powerful nuclear bomb tested by the U.S.

  Due to a design error, the explosive energy from the bomb reached 15,000 kilotons, two and a half times what was expected. The mushroom cloud climbed up to roughly 25 miles (40km).

  As a result of the test, an area of 7,000 square miles was contaminated, and inhabitants of nearby atolls were exposed to high levels of radioactive fallout. Traces of the blast were found in Australia, India, Japan, and Europe.

  #5, #4, #3: Soviet Tests #173, #174, #147 (1962)

  In 1962, the Soviet Union conducted 78 nuclear tests, three of which produced the fifth, fourth, and third-most powerful explosions in history. Tests #173, #174, and #147 each yielded around 20,000 kilotons. Due to the absolute secrecy of these tests, no photos or videos have been released.

  #2: Soviet Test #219 (1962)

  Test #219 was an atmospheric nuclear test carried out using an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), with the bomb exploding at a height of 2.3 miles (3.8km) above sea level. It was the second-most powerful nuclear explosion, with a yield of 24,200 kilotons and a destructive radius of ~25 miles (41km).

  #1: Tsar Bomba (1961)

  Tsar Bomba, also called Big Ivan, needed a specially designed plane because it was too heavy to carry on conventional aircraft. The bomb was attached to a giant parachute to give the plane time to fly away.

  The explosion, yielding 50,000 kilotons, obliterated an abandoned village 34 miles (55km) away and generated a 5.0-5.25 magnitude earthquake in the surrounding region. Initially, it was designed as a 100,000 kiloton bomb, but its yield was cut to half its potential by the Soviet Union. Tsar Bomba’s mushroom cloud breached through the stratosphere to reach a height of over 37 miles (60km), roughly six times the flying height of commercial aircraft.

  The two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had devastating consequences, and their explosive yields were only a fraction of the 10 largest explosions. The power of modern nuclear weapons makes their scale of destruction truly unfathomable, and as history suggests, the outcomes can be unpredictable.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/15/2022 – 21:00

• Buffalo Mass Shooter Cites "Great Replacement Theory" & NY's "Heavy Gun Laws" In Manifesto
  Buffalo Mass Shooter Cites “Great Replacement Theory” & NY’s “Heavy Gun Laws” In Manifesto

  Payton S. Gendron, 18, was arraigned before Buffalo City Court Judge Craig Hannah on a first-degree murder charge on Saturday evening for killing ten people at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket, according to The Buffalo News. 

  

  Gendron pleaded not guilty and was revoked bail while awaiting the next court appearance at 0930 ET Thursday. The 18yo white male told the judge, “I understand my charges.”

  

  Local, state, and federal authorities say they’re investigating the mass shooting as a racially motivated hate crime. Police said eleven of the 13 shooting victims at the Tops Friendly Market are Black. 

  Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said Gendron’s attack on the supermarket was “pure evil.” Erie County District Attorney John J. Flynn said investigators had found evidence showing “racial animosity” was behind the shooting. The FBI is also investigating the incident as an act of racially-motivated violent extremism. 

  According to NYTimes, investigators were examining a “manifesto” believed to have been written by Gendron that was posted online.  

  

  Searching through the 180-page hate-filled manifesto, the 18yo writes about the risk of white Americans being replaced by people of color, also known as the “replacement theory.” 

  A senior law enforcement official told NBC News they are aware of the manifesto allegedly written by the suspect, and we’re working to confirm that he is the author.

  In the uncorroborated manifesto (circulating the internet), Gendron says he was radicalized on 4chan at the beginning of the virus pandemic in early 2020. The document’s layout is similar to Brenton Tarrant, the white supremacist mass shooter who killed 51 people and injured 40 others in a New Zealand mosque in 2019. 

  Gendron appears to have copy and pasted Tarrant’s manifesto. 

  

  Here’s another example of the copy and pasting. 

  

  Within the text, Gendron purportedly describes himself as “… a populist. But you can call me an ethno-nationalist eco-fascist national socialist if you want.” 

  Gendron says he planned the shooting based on the “highest percentage and high density of blacks” that can be found near him. 

  Additionally, as The Epoch Times’ Jack Phillips notes, the alleged manifesto suggests that the shooter chose Buffalo, NY because of its stringent gun laws:

  New York state, the author said, “has heavy gun laws so it would ease me if I knew that any legally armed civilian was limited to 10 round magazines or cucked firearms,” likely referring to New York laws restricting magazines to only 10 rounds and laws that limit the purchase of certain types of semi-automatic rifles. New York state residents also need to obtain a permit, which can take months if not years, to buy a pistol under the provisions of the SAFE Act.

  “Won’t your attack result in calls for the removal of gun rights in the United States?” the author rhetorically asked himself.

  “Yes, that is the plan all along, you said you would fight to protect your rights and the constitution, soon will come the time.”

  “NY has cucked gun laws. Assault style weapons and high capacity magazines are illegal for civilians to own, thus lowering threats from law-abiding civilians,” the individual wrote, adding that he obtained a Bushmaster XM-15.

  “Since I live in New York, I had to buy a cucked version of this before illegally modifying it,” he said.

  Aside from the manifesto that investigators are still combing through to confirm authenticity, The Buffalo News said police in 2021 were notified when Gendron threatened violence to others at his local high school. 

  “A school official reported that this very troubled young man had made statements indicating that he wanted to do a shooting, either at a graduation ceremony, or sometime after,” a law enforcement official familiar with the case told the local paper. 

  At the time, NY State Police investigated Gendron under the section of state mental health laws, and he was referred for a mental health evaluation. 

  The Biden administration responded to the mass shooting, saying, “A racially motivated hate crime is abhorrent to the very fabric of this nation. Any act of domestic terrorism, including an act perpetrated in the name of a repugnant white nationalist ideology, is antithetical to everything we stand for in America. Hate must have no safe harbor. We must do everything in our power to end hate-fueled domestic terrorism.” 

  Investigators told the NYPost they believe the manifesto is “authentic,” though police are still waiting to analyze Gendron’s computer for confirmation. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/15/2022 – 20:55

• Wheat Prices Soar As India Restricts Exports
  Wheat Prices Soar As India Restricts Exports

  Update (Sunday): Wheat futures in Chicago jumped 5.9% to $12.47 a bushel Sunday evening after India restricted wheat exports to preserve its food security. Since the beginning of May, prices have skyrocketed nearly 20%. 

  

  India’s decision to halt wheat exports was announced on Friday. The government said it must safeguard domestic supplies amid heat waves that threaten crop yields. 

  “Directing the wheat exports through government channels would not only ensure fulfilling the genuine needs of our neighbors and food-deficit countries, but also control inflationary expectations,” India’s food ministry said in a statement. 

  A grains analyst at Melbourne-based Thomas Elder Markets, Andrew Whitelaw, told Bloomberg, “if this ban occurred in a normal year, the impact would be minimal, but the loss of Ukraine volumes exacerbates the issues.” 

  The jump in wheat futures underlines just how tight global supplies are following top-producer Ukraine being knocked offline because of the war. Higher wheat prices will continue to drive food inflation. 

  * * *

  India prohibited wheat exports effective immediately, saying the nation’s food security was under threat, partly due to heatwaves that damaged yields in the country and disruptions to global grain markets in the Black Sea breadbasket region. 

  The notice was published in the government gazette by the Directorate of Foreign Trade on Friday. It read, “there is a sudden spike in the global food prices of wheat arising out of many factors, as a result of which the food security of India, neighboring and other vulnerable countries is at risk.”

  India said it was still committed to exporting wheat to “neighboring and other vulnerable developing countries which are adversely affected by the sudden changes in the global market for wheat and are unable to access adequate wheat supplies.”

  

  The move by the world’s second-largest wheat producer comes as food protectionism runs rampant worldwide as countries limit or restrict exports of food staples to rein in domestic prices. 

  Wheat futures are expected to jump Sunday evening and add to record-high food inflation, crushing emerging market economies the hardest. High food prices have already resulted in inflation riots in several countries, one being the ongoing social instability unfolding in Sir Lanka. 

  Before the export ban, India was expected to be one of the top-10 wheat exporters for the 2022-23 crop season. Removing all (or part of) India’s expected wheat exports creates a massive hole in the global supply and demand. Wheat prices will rise further, and quickly #OATT pic.twitter.com/XG7OKuyMxX

  — Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) May 14, 2022

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

  The ban comes as no surprise considering India has been mulling trade restrictions this month as heatwaves have damaged wheat yields.

  *INDIA MULLS RESTRICTING WHEAT EXPORTS AS HEAT DESTROYS CROPS

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 4, 2022

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

  Wheat production this year in the South Asian nation is expected to decline after rising for a half-decade. Other top-producing wheat countries will experience production drops by the end of the growing season and may exacerbate the fall in global wheat production. 

  

  “We now have an environment with another supplier removed from contention in global trade flows,” Andrew Whitelaw, a grains analyst at Melbourne-based Thomas Elder Markets, told Bloomberg. “The world is starting to get very short of wheat,” he added. 

  “We should carefully map the requirement of India’s domestic food security”: Economist Vijay Sardana on India’s wheat export ban pic.twitter.com/rnFplorzZE

  — NDTV (@ndtv) May 14, 2022

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

  A Mumbai-based commodity dealer with a global trading firm told Reuters the ban is “shocking.” The trader added: “We were expecting curbs on exports after 2-3 months, but seems inflation numbers changed the government’s mind.”

  Add protectionism to the list of what could spark even more chaos for global food markets. If countries continue to place export restrictions on food, the crisis could deepen.

  Energy crisis -> food protectionism -> economic vapor lock -> global famine https://t.co/ROH6RWVyAx

  — Doomberg (@DoombergT) May 14, 2022

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

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/15/2022 – 20:46

• Musk Warns Twitter Users Are "Being Manipulated", Company's Legal Team Reaches Out
  Musk Warns Twitter Users Are “Being Manipulated”, Company’s Legal Team Reaches Out

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  Elon Musk warned Twitter users that they are “being manipulated” and told them to turn off the platform’s algorithmic newsfeed, coming as the firm’s legal department apparently said he committed a violation of a non-disclosure agreement.

  

  “You are being manipulated by the algorithm in ways you do not realize … Easy to switch back and forth to see the difference,” Musk wrote on Twitter. The Tesla CEO advised other users to switch to seeing the latest Twitter posts immediately by tapping the Twitter home button, tapping the stars button on the upper right of the screen, and selecting “latest tweets.”

  Very important to fix your Twitter feed:

  1. Tap home button.
  2. Tap stars on upper right of screen.
  3. Select “Latest tweets”.

  You are being manipulated by the algorithm in ways you don’t realize.

  Easy to switch back & forth to see the difference.

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 14, 2022

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

  “I am not suggesting malice in the algorithm, but rather that it is trying to guess what you might want to read and, in doing so, inadvertently manipulate/ amplify your viewpoints without you realizing this is happening,” Musk continued in another post.

  Musk announced his intentions to purchase Twitter on April 25 as he criticized the firm’s content moderation policies. Both he and Twitter said that Musk would attempt to purchase the firm for $44 billion, allowing him to take the platform private after the purchase.

  But on May 13, the deal appeared to be on thin ice after Musk posted that the agreement was “on hold” after reports said that bots and automated accounts make up fewer than 5 percent of the overall users. Hours later, Musk confirmed that he is still committed to the purchase.

  “Twitter (TWTR) legal just called to complain that I violated their NDA by revealing the bot check sample size is 100!” the billionaire wrote on Saturday, referring to a study on bots.

  Musk posted early Sunday that he’s not seen any analysis that suggests that bots comprise fewer than 5 percent of Twitter accounts.

  He later said that “there is some chance it might be over 90 percent of daily active users.”

  Meanwhile, Musk confirmed last week that he would allow President Donald Trump to return to Twitter after the deal is finished, although Trump has said he wouldn’t return to Twitter because he wants to stay on his Truth Social venture.

  “I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on Truth,” Trump told Fox News in April. “I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it, and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on Truth.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/15/2022 – 20:35

• One Step Closer To Recession: Goldman Cuts S&P Price Target To 4,300; Slashes GDP Forecast
  One Step Closer To Recession: Goldman Cuts S&P Price Target To 4,300; Slashes GDP Forecast

  It took Goldman three months to slash its (widely mocked) 2022 year-end S&P price target of 5,100 published in mid-November (at the time we said it would take just a few months for the target to be cut and we were right) to 4,900 in mid-February. Back then Goldman’s chief strategist David Kostin listed three scenarios, the third and most bearish of which was that if the US economy tips into a recession, “the typical 24% recession peak-to-trough price decline would reduce the S&P 500 to 3600″ to which we said that’s what would happen “but before we get there expect another 200 point S&P target in one month, and then another, and then another.”

  One month later, this is precisely what happened, when in mid-March Goldman’s David Kostin again cut his year-end price target to 4,700 (from 4.900), but more importantly, Kostin grudgingly raised the odds of a recession writing that “the current S&P 500 index level of 4260 suggests roughly a 40% likelihood of a downside recessionary case.” He then noted that in such a “recession” scenario, the bank expects reduced earnings and valuation multiples would cause the S&P 500 to decline by 15% to 3600, similar to the 24% drop he had warned previously (Goldman also noted that this represents a 15% drop from current levels and is probably sufficient to trigger the Fed’s put).

  So fast forward another two months, when our prediction that Goldman would continue to slash its S&P price target by 200 points every month or so was spot on again, because as of this weekend, two months after Goldman cut its S&P target to 4,700, the bank’s chief equity strategist has just published his latest forecast (full note available to professional subscribers), taking down the bank’s price target to 4,300 (or 200 points per month for two months); as a reminder this was 5,100 just three months ago!

  How does Kostin explain this dramatic reversal in his original cheerful forecast, which apparently could not anticipate any of the things that took place in the past few months? Here’s how:

  We revise our forecasts for earnings, interest rates, and the yield gap. We lower our S&P 500 year-end 2022 price target to 4300 (from 4700). Our new price target represents a 7% return from today. Our 3-month forecast equals 4000, with expected gains likely coming later in the year.

  Finally admitting what we have been saying all along, Kostin concedes that “much higher equity prices in the near-term would ease financial conditions and be antithetical to the Fed’s goal of slowing economic growth”, in other words, every time stocks jumped it would only prompt Powell to come out with even stronger hawkish jawboning .

  That said, while Goldman expects an overshoot to 4,000 in the near-term (or undershoot since the S&P dropped as low as 3,855 on Thursday, touching the edge of a bear market), the bank remains somewhat hopeful that the worst is now behind us and “a contraction in economic growth is priced in equities and our baseline forecast suggests the worst of the decline is likely behind us assuming a recession is averted.” Kostin also assumes that as the year progresses “investors will gain confidence about decelerating inflation, the path of Fed tightening, and recession risk, and equities will rise modestly driven by EPS growth.”

  

  Kostin then breaks down the revision in his forecast by factoring in for a stronger than expected Q1 earnings, offset by everything else deteriorating:

  1Q earnings season was better-than-feared. Consensus expected +5% year/year growth in S&P 500 EPS, but firms realized +11%. Both sales and margins posted positive surprises. Analyst revisions to 2022 and 2023 have been slightly positive, mostly driven by Energy. We raise our 2022 S&P 500 top-down EPS growth forecast to +8% (vs. +5% previously). We maintain our 2023 EPS growth forecast of +6%. Our revised S&P 500 EPS estimates equal $226 and $239. Faster sales growth and better-than-feared Financials earnings are the primary drivers of our revision. Our net margin forecast remains unchanged. We expect margins will rise by 11 bp to 12.3% in 2022. However, excluding Energy, we forecast net profit margins will contract by 22 bp as input cost pressures weigh on companies.

  

  Our sales, margin, and earnings forecasts remain below bottom-up consensus. Our economists’ 2022 real US GDP growth forecast is below-consensus and China’s zero COVID policy poses a clear downside risk to EPS growth. From a revenue perspective, we expect the headwind from a stronger trade-weighted dollar will need to be incorporated into analyst models. Investors have already started to reflect this risk; our domestic sales basket (GSTHAINT) has outperformed our international sales basket (GSTHINTL) by 10 pp YTD. While quarterly net profit margins have slipped modestly from their peak in 2Q 2021 to 12.1% in 1Q 2022, consensus expects an expansion during in 2H 2022, which appears too optimistic in our view. However, we believe it will take time for analysts to trim their forecasts closer to our top-down estimate. Our S&P 500 valuation and index forecasts assume that market participants price the index at year-end 2022 based on the consensus 2023E estimate of $250.

  Higher interest rates. Our Rates strategists now expect the nominal 10-year US Treasury yield to rise to 3.3% at year-end 2022 (vs. 2.7% previously) driven by real yields. We assume real yields will end 2022 at 0.5% (vs. 0% previously).

  Our forecast is that the P/E remains unchanged from today at 17x. Previously, we assumed the low real rate environment would support a P/E of 20x, 10% below the valuation at start of the year. But YTD the market has priced the equivalent of 8 additional 25 bp Fed hikes and real rates have risen sharply. During the last 8 weeks real rates have surged from -1.0% to +0.2%. Our revised outlook of lower growth and higher rates no longer supports meaningful P/E expansion. Our new P/E multiple forecast ranks in the 70th historical percentile and is consistent with pre-pandemic multiples, but below the past cycle’s peak of 18x in 2018. In our baseline, the relative valuation of stocks vs. real rates would rank in the 46th percentile vs history.

  Lower yield gap. We expect the gap between the S&P 500 EPS yield and real 10-year US Treasury yield will narrow modestly to 530 bp (vs. 560 bp today). This yield gap would match the level experienced in April 2021 but remain above the average since 1990. We model the yield gap as a function of economic growth, policy uncertainty, the size of the Fed balance sheet, and consumer confidence. By the end of the year, our baseline assumes a slight improvement in growth expectations relative to the pessimistic outlook currently priced by cyclical vs. defensive industries. Valuation will benefit from reduced policy uncertainty and higher consumer confidence. These positive dynamics should more than offset the headwind from tightening financial conditions and allow the earnings yield gap to compress.

  While Kostin tries to sound hopeful, the reality is that for the third time in a row the Goldman chief strategist not accidentally brings up that in a “downside” scenario, “a recession would push the S&P 500 11% lower to 3600”, which is just slightly above the level Morgan Stanley expects stocks drop to in this bear market before they reverse. However, in a novel twist, today for the first time Kostin admits that if by year-end the economy is poised to enter a recession in 2023, “a combination of reduced EPS estimates and a wider yield gap would drive a lower index level” suggesting that the S&P may slide well below 3,600:

  Earnings typically fall by 13% from peak-to-trough during recessions. However, equity prices move ahead of earnings. We assume by year-end the current 2023 EPS estimate of $250 would be cut by 7%, consistent with history. Our macro model implies the yield gap widens to 700 bp and the P/E multiple narrows to 15x.

  Translation: just above 3,400.

  In another downside scenario, Kostin writes that while the economy may avoid recession, real rates could continue to march higher, which would lead to a lower valuation multiple pushing the S&P 500 index down by 6% to 3800. In this scenario, if the Fed is forced to hike by more than Goldman economists expect and real rates rise to 1% – similar to the peak reached during the last cycle in 2018 – Goldman’s macro model suggests that higher rates will more than offset the lower yield gap. In this scenario, the forward P/E would equal 16x, the lowest level since 2020.

  Bottom line: Goldman has thrown in the towel and the bank which in early February expected stocks to hit 5,100 now says don’t be surprise if they drop to 3,400. And that’s why the David Kostins of the world get paid the big bucks.

  But wait, there more…

  In another confirmation of our skepticism, Goldman’s chief economist Jan Hatzius published a note on Sunday in which he again cut his overly optimistic GDP forecast (having done so most recently in March), and now expects GDP growth as follows:

  • Q2 ’22 to 2.5% from 1.5%
  • Q3 ’22 to 2.25% from 2.5%
  • Q4 ’22 to 1.5% from 2.5%
  • Q1 ’23 to 1.25%
  • Q2 ’23 to 1.5%
  • Q3 ’23 to 1.5%
  • Q4 ’23 to 1.5%

  And visually:

  

  These changes imply a downgrade in 2022 GDP growth to +2.4% on an annual basis (vs. +2.6% previously) and to +1¼% on a Q4/Q4 basis (vs. 1.6%), and a downgrade in 2023 growth to +1.6% on an annual basis (vs. +2.2%) and to +1½% on a Q4/Q4 basis (vs. +2.0%). In other words, just as we said in March, the hockeystick forecast that Goldman laughably presented two months ago has not only flattened but has inverted.

  Of course, Goldman has refused to forecast a recession (yet), and instead frames the continuing slowdown (as a reminder Goldman was nowhere near the -1.4% Q1 GDP print), as a “necessary growth slowdown.” According to Goldman, the slowdown is a byproduct of the Fed’s tightening in financial conditions, and the bank thinks the rate hikes that are currently priced into financial  conditions “are in the ballpark of what is ultimately needed to restore balance to the labor market and cool wage and price pressures. We therefore expect that the recent tightening in financial conditions will persist, in part because we think the Fed will deliver on what is priced.”

  That said, not even Goldman is confident that a slowdown won’t push the economy into recession, and cautions that job openings remains “extremely high (+4.5mn vs. pre-pandemic level; right chart, Exhibit 1) and less likely to moderate on their own. And the jobs-workers gap probably cannot meaningfully narrow without a moderation in job openings, and wage growth probably cannot settle back to a sustainable level while the jobs-workers gap remains very elevated. Therefore, the main challenge for the FOMC as it attempts to lower inflation is to convince companies to shelve some of their expansion plans and close enough job openings to restore balance to the labor market, a view Chair Powell endorsed at the May FOMC press conference.”

  

  It’s not just GDP that will get hit: the labor market will too. As the bank concludes in its downward revision, while the slowdown in growth should help lower job openings, “it is also likely to raise the unemployment rate a bit, particularly since the job openings rate
  typically only falls when unemployment spikes in recessions.” Of course, Goldman remains optimistic “that a sharp rise in the unemployment rate can be avoided, especially since typically the job openings rate declines more and the unemployment rate increases less when the job openings rate is very elevated, like it is today.”

  Although we continue to expect that momentum in job gains will push then unemployment rate to a low of 3.4% in the next few months, we now expect that the unemployment rate will subsequently rise back to 3.5% at end-2022, and rise further to 3.7% at end-2023.

  And since Goldman has been always wrong in its economic forecasts in the past year (just see the bank’s horrific CPI predictions) here is our translation of the above: expect the labor market to soon enter freefall, one which will force the Fed to not only reverse its tightening and QT plans, but to go straight from rate cuts to NIRP and back to QE again.

  And just to confirm that a recession is now inevitable (as is the obvious Fed response) none other than the former boss of both Kostin and Hatzius, former Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein, spoke on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, and urged companies and consumers to gird for a US recession, saying it’s a “very, very high risk.”  

  “Do you think we’re headed towards recession?” @margbrennan asks Goldman Sachs Senior Chairman Lloyd Blankfein amid U.S. inflation.

  “It’s definitely a risk…If I were a consumer, I’d be prepared for it, but it’s not baked in the cake.” pic.twitter.com/IehxU4wSo6

  — Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) May 15, 2022

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  “If I were running a big company, I would be very prepared for it. If I was a consumer, I’d be prepared for it.” A recession is “not baked in the cake” and there’s a “narrow path” to avoid it, said the CEO who lost his job after infamously enabling Obama golfing buddy, former Malaysia PM Najib Razak, to loot billions from 1MDB.

  Blankfein noted that while some of the inflation “will go away” as supply chains unsnarl and Covid-19 lockdowns in China ease, “some of these things are a little bit stickier, like energy prices.”

  “How comfortable are we now to rely on those supply chains that are not within the borders of the United States and we can’t control?” Blankfein said. “Do we feel good about getting all our semiconductors from Taiwan, which is again, an object of China.”

  Bottom line: the question is not if but when the next recession hits, and not if but when the Fed responds with aggressive rates cuts and QE.

  The full Goldman notes are available to professional subs in the usual place.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/15/2022 – 20:10

• Hedge Fund CIO: In Markets, The Strongest Gravitational Force Is Produced By Stop-Losses Imposed By Leverage
  Hedge Fund CIO: In Markets, The Strongest Gravitational Force Is Produced By Stop-Losses Imposed By Leverage

  By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

  “We are peering into the curved spacetime near a supermassive black hole,” said Michael Johnson, researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, marveling at the image. “And it is teeming with activity, always burbling with turbulent energy and occasionally erupting into bright flares of emission,” added Johnson, standing tall on our little planet, 27,000 light years (159,300 trillion miles) from Sagittarius A*.

  At this vast distance, we travel through space at 140 miles per second, rotating around the supermassive black hole at our Milky Way’s center. Nearer objects move faster. Stars closest to Sagittarius A* travel at 141,000 miles per second. The plasma surrounding the black hole’s event horizon orbits at 190,000 miles per second, superheats to a trillion degrees, then disappears. Within our galaxy, gravity wins, eventually, always. Or so it seems. Time will tell.

  Unlike heavenly bodies, financial markets are our creation, and as such, they are just as much a part of nature as are we, which is to say indistinguishable. In financial markets, the strongest known gravitational force is produced by the presence of stop-losses imposed by leverage. The larger the stop, the greater the pull.

  The natural force at play is easy to understand. As the aggregate position size grows too large relative to its ability to withstand a capital loss, the market is drawn toward the price that forces liquidation. As prices approach that level, the process accelerates, the temperature rises.

  Along that path, the combination of counterparties demanding more margin, nervous longs liquidating, and short sellers pressing positions produces an outcome all but inevitable. We see this repeatedly. Long Term Capital Management was a victim of gravity. So too were VIX ETP volatility-sellers in Feb 2018.

  The Archegos unwind took two days in Apr 2021. This week a US dollar stablecoin called UST succumbed to gravity. A shockwave rippled across digital asset markets. And with temperatures this elevated, time accelerating, we are left to carefully examine the numerous large stops across the $200 trillion universe of traditional assets.

  * * *

  Stop: As a young pit trader in 1989, I was taught to understand where the big stop-loss orders were likely to be found. Markets in rough balance tend to oscillate, wander. But when there are traders with big leveraged positions, and they do not have the capital to sustain a large move against their exposures, they will eventually be forced to stop out either by choice or by creditors. As prices approach that stop-loss level, the trend accelerates. Sometimes such markets move as much in a minute as they otherwise do in a decade. Spacetime is bent around such stops.

  Stop II: Markets are mostly mean reverting. Their ups and downs are nature’s search for equilibrium. The damage to those on the wrong side of stops in such markets goes largely unnoticed in the broader financial system. But sometimes stops are existential. Hitting them precipitates a self-perpetuating move that is never reversed. Companies, currencies, and sovereigns – sometimes all at the same time – experience permanent shifts. And in times of great change, such as this turbulent decade, these are the stops to watch most carefully. Here are some:

  • Putin: Russia is approaching a stop. Its slow-moving demographic collapse has been known for decades. Its weak economic engine will collapse beneath sanctions, depriving Russia of the capital to sustain itself and defend against domestic and foreign adversaries. NATO membership of Finland and Sweden is the kind of price action you see when nearing a stop. So too the accelerating pace of Kyiv visits by world leaders and nuclear saber rattling by Russian defense ministers. Were Russia not a great nuclear power, a stop would be hit imminently. But it has 1,500 nuclear warheads currently deployed. This is clearly the world’s greatest near-term risk.
  • Famine: What appeared to be a trend of ever-expanding globalization allowed world governments and their respective economic systems to optimize for efficiency. But efficiency came at the cost of fragility, dependency. The current commodity price shock, and unfolding food shortage, will devastate most poor nations. This is only just getting started. Indonesia’s plan to limit palm oil exports, and India’s extraordinary decision to ban wheat exports, is what you see as governments approach stops. Hoarding has begun. This is the world’s greatest 2-3yr risk.
  • Union: Europe is a project that exchanges the constraints of political union for the promise of an end to senseless war. It was not designed for economic efficiency, and it has so far avoided a complete monetary integration. It made an energy deal with Russia that left its economy dependent, vulnerable. It must now overcome an energy crisis, risking direct conflict with Russia. While common enemies tend to draw nations together, the continent has a long history of fracture, infighting. It has also tended to make moves toward greater integration only in times of acute market stress. The market hunts for such stops. The 10yr Germany/Italy spread is 190bps.
  • America: There is no nation better positioned for a world that is deglobalizing than the US. It is the largest food producer, has enormous energy resources, innovators, capital markets, etc. Such advantages have been sold forward. Foreigners own $53.3trln US assets and the US owns $35.2trln foreign assets. The net external deficit has quietly increased nearly 10x since the start of the 2008 crisis. Our politicians have made entitlement promises that project government debt of more than 200% of GDP in the next thirty years, almost double the current share of GDP. Such vast imbalances will need to be resolved through default or devaluation (inflation). The latter is more likely. Unless the Fed contains inflation aggressively, the market will sniff the stop.  

  Anecdote: The Sun fuses 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium each second to produce the outward pressure required to offset its gravity. All stable stars live in this state of hydrostatic equilibrium. When their fuel is eventually expended, gravity prevails, and they collapse into themselves, achieving new equilibriums governed by quantum law. Small stars like our Sun become white dwarfs. Larger ones become neutron stars, the densest objects in the visible universe. The most massive stars overcome all know forces and disappear entirely – this collapse to a black hole occurs in less than a second. Spinning here on a little blue planet, 27,000 light years away from the invisible center of our galaxy, the scale and speed of such forces appears less extreme. Yet still, we observe all things around us struggling endlessly, mercilessly, for equilibrium. The weather constantly reminds us that complex systems move in volatile ways as they search for balance. This extends to all natural systems, creatures, companies, nations too.

  Throughout history our kingdoms, countries, and empires have had to produce sufficient outward pressure to maintain equilibrium and forestall collapse. The most prosperous ones have sustained balance through building vibrant economic systems. Such economies generate surpluses sufficient to sustain investment and finance a robust defense against those who threaten its existence. Some nations succeeded through conquest, confiscation, slavery, savagery. Others through capitalism. There are many models in between.

  When nations are growing more prosperous, their governments have relatively easy work. But when the economic engine falters, they must make difficult choices to sustain the outward pressure required to avoid collapse. Many governments fail; sustaining a healthy economic system is hard work, requiring foresight, investment, ingenuity, risk-taking. In their failure, such governments resort to coercion, confiscation, crackdowns. They pay their bills and bribe the citizenry with money borrowed against their nation’s future, leaving it diminished, eventually depleted.

  In a final attempt to defy gravity, and approaching their stop loss, governments print money. And this is why failing nations suffer currency collapse. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/15/2022 – 19:45

• 1 Dead, 5 Injured In Shooting At Southern California Church
  1 Dead, 5 Injured In Shooting At Southern California Church

  Multiple people have been shot and at least one person has died at a church in Laguna Woods, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD).

  

  Vanessa Serna reports at The Epoch Times that deputies received a call about a shooting at Geneva Presbyterian Church on the 24000 block of El Toro Road at 1:26 p.m. on May 15.

  One deceased victim, four critically wounded victims, and another with minor injuries were found. All victims are adults and have been sent to an area hospital.

  Police said they detained a suspect quickly at the scene and recovered a weapon that was believed to have been used in the shooting.

  

  Police tape at Geneva Presbyterian Church after a shooting left one dead and four critically injured in Laguna Woods, Calif., on May 15, 2022. (Vanessa Serna/The Epoch Times)

  About 35 to 40 people witnessed the shooting at the church and are being interviewed by police.

  “El Toro Road is closed between Calle Sonora and Canyon Wren, please avoid the area. We are in Unified Command with @OCFireAuthority,” said OCSD on Twitter.

  California Governor Gavin Newsom took to Twitter following news of the shooting releasing a statement that read:

  “We are actively monitoring the shooting at a church in Laguna Woods and working closely with local law enforcement.

  No one should have to fear going to their place of worship. Our thoughts are with the victims, community, and all those impacted by this tragic event.”

  Congresswoman Katie Porter, who represents the 45th Congressional District which oversees the area also released a statement to the public:

  “A shooting at a church in Laguna Woods has left multiple people injured and one deceased. This is upsetting and disturbing news, especially less than a day after a mass shooting in Buffalo. This should not be our new normal. I will work hard to support the victims and their families.”

  Laguna Woods is a community comprised primarily of persons considered to be senior citizens, with 82% of residents reportedly over the age of 65

  

  According to reports on Twitter, Geneva Presbyterian hosts a Taiwanese church, and the shooting took place during a lunch meeting of the Taiwanese congregation.

  The victims were described as mostly Asian and mostly of Taiwanese descent, authorities said.

  The LA Times reports that a law enforcement source said officials believe the suspect was a 68-year-old Asian man who is originally from Las Vegas.

  “Things are just breaking down in society right now,” said Patricia Wallace, 61, was inside her apartment when she heard the whirl of helicopters hovering above her complex across the street from the church. “It’s just so sad.”

  As of writing, there has been no discussion of this being investigated as a hate crime.

  Developing…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/15/2022 – 19:21

• Oh, Kamala!
  Oh, Kamala!

  Presented with no comment… aside from to note that the word “together” must have tested well in Democrats’ focus-groups…

  KAMALA: “We will work together, and continue to work together, to address these issues, to tackle these challenges, and to work together as we continue to work operating from the new norms, rules, and agreements, that we will convene to work together…We will work together” pic.twitter.com/AblARhoSQj

  — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 15, 2022

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  2024 is going to be so fun!

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/15/2022 – 19:01

• Greenwald: The Demented – And Selective – Game Of Instantly Blaming Political Opponents For Mass Shootings
  Greenwald: The Demented – And Selective – Game Of Instantly Blaming Political Opponents For Mass Shootings

  Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com,

  At a softball field in a Washington, DC suburb on June 14, 2017, a lone gunman used a rifle to indiscriminately spray bullets at members of the House GOP who had gathered for their usual Saturday morning practice for an upcoming charity game. The then-House Majority Whip, Rep. Steven Scalise (R-LA), was shot in the hip while standing on second base and almost died, spending six weeks in the hospital and undergoing multiple surgeries. Four other people were shot, including two members of the Capitol Police who were part of Scalise’s security detail, a GOP staffer, and a Tyson Foods lobbyist. “He was hunting us at that point,” Rep. Mike Bishop (R-MI) said of the shooter, who attempted to murder as many people as he could while standing with his rifle behind the dugout.

  

  The shooter died after engaging the police in a shootout. He was James T. Hodgkinson, a 66-year-old hard-core Democrat who — less than six months into the Trump presidency — had sought to kill GOP lawmakers based on his belief that Republicans were corrupt traitors, fascists, and Kremlin agents. The writings he left behind permitted little doubt that he was driven to kill by the relentless messaging he heard from his favorite cable host, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, and other virulently anti-Trump pundits, about the evils of the GOP. Indeed, immediately after arriving at the softball field, he asked several witnesses whether the people gathered “were Republicans or Democrats.”

  A CNN examination of his life revealed that “Hodgkinson’s online presence was largely defined by his politics.” In particular, “his public Facebook posts date back to 2012 and are nearly all about his support for liberal politics.” He was particularly “passionate about tax hikes on the rich and universal health care.” NBC News explained that “when he got angry about politics, it was often directed against Republicans,” and acknowledged that “Hodgkinson said his favorite TV program was ‘The Rachel Maddow Show’ on MSNBC.”

  Indeed, his media diet was a non-stop barrage of vehement animosity toward Republicans: “His favorite television shows were listed as ‘Real Time with Bill Maher;’ ‘The Rachel Maddow Show;’ ‘Democracy Now!’ and other left-leaning programs.” On the Senate floor, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) divulged that Hodgkinson was an ardent supporter of his and had even “apparently volunteered” for his campaign. A Sanders supporter told The Washington Post that “he campaigned for Bernie Sanders with Hodgkinson in Iowa.”

  The mass-shooter had a particular fondness for Maddow’s nightly MSNBC show. In his many Letters to the Editor sent to the Belleville News-Democrat, reported New York Magazine, he “expressed support for President Obama, and declared his love for The Rachel Maddow Show”. In one letter he heralded Maddow’s nightly program as “one of my favorite TV shows.”

  While consuming this strident and increasingly rage-driven Trump-era, anti-GOP media diet, Hodgkinson “joined several anti-GOP Facebook groups, including ‘Terminate The Republican Party’; ‘The Road to Hell Is Paved With Republicans’;, and ‘Join The Resistance Worldwide!!'” Two of his consuming beliefs were that Trump-era Republicans were traitors to the United States and fascist white nationalists. In 2015, he had posted a cartoon depicting Scalise — the man he came very close to murdering — as speaking at a gathering of the KKK.

  

  Once Trump was inaugurated in early 2017, the mass shooter’s online messaging began increasingly mirroring the more extreme anti-Trump and anti-GOP voices that did not just condemn the GOP’s ideology but depicted them as grave threats to the Republic. In a March 22 Facebook post, Hodgkinson wrote: “Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.” In February, he posted: “Republicans are the Taliban of the USA.” In one Facebook post just days before his shooting spree, Hodgkinson wrote: “I Want to Say Mr. President, for being an ass hole you are Truly the Biggest Ass Hole We Have Ever Had in the Oval Office.” As NBC News put it: “Hodgkinson’s Facebook postings portray him as stridently anti-Republican and anti-Trump.”

  Despite the fact that Hodgkinson was a fanatical fan of Maddow, Democracy Now host Amy Goodman, and Sanders, that the ideas and ideology motivating his shooting spree perfectly matched — and were likely shaped by — liberals of that cohort, and that the enemies whom he sought to kill were also the enemies of Maddow and her liberal comrades, nobody rational or decent sought to blame the MSNBC host, the Vermont Senator or anyone else whose political views matched Hodgkinson’s for the grotesque violence he unleashed. The reason for that is clear and indisputable: as strident and extremist as she is, Maddow has never once encouraged any of her followers to engage in violence to advance her ideology, nor has she even hinted that a mass murder of the Republican traitors, fascists and Kremlin agents about whom she rants on a nightly basis to millions of people is a just solution.

  It would be madness to try to assign moral or political blame to them. If we were to create a framework in which prominent people were held responsible for any violence carried out in the name of an ideology they advocate, then nobody would be safe, given that all ideologies have their misfits, psychopaths, unhinged personality types, and extremists. And thus there was little to no attempt to hold Maddow or Sanders responsible for the violent acts of one of their most loyal adherents.

  The same is true of the spate of mass shootings and killings by self-described black nationalists over the last several years. Back in 2017, the left-wing group Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) warned of the “Return of the Violent Black Nationalist.” In one incident, “Micah Xavier Johnson ambushed Dallas police officers during a peaceful protest against police brutality, killing five officers and wounding nine others.” Then, “ten days later, Gavin Eugene Long shot six officers, killing three, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.” They shared the same ideology, one which drove their murderous spree:

  Both Johnson and Long were reportedly motivated by their strong dislike of law enforcement, grievances against perceived white dominance, and the recent fatal police shootings of unarmed black men under questionable circumstances, specifically the shooting deaths of Alton Sterling of Baton Rouge and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota . . .

  Needless to say, the ideas that motivated these two black nationalists to murder multiple people, including police officers, is part of a core ideology that is commonly heard in mainstream media venues, expressed by many if not most of the nation’s most prominent liberals. Depicting the police as a white supremacist force eager to kill black people, “grievances against perceived white dominance,” and anger over “the white supremacism endemic in America’s system of governance from the country’s founding” are views that one routinely hears on MSNBC, CNN, from Democratic Party politicians, and in the op-ed pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post.

  Yet virtually nobody sought to blame Chris Hayes, Joy Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Jamelle Bouie or New York Times op-ed writers for these shooting sprees. Indeed, no blame was assigned to anti-police liberal pundits whose view of American history is exactly the same as that of these two killers — even though they purposely sought to murder the same enemies whom those prominent liberals target. Nobody blamed those anti-police liberals for the same reason they did not blame Maddow and Sanders for Hodgkinson’s shooting spree: there is a fundamental and necessary distinction between people who use words to express ideas and demonize perceived enemies, and those who decide to go randomly and indiscriminately murder in the name of that ideology.

  Since that 2017 warning from the SPLC, there have been many more murders in the name of this anti-police and anti-white-supremacist ideology of black nationalism. In June of last year, the ADL said it had “linked Othal Toreyanne Resheen Wallace, the man arrested and accused of fatally shooting Daytona Beach Officer Jason Raynor on June 23, to several extremist groups preaching Black nationalism.” He had “participated in several events organized by the NFAC…best known for holding armed marches protesting racial inequality and police brutality.” He had a long history of citing and following prominent radical Black anti-police and anti-White ideologues.” Also in June of last year, a 25-year-old man named Noah Green drove a car into a Capitol Hill Police Officer, killing him instantly. The New York Times reported that he follows black nationalist groups, while a former college teammate “recalled that Mr. Green would often talk to fellow players about strategies to save and invest, emphasizing the need to close the wealth gap between white and Black America.”

  

  Just last month, a self-identified black nationalist named Frank James went on a terrifying shooting spree in the New York City subway system that injured dozens. He had “posted material on social media linked to black identity extremist ideologies, including the Nation of Islam, Black Panthers, Black Liberation Army, BLM and an image of black nationalist cop-killer Micah Johnson.” Angie Speaks, the brilliant writer who voices the audio version of the articles for this Substack, reported in Newsweek that James had “posted prolifically on social media and hosted a YouTube channel where he expressed Black Nationalist leanings and racial grievances.” In 2019, The New York Times reported that “an assailant involved in the prolonged firefight in Jersey City, N.J., that left six people dead, including one police officer, was linked on Wednesday to the Black Hebrew Israelite movement,” and had written “anti-police posts.”

  Most media outlets and liberal politicians correctly refused to assign blame to pundits and politicians who spew anti-police rhetoric, or who insist that the U.S. is a nation of white supremacy: the animating ideas of these murders. Yet in these cases, they go much further with their denialism: many deny that this ideology even exists at all.

  “The made-up ‘Black Identity Extremist’ label is the latest example in a history of harassing and discrediting Black activists who dare to use their voices to call out white supremacy,” claimed the ACLU in 2019. PBS quoted a lawyer for an advocacy group as saying: “We’re deeply concerned about the FBI’s ‘black identity extremist’ designation. This is mere distraction from the very real threat of white supremacy…There is no such thing as black identity extremism.” The same year, The Intercept published an article headlined “The Strange Tale of the FBI’s Fictional ‘Black Identity Extremism’ Movement,” which claimed over and over that there is no such thing as black extremism and that any attempt to ascribe violence to this ideology is a lie invented by those seeking to hide the dangers of white supremacy.

  

  It is virtually impossible to find any ideology on any part of the political spectrum that has not spawned senseless violence and mass murder by adherents. “The suspected killer of Dutch maverick politician Pim Fortuyn had environmentalist propaganda and ammunition at his home,” reported CBS News about the assassin, Volkert van der Graaf. Van der Graaf was a passionate animal rights and environmental activist who admitted “he killed the controversial right-wing leader because he considered him a danger to society.” Van der Graaf was particularly angry about what he believed was Fortuyn’s anti-Muslim rhetoric. As a result, “some supporters of Fortuyn had blamed Green party leader Paul Rosenmoeller for “demonizing Fortuyn before he was gunned down in May just before general elections.” In other words, simply because the Green Party leader was highly critical of Fortuyn’s ideology, some opportunistic Dutch politicians sought absurdly to blame him for Fortuyn’s murder by Van der Graaf. Sound familiar?

  During the BLM and Antifa protests and riots of 2020, an Antifa supporter, Michael Reinoehl, was the leading suspect in the murder of a Trump supporter, Aaron J. Danielson, as he rode in a truck (Reinoehl himself was then killed by federal agents before being arrested in what appeared to be a deliberate extra-judicial execution, though an investigation cleared them of wrongdoing, as typically happens when federal agents are involved). In 2016, The New York Times reported that “the heavily armed sniper who gunned down police officers in downtown Dallas, leaving five of them dead, specifically set out to kill as many white officers as he could, officials said Friday.” The Paper of Record noted that many believed that anti-police protests would eventually lead to violent attacks on police officers: it “was the kind of retaliatory violence that people have feared through two years of protests around the country against deaths in police custody.”

  Then there are the murders carried out in the name of various religions. For the last three decades at least, debates have been raging about what level of responsibility, if any, should be assigned to radical Muslim preachers or Muslim politicians when individuals carry out atrocities and murders in the name of Islam. Liberals insist — correctly, in my view — that it is irresponsible and unfair to blame non-violent Muslims who preach radical versions of religious or political Islam for those who carry out violence in the name of those doctrines. Similar debates are heard with regard to Jewish extremists, such as the Israeli-American doctor Baruch Goldstein who “opened fire in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, killing 29 Muslim worshippers.” Many insist that the radical anti-Muslim speech of Israeli extremists is to blame, while others deny that there is any such thing as “Jewish terrorism” and that all blames lies solely with the individual who decided to resort to violence.

  To be sure, there have been a large number of murders and other atrocities carried out in U.S. and the West generally in the name of right-wing ideologies, in the name of white supremacy, in the name of white nationalism. The difference, though, is glaring: when murders are carried out in the name of liberal ideology, there is a rational and restrained refusal to blame liberal pundits and politicians who advocate the ideology that animated those killings. Yet when killings are carried out in the name of right-wing ideologies despised by the corporate press and mainstream pundits (or ideologies that they falsely associate with conservatism), they instantly leap to lay blame at the feet of their conservative political opponents who, despite never having advocated or even implied the need for violence, are nonetheless accused of bearing guilt for the violence — often before anything is known about the killers or their motives.

  In general, it is widely understood that liberal pundits and politicians are not to blame, at all, when murders are carried out in the name of the causes they support or against the enemies they routinely condemn. That is because, in such cases, we apply the rational framework that someone who does not advocate violence is not responsible for the violent acts of one’s followers and fans who kill in the name of that person’s ideas.

  Indeed, this perfectly sensible principle was enshrined by the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark 1982 unanimous free speech ruling in Claiborne v. NAACP. That case arose out of efforts by the State of Mississippi to hold leaders of the local NAACP chapter legally liable for violence carried out by NAACP members on the ground that the leaders’ inflammatory and rage-driven speeches had “incited” and “provoked” their followers to burn white-owned stores and other stores ignoring their boycott to the ground. In ruling in favor of the NAACP, the Court stressed the crucial difference between those who peacefully advocate ideas and ideologies, even if they do so with virulence and anger (such as NAACP leaders), and those who are “inspired” by those speeches to commit violence to advance that cause. “To impose liability without a finding that the NAACP authorized — either actually or apparently — or ratified unlawful conduct would impermissibly burden the rights of political association that are protected by the First Amendment,” ruled the Court.

  This principle is not only a jurisprudential or constitutional one. It is also a rational one. Those who express ideas without advocating violence are not and cannot fairly be held responsible for those who decide to pick up arms in the name of those ideas, even if — as in the case of James Hodgkinson — we know for certain that the murderer listened closely to and was influenced by people like Rachel Maddow and Bernie Sanders. In such cases, we understand that it is madness, and deeply unfair, to exploit heinous murders to lay blame for the violence and killings on the doorsteps of our political adversaries.

  ---

  But when a revolting murder spree is carried out in the name of right-wing ideas (or ideas perceived by the corporate press to be right-wing), everything changes — instantly and completely. In such cases, often before anything is known about the murderer — indeed, literally before the corpses are even removed from the ground where they lie — there is a coordinated effort to declare that anyone who holds any views in common with the murderer has “blood on their hands” and is essentially a co-conspirator in the massacre.

  A very vivid and particularly gruesome display of this demented game was on display on Saturday night after a white 18-year-old, Payton Gendron, purposely targeted a part of Buffalo with a substantial black population. He entered a supermarket he knew was frequented largely by black customers and shot everyone he found, killing 10 people, most of them black. A lengthy, 180-page manifesto he left behind was filled with a wide variety of eclectic political views and ideologies.

  In that manifesto, Gendron described himself as a “left-wing authoritarian” and “populist” (“On the political compass I fall in the mild-moderate authoritarian left category, and I would prefer to be called a populist”). He heaped praise on an article in the socialist magazine Jacobin for its view that cryptocurrency and Bitcoin are fraudulent scams. He spoke passionately of the centrality and necessity of environmentalism, and lamented that “the state [has] long since heavily lost to its corporate backers.” He ranted against “corporate profits and the ever increasing wealth of the 1% that exploit the people for their own benefit.” And he not only vehemently rejected any admiration for political conservatism but made clear that he viewed it as an enemy to his agenda: “conservatism is corporatism in disguise, I want no part of it.”

  But by far the overarching and dominant theme of his worldview — the ideology that he repeatedly emphasized was the animating cause of his murder spree — was his anger and fear that white people, which he defines as those of European descent, were being eradicated by a combination of low birth rates and mass immigration. He repeatedly self-identified as a “racist” and expressed admiration for fascism as a solution. His treatise borrowed heavily from, and at times outright plagiarized, large sections of the manifesto left behind by Brenton Tarrant, the 29-year-old Australian who in 2019 murdered 51 people, mostly Muslims, at two mosques in New Zealand. Gendron’s manifesto included a long list of websites and individuals who influenced his thinking, but made clear that it was Tarrant who was his primary inspiration. Other than extensive anti-Semitic sections which insisted that Jews are behind most of the world’s powerful institutions and accompanying problems, it was Tarrant’s deep concern about what he perceived is the disappearance of white people that was also Gendron’s principal cause:

  If there’s one thing I want you to get from these writings, it’s that White birth rates must change. Everyday the White population becomes fewer in number. To maintain a population the people must achieve a birth rate that reaches replacement fertility levels, in the western world that is about 2.06 births per woman….

  In 2050, despite the ongoing effect of sub-replacement fertility, the population figures show that the population does not decrease inline with the sub-replacement fertility levels, but actually maintains and, even in many White nations, rapidly increases. All through immigration. This is ethnic replacement. This is cultural replacement. This is racial replacement. This is WHITE GENOCIDE.

  Within literally an hour of the news of this murder spree in Buffalo — far too little time for anyone to have even carefully read all or most of Gendron’s manifesto, and with very little known about his life or activities — much of the corporate press and liberal pundit class united to reveal the real culprit, the actual guilty party, behind this murder spree: Fox News host Tucker Carlson. So immediate and unified was this guilty verdict of mob justice that Carlson’s name trended all night on Twitter along with Buffalo and Gendron.

  

  The examples of liberal pundits instantly blaming Carlson for this murder are far too numerous to comprehensively cite. “Literally everyone warned Fox News and Tucker Carlson that this would happen and they fucking laughed and went harder,” decreed Andrew Lawrence of the incomparably sleazy and dishonest group Media Matters, spawned by ultimate sleaze-merchant David Brock. “The Buffalo shooter… subscribed to the Great Replacement theory touted by conservative elites like Tucker Carlson and believed by nearly half of GOP voters,” claimed The Washington Post‘s Emmanuel Felton. “See if you can tell the difference between [Gerdon’s manifesto on ‘white Replacement’] and standard fare on the Tucker Carlson show,” said Georgetown Professor Don Moynihan. “The racist massacre in Buffalo rest [sic] at the feet of Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and the GOP,” decreed Hollywood’s nepotism prince Rob Reiner. The shooter was inspired by “a white nationalist conspiracy theory that Tucker Carlson has defended on his show,” was the verdict of The Huffington Post‘s Philip Lewis less than six hours after the shooting spree began. And on and on.

  That Carlson was primarily responsible for the ten dead people in Buffalo was asserted despite the fact that there was no indication that Gendron even knew who Carlson was, that he had ever watched his show, that he was influenced by him in any way, or that he admired or even liked the Fox host. Indeed, in the long list of people and places which Gendron cited as important influences on him — “Brenton Tarrant, [El Paso shooter] Patrick Crusius, [California Jewish community center killer], John Earnest, [Norwegian mass murderer] Anders Breivik, [Charleston black church murderer] Dylann Roof, etc.” — nowhere does he even allude to let alone mention any Fox News host or Carlson.

  To the contrary, Gendron explicitly describes his contempt for political conservatism. In a section entitled “CONSERVATISM IS DEAD, THANK GOD,” he wrote: “Not a thing has been conserved other than corporate profits and the ever increasing wealth of the 1% that exploit the people for their own benefit. Conservatism is dead. Thank god. Now let us bury it and move on to something of worth.” In this hated of conservatism, he copied his hero Brenton Tarrant, who also wrote that “conservatism is corporatism in disguise, I want no part of it,” adding about conservatives:

  They don’t even BELIEVE in the race, they don’t even have the gall to say race exists. And above all they don’t even care if it does. It’s profit, and profit alone that drives them, all else is secondary. The notion of a racial future or destiny is as foreign to them as social responsibilities.

  So desperate and uncontrolled was this ghoulish attempt to blame Carlson for the Buffalo shootings that my email inbox and social media feeds were festering with various liberal pundits demanding to know why I had not yet manifested my views of this shooting — as though it is advisable or even possible to formulate definitive opinions about a complex mass murder spree that had just taken place less than five hours before. “Still working on your talking points to defend your buddy Tucker or are you holding off on trying out your deflections until the bodies get cold?,” wrote a pundit named Jonathan Katz at 6:46 pm ET on Saturday night in a highly representative demand — just four hours after the shooter fired his first shot. Demands to assert definitive opinions about who — other than the killer — is to blame for a mass murder spree just hours after it happened can be called many things; “journalistic” and “responsible” are not among them.

  As it happened, I was on an overnight international flight on Saturday and into Sunday morning; I deeply apologize for my failure to monitor and speak on Twitter twenty-four hours a day. But even if I had not been 40,000 feet in the air, what kind of primitive and despicably opportunistic mindset is required not only to opine so definitively about how your political opponents are guilty of a heinous crime before the corpses are even taken away, but to demand that everyone else do so as well? In fact, Katz was particularly adamant that I opine not just on the killings but on the list of pundits I thought should be declared guilty before, in his soulless words, “the bodies get cold” — meaning that I must speak out without bothering to take the time to try to understand the basic facts about the killer and the shootings before heaping blame on a wide range of people who had no apparent involvement.

  But this is exactly the morally sick and exploitative liberal mentality that drives the discourse each time one of these shooting sprees happen. Rachel Maddow had far more known connections to Scalise’s shooter James Hodgkinson than Carlson has to Gendron. After all, as Maddow herself acknowledged, Hodgkinson was a fan of her show and had expressed his love and admiration for her. His animating views and ideology tracked hers perfectly, with essentially no deviation. And yet — despite this ample evidence that he was influenced by her — it would never occur to me to blame Maddow for Hodgkinson’s shooting spree because doing so would be completely demented, since Maddow never told or suggested to anyone that they go out and shoot the political enemies she was depicting as traitors, Kremlin agents, plotters to overthrow American democracy and replace it with a fascist dictatorship, and grave menaces to civil rights and basic freedom.

  The attempt to blame Carlson for the Buffalo shootings depended entirely on one claim: Carlson has previously talked about and defended the view that immigration is a scheme to “replace” Americans, and this same view was central to Gendron’s ideology. Again, even if this were true, it would amount to nothing more than a claim than the shooter shared key views with Carlson and other conservative pundits — exactly as Hodgkinson shared core views with Maddow and Sanders, or the numerous murderers who killed in the name of black nationalism shared the same views on the police and American history as any number of MSNBC hosts and Democratic Party politicians, or as Pim Fortuyn’s killer shared core views with animal rights activists and defenders of Muslim equality (including me). But nobody is willing to apply such a framework consistently because it converts everyone with strong political views into murderers, or at least being guilty of inciting murder.

  But all bets are off — all such principles or moral and logical reasoning are dispensed with — when an act of violence can be pinned on the political enemies of liberals. If a homicidal maniac kills an abortion doctor, then all peaceful pro-life activists are blamed. If an LGBT citizen is killed, then anyone who shares the views that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had until 2012 about marriage equality is blamed. If a police officer unjustifiably kills a black citizen, all police supporters or those who dissent from liberal orthodoxy on racial politics are decreed guilty. But liberals are never at fault when right-wing politicians are murdered, or police officers are hunted and gunned down by police opponents, or an anti-abortion group is targeted with firebombing and arson, as just happened in Wisconsin, or radical Muslims engage in random acts of violence. By definition, “moral reasoning” that is applied only in one direction has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with crass, exploitative opportunism.

  Though it does not actually matter for purposes of assigning blame, it is utterly false to claim that Carlson’s ideology — including on “replacement” — is the same as or even related to the views expressed by the killers in Buffalo or New Zealand. Indeed, in key respects, they are opposites. Both Tarrant and Gendron targeted citizens of the countries in which they carried out their murder spree. They justified doing so on the ground that any non-white citizen is automatically an “invader,” regardless of how long they have been in the country or how much legal status they have. “It would have eased me if I knew all the blacks I would be killing were criminals or future criminals, but then I realized all black people are replacers just by existing in White countries,” Gendron wrote.

  To claim that Carlson ever said anything remotely like this or believes it is just an outright lie. Indeed, with great frequency, Carlson says that the priority of the U.S. Government should be protection of and concern for American citizens of all races. Tarrant and Gendron believe and explicitly say that any non-white citizen of a European country is automatically an “invader” who must be killed and/or deported to turn the country all-white. Carlson believes the exact opposite: that the proper citizenry of the United States is multi-racial and that Black Americans and Latin Americans and Asian-Americans are every bit as much U.S. citizens, with all of the same claims to rights and protections, as every other American citizen. His anti-immigration and “replacement” argument is aimed at the idea — one that had been long mainstream on the left until about a decade ago — that large, uncontrolled immigration harms American citizens who are already here. There is no racial hierarchy in Carlson’s view of American citizenship and to claim that there is is nothing short of a defamatory lie.

  But even if these liberal smear artists were telling the truth, and Carlson’s view of immigration and “replacement” were similar or even precisely identical to Gendron’s, one could certainly say that Carlson holds immoral and despicable views. But he would still no more carry blame for the Buffalo murders than liberal pundits have blood on their hands for countless massacres carried out in the name of political causes they support and theories they espouse, whether it be animus toward the police or anti-imperialism or opposition to Israeli occupation of the West Bank or the belief that the United States is a fundamentally racist country or the view that the GOP is a fascist menace to all things decent.

  The distinction between peaceful advocacy even of noxious ideas and those who engage in violence in the name of such ideas is fundamental to notions of fairness, justice and the ability to speak freely. But if you really want to claim that a public figure has “blood on their hands” every time someone murders in the name of ideas and ideologies they support, then the list of people you should be accusing of murder is a very, very long one indeed.

  ---

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  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/15/2022 – 18:30

• Navy Remains Silent About Secret Boat's Sinking
  Navy Remains Silent About Secret Boat’s Sinking

  The US Navy remains hush-hush about the sinking of a small secretive vessel testing high-tech equipment.

  “Due to the experimental nature of the technology coupled with OSPEC concerns, we are unable to provide any further details nor specifics of the incident,” Naval Safety Command spokeswoman Priscilla Kirsch said in an email to Navy Times. 

  The sinking occurred on Dec. 7, 2021. Information about the vessel’s name and what type of technology was outfitted on the boat has been shielded from the public. The service noted that the incident occurred while the boat was moored at an undisclosed area. It gave no reason why the vessel sunk, though it said damages amounted to $2.5 million. 

  Kirsch said the vessel was “immediately recovered and restored” following the incident, adding it’s awaiting further evaluation. 

  Even though the Navy released limited, months before the incident, a small mysterious stealth boat was spotted in a boatyard in Gulfport, Mississippi, known for the high-tech manufacturing of vessels for US Special Forces. 

  Could this be the vessel?

  

  Still, the type of vessel that sunk is shrouded in secrecy by the service.  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/15/2022 – 18:00

• Clarence Thomas Has New Message Over "Tremendously Bad" Roe V. Wade Leak
  Clarence Thomas Has New Message Over “Tremendously Bad” Roe V. Wade Leak

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

  U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has called the shocking leak of the draft Roe v. Wade opinion a major violation of trust that has “fundamentally” changed the high court.

  

  Thomas made the remarks at a May 13 conference in Dallas, Texas, in which he decried the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion suggesting that the court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, with major implications for access to abortion.

  “I do think that what happened at the court is tremendously bad,” he said, referring to the May 2 leak of the opinion to Politico, adding that some time ago it would have been unthinkable for even “one line of one opinion” to have been disclosed without authorization.

  The Supreme Court has confirmed the authenticity of the draft opinion, but has called it preliminary. A ruling in the case is expected in June.

  Chief Justice John Roberts has ordered a probe into the leak. Thomas said its unauthorized disclosure undercut confidence in the Supreme Court and its internal processes.

  “When you lose that trust, especially in the institution that I’m in, it changes the institution fundamentally,” he said.

  “You begin to look over your shoulder. It’s like kind of an infidelity that you can explain it, but you can’t undo it.”

  “I wonder how long we’re going to have these institutions at the rate we’re undermining them,” Thomas said, echoing earlier remarks in which he expressed concern about a “different attitude of the young” toward respect for institutions and the law, suggesting that this is on the decline relative to past generations.

  Thomas was also critical of liberal protests outside the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices.

  “You would never visit Supreme Court justices’ houses when things didn’t go our way. We didn’t throw temper tantrums. I think it is … incumbent on us to always act appropriately and not to repay tit for tat,” he said.

  Besides pickets in front of the homes of several conservative justices, a flurry of protests and counterprotests broke out outside the Supreme Court after Politico obtained and published the draft opinion that would uphold a Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy and overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide.

  The protests have been loud, but mostly peaceful, though there have been reports that pro-abortion activists have attacked pro-life pastors.

  In a bid to prevent violence, police have surrounded the Supreme Court with a set of 9-foot-high metal barricades, with an officer telling an Epoch Times reporter that the move was made “just in case.”

  Speaking at a May 6 judicial conference in Atlanta, Thomas said that government institutions must not allow themselves to be strong-armed into delivering outcomes that people demand.

  “We are becoming addicted to wanting particular outcomes, not living with the outcomes we don’t like,” he said, according to Reuters.

  “We can’t be an institution that can be bullied into giving you just the outcomes you want.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 05/15/2022 – 17:30