• 'Negative Efficacy' Should Have Stopped COVID Vaccine Recommendations In Their Tracks
  ‘Negative Efficacy’ Should Have Stopped COVID Vaccine Recommendations In Their Tracks

  Authored by Dr. Sean Lin and Mingjia Jacky Guan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Recently, various health agencies around the world have approved and are actively pushing for another COVID booster shot, meant to enhance the vaccine efficacy against a COVD-19 infection.

  However, many studies have found that the boosters do not make a significant  difference in protection, especially in terms of protection against reinfection. In fact, the latest data shows vaccine efficacy against the coronavirus tends to even drop into the negatives after just a few months.

  

  What Does Negative Efficacy Mean?

  It is a well known fact that COVID vaccine effectiveness wanes quickly as time goes on; this is confirmed by countless studies.

  Although the official narrative for COVID-19 vaccines nowadays only emphasizes its efficacy on protection against ICU admission and death rates, it actually implies the indisputable fact that vaccines don’t protect, contrary to their design, against infection or even symptomatic infection, especially after the emergence of various Omicron variants.

  Even the protection two shots offers against hospitalization drops to about 40 percent after less than a year. It’s actually looking worse for protection against severe symptoms, as efficacy rates seem to drop into the negatives about five months into full vaccination.

  When a vaccine’s efficacy drops into the negatives, it means that vaccination actually elevates the risks of hospitalization and severe diseases rather than reducing the risks. In simple terms, it does more harm than good when the efficacy is negative.

  During the time prior to the pandemic, any vaccine with an efficacy less than 50 percent would be regarded as a poor product.  When a product shows negative efficacy, it should be banned. It seems that the pandemic isn’t only bad for our health, but also is tugging at our common sense.

  COVID Vaccines’ Declining Usefulness

  It has been around three years since the first COVID-19 case was discovered in Wuhan, China. Since then, more than 600 million cases of the virus have been recorded, translating into a little less than 1 in 10 people around the world already being infected with the virus. In many countries, “living with COVID” has become the norm, along with getting “fully vaccinated” and getting those booster shots.

  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it is recommended that everyone 6 months and older should receive a full vaccination and everyone 5 years and older should receive a booster shot. Booster shots are recommended as they “are an important part of protecting yourself from getting seriously ill or dying from COVID-19” according to the CDC.

  However, emerging data paints a different picture.

  At its crux, the vaccines were developed with the earlier strains of the coronavirus, meaning developers primarily used the original Wuhan strain in their testing. The Delta strain that came along was particularly infamous as it was known to have a high death rate, but vaccines fared quite well against it. The results, however, went south as time went on and as the Omicron strain rolled out.

  Trying to Outrun Nature

  Making its debut in South Africa, the Omicron strain started to dominate the world by the beginning of 2022, which caused even more turmoil in terms of vaccine efficacy. The most shocking result is the extent it dragged down the vaccine’s efficacy against infection. Data shows that the vaccine used to be around 90 percent effective for weeks on end after vaccination.

  After Omicron came along, infection prevention dropped to less than 50 percent after about a month after two shots and dived into the negatives four months later. It doesn’t seem to stop after that.

  This clearly suggests that the COVID-19 vaccination campaigns should’ve been suspended as soon as the Omicron variant began to dominate over Delta.

  In a study which analyzed COVID-19 cases from the beginning of this year in children that were previously infected, it was discovered that vaccine effectiveness wasn’t keeping up with pre-Omicron levels. The effects of a full vaccination against a second infection drops into the negatives within a few months, and it seems that the earlier one got the vaccination, the more likely it would lose its efficacy during the omicron waves.

  The results from a September 2022 British Medical Journal study highlights again the fact that vaccine potency drops rapidly with time. It concluded that protection against severe symptoms drops well below half within a few weeks of administering the full two doses, or even after a third dose is administered. It also showed that in the immunocompromised, two doses never had an efficacy rate against hospitalization over 50 percent. Things do look a little better for three doses, but not by much.

  Another study published data on the efficacy of the third dose relative to primary doses and found that the mean efficacy of three doses of the Moderna vaccine against the Omicron variants are, in fact, below 0.

  It is interesting to note a logical assumption made by many, which is that the more you take the vaccine the better prepared you are against the virus, isn’t necessarily true.

  Data published shows that neutralizing antibody count doesn’t necessarily correlate with the number of doses.

  They found that people who took the fourth dose sometimes had higher, but mostly lower, antibody concentrations in the body compared with those who took the third dose.

  Also, the hazard ratio calculated by researchers for the third and fourth vaccine doses provide us with mixed results. Sometimes, it seems like a good option to stick with the third dose, as the hazard ratio actually rises for taking the second booster compared with the first one.

  One possible reason vaccine data is going downhill after Omicron appeared is that the new variant had a lot of changes in its spike protein composition.

  This changes the way the virus enters the body and allows it to better “bypass” the security system set up by the old vaccines, which were developed from the very first SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan strain. One can understand it as if the variants have new toys to play with the old security guards.

  Another potential mechanism that leads to the significant decline of vaccine efficacy is that repeated vaccination also damages people’s immunity via immune imprinting, a phenomenon in which an initial exposure to a virus–such as the original strain of SARS-CoV-2, by infection or vaccination–limits a person’s future immune response against variants.

  Meanwhile, there are numerous underlying factors that would contribute to the disease’s progression from mild to severe, or even into fatal stages. Even if the vaccination groups during clinical trials were carefully chosen to have similar comorbid medical conditions as the control or unvaccinated group, there are still many other unknown factors that would dictate the outcome of the disease progression.

  It is inconceivable and overtly overambitious that any pharmaceutical company would aim so high to design a vaccine which can protect against severe diseases from the onset of research, especially since the resulting vaccine can’t seem to keep up with preventing infection in the first place.

  If a vaccine reaches negative efficacy, it means that people have higher chances to get infected than if you didn’t get the shot in the first place, meaning that not getting vaccinated might just reduce the chance of infection, unwanted symptoms, and severe disease. This is not just a vaccine failure or breakthrough infection issue, but a good time to halt COVID vaccines for good. Humans will never win in this cat-and-mouse game against nature.

  Are Previous Infections Still Protective?

  As time goes on, the likelihood of reinfection is quite high. Studies do show that in reinfected people the chances of death, hospitalization, and some form of sequela is much higher in those infected for the first time. It also seems like a logical conclusion for the CDC to recommend that everyone gets vaccinated.

  However, the data we have is rather conflicting as the aforementioned study doesn’t show much of a difference between the unvaccinated, the half vaccinated, or the fully vaccinated. They all have just about the same values for cardiovascular, thrombotic, renal, or pulmonary sequelae post infection, or chances of getting a tough COVID-19 infection in the first place.

  Data also shows that previously infected and unvaccinated children were better at preventing a second infection compared with children who were in the same age category but who were vaccinated. Generally speaking, vaccine induced immunity doesn’t seem to be quite as effective as that induced by a previous, natural infection.

  What this essentially means is that the vaccines cannot keep up with the constantly emerging variants and that a waning efficacy was frankly inevitable. The only question left is, what is the driving force behind the Omicron variants, or SARS-CoV-2 variants on a broad scale? What accounts for variants emerging at the same time around the world?

  Microevolution cannot explain everything.

  Over the past 3 years, scientists have applied the theory of evolution to describe and explain the trajectory of SARS-CoV-2. Delta was the deadly variant and now Omicron is the road runner. In theory, the virus developed these strains to best adapt to the objective environment, yet scientists are still looking for more answers.

  For example, when much of the world’s population was in different degrees of “lockdown” or restriction of movements, when international travel was severely impaired, how did the Alpha and Delta variants emerge and quickly spread widely, and even become dominant globally?

  If the only factor that determines which variant to become dominant or not was its fitness, i.e., its transmissibility and replication efficiency, why were there not multiple variants with better fitness that emerged and all became dominant regionally, just like how divergent strains of flowers blossom at the same time in distinct locations? Why does it appear as if there is a coordinating force behind the virus such that one strain was able to uniformly retire the previous one?

  In order to answer all these questions, I believe that there needs to be a more holistic evaluation of the current pandemic. At the same time, it’s important to note that viruses adapt to the vaccines, and not the other way around.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/30/2022 – 00:05

• Law-Abiding Americans Had "Strong Appetite" For Guns On Black Friday
  Law-Abiding Americans Had “Strong Appetite” For Guns On Black Friday

  The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) reported the latest National Instant Criminal Background System (NICS) checks on gun sales during Black Friday was one of the “Top 10” busiest days in history.

  NSSF said NICS processed 711,372 background checks during the days leading up to and including Black Friday. FBI’s NICS recorded 192,749 background checks on Black Friday alone, a 2.8% increase from Black Friday 2021, when 187,585 background checks were completed. 

  Below are the number of NICS checks leading up to Black Friday.

  • Saturday, Nov. 20, 2022: 102,376

  • Sunday, Nov. 21, 2022: 57,665

  • Monday, Nov. 22, 2022: 103,543

  • Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2022: 109,895

  • Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2022: 116,033

  • Thursday, Nov. 25, 2022: 29,111

  • Friday, Nov. 26, 2022: 192,749

  Third-highest Black Friday NICS checks on record since the system was established in 1998. 

  

  When a person tries to buy a firearm at a gun shop, known as a Federal Firearms Licensee (FFL), they’re required to fill out an ATF form, and the FFL forwards that information to the NICS electronically. NICS staff performs a background check on the buyer to ensure he/she does not have a criminal record or isn’t otherwise ineligible to purchase or own a firearm. 

  Joe Bartozzi, NSSF President and CEO, commented on the large influx of law-abiding Americans buying guns last week and said:

  “Background checks for firearm purchases were already trending to make 2022 the third strongest year on record, coming off of the outsized years of 2020 and 2021.

  “These figures tell us that there is a continued strong appetite for lawful firearm ownership by law-abiding Americans and that firearm manufacturers across the country continue to deliver the quality firearms our customers have come to expect.”

  What’s important to note is that NICS checks are a proxy for the number of guns sold and are not exact because the background checks are performed on the buyer rather than the gun. 

  Elevated NICS checks imply a strong firearm appetite among law-abiding Americans. There was no explanation given why this trend remained red hot since the early pandemic days. 

  What might have supercharged gun buying among law-abiding Americans is this summer’s US Supreme Court’s NYSRPA v. Bruen ruling affirmed the right-to-carry applies outside the home, which forces states to stop arbitrarily denying carry permits to applicants who didn’t meet specific requirements. Perhaps another reason is that under the Biden administration, violent crime has soared in some parts of the country — law-abiding Americans might want protection. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/29/2022 – 23:45

• US, South Korea Plan To Expand 'Silent Shark' Drills
  US, South Korea Plan To Expand ‘Silent Shark’ Drills

  Authored by Kyle Anzalone & Will Porter via The Libertarian Institute,

  Washington and Seoul are reportedly discussing plans to ramp up anti-submarine military exercises set to begin next year. The talks came amid soaring tensions in the region, and just days before North Korea pledged to further develop its nuclear arsenal. 

  While some details of the biannual ‘Silent Shark’ drills remain undecided, they are set to be “bigger than those of the past, given the North heightening tensions with its dozens of missile tests in recent months,” the Korea Times reported last week, citing an unnamed navy official.

  

  Seoul has claimed the exercises are needed to contain the growing threat from Pyongyang, saying they will focus on anti-submarine warfare assets and are “designed to improve their capability to respond to increasing North Korean submarine threats, including its submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs).”

  In October, the DPRK said it had successfully fired a KN-23 SLBM – modeled on the Russian Iskander missile – as part of a flurry of weapon tests carried out in retaliation to joint US-South Korean war games. The nuclear-capable KN-23 was launched from a special underwater reservoir, prompting speculation that Pyongyang may have developed a new launch platform for the weapon.

  Military activity on the Korean Peninsula has reached a multi-year high in 2022, with North Korea conducting a record number of missile tests, including two intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launches this month alone. The US and South Korea, for their part, have deployed additional strategic assets to the region, and have carried out several rounds of live-fire military exercises, helping to drive a cycle of escalation with the North. 

  Earlier this month, Washington flew nuclear-capable, long-range B-1B stealth bombers over Korea during its ‘Vigilant Storm’ drill as a show of force to Pyongyang. Though US Air Force Chief of Staff CQ Brown Jr. downplayed the maneuvers as “just part of an exercise,” the DPRK has repeatedly denounced such drills as provocative, viewing them as preparations for an attack.

  In addition to continued missile, rocket and artillery tests, North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un has pledged to further develop his country’s nuclear capabilities in response to the growing tensions, saying the military would work to improve its nuclear forces at the “fastest possible speed” back in April. 

  Kim Jong Un is still smoking near fueled liquid propellant ICBMs in 2022. https://t.co/9XbGFWWYMW

  — Ankit Panda (@nktpnd) November 18, 2022

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

  More recently, Kim claimed North Korean scientists had made a “wonderful leap forward in the development of the technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles,” going on to say that Pyongyang would create “the world’s most powerful strategic force, the absolute force unprecedented in the century.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/29/2022 – 23:25

• Deja Vu All Over Again: China's Auto Industry Is Once Again Shuttering Some Operations Due To Lockdowns
  Deja Vu All Over Again: China’s Auto Industry Is Once Again Shuttering Some Operations Due To Lockdowns

  Just when the automobile industry thought it was out of the clutches of the Covid-induced supply chain SNAFU that had taken place over the last several years, it looks as though China’s strict Covid policy threatens to pull them back in again. 

  “At least three major automakers” are once again shuttering production, according to a new report from Bloomberg this week. Honda has shut down operations in Wuhan for the time being due to “limitations around movement” in the area, the report says.

  The company also suspended operations at a lawnmower engine plant in Chongqing.

  

  Yamaha has also been hit by the new Covid lockdowns, partially suspending operations at a motorcycle plant in Chongqing. Bloomberg reports that 8,721 new COVID-19 cases were reported in the area on Monday this week. 

  VW also halted production at a joint venture plant that it has with China FAW Group on Monday of this week, the report continues. Volkswagen is attributing the shutdown to a shortage of components. It has also shut down two of five production lines at its factory in Changchun and has no date for resuming operations.

  Nissan, Mazda and Mitsubishi told Bloomberg that their operations had not been affected. 

  Recall, just last week we published on how China’s Covid restrictions were actually tightening when the country’s market had assumed they were easing. 

  

  We published:

  “More than a week after Beijing fine-tuned its Covid Zero strategy, local governments are struggling to balance the need to control the pandemic while also limit the economic damage. Shijiazhuang, a closely-watched city that had experimented with a version of “living with the virus,” has reversed course, suspending schools and asking residents to stay at home for five days. As infections multiplied, subway rides in some big cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou and Chongqing have tumbled.

  The result is that Goldman Sachs’s Effective Lockdown Index has increased in recent weeks, despite Beijing’s new order to reduce the need for mass testing and citywide shutdowns.”

  

   

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/29/2022 – 23:05

• Two Oath Keepers, Including Founder Stewart Rhodes, Found Guilty Of Jan. 6 Seditious Conspiracy
  Two Oath Keepers, Including Founder Stewart Rhodes, Found Guilty Of Jan. 6 Seditious Conspiracy

  Authored by Madalina Vasiliu via The Epoch Times,

  Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers militia group, was found guilty by a jury on Nov. 29 of seditious conspiracy connected to the events on Jan 6, 2021.

  One co-defendant, Kelly Meggs, was also found guilty of seditious conspiracy on Tuesday, while three others—Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins, and Thomas Caldwell—were acquitted of that charge.

  In total, Rhodes was found guilty on three out of five counts: seditious conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, and tampering with documents or proceedings.

  Meggs was found guilty on five counts out of six: seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging any duties, and tampering with documents.

  

  Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, center, speaks during a rally outside the White House in Washington, on June 25, 2017. (Susan Walsh/AP Photo)

  The other three defendants were each found guilty on multiple lesser charges.

  In closing arguments, defense attorneys said the government failed to prove that the Oath Keepers planned to attack the Capitol or to interfere with the certification of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, 2021.

  A defense lawyer said that none of the 50 witnesses in the Oath Keepers trial testified that they heard any of the defendants discuss or plan to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

  However, in the final rebuttal, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nestler said that according to the jury instructions (pdf), the government did not have to prove that the defendants had a detailed plan to breach the Capitol and meet in person to discuss their alleged scheme. An implicit agreement and mutual understanding were enough to prove the defendants’ conspiracy, he said.

  

  Sharon and Thomas Caldwell at the Peace Monument during the January 6, 2021 protest in Washington, D.C. (Courtesy of Sharon Caldwell)

  Nestler told the jury that the three defendants who decided to take the witness stand to testify in their defense (Stewart Rhodes, Thomas Caldwell, and Jessica Watkins) allegedly lied.

  “But it’s important to ask not just whether they lied. Ask yourself, why? Because the truth is so damning,” Nestler emphasized.

  The government told the 14 jurors that the defendants deleted evidence that could prove even further their plan to breach the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

  

  A sign outside the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in Washington on Sept. 29, 2022. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

  James Bright, the attorney for Rhodes, asked the jury how the Oath Keepers could conspire as early as November 2020 to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, if the Jan. 6 rally wasn’t announced until late December 2020.

  Rhodes founded the Oath Keepers organization in 2009 to assist in natural disaster situations, Bright said, to volunteer to provide security for small businesses that could not afford security services from a regular company and to offer personal security details for VIPs.

  Several members of the Oath Keepers testified during the weeks-long trial, saying that the organization gave them a sense of purpose since most members were retired veterans who found meaning in continuing to serve the country.

  During nearly two months of trial, the U.S. prosecutors presented exhibits showing contact between the five defendants on trial and others who allegedly plotted to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6.

  Most of the government’s evidence came from the FBI agents assigned to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach. Text messages, video footage, Signal messages (an encrypted messaging app), and Zello audio recordings (a walkie-talkie app) were frequently shown in the courtroom, among other exhibits.

  In his closing argument, defense counsel Bradford Geyer walked the jury through a video where he pointed out that unknown provocateurs broke through the Capitol doors first.

  “Please send Ken home,” Geyer told the jury.

  Another defense attorney, David Fischer, explained an unsent message that Thomas Caldwell, an Oath Keeper affiliate, deleted containing a link. That shouldn’t be considered evidence, the attorney said, since a link is not a document. That link was a video available to everyone, Fischer continued.

  The prosecution distorted timeframes throughout its presentation of when the defendants walked up the stairs and entered the building, argued Jonathan Crisp, Jessica Watkins’ attorney. He also said that the government’s evidence was mostly out of context. Crisp explained that the stack formation was a way to get through the dense crowd and not for attacking the Capitol.

  

  Only defendants Jessica Watkins, Kelly Meggs, and Kenneth Harrelson entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Rhodes and Caldwell did not.

  In the aftermath of Jan. 6, the U.S. government charged Stewart Rhodes, Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins, and Thomas Caldwell with seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, aiding and abetting, conspiracy to prevent an officer from carrying out any duties, destruction of government property, civil disorder, and tampering with documents.

  Before passing the trial to the jury on Nov. 21 evening, Judge Amit Mehta, an appointee of Barack Obama, reminded the jurors that the trial was against the five defendants on trial and not against the Oath Keepers’ organization.

  Edward Tarpley, attorney for Rhodes said, “The judge treated us with respect.”

  “There was no evidence ever introduced that there was a plan,” Tarpley told The Epoch Times, “I am grateful for the jury for not finding them guilty on all counts.”

  “Jessica testified well, however, the government will seek multiple enhancements,” Jonathan Crisp, attorney for Jessica Watkins, told The Epoch Times.

  Seditious Conspiracy

  The most recent charge of seditious conspiracy was in 2010 when the government accused nine members of the Hutaree Militia from Michigan of “levy war against the United States.” An FBI agent who infiltrated the militia group provided most of the prosecution evidence.

  When the defendants’ trial began two years later, in 2012, U.S. district judge Victoria Roberts dismissed the conspiracy charges. The judge explained that the government’s evidence mainly consisted of the defendants’ controversial speech protected by the First Amendment and did not prove the group’s alleged plan to overthrow the government.

  The U.S. government pressed multiple charges, including attempted murder and seditious conspiracy, against five members of the Puerto Rican Nationalists who attacked the Capitol in 1954. The group opened fire on the House of Representatives and injured five Congress members.

  Another seditious conspiracy charge was pressed in 1995 against Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine of his followers. They were found guilty of planning to bomb bridges, tunnels, and other landmarks in New York City.

  In 2006, Adam Gadahn was the first American charged with treason since World War II. He “gave al Qaeda aid and comfort … with intent to betray the United States.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/29/2022 – 22:45

• The White House Just Changed Its Plan To Refill SPR At $70 Per Barrel
  The White House Just Changed Its Plan To Refill SPR At $70 Per Barrel

  Several months ago, we mocked the ridiculous idea spawned by some of the “best and brightest” progressives currently cogitating and advising the 80-year-old in the White House, according to which even as Biden was actively steamrolling US energy companies by vowing to end US fossil fuel usage in a few decades and single-handedly crushing the price of oil through the biggest ever release of crude from the strategic petroleum reserve (where the term “emergency” now means not war or a natural disaster but Democrats lagging in the polls) he would be throwing them a bone by “promising” to buy oil if and when it hit a price of $72/barrell, as otherwise US producers would have zero incentive ever to invest even one dollar in growth (or even maintenance) capex, thereby guaranteeing much, much higher oil prices once the current SPR drain inevitably drew to a close (which may or many not happen in what’s left of the president’s lifetime).

  Progressives cheering the latest SPR news unaware that the government is literally giving out tens of billions in risk-free dollars to US energy producers arbing the SPR trade. https://t.co/572IYI8t9L

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 26, 2022

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  And while on paper this noble lie may have looked appealing – after all by giving an oil price floor, Biden would at least tacitly encourage US majors to invest in much needed growth capex – we warned that it was still nonetheless just that: a lie.

  Today, that was confirmed after Biden’s Energy Security Advisor Amos Hochstein said that the White House would look to refill the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves when oil prices were “consistently” at $70 per barrel, Bloomberg said.

  As a reminder, in mid-October, the White House released a fact sheet that outlined the administration’s intention to refill the SPR when oil prices were between $67 and $72 per barrel, following the President’s release of 200 million barrels from the SPR to help bring down the price of oil.

  According to the White House statement at the time, the Administration was counting on its repurchase of crude oil helping to create some certainty around future crude oil demand, stimulating greater domestic oil production. The United States has added 15 oil-directed drilling rigs since that announcement was made.

  And now, just as we expected, the Administration is walking back that plan by clarifying that its repurchase program would begin only when crude oil prices were $70 or below “consistently”.

  Hochstein did not say how long prices would need to stay at the level before repurchasing would begin.

  One thing is certain: if and when oil prices are below $70 “consistently”, the White House will next lower the bogey to $60, $50, $40 and so on… as E&Ps watch in disgust and scrap any plans to expand production in the next decade.

  Oil prices have been experiencing significant volatility over the past month, with OPEC’s production plans, the EU’s price cap plan and export ban, China’s Covid struggles, and stagnating U.S. production at the center of the volatility.

  The amount of crude oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has declined by 204.3 million barrels so far this year, with the current levels at just 389.1 million barrels—the lowest level since March 1984.

  

  “Refining and refilling the reserve at $70 a barrel is a good price for companies and it’s a good price for the taxpayers, and it’s critical to our national security,” The White House said in October. It lied, just as it has lied about everything else.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/29/2022 – 22:25

• Democrats Admit 'Assault Weapons Ban' Likely Doesn’t Have Enough Votes To Pass Senate
  Democrats Admit ‘Assault Weapons Ban’ Likely Doesn’t Have Enough Votes To Pass Senate

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

  A gun control bill that would ban “assault weapons” likely does not have enough votes to make it to President Joe Biden’s desk, Democrats said on Nov. 27.

  “I’m glad that President Biden is going to be pushing us to take a vote on an assault weapons ban. The House has already passed it. It’s sitting in front of the Senate. Does it have 60 votes in the Senate right now? Probably not,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

  “I don’t know how you get 60 votes in the Senate,” Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the House majority whip, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

  

  The Democrat controlled-House of Representatives in July passed H.R. 1808, or the Assault Weapons Ban. The law would prohibit the sale, manufacture, and possession of all semiautomatic guns.

  Democrats also control the Senate. The upper chamber is split 50–50 and Vice President Kamala Harris can cast tiebreaking votes. But to pass the filibuster, Democrats must convince 10 Republicans to support legislation.

  Republicans will gain control of the House in January 2023 after flipping seats in the midterm elections, adding urgency to the Democrat push to pass gun control bills.

  Biden on Thanksgiving called for “much stricter gun laws” and said he would call for a ban on so-called assault weapons during the lame-duck session.

  “The idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick,” Biden said.

  “It’s just sick. It has no, no social redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single, solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers,” he added.

  

  Criticism

  Pro-Second Amendment groups and some Republicans have criticized the effort to ban “assault weapons,” noting the term would encompass many firearms.

  “They are coming for everything,” the Firearms Policy Coalition said on Facebook, alongside a picture of Biden’s remarks.

  “Americans rejected Pelosi’s gun control schemes in the mid terms, yet here is Biden saying he wants to ban modern firearms, and maligning most gun owners,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said in a statement.

  He was referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and how Democrats lost the House in the midterms.

  The National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action estimated that more than 24 million guns could fall under the definition outlined in H.R. 1808.

  

  Senate Prospects

  The House narrowly passed H.R. 1808 in a 217–213 vote. Five Democrats—Reps. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), Jared Golden (D-Maine), Vincente Gonzalez (D-Texas), Ron Kind (D-Wis.), and Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.)—voted against the bill. The latter two were voted out in the midterms. Two Republicans—Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Chris Jacobs (R-N.Y.)—backed the legislation. Jacobs chose to retire due to his vote.

  Bills only need a majority vote to pass the House. In the upper chamber, most bills need to meet a threshold called the filibuster, currently set at 60 votes, in order to advance to a final vote.

  Democrats only hold 50 seats, necessitating support from at least 10 Republicans.

  Fifteen Senate Republicans joined Democrats in June in approving a gun control bill called the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, including Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), and Susan Collins (R-Maine). The bill included expanding background checks; incentivizing states to impose measures known as red flag laws, which enable judges to strip people of guns; and boosting school security.

  But none of the Republicans who voted for the bill has said they support a ban on so-called assault weapons.

  The legislation “is being implemented as we speak,” Murphy said on Sunday, adding that “it takes a little while for these big, complicated laws to be put into place.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/29/2022 – 22:05

• US Mulls 100-Mile Range Rockets For Ukraine With Boeing's Help
  US Mulls 100-Mile Range Rockets For Ukraine With Boeing’s Help

  The United States is considering transferring new longer-range rockets to Ukraine which are capable of striking targets 100 miles away, despite the Biden White House previously shutting the door on the possibility, citing worries that long-range systems could strike inside Russian territory, potentially bringing Moscow and Washington into direct confrontation. 

  But those legitimate worries over stumbling into WW3 are apparently quickly going by the wayside, as Reuters reports this week that Boeing is getting involved by proposing its Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB) for the Ukrainians, which could be delivered as early as spring 2023.

  Time is indeed of the essence from NATO’s point of view, given rapidly depleting stockpiles in the militaries of the West, which the Pentagon has also of late expressed alarm over. 

  

  The GLSDB is seen as versatile and capable of being quickly delivered to the battlefield given it combines small-diameter bombs with a key rocket technology said to be widely available among Pentagon inventories – the M26 rocket motor.

  Boeing says it can easily manufacture many of these small precision-guided bombs cable of fitting into a variety of common rocket systems. Neither Boeing nor the Pentagon have yet to officially confirm, but Reuters details:

  Although the United States has rebuffed requests for the 185-mile (297km) range ATACMS missile, the GLSDB’s 94-mile (150km) range would allow Ukraine to hit valuable military targets that have been out of reach and help it continue pressing its counterattacks by disrupting Russian rear areas.

  GLSDB is made jointly by SAAB AB and Boeing Co and has been in development since 2019, well before the invasion, which Russia calls a “special operation”. In October, SAAB chief executive Micael Johansson said of the GLSDB: “We are imminently shortly expecting contracts on that.”

  Crucially, the main appeal and priority is beginning to rest on availability… “According to the document – a Boeing proposal to U.S. European Command (EUCOM), which is overseeing weapons headed to Ukraine – the main components of the GLSDB would come from current U.S. stores,” Reuters writes.

  “The M26 rocket motor is relatively abundant, and the GBU-39 costs about $40,000 each, making the completed GLSDB inexpensive and its main components readily available,” the report adds. “Although arms manufacturers are struggling with demand, those factors make it possible to yield weapons by early 2023, albeit at a low rate of production.”

  Given that some US generals and officials have forecast that the Ukraine conflict could take years before the fighting ceases, and given already arms availability is becoming a major determinant for what gets sent, the massive Western weapons pipeline to Kiev could be growing thinner by the month. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/29/2022 – 21:45

• DeSantis: Congress Should Target Apple Over Alleged Threats To Block Twitter
  DeSantis: Congress Should Target Apple Over Alleged Threats To Block Twitter

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republicans this week said that Apple’s alleged threat to remove Twitter from its App Store warrants congressional investigation.

  “That would be a huge, huge mistake, and it would be a really raw exercise of monopolistic power that I think would merit a response from the United States Congress,” DeSantis told an audience in Duval County, Florida, on Tuesday.

  

  The “old regime” at Twitter attempted to “suffocate the dissent” in regards to COVID-19 reporting, DeSantis said, adding that Apple is acting as a “vassal of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]” while using “corporate power in the United States … to suffocate Americans.”

  The governor appeared to have been referring to reports that Apple blocked some features of its popular AirDrop service for only Chinese users prior to widespread protests against the regime’s “zero COVID” policies.

  Top story: @FLVoiceNews: ‘WATCH: Ron DeSantis says Apple removing @elonmusk‘s Twitter from app store warrants Congressional response

  “That would be a huge, huge mistake, and it would be a really raw exercise of monopol… pic.twitter.com/vmJ2ACglGb, see more https://t.co/whhQ7jVrUh

  — NewsNosh (@NewsNosh) November 29, 2022

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

  The Florida governor was referring to a claim from new Twitter owner Elon Musk’s posts on Monday that Apple, considered the world’s most valuable company, threatened to remove the Twitter app from its App Store. Apple has not yet issued a public comment on the matter, and The Epoch Times has contacted the firm for comment.

  “Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?” Musk asked on Twitter.

  “Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store,” he posted, “but won’t tell us why.” The tech billionaire also directly asked CEO Tim Cook: “What’s going on?”

  Outside of DeSantis, other Republicans said that Apple and Google have too much control over the internet via their respective app-downloading stores. Removing Twitter from both would mean that the social media app would be heavily limited in its growth and usage.

  Parler, a social media platform favored by conservatives, was removed from the App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Web Services days after the Jan. 6 Capitol incident. For more than a month, the website was not accessible, and data shows that its usage significantly dropped during that time period and has never recovered.

  “This is why we need to end the App Store duopoly before the end of this year. No one should have this kind of market power,” Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo) wrote.

  Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who co-sponsored a Senate measure targeting app stores, added that “Apple and Google currently have a stranglehold on companies and have used their leverage to bully businesses.”

  

  Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks at a gaming convention in Los Angeles, Calif., on June 13, 2019. (Mike Blake/Reuters)

  In the first quarter of 2022, Apple was the top advertiser on Twitter, spending $48 million and accounting for more than 4 percent of total revenue for the period, the Washington Post reported, citing an internal Twitter document.

  Cook, Apple’s CEO, has not yet weighed in on Musk’s comments. When asked about possibly removing Twitter from the App Store in an interview on Nov. 15, he replied: “They say that they are going to continue to moderate and so … I count on them to do that.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/29/2022 – 21:25

• Saudis Unveil Plans For Massive 6-Runway Airport Hub To Boost Tourism, Trade
  Saudis Unveil Plans For Massive 6-Runway Airport Hub To Boost Tourism, Trade

  Saudi Arabia has unveiled plans for a massive new airport in Riyadh as part of the kingdom’s ambition to diversify its economy so its fortunes aren’t solely determined by the price of oil.  

  In announcing the plan, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) said the airport would be named after his 86-year-old father, King Salman. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — the Public Investment Fund — will own the airport.

  The move is part of a previously-announced Saudi intention to invest $1 trillion to transform the head-chopping kingdom into a tourist destination.  

  

  The airport is slated to have six parallel runways on a 22-square-mile expanse, subsuming the existing King Khaled airport. The initial goal is to accommodate upwards of 120 million travelers by the end of this decade.  

  

  It’s not all about tourism. Today, just a half-million tons of airfreight transit the kingdom each year. By 2030, MBS wants to see that skyrocket to 4.5 million tons.    

  King Salman International Airport will challenge current airports in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, UAE, and Doha, Qatar. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is also launching a new national airline, RIA, to compete with the likes of Emirates and Qatar Airways. In discussions with Boeing and Airbus, RIA is slated to take its first flight by the end of this year. 

  The Public Investment Fund posted a slick video with renderings of the future “aerotropolis”: 

  Introducing King Salman International Airport.

  An aerotropolis centered around seamless passenger journeys, world-class efficient operations, and innovation.#KSIA#PIF pic.twitter.com/yNXbAizzFH

  — Public Investment Fund (@PIF_en) November 28, 2022

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

  “The airport project is in line with Saudi Arabia’s vision to transform Riyadh to be among the top ten city economies in the world and to support the growth of Riyadh’s population to 15–20 million people by 2030,” Saudi state news agency SPA said. The development is projected to create more than 100,000 jobs.

  The lofty goals for the air hub are positively humble when compared to the country’s planned building of Neom, a giant, modern mega-city in the northwest part of Saudi Arabia. Believe it or not, it’s supposed to center on two parallel skyscrapers that will be 110 miles long, 500 meters tall and house 9 million people. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/29/2022 – 21:05

• Former White House 'Disinformation Czar' Nina Jankowicz Registers As Foreign Agent
  Former White House ‘Disinformation Czar’ Nina Jankowicz Registers As Foreign Agent

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

  Nina Jankowicz, who briefly served as the Biden administration’s “disinformation czar,” has registered as a foreign agent of a nonprofit organization based in the United Kingdom.

  

  According to registration documents received by the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) unit, Jankowicz filed for her foreign agent status this month (pdf). The name of the foreign principal is listed as the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) from the United Kingdom. The nonprofit is founded and directed by Adam Rutland, a UK citizen, and Ross Burley, a dual UK–U.S. national.

  The entity is financed by a “foreign government, foreign political party, or other foreign principal,” the documents show. It receives grants from the UK government, including the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development offices.

  According to its website, CIR “is an independent, non-profit social enterprise dedicated to countering disinformation, exposing human rights abuses, and combating online behavior harmful to women and minorities.”

  What it really is, as it readily admits, is a social media influence operation.

  It’s literally for influence operations lmao pic.twitter.com/8dtThxB7j5

  — O (@O08678458) November 30, 2022

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

  At CIR, Jankowicz is tasked with supervising research, executing business strategy, overseeing the establishment of CIR’s research, communicating with the media, and briefing individuals and officials on the organization’s research, according to her registration documents.

  She will work with CIR employees from the UK via online communication platforms in order to “further the goals” of the organization.

  Jankowicz also documented that in the 60 days prior to the obligation to register for the foreign principal, she received money for promoting the interests of the organization. She cited two payments in excess of $12,000 each made in October and November with the purpose stated as “remuneration for services rendered.”

  Jankowicz was selected to lead the Disinformation Governance Board under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in April 2022. At the time, the Biden administration had portrayed Jankowicz as an expert in online disinformation.

  Her appointment instantly drew criticism, with reports showing that Jankowicz had made posts on Twitter trying to whitewash the Hunter Biden scandal as disinformation.

  She also made posts in support of the discredited “Steele dossier” that was used to smear former President Donald Trump by insisting he had ties with the Russian government.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/29/2022 – 20:45

• These Are The World's 100 Biggest Pension Funds
  These Are The World’s 100 Biggest Pension Funds

  Despite economic uncertainty, pension funds saw relatively strong growth in 2021, and as Visual Capitalist’s Jenna Ross details below, the world’s 100 biggest pension funds are worth over $17 trillion in total, an increase of 8.5% over the previous year.

  This graphic uses data from the Thinking Ahead Institute to rank the world’s biggest pension funds, and where they are located.

  

  What is a Pension Fund?

  A pension fund is a fund that is designed to provide retirement income. This ranking covers four different types:

  • Sovereign funds: Funds controlled directly by the state. This ranking only includes sovereign funds that are established by national authorities.

  • Public sector funds: Funds that cover public sector workers, such as government employees and teachers, in provincial or state sponsored plans.

  • Private independent funds: Funds controlled by private sector organizations that are authorized to manage pension plans from different employers.

  • Corporate funds: Funds that cover workers in company sponsored pension plans.

  Among the largest funds, public sector funds are the most common.

  The Largest Pension Funds, Ranked

  Here are the top 10 pension funds, organized from largest to smallest.

  

   

  U.S. fund data are as of Sep. 30, 2021, and non-U.S. fund data are as of Dec. 31, 2021. There are some exceptions as noted in the graphic footnotes.

   

  Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) is the largest in the ranking for the 21st year in a row. For a time, the fund was the largest holder of domestic stocks in Japan, though the Bank of Japan has since taken that title. Given its enormous size, investors closely follow the GPIF’s actions. For instance, the fund made headlines for deciding to start investing in startups, because the move could entice other pensions to make similar investments.

  America is home to 47 funds on the list, including the largest public sector fund: the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), overseen by the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board. Because of its large financial influence, both political parties have been accused of using it as a political tool. Democrats have pushed to divest assets in fossil fuel companies, while Republicans have proposed blocking investment in Chinese-owned companies.

  Russia’s National Wealth Fund comes in at number 19 on the list. The fund is designed to support the public pension system and help balance the budget as needed. With Russia’s economy facing difficulties amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the government has also used it as a rainy day fund. For instance, Russia has set aside $23 billion from the fund to replace foreign aircraft with domestic models, because Western sanctions have made it difficult to source replacement parts for foreign planes.

  The Future of Pension Funds

  The biggest pension funds can have a large influence in the market because of their size. Of course, they are also responsible for providing retirement income to millions of people. Pension funds face a variety of challenges in order to reach their goals:

  • Geopolitical conflict creates volatility and uncertainty

  • High inflation and low interest rates (relative to long-term averages) limit return potential

  • Aging populations mean more withdrawals and less fund contributions

  Some pension funds are turning to alternative assets, such as private equity, in pursuit of more diversification and higher returns. Of course, these investments can also carry more risk.

  Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, number 18 on the list, invested $95 million in the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX. The plan made the investment through its venture growth platform, to “gain small-scale exposure to an emerging area in the financial technology sector.”

  In this case, the investment’s failure is expected to have a minimal impact given it only made up 0.05% of the plan’s net assets. However, it does highlight the challenges pension funds face to generate sufficient returns in a variety of macroeconomic environments.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/29/2022 – 20:25

• Lawyer To Private Equity Billionaire Dies Of Self-Inflicted Gunshot On Eve Of Tax-Fraud Trial
  Lawyer To Private Equity Billionaire Dies Of Self-Inflicted Gunshot On Eve Of Tax-Fraud Trial

  You may know billionaire Robert F. Smith, 59, founder of private equity giant Vista Equity, as the richest black man in the U.S with a net worth of $8 billion.

  

  You may also know him for his escapades with the US Treasury which accused him of hiding tens of millions in income from the IRS and then using the untaxed money to buy up expensive homes in California, Colorado and France as well as putting his girlfriend up in an expensive Manhattan pad. He is also the same philanthropist who previously donated some $34 million (in more untaxed income) to pay off the student debt of black students at Morehouse College.

  

  This libertarian tax evader, however, never saw the inside of a jail: he escaped charges by agreeing to testify against his business partner, former Reynolds & Reynolds CEO Robert Brockman, who was accused of hiding $2 billion from the IRS in the largest tax bust in US history (Brockman died earlier this month). He didn’t completely get away with it however: the Vista Equities boss was hit with $139 million in fines for his admitted tax evasion.

  And while you may or may not know Bob, you probably don’t know and never heard of Houston lawyer Carlos Kepke who had been set to go on trial Monday in San Francisco federal court on charges of conspiring to defraud the IRS and aiding and abetting the filing of false tax returns by Bob.

  And you never will: Carlos, who was 83, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head on Sunday in a bedrom in his home, according to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences website.

  “The court is advised that defendant Kepke has passed away,” U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco said in a Monday order canceling the trial.

  In an interview on Monday, Kepke attorney Richard Strassberg said, “Carlos always maintained that he was innocent of these charges, and we were prepared to prove that at trial.”

  Carlos Kepke, was charged with helping Robert Smith, the billionaire founder of private equity Vista Equity Partners LLC, conceal $225 million from the IRS.

  Prosecutors had alleged Kepke created for Smith a limited liability company in Nevis called Flash Holdings, as well as an offshore trust based in Belize, called Excelsior Trust. Excelsior was set up to own Flash. Thus, when Smith’s portion of capital gains from Vista funds was deposited into accounts held in Flash’s name in Switzerland and the British Virgin Islands, the money could be routed to the offshore Excelsior trust, away from the eyes of the IRS.

  According to the DOJ’s press release, Kepke enabled what Smith has admitted to as an illegal scheme. Thanks to Kepke’s work, “Smith was able to hide this income because Excelsior, and not Smith, was the nominal owner of Flash. Smith then allegedly failed to timely and fully report his income to the IRS.”

  In 2020 Smith entered into a “non-prosecution agreement” with the DOJ, in which he admitted to felony tax evasion and the wrongful use of roughly $30 million in charitable trust funds for his personal benefit. Smith agreed to fork over $139 million in taxes and penalties, and to cooperate against affiliated scofflaws like Brockman, and Kepke. U.S. Attorney David L. Anderson said at the time that despite having committed “serious crimes,” Smith’s cooperation had “put him on a path away from indictment.”

  Both Brockman and Kepke are now dead, which may or may not will Bob sleep better at night, having thrown both under the bus to save his own ass.

  Meanwhile in Bermuda, oversight of the multi-billion-dollar A. Eugene Brockman Charitable Trust, remains in limbo, as attorneys for Brockman and his wife Dorothy argued recently to the Bermuda appelate court that they ought to appoint a new independent trustee to oversee the trust, replacing anyone connected to former trustee Tamine. According to attorneys, Cayman Island-based trust specialist Maples Group has agreed to take on the job. We are surprised Sam Bankman-Fried didn’t somehow get involved and embezzle the funds to keep his crypto scam going a little longer.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/29/2022 – 20:20

• End Of Zero-COVID Will Not Cure China's Deep-Set Debt Problem
  End Of Zero-COVID Will Not Cure China’s Deep-Set Debt Problem

  Authored by Simon White, Bloomberg macro strategist,

  China’s risk of slipping into “debt deflation” will be the longer-term driver of its asset markets even after the country finally manages to exit its Covid Zero policy. A much weaker yuan remains likely as one of the tools to alleviate the problem.

  China’s stocks and the yuan bounced today after the government said it would ramp up vaccination among its elderly population and avoid excessive virus restrictions.

  Furthermore, more property easing measures were announced, with the removal of restrictions for builders to issue shares. This adds to 16 targeted easing measures for the property market announced earlier this month. The debt of property companies, which had slumped by 80%, has rallied over 50% off the lows.

  

  Still, this will not be enough on its own to resolve China’s longstanding debt problem, and the risk that the country sinks into debt deflation. The essence of debt deflation (see diagram below) is when the value of assets and the income from these assets declines in relation to the value of liabilities, meaning the debt becomes increasingly difficult to service and pay back, leading to slower growth and ultimately deflation.

  

  The property downturn is a particular problem for China as local government debt – of which there is an estimated $8 trillion of outstanding, half of China’s GDP – is often collateralized by land values. Falling land values increase the chance of collateral calls, leading to the distressed sale of other assets, adding to deflationary dynamic.

  China saw the largest rise in private debt since 2010 of any country in the world, with the private-debt-to-GDP ratio rising a dizzying 90 percentage points.

  That has led to China’s debt service ratio, the ratio of its debt service repayments to private disposable income, to rise above 20%.

  The BIS notes that DSRs of 20%-25% have preceded financial crises in other countries. Hong Kong’s DSR is even worse at over 30%.

  

  One increasingly likely lever China will pull (and has been pulling) to ease the debt problem is allowing the yuan to weaken, and perhaps eventually dropping the fixed-rate exchange system altogether. Property easing measures and an eventual exit from Covid restrictions will help, but the debt problem is not going away.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/29/2022 – 20:05

• Cyber Monday Sales Hit Record $11.3B, Fueled By Deep Discounts
  Cyber Monday Sales Hit Record $11.3B, Fueled By Deep Discounts

  Thanks to deeper than expected discounts, Cyber Monday set new records yesterday – with online retailers pulling in $11.2 billion in sales, a 5.1% jump over 2021 when $10.7 billion of sales were recorded, according to figures from tracking firm Adobe Analytics.

  

  The figure tops Black Friday, which saw $9.12 billion in sales – while Thanksgiving saw $5.29 billion in sales. There was roughly $9.55 billion in sales over the weekend on top of that. Altogether, “Cyber Week” is expected to reach $35.27 billion in online sales, up 4% over last year. The week accounts for 16.7% of all sales in November and December, according to TechCrunch.

  

  And as we noted on Monday, the record sales were underpinned by record discounts – with electronics, toys and apparel leading the charge. Discounts on electronics were as high as 25% (vs 8% in 2021), while toys had an average discount of 34%.

  

  Followed by televisions, sporting goods, computers, furniture and appliances. Top products included games, gaming consoles, Legos, Hatchimals, Disney Encanto, Pokémon cards, Bluey, Dyson products, strollers, Apple Watches, drones, and digital cameras, according to the report (via TechCrunch).

  

  More via Techrunch:

  Adobe expects $210 billion in sales for the two months, and so far in the season mobile has accounted for 44% of sales.

  Salesforce separately released its own preliminary figures of $6 billion for Cyber Monday in the evening Monday. We’ll update these as we get more complete results.

  Notably, although inflation is definitely being felt in the U.S., Adobe said that these figures were based on more transactions overall. At the peak, people were spending $12.8 million per minute on Monday, and Adobe said that its digital price index, which tracks prices across 18 categories, said that prices have been nearly flat in recent months.

  Deep discounts — retailers perhaps anticipating needing to have something more to lure shoppers — have played a big role, too, as have the sheer availability of goods after shortages of the years before.

  “With oversupply and a softening consumer spending environment, retailers made the right call this season to drive demand through heavy discounting,” according to Adobe Digital Insights lead analyst, Vivek Pandya. “It spurred online spending to levels that were higher than expected, and reinforced e-commerce as a major channel to drive volume and capture consumer interest.”

  As far as buying trends, buy-now-pay-later transactions (BNPL) were down slightly on Cbyer Monday vs Black Friday and the weekend. According to Adobe, people tend to use BNPL when the overall shopping cart size is higher.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/29/2022 – 19:45

• Pennsylvania County That Ran Out Of Paper Ballots Fails To Certify Election Results
  Pennsylvania County That Ran Out Of Paper Ballots Fails To Certify Election Results

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

  A county in Pennsylvania that didn’t have enough paper ballots on Election Day failed to certify the results of the Nov. 8 midterms by the Nov. 28 deadline.

  

  The Luzerne County Board of Elections split 2–2 to certify the results, while one member abstained from voting. It’s unclear what the next steps are.

  Republican board members Alyssa Fusaro and Jim Mangan voted no, while Democrat members Denise Williams and Audrey Serniak voted for the certification, according to the Times Leader. Daniel Schramm, also a Democrat, was the lone board member who abstained.

  Fusaro and Mangan said the ballot shortage on Nov. 8 that caused voters to be turned away was the reason they wouldn’t certify the results, according to local media reports. Fusaro said on Nov. 28 that voters were turned away from the polls, privacy safeguards weren’t in place, and machines jammed and ran out of paper.

  “There were so many challenges, so many issues, so many problems, so many concerns, that I can’t with good conscience certify this election,” Fusaro said, stating that a new election should be held.

  Schramm said at the hearing that he’s “not a rubber stamper” and wants more time to review a reconciliation report. He also wants to look into claims made by voters on Election Day, the Times Leader reported.

  Mangan said the board “made every effort” to accept every ballot possible during the adjudication phase. The paper ballot issues, he said, triggered a “humiliating experience” for Luzerne County’s government that drew international headlines.

  The Luzerne County District Attorney’s Office previously stated that it’s investigating the paper shortage along with other issues on Election Day.

  Officials with the Pennsylvania Department of State didn’t provide an immediate public comment about the next steps. In May, three Pennsylvania counties refused to record mail-in votes from the state’s primary elections and delayed Pennsylvania’s certification of the results before a judge intervened and ordered that the votes be counted.

  During the Nov. 28 hearing, an attendee called Serniak a liar after she said, “I can’t see any massive fraud in this,” according to local media. The man was escorted out of the building by deputies.

  Deputies also asked another man to leave after he called Williams a communist and said board members shouldn’t vote until voters get a full explanation of why the paper shortage was caused.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/29/2022 – 19:25

• NASA's Orion Spacecraft Breaks Apollo 13 Record For Further Distance From Earth
  NASA’s Orion Spacecraft Breaks Apollo 13 Record For Further Distance From Earth

  The uncrewed Orion capsule, the centerpiece of NASA’s historic Artemis I mission, reached its farthest distance from Earth on Monday, breaking the record for the maximum distance a spacecraft developed to carry humans has ever traveled.

  The space agency tweeted that Orion reached its maximum distance from Earth of 268,563, adding the uncrewed capsule “has now traveled farther than any other spacecraft built for humans.” 

  

  Record-breaking distance! @NASA_Orion, a spacecraft designed to carry astronauts to deep space destinations, has reached its farthest distance from Earth today — nearly 270,000 miles away! pic.twitter.com/V4pU5Pjguv

  — NASA Astronauts (@NASA_Astronauts) November 28, 2022

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

  On Saturday, Orion broke the record-setting distance of 248,655 miles from Earth, achieved by the Apollo 13 crewed command module over a half-century ago. 

  Orion is set to fire its engines on Thursday and head back to Earth with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California on December 11.

  If all goes well for the pivotal mission, then the Artemis II mission could fly astronauts around the moon in 2024. By 2025, astronauts could return to the lunar surface via the Artemis III mission. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/29/2022 – 19:05

• Bahamas AG Says FTX 'Debacle' Not Their Fault
  Bahamas AG Says FTX ‘Debacle’ Not Their Fault

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

  Bahamas Attorney General Ryan Pinder took to the podium Sunday night to defend his country’s securities regulators against “inaccurate allegations” by the U.S.-based legal team, led by veteran work-out attorney John Ray III, that has taken over management of FTX in bankruptcy, following the cryptocurrency exchange’s abrupt collapse in early November.

  “It is possible that the prospect of multimillion-dollar legal and consultancy fees is driving both their legal strategy and their intemperate statements,” Pinder alleged, adding that “any attempt to lay the entirety of this debacle at the feet of the Bahamas because FTX is headquartered here would be a gross oversimplification of reality.”

  

  Ray is reportedly earning $1,300 per hour, with a $200,000 retainer, to lead the work-out effort. Other attorneys are reported to earn $975 per hour, with other technical and investigative consultants earning $50,000 per month. In addition, many of the original 350 FTX employees are being kept on the payroll in order to try to preserve for investors whatever value of the company remains, but according to Ray, even figuring out who all these employees are has been challenging.

  Ray states in his bankruptcy declaration of Nov. 17 that because of poor record keeping by the company’s human resources department, bankruptcy attorneys “have been unable to prepare a complete list of who worked for the FTX Group as of the petition date or the terms of their employment. Repeated attempts to locate certain presumed employees to confirm their status have been unsuccessful to date.”

  

  Founded by Sam Bankman-Fried in 2019, FTX was valued at $32 billion by 2021 and was the third-largest exchange for cryptocurrency in the world, with more than a million investors trading its version of digital currency, known as FTT. Bankman-Fried’s net worth at the height of the crypto market was believed to be $16 billion.

  The crypto market has had a difficult year across the board, falling from a total global market capitalization of $3 trillion a year ago to around $800 billion today, with other crypto companies facing bankruptcy. But FTX had specific problems beyond the general market decline.

  On Nov. 6, Binance, a rival exchange to FTX, abruptly sold off its $2 trillion holdings of FTT, which it acquired in connection with a prior stake in FTX. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao noted in a tweet: “Due to recent revelations that have came to light, we have decided to liquidate any remaining FTT on our books.”

  Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research at the time, responded by tweet to Binance: “If you’re looking to minimize the market impact of your FTT sales, Alameda will happily buy it all from you today at $22!” But Alameda was unable to make good on this pledge, and the massive unloading of FTT sparked other investors to rush to sell the digital coin as its value collapsed, sparking a liquidity crisis at FTX.

  According to Pinder, “FTX was experiencing the equivalent of a run on a bank, when customers are all rushing to withdraw all of their assets simultaneously.” Binance then offered to step in and acquire FTX, but quickly withdrew its offer once it got a look at FTX’s books, which Ray subsequently described as “a complete failure of corporate controls and a complete absence of trustworthy financial information.”

  Liquidity issues, it now appears, were only the tip of the iceberg. To date, the investigation of FTX’s books indicates that money that investors put up to buy FTT crypto on the exchange was being passed from their exchange accounts to an affiliated hedge fund called Alameda Research. It was also being lent out to owners, used to buy houses in the Bahamas and elsewhere, donated to various progressive causes that Bankman-Fried supported, or paid out as political donations.

  But the blame for regulators failing to notice any of this should not be placed solely on the Bahamas, Pinder said. Of the more than 100 subsidiaries and affiliates of FTX’s crypto empire, FTX Digital Markets is the only entity regulated in the Bahamas, according to Pinder. Alameda Research, the hedge fund affiliate of FTX, is registered in Delaware. According to Ray’s bankruptcy filing, however, other Alameda affiliate companies are registered in the Bahamas, as well as in Korea, Japan, the British Virgin Islands, Antigua, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Seychelles, the Cayman Islands, Australia, Panama, Turkey, and Nigeria.

  ‘Next Warren Buffet’

  Numerous FTX subsidiaries are registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), with some operating with licenses from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)—both U.S. regulators who were established to protect small investors and appear to have had no concerns about illicit activity at FTX prior to the bankruptcy filing. At the height of his success, Bankman-Fried was lauded on the cover of Forbes and Fortune Magazine, which referred to him as the “next Warren Buffet.”

  

  He was praised for his support of progressive causes, which ranged from climate change to pandemic policy. Sam’s brother, Gabe Bankman-Fried, ran the advocacy group Guarding Against Pandemics, which sought to increase government efforts for pandemic prevention and to which Bankman-Fried donated millions.

  Bankman-Fried had relationships and took meetings with prominent politicians and regulators, including SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, who seemingly also failed to notice anything amiss at FTX during a 45-minute phone call with Bankman-Fried. Bankman-Fried was the second-largest donor to the Democratic Party, after billionaire hedge-fund manager George Soros, and donated $10 million to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. Of the tens of millions of dollars Bankman-Fried donated to political campaigns, $262,200 went to Republican candidates, while $40 million went to Democrats.

  Pinder took no questions after his speech and did not address other open issues, including whether FTX founder and ex-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried would be extradited to the United States to face criminal charges or whether the global assets of the FTX empire would be consolidated from the various jurisdictions around the globe into the United States, as the bankruptcy team is attempting to do.

  Bankman-Fried remains a headline speaker at the upcoming New York Times’ DealBook Summit, which also features BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, actor Ben Affleck, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, among others. BlackRock was reportedly one of the investors in FTX.

  A recent tweet from Bankman-Fried stated, “I’ll be speaking with [New York Times business columnist] Andrew Sorkin at the dealbook summit next Wednesday (11/30).”

  The Times’ summit, billed as a gathering of “today’s most vital minds on a single stage,” identifies Bankman-Fried as “a 29-year-old American investor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist.”

  “At this time, we expect Mr. Bankman-Fried will be participating in the interview from the Bahamas,” a spokesperson for the New York Times told The Epoch Times.

  Bankman-Fried’s parents, both professors at Stanford University, are prominent supporters of the Democratic Party. His mother, Barbara Fried, is the founder of “Mind the Gap,” a secretive Silicon Valley fundraising organization for Democrat candidates. Mind the Gap has reportedly raised approximately $20 million from tech investors to support left-wing political campaigns.

  ‘A Very Complex Investigation’

  In defense of Bahamian regulators, Pinder said that authorities in the Bahamas were the first in the world to act when trouble at FTX became apparent, and that there were “a number of protective measures” that were taken by the Bahamian Securities Commission on Nov. 10, including freezing FTX’s accounts, seizing FTX’s assets and putting FTX into provisional liquidation the day after rival crypto exchange Binance abruptly pulled out of a deal to acquire FTX.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/29/2022 – 18:45

• There's A $19 Billion Backlog Of Weapons Bound For Taiwan
  There’s A $19 Billion Backlog Of Weapons Bound For Taiwan

  US-approved weapons deliveries to Taiwan have been considerably delayed and slowed throughout the course of the nine-month long Ukraine war, despite the US having approved some $20 billion total in arms sales for the self-ruled island since 2017. In October, Defense News cited a $14 billion backlog in sales from the US, but that number has now dramatically increased to a nearly $19 billion backlog, according to a fresh estimate in The Wall Street Journal. 

  “U.S. government and congressional officials fear the conflict in Ukraine is exacerbating a nearly $19 billion backlog of weapons bound for Taiwan, further delaying efforts to arm the island as tensions with China escalate,” the report begins. 

  

  The WSJ continues with a somewhat rare mainstream media acknowledgement that was missing-in-action from public discourse, albeit an easily predictable outcome, during the opening months of the war: “The U.S. has pumped billions of dollars of weapons into Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February, taxing the capacity of the government and defense industry to keep up with a sudden demand to arm Kyiv in a conflict that isn’t expected to end soon.”

  This puts the ability of the Pentagon to respond adequately to any potential major cross-strait crisis in question for the near and long term: “The flow of weapons to Ukraine is now running up against the longer-term demands of a U.S. strategy to arm Taiwan to help it defend itself against a possible invasion by China, according to congressional and government officials familiar with the matter,” WSJ observes.

  Ironically, American and Taiwanese officials themselves have consistently referenced the Ukraine crisis as demonstrating why the US “must” urgently equip the island with everything it needs. And yet, until now few officials have admitted the reality that US arms manufacturing can’t keep up, especially not if an additional conflict beyond Ukraine were to suddenly open up.

  Additionally, other NATO allies are facing this same problem and worry, especially ‘neutral’ Germany which has dramatically shifted its historic stance on not sending weapons into foreign conflict zones. A number of German politicians have warned that Berlin should not be sharing weapons from its own arsenal, given that “Unfortunately, the situation here is such that we have an absolute deficit in our own stocks,” according a prior admission of Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock – words which came at the end of the summer.

  She had told German media agency ZDF at the time: “However, Germany must also think in the medium term. Due to the German arms problem, the armaments industry had to dedicatedly produce material for the Ukraine.” By many accounts Ukraine’s military has only ramped up its plowing through artillery ammo, which the West has struggled to replace at the rates needed to hold off the superior numbers of Russian forces. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/29/2022 – 18:25

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• China: The World's First Technate – Part 1
  China: The World’s First Technate – Part 1

  Authored by Iain Davis via Off-Guardian.org,

  We are being rapidly transitioned into a new system of centralised, authoritarian global governance. This system is designed to be a technocracy and it is truly totalitarian.

  Totalitarianism is a form of government that attempts to assert total control over the lives of its citizens. It is characterized by strong central rule that attempts to control and direct all aspects of individual life through coercion and repression. It does not permit individual freedom. Traditional social institutions and organizations are discouraged and suppressed, making people more willing to be merged into a single unified movement. Totalitarian states typically pursue a special goal to the exclusion of all others, with all resources directed toward its attainment, regardless of the cost.

  That “special” goal is sustainable development and no cost, either financial or humanitarian, is too great to tackle the alleged “climate crisis.” In reality, climate change is simply the excuse for sustainable development and it is through the global policy commitment to “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs) that technocracy is being installed.

  A technocratic society is called a Technate and the world’s first Technate has emerged in China. In this two part exploration we will look at how this system was constructed, who was behind it and why technocracy is now being foisted upon all of us.

  

  These articles are drawn largely from my 2021 publication Pseudopandemic. It is free to subscribers to my blog.

  GLOBAL TECHNOCRATIC GOVERNANCE

  In order for global technocracy to be rolled-out, authority needs to be centrally controlled at the global level. Governments, intergovernmental organisations and multinational corporations have collaborated to form a global public-private partnership  (G3P) for this purpose.

  Throughout the 20th and 21st century the G3P network has sought to construct global governance. In turn, global governance enables the worldwide distribution of the technocracy that governments then convert into national policy commitments. Many components of global technocratic governance have already been established.

  The World Heath Organisation (WHO) delivers global governance of public health; global access to technological development is meted out through the World Intellectual Property Organization; the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) works to coordinate economic policies between nation-states and global trade is monitored and controlled through the trade agreements overseen by the World Trade Organisation.

  The Bank For International Settlements (BIS) coordinates global monetary policy and the flow of capital; the direction of education, academia, the sciences and cultural development is steered through the U.N Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the seizure of the global commons and the “financialisation” of nature—through natural asset companies and other mechanisms—is nearing completion.

  Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are centrally controlled through global governance, primarily by the U.N Development and Environmental programs (UNDP & UNEP). The necessary global scientific consensus on climate change is centrally administered and the appropriate research funding streams allocated, by the U.N’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

  The powerful individuals, pushing the G3P project forward, are a collective of mass polluters, robber barons, land grabbers and the world’s leading exponents of worker exploitation, market manipulation, monetary extortion (usury) and oppression. They form what would otherwise be considered a criminal cartel but have greenwashedtheir reputations through their commitment to so-called “sustainable development.”

  Often referred to as the elite, a more fitting description is “the parasite class.”

  The G3P has managed to convince billions that it is committed to sustainable, net zero, environmentalism and wants to “save the planet.” It is actually determined to empower global governance and enforce technocracy upon humanity through SDGs and the associated policy Agendas. Regardless of what you think about the causes of climate change or the level of risk it presents, SDGs do nothing to address it and are designed to serve no-one and nothing other than the G3P and its interests.

  In order to requisition, commodify, audit and ultimately divide up the Earth’s resources among themselves, the stakeholder capitalists, at the heart of the G3P, also need technocratic control. Once humanity figures out what has happened, technocracy will enable the G3P to shutdown resistance through literal population control.

  Every human being will be individually monitored by Artificial Intelligence (AI) networks which will punish or reward them, depending upon their behaviour. Biosecurity and environmental concerns are set to provide the justification for this enslavement.

  Much like the quack pseudo-science of eugenics, which many G3P “thought leaders” seem to believe, Technocracy was the social science certainty of its day. Like eugenics, while it has subsequently faded from public consciousness, it is still avidly pursued by the G3P’s compartmentalised hierarchy.

  TECHNOCRACY

  In 1911, arguably the worlds first management consultant, Frederick Winslow Taylor, published The Principles of Scientific Management. His publication came at the culmination of the Progressive Era in the United States.

  This was a period marked by the political activism of the US middle class who mainly sought to address the underlying social problems, as they saw them, of excessive industrialisation, immigration and political corruption. So-called “Taylorism,” fixated with the imminent exhaustion of natural resources and advocating efficient “scientific management systems,” was in the spirit of the age.

  Taylor wrote:

  In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first. [. . .] The best management is a true science, resting upon clearly defined laws, rules, and principles. [. . . ] The fundamental principles of scientific management are applicable to all kinds of human activities, from our simplest individual acts to the work of our great corporations.

  Taylorism advocated science driven efficiency reforms across society. An efficient system should not be run by politicians or religious leaders but by “experts,” such as engineers, scientists, logistical experts, economists and other academics. The focus should always be on systemic efficiency and the proper use of precious resources, including labour.

  Though Taylor’s ideas were influenced by Social Darwinism he wasn’t a eugenicist. However, his ideas were adopted by eugenicists. It “fitted” with their belief in their unassailable right to rule.

  Just as they could optimise and control the human population, so they could employ the right experts to make socioeconomic and industrial systems more efficient. They could promote this as being for “the public good” while at the same time consolidating their own power and reaping a greater financial harvest from a more efficient industrialised society.

  Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management chimed with the theories of economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblan. He proposed that economic activity wasn’t just a function of supply and demand, utility, value and so forth, but rather it evolved with society and was thus shaped by psychological, sociological and anthropological influences.

  Both Taylor and Veblan were focused upon improving the efficiency of industrial and manufacturing processes. However, they also recognised that their theories could be extended to the wider social context. It was the more expansive application of their ideas that beguiled the parasite class.

  Veblan famously spoke about “conspicuous consumption” to describe how the affluent displayed their social standing through their ability to engage in pursuits and buy items that were essentially purposeless and wasteful. This “conspicuous leisure” and “consumption” cascaded down through the class structure, as those aspiring to signal their own status emulated the wealthy.

  He argued that this was a major contributory factor toward unacceptable resource waste and inefficiency. Consumer society ultimately produced more goods and services than it needed simply to meet the artificial demand created for, in his view, avoidable and unnecessary social demand.

  Veblan was strongly opposed to this inefficient use of resources which he blamed on the “business classes” and financiers. He valued their contribution to the industrial age but felt they were no longer capable of managing modern industrial society.

  Initially, Veblan argued that the workers must therefore be the architects of the necessary social change that would create economic and industrial reform. Later, in the Engineers and the Price System he shifted his focus away from workers, as the drivers of change, towards technocratic engineers.

  

  Thorsten Veblan

  He called for a thorough analysis of the institutions which maintained social stability. Once understood, he opined, those with technological expertise should reform the institutions and thereby engineer society and improve efficiency. Veblan referred to these social change agents as a “soviet of technicians.”

  In 1919 Veblan was among the founders of the John D. Rockefeller funded private research university in New York called the New School for Social Research. This soon led to the creation of the Technical Alliance as Veblan joined a small team of scientists and engineers, notably Howard Scott, to form a fledgling technocratic organisation.

  

  Howard Scott

  Scott didn’t like Veblan’s description of a soviet of technicians, reportedly calling it “a cockeyed thing.” The clear association with communism probably wasn’t welcome from a PR perspective, and Scott felt it undermined what he was trying to achieve with the technocracy movement.

  Veblan’s involvement with the Technical Alliance was relatively brief and some have suggested that his contribution to technocracy was minimal, accrediting Scott as the great mind behind it. Regardless of the extent of Veblan’s personal involvement in the movement, his socioeconomic theories permeate technocracy.

  In 1933 the Technical Alliance reformed after an enforced hiatus, prompted by Scott’s exposure as a fraudster—he falsified his engineering credentials. The group renamed themselves Technocracy inc.

  Despite his public humiliation, Scott was a skilled orator and remained the spokesman for Technocracy inc. He worked with, among others, M. King Hubbert who would later become globally renowned for his vague and generally inaccurate “peak oil” theory.

  Scott and Hubbert collaborated to write The Technocracy Inc study course to formerly introduce the world to technocracy. At the time, the proposed technocracy was technologically impossible and sounded pretty crazy. However, we are certainly more familiar with these ideas today.

  Hubbert wrote:

  Technocracy finds that the production and distribution of an abundance of physical wealth on a Continental scale for the use of all Continental citizens can only be accomplished by a Continental technological control, a governance of function, a Technate.

  The Technate, a technocratic society initially envisaged to encompass the North American continent, would be administered by a central planning body formed of scientists, engineers and other suitably qualified technocrats. Technocracy would require a new monetary system based upon a calculation of the Technate’s total energy usage. People would be allocated an equal share of the corresponding “energy certificates” (as a form of currency) denominated in units of energy (Joule):

  [I]ncome is granted to the public in the form of energy certificates. [. . .] They are issued individually to every adult of the entire population. [. . .] The record of one’s income and its rate of expenditure is kept by the Distribution Sequence, [the envisaged ledger of transactions]. [. . .] so that it is a simple matter at any time for the Distribution Sequence to ascertain the state of an unknown customer’s balance. [. . .] Energy Certificates also contain the following additional information about the person to whom issued: whether he has not yet begun his period of service, is now performing service, or is retired [where service to the Technate is rewarded with Energy Certificates] [. . .] sex, [. . .] the geographical area in which he resides, and [. . .] job at which he works.

  A new price system was envisaged with all commodities and goods priced according to the energy cost of their production. Purchases made with “energy certificates” would then be reported back to the appropriate department of the technocratic central planning committee. The transactions would be catalogued and analysed, enabling the central planners to precisely calculate the rolling energy balance, between energy production and consumption, for the entire Technate.

  In order for this system to work, all consumer’s energy expenditure (including all daily transactions) would need to be recorded in real time; the national inventory of net energy production and consumption would have to be constantly updated, around the clock; a registry of every commodity and product needed to be scrupulously maintained, with every individual living in the Technate allocated a personal energy account. This would be updated to record their energy usage and personal net energy balance.

  Hubbert & Scott made it clear that, for technocracy to work, an all pervasive energy surveillance grid would be required. All citizens would be individually identified on the grid and every aspect of their daily lives monitored and controlled by the technocratic central planners.

  Technocracy is a totalitarian form of surveillance based, centralised authoritarian governance which abolishes national sovereignty and political parties. Freedoms and rights are replaced with a duty to behave in the interest of a common good, as defined by the technocrats. All decisions about production, allocation of resources, all technological innovation and economic activity is controlled by a technocracy of experts (Veblan’s “soviet of technicians”).

  In 1938 in Technocrat Magazine vol. 3 No. 4 (to give it its technocratic specification) technocracy was described as:

  The science of social engineering, the scientific operation of the entire social mechanism to produce and distribute goods and services to the entire population.

  For the parasite class, and their G3P stakeholder partners, technocracy was an irresistible idea. Technocracy potentially enables the precise engineering of society through the control of resources and energy through the mechanism of a linked, centrally planned and monitored, economic and monetary system.

  The Technocracy inc Study Course claims:

  The significance of this, from the point of view of knowledge of what is going on in the social system, and of social control, can best be appreciated when one surveys the whole system in perspective. First, one single organization is manning and operating the whole social mechanism. This same organization not only produces but distributes all goods and services. Hence a uniform system of record-keeping exists for the entire social operation, and all records of production and distribution clear to one central headquarters.

  In order to control everything all the parasite class would need to do is whisper in the ear of a few hand-picked technocrats. There would be no need to corrupt politicians or orchestrate international crisis anymore. While in the 1930’s the Technate was an impracticable proposition, it was still something to inspire the G3P and a goal to work towards.

  

  Scott Speaking at a Technocracy inc. Rally

  THE TECHNOCRATIC OPPORTUNITY

  Understanding that technological development would eventually enable the Technate to be realised, in 1970 Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski (1928 – 2017) wrote Between Two Ages: America’s Role In The Technetronic Era. At the time, he was a professor of political science at Columbia university, where Scott had first met Hubbert in 1932. He had already been an advisor to both the Kennedy and Johnson campaigns and would later become National Security Advisor to US President Jimmy Carter (1977 – 1981).

  Brzezinski was a significant influence on late 20th Century US foreign policy, far beyond his years in the Carter administration. The Democrat counterpart to Republican Henry Kissinger, he was a centrist and his deep dislike of the Soviet Union often placed him on the right of Kissinger on related issues. He supported the Vietnam War and was instrumental in “Operation Cyclone“ which saw the US arm, train and equip Islamist extremists in Afghanistan.

  He was a member of numerous policy think tanks including the Council on Foreign Relations, The Center For Strategic & International Studies, Le Cercle and was a regular attendee at the annual parasite class soiree, the Bilderberg conference. In 1973 he and David Rockefeller formed the Trilateral Commission policy think tank. Brzezinski was very much part of the Deep State milieu and the G3P.

  

  Zbigniew Brzezinski (March 28, 1928 – May 26, 2017)

  Between Two Ages is a geopolitical analysis and practical set of policy recommendations born from Brzezinski’s view that digital technology would transform society, culture, politics and the global balance of political power. It also provides us with a clear view of the mindset of the parasite class.

  Brzezinski didn’t reference technocracy directly, perhaps wary of its rather sketchy reputation following Scott’s disgrace. However, he did describe it in detail throughout the book:

  Technological adaptation would involve the transformation of the bureaucratic dogmatic party into a party of technocrats. Primary emphasis would be on scientific expertise, efficiency, and discipline. [. . .] the party would be composed of scientific experts, trained in the latest techniques, capable of relying on cybernetics and computers for social control.

  He theorised about, what he called, the “Technetronic Age” and offered a vision of the near future, from the perspective of the 1970’s. Brzezinski predicted that this Age would arise as a result of the Technetronic Revolution. This would be the “third revolution” to follow the industrial revolution. Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, would later call this the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

  Brzezinski wrote:

  The post industrial society is becoming a ‘technetronic’ society: a society that is shaped culturally, psychologically, socially, and economically by the impact of technology and electronics—particularly in the area of computers and communications.

  He then went on to describe what he thought life in the Technetronic Age would be like for ordinary men, women and their families. He foretold how political and industrial control would be replaced by psychological control mechanisms, such as the cult of personality, steering us towards behaviour change. Our lives would be managed through computing power and, in the parlance of today, led by science:

  Both the growing capacity for the instant calculation of the most complex interactions and the increasing availability of biochemical means of human control augment the potential scope of consciously chosen direction. [. . .] Masses are organized in the industrial society by trade unions and political parties and unified by relatively simple and somewhat ideological programs. [. . .] In the technetronic society the trend seems to be toward aggregating the individual support of millions of unorganized citizens, who are easily within the reach of magnetic and attractive personalities, and effectively exploiting the latest communication techniques to manipulate emotions and control reason.

  He also explained how technology would enable extensive behaviour modification and manipulation of the population. He foresaw (suggested) how this could be weaponised:

  It may be possible—and tempting—to exploit for strategic political purposes the fruits of research on the brain and on human behavior. [. . .] one could develop a system that would seriously impair the brain performance of very large populations in selected regions over an extended period.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote enthusiastically, through a paper-thin veil of caution, about how a “global scientific elite” could not only use extreme, all-pervasive propaganda, economic and political manipulation to determine the direction of society, but could also exploit technology and behavioural science to genetically alter and brainwash the population.

  Describing the form of this society and the potential for technocratic control, he wrote:

  Such a society would be dominated by an elite whose claim to political power would rest on allegedly superior scientific know-how. Unhindered by the restraints of traditional liberal values, this elite would not hesitate to achieve its political ends by using the latest modern techniques for influencing public behavior and keeping society under close surveillance and control.

  He claimed that the “Technetronic Age” he described was inevitable. Therefore he asserted that the future of the United States (and the planet) must be centrally planned. These planners would eventually displace “the lawyer as the key social legislator and manipulator.”

  As is so often the excuse, warning that others—he meant the Soviet Union—wouldn’t hesitate to embark on this dark social engineering path, this therefore necessitated the urgent need for US geopolitical strategists to develop this network of planners (technocracy) first. This would be done by fusing government with academia and private corporations (the G3P).

  He stated that political parties would become increasingly irrelevant, replaced by regional structures pursuing “urban, professional, and other interests.” These could be used to “provide the focus for political action.” He understood the potential for this localised, technocratic administrative system:

  In the technetronic age the greater availability of means permits the definition of more attainable ends, thus making for a less doctrinaire and a more effective relationship between ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be.

  He also suggested a redefinition of freedom. Liberty would be achieved through centrally planned public commitment to social and economic equality. The “public good” thus defined by the technocrats.

  The positive potential of the third American revolution lies in its promise to link liberty with equality.

  Brzezinski recognised that it would be impossible to impose world government directly. Rather it should be gradually constructed through a system of global governance comprised of treaties, bilateral agreements and intergovernmental organisations:

  Though the objective of shaping a community of the developed nations is less ambitious than the goal of world government, it is more attainable. [. . .] It [global governance] attempts to create a new framework for international affairs not by exploiting these divisions [between nation-states] but rather by striving to preserve and create openings for reconciliation.

  One “opening” that he was particularly interested in was China. Tensions between Russia and China had continued to rumble on and, as Brzezinski wrote Between Two Ages, they had spilled over into a border conflict. He saw that the Sino-Soviet split had created an opportunity to shape China’s modernisation:

  In China the Sino-Soviet conflict has already accelerated the inescapable Sinification of Chinese communism. That conflict shattered the revolution’s universal perspective and—perhaps even more important— detached Chinese modernization from its commitment to the Soviet model. Hence, whatever happens in the short run, in years to come Chinese development will probably increasingly share the experience of other nations in the process of modernization. This may both dilute the regime’s ideological tenacity and lead to more eclectic experimentation in shaping the Chinese road to modernity.

  These ideas were firmly in Brzezinski’s mind when he and committed eugenicist David Rockefeller, whose family had been bankrolling technocratic initiatives for more than 50 years, first convened the Trilateral Commission. They were eventually joined by other so called “thought leaders” like population control expert Henry Kissinger, Club of Rome environmentalist Gro Harlem Brundtland, US presidents like Bill Clinton, and the president of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass, who more recently wrote World Order 2.0.

  

  CONSTRUCTING THE TECHNATE IN CHINA

  Mao Zedong’s “great leap forward” saw 40 million people brutalised and starved to death in just three horrific years (1959 – 1961). Apologists claim this was all a terrible mistake but it was nothing of the kind.

  In the certain knowledge that food supplies were running out, in 1958 Mao said “to distribute resources evenly will only ruin the Great Leap Forward” and later the same year:

  When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. It is better to let half the people die so that others can eat their fill.

  In his zeal to create a communist utopia, Mao presided over a system that seized food from starving millions and exported it to fund his political reforms and determination to rapidly industrialise the economy. It wasn’t an error or an unfortunate oversight. While many were so terrified that they submitted fake reports of surpluses that didn’t exist, it is clear that the leadership of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) knew exactly what the human costs were. They just didn’t care.

  

  Mao and Rockefeller’s view of the Great Leap Forward

  Nor did David Rockefeller, as evidenced by his 1973 op-ed for the New York Times. He and his Chase Group banking empire delegation had visited Maoist China. In his account of the trip, Rockefeller dismissed the mass murder of millions as “whatever.” It was the product of genocide that Rockefeller was interested in:

  One is impressed immediately by the sense of national harmony. [. . .] There is a very real and pervasive dedication to Chairman Mao and Maoist principles. Whatever the price of the Chinese revolution it has obviously succeeded, not only in producing a more efficient administration, but also in fostering. [. . .] a community of purpose.

  The Trilateralist Rockefeller could see the opportunity the Chinese dictatorship presented the parasite class. In full agreement with Brzezinski, he wrote:

  Too often the true significance and potential of our new relationship with China has been obscured. [. . .] In fact, of course, we are experiencing a much more fundamental phenomenon. [. . .] The Chinese, for their part, are faced with altering a primarily inward focus. [. . .] We, for our part, are faced with the realization that we have largely ignored a country with one-fourth of the world’s population.

  The “we” Rockefeller referred to was not us. He meant the G3P and his fellow “stakeholder capitalists” and Trilateralists.

  The totalitarian order in China impressed him as he hoped it would. He wasn’t the first Trilateralist to see the technocratic possibilities in China. The sheer scale of the market was an enticing prospect and the promise of the “Technetronic Age” raised the real potential to build the world’s first Technate.

  Completely discounting the appalling loss of human life, Rockefeller wrote:

  The social experiment in China under Chairman Mao’s leadership is one of the most important and successful in human history. How extensively China opens up and how the world reacts to the social innovation. [. . .] is certain to have a profound impact upon the future of many nations.

  

  The Great Leap Forward

  The G3P’s task was to crack open the Chinese market while supporting ongoing totalitarian rule. China would need help with its economic development and technical support to build the technological infrastructure necessary for technocracy to work. This process had already begun, but with Rockefeller, Brzezinski, Kissinger and others committed to the cause, the target of constructing a Technate was firmly in the Trilateral Commission’s sights.

  The Trilateralists set about assisting China to develop both economically and technologically, while remaining careful to avoid applying too much pressure for political reform. Totalitarianism was a system they supported and wanted to exploit. In their 1978 Paper No. 15 on East-West Relations they suggested:

  To grant China favourable conditions in economic relations is definitely in the political interest of the West.. there seems to exist sufficient ways for aiding China in acceptable forms with advanced civilian technology.

  In the same paper the Trilateralists announced that they weren’t entirely averse to helping China modernise their military capability, though they stressed this should only be for defensive purposes.

  They accepted that a modern, militarised China might turn to expansionism and seek to regain territory it historically claimed as its own, in particular Taiwan. They judged this was a reasonable risk to take.

  They were playing the great game. Human lives were of no concern.

  In Part 2 we will look at how they set about constructing the world’s first Technate in China.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/28/2022 – 23:40

• Police Bust "Super Cartel" Behind One-Third Of Europe's Cocaine Trade
  Police Bust “Super Cartel” Behind One-Third Of Europe’s Cocaine Trade

  Law enforcement agents across six countries joined forces to bust a “super cartel” of drug traffickers controlling about one-third of cocaine flows into Europe, the European Union crime agency stated Monday.

  🚨 Super cartel controlling one third of Europe’s cocaine trade is taken down

  👥 49 arrests following parallel investigations in Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the UAE with the support of Europol

  More➡️https://t.co/wzkpoAKAx1https://t.co/5JBHRdXwDP

  — Europol (@Europol) November 28, 2022

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

  Europol said a series of raids (dubbed “Operation Desert Light”) between Nov. 8 and 19 in multiple countries led to the arrest of 49 suspects and the seizure of 30 tons of drugs. The raids were in Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UAE. 

  

  “The drugpins, considered as high-value targets by Europol, had come together to form what was known as a ‘super cartel’ which controlled around one-third of the cocaine trade in Europe,” Europol said.

  “The scale of cocaine importation into Europe under the suspects’ control and command was massive and over 30 tons of drugs were seized by law enforcement over the course of the investigations,” the law enforcement agency said, adding cartel members used a super encrypted communication network to arrange drug shipments. 

  The Netherlands had the most arrests, with 14 suspects in 2021 and six “high-value targets” in Dubai. Shipments of cocaine were imported from Panama in Central America. 

  

  “This coordinated clampdown sends a strong message to criminals seeking sanctuary from law enforcement,” Europol said. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/28/2022 – 23:20

• The Emperor Elonicus
  The Emperor Elonicus

  Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

  Everyone is going to hate this column. Musk worshipers are going to hate it because I’m going to blaspheme against Elon Musk. Musk demonizers are going to hate it because I am not going to blaspheme against him enough. Everyone else is going to hate it because they’re sick to the gills of hearing about Musk, and Musk’s destruction of Twitter, or his salvation of Twitter, and censorship, and “hate speech,” and all that stuff.

  

  I’ll get to the blasphemy part in a minute, but first, let’s quickly review what’s happened, and where things now stand, or appear to stand.

  On October 27, 2022, so almost exactly a month ago, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, US government military contractor and all-around global-capitalist oligarch with a net worth approaching $200 billion, completed his acquisition of Twitter, the notorious “hell-site” where Donald Trump, the Russian-backed literal Resurrection of Hitler, Jordan Peterson, the “lobster hierarchy” guy, Alex “the Devil Incarnate” Jones, and assorted members of the “deplorable” masses had been wantonly perpetrating acts of “hate speech,” disseminating “disinformation,” and otherwise unrestrainedly expressing themselves, until Twitter’s “content moderators” started censoring, deboosting, and deplatforming everyone whose views and opinions they didn’t like.

  As it turned out, most of the views and opinions they did not like, and thus needed to censor, were views and opinions that conflicted with their increasingly fanatical “woke” ideology, or allegiance to the Democratic Party, or one of its European equivalents, or which contradicted, or challenged, or playfully mocked, whatever official narrative the global Corporatocracy was pumping out on any given day.

  From 2016 to 2022, Twitter.com (which, let’s face it, is essentially a glorified listserv with ads) abandoned any pretense of editorial neutrality and regard for anything remotely resembling people’s right to freedom of speech (i.e., a fundamental principle of democratic society), and brazenly attempted to impose and enforce ideological uniformity on the platform under the guise of “keeping people safe” and “protecting the health of the public conversation.”

  This metamorphosis of a social-media company into a full-blown Orwellian Ministry of Truth was just one part of “The War on Populism” that the global-capitalist ruling classes have been relentlessly waging for the last six years, which I’ve written about extensively elsewhere (e.g., in that book I just inserted a link to, and the majority of my Consent Factory essays), so I just want to focus on Twitter at the moment and get to the part where I blaspheme Musk, or don’t blaspheme him enough, and piss everyone off.

  Basically, the backstory, in a nutshell, is, by circa the middle of 2021, the Twitter moderators’ censorship of views that didn’t conform to their “woke” ideology had reached the point where a lot of conservatives, and libertarians, and the approximately 15-16 old free-speech-absolutist lefties like me that still exist, were unhappy about being censored, deplatformed, “deboosted,” and demonized as “disseminators of hate speech,” “science deniers,” “election deniers,” “anti-vaxers,” “conspiracy theorists,” and an assortment of other official epithets, and were making a considerable amount of noise.

  The governments that nominally regulate Twitter and other social-media platforms are owned and operated by GloboCap (i.e., the global Corporatocracy I mentioned above), which has been imposing and enforcing ideological uniformity on the entire planet for the last thirty years, so, of course, they were not going to intervene in the affairs of global corporation that is part and parcel of the Gleichschaltung campaign that they are also part and parcel of.

  So, Emperor Elonicus to the rescue!

  Musk, who did not get where he is by not being able to read a market, saw an opportunity and he seized it. As I’ve been going on and on and on about monotonously for the last six years, the essential conflict of our historical epoch is the multiplicitous backlash (or insurgency) against the advance of hegemonic global capitalism. I won’t go on and on about it here. The point is, at the current stage of that conflict, there is serious money to be made by marketing to the “anti-Woke” demographic, and, if Musk is a master of anything, it’s marketing.

  You probably think I’m kidding. I am not. As Bill Hicks would put it if he were still around, the authoritarian anti-authoritarianism dollar is just sitting out there waiting to be harvested. “Anti-Woke” authoritarianism is the next big thing. We are talking beaucoup branding action, social media platforms, phones, you name it!

  And so begins the glorious reign of Emperor Elonicus the Just, the half-man/half-god savior of Twitter, and freedom of speech, and freedom itself, selfless defender of the common man, and unrivaled practitioner of the marketing stunt!

  The day before the deal was sealed, Elonicus swaggered into Twitter headquarters carrying an actual kitchen sink, tweeting “let that sink in!” to his 100 million followers, the first of a series of such stunts to follow.

  

  The plebeians in the digital Colosseum erupted into wild applause. A frenzy of joyous hooting and hollering and “liking” and retweeting ensued. At last, a beneficent billionaire Caesar had arrived to save the Internet from Wokeness! Elonicus loyalists flooded onto Twitter, chanting the ancient Roman obeisance, “Avē Imperātor, tweetitūrī tē salūtant!”

  The next day, Elonicus summarily fired Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s CEO, and took his seat upon the throne. Other “woke” heads were soon placed on spikes. Hallelujah … the bird was freed!

  

  The Corporatocracy went absolutely apeshit. Liberal pundits rent their garments and rushed onto the Internet to histrionically denounce Elonicus the Usurper, who was going to unleash the most the stochastically-terrorist orgy of white-supremacist hate speech in the history of white-supremacist hate speech, or stochastic terrorism, or orgies, or something. Television celebrities, ageing rock musicians, bestselling philosophical podcasters, and other such influential personages began pretentiously fleeing the platform in droves, a number of them migrating to something called Mastodon, where they immediately commenced scolding and cancelling each other. Advertisers pulled their accounts. The media began a “Twitter Death Watch.” Jonathan Chait threatened to move to Canada, but then changed his mind and vowed to “stay and fight.”

  Meanwhile, Elonicus, who understands a public-relations war as well as anyone, did what all good emperors do when under attack from their own patrician class. He broke out the bread and circus for the plebeians … or, all right, at least he broke out the circus.

  

  Yes, he actually did the imperial Roman “pollice verso” shtick to decide the fate of Trumpus Maximus, and then, once the results came in, he imperiously tweeted “Vox Populi, Vox Dei”!

  

  And now, apparently, Elonicus, in his mercy, after running another Vox Populi poll stunt, has decreed a “general amnesty” for all political prisoners (i.e., suspended Twitter accounts). It remains to be seen whether this “amnesty” extends to the countless people whose accounts were suspended for challenging the official Covid narrative, or for mentioning the fact that GloboCap is arming and funding the neo-Nazis in the Ukraine that have been carrying out its latest counterinsurgency op, but let’s not worry about minor details. Next week is going to be a celebration … a celebration of freedom, and “anti-Wokeness,” and the god-like power of Elon Musk!

  All of which has been highly entertaining, but forgive me if I don’t get all worked up. For one thing, I’ve seen this movie before, the one where the handsome new charismatic sheriff (who just happens to be a major GloboCap player, or puppet, or otherwise a member of “the club”) rides into town to set things right. No matter how many I watch it, it always seems to end the same.

  The other thing is … well, it’s personal. For about a year now, Twitter has been maliciously defaming my business account in order to damage my reputation and income. Twitter has been doing that by concealing my tweets — the majority, but not all, of my tweets — behind fake “age-restricted adult content” advisories. Twitter has been doing that in order to trick people into believing that I am tweeting some kind of pornography.

  

  This rather weird tactic has been quite effective. It has definitely damaged my income as an author, and has presumably misled countless people into assuming I am some sort of sleazy pornographer posing as a political satirist. You can probably imagine how I feel about that.

  Elon Musk’s Twitter did not start this, and I realize the man has a lot on his plate, but I just assumed that, after a month or so on the throne, it might have occurred to him to issue an order instructing his “freebird” staff to, you know, stop maliciously defaming people, and attempting to damage their reputations and income, because they questioned the official Covid-19 narrative, or the official Russia narrative, or the “Emperor Elonicus” narrative.

  

  Or … I don’t know, maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe Elonicus really has come to save us from the “woke” fanatics. Maybe this is not just another iteration of the classic good cop/bad cop routine, like when Obama the Beneficent saved the world from Evil Bush and ended the War on Terror by bombing numerous countries, extrajudicially assassinating anyone he felt like, and illegally surveilling everyone, to the wild applause of millions of liberals, who had spent the previous eight years shrieking about Evil Bush doing exactly the same thing.

  Because conservatives and libertarians would never fall for a con job like that, would they?

  No, the Emperor Elonicus is probably going to issue that order any day now (i.e., to cease and desist from maliciously defaming people). Or I guess it might take a little longer than that. Not maliciously defaming people is probably a complicated, multi-stage process involving months of meticulous planning, like rocketing a car into outer space. One Elonicus fan, alarmed by the disrespectful tone of my repeated tweets to the Emperor, advised me to stop whining and wait one full year, which … sure, on reflection, that’s probably about right.

  So, never mind, and please forgive the foregoing blasphemy. Hail Elonicus! Long may he reign!

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/28/2022 – 23:00

• Biden Joins Over 400 Trade Groups In Calling On Congress To Pass Legislation To Avert Crippling Rail Strike
  Biden Joins Over 400 Trade Groups In Calling On Congress To Pass Legislation To Avert Crippling Rail Strike

  Calls for government intervention to prevent a rail strike in early-to-mid-December became louder Monday, with more than 400 state and national trade groups asking the majority and minority leaders of Congress to prevent a rail strike that would disrupt the flow of goods as soon as next week and could further hobble the pre-recessionary US economy.

  In a Monday letter to Congress seen by Freightwaves, the US Chamber of Commerce sent a letter on Monday, signed by dozens of other business lobbying groups, to Democratic and Republican congressional leaders calling on them to intervene to prevent a labor strike or a lockout by the freight railroads. The Chamber and these groups have made similar calls before, and some of the groups plan a press conference for Tuesday; the groups pleaded with congressional leaders to address the possible rail strike, calling it a “matter of grave urgency” because of the potential billions of dollars such a shutdown could cost the U.S. economy.

  “No one wins when the railroads stop running,” the letter said. “Congress recognized their necessity to interstate commerce and America’s economic health with the passage of the Railway Labor Act and past congressional interventions in rail labor disputes when other steps failed. Indeed, Congress has intervened 18 times since 1926 in labor negotiations that threaten interstate commerce and there is no reason why Congress should deviate from this record today. 

  “While a voluntary agreement with the four holdout unions is the best outcome, the risks to America’s economy and communities simply make a national rail strike unacceptable. Therefore, absent a voluntary agreement, we call on you [Congress] to take immediate steps to prevent a national rail strike and the certain economic destruction that would follow.”

  Members of four rail unions have failed to ratify a labor agreement, while eight others have ratified theirs. The cooling-off period in which neither the unions nor railroads can take any corrective actions ends just after midnight EST on Dec. 9, which means that on Dec 10 the US economy could find itself paralyzed all over again.

  The two sides are in negotiations but the railroads said they would not deviate far from the recommendations of the panel, while union leaders said they must win new concessions, such as paid sick days, to take back to their workers. If no agreement has been reached before then, union members could go on strike or the railroads could lock out union workers.

  The four unions to have not ratified labor deals consist of over 56% of all unionized workers who have been seeking to receive a new contract since January 2020. They include two of the larger unions, one representing train conductors and the other maintenance-of-way employees.

  “As provided for under federal law and consistent with past practice, Congress must be prepared to intervene before the end of the current ‘status quo’ period on Dec. 9 to ensure continued rail service should railroads and [the] four unions fail to reach a voluntary agreement. A strike by any one union would assuredly result in a stoppage of national rail service,” said the letter signed by the Agriculture Transport Coalition, American Chemistry Council, American Petroleum Institute and National Retail Federation, among others.

  The letter also hearkened back to September, when freight railroads reduced their operations of handling hazardous materials ahead of a potential strike as a security measure. That strike could have occurred had the two largest rail unions — the ones representing train conductors and locomotive engineers — failed to reach a tentative agreement. After reaching that deal, the locomotive engineers voted to ratify it, but the train conductors ultimately turned it down.

  “Many businesses will see the impacts of a national rail strike well before Dec. 9 — through service disruptions and other impacts potentially as  early as Dec. 5,” the letter said. “The sooner this labor impasse ends, the better for our communities and our national economy.”

  Late on Monday, the WSJ reported that Joe Biden joined the trade groups in calling on Congress to pass legislation to adopt a tentative labor agreement in an effort to avert a rail shutdown that could hurt the economy before the holiday season.

  “As a proud pro-labor President, I am reluctant to override the ratification procedures and the views of those who voted against the agreement,” Biden said in a statement. “But in this case—where the economic impact of a shutdown would hurt millions of other working people and families—I believe Congress must use its powers to adopt this deal.”

  White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Biden is directly involved in the matter and “has had conversations with members of Congress on this particular issue in case resolving the issue falls to them, as it has 18 times in the last 60 years.”

  The White House and congressional leaders say a strike would be unacceptable but that the companies and unions need to resolve their disagreements. The White House appointed a panel over the summer to mediate the discussions. Eight unions have ratified the deal that came out of those talks, but four haven’t.

  Under the Railway Labor Act, Congress can make both sides accept an agreement that their members have voted down. Likewise, lawmakers can order negotiations to continue and delay the strike deadline for a certain period, or they could send the dispute to outside arbitrators.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/28/2022 – 22:40

• Conrad Black: Is America In Decline?
  Conrad Black: Is America In Decline?

  Authored by Conrad Black via The Epoch Times,

  Gloom is always annoying and almost never the best response to even the most upsetting developments. It’s always psychologically better and a more efficient response to negative facts to try to design around them and get back to a positive sequence of objectives, no matter how tortuous and challenging.

  Sometimes reflexive and uninformed cheerfulness is useful as a momentary palliative, but it swiftly descends into a make-believe optimism that is bound to be disappointed. That seems to be where much of the Republican response to the midterm elections has settled.

  Those of us who are appalled by the weakness, incoherence, corruption, and hypocrisy of the Biden administration would do better to recognize the implications of the disaster in the midterm elections and the extent of the task that confronts those—apparently a significant majority—who believe that Bidenism is a straight boulevard to catastrophe.

  Whatever else may be said of Donald Trump, he represented a shaped-up Western alliance fully armed and determined to prevent continued Chinese advance at the expense of the West; effective opposition to North Korea and Iran as nuclear powers; and a determination to reverse the erosion of America by the admission of countless millions of migrants partly masking the smuggling in with them of unfeasible quantities of lethal drugs. He also represented the celebration of the unifying American nationality over atomizing inflamed groups protesting multifarious forms of victimhood: self-serving nihilists gnawing at the bowels of America and denigrating virtually all of its characteristics and traditions.

  Trump supported rational limits to the treatment of climate change: He continued to compel the reduction of environmental pollution while eliminating oil imports and recognizing the economic insanity of excessive and over-hasty promotion of energy sources that are deemed to be sustainable but are, in fact, inadequate in themselves and economically profoundly unsustainable. America has apparently chosen Biden over Trump twice, a grievous self-issued verdict.

  It was widely believed prior to the midterm elections that the fact that three-quarters of Americans believed the country was headed in the wrong direction under the current administration, and disapproved of that administration by a substantial majority, would assure that a sharp course correction would be imposed by the voters.

  

  The principal fact to emerge from these elections was that the well-founded disapproval of this hapless and, at times, malevolent administration was effectively equaled by a confected, defamatory fear that a return of Donald Trump would plunge the country into chaos, violence, racism, and intolerable indignities.

  …

  It seemed a reasonable hope that the failures of the Biden administration in almost every field and the alarming trend of the most obvious indicators—economic breakdown and soaring crime rates—would motivate the country to seek a different result in the event of a presidential election rematch between Biden and Trump. The evidence of the midterm elections is otherwise, and the Republicans have only managed to accustom themselves to the dangerous practices of ballot harvesting in some states and not in others.

  Unless Trump can, as he gave some indication of doing in his announcement of his campaign for renomination, convince a substantial number of voters that he’s a seriously renovated and less erratic political personality, there’s no reason to think he will do better in 2024 than he has in the last two elections.

  He can still meet these criteria, but it will require diligence and self-discipline.

  …

  For the majority who still believe in the traditional America, sensibly updated and cleansed of discrimination, the country is entering mortally perilous times. The midterms were a wake-up call, but has anyone awakened?

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/28/2022 – 22:20

• Biden's Gender-Fluid Nuclear Official Charged With Felony Theft After Lying To Cops
  Biden’s Gender-Fluid Nuclear Official Charged With Felony Theft After Lying To Cops

  A senior Department of Energy official was charged with felony theft after stealing a piece of luggage from the Minneapolis airport in September – shortly before taking a leave of absence.

  

  Sam Brinton, a gender-fluid nuclear expert who in 2015 defended underage gay prostitution website “Rentboy.com,” allegedly took a Vera Bradley suitcase worth $2,325 from the luggage carousel at the Minneapolis St. Paul Airport (MSP) on September 16, Fox News reports, citing a criminal complaint filed Oct. 16 in Minnesota state court.

  It’s official. As of June 19th, I now serve my nation as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy in the Department of Energy. pic.twitter.com/zLq3Bf97X2

  — Sam Brinton (@sbrinton) June 29, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsAccording to court filings, surveillance footage showed Brinton taking the luggage, then removing its tag identifying the owner, before leaving the airport. Brinton was observed using the luggage during at least two other trips to Washington DC – on Sept. 18 and Oct. 9.

  When a police officer called Brinton on Oct. 9 for questioning, Brinton confirmed that he still possessed the suitcase, but then claimed it was his.

  “If I had taken the wrong bag, I am happy to return it, but I don’t have any clothes for another individual,” Brinton told the officer, adding “That was my clothes when I opened the bag.“

  Two hours later, Brinton called back and apologized for not being “completely honest,” adding that taking the wrong bag was a mistake because ht was tired.

  “DEFENDANT said when they opened the bag at the hotel, they realized it was not theirs,” reads the court filing. “DEFENDANT got nervous people would think they stole the bag and did not know what to do. DEFENDANT stated they left the clothes from the bag inside the drawers in the hotel room.”

  Brinton was ultimately charged with felony theft of a movable property without consent, a charge that could result in a five-year sentence, $10,000 fine or both.

  Minnesota-based outlet Alpha News first reported the charges against Brinton on Monday.

  Brinton was placed on leave about a month ago and another official was named as a replacement in the interim earlier this month, according to the Exchange Monitor which tracks government hires. The DOE didn’t explain why Brinton took leave at the time. -Fox News

  Sounds like Brinton can add ‘klepto’ to their resume.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/28/2022 – 22:00

• "Instructions From Kiev": Ukraine Propaganda Messaging
  “Instructions From Kiev”: Ukraine Propaganda Messaging

  Authored by Yves Smith via NakedCapitalism.com,

  Below we are reproducing a post from Ukraine Telegram, along with an assessment from Colonel Douglas Macgregor. A long-standing military colleague sent the material to Macgregor, who deems it to be authentic.

  One thing that is striking about the text of Ukraine gaslighting messaging points is the focus on creating dissent in the military with the intent of achieving regime change in Moscow. One thing I have inferred despite my considerable distance from Russian Telegram is the degree to which it seems to be highly critical of the Russian government’s conduct of the war. This seems to go beyond possible self-selection. Yes, ex-soldiers and other war nerds can no doubt come up with mistakes made, as well as having a general hankering for more aggressive action. Mind you, Russia is now moving into that footing with its dissection of Ukraine’s electrical grid. That is presumably be followed sometime in the winter with an increase in the tempo of the war. But Surovikin promised a grinding war. If that translates into grinding in more places, and faster loss of Ukraine/Western men and materiel, will that be kinetic enough to make these armchair generals happy?

  What has struck me with my limited contact with Russian Telegram is that its members seem too often to become overwrought about minor setbacks, like the loss of three Russian helicopters at an airbase due to apparent sabotage. Yes, this is bad and suggests not enough care was taken to prevent such an event (although one could easily argue given the ferocity of Ukraine intent that the level of successful terrorist operations has been comparatively modest). But the level of upset on Telegram seemed wildly disproportionate, and hence not organic…particularly given that the Western press also flogged the story.

  Some of the messaging in the Western press is also so uniform as to raise questions about how so many journalists can suddenly be thinking the same thing. For instance, now that they can’t not mention Russia’s destruction of Ukraine’s electrical grid, the spin is that this move is an act of desperation by Russia, a last-ditch effort to salvage its failing campaign….which will clearly fizzle into nothing when they run out of missiles.

  

  Now to Macgregor, who I hope you will thank for letting me publish his finding. Hoisted from e-mail:

  I am indebted to XXXX who sent this material to me this morning. The material is very revealing.

  The instructions below from the Kiev Government to its propaganda organs read like talking points for the Washington Post, New York Times, and most of the major western media. These points were lifted from a Ukrainian telegram channel. The stories that appear in Western media begin with the utterly false and misleading assertions on the list below. Encouraged by Western Governments, Western Journalists eagerly adopt them and present the fairy tales that proceed from them as factual.

  Trotsky who distinguished himself during the Russian Civil War and the Russian Invasion of Poland with the creation of similarly effective lies and fabrications would be enormously proud of Zalenskiy and the work he and his apparatus are doing.

  From XXX:

  According to the source, this is a conditional training manual for a week from the functionaries of the Office of the President and CIPSO for their bot farms and social media to work in the RU segment.

  Media plan, November 21-27

  Topic: Problems of mobilization 

  • Search and creation of materials about the problems of providing mobilized weapons, equipment, mistakes in managing on the battlefield and during training.

  • Use authentic videos from the mobilized, published in Russian news and military Telegram channels.

  • Obtaining, creating and disseminating insider information about problems in the regions. Detailed coverage, generalization of problematic incidents for the entire mobilization process.

  • The direct accusation of the Russian high command and leadership of the Ministry of Defense of corruption, low qualifications and neglect of the lives of their subordinates.

  Topic: Losses in manpower and equipment 

  • Use of numerical data of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, ISW, CIT, Oryx and other approved sources.

  • Emphasize high casualties among mobilized, not professional Russian military. The task is to create a conflict between the career military and those called up for mobilization for further development and consistent updating.

  • Calls to lay down arms and surrender – saving lives is more important than war for undefined goals and the Kremlin regime. Involvement of youth opinion leaders and organizations to disseminate such appeals.

  • Losses in technology – translate the assessment into financial indicators. Emphasis: the money spent on the war, the Kremlin should have distributed among the population, so that it becomes richer.

  • Emphasize the losses of the economy from the war and the imposed sanctions.

  Topic: Internal conflicts in power 

  • Key line: to strengthen the basis for the revolt of the military against the Kremlin in case of a crisis.

  • Return to theses about conflicts in the Russian elite, among the “Kremlin towers”. The task is to undermine the trust of civil officials and security forces in each other.

  • The accusation of officials of the Presidential Administration and the government of disagreeing with the actions of the military, in parallel to disseminate information about the violent dissatisfaction of the military with the political decisions of the Kremlin. Task: to launch information about the next conflict between the civilian and security forces of the regime.

  • The use of defector speakers to launch information about conflicts between law enforcement agencies – the military, the FSB, the National Guard.

  • Continuing the line: discrediting past referendums on joining Russia. The key thesis is that among the Russians, the annexation of regions does not enjoy support, their preservation as part of Russia is not considered important following the results of the war.

  Topic: Russia is a terrorist state 

  • Key line: The whole world considers the Russian regime to be terrorist in its essence, punishment for its crimes is inevitable.

  • Active coverage of Russian strikes on civilian infrastructure. Emphasize the suffering of the civilian population from the power outage, the victims of the civilian population from shelling.

  • Accents in coverage: The European Parliament recognizes Russia as a “State Sponsor of Terrorism”. The Dutch Parliament will vote on a resolution recognizing the Russian Federation as a “State Sponsor of Terrorism”. Emphasize European unity on the issue of recognizing the Putin regime as a terrorist one.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/28/2022 – 21:40

• NYISO Warns New Yorkers About "Sharp Rise" In Winter Electricity Prices
  NYISO Warns New Yorkers About “Sharp Rise” In Winter Electricity Prices

  Readers have been well-informed that the global energy crisis is finally coming to America this winter as energy bills soar. The latest sign of soaring power costs is a warning from New York’s grid operator. 

  In a press release, New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) wrote that millions of New Yorkers would have enough electricity supplies this winter to meet forecasted peak demand conditions.

  While that’s a relief NYISO won’t have to resort to power blackouts this winter, the grid operator warned customers would face “a sharp rise in wholesale electricity prices expected this winter due to several economic and geopolitical factors that continue to impact the cost of natural gas used in the production of electricity.” 

  

  Bloomberg pointed out that NYC natural gas prices for January delivery were more than 60% higher than a year ago. Plus, diesel prices are through the roof as fuel supplies in the Northeast are dangerously low. Combine higher inputs to generate power, which means the added costs will be passed onto consumers. 

  

  For months we have pointed out, “The Average US Household Pays 47% More For Electricity Than A Year Ago” and “American Energy Bills Are Set To Soar This Winter” and “Your Next Pain Will Be Soaring Electricity Costs As Energy Crisis Comes To America.”

  And just as the cold season begins, there are 20 million households behind on their power bills. Now power companies are renegotiating power contracts with households, increasing the price per kilowatt substantially.

  Winter is coming...

  

  Americans will increasingly burn firewood this year to offset soaring electricity costs, just like millions of Europeans — as the energy crisis sends the western world back to the ‘medieval’ days of using stoves and fireplaces to heat homes because of failed sanctions against Russia and terrible energy policy by western politicians pushing ESG garbage. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/28/2022 – 21:20

• Was San Francisco Election Official Not Rehired Because He Wasn't 'Diverse' Enough?
  Was San Francisco Election Official Not Rehired Because He Wasn’t ‘Diverse’ Enough?

  Authored by Alan Dershowitz via The Gatestone Institute,

  • The City of San Francisco is a state actor that is constitutionally prohibited from disqualifying job applicants on the basis of race. That is precisely what occurred here, despite the phony claim that Arntz can reapply for his job.

  • There is one important benefit to the San Francisco decision — at least as compared to university admissions decisions. The San Francisco panel did not try to disguise the racial criteria they are employing, whereas most universities go to great length to deny that race alone is often a dispositive factor in ranking applicants. This will make it easier for the courts to hold San Francisco’s Arntz decision as a clear violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

  • In the bad old days, race was often used to discriminate against Black applicants. Today race is often used to discriminate in favor of Black applicants. I guess that is some sort of progress. But real progress will be achieved only if and when race is no longer a factor that trumps meritocracy. Only then will Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream of how his children and ours should be judged become a reality.

  John Arntz has held the job of San Francisco’s director of the Department of Elections for two decades. He has been repeatedly praised for his excellent performance at this increasingly important job — important because of so many election challenges and doubts. Just two years ago, the election commission commended him for his “incredible leadership.” But now they are essentially firing him because he is apparently of the wrong race to satisfy their “racial equity plan.”

  

  This is what he was told:

  “Our decision wasn’t about your performance, but after twenty years we wanted to take action on the City’s racial equity plan and give people an opportunity to compete for a leadership position.”

  The mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, disagreed:

  “John Arntz has served San Francisco with integrity, professionalism and has stayed completely independent. He’s remained impartial and has avoided getting caught up in the web of City politics, which is what we are seeing now as a result of this unnecessary vote.

  “Over the last year John successfully ran four elections while navigating a pandemic that thwarted San Francisco into crisis response – all without a single issue. Rather than working on key issues to recover and rebuilt our City, this is a good example of unfair politicization of a key part of our government that is working well for the voters of this city.”

  All of the 12 managers in his department asked that his contract be renewed. But in today’s woke world of identity politics, race trumps meritocracy. “Racial equity” plans are apparently more important than electoral integrity.

  It well maybe that Arntz’s “equity” replacement will be as good as or better than him. There are, after all, highly qualified people of all races and backgrounds. But that is not the point. His contract would clearly have been renewed — he would not have been fired — if he were of an “acceptable” race. But he is not, because he does not meet the criteria for the city’s “racial equity plan.”

  To cover their legal rear ends (“CYA”) the panel has said that Arntz can “reapply” and be considered among the pool of candidates who do meet the criteria of racial equity, even though he does not! This “CYA” tactic does not even pass the giggle test.

  It certainly does not pass the constitutional test, even the one that currently allows universities to place the thumb of racial diversity on the scale of admissions. That test is likely to be changed — perhaps disallowed — even in the context of private universities such as Harvard. The City of San Francisco is a state actor that is constitutionally prohibited from disqualifying job applicants on the basis of race. That is precisely what occurred here, despite the phony claim that he can reapply for his job.

  There is one important benefit to the San Francisco decision — at least as compared to university admissions decisions. The San Francisco panel did not try to disguise the racial criteria they are employing, whereas most universities go to great length to deny that race alone is often a dispositive factor in ranking applicants. This will make it easier for the courts to hold San Francisco’s Arntz decision as a clear violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. But even if this particularly outrageous decision is struck down as unconstitutional, many cities and other governmental units will continue to use race as a basis for hiring and firing employees. They will simply be less transparent about it than San Francisco was.

  In the bad old days, race was often used to discriminate against Black applicants. Today race is often used to discriminate in favor of Black applicants. I guess that is some sort of progress. But real progress will be achieved only if and when race is no longer a factor that trumps meritocracy. Only then will Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream of how his children and ours should be judged become a reality.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/28/2022 – 21:00

• Japan Considering Long-Range Missiles For Submarines
  Japan Considering Long-Range Missiles For Submarines

  Despite only until recently having no military to speak of at all based on post-WWII disarmament, Japan’s defense ministry is hinting that it could soon equip its submarines with long range missiles, regional media reported Monday.

  Japan’s armed forces are “considering acquiring the capability to launch long-range missiles from submarines as a way to mount a counter-strike against foreign threats,” Nikkei reported.

  

  Japan’s public broadcaster NHK referenced considerations for the acquirement of the iconic Tomahawk cruise missile in partnership with the US. If it goes through, the new platform would be deployable by some point in the 2030s. 

  The news comes after in the last couple years Tokyo acknowledged it is studying ways to enhance deterrence. In 2021, for example, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida stated:

   “In order to protect the lives and livelihood of our citizens, we will examine all options, including so-called enemy base strike capability in a realistic manner without ruling out any options. We will fundamentally strengthen our defense capabilities with an accelerated pace.”

  Earlier reports also said that ships and fighter jets will be included as key platforms from which to launch longer range missiles. 

  Maritime and arms monitoring site Naval News describes based on the reports, “the reason why the Japanese government is considering the purchase of Tomahawk is that it cannot wait to deploy domestically produced long-range cruise missiles in the face of recent heightened security threats.”

  China in particular has of late been seen as challenging Japan’s maritime territory and sovereignty over disputed islands. Japan has also recently become more vocally supportive of the United States’ stance on the Taiwan issue. 

  

  “The Japanese Ministry of Defense (MoD) is currently in the process of extending the range of the Type 12 surface-to-ship missiles deployed by the Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF), from the current 200 km to a maximum of 1,200 km,” the Naval News report explains. Japanese media has revealed that submarines are now being seriously considered as among the list of options.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/28/2022 – 20:40

• Only 28% Of Americans Are Worried About COVID Anymore; New Poll Finds
  Only 28% Of Americans Are Worried About COVID Anymore; New Poll Finds

  Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

  A Gallup poll has found that fewer than a third of Americans remain worried about COVID.

  

  “Twenty-eight percent of Americans say they are ‘very’ or ‘somewhat worried’ they will get COVID — the lowest percentage Gallup has recorded since the summer of 2021,” the pollster notes.

  

  The survey also found that 78% believe the pandemic to be “over,” a new high, with most people saying that everyone should “lead their normal lives as much as possible and avoid interruptions to work and business.”

  

  Gallup further notes that “The same poll finds the smallest percentages of Americans yet reporting they are steering clear of specific situations because of the coronavirus, including avoiding large crowds (24%), avoiding travel by plane or public transportation (19%), avoiding going to public places (16%) and avoiding small gatherings (13%).”

  “Use of face masks remains fairly common, but the 40% saying they have worn one in the past week when outside their home is also a new low during the pandemic,” the pollster adds.

  Most Americans are not bothering with social distancing anymore either, according to the poll.

  

  “About six in 10 Americans (59%) say they have made no attempt to isolate themselves from people outside their household in the past 24 hours — the most eschewing social distancing since the beginning of the pandemic,” Gallup explains.

  “Sixteen percent, similar to the level in April, now say they have completely or mostly isolated themselves from people outside their household, while 25% — the lowest reading since April 2020 — say they have isolated themselves partially or a little,” the report further notes.

  Despite the findings, along with all the recent revelations about vaccines and vaccine mandates, globalist technocrats appear to be planning to bring back vaccine passports for the “next pandemic.”

  *  *  *

  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. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support our sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/28/2022 – 20:20

• Are Progressive "Experts" Fallible? Yes, But Don't Tell Them That
  Are Progressive “Experts” Fallible? Yes, But Don’t Tell Them That

  Authored by Claudio Grass via The Mises Institute,

  It can be argued that the world has reached the sorry state it’s in today largely because academics, politicians, “distinguished experts,” and “recognized authorities” did not have the humility to admit their own mistakes or to at least recognize the limits of their knowledge. Of course, this is far from a new affliction in societies and political systems. Hubris was among the most terrible sins that the ancient Greeks warned against, and there have been too many narcissists in positions of power to count since the emergence of the first organized societies.

  People who believe they know best, not just for themselves, but everyone else too, are naturally attracted to roles that would allow them to impose their will, their morality, and their values on their neighbors.

  

  However, one also can argue that the problem is much more prevalent today than at any other time in our history. The modern news landscape, both mainstream and social media, the supercharged propaganda machines of all developed nations, and our public education system, ensure that dangerous figures will hardly be challenged by anyone once presented to the public as de facto, “recognized,” and “widely accepted” authorities. This is also true of politicians, but things are infinitely more perilous when it comes to science. The average citizen can more easily question a political stance directly, whereas it can be impossible to judge the merits of a scientific one without detailed and specific knowledge.

  Therefore, it is much easier to “sell” any academic, from professors to junior researchers, as an “authority,” one that must be obeyed and never questioned. They can freely give us all advice on how to live our lives, and they can even dictate policy, despite the fact that usually that kind of thing tends to have side effects in areas they have absolutely no clue about. Once placed on their pedestals, they become “anointed.” They don’t even have to share their qualifications, their accomplishments, or any testimonies from their peers.

  Their professional records are irrelevant; well, their failures, at any rate. After all, how could you, average Joe, even begin to use your untrained, unspecialized brain to judge the particulars of their CVs or their research? After all, what do you know about climatology, about infectious diseases, or about macroeconomics? Isn’t it hubris on your part to dismiss the decades of dedication and work that someone else invested in a single subject and to believe that you know better?

  These would be fair arguments if we lived in an unbiased world where open debate and independent thinking were actually encouraged. In that world, multiple experts would engage in public exchanges and challenge each other by presenting relevant, contradictory findings and evidence for different theories. And every viewpoint would be explored and scrutinized, in a grand competition of ideas. Those hypotheses and models that matched real-life observations and had more accurate predictive value would be promoted to theories, and only then could we base our policy making upon them. But just as easily, old ideas would be consigned to the ash heap of history once better ideas came along. This is the scientific method, the product of reason; everything else we see today is the product of a cult mentality.

  And it yields the results one would expect: catastrophically wrong “theories” with devastating consequences for entire nations, even the entire world. We’re seeing much of this play out in real time today. The demented fanaticism of the West and its leaders’ monomaniacal obsession with the “green” agenda have led to an energy crisis like no other. In Europe, guided by “expert advice,” the policies of the last decade and the premature transition away from fossil fuels have left most countries almost entirely dependent on imports. Skyrocketing electricity bills have already crippled countless households and this self-inflicted crisis even has the potential to cost actual lives this winter.

  Another area where this phenomenon is painfully obvious is the “dismal science.” The field of economics has arguably produced some of the most dangerous “authorities” the world has ever seen. Once placed in a position of power, in a central bank or in a finance ministry, for instance, the chaos they can wreak is frightening and truly lasting. This is because the general public really has no understanding of even the most basic economic principles and no grasp of monetary history, and it is justifiably intimidated by the jargon used. This is why central bankers can deflect the blame so easily each time their policies go awry and why “respected economists” can sell nonsensical but popular ideas as “fact,” just as we saw with “modern monetary theory.”

  A rare exception can be found in Austrian economics. Economists of this school understand very well that the economy is an extremely complex, living organism and that there is no such thing as a homo economicus or a perfectly rational actor that behaves exactly as a model predicts. No, there are no such creatures, we only have humans to work with, for better or for worse. As Walter E. Block put it in a recent article:

  I think the steadfast refusal of Austrians to engage in economic predictions is consonant with our limited powers. We can explain economic reality and understand quite a bit of it, but unless “all else is constant” which it never is, we cannot predict, at least not qua economists. Intellectual modesty is of great value. Do I predict that one day mainstream economists will come to see the error of their ways in this regard? I hope so, but, as an Austrian economist, I make no predictions either way.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/28/2022 – 19:40

• Beijing Police Checking People's Phones For Social Media Apps Amid Mass Protests: Report
  Beijing Police Checking People’s Phones For Social Media Apps Amid Mass Protests: Report

  Mass protests against China’s ‘zero-covid’ policy have spread to Hong Kong, after demonstrators on the mainland began demanding that President Xi Jinping resign.

  

  Around 50 students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong were pictured chanting “No PCR tests but freedom!” and “Opposed dictatorship, don’t be slaves!” while holding up blank pieces of paper – which have become a symbol of protest against China’s clampdown on freedom of expression, according to Axios. The blank paper protests were previously seen during the Hong Kong protests in 2020, and earlier this year during demonstrations against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

  

  “We are not foreign forces! We are Chinese youth!” pic.twitter.com/QraYzybqPR

  — Xinqi Su 蘇昕琪 (@XinqiSu) November 28, 2022

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  Anti-lockdown protests spread throughout several cities over the weekend, including Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan – which were largely muted on Monday after police moved out in force.

  Meanwhile, police in Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou have reportedly been checking the phones of random citizens to look for unapproved social media apps. If they found Twitter or Telegram, the personal information would be taken down and the person would receive a warning. Any resistance would be met with a report, according to DW News correspondent William Yang.

  Updates: police in Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou have all reportedly been checking people’s phones. #China https://t.co/VIxUhtoAct

  — William Yang (@WilliamYang120) November 28, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsOn Monday, a BBC reporter who was arrested over the weekend while covering the protests reported that police were checking people’s phones for photos, and forcing people to delete them (or have them deleted).

  People being forced to delete photos by the police today at the of the last two days of protests #shanghai #china pic.twitter.com/VS1kFSoh3x

  — Edward Lawrence (@EP_Lawrence) November 28, 2022

  In response to the protests, China’s Foreign Ministry says that the country has been “making adjustments” to Covid protocols “based on realities on the ground.” This follows a statement out of Beijing earlier in the month in which the CCP said they would “unswervingly adhere” to their zero-Covid policy, but would make it less disruptive.

  “We will protect people’s lives and health to the greatest extent and minimize the impact of the epidemic on economic and social development,” said CCP officials, adding “But recent spikes in Covid cases have prompted cities to tighten protocols.”

  On Monday Spokesperson Zhao Lijian said that China is actively implementing the 9th version of the pandemic protocols.

  “We believe that, with the leadership of China’s Communist Party and the cooperation and support of all Chinese people, our fight against COVID-19 will be successful,” he told reporters.

  China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the country has been “making adjustments” to its Covid protocols “based on realities on the ground,” despite the public anger across the country over its stringent Covid Zero policy https://t.co/OmnBHyj5Us pic.twitter.com/xDbzKXu8hg

  — Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake) November 28, 2022

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsMeanwhile, Apple is helping the CCP:

  Apple has released a software update limiting the use of AirDrop in China in light of recent protests.

  AirDrop was being used by protesters to transmit info directly phone to phone, bypassing the Great Firewall of China. pic.twitter.com/2UNtOeuTBZ

  — Whole Mars Catalog (@WholeMarsBlog) November 28, 2022

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  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/28/2022 – 19:20

• US Soccer Coach Apologizes To Iran Over Flag Scandal In Unprecedented Presser
  US Soccer Coach Apologizes To Iran Over Flag Scandal In Unprecedented Presser

  Update(1510ET): In an unprecedented press conference, the head coach of the US soccer team Gregg Berhalter apologized to the Iranian team over the altered flag controversy. However, he asserted that he and the team had no involvement with the weekend social media post which unleashed a firestorm of controversy. 

  “We had no idea about what U.S. Soccer put out. The staff, the players, we had no idea,” Berhalter said at the Monday press conference. “Our focus is on this match,” he added. That’s when he issued a formal apology amid Tehran’s insistence that the US team be disqualified: 

  “We’re not focused on those outside things and all we can do, on our behalf, is apologize on behalf of the players and the staff. But it’s not something that we were a part of.”

  

  “I’m not well versed on international politics. I’m a football coach,” he had stressed while being grilled by international reporters covering the World Cup in Doha.

  Iran over the weekend and into Monday said that the US Soccer federation had “disrespected the national flag of Islamic Republic of Iran,” and additionally that it was “unethical and against international law.” State media described that the US had removed “the symbol of Allah” from the Iranian flag in social media posts. The original national flag of Iran has since been restored to the US team’s social media accounts. 

  As Axios previews, “The U.S. team will play Iran on Tuesday in a match that is a must-win for the USA in order to advance to the knock-out stage of the World Cup tournament.” As for Iran, it “can sneak through with a draw if Wales doesn’t defeat England in their next match, also taking place Tuesday.”

  * * *

  Iran is demanding that the US Soccer team be disqualified from the World Cup going into Tuesday’s much anticipated US-Iran match, after more off-field controversy has sent tensions to boiling point. 

  A Saturday social media post across the official social media accounts of the US Soccer Federation (USSF), including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram – featured an altered version of the Iranian national flag without the Islamic emblem in the center. US Soccer said it was to show solidarity with the ongoing ‘anti-hijab’ protest movement which has been raging for over two months inside Iran.

  

  “We wanted to show our support for the women in Iran with our graphic for 24 hours,” the US Soccer federation said. The USSF said this was in “support for the women in Iran fighting for basic human rights.”

  In response, Iran’s soccer federation said the move “disrespected the national flag of Islamic Republic of Iran,” and additionally that it was “unethical and against international law.” 

  It is driving outrage inside Iran, given that state media is describing that the US is “removing the symbol of Allah” from the Iranian flag. According to a description in the Associated Press: 

  The Islamic Republic emblem, designed in 1980, is four curves with a sword between them. It represents the Islamic saying: “There is no god but God.” It also resembles a tulip or lotus.

  In response, on Sunday Iran state media called for the US team to be immediately booted from the World Cup for the intentionally “distorted image” of the flag.

  Tasnim news agency said in a statement, “By posting a distorted image of the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran on its official account, the US football team breached the FIFA charter, for which a 10-game suspension is the appropriate penalty.” It emphasized: “Team USA should be kicked out of the World Cup 2022.”

  Iran’s soccer federation called for the U.S. to be expelled from the World Cup over social media posts that featured a doctored version of Iran’s flag. U.S. Soccer said that it was meant to show support for the women of Iran, but later deleted the posts. https://t.co/zEX9IhT8K3

  — The New York Times (@nytimes) November 27, 2022

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  The flag sans Islamic emblem appeared for 24 hours and then the actual flag was restored…

  The US soccer team changed Iran’s flag ahead of their match, then changed it back to its correct form after Iran complained to FIFA. #FIFAWorldCup pic.twitter.com/MlsiihdfBt

  — Richard Medhurst (@richimedhurst) November 27, 2022

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  FIFA has thus far not indicated whether it will take any punitive action.

  Already there has been much off-the-field controversy and drama in Qatar, including a strict FIFA ban on players wearing ‘pro-LGBT’ armbands – which a number of European teams had initially planned to do, but have since backed off of.

  For Iran especially, Qatar 2022 continues to be one of the most politicized World Cups in recent memory…

  The sore losers of British state media https://t.co/z9HE3atvTr

  — Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) November 26, 2022

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  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/28/2022 – 19:11

• Canadian Banks Slammed For Continued Fossil Fuel Investments
  Canadian Banks Slammed For Continued Fossil Fuel Investments

  Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

  • Canadian banks are receiving backlash from investors for their continued investments in fossil fuels.

  • All Canadian banks were revealed to have increased their exposure to fossil fuels between 2020 and 2021, by between 25 percent – TD and BMO – and 132 percent for CIBC.

  • The report is the latest example of investor pressure on financial institutions to reduce their lending to fossil fuel companies.

  An investor group has criticized Canadian lenders for investing heavily in fossil fuels despite the Paris Agreement, noting that all of the largest Canadian banks still need to be ready for net zero.

  

  In a report titled Net Zero Policy Report Card, Investors for Paris Compliance graded Canada’s largest banks on several indicators, including fossil fuel investments, climate targets, and emissions reporting.

  In fossil fuel investments, all banks were revealed to have increased their exposure between 2020 and 2021, by between 25 percent—TD and BMO—and 132 percent for CIBC.

  According to the report, RBC invested $48.5 billion in fossil fuels last year, up 101 percent on 2020, and Scotiabank increased its exposure to the sector by 87 percent to $38 billion.

  TD’s fossil fuel investments rose to $26.4 billion, and BMO’s went up to$23.5 billion. CIBC invested $27.8 billion in fossil fuels in 2021, Investors for Paris Compliance said, noting that the sixth bank under review, National Bank, had no data published on its fossil fuel industry exposure.

  The report is the latest example of investor pressure on financial institutions to reduce their lending to the fossil fuel sector and focus on emission reporting and reducing measures in line with international Paris Agreement commitments.

  This, however, stands in stark contrast with warnings, including from the IEA, that not enough is being invested in the new supply of fossil fuels, including coal, which this year saw a real renaissance.

  Despite this growing pressure from investors, banks around the world increased their exposure to fossil fuels last year. Earlier in 2022, a report produced by a group of climate nonprofits said that the world’s biggest banks had invested $742 billion in the fossil fuel industry, almost unchanged on 2020. 

  The level of financing was higher than in 2016 and 2017 despite the fact that the global economy was still in recovery mode after the pandemic, the report, released in March, said.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/28/2022 – 19:00

• US Complains Russia Has Abruptly Postponed Nuclear Arms Control Talks
  US Complains Russia Has Abruptly Postponed Nuclear Arms Control Talks

  On Monday the United States said that Russia has “unilaterally postponed” important nuclear arms control talks without explanation. The resumption of New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New Start) negotiations was supposed to happen this week, but now a potential date for their continuation remains uncertain.

  “The United States is ready to reschedule at the earliest possible date as resuming inspections is a priority for sustaining the treaty as an instrument of stability,” the US State Department said.

  

  It was a mere weeks ago that the two sides finally agreed to restart the talks for the first time since Russia’s Ukraine invasion, given the growing international alarm over the increasing prospect of nuclear confrontation and accompanying rhetoric. 

  State Department spokesperson Ned Price said at the time that New START will be focus of bilateral talks in the near future. “We have agreed that the BCC [Bilateral Consultative Commission] will meet in the near future under the terms of the New START Treaty. The work of the BCC is confidential, but we do hope for a constructive session.”

  New START remains the last significant end of Cold War era agreement on nuclear arms control between Washington and Moscow. It is also one of the last hoped-for points of positive communications between the two sides, given spiraling relations over the Ukraine war.

  The commission has not met in more than a year, in October 2021, with central aspects of the treaty since stalled due to attempts of the US to resume nuclear arsenal inspections on Russian soil, which Moscow rebuffed. According to The Associated Press on Monday:

  The State Department said Russia had “unilaterally postponed” a meeting of the Bilateral Consultative Commission that was scheduled to begin Tuesday in Egypt and last through next week. It said Russia had promised to propose new dates but had offered no reason for the delay.

  

  Russia had complained that it was actually the US side which “deprive the Russian Federation of the right to conduct inspections on American territory.” If New START can’t be successfully renewed, this would mark the collapse of the last nuclear agreement between the rival superpowers, creating an ever more dangerous situation for the world.

  * * *

  Below is a summary definition of New START and where things stand via Arms Control Association…

  The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) was signed April 8, 2010, in Prague by the United States and Russia and entered into force on Feb. 5, 2011. New START replaced the 1991 START I treaty, which expired December 2009, and superseded the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), which terminated when New START entered into force.

  New START continues the bipartisan process of verifiably reducing U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals begun by former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. New START is the first verifiable U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control treaty to take effect since START I in 1994.

  The United States and Russia agreed on Feb. 3, 2021, to extend New START by five years, as allowed by the treaty text, until Feb. 5, 2026.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/28/2022 – 18:40

• Wallowing In Welfare-Warfare State Prison
  Wallowing In Welfare-Warfare State Prison

  Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

  A reader recently sent me an email pointing out that many ex-convicts commit new crimes with the intent of being sent back to prison. They actually feel more comfortable in prison than they do in the outside world.

  This phenomenon shouldn’t surprise us. In prison, the state takes care of prisoners and, by and large, keeps them safe. It provides their food, healthcare, and clothing. In some prisons, prisoners are even given a paying job. Much of the time, prisoners are free to lie around, relaxing in their cells or watching television. Sometimes prisoners are even provided a formal education. And the best part is that all of this is free.

  In other words, with prison the state provides you with security. In the minds of some convicts, that’s a lot better than freedom. When the state casts convicts out of prison, they become responsible for themselves and their well-being. That’s not easy. They need money to buy food, housing, a car, and other things. That means finding and keeping a job. Moreover, outside prison they are faced with an array of choices on a daily basis, which contributes to their anxiety. Better to trade liberty for security.

  The reason that this phenomenon shouldn’t surprise us is that this is no different from what the American people have done with their adoption of a welfare-warfare state way of life.

  They have traded their liberty for security – or at least what they are convinced is security.

  The purpose of government in a welfare state is to take care of the citizenry, not only by providing them with government doles, but also by restricting their range of choices, so that they don’t have to experience excess anxiety.

  That’s what Social Security and Medicare are all about. The government takes care of people when they reach older age. They don’t have to worry about starving to death or dying in the street from some illness, which is what government officials have convinced people would happen in the absence of these two big socialist programs.

  It’s also what public schooling is all about — to provide the education of young people, thereby relieving families of the responsibility of making educational decisions for their children. 

  It’s what education grants and loans are all about — to help young people get a college education. 

  There is the FDIC, to ensure that people don’t lose their money in the event of a bank failure. 

  Public housing provides low-cost housing for the poor. Food stamps ensure that the poor don’t go hungry. Medicaid ensures that the poor are able to get healthcare. 

  Farm subsidies help out needy farmers. Corporate bailouts help out needy corporations. 

  Taking care of people is what drug laws are for. These laws ensure that people will be punished if they possess, ingest, or distribute drugs that have not been approved by the government. That keeps people healthy. If someone gets caught breaking the rules, he is sent to his room, which is located in a state or federal penitentiary.

  Immigration controls. They protect us from immigrant invaders. 

  Trade wars and trade restrictions. They protect us from foreigners who would dump cheap products in our laps.

  And then there is the massive national-security establishment.

  The Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA keep us safe from the terrorists, the drug dealers, the illegal immigrants, the Muslims, the communists, and all those foreign nations that are hell-bent on invading the United States and conquering our country. 

  Moreover, the military provides vast amounts of military welfare for Americans all across the country.

  Think of all of the cities and towns that are dependent on military bases and military installations. Supposedly, they would dry up and die without all that military welfare. And don’t forget all those weapons manufacturers who existence necessarily depends on feeding at the public trough.

  

  Why should it surprise anyone that some convicts readily trade liberty for security? Isn’t that what the American people have done with their adoption of the welfare-warfare state way of life?

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/28/2022 – 18:20

• Goldman Prime Finds Hedge Funds Massively Piling Into Energy Stock Shorts
  Goldman Prime Finds Hedge Funds Massively Piling Into Energy Stock Shorts

  Last week, when we recapped Goldman’s quarterly hedge fund monitor report which is the most detailed breakdown of hedge fund activity in the prior quarter, we pointed out something remarkable: while the hedge fund VIP list of most popular long positions continued to dramatically underperform (i.e., suck( as the “hedge fund hotel” model works very badly during times of broader market drawdowns…

  

  … what was far more interesting was the list of Very Important Short Positions, or VISP, where at the very top was none other than Exxon – our favorite long since the summer of 2020 when it dropped to the $30s – which has doubled this year (and quadrupled since it was kicked out of the Dow Jones). As we said last week, “judging by how much short covering XOM still faces, not to mention how much more buying lies in stock as hedge funds rotate from being short to going long energy, Exxon may very well double again from here.”

  It very well may be eventually… but not before hedge funds double down on their worst trade of 2022 which has been to massively short the best performing sector in the S&P500 this year.

  

  You see, so ingrained is the mean-reversion Pavlovian response among the hedge fund community that it continues to double down on tech longs – hoping that any minute now they will soar higher just because – while doubling down on such formerly hated names as energy stocks, nevermind the massive underperformance that the average hedge fund has suffered YTD.

  And sure enough according to Goldman Prime’s latest report, energy was the top shorted sector (notionally) on the bank’s Prime book last week with short sales outpacing long buys 6 to 1! Yes, during the previous week when many energy names hit fresh all time highs, instead of cutting losing tech longs, hedge funds were sextupling down on their energy shorts, and as GS Prime further adds, “US Energy stocks have been net sold 7 of the past 8 trading sessions, and last week’s notional net selling was the largest in over 5 months.”

  It gets better: the US Energy Long/Short ratio has steadily fallen to 1.83 from its YTD peak of 2.38 in January. The Long/Short ratio is currently in only the 2nd percentile vs. the past year!

  Amid all the shorting, the US Energy Over/Underweight vs. the S&P decreased week-over-week to -0.69% underweight, which is in the 32nd percentile vs. the past year and in the 65th percentile vs. the past five years. Yes: despite the historic outperformance of energy, hedge funds remain stubbornly, stupidly short the sector even as it continues to grind ever higher.

  

  Finally, Goldman prime observes that over the last week, US Energy as a % of Total US Net Exposure decreased to 4.57%, while the percentage of Gross Exposure  remained relatively unchanged. US Energy as a % of Total US Net Exposure remains in the 89th percentile vs. the past year, and in the 72nd percentile vs. the past five years. At the same time, US Energy as a % of Total US Gross Exposure is in the 86th percentile vs. the past year, and 63rd percentile vs. the past five years.

  

  Why does this matter: considering the outperformance of energy, and the increase in market cap relative to the drop in tech values, net energy exposure as a % of total should be roughly double where it is now.

  Finally, all of this is taking place as oil hits lows not seen since Dec 2021; in fact, we can only assume that many hedge funds are erroneously shorting energy as a surrogate to shorting oil itself. Just imagine the squeeze when oil finally catches a bid and pushes the energy sector to new highs.

  Full report available to zh pro subs.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/28/2022 – 18:00

• No Joke: Supreme Court Case Could Take A Big Bite Out Of The First Amendment
  No Joke: Supreme Court Case Could Take A Big Bite Out Of The First Amendment

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  Below is my column in The Hill on what is shaping up to be a major Supreme Court term on the issues of parody and satire under the First Amendment. The Court could reframe the constitutional limits for criminal and civil liability in two cases currently on the docket, including one recently granted review. Here is the column:

  The court system often is where humor goes to die. For those seeking to use satire or parody of corporations, jokes often run into trademark or other lawsuits and result in a little more than “ha, ha, thump.”

  The same bad audience could await the defendant in Jack Daniel’s Properties Inc. v. VIP Products LLC. The Supreme Court just accepted a case involving a tongue-in-cheek dog chew toy made to resemble a Jack Daniel’s whiskey bottle. VIP prevailed in defending the toy as protected speech, but the distiller wants the Supreme Court to declare such parodies to be trademark violations.

  The docket this term is actually a hoot of parody cases.

  Another pending case is Novak v. City of Parma, in which Anthony Novak was prosecuted for posting a parody of the website of his local police department. He was charged with (and later acquitted of) a felony under an Ohio law prohibiting the use of a computer to “disrupt” or “interrupt” police functions.

  The satirical site, The Onion, has filed a brilliant parody brief to support the right to parody. The Onion regularly publishes funny fake news stories and, true to form, filed a brief as the self-described “world’s leading news publication” offering “universally revered coverage,” and noting it is the “single most powerful and influential organization in human history.” It told the court that its “more than 350,000 full- and part-time” staff members are renowned for “maintaining a towering standard of excellence” in journalism. (It added that it “owns and operates the majority of the world’s transoceanic shipping lanes, stands on the nation’s leading edge on matters of deforestation and strip mining, and proudly conducts tests on millions of animals daily.”) It was a tour-de-force on the value of satire to make profound legal and political points.

  

  Image from Supreme Court Petition

  The court has yet to decide whether to take the Novak case, but it has accepted the Jack Daniel’s case. The distiller sued VIP over its introduction of the Silly Squeakers “Bad Spaniels” rubber squeaky toy. The toy is shaped like a whiskey bottle with a cartoon spaniel on the front and the caption: “Bad Spaniels, the Old No. 2, on your Tennessee Carpet.” On the back is a small disclaimer reading: “This product is not affiliated with Jack Daniel’s Distillery.”

  That clearly was not enough for the distillery, which argued that people would be confused by the parody. While the district court originally ruled with Jack Daniel’s, it was reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The chew toy was ruled (correctly, in my mind) to involve “new expressive content” and to be protected under the First Amendment.

  The Supreme Court has recognized that satire and parody have long played a key role in political discourse stretching back to ancient Greece. In 1988, the court handed down the important free-speech decision in Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, holding that an offensive cartoon of Rev. Jerry Falwell was protected under the First Amendment from civil liability.

  A chew toy is obviously not the type of “slashing and one-sided” political commentary which the court found in the Hustler case.

  However, the distiller is advancing a claim that would chill the use of any common image in a parody or satire, even though no reasonable person would confuse the products.

  At issue is the Ninth Circuit’s highly protective free-speech test for trademark claims where a company argues that a product “tarnishes” its image. The Ninth Circuit has held that the “referential and cultural icon requirements” just have to be “above zero” to be protected under the First Amendment.

  The district court originally objected that, once a court finds that a parody is protected speech, companies have little ability to overcome free-speech objections. It found that the Bad Spaniels toy was not an artistic or expressive work and was not entitled to protection under the First Amendment. But the Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded, finding it to be expressive speech protected by the First Amendment.

  On remand, the district court found that standard was made because, as it said, “A parody functions just like a mash-up. It modifies and plays with the elements of an original work to express something new and different.” Three other circuits have rejected this approach. Yet, in the absence of congressional action (which is unlikely, given the power of corporate lobbies), the Ninth Circuit offers greater clarity and space for free expression.

  Parody and satire also face threats from other legal actions, particularly tort actions over the appropriation of names or likenesses (called the right to publicity). The courts, including the Ninth Circuit, have made a distinctly unfunny mess of such cases. Past tort cases generally have favored celebrities and resulted in rulings like White v. Samsung, a perfectly ludicrous ruling in which Vanna White successfully sued over the use of a robot with a blonde wig turning cards as the appropriation of her name or likeness. It appears no blonde being — robotic or human — may turn cards on a fake game show.

  The court’s term could prove to be the most important docket on parody and satire in decades. It may prove less protective on trademark actions (like Jack Daniel’s) than criminal matters (like Novak). However, this involves more than a canine chew toy — it will impact a wide range of creative expression using common cultural images or references.

  This dog toy was an obvious parody and expressly included a disclaimer of any connection to the distillery; it neither confuses consumers nor tarnishes the Jack Daniel’s trademark.

  A lack of sense of humor, not a lack of sufficient clarity, drove this litigation – but make no mistake: If this little chew toy is found to be a trademark violation, the court may take a big bite out of the First Amendment.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/28/2022 – 17:40

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• US Urgently Mediating Between Turkey & Syrian Kurds To Prevent Ground Offensive
  US Urgently Mediating Between Turkey & Syrian Kurds To Prevent Ground Offensive

  Via The Cradle,

  Turkey has reportedly laid out its conditions for refraining from a ground offensive against the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria, Kurdish media reported.

  According to local sources, the Turkish bombardment – although ongoing – has decreased significantly as of the last few days. The sources added that this is due to the current US mediation between Turkey and the Kurdish militant group. “Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar received the US ambassador, Jeffry L. Flake, at the ministry’s headquarters in Ankara,” the Turkish Defense Ministry said in a statement on 24 November, without further clarification.

  

  During the meeting, the US ambassador reportedly offered a 30-kilometer pullback of Kurdish forces to prevent Turkey from launching its promised ground offensive. According to a Kurdish media report, however, Ankara has not only demanded a 30-kilometer withdrawal of the SDF from Turkey’s borders, but also that all members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Syria be handed over to Turkish custody.

  The report also states that Turkey has demanded “the allocation of partial oil revenues in SDF-controlled areas for the benefit of factions loyal to Ankara [and the areas under their control],” referring to the Syrian National Army (SNA) and the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

  Ankara has also requested the establishment of “observation points,” either independent ones or joined by the US coalition, to allow Turkey to “monitor weapons transfers [following the SDF withdrawal].”

  The Kurdish report also states that Ankara is willing to “substitute” all of its conditions with a handover “of the entire area” to the Syrian Arab Army (SAA). The report also accused Turkey of having a secret agreement with Russia that would allow it to occupy more Syrian territory. This could be due to Russian pressure on the Kurdish militants to withdraw.

  While the US mediates between Turkey and the Kurds, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Friday that a Turkish ground offensive in Syria is still imminent and will begin “when the time comes.”

  Moreover, Erdogan identified the northern Syrian towns of Ras al-Ain, Manbij, and Ain al-Arab (Kobane), as the site of the upcoming ground offensive. According to Turkish Interior Minister Suleiman Soylu, the order for the Istanbul bombing was taken in Manbij.

  1/3 At the meeting held in #Qamishli, Russia asked the YPG to withdraw all its military presence from the Turkish border to the M4 road (and leave the entire region to the government). https://t.co/2qN8C95pYa pic.twitter.com/oh3nEG4EPr

  — Balanche (@FabriceBalanche) November 26, 2022

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  Erdogan also announced that Turkey would initiate its plans to establish a 30-kilometer “security zone” on its southern border, which has been the longstanding goal of the Turkish military occupation in northern Syria.

  Turkey has accused the US of supporting Kurdish ‘terrorism,’ while the SDF has accused the US of turning a blind eye to Turkish aggressions. Washington’s mediation is likely to be a form of appeasement for the two opposing sides, which are considered US allies.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/27/2022 – 23:30

• 1.8M Chickens Slaughtered In Nebraska As Bird Flu Pecks Away At Food Supply
  1.8M Chickens Slaughtered In Nebraska As Bird Flu Pecks Away At Food Supply

  Another 1.8 million chickens were ordered to be culled in Nebraska after agriculture officials analyzed yet another bird flu outbreak on a farm.

  

  The latest culling comes after 50 million birds have been slaughtered nationwide to try and contain the ongoing outbreak according to AP, so who knows if it’s actually true.

  Fortunately the Nebraska Department of Agriculture (NDA) issued a report, which adds that this is the 13th farm in the state to suffer an outbreak this year. According to the report, 6.8 million birds have been killed in Nebraska – the second-most behind Iowa, which has killed 15.5 million.

  After the affected flock is culled, the NDA will establish a 6.2-mile control zone around the affected premises.

  Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) is a highly contagious virus which spreads easily among birds via nasal and eye secretions, along with manure, the NDA said in a statement. Symptoms include a lack of energy and appetite, decreased egg production or malformed eggs, and sudden death in birds even if they aren’t showing symptoms.

  The disease can survive ‘for weeks’ in contaminated environments.

  According to Yahoo, Turkey and chicken farms aren’t the only facilities affected by bird flu this year – as a petting zoo in Utah had an outbreak in recent days.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/27/2022 – 23:00

• Plane Crashes Into High Voltage Power Lines Leaving 120,000 Without Power In Maryland
  Plane Crashes Into High Voltage Power Lines Leaving 120,000 Without Power In Maryland

  Approximately 120,000 customers in Montgomery County, Maryland were without power Sunday night after a small plane crashed into high-voltage power lines just north of Montgomery Village.

  

  The pilot and passenger, identified as Patrick Merkle, 65, of Washington, and Jan Williams, 66, of Louisiana, are reportedly alive and unharmed in the aircraft, and authorities are in cell phone contact with them according to Montgomery County Fire Chief Scott Goldstein.

  Update – Gaithersburg, Maryland, @MontgomeryCoMD small plane into powerlines & tower plow, suspended about 100 feet in the air, two persons on board uninjured at this time, @mcfrs on scene, Widespread power outages, some roads closed in area, https://t.co/VRLGfpyFaA pic.twitter.com/3iCMW0v94j

  — Pete Piringer (@mcfrsPIO) November 27, 2022

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  Rescue personnel have had to wait until crews can ground the lines before attempting to extract the plane, with Goldstein saying that crews would need to go up the lines themselves in order to put clamps or cables onto the wires to ensure there is no static electricity or residual power that could pose danger to any involved, according to DC News Now.

  Authorities say they are in communication with the two people stuck in a plane that hit a power transmission tower in Gaithersburg. Tap here for more: https://t.co/jjq2Wdqlnn . pic.twitter.com/cE7CGcccDR

  — NBC4 Washington (@nbcwashington) November 28, 2022

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  Bascially: Crews have to go up to the wires and ground them. then secure plane to the tower. Large crane about to arrive. They’re awaiting additional resources arriving around 9:30. the occupants in airplane are okay.

  — I’m Glad I Don’t Look Like What I’ve Been Through (@CosmicKitty143) November 28, 2022

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  The power outage is limiting the number of patients that two nearby hospitals  can take, according to the report.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/27/2022 – 22:38

• Fauci's 7-Hour Deposition: What We Know So Far
  Fauci’s 7-Hour Deposition: What We Know So Far

  Via The Brownstone Institute,

  The transcript is not yet available and no reporters were allowed. But from the Attorneys General who brought the suit, the plaintiffs in the case and their attorney, and other parties to the lawsuit against the Biden administration, we have some information about the deposition provided by Anthony “I am the Science” Fauci. He has been the face of the pandemic response and stands accused of colluding with Big Tech to suppress dissent in violation of the First Amendment. 

  

  The question of whether the deposition was to be public was itself the subject of legal attention. The Department of Justice filed to block all recording and personally identifiable information for fear of public harassment, and this condition was granted. As a result, we have no transcript (yet) and one senses a great skittishness even from those who were there to explain the fullness of what transpired. Major national media have shown no interest in getting the story. 

  Nonetheless, we do have information thanks to some candid tweets and an article by one of the plaintiffs. The main takeaway is that Fauci has come down with a serious case of amnesia. Over seven hours, reported Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, he mostly stonewalled detailed questioning by answering that he has no clear memory of details that would shed light on his involvement in speech suppression. 

  “Wow! It was amazing to spend 7 hours with Dr. Fauci. The man who single-handedly wrecked the U.S. economy based upon ‘the science.’ Only to discover that he can’t recall practically anything dealing with his Covid response!”

  This is despite the hundreds of pages and many public statements that seem to confirm that the White House and many government agencies worked very closely with Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others, to control the narrative for the better part of two years. And these efforts are probably ongoing. 

  Eric Schmitt, the Attorney General of Missouri and now Senator-Elect, bought the suit along with the Attorney General of Louisiana. Schmitt tweeted “some takeaways from the deposition of Fauci: Fauci knew the Lab Leak theory had merit but it’d come back to him & sought to immediately discredit it; He defended lockdowns; The rest of us ‘don’t have the ability’ to determine what’s best for ourselves.”

  In addition, he wrote: “In the Fauci depo this week the court reporter sneezed. Fauci wanted her to wear a mask. This is the mentality in Nov 2022 of the guy who locked down our country & ruined countless lives & livelihoods.The Experts followed suit. Dissent was censored. In America. Never Again.”

  Plaintiff Aaron Kheritary, Brownstone Senior Scholar and Fellow, explains as follows:

  UPDATE: from our deposition of Fauci yesterday in the MO v. Biden case. Fauci confirmed that in Feb 2020, Fauci sent Clifford Lane, his deputy at the NAIAD, as the U.S. representative for the WHO delegation to China. Lane convinced Fauci we should emulate China’s lockdowns. 

  The CCP had announced China had contained the virus through draconian lockdowns–a claim now known to be false. Given the (sic) China’s pattern of falsified information, Lane and Fauci should have approached this claim with skepticism. Lockdowns were wholly untested & unprecedented. 

  As our lawyer, @Leftylockdowns1 put it, Fauci “was apparently willing to base his lockdown advocacy on the observations of a single guy relying on reports from a dictator.” Not exactly a double-blind randomized trial level of evidence, or indeed, any level of evidence. 

  Days after Lane returned, WHO published its report praising China’s strategy: “China’s uncompromising and rigorous use of non-pharmaceutical measures [lockdowns] to contain transmission of the COVID-19 virus in multiple settings provides vital lessons for the global response. 

  “This rather unique and unprecedented public health response in China reversed the escalating cases,” the report claimed. My colleague @jeffreyatucker at the @brownstoneinst gave a tongue-in-cheek gloss of WHO’s misty eyed report: “I’ve seen the future—and it is Wuhan.” 

  Lockdowns quickly spread from China to the West, as a troubling number of Western apologists besides the WHO also looked to the Chinese Communist Party’s covid response for guidance. 

  The U.S. & U.K. followed Italy’s lockdown, which had followed China, and all but a handful of countries around the globe immediately followed our lead. Within weeks the whole world was locked down. 

  From the very beginning, the evidential basis for this global policy catastrophe was always paper-thin. We are now living in the aftermath. 

  Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit added direct quotes from Fauci fully confirming Brownstone’s report on the NIH junket to China in February 2020:

  John Sauer, “And Mr. Lane, after returning from the trip, said the Chinese were managing this in a very structured, organized way; correct?… Did you discuss Mr. Lane’s experience on the trip with him when he got back from the WHO trip?”

  Dr. Fauci, ” The answer is I did… Dr. Lane was very impressed about how from a clinical public health standpoint, the Chinese were handling the isolation, the contact tracing, the building of facilities to take care of people, and that’s what I believed he meant when he said [they] were managing this in a very structured organized way.”

  Sauer: “So he drew the conclusion that there might have to be extreme, in his word, measures to mandate social distancing to bring the outbreak under control; correct?”

  Fauci: “That’s what this is implying, yes… He did discuss with me that the Chinese 19 had a very organized way of trying to contain the spread in Wuhan and elsewhere. He didn’t get a chance to go to Wuhan, but he was in Beijing, and I believe other cities — at least Beijing — and he mentioned that they had a very organized, well regimented way of handling the outbreak.

  Sauer: “And so he had a kind of positive reaction to that. There might be lessons to be learned for the United States in its response to the outbreak?”

  Fauci: “I believe Dr. Lane came to the conclusion that when you have a widespread respiratory disease that a very common and effective way to curtail the rapid spread of the disease is by implementing social distancing measures… Dr. Lane is a very astute clinician, and I have every reason to believe that his evaluation of the situation was accurate and correct.”

  Just to be clear, Fauci has here described a policy response that included welding shut the doors to people’s apartments and full totalitarian controls on movement as a “very organized” and “well regimented” implementation of “social distancing measures.”

  Just let that sink in. 

  Hoft provided in addition the most detailed observations yet. Quoting here from his report in full: 

  • Fauci is a skillful liar. As we have seen now for months in his public comments, he lies when he feels he can get away with it or when he feels there will be no meaningful consequences.

  • Fauci frequently lied unless and until he was confronted with alternate facts. For example, he claimed he really wasn’t familiar with Ralph Baric (creator of the COVID virus) or Peter Daszak (who brokered Fauci’s NIAID grant money to the Chinese biolab in Wuhan), until he was confronted with evidence that his own chief of staff emailed him describing Daszak and Baric as being part of Fauci’s team!

  • Fauci claimed that he had no knowledge that his communications team did not coordinate with social media companies to stop “misinformation and disinformation” until he was forced to admit that he actually did know of certain instances of coordination.

  • Fauci continued to push the now-debunked assertion that COVID-19 was a naturally occurring virus.

  • Fauci said disinformation and misinformation (information he disagrees with) puts lives at risk.

  • Fauci refused to define “gain of function” research saying it was too broad of a term to define.

  • FUN FACT: until VERY recently, Fauci’s daughter worked for Twitter.

  • FUN FACT: Fauci is a hypochondriac. In a bizarre and stunning segment during the deposition, Fauci blew off some of his frustration on the poor court reporter. The court reporter transcribing the deposition sneezed, and Fauci stopped the deposition and scolded the court reporter: “WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU??? Do you have some sort of respiratory illness, because in the era of COVID, I’m concerned about being near you.” Court Reporter: “I’m not sick, I just have allergies. I can wear a mask though.” Fauci: “Ok. Thank you, because the last thing I want is to get COVID. [notably, (1) Fauci himself did not wear a mask at any point during the deposition, and (2) he appeared to be several feet away from the court reporter].

  • FUN FACT: in another Fauci hypochondria spasm, Fauci conspicuously mean-mugged Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry after Landry sneezed into his suit coat jacket.

  • Gamesmanship. Whenever introduced to a difficult topic, he dishonestly refused to define key terms so he could avoid being pinned down and held accountable. For example, when discussing the topic of “gain of function” research, he refused to acknowledge what the term meant, objecting that it was a term so broad it could not be defined.

  • Fauci repeatedly claimed that he “couldn’t recall” or “couldn’t remember,” and attempted to bolster these incredible statements by appealing to the volume of emails he would receive or issues or studies that would come across his desk. This is simply not credible for nearly all of such statements, because the incidents in question were either recent or within the past three years, and they were all highly politically charged.

  • Fauci’s other method of lying was simply to pretend that he didn’t understand something, and then hope the lawyer asking the question wouldn’t be able to catch him in the lie. For example, he very obviously lied at one point when he claimed he didn’t know what Meta (parent company of Facebook) was, until he was forced to admit that he did, in fact, know what Meta was.

  • Another Fauci tactic: when forced to admit he had made a communication or reviewed a key record at a key time, or knew or worked with a key individual, he would try and downplay each negative fact by (1) downplaying the significance of the communication, (2) suggest that while he reviewed the key record, he didn’t really read it carefully, or (3) with false humility suggest that he was not an expert in X field and so did not fully understand the scientific study at issue, or (4) claim that, while he did “know” said individual, he doesn’t really know them that well because he meets so many doctors and scientists as part of his job.

  • Other Fauci deceit tactics: throwing subordinates under the bus. Fauci is a famous survivor among bureaucrats. One way he has survived this long is by only taking credit for wins and pawning off losses on hapless subordinates. This trend continued in his deposition, in which he brazenly argued that, while he is the head of the NIAID and its $6 billion budget, he repeatedly didn’t have any knowledge about what his immediate direct reports were doing right under his nose. Fauci supports accountability, so long as he has a subordinate to sacrifice.

  • Fauci argued that Hydroxychloroquine was “dangerous” and had “toxic” side effects…. Fauci claimed HCQ was ineffective in treating COVID, but couldn’t cite a single study to support his claim. Fauci also rejected the list of 371 studies on HCQ and its effectiveness in treating the disease when he was presented with the list.

  • Fauci admitted lying to the public. In one of the more amazing segments during his deposition, Fauci admitted that he knowingly made false public health statements at the beginning of the pandemic, advising people against using masks in order to discourage the public from depleting the supply of masks.

  • Fauci admitted he got his ideas of a lockdown from the Communist Chinese who implemented their extreme lockdowns in January 2020.

  Jenin Younes, attorney for the plaintiffs who works with the New Civil Liberties Alliance, wrote on Twitter: “One of my favorite quotes from Fauci’s deposition today: “I have a very busy day job running a six billion dollar institute. I don’t have time to worry about things like the Great Barrington Declaration.”

  Keep in mind that we have full records of emails in which Fauci took credit for coming “out very strongly publicly against the Great Barrington Declaration.” 

  In conclusion, we have here a revealing account of astonishing testimony from Fauci, which, to those of us who have followed this case closely from the very beginning, is only shocking because it confirms the fullness of the treachery we have long suspected was at the very heart of the US lockdown experience. We also have confirmed that the phrase “social distancing” really is nothing but a euphemism for a China-style full assault on everything we once called freedom in the West. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/27/2022 – 22:30

• Futures, Crude, Crypto, Yuan Tumble Amid Violent China Covid Protests As Goldman Warns Of "Disorderly" Early Exit From Covid Zero
  Futures, Crude, Crypto, Yuan Tumble Amid Violent China Covid Protests As Goldman Warns Of “Disorderly” Early Exit From Covid Zero

  It finally happened.

  After markets had ignored for months the rising tension between China’s artificial Covid Zero lockdowns – which are there not to protect the economy from covid as even the wokest mask-breathers realize by now that the latest diluted iteration of Wuhan’s most infamous export is no different than the flu…

  Packaging update 🙄 pic.twitter.com/ErkMMdnQit

  — Bernie’s Tweets (@BernieSpofforth) November 26, 2022

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  Lockdown protests reported in Beijing as well https://t.co/QoqFu4dxfN

  — Austin Ramzy (@austinramzy) November 26, 2022

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  … but to provide the Xi regime with a scapegoat for China’s slow-motion implosion, over the weekend said tension finally erupted as millions of Chinese took to the streets in protest of Beijing’s ongoing lockdown lunacy which late last week led to multiple fire deaths in a building whose doors were literally bolted down as China’s ingenious “covid quarantine”, in many cases accompanied by violence.

  As reported earlier, protests spread over the weekend as citizens in major cities including Beijing and Shanghai took to the streets to express their anger on the nation’s Covid controls in a rare show of defiance which some believe raises the threat of a government crackdown, prompting investors to re-think investment plans after jumping back in on reopening hopes.

  This culminated in a violent selloff across Chinese stocks, the yuan, US equity futures, crude oil, and cryptos, which all tumbled as China’s protests cast a shadow over the nation’s reopening path and putting investors on edge.

  The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index was hardest hit, tumbling more than 4% out of the gate, and paring this month’s sharp advance to less than 16%.

  

  The onshore yuan plunged 1%, the most since May, to 7.2592 per dollar as risk appetite faded.

  

  “We might see some derisking around Chinese markets,” said Chris Weston, head of research at Pepperstone Group Ltd. “We are seeing some outflows of the offshore yuan, which I think is a pretty good indication of how Chinese markets may fare.”

  In a note from Goldman China economist Hui Shan (available to pro subs in the usual place), he warned that there is some chance of a “disorderly” exit from Covid Zero in China, as the “central government may soon need to choose between more lockdowns and more Covid outbreaks.” The bank added that “the current situation imposes further downside risk to our Ielow-consensus Q4 GDP forecast.”

  

  Ironically, the Chinese rioting takes place right after the PBOC cut RRR by 25bps last Friday unleashing (a paltry) RMB 500bn in long-term liquidity. While the economic impact may be more limited if the PBOC offsets it with a partial rollover of maturing MLF loans next month, the significance of the RRR cut lies in its signal value: policymakers are attentive to incoming data and the central bank will likely keep monetary policy accommodative in the face of a challenging growth outlook in the next quarter or two.

  Needless to say, widespread rioting across China will not ensure peaceful and prosperous golden years for China’s dictator-for-life, Xi Jinping. On the contrary, the latest developments underscore China’s rocky path to reopening as the nation grapples with a record number of Covid cases. Just as ironically, Chinese assets rallied in November as directives for a less-restrictive pandemic approach, coupled with strong support for the property sector, gave investors confidence that the worst is well behind.

  But not any more: Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell as much as 4.2% and a separate gauge of Chinese tech stocks down more than 5%. On the mainland, the CSI 300 Index declined as much as 2.8%, while yields on the benchmark note gained one basis point to 2.83%.

  The shockwave from China’s riots quickly spread across the Pacific as US equity futures tumbled as much as 0.7% to hit a session low of just above the “nice, round number”, at 4,001.5.

  

  Oil was slammed too, with WTI tumbling as much as $3 from Friday’s close to a session low of $73.75, or right above the level when the Biden admin lied it would restart purchasing oil to refill the SPR which it has drained by more than 200 million barrels in the past year.

  

  Finally, and not like anyone will be surprised by this, crypto which now tumbles to any news, both good and bad, tumbled right on cue, with bitoin sliding from the $16,500 level right back down to $16,000, as even the faintest attempt to reverse the relentless selling of 2022 is promptly crushed.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/27/2022 – 21:53

• What The #$%& Is A Shallow Recession
  What The #$%& Is A Shallow Recession

  This week, DataTrek founder Nick Colas is visiting his in-laws in Memphis for the Thanksgiving holiday, and as he notes, contact with what New York finance types call “the real world” is always an educational experience, given his usual cloistering in midtown Manhattan. To celebrate his brief freedom from the Big Apple, if only for a few days, are two brief thoughts based on a few interactions during his time here.

  Below we excerpt from the latest Morning Briefing by Nick Colas of DataTrek

  #1: What the #@$% is a shallow recession? My hotel’s breakfast area had business TV on this morning, and one of the hosts said, “markets are expecting a shallow recession next year”. She was not wrong. US equities trade for 18x current earnings, which strongly implies either no diminishment of corporate earnings or, at worse, a dip sometime in 2023 but then a swift recovery.

  An older gentleman sitting opposite me at group table shook his head and grumbled the question noted above. His observation, implying that any recession can be “shallow” is at best euphemistic and at worst delusional, is also not wrong.

  Since World War II, the shallowest recessions in terms of their effect on US GDP growth were in 1990 and 2001. The chart below shows quarterly real GDP growth from 1947 to 2019, with the 11 official NBER recessions over that period noted by the gray bars. We have put a dotted line across the 1 percent contraction level. All but the 1990/2001 recession exceeded that number.

  

  Many readers will recall the 1990 and 2001 recessions, and I am fairly sure none would think of them as “shallow”. The first was due to an oil shock caused by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. US unemployment went from 5 to 8 percent over 2 years. The second was caused by the bursting of the dot com stock bubble and the 9-11 terror attacks. Unemployment rose from 4 to 6 percent.

  The lesson here is that even “shallow” recessions have real world outcomes and, in the case of 1990 and 2001, came with other problems. Yes, perhaps the Fed can thread the needle of reducing inflation without causing a steep recession. We certainly hope it can. But I think it will pay to have some of the skepticism offered by my dining companion until that result becomes somewhat clearer.

  * * *

  #2: Help wanted. There are still many small businesses in the Memphis area looking for workers, especially those with seasonal labor needs heading into the holidays. The shortage of workers is evident here, as it is across the country. It has been thus for over 2 years, with wage inflation a necessary byproduct of that phenomenon.

  The chart below shows US labor force participation (people in the workforce divided by the total population) for 25 – 54-year-olds (in red, left axis) and all adults (black line, right axis) from 2015 to the present.

  

  Two points on this data:

  • Prior to the pandemic, aggregate and 25 – 54 LFP was rising. The former hit 63.4 percent in February 2020, its highest level since June 2013. The latter got up to 83.1 percent, the best level since May 2013. A strong, late cycle US economy was pulling Americans into the workforce.
  • Today, both LFP levels remain below their pre-pandemic highs. Working-age (25 – 54-year-olds) LFP is 0.4 points lower, which translates into 520,000 “missing” prime-aged workers. Total LFP is down 1.2 percentage points, or 3.2 million people.

  The upshot here is that, despite population growth, there are scarcely more workers in the US now than at the start of the Pandemic Crisis. According to BLS data, the civilian non-institutional American population has grown by 1.9 percent since February 2020. The total number of Americans in the workforce has only grown by 0.5 percent.

  Linking this discussion to the prior point about recessions, it is worth noting that every economic downturn since the 1980s has seen labor force participation either stay flat or decline. In the 1970s/early 1980s, LFP was stable through recessionary periods primarily because women were still entering the American workforce. In the 1990, 2001, and 2007 – 2009 recession, LFP fell by 2 points or more during/after each downturn.

  The lesson here is that a recession does not draw people into the workforce, so the current labor shortage is unlikely to ease very much in a “shallow” recession. An economic downturn should, however, reduce wage inflation to some degree if employees feel they no longer have bargaining power with respect to their pay. Still, this may not be enough to bring wage growth in line with productivity growth if the supply of labor contracts over the next 1-2 years.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/27/2022 – 21:30

• After 15 Break-Ins, A Portland Business Finally Calls It Quits
  After 15 Break-Ins, A Portland Business Finally Calls It Quits

  Progressives are hell bent on fixing the world, climate, capitalism and every form of social injustice…. just don’t look at the destruction in the cities under their control.

  Take Portland resident, Marcy Landolfo, who finally hit her breaking point. As KATU reports, this week marked the 15th break-in at her PDX store within a year and a half in the city that spawned the radical-leftist Antifa movement.

  Landolfo said most of those repairs at the Northeast Portland location were paid for out of pocket. Other times, she just left the windows boarded up. “It’s just too much with the losses that are not covered by insurance, the damages, everything. It’s just not sustainable,” Landolfo said.

  The owner at Rains tells me after five break-ins in about three weeks, she made the sudden decision to permanently close. Staff here are putting pressure on the city to look after small businesses dealing with ongoing challenges with crime. pic.twitter.com/XyP2p6PR6W

  — Megan Allison (@mallisonKATU) November 26, 2022

  KATU asked why Landolfo decided to close now, instead of keeping doors open through the holiday shopping season.

  “The products that are being targeted are the very expensive winter products and I just felt like the minute I get those in the store they’re going to get stolen,” she said.

  Landolfo said she’s worried about her employees, and no longer sees this location as a feasible business model.

  “The problem is, as small businesses, we cannot sustain those types of losses and stay in business. I won’t even go into the numbers of how much has been out of pocket,” she said. If only the progressives who effectively run her city were aware of the hellhole they have made it into, maybe this could have been avoided, but alas – anyone who speaks out against the idiotically socialist practices of these “progressive” ghettos is immediately blasted as a racist, white supremacist, etc, and promptly canceled.

  When Rains was broken into in late October, KATU reached out to Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office; his team responded that they’re working to increase funding for business repair grants through Prosper Portland. Because somehow for socialists it makes more sense to pay fore reparations instead of preventing the crime from occurting in the first place. Then again, all such Democrat strongholds are all about reparations.

  Needless to say, for Landolfo that was not enough.

  “Paying for glass that’s great, but that is so surface and does nothing for the root cause of the problem, so it’s never going to change,” she said, gradually realizing why socialism never works.

  The mayor’s office also said they participated in a retail safety summit in October, and cited recent efforts to streamline the permitting process for things like storefront lighting. News channel KATU asked how that work is going, and it was still waiting to hear back.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/27/2022 – 21:00

• FTX Post Mortem Part 2 Of 3: How Did We Get Here?
  FTX Post Mortem Part 2 Of 3: How Did We Get Here?

  Authored by Scott Hill via BombThrower.com,

  Last week we covered the collapse of FTX as it happened but there’s a lot more to the story.

  How did FTX grow from a tiny Hong Kong bucket shop into a top three Crypto exchange over the course of just a few years?

  What was Alameda research and were they ever legitimate?

  Most importantly, how exactly does an exchange lose track of up to $10 billion worth of customer deposits?

  

  Most of this material is still an educated guess, but the guessers are out there putting together clues from private discussions which have been leaked, the bankruptcy proceedings and first hand dealings shared on Crypto Twitter.

  It’s worth noting that there is a whole deep state angle to this story.

  I won’t go into it in this article because so little is known (see endnote)

  What we do know is mostly confined to the fact that FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was the second largest donor to Democrat political campaigns since 2019. His Co-CEO for part of the FTX Empire, Ryan Salame, was a top 10 donor to the Republican party in the same period.

  Sam Bankman-Fried met with SEC Chairman Gary Gensler seeking a “no action” letter on an enforcement matter in April, shortly before SBF began pushing the DCCPA, a bill which the Crypto industry mainly saw as a subtle crackdown on DeFi wrapped in a reasonable sounding regulatory framework.

  The biggest question mark is the identity of FTX CTO and co-founder Garry Wang. The man is a ghost with very little online presence and only a handful of photos. Famed short seller Marc Cohodes is under the impression that Wang is a state actor for the CCP.

  These questions are important and interesting, but they don’t make for a useful article because of the complete absence of detail.

  Alameda Research

  Alameda Research, the market maker or crypto hedge fund founded by SBF in Hong Kong during the bull run of 2017 is the start of the rot. The official story is that the firm was formed from a team of young hotshots who learned to trade at Jane Street, a notoriously secretive global market maker which trades more than $10 trillion in securities volume each year.

  In January 2018 as Bitcoin was collapsing, Alameda research were performing the Japan arbitrage trade. They purchased Bitcoin in the US, moved it onto Japanese exchanges and cashed in on the gap between markets. The spread was often as wide as 10%. SBF claimed the firm made $10M on the arbitrage over the course of several weeks.

  This was a complicated trade. Japanese capital controls are strict with only Japanese nationals allowed to hold bank accounts, making it extremely difficult to get the money out of Japan and requiring a reasonable level of sophistication and corporate legitimacy to pull off.

  Following the Japan arbitrage, Alameda went after the “Kimchi Premium”. This was the same type of arbitrage trade, with Bitcoin on South Korean exchanges worth up to 20% more than Bitcoin on US exchanges. The capital controls were tighter, the ability to set up corporate infrastructure in the nation was more restricted and Bitcoin was in the middle of collapsing making trading the asset much more risky.

  Some people are suggesting that Alameda lost $10 million on the Kimchi Premium trade, but no one really knows whether any of this story is even true.

  I’m deeply skeptical of this entire backstory given what we have now seen about how careful SBF is with his public image.

  It’s entirely possible that this whole story was a fabrication to paint the picture of a boy genius trader with a Jane Street pedigree striking out on his own in Crypto land.

  Completely Absurd Fundraising

  In early 2018, Alameda Research established headquarters in Hong Kong. While SBF was a complete unknown to Crypto insiders at the time, Alameda Research was making a name for itself, frequently up the top of the Bitmex trading leaderboard.

  Crypto markets in 2018 were very different to the last few years. While 2017 had seen a burst of activity during Bitcoin’s bull run, volumes were still tiny and there were very few professional firms taking the asset class seriously.

  It’s completely plausible that in the absence of professional market makers, Alameda Research could have done very well. It also seems likely that the edge that such a small team had would have disappeared quickly as the market became more professional. Alameda Research only had a handful of employees. Nowhere near enough to build and execute a sophistical algorithmic market making strategy, such as those employed at Jane Street.

  In December 2019 an investment pitch deck for Alameda Research circulated among Crypto insiders. The firm was seeking to raise $200 million in debt funding and was offering 15% payments on the debt. The pitch itself made ridiculous claims about the firm’s edge and was riddled with red flags.

  “High Returns with no risk – These loans have no downside”

  Insiders that viewed the pitch deck were confused. The whispers within the industry were that this firm was highly profitable yet they seemed desperate to raise $200 million. Most stayed away and it’s unclear whether or not the fundraising was successful.

  Launch of FTX

  FTX was founded in May 2019 but had very little volume until the following year when they established the regulatory status to allow US customers to trade. FTX later acquired Blockfolio to obtain additional US licensing and the bones of a trading app. Even with this boost in volume, FTX was considered an unfavorable exchange to make markets for among established industry participants.

  The presumption was that Alameda Research was an embedded market maker that was given an unfair advantage on the platform and rival firms stayed clear.

  At the time SBF was still the CEO of both companies. There were claims of a separation of the firms, but it was known that they both operated out of the same offices in Hong Kong. It was rumored that Alameda had full access to customer position data and would hunt for liquidations.

  FTX was seen as a shady offshore bucket shop.

  By early 2021 little had changed in the industry perception of FTX, but volume was growing. In January SBF was busy arguing on Twitter, leading to the infamous “I’ll buy as much Solana as  you have, right now, at $3” tweet. He was not taken seriously until later that year when this huge Solana bet seemed to pay off.

  FTX gains Legitimacy

  By the middle of 2021, with Crypto in a raging bull market and FTX capturing significant market share, the exchange became too large to ignore. A big part of the story was China putting in place another round of Crypto bans in September which forced many major Crypto traders and market makers to find new venues to trade.

  Zhu Su, founder of disgraced Crypto Hedge fund Three Arrows Capital said recently that he had moved his fund’s trading from Huobi and Okex to FTX and Binance in the wake of the China ban.

  FTX gave them extremely favorable terms.

  A big reason that firms began to feel comfortable with FTX was the splashy fundraising FTX was able to pull off. Market participants assumed that among the billions of dollars of venture capital money that had been invested in FTX, someone had done basic due diligence on the firm. We now know that during these heady days of free money SBF was demanding investment commitments quickly from VCs or he would move on to the next phone call.

  There was a giant line of VCs desperate to get into an FTX round.

  The July fundraising list was a who’s who of Silicon Valley VC. Led by Sequoia, the round included Softbank, Temasek and VanEck. Apparently none of these firms insisted on even the most basic corporate controls, like installing a board of directors. A later round included a strategic investment from Blackrock. FTX was a blue ribbon investment.

  They all needed Crypto exposure now and FTX was the hottest Crypto startup in town.

  The other piece of the puzzle was that trading firms were now making money on FTX, when before they were simply getting their positions hunted by Alameda. Leverage was handed out in ample servings. Compliance was lax. Payouts were quick. It seemed to most that FTX had moved on from its shady beginnings to become a legitimate venue for market makers to use.

  Tokens

  A giant part of understanding exactly what went down at FTX is understanding the Tokens they had launched or partnered with. In 2019 FTX launched FTT, an Ethereum ecosystem token which represented a cut of exchange fees and offered discounts to traders for holding it. It was the same model that Binance launched their token with in 2017. Tokens would be bought out of the market with a portion of exchange profits on a regular basis, delivering a return to investors.

  A huge portion of FTT tokens were held on the FTX balance sheet as an asset.

  Even more egregious were the Solana ecosystem tokens which FTX helped launch. The leaked balance sheet showed that FTX had large holdings of Serum, Maps and Oxy.

  It showed Serum tokens marked as a $2.2 billion asset. Available market cap at the time was less than $500 million.

  We don’t know for sure, but it seems likely that loans were taken out backed by FTT and other minor tokens.

  Essentially, it seems that SBF invented his own currency from this air and then took out US dollar loans against it from anyone that would offer. 

  We haven’t heard from any major Crypto lender about whether or not they took FTT as collateral. We may never hear an admission on that point. What we do know is that Solana DeFi, where SBF had significant influence, largely took these minor tokens as collateral for loans on much more generous terms than seems reasonable now.

  And why wouldn’t Crypto lenders offer loans to FTX on whatever collateral was offered? FTX was the fastest growing exchange in industry history. It had prestigious investors. Its CEO was throwing around cash on advertising and political donations. Surely FTX was profitable enough to service their loans.

  So what happened to the money?

  When FTX blew up there was a balance sheet hole of somewhere between $6-10 billion. It was reported as “missing customer funds” but judging from recent public comments made by SBF it seems more likely that there was a complex web of loans and cross company funding arrangements than just straight up theft of customer assets.

  An underreported part of this story which fills in a key gap is that the offshore FTX entity apparently didn’t have its own bank account. Wires to the offshore exchange would go directly into a bank account held by Alameda Research. It seems that FTX didn’t secretly transfer customer funds to its associated hedge fund, it probably didn’t even make loans between companies.

  The most likely explanation is that Alameda Research just had direct access to customer funds  which were wired to them.

  While shocking, it wouldn’t be as egregious if the FTX terms didn’t explicitly say that assets were held on trust for customers. FTX wasn’t supposed to touch customer funds once they were deposited. Maybe that’s the whole point, that SBF was relying on some bizarre technicality or legal fiction to convince himself that he had the right to deal with customer assets. Did I mention that both of his parents are compliance lawyers, with one a leading expert on tax havens.

  If there’s anyone that could access the advice to set up a complex piece of legal fiction entitling him to pilfer customer funds in a defensible way, it’s SBF.

  

  Liquidations

  That only explains how Alameda Research got access to customer funds, but how did they lose the funds? Alameda Research is a market maker primarily and was the key integrated market maker on FTX. Among other things that gave Alameda the ability to purchase liquidated positions of customers, likely at a huge discount.

  In a bull market this is a hugely advantaged position to be in. Say Bitcoin drops 5% in an hour and longs get liquidated, Alameda was able to purchase those long Bitcoin positions and then resell them later, after the liquidation cascade was over and price had recovered.

  Alameda was exempt from liquidation on FTX, so they could hold underwater positions for as long as they wanted without being forced to close them.

  In a bear market, Alameda would likely accumulate underwater positions that they couldn’t get out of without incurring a large loss. Other market makers will generally sell a liquidated position off as soon as possible, to avoid being liquidated themselves. This doesn’t appear to be a check and balance that was in place for Alameda’s operations on FTX.

  Another key feature of the leverage trading offered at FTX was cross asset collateral. Essentially this means that leverage was offered on the entire portfolio of a customer. There wasn’t a segregation of collateral, users could simply offer up a mixed list of tokens and take margin loans against the whole pie. This included FTT and Serum at much more generous collateral ratios than other exchanges offered.

  Whatever low quality collateral you had, FTX would take it, and it seems that it would end up on Alameda’s books when a customer was liquidated.

  Luna Eclipse

  In a collapsing market, this lack of controls over Alameda is potentially disastrous. Luna had the most high profile collapse in the history of Crypto tokens in May this year, losing 99.7% of its value in a week before getting as close to absolute zero as possible. FTX and Binance were the major venues for trading the Luna collapse. Traders bought the dip on leverage all the way down.

  It seems likely that Alameda took all of those liquidated positions onto their own balance sheet.

  Luna started its collapse at around $90. The following week it was at essentially zero. There is no way that Alameda could have sold off all of those liquidated customer positions as the token collapsed. This type of liquidation transaction is known as “toxic flow” and is a surefire way to bankrupt a market maker.

  If FTX’s famously specialized liquidation engine simply meant that customer positions were shunted onto the Alameda balance sheet to be cleared at a later date, then the amount of toxic flow from junk tokens in the last year would build up quickly.

  This seems to be the only way the size of the hole makes any sense.

  Other Problems

  If we assume that Luna blew a giant hole in the balance sheets within the FTX empire then what happened next makes a whole lot more sense. SBF went on a buying spree as Crypto lenders collapsed, backstopping insolvent firms and being proclaimed as Crypto’s JP Morgan.

  In the cold light of day a more likely explanation than wanting to save the industry is wanting to save himself.

  If insolvent Crypto lenders like Voyager and Celsius had given loans to FTX, taking FTT and other minor tokens as collateral then those tokens would be seized and sold into the market during a bankruptcy, cratering the price and liquidating FTX loans with other lenders. Don’t forget, for tokens like Serum, FTX held and likely pledged as collateral more than the entire free float on the market.

  All of this isn’t to say that funds didn’t go missing in other ways though.

  According to the Bankruptcy filings, FTX had loaned more than $1 billion to SBF individually and $2.3 billion to his investment company, Paper Bird Inc. There were also 9 figure loans to other executives and Bahamas real estate purchased by SBF’s parents and associates worth $300 million. There are even suggestions that the $420 million meme fundraise in October 2021 basically just ended up in the pocket of SBF, rather than productively invested in the company.

  

  It seems like the FTX balance sheet was used as a slush fund for SBF.

  None of this in any way can add up to $6-10 billion in stolen customer funds and it’s unlikely that the mechanism was brazen theft. The scenario outlined above, poor trading controls at Alameda creating bad debt within the corporate structure and a CEO that was scrambling to keep the empire afloat, is far more likely. This also casts a new light on the “generous terms” offered to other major market participants in 2021.

  Taking VC money

  What if Alameda’s goal wasn’t to make money, but to lose money to other traders in a perverse growth hack used to attract the next round of “smart money” investors?

  After all, at best Alameda had been making a few hundred million from trading over the course of its existence and likely much less than that. As spreads closed with more market makers flooding into the asset class it’s much easier to take money from Sequoia and Softbank than it is to make money trading.

  Running an unprofitable casino is a terrible business, but selling an unprofitable casino that looks extremely busy to a private investor is a fantastic business.

  This part of the story seems like the inevitable end state of the 2010s dominance of Venture Capital and private investing. After a decade of easy money, low interest loans and an insatiable appetite for tech investments we were bound to see someone game the system. In 2021 VCs were not doing diligence, they were shoving newly raised funds into startups as fast as possible. Venture capital firms invested $643 billion in 2021. Almost double the pace of 2020 and five times as much as was committed in 2012.

  For context, noted scam company Theranos raised $1.4 billion over 13 years. FTX raised $1.8 billion in only 3 years.

  The entire story of the growth of FTX is a story of the driving forces of tech stock investing being applied to Crypto and fintech. The problem is that when a social media company blows up, users just lose their photos and social graph. When a fintech or Crypto company blows up, customers lose their funds and lives are ruined.

  A big part of the problem with FTX was that tech growth hacking and the infinite pot of VC money was applied to financial services with little regard for the safety of users. No one did the diligence. The regulators were asleep at the wheel.

  “Grow fast and break things” isn’t an appropriate model for the financial sector.

  We Have Questions…

  This article mostly dealt with how FTX managed to grow so fast and then blow up so spectacularly but it didn’t touch on the why. As stated in the introduction, there are some major question marks about state entanglement, potential involvement of intelligence operatives and the corruption of captured regulators are all major open questions that I just don’t have answers to.

  Was FTX a plant to bring down the Crypto industry and justify tighter regulation?

  Was FTX a front for money flowing from Crypto traders and Tech VCs into Democrat coffers?

  Why is the mainstream media reporting on this event as if SBF is just a failed entrepreneur who dreamed too big, rather than a fraud who appropriated customer funds?

  Who was behind the success of FTX? Who is Gary Wang?

  

  We likely won’t ever get satisfactory answers to these questions. The family political links between major characters in this story are deeply suspicious. As one Crypto Twitter account that has been covering the news relentlessly said:

  “This FTX fiasco is *really* doing its best to confirm every single conspiracy theory anyone has ever had about anything.”

  Next week in the conclusion of this three part article I’ll cover some of the fallout surrounding the FTX collapse that is important to understand and the lessons being learned by the industry in its attempt to rebuild.

  [A good place to start down the deep state rabbit hole in all this is Mathew Crawford’s  ‘A Grand Unified Theory of FTX’ – which I printed off to read and it clocks in around 65 pages – markjr]

  *  *  *

  Today’s post is from contributing analyst Scott Hill. To receive further updates of this series and our overall investment thesis for digital assets (even in this climate), subscribe to the Bombthrower mailing list. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/27/2022 – 20:30

• IRS Warns Americans To Report Annual PayPal, Venmo Transactions Exceeding $600 Per Year
  IRS Warns Americans To Report Annual PayPal, Venmo Transactions Exceeding $600 Per Year

  The Internal Revenue Service is warning Americans that they need to prepare to report transactions of at least $600 per year through ‘third-party’ payment processors such as Venmo and PayPal.

  

  In a notice posted Tuesday to irs.gov, businesses and the self-employed are warned that cumulative income of at least $600 per year through apps – which also include Zelle and Cash App – will need to be reported on a tax form known as 1099-K, according to Marketwatch.

  According to the agency, the notice is primarily aimed at part-time workers, those with side-gigs and people selling goods. It does not apply to non-commercial transactions such as reimbursing people, or one-off transactions such as selling old furniture, Marketwatch reports.

  That said – considering that the 3rd party providers are going to start reporting transactions exceeding $600, how will the IRS know you’re selling ‘old furniture’ versus, say, sweaters made out of cat hair on Ebay?

  Before this year, the threshold for filing a Form 1099-K report was at least 200 transactions totaling an aggregate of at least $20,000.

  When Congress passed the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, it included a provision that reduced the reporting threshold to a single transaction over $600.

  The Biden administration hopes that by reducing the threshold, the measure will crack down on Americans evading taxes by not reporting the full extent of their gross income. -MarketWatch

  In short, this will undoubtedly raise taxes on people making under $400,000 per year.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/27/2022 – 20:00

• Bans On "Assault" Weapons Do Not Reduce Crime
  Bans On “Assault” Weapons Do Not Reduce Crime

  Authored by Benjamin Williams via The Mises Institute,

  Prominent Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have repeatedly expressed interest in reinstating a federal assault weapons ban.

  Biden himself included an assault weapon ban in his 1994 crime bill, which lasted ten years until its expiration in 2004. 

  Biden has claimed that the ban did its job and reduced mass shootings:

  “When we passed the assault weapons ban, mass shootings went down. When the law expired, mass shootings tripled.”

  

  But a detailed review of the data demonstrates that the ban had no real benefits whatsoever, and neither did it lessen the frequency of major shootings.

  What Is an Assault Weapon?

  Contrary to popular belief, an assault weapons ban does not ban AR- or AK-style rifles. Assault weapons bans focus primarily on the specific functions of these rifles. The 1994 ban described assault weapons as semiautomatic rifles that

  had the ability to accept a detachable magazine and possessed two of the following five features: (1) a folding or telescopic stock; (2) a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon; (3) a bayonet mount; (4) a flash suppressor or threaded barrel designed to accommodate a flash suppressor; or (5) a grenade launcher.

  This definition permits some adjustments to be made to rifles, such as an AR-15, that would make them completely legal (or “compliant”). Rifles that comply must have a fixed stock. Stocks cannot be telescopic or folding. A pistol grip is incompatible with a compliant rifle. Compliant rifles typically have a stock that has additional material added to it, so the pistol grip is attached to the stock or is extended far enough to prevent the shooter from wrapping around it with their thumb. The maximum number of rounds the rifle’s magazine can hold is 10. Any more than that is regarded as a high-capacity magazine. The rifle may not have a flash suppressor.

  Many creative minds have discovered countless ways to transform basic AR-style rifles into completely compliant weapons. Today, several states have their own assault weapons bans with similar or identical provisions as the 1994 federal ban. In these states, the ownership of AR-15s and such is not at all uncommon. The same went for gun owners during the federal ban from 1994–2004.

  

  The reality of compliant assault weapons is a strong indicator that the assault weapons ban did not work, outside of some inconveniences for gun owners. Any owner could easily convert a compliant rifle into a fully functional (and illegal) one using minimal tools and labor. And many, including mass shooters, take advantage of this. The 1994 ban led to a sharp increase in the demand for assault weapons, which initially increased prices. But after an increase in production, prices began to fall to their previous state. A 2002 study showed:

  In the short-term, the federal AW ban reduced the availability of AWs to criminal users by increasing the cost of these weapons in primary and, presumably, secondary markets. However, the ban also stimulated production increases for AWs and legal substitute models, resulting in a post-ban decline in prices.

  Proponents of a renewed ban completely overlook the rise in the ownership of assault weapons both before and after the 1994 ban. Any positive benefits cited by Biden and other politicians and talking heads are seriously called into question in light of this fact.

  Did the Ban Decrease Mass Shootings?

  When we closely examine the facts, Biden’s assertion that the ban will reduce the number of mass shootings is shown to be, to put it mildly, an excessive exaggeration. It is safe to assume that Biden derived this claim from a 2019 study that references the Mother Jones mass shootings database, or possibly he obtained it directly from Mother Jones. Either way, there are numerous flaws in citing this data as evidence. The methodology Mother Jones utilized to create their dataset on mass shootings and the conclusions that were made using this data have garnered criticism from criminologists such as Grant Duwe, who points to underreporting problems and says that “the Mother Jones list relied exclusively on news reports as a source of data, and news coverage tends to be less accessible for the older cases.”

  He anchored the hunt for more in-depth news reporting on mass homicides in his own study of homicide using the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) data. The SHR data has several shortcomings, but it is the most complete homicide dataset currently accessible that sheds light on, among other things, when and where the majority of mass shootings have occurred in the United States. Duwe’s research revealed that mass shootings are “roughly as common now as they were in the 1980s and ’90s.”

  

  But what about the frequency of assault weapons used in mass shootings? Did that change? Economist John R. Lott says: “There was no drop in the number of attacks with assault weapons during the 1994 to 2004 ban. There was an increase after the ban sunset, but the change is not statistically significant.”

  Did the Ban Decrease Gun Homicides?

  Assault rifles (and rifles in general) are very rarely used in gun crimes, so we would not expect to see any significant decrease in gun homicides or gun crimes due to the 1994 ban. Multiple studies have been done examining the effects of the ban on gun homicides and the results are generally inconclusive. A 2016 review published in JAMA found that four different studies, “do not provide evidence that the ban was associated with a significant decrease in firearm homicides.”

  Between 1991, when violent crime reached an all-time high, and 2017, the country’s overall violent crime rate decreased by 47 percent, with a murder rate decline of 34 percent. Meanwhile, it appears foolish to attempt to count the almost two hundred million new firearms purchased by Americans, including the more than twenty million AR-15s and the hundreds of millions of “large” pistol and rifle magazines.

  Conclusion

  The assumption that the 1994 assault weapons prohibition was successful in lowering gun homicides, mass shootings, or even the possession of assault weapons is not backed by strong evidence. Most likely, those who advocate for the ban’s reintroduction are unaware of the compelling evidence against the prohibition, whether on purpose or accidentally. When the police and ATF start enforcing a new ban, there may even be an uptick in violence.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/27/2022 – 19:30

• Binance's 'CZ' Says Half Billion WhatsApp User Records For Sale On Dark Web
  Binance’s ‘CZ’ Says Half Billion WhatsApp User Records For Sale On Dark Web

  Nearly half a billion WhatsApp users’ mobile phone numbers are allegedly for sale on a dark web community forum, according to multiple sources, including Binance’s billionaire Changpeng “CZ” Zhao. 

  “A new set of 487 million WhatsApp phone numbers for sales in the Dark Web,” CZ tweeted Sunday. He said a sample of hacked data “indicates the phone numbers are legit.”

  CZ warned users on the Meta-owned platform that “threat actors downstream will use this data to conduct smishing (phishing messages) campaigns.” 

  A new set of 487 million WhatsApp phone numbers for sales in the Dark Web. A sample indicates the phone numbers are legit. Please stay vigilant as threat actors downstream will use this data to conduct smishing (phishing messages) campaigns. Stay SAFU. 🙏 pic.twitter.com/ZuDVXlzz4F

  — CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) November 27, 2022

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

  Cybernews initially confirmed the hack. They said: 

  On November 16, an actor posted an ad on a well-known hacking community forum, claiming they were selling a 2022 database of 487 million WhatsApp user mobile numbers.

  The dataset allegedly contains WhatsApp user data from 84 countries. Threat actor claims there are over 32 million US user records included.

  Another huge chunk of phone numbers belongs to the citizens of Egypt (45 million), Italy (35 million), Saudi Arabia (29 million), France (20 million), and Turkey (20 million).

  The dataset for sale also allegedly has nearly 10 million Russian and over 11 million UK citizens’ phone numbers.

  The threat actor told Cybernews they were selling the US dataset for $7,000, the UK – $2,500, and Germany – $2,000.

  Cybernews also posted a screenshot of the seller’s post on the forum featuring the total number of phone numbers per country. 

  

  Cybernews investigated a sample of the stolen database and concluded this is legit. 

  

  The report adds massive data sets “could be obtained by harvesting information at scale, also known as scraping, which violates WhatsApp’s Terms of Service.” The seller claims all numbers belong to active users. 

  “In this age, we all leave a sizeable digital footprint – and tech giants like Meta should take all precautions and means to safeguard that data.

  “We should ask whether an added clause of ‘scraping or platform abuse is not permitted in the Terms and Conditions’ is enough. Threat actors don’t care about those terms, so companies should take rigorous steps to mitigate threats and prevent platform abuse from a technical standpoint,” head of Cybernews research team Mantas Sasnauskas said.

  This is not the first time Meta and its platforms have had users’ personal data published on the dark web. Last year, someone on a low-level hacking forum published the phone numbers and personal data of 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries for free. 

  Meta has vowed to crack down on data-scraping after Cambridge Analytica scraped the data of over 80 million users to target them with political ads in the 2016 election.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/27/2022 – 19:00

• EU Accuses Washington Of Making A Fortune From Ukraine War
  EU Accuses Washington Of Making A Fortune From Ukraine War

  “Nine months after invading Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is beginning to fracture the West,” Politico observes in a surprising admission which marks a stark reversal from prior mainstream media optimism and cheerleading of the White House’s blank check approach to supporting Ukraine. “Top European officials are furious with Joe Biden’s administration and now accuse the Americans of making a fortune from the war, while EU countries suffer.”

  There’s clearly growing frustration among European officials over Washington’s refusal to push the Zelensky government to the negotiating table while an unprecedented billions worth of weaponry and defense aid pours in, risking unpredictable escalation between NATO and Russia. Meanwhile European populations will continue being the first to pay the price amid frigid winter temperatures and a simultaneous severe energy supply crisis even as some leaders still spout abstract ideals of “sacrifice”. 

  

  And all the while Biden has continued rolling out his controversial green subsidies and taxes which are widely perceived as unfairly punishing European industries at this most sensitive juncture. 

  A senior European official speaking to Politico additionally blasted the White House policy of in effect using the Ukraine war to line the pockets of American defense contractors while at the same turning a deaf ear on European pleas for some relief to the no-win situation.

  “The fact is, if you look at it soberly, the country that is most profiting from this war is the U.S. because they are selling more gas and at higher prices, and because they are selling more weapons,” the senior official said. 

  The person acknowledged a large-scale shift in sentiment happening, largely driven by the intractable ‘win in Ukraine at all costs’ stance of the US administration: 

  The explosive comments — backed in public and private by officials, diplomats and ministers elsewhere — follow mounting anger in Europe over American subsidies that threaten to wreck European industry. The Kremlin is likely to welcome the poisoning of the atmosphere among Western allies. 

  “We are really at a historic juncture,” the senior EU official said, arguing that the double hit of trade disruption from U.S. subsidies and high energy prices risks turning public opinion against both the war effort and the transatlantic alliance. “America needs to realize that public opinion is shifting in many EU countries.”

  But the US National Security Council has lately reiterated its position that the crisis is solely on Putin’s shoulders full-stop, while Washington is simply presenting ramped-up US liquefied natural gas delivery to Europe as fulfilling the need to “diversify away from Russia,” according to a NSC statement.

  

  Even the typically compliant EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell is now questioning and showing hints of losing faith in ‘united’ efforts to support Ukraine, acknowledging to Politico, “Americans — our friends — take decisions which have an economic impact on us.”

  And for a more pointed breakdown of the problem as Brussels sees it…

  “The United States sells us its gas with a multiplier effect of four when it crosses the Atlantic,” European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton said on French TV on Wednesday. “Of course the Americans are our allies… but when something goes wrong it is necessary also between allies to say it.”

  Another EU diplomat cited in the Politico report described that Biden’s $369 billion industrial subsidy scheme to support green industries as part of the Inflation Reduction Act unleashed panic across European capitals. 

  “The Inflation Reduction Act has changed everything,” the EU diplomat said. “Is Washington still our ally or not?” This rising fury could spill into the streets as more European households are likely to experience shortages in electricity and heat this winter, further intensifying the pressure on EU politicians.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/27/2022 – 18:35

• True Colors: J6 Staff Lash Out At Liz Cheney For Allegedly Burying Parts Of The Investigation
  True Colors: J6 Staff Lash Out At Liz Cheney For Allegedly Burying Parts Of The Investigation

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  There is a deepening division on the J6 Committee as staffers turn on Liz Cheney over the final report on the January 6th riot. Angry rhetoric is flying with staffers accusing the Committee of becoming a “Cheney 2024 campaign” while both the Cheney spokesperson and Committee spokesperson lashed out at the staff members as “disgruntled” and producing shoddy or biased work. The underlying issue, however, is important and revealing. The Committee’s color coated teams include a “Blue Team” on the failure to prepare adequately for the riot. That part of the investigation is reportedly being dumped or reduced.  Members of the “Green” and “Purple” teams are also reportedly irate.

  

  Cheney was soundly defeated in her primary in Wyoming and will soon leave Congress. She is being pushed by some Democrats as a possible surprise candidate for House Speaker if they could get a few Republican votes. That seems highly unlikely. The Republicans are likely to end up with the identical margin held by the Democrats for the past two years. Alternatively, some Democrats want Cheney to run for president either to dog Donald Trump in the primary debates or to run as an independent to siphon off votes in the general election.

  That seems to be the suspicion for some staffers in the Washington Post story.

  Fifteen former and current staffers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, expressed concerns that important findings unrelated to Trump will not become available to the American public…

  Several committee staff members were floored earlier this month when they were told that a draft report would focus almost entirely on Trump and the work of the committee’s “Gold Team,” excluding reams of other investigative work.

  Potentially left on the cutting room floor, or relegated to an appendix, were many revelations from the “Blue Team” — the group that dug into the law enforcement and intelligence community’s failure to assess the looming threat and prepare for the well-forecast attack on the Capitol. The proposed report would also cut back on much of the work of the Green Team, which looked at financing for the Jan. 6 attack, and the Purple Team, which examined militia groups and extremism.

  “We all came from prestigious jobs, dropping what we were doing because we were told this would be an important fact-finding investigation that would inform the public,” said one former committee staffer. “But when [the committee] became a Cheney 2024 campaign, many of us became discouraged.”

  If true, the report will largely track the virtual exclusive focus of the hearings with open references to the 2024 election as an overriding concern.

  Some of us have lamented that the J6 Committee could have been so much more than a one-sided, highly partisan investigation. House Democrats barred two Republican members originally selected by GOP leaders, who then boycotted the panel in response.

  Even with the GOP boycott, the Committee could have followed the type of balanced inquiry that pursued allegations tied to the Pearl Harbor attack or Watergate. It could have insisted on balanced hearings with witnesses and dissenting views.

  Nevertheless, the committee revealed important, often disturbing details. It was important for Americans to hear from figures like former attorney general Bill Barr and White House lawyers who struggled to counter unfounded advice given to Trump by outside lawyers on challenging the 2020 election. There were painful scenes of Capitol police overwhelmed at barricades and members of Congress hunkered down in offices.

  Yet, the focus on a single approved narrative gave the hearings the feel of an infomercial selling a product that most of us bought two years earlier.

  Now, staffers are turning on Cheney who appears to have objected to parts of the final report and wants the report to focus on Trump. Cheney’s spokesman Jeremy Adler said that the staffers in the other teams produced “subpar material” full of “liberal biases.”

  Tim Mulvey, the spokesperson for the committee, criticized the staffers speaking to the media as “disgruntled” and added that “they’ve forgotten their duties as public servants and their cowardice is helping Donald Trump and others responsible for the violence of January 6th.”

  It is obviously hard to address the alleged shoddy work on these other teams or claims of liberal bias. However, the “Blue Team” was a particular interest for some of us. The J6 Committee virtually ignored the issue despite ample questions over decisions by Congress leading to the riot.

  The Democrats in the final hearing hammered away at documents showing that the agency knew about violent threats in the days leading up to Jan. 6th. However, the Democrats have refused to pursue the lack of preparations on Capitol Hill as a focus of the hearing. On the day of the riot, many of us noted (before the breach of security) that there was a relatively light police presence around the Capitol despite the obvious risk of a riot. Once the crowd surged, they quickly were able to gain access to the building. Conservative media have featured a video showing an officer standing by as crowds poured into the building.

  That obviously does not mean that there was not violence or that Capitol police did not bravely fight to protect the building. Most of us have denounced the riot as a desecration of our constitutional process.

  Moreover, at some point, officers may have shifted to deescalating as crowds surged into the building. The question is why there were not more substantial barriers, like those used at the White House. Instead, some barriers were composed of a few officers using their bikes.

  The available evidence indicates that the House was warned and that the need for National Guard deployments were discussed.

  There is a concern that, after criticizing such deployment and fencing around the White House in the earlier riots, the Democrats did not want to be seen following the same course.

  An Inspector General report indicated that police were restricted by Congress in what they could use on that day. Previously, it was disclosed that offers of National Guard support were not accepted prior to the protests. The D.C. government under Mayor Muriel Bowser used only a small number of guardsmen in traffic positions.

  That focus was rejected by the Committee members and there were no dissenting views voiced on the Committee as well as a virtual bar on opposing explanations or interpretations of evidence.

  The GOP is now expected to fully investigate what the Congress knew and what it did in the days leading to the breach of the Capitol. Clearly, Cheney and others did not believe that the Blue Team full findings were ready to be released. However, those findings could be reviewed by the new GOP majority as it seeks full disclosure on why the Capitol was so quickly overrun on January 6th.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/27/2022 – 18:30

• When Crypto Bros Hit Miami: "It Was Like Revenge Of The Nerds" Booking Tables For $50,000
  When Crypto Bros Hit Miami: “It Was Like Revenge Of The Nerds” Booking Tables For $50,000

  In the grand scheme of the post-FTX collapse, millions of depositors in the exchange will suffer terminal losses and countless other investors will see much if not all of their crypto gains wiped out. But we doubt anyone will shed a tear for the Miami nightclubs which made an absolute killing for much of 2022 only to see their crypto spoils evaporate as the bitcoin bubble burst.

  As the FT recalls, it was the spring of 2021, and Miami’s hottest night clubs were inundated with phone calls from cryptocurrency entrepreneurs that no one had heard of. They wanted to reserve lots of tables, or rent the entire venue for a whole evening at a cost of half a million dollars or more.

  As bitcoin hit a then-record high of $60,000 and as crypto became mainstream, the biggest beneficiaries descended on the Florida city to flaunt their wealth at lavish parties.

  “Out of the blue, all these kids from crypto started coming down and spending a lot of money — like, an insane amount of money,” said Andrea Vimercati, director of food and beverage at Moxy Hotel group.

  “They were booking tables for $50,000, and it was like, who the hell are these people,” added Vimercati, former director of Groot Hospitality, which operates some of the hottest night clubs in Miami including Liv, Story and Swan.

  The new partygoers were “95 per cent men, young . . . with a kind of nerdy style,” he said. “You couldn’t tell they had a lot of money if they were just walking around.”

  A little more than a year later, the phones have stopped ringing with the value of the crypto universe tumbling over 70% from its all time highs, culminating with the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraudulent FTX exchange which has cast a pall over the industry. As a result, the FT reports that according to Vimercati, the crypto revellers frequenting Miami’s clubs have “completely disappeared”,

  Those on the dance floor had behaved as though there was no tomorrow. In the event, it turns out they might have been right. “They wanted to show that they didn’t have any limits,” recalled Vimercati. “They were ordering 12 or 24 bottles of the most expensive champagne and just showering themselves without even drinking.”

  In June last year, one group who claimed to have just sold their cryptocurrency company celebrated the windfall at E11even, a neon-lit night spot with troupes of trapeze dancers and burlesque shows. “50 Cent was performing, and their spend was more than a million dollars,” said Gino LoPinto, operating partner at the club. “They paid in crypto.”

  LoPinto recalled: “They had bathtubs of champagne brought out, and gave 50 Cent a bunch of cash to throw.”

  E11even started accepting payment in cryptocurrency in April 2021. The club processed more than $6mn worth of transactions last year. But in the past three months, the club has processed less than $10,000 — “a monster, huge fall”, he said.

  

  Not surprisingly, the crypto nouveau riche were keen to boast about their newfound wealth, said LoPinto, who described how clientele would prove how rich they were by opening up the crypto wallets on their smartphones.

  “You wouldn’t normally show your bank account, but people do show their crypto wallets,” he said. “I’ve seen more crypto wallets in a year than I’ve seen bank accounts in a lifetime.”

  Surely the IRS will be delighted. As for Miami, the never-ending parties only underscored the city’s status as the epicenter of the US cryptocurrency industry. Florida’s low taxes were a big draw, as were less-onerous Covid-19 restrictions that turned the city into a magnet for revellers. In March 2021, FTX paid $135 million to secure 19 years of naming rights for the arena where basketball team Miami Heat play. In June 2021, the Bitcoin Conference was held in Miami after relocating from Los Angeles.

  To be sure, Miami’s club operators have always been able to rely on a few big weekends, such as Art Basel, music festival Ultra and New Years Eve. But for the past two years, it was a never-ending cryptofest as attendees at bitcoin events demanded as many tables and in some instances have bought out entire venues to throw private parties.

  “On the bigger crypto weekends, the groups coming in for private buyouts were these young tech guys,” said Alan Roth, owner of Rosa Sky rooftop lounge. “A buyout costs anywhere from 20 per cent to 50 per cent more than we would make on a normal night.”

  Crypto money had flooded into other parts of Miami’s luxury scene too. “They bought big houses for $25 million plus, they rented big yachts . . . they had money and were spending it lavishly,” said Brett Harris executive director of luxury sales at real estate firm Douglas Elliman. “They were buying big houses in cash, no financing — converting Bitcoin into cash to buy.”

  “It was revenge of the nerds,” said Harris, adding that crypto entrepreneurs wanted to buy properties for entertaining with home movie cinemas and water features.

  Michael Simkins, chief executive of E11even’s cryptocurrency operation in Miami said: “The money came rather quickly for a lot of them, and it’s easier to spend it when it comes quickly.”

  Roth is hopeful that the latest source of demand for Miami’s luxury lifestyle will return. “I don’t think the crypto market is going to fold and be done. It’s like the regular market — it goes up and down. I don’t get the sense that they’re afraid.”

  Not everyone agrees. “We don’t think they’re coming back,” Vimercati said.

  Oh yeah? Just watch how quickly the narrative changes the moment cryptos 2X, 3X and more-X from here after the Fed folds and unleashes the next monetary firehose, and how fast all those who vow they will never again touch a (fraction of a) bitcoin ever again park their life savings in the digital token all over again…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/27/2022 – 18:00

• The Consumer Economy Has Completely Collapsed – "It's A Ghost Town" For Holiday Shopping Everywhere
  The Consumer Economy Has Completely Collapsed – “It’s A Ghost Town” For Holiday Shopping Everywhere

  Authored by Sundance via TheConservativeTreehouse.com,

  “Crowds? I see nothing. I’m surprised,” retail worker Jeremy Pritchett told FOX 2.

  “Normally, it’s wrapped all the way around the building. Today: no one.”

  That’s the typical ground report from areas all over the country.  No one, literally almost no one, is doing any holiday shopping and the traditional Black Friday rush to get deals and discounts just didn’t happen.  Financial media are scratching their puzzlers, perplexed with furrowed brows.

  

  Interestingly, almost every financial media outlet is using the same Retail Federation talking point about anticipating an 8% increase in holiday sales this year.  Apparently, pretenses must be maintained.  Meanwhile, news crews and camera crews are having a desperate time finding any holiday shopping to use as background footage for the claims that sales are strong.

  “Look, over there. There’s a person buying something. Oh, wait, no, that’s just an employee dusting the empty cash register.”  At a certain point, one would have to believe reality would run head-first into the mass delusional pretending.  Maybe this holiday season will be it, maybe not.

  Reuters – […] About 166 million people were planning to shop from Thursday’s Thanksgiving holiday through this coming “Cyber Monday,” according to the National Retail Federation, almost 8 million more than last year. But with sporadic rain in some parts of the country, stores were less busy than usual on Black Friday.

  “Usually at this time of the year you struggle to find parking. This year, I haven’t had an issue getting a parking spot,” said Marshal Cohen, chief industry adviser of the NPD Group Inc.

  Black Friday Has Gotten Out Of Control pic.twitter.com/AzhL3rFnas

  — Steve Inman (@SteveInmanUIC) November 26, 2022

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

  “It’s a lot of social shopping, everybody is only looking to get what they need. There is no sense of urgency,” Cohen added, based on his store checks in New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia.

  At the American Dream mall in East Rutherford, New Jersey, there were no lines outside stores. A Toys ‘R’ Us employee was handing out flyers with a list of the Black Friday “door buster” promotions. (read more)

  It’s almost Kafkaesque to see how the media are continuing to maintain economic pretenses, yet the reality of a completely collapsed consumer economy is physically staring them in the face.

  (Bloomberg) – Activity Light at One San Francisco Mall (4:40 p.m.) – At the Stonestown mall in San Francisco, shoppers were few and far between. The Target and Zara stores were mostly empty, and there was no line for the mall’s Santa Claus. Uniqlo and Apple were the busiest locations, but they still weren’t crowded. 

  […]

  Crowds were thin in the late morning at the Stamford Town Center mall. Kay Jeweler, empty. Safavieh, empty. Only a couple of people waited at the checkout line at Forever 21 and just a few were in line for a purchase at Barnes & Noble.

  […]

  At a Target store on Chicago’s North Side, the parking lot was barely half full at about 9 a.m. local time. Shoppers were greeted with $3 ornaments and discounted Christmas trees when entering, and the store seemed calm and relatively quiet.

  […]

  The Macy’s in Stamford, Connecticut, was neat and orderly — maybe a little too neat and orderly on a day associated with shopping chaos. The furniture section was nearly deserted, though there were more shoppers looking at shoes. (read more)

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/27/2022 – 17:30

• "Atmospheric Chess Pieces Align": Polar Vortex May Unleash Arctic Blast As Far As Deep South
  “Atmospheric Chess Pieces Align”: Polar Vortex May Unleash Arctic Blast As Far As Deep South

  Ever so often, the polar vortex dips south over North America from its usual perch in the Arctic and brings a blast of cold air. The next arrival appears imminent, potentially as early as the first week of December, over the eastern half of the US. 

  According to freelance meteorologist Mike Masco, a “monster negative NAO [North Atlantic Oscillation] signal showing the pattern will reload the cold FAST as the atmospheric chess pieces align to produce major cold & potential polar vortex into the eastern/northern USA Dec. 5 & Beyond.”

  MONSTER NEGATIVE “NAO” SIGNAL SHOWING
  The pattern will reload the cold FAST as the atmospheric chess pieces align to produce major cold & potential #PolarVortex into the eastern/northern USA Dec 5 & Beyond..Consider topping off Oil/propane tanks soon if that’s your heating mode pic.twitter.com/AaGvLCeiHH

  — Mike Masco (@MikeMasco) November 27, 2022

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

  Masco said, “consider topping off Oil/propane tanks soon if that’s your heating mode.” 

  Others say a polar vortex will plunge temperatures below freezing across the Deep South, mainly in Alabama, Louisiana, and South Carolina, by Dec. 13. 

  

  Average temperatures in Washington, DC, will peak around 60 degrees Fahrenheit on Dec. 6 and begin to slide to about 26 degrees by Dec. 12. 

  

  Temperatures across North Carolina will plunge from the low 60s to sub-freezing by Dec. 12. 

  

  The same for South Carolina. 

  

  As well as Georgia. 

  

  The cold air will even pour into Florida. 

  

  On a regional basis, Midwest temperatures will average around 20 degrees by Dec. 12. 

  

  Southeast temperatures will plunge to freezing conditions. 

  

  The cold blast will be so severe that temperatures across the country, on average, will be driven down to around 35 degrees. 

  

  And look at heating degree days for the South East …. the cold blast will send heating demand through the roof. 

  

  However, Phil Flynn, senior analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago, told Reuters that even though “the forecast seems to suggest we are going to see this polar vortex… (traders are) pulling back some of their positions on the anticipation, the cold blast might not be as far-reaching as originally feared.”

  Last week, Houston-based energy firm Criterion Research explained that the US “officially flipped over to withdrawal season” as heating demand begins to rise. 

  

  What appears to be an upcoming cold blast may only suggest US natural gas prices could rise even higher. 

  

  Enjoy the warm weather while it lasts — because if forecasts hold up, a polar vortex could plunge a large swath of the US into a deep freeze. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/27/2022 – 17:00

• Market Positioning And Drivers: Will There Be An "Everything Rally" Or Will Stocks "Risk-Off" Into Year-End?
  Market Positioning And Drivers: Will There Be An “Everything Rally” Or Will Stocks “Risk-Off” Into Year-End?

  By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

  Positioning & Key Drivers

  As we head into what in theory should be a quiet period for markets (though it certainly wasn’t in December 2018), we try to address positioning (very difficult to get a good read) and what our drivers for the next few weeks will be.

  Positioning

  There are reports circulating that everyone is bearish. Those reports seem to focus on words (there is a lot of airtime being given to the bears) and on things like equity put/call ratios. The argument against looking at put/call ratios is that they have been oscillating back and forth (almost wildly) and they may not do a good job of capturing the weekly and daily expiration options markets. It is truly fascinating to watch (and to understand) the implications of the rise of daily expiration options. I cannot think of a more leveraged bet than daily and weekly options. Most (not surprisingly) expire out of the money, but the lottery ticket nature seems to encourage the large swings (in either direction) to become even larger (see “What’s Behind The Explosion In 0DTE Option Trading“).

  

  This is an added dose of gamma to an already illiquid market – which is a recipe for large moves.

  Measures like the CNN Fear & Greed index remain firmly in “Greed” territory. Certainly not “Extreme Greed” but not indicative that “everyone” is bearish. On AAII we pulled back from last week’s more bullish reading, but it is still more neutral than anything else.

  

  Looking at QQQ RSI (relative strength indicator) it is by and large in the middle which indicates neutral positioning. Nothing in the “technical charts” I look at (not my area of expertise, but not something I ignore completely) was jumping out at me as bullish or bearish except for the VIX.

  VIX has drifted back to just over 20, which has been problematic for equities this year.

  

  Will VIX, QT, weakening economic data, and abysmal liquidity set up a December 2018 type of scenario?

  Stock buybacks (which may be loosely interpreted as company positioning) influence markets and it seems like we have developed a pattern where we hold our breath during earnings season and breathe a sigh of relief as earnings are done and cannot undo any of the good that the buybacks have done. Unfortunately, this is a three-month cycle and by late December we go back to holding our breath again!

  On the fund flows, ARKK hit a record for shares outstanding two weeks ago and has seen a slight pullback. TQQQ hit the record three weeks ago but has also seen small but steady outflows. I use those two ETFs as they capture the zeitgeist of the moment, and they seem to support the fact that markets actually got bullish and are now more neutral.

  I see little evidence to support the “everyone is bearish” camp (at least not in equities). If anything, we could be setting up for selling pressure into year-end as the “Fed is slowing down on hikes” story is getting largely priced in. Additionally, the “need to chase seasonality” trade has been put on and quantitative tightening will (over time) give investors the opportunity to take less risk for similarly expected returns.

  On the bond side, you could convince me that people are still too bearish (because that’s what I’d like to believe) and it may be true here, but with the recent move stopping out a lot of short positions, I suspect that bonds are more neutrally positioned.

  Key Drivers

  With positioning likely neutral, markets will be influenced by data and important narratives. For the coming weeks and months  these are the drivers that we will be keeping a close eye on. They are what we will be examining closely to see if we need to adjust our opinions and outlooks on the economy and markets!

  • The Wealth Effect. The wealth effect isn’t getting the attention it deserves.
    • Housing is down. For most, home values are higher today than a couple of years ago, but the psychological impact of having home values decline (in response to much higher mortgage rates) is problematic.
    • Bonds have been hit hard. Anyone hoping bonds would zig when stocks zagged is having a tough year. The so-called 60/40 funds (funds that invest in stocks and bonds specifically to capture the typically negative correlation) have had one of their worst years on record.
    • Stocks have been hit hard. While the S&P 500 is “only” down 15% this year, the Nasdaq is down 28%, and “disruptive” companies (I will use the ARKK ETF as a proxy) are down 62%. It isn’t just the wealth effect of the average investor that is problematic, but it is also the destruction of what was “paper” wealth for many employees of these companies.
    • Crypto was hit hard. Many seem to ignore crypto, but in a little over a year, the value of cryptocurrencies has gone from $3 trillion to maybe $0.7 trillion. The entities involved in the space have also seen their valuations plunge.
    • The Growth Company “Wealth Effect.” If you go back to early 2021, growth was everywhere. Raising equity (publicly or privately) was relatively easy even at large valuations. That money was raised and was spent because showing growth was the key objective. Now, with valuations low (and more of an emphasis on cashflow) these companies which were big engines of growth will be much more careful with their spending.
  • Inventory, Demand, and Supply Chains. These factors could just as easily drag inflation down.
    • Demand seemed high, but was it sustainable? Consumers had wealth (see above), stimulus, and responded to potential supply shortages by buying more last year than they needed and effectively pulled demand forward. There is evidence (in inventory data) that companies didn’t see this.
    • Supply chain overcompensation. Companies responded to supply chain risks by ordering more. Demand seemed robust and it also seemed “safer” to have more inventory than less. As supply chains are normalizing (lots of evidence that this is occurring, even with China still enforcing a zero-COVID policy), we can see more inventory build-up.
  • Russia, Ukraine, and Energy Prices. The base case is for the status quo to continue, which will keep upward pressure on energy and commodity prices, but much has been priced in and global supply chains are shifting to adapt to this new universe.
    • If anything, the “surprise” would be some sort of truce. The expense of military equipment is weighing on many NATO nations. Ukraine cannot really “win” and Russia cannot afford to lose, so trying to avert further infrastructure damage (and permanently displacing citizens) is a reasonable goal. Sanctions seem to hurt us as much as Russia, which is yet another reason to try to come to the table. One of the outcomes of the sanctions is that moving oil by tanker has become difficult and expensive because  shipping routes have lengthened to adjust for “who can buy or sell oil to whom.”
  • China continues its re-assertion of the communist party and is extending its “client” state relationships. I do not expect much help from China in the global economy.
    • Xi is re-asserting the authority of the communist party. It was always in charge, but even internally the perception of the party’s power relative to successful businesspeople (as one example) is being clamped down on.
    • Expecting China to do what we wish they would do has been and will continue to be a flawed strategy. There remains a “hope” that China really wants to be like us, and they will come around to that way of thinking. This is highly unlikely to happen.
    • Shifting economic ties. China and Russia, in many ways, make better trading partners than the U.S. and Russia (Russia wants high tech from China and has a trade surplus from selling commodities). This relationship exists with many countries, especially the autocratic/resource rich nations of the world. The Belt and Road Initiative has been an extremely effective way (from the Chinese perspective) of solidifying relationships with countries that China wants resources, access, or other things from.
    • Taiwan. The GIG sees a military invasion as unlikely, but look for political and economic pressure to be ratcheted up, while maintaining an intimidating military presence.
  • Jobs. The job data has been strong and could be one area that continues to show strength, which would be a threat to our rate outlook as we are less sanguine about that market.
    • Jobs (always a lagging indicator) will be even more lagging this time. After a year or more where it was extremely difficult to hire, companies will not fire people any time soon! Firing will be a last resort (even more than usual). You will see cutbacks in services used (legal, consulting, cloud, advertising, etc.) first and there is evidence we are seeing some of that.
    • What sort of jobs will be lost? This time around, it seems like many job cuts (at least in the early rounds of layoffs) will be higher paying jobs. This won’t be a job market that hits low-income earners hard because it will hit high income jobs more than usual. That will matter as it will take fewer jobs lost to tilt the economy down.
    • Not all jobs data passes the “smell” test. The Household Survey shows 2 million fewer jobs created than the Establishment Survey. The JOLTs data has been showing more and more jobs relative to hiring since more job searches went online. There are also some “wonky” but realistic questions about various metrics in the jobs data.
  • The Service Sector. This is another area that has held in there and this might bode well for the future. However, there is a risk that similar to inventory (where supply chain fears overstated demand), a similar phenomenon could be occurring in the services space. The contention is that after an extended period where travel or seeing your family was difficult, there is a “catch up” effect that may not be as robust once we make it through this year’s holiday season.
  • Inflation. I expect deflation to be as much of a topic of conversation next year as inflation.

  Longer-term factors. While these drivers are unlikely to cause major market moves in the coming weeks, they will shape next year, and it is important to keep an eye on how they are developing as getting these right will be a key component of successfully navigating 2023.

  Supply Chain Management. Companies will create simpler and “safer” or more “secure” supply chains. That will create jobs domestically, in Mexico, and in other areas. That will create opportunity and will be somewhat inflationary. It will create more “middle” class jobs, not just in manufacturing, but in the logistics around these new supply chains. This will be good for American jobs, but not great for inflation.

  Sustainable AND Traditional Energy build-out. We need to build out sustainable energy faster and more aggressively than previously thought. We need to ensure that the backbone of our energy system is big enough (for long enough) to let that transformation occur smoothly. This will eventually be deflationary, but it will be inflationary in the near-term as immense amounts of money will need to be spent on the materials and people needed to create the world for which we are striving.

  India. This is my “outlier” and doesn’t get enough attention. India is set to surpass China in terms of total population with a much better demographic mix! India is also set to gain China’s “losses” on the supply chain side. India was growing rapidly before Covid and seems to be back on that trajectory. There are many obstacles (some of which are their own making), but if there was one outlier that I’d be looking for it would be an “early 2000s like” China commodity boom! Let’s not forget that India is buying Russian commodities because cheap resources are critical for India. They work with Venezuela too and seem to be mimicking China’s playbook for resource accumulation in many ways. It seems shocking how seldom India comes up in conversations, yet this could be the shock to the global system for which we aren’t prepared.

  Bottom Line

  I still like bonds, though less than I did a few weeks ago! The rally has been intense, and we are nearing levels that seem difficult to justify without much worse data coming through. From our key drivers section, I expect the data to be weaker than consensus, but if the bearish positioning has been reduced in bonds, it will take a lot more to propel them to much lower yields.

  Skew positioning to the 2-to-5-year range as they should benefit the most as data comes in that compels the Fed to stop hiking sooner and the markets can price in a lower terminal rate. As of now, though there is more data to come, we can expect a 50bps hike in December, but that could be it (and might be too much). The market is pricing in a 5% terminal rate in May.  However, sub 4.5% appeals to me.

  Commodities may continue to struggle here, led by energy prices. Recent price declines have not impacted stocks significantly, but that commodity weakness could translate into commodity stock weakness (XLE and XLM have been resilient, near the highs in XLE’s case, but look for some profit taking to weigh on these stocks as markets struggle to see growth into 2023).

  I wouldn’t touch crypto with a ten-foot pole here. Maybe we see some of the various “exchange” and “custodial” entities and companies in the headline sort out their alleged issues and the market rebounds, but I don’t see that happening. Bitcoin should drift lower and sub $10,000 is my target (given everything that is going on and the number of questions institutional investors are facing).

  Which leaves the question – will there be an “everything rally” or will it actually be “risk-off” into year- end for equities?

  A week or so ago, I would have expected an “everything rally” into year-end. However:

  • Treasury yields are quite low and stocks didn’t lift much. The S&P 500 is close to its mid-September closing high (4,110) which should function as resistance.
  • The minutes should have helped stocks more than they did. Markets got less than a 0.5% rally in the S&P on Wednesday and the Nasdaq 100 is closer to Tuesday’s closing price than Wednesday’s price (not the sort of price action that bodes well for a sustained rally into year-end).
  • The PMI data was abysmal. It wasn’t just bad, it was abysmal. Services, the alleged backbone of the economy, growth, and inflation, hit 46.1 (down from 48.2). That is disturbing.
  • QT doesn’t help and if the “seasonality” trade has already been embraced, that could unwind.

  So, weighing all the evidence, I am slightly bearish on equities for now. Weirdly, the bearishness has little to do with the Fed trying to jawbone things down (because the market has moved beyond that). The bearishness is because we have shifted from a “bad news is good news” world to a “bad news is bad news” world for risky assets.

  Credit will outperform equities and there is a path to further spread tightening even if equities don’t rally. There are signs that some of the “hung” deals the banks have on the high yield side are working themselves out, so they won’t continue to be an overhang on the high yield and leveraged loan market. Maybe the pop, ironically, is more likely to occur in that space than in investment grade.

  In any case, on an all-in yield basis credit looks good, but on a spread basis it is time to opportunistically reduce risk, even in the face of a light calendar. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/27/2022 – 16:30

• RV Boom Over? Monthly Shipments Plunge As Dealerships Overflow With Campers
  RV Boom Over? Monthly Shipments Plunge As Dealerships Overflow With Campers

  There are dozens of recreational vehicle dealerships lining highways up and down the US East Coast. As of the Thanksgiving holiday week, driving down Interstate 95 and 85 from the Mid-Atlantic region into the Deep South, RV dealerships are overflowing with inventory, a massive change from the empty parking lots when RVs were in high demand during the pandemic. 

  RV Industry Association’s October 2022 survey of manufacturers shows total RV shipments ended the month with 32,652 units, a massive decline of 43.7% compared to the 57,971 units shipped in October 2021. Through October, RV shipments are down 12.2% compared with the same period last year, with 448,246 wholesale shipments. 

  

  “As we enter the holiday season, shipments of RVs continue to normalize from last year’s record production,” said RV Industry Association President and CEO Craig Kirby.

  

  Towable RVs, led by conventional travel trailers, saw shipments last month plunge by 48.3% compared with the same month the previous year with 27,329 shipments. However, motorhome shipments were up 4.1% compared to the same month last year, with 5,323 units. 

  Meanwhile, there’s been an explosion in shipments of parked model RVs, up 43.2% compared to the same month last year, with 507 wholesale shipments. So far this year, parked model RVs are up 16.5%, with 3,947 shipments. There was no official reason why trailers, or as the millennials call them, “tiny homes,” saw a surge in shipments, though demand could be rising as housing affordability is the worst on record, pricing tens of millions of Americans out of a traditional home due to elevated mortgage rates and record high home prices. 

  Take a look at the heavy discounting at the RV dealership Camping World in South Carolina.

  

  More discounting in Georgia. 

  

  To sum up, the RV bubble of the pandemic is deflating, and the overflowing inventory sitting on RV dealership lots may suggest soaring interest rates have crushed demand. Now comes the terminal bullwhip effect, where dealerships must unload RVs. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/27/2022 – 16:00

• 'Greater Idaho' Moves Closer To Bi-State Referendum As Two More Oregon Counties Vote To Leave
  ‘Greater Idaho’ Moves Closer To Bi-State Referendum As Two More Oregon Counties Vote To Leave

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

  Two more conservative-leaning counties in eastern Oregon, and one politically split county in California, have voted to begin the process that could lead to secession from their respective blue states.

  

  On Nov. 8, Oregon’s Morrow County passed the Greater Idaho proposal with 60 percent of the vote and Wheeler County with 59 percent.

  A similar measure in San Bernardino County, California, passed by a narrow margin, 51.3 percent to 48.7.

  “These are solutions they want their elected leaders to look into,” said Matt McCaw, spokesman for the Greater Idaho Movement based in Oregon.

  “We think it makes sense to move the border to where the cultural divide [exists]. Oregon is a very polarized state—two very different cultures.”

  

  The Greater Idaho Movement seeks as many as 15 counties in Republican-majority rural eastern Oregon to join with neighboring Idaho to the east.

  So far, 11 counties have signed on since the movement launched in 2019. Another county will vote on whether to investigate the secession process early in 2023.

  If both states ultimately agree to separation, the next step would be to form an interstate compact between Idaho and Oregon, something McCaw believes has “plenty of popular support.”

  The benefits would be mutual, he said.

  For example, though Oregon would end up losing about 400,000 (9 percent) of its population and ceding 63 percent of its land mass to Idaho, a political merger would end the longstanding partisan divide in Oregon, where Democrats comprise 47 percent of the electorate.

  The situation is nearly the reverse in Idaho, with nearly 84,000 square miles, 2 million residents, and a gross domestic product that exceeds $79 billion. Moreover, nearly 50 percent of the state leans conservative and Republican.

  Oregon, by contrast, encompasses more than 98,000 square miles and has 4 million residents and a gross domestic product of $224 billion. Vast swathes of some 30 million acres of productive forestland lie in the eastern part of the state.

  McCaw said most of Oregon’s wealth comes from industry and finance in the western coastal area, where liberal politicians in the state’s largest city of Portland often decide the state’s policies.

  “The west side of the state is urban and very left-learning. The right side of the state is very rural—very conservative. Eastern Oregonians match culture and values, and politics with Idaho.”

  

  McCaw said that political and cultural polarization is a problem not only in Oregon but across the United States. He said there is a “huge urban [and] rural divide” that is “only getting bigger.”

  He said that disapproval with the 2022 midterm elections among conservatives would only fuel partisan realignments at the state and county levels.

  “We’re about matching government to people and their values. You get rid of polarization and tension by matching people to the government they want,” McCaw told The Epoch Times.

  In San Bernardino County, with more than 2 million residents, real estate developer Jeff Burum proposed Measure EE as a way to leave California and create the new state of Empire.

  At issue is the state’s apparent inability to supply the resources or funding to support a growing population.

  The measure asked voters their “opinion on whether they want San Bernardino County elected representatives to study and advocate for all options to obtain the county’s fair share of state funding, including secession from the state of California.”

  Burum told The San Bernardino Sun, “I would never wilfully want to leave this state. But I can tell you this, if you’re just going to continue to abuse me and abuse us, sometimes you don’t have a choice but to stand up for yourself.”

  Jack Pitney, a professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, told the Daily Press there is a “very low probability” Measure EE would succeed, given that there are constitutional hurdles to overcome.

  He said the Constitution requires a vote of the state legislature to allow secession and the U.S. Congress to approve the establishment of a new state.

  West Virginia was the last state to secede at the height of the Civil War in 1863. Until 1792, Kentucky was a part of Virginia, and Maine a part of Massachusetts before separating to become an independent state in 1820.

  Another example is Washington, once a part of the Oregon Territory before it split from Oregon and became a territory in 1853 and the 42nd state in 1889.

  In Idaho, Republican state Rep. Barbara Ehardt said she supports the Greater Idaho movement as a “win-win” for both states even though it’s far from being a done deal.

  “States rights—that’s why I favor this movement. At some point, states will have to get the courage and rise and say, you know what? We’re not playing in that sandbox because it’s corrupt. We’re going to do what we need to,” she said.

  “When I first heard about this [movement] it resonated. Why wouldn’t we want to explore this, given that Idaho has been the No. 1 state in the nation for percentage of growth? If this weren’t a win for Idaho, I wouldn’t be behind it,” Ehardt told The Epoch Times.

  Ehardt said the more liberal-leaning parts of Oregon would benefit from fewer political struggles with conservatives and tax subsidies of the state”s less affluent eastern half. There would be “zero exchange” of congressional seats, and a more unified culture.

  The gains for Idaho would come from natural resources—minerals, water, timber, and the acquisition of Coos Bay, an important commercial hub.

  As one of the nation’s fastest-growing areas for conservatives, Idaho’s right-leaning base would gain from the infusion of 400,000 new residents, many of whom would likely vote Republican, Ehardt said.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 11/27/2022 – 15:30

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• 'Woke Warfighters': GOP Report Says Leftist Ideology, Gender "Insanity" Weakening America's Military
  ‘Woke Warfighters’: GOP Report Says Leftist Ideology, Gender “Insanity” Weakening America’s Military

  Authored by Naveen Anthrapully via The Epoch Times,

  Republican lawmakers have decried the Biden administration for policies that they say are weakening America’s military through leftist indoctrination and “woke” ideological posturing to appease “Ivy League faculty lounges or progressive pundits.”

  “Unfortunately, President Joe Biden and his administration are weakening America’s warfighters through a sustained assault fueled by woke virtue signaling,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) in a report titled “Woke Warfighters,” according to Fox News.

  “Our military’s singular purpose is to ‘provide for the common defense’ of our nation. It cannot be turned into a left-wing social experiment. It cannot be used as a cudgel against America itself.”

  The report cites several examples of the administration’s stance. One example was Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s first action after being confirmed by the Senate, which included signing a “racism” memorandum. The message directed all service members and Department of Defense civilian employees to conduct a “one-day stand-down” to discuss extremism within their ranks.

  

  This was despite the fact that in a force of more than 2.1 million active and reserve members, there were only 100 such cases of alleged “extremism,” according to data collected by the Biden administration.

  “The world is a dangerous place, and the Biden Administration’s insanity is eroding our greatest source of security in it,” said the report, citing the military’s promotion of Marxist critical race theory, sex reassignment procedures, and transgender ideology, as well as the punishment of those who oppose such things.

  Another example was that of Bishop Garrison, who currently serves as Austin’s senior adviser on human capital and diversity, equity, and inclusion issues. The report said that Garrison promoted the “1619 Project,” which is based on a falsified history of the United States and part of a revisionist education being taught in some schools across the country.

  Another case cited in the report was that of Kelisa Wing, the chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer at the Department of Defense Education Agency.

  “Wing also wrote a book to teach white children that they have white privilege and that ‘white privilege hurts a lot of people.’ The book comes with an exercise to help kids understand ‘what parts of my identity have provided me with privilege.’”

  Sex Reassignment Procedures

  Rubio and Roy pointed out that the U.S. military has historically not accepted candidates who do not meet certain physical and mental criteria, and some of the disqualifying conditions include allergies to peanuts or gluten, learning disorders, acute depression or anxiety, and skin diseases like eczema and psoriasis.

  “People cannot even enlist with Invisalign or braces until they are removed,” the report states. However, recent developments have the military forces “proudly promoting and celebrating sex reassignment procedures, which can have months-long recovery periods, with complete recovery taking ‘up to one year’ for some procedures.”

  Former President Barack Obama’s Defense Department in 2016 allowed unrestricted access to military service by transgender people. The GOP report argues that people with gender dysphoria suffer from mental health issues and are more likely to experience severe anxiety and poor mental health encounters, and “are eight times more likely to commit suicide.”

  The report cites Thomas Spoehr of The Heritage Foundation, who said that because people with gender dysphoria are more prone to mental health issues, other service personnel “will be reluctant to rely on them” because of these issues, which would result in a section of “non-deployable service members.” This could also lead to resentment within the ranks as some members will never be “called upon to deploy,” the report states.

  The Biden administration allows members to “transition” while on active duty, and allows individuals to use shower and bathroom facilities of their choosing. Military members are now being trained in the use of appropriate pronouns and “when to recommend their subordinates consider gender reassignment surgery,” said the report.

  Punishing Dissenters of Woke Ideology

  The report concluded with the Afghanistan withdrawal, which resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members. The United States also left behind billions of dollars’ worth of equipment, including 2,000 armored vehicles and up to 40 aircraft, which the Taliban seized and paraded.

  “No one faced consequences. Rather, the Biden Administration continued undermining the military with woke ideology and ignored its failure. The only service member who received a reprimand from the Afghanistan debacle was a lieutenant colonel who criticized the way the withdrawal was executed,” the report stated.

  The GOP report accused the administration of hypocrisy for the lieutenant colonel’s treatment when compared to a junior medic in uniform who used the Chinese messaging app TikTok to criticize the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

  The medic asks in the video, “How am I supposed to swear to support and defend the Constitution and a country that treats its women like second-class citizens,” adding “I will not rest, and I will not be silent, because this is an attack on women in this country.”

  The report states that the medic has not received any disciplinary action for her remarks.

  Chiefs Push Back on Criticism

  In 2021, the service chiefs for the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard rejected the assertion that the armed services are getting progressively “woke.”

  “I think it’s an assertion that isn’t really grounded on facts,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said at a naval conference in 2021.

  “We know that there’s strength in diversity; that is a scientifically proven fact.’’

  The Epoch Times has reached out to the Department of Defense and its education agency.

  U.S. Army officials confirmed on Sept. 30 that the Army failed to meet its recruitment goal of 60,000 personnel as the service branch only recruited about 45,000 soldiers during the 2022 fiscal year.

  “In the Army’s most challenging recruiting year since the start of the all-volunteer force, we will only achieve 75 percent of our fiscal year 22 recruiting goal,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said in a statement.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/26/2022 – 23:30

• EV Charging Stations By 2035 Will Need More Power Than A Small Town
  EV Charging Stations By 2035 Will Need More Power Than A Small Town

  A new report from the electricity and gas utility National Grid (which serves parts of New York and Massachusetts) found a rapid increase in electric vehicles on the city streets and highways will require upgraded power grids to handle all the new demand. By 2035, a charging station could demand as much power as a sports arena or small town. 

  National Grid expects by 2035, large charging stations serving EVs, from SUVs and pickup trucks to delivery vans and semi-trucks, would require 19 megawatts of peak power — that’s approximately what a small town uses. In 2045, those large charging stations could demand upwards of 30 megawatts of capacity, with peak usage of a large manufacturing plant. 

  

  National Grid said current charging stations couldn’t serve the EV demand of the future, indicating significant power-grid improvements would be needed. It said expanding the charging infrastructure would take time:

  “Building these high-voltage interconnections and upgrades can take years, which is why it’s important to take action right now.

  “By making ‘no-regrets’ upgrades at ‘no-regrets’ sites, we can make sure fast-charging is there when drivers need it—and not a moment too late,” the report said. 

  Today, the impact of EV charging on the grid is small, and there is enough excess capacity to handle the current fleet of cars, SUVs, vans, and pickup trucks. 

  As EV adoption expands, so will the electricity demand, and as we’ve noted, nuclear power generation will be the best form of on-demand clean energy. The White House understands nuclear is the future for a sustainable clean grid, as they rush to secure a “large amount” of funding for a domestic uranium strategy. 

  Unreliable solar and wind won’t be enough to power the Biden administration’s ambitious plan for half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 to be electric. Meanwhile, California set a target of 2035 to phase out the sale of new gasoline-powered light-duty vehicles.

  Momentum is certainly building to electrifying vehicle fleets. In doing so, increasing investments in zero-emission nuclear power production and sourcing uranium domestically will be the key to sustainably powering future EV demand. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/26/2022 – 23:00

• The Left's Cynical "Speech Is Violence" Ploy
  The Left’s Cynical “Speech Is Violence” Ploy

  Authored by Ben Shapiro via The Epoch Times,

  This week, another evil mass shooter unleashed horror at a gay club in Colorado Springs, killing 5 and wounding another 25. The shooter – whose name I refuse to mention in order to disincentivize future shooters, who seek notoriety – was clearly mentally ill: Just last year, the shooter reportedly threatened his mother with a bomb, resulting in his arrest. Yet Colorado’s red flag law, which could have deprived him of legal access to weaponry, was not invoked by either police or relatives. The Colorado Springs massacre, then, is yet another example of a perpetrator with more red flags than a bullfighting convention, and no one in authority willing to take action to do anything about him.

  

  Yet the national conversation, as it so often does, has now been directed away from the question at hand – how to prevent mass shootings – and toward broader politics. Instead of seeking methodologies that might be effective in finding and stopping deranged individuals seeking murder without curbing rights and liberties for hundreds of millions of people, our political and media leaders have decided to blame Americans who oppose same-sex marriage, drag queen story hour, and “family-friendly” drag shows.

  Disagreement with the radical Leftist social agenda amounts to incitement to violence, they argue.

  Thus, NBC News senior reporter Brandy Zadrozny said, “there is a pipeline. It starts from some smaller accounts online like Libs of TikTok, it moves to the right wing blogosphere, and then it ends up on Tucker Carlson or ends up out of a right-wing politician’s mouth, and it is a really dangerous cycle that does have real-world consequences.”

  Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times wrote, “it seems hard to separate (these murders) from a nationwide campaign of anti-LGBTQ incitement …. They’ve been screaming that drag events … are part of a monstrous plot to prey on children. They don’t get to duck responsibility if a sick man with a gun took them seriously.”

  Brian Broome wrote in The Washington Post that the shooting could not be “blamed on mental illness”; no, he stated, “It’s right-wing rhetoric that sparks these nightmares …. The bottomless list of homophobes and transphobes on the right don’t need to throw the rock and then hide their hands. Instead, they use someone else’s hands entirely.”

  The Left’s attempt to lay responsibility for violence at the feet of anyone who opposes the transgressive social agenda doesn’t stop with blame—it extends to calls for full-scale censorship.

  “We’re living in an environment that’s driven by two things,” averred Sarah Kate Ellis, CEO of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

  “Politicians who are using us to bolster their careers by creating division and hate, and number two is social media platforms that are monetizing hate, and especially against marginalized communities. They’re—they’re choosing profits over hate, and it’s killing, literally killing our community.”

  Social media, the logic goes, ought to shut down or demonetize any video disagreeing with the GLAAD agenda.

  This is cynical politics at its worst. It’s also nothing new. The Left routinely cites violent incidents as reason to crack down on free speech with which they disagree. As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Instagram) tweeted, “After Trump elevated anti-immigrant & anti-Latino rhetoric, we had the deadliest anti-Latino shooting in modern history. After anti-Asian hate w/ COVID, Atlanta. Tree of Life. Emanuel AME. Buffalo. And now after an anti-LGBT+ campaign, Colorado Springs. Connect the dots, @GOP.”

  Yes, according to AOC, virtually every major mass shooting of the last seven years is the result of her political opponents—none of whom has called for violence. But in the world of the Left, disagreement is violence merely waiting to be unleashed. Which is why censorship, they believe, is the only way to achieve a more peaceful world.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/26/2022 – 22:30

• US Nuclear Reactors Among The Oldest In The World
  US Nuclear Reactors Among The Oldest In The World

  The United States’ 92 nuclear reactors currently in operation have a mean age of 41.6 years, the third oldest in the world.

  

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, the only nuclear fleets that are older are those of Switzerland (46.3 years) and Belgium (42.3 years). Also older are the singular reactors in use in Armenia and the Netherlands.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  The U.S. was among the first commercial adopters of nuclear energy in the 1950s, explaining the number of aging reactors today. A building boom between the 1960s and 1970s created today’s nuclear power plants in the United States. The five reactors completed in the 1990s and the one finished in 2016 were all holdovers of delayed construction projects from the 1970s experiencing roadblocks due to regulatory problems and mounting opposition to nuclear energy. The most recent construction start date of a completed U.S. reactor today is 1978 – one year before the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, which further cemented the public’s rejection of nuclear energy and the challenges of updating nuclear reactor infrastructure today. However, two reactors started at Vogtle power plant in Georgia in 2013 will join the grid soon as the newest additions to the U.S. fleet. They too experienced many regulatory and other delays, culminating in the bankruptcy of the reactor construction company. The U.S. government stepped in with a loan so that the project can now be finished almost 17 years after its initial proposal.

  The U.S. today is one of only 15 countries which the World Nuclear Industry Status Report lists as actively pursuing nuclear energy. This includes new nuclear programs in the United Arab Emirates, Belarus and Iran that were started in the past decade only, as well as a younger program in China that started producing power in 1991 and today has a mean reactor fleet age of just nine years. India, running a nuclear energy program since 1969, nevertheless saw much more recent construction than the U.S., achieving a current mean reactor age of 24.2 years. Many European countries which were early adopters of the technology are meanwhile phasing out their programs, at times before the end of reactors’ expected lifespans.

  Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing energy crisis, interest in nuclear energy has been renewed in many countries, but challenges for nuclear reactors construction persist today. One solution could be a pivot to small reactors like the ones company NuScale is expected to build in Idaho by 2030 using a new modular technology.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/26/2022 – 22:00

• Biden Admin Quietly Greenlights Plan To Build Huge Gulf Oil Terminal
  Biden Admin Quietly Greenlights Plan To Build Huge Gulf Oil Terminal

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

  The Biden administration has quietly approved plans to build a new crude oil terminal in the Gulf of Mexico off Texas, seemingly in contradiction to the president’s climate agenda.

  

  The Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration approved the application (pdf) for Enterprise’s Sea Port Oil Terminal, one of four proposed offshore oil export terminals, on Monday.

  According to the application, the port will be located offshore of Freeport, Texas. It will have 4.8 million barrels of storage capacity and add 2 million barrels per day to the U.S. oil export capacity.

  In its 94-page decision (pdf), the Maritime Administration said that it had approved the application because the construction and operation of the port is “in the national interest and consistent with other policy goals and objectives.”

  “The construction and operation of the Port is in the national interest because the Project will benefit employment, economic growth, and U.S. energy infrastructure resilience and security,” the administration wrote. “The Port will provide a reliable source of crude oil to U.S. allies in the event of market disruption and have a minimal impact on the availability and cost of crude oil in the U.S. domestic market.”

  

  Protests Over Planned Oil Terminal

  The decision states that the project will expand on an existing Enterprise Crude Houston operated terminal located in Houston and will generate 62 permanent jobs over 30 years. Additionally, 1,400 temporary construction jobs will be created, with the majority of the workforce being hired from existing labor pools in Texas and Louisiana, according to the application.

  The Environmental Protection Agency quietly issued its approval (pdf) of the project in October but stressed that “more emphasis is needed to ensure that environmental justice and climate change considerations are included in the project for the protection of overburdened communities.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/26/2022 – 21:30

• Rocking Around The Plastic Tree
  Rocking Around The Plastic Tree

  For some families, the search for the right Christmas tree is an annual event.

  For large shares of Americans and Brits though, this search may have ended a long time ago – the perfect tree already sitting safely in the attic or garage, ready for its glorious but fleeting return to the living room.

  

  As new survey data from Statista’s Global Consumer Survey shows, it’s a different story in Germany.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  There, the home of the Christmas tree tradition, the practice is still very much alive – 43 percent of adults said they would be putting up a real tree this year, compared to 24 percent in the U.S. and just 17 percent in the United Kingdom.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/26/2022 – 21:00

• Thoughts On A Crypto Crisis
  Thoughts On A Crypto Crisis

  Authored by Omid Malekan,

  If you’ve never seen the movie “There Will Be Blood” starring Daniel Day Lewis, then now might be a good time. Based loosely on an Upton Sinclair novel that satirizes the early days of the oil industry, it portrays the life of an independent oil man who rises to great wealth and power at the expense of his humanity. While that character’s arc is predictable, what makes the movie is his back and forth interaction with a young pastor whose own lust for power turns out to be just as great, and just as corrupting. Lewis’ character, while evil, is at least self-aware about his greed and selfishness. The pastor is not, and in some ways turns out the more pathetic character.

  

  Welcome to the state of crypto in its thirteenth year, except that in our story the greedy entrepreneur and the morally bankrupt spiritual leader have turned out to be the same person. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, but also Do Kwon (of Terra), Su Zhu (of Three Arrows Capital), Alex Mashinsky (of Celsius) and a few others. All claimed to be working towards the greater good. All ended up obscenely wealthy in the process. All turned out to be frauds.

  Tempting as it might be to focus all of our energy into anger towards these men, this is a time for self reflection. As an industry, but also a community. Crypto has attracted millions of people from all over the world and the vast majority are good people who believe in this new way of building trust. But we are terrible at picking leaders (with a few exceptions) and have only ourselves to blame when they let us down.

  The great irony of the collapses we’ve experienced lately is that nobody has to use these firms. Unlike Wall Street, where consumer choices are always limited (by design) the censorship resistance of crypto often means nobody has to use any service. Most of FTX’s clients could have custodied their own coins and used DeFi, in the same way that people who wanted a more decentralized stablecoin could have used Dai.

  And yet, countless users who came to crypto to get away from traditional authorities ended up running into the arms of services offered by inexperienced leaders who act like they are running a cult. But why?

  The simplest answer is greed. The KwonZhuMashFried’s of the world all promised their followers a faster road to riches. Greed has an exponential function. The more money people make, the more they (paradoxically) want, despite the marginal utility of the next dollar declining quickly. Crypto has made a lot of people rich, but for every user who cashes out there seems to be two who double down. This compulsion for always making more drives some people to suspend disbelief and to seek out the quacks who make the most grandiose promises.

  But blaming everything on greed is too simple. There has to be more to this story, and true self reflection requires going deeper.

  Another explanation is the messy birthing process of a new industry. Director Paul Thomas Anderson chose the early days of the oil industry as the setting for his tale of human corruption for a good reason. There is something about transformative technologies and their early boom-bust cycles that pulls in certain kinds of people, and those people often end up hurting many others. There is a good amount of historical precedence to what is happening in crypto today in other industries. The early days of the railroad industry had the Crédit Mobilier scandal, the early days of the web had Worldcom, and the early days of securitization had Lehman.

  Ironically, even the early days of central banking included a spectacular bubble that led to a major collapse, as orchestrated by a cult-like figure who turned out to be a fraud.

  In each example, early adopters who believed that the world could be a better place — a place where central banking could work, railroads could crisscross the land, or electronic communication could be ubiquitous — had to suspend some level of disbelief. They also had to have faith in the face of great skepticism, for each new idea had its naysayers. But their open-mindedness also paved the way for grifters with a messiah complex to come in, take over, and almost ruin everything.

  Almost, because good ideas transcend the bad people who hijack them. This is a point that the crypto skeptics now basking in their schadenfreude tend to miss. Crypto didn’t become important because some mountebank mouthed off about it on twitter or because some charlatan testified about it to congress. It became important because it can solve important problems, and that importance enabled the rise of people like SBF. The collapse of FTX does not change that promise, in the same way that the collapse of countless railroad companies in the 1870s did not change the utility of trains.

  Blockchain is a technology invented to transform trust. In that sense, it is even more fundamental than oil, railroads or telecommunication, for trust is the alpha and omega of civilization. This transformation was always going to be messy and have many ups and downs, great moments of triumph followed by equally hard periods of despair.

  The fact that history is repeating itself doesn’t let the rest of us off the hook. We can and should do better. For me, I at least owe that much to my students and readers. For you, it might be something that you owe to your investors or customers. Governments owe it to their citizens and we all owe it to future generations.

  Here’s a short (but by no means definitive) list of how:

  First, we need to stop with the cults of personality. Even after everything that has happened we still have too many charlatans. The Michael Saylors and Max Keisers of the world only hurt the cause. Part of me is ashamed to work in an industry where people behave like this. (Side note: Bitcoin has lost half of its value since the time Keiser declared “we are not selling.” Not only are these people scummy grifters, they are also terrible investors).

  Second, success in this domain was, is and will always be about the tech, not the money, and certainly not the hype. Capital deployment, economic incentives and money legos are intricately involved with that tech, but doing well should only come to those who do good, and doing good means building something sustainable. The biggest tell of the impending doom of the KwonZhuMashFrieds of our world was their tendency to focus on flowery bullshit like super cycles and altruism, as opposed to the technology.

  How sad that the lineup for the next major Bitcoin conference consists almost entirely of hype people, even after everything that’s happened. For contrast, this is what real leaders like to talk about.

  Third, we need to stop the endless tribalism. Competition is healthy, believing your preferred project can only succeed if others fail is not. Tellingly, some of the industry insiders who just read my preceding paragraph have already jumped to false conclusions about my feelings towards Bitcoin and Ethereum, and will now filter the rest of my comments through that lens. This is not how serious people behave.

  Our tribalism is a direct result of our insecurity. If you are actually certain that your project is the best then you should welcome the competition.

  Fourth, we need a better approach to VC. I’ve worked in venture and have many friends who work in crypto VC, but something has gone wrong here, because the most sophisticated investors have somehow fallen for the biggest scams. I’m not sure what the solution is, but it probably starts with more diverse views within the venture community and more patience. Just because your fund can raise a billion dollars to deploy doesn’t mean that you should.

  As a corollary, we also need to do something about the entrance of so much “biased capital” into our domain. Why do otherwise conservative institutions (such as pension funds) who would never invest a dollar into Bitcoin plow hundreds of millions of dollars into companies that promise to do stuff with Bitcoin like Celsius and FTX? Anyone who wants to get capital exposure to crypto should invest directly in crypto, as opposed to startups run by inexperienced boys with bad hygiene.

  Fifth, we need better infrastructure. One reason major institutions prefer indirect equity exposure over directly owning the coins is custody. So we need better custody of all kinds, from safer self-custody to regulated centralized custodians. I find it telling that so many funds and protocols who obviously knew better still kept all their coins at FTX. They did that because it was easier.

  The crypto-originalist vision of a world where every participant practices strict self-custody was never going to scale. Human beings have always wanted the help of a trusted institution to protect their valuables. This was true in ancient times when people used bearer assets like gold and will be true in future times when people use digital bearer assets like Bitcoin.

  Sixth, we need better regulators. Naked ambition masquerading as “doing good” by people with a messiah complex doesn’t just infect the industry. It also infects some of the people who regulate it. Gary Gensler is a good example. He talks a big game, but his track record of actually preventing bad stuff from happening is abysmal. His agency directly looked at Terra & BlockFi, and dealt directly with Sam, but did nothing to protect their victims. This obsession with classifying tokens as securities is counterproductive.

  The SEC’s refusal to allow a basic Bitcoin ETF, while simultaneously approving garbage like the BITI short Bitcoin fund, is the ultimate proof that this is more about Gary than investor protection. (BITI isn’t bad because it is shorting Bitcoin, it’s bad because it is bad at being short Bitcoin. BTC is down over 20% since it launched but the ETF is up less than half that amount.)

  Gensler belongs to a family of regulators and government officials who seem to think industries exist to serve their needs, as opposed to the other way around. If they were in charge when YouTube came out they’d be fining kids who uploaded cartoon clips while demanding every YouTube channel get a federal broadcast license. Bad regulators are almost as harmful to a new industry as bad entrepreneurs.

  That said, the crypto industry needs to get over its childish views on regulations. The parts of crypto that are fully centralized should be regulated like any other intermediary. The parts that sit in the middle (as FTX did) should be regulated by a mix of traditional rules and new ones that take advantage of the underlying tech, like proof of reserves. Only after we concede these points can we make a credible case for why things like DeFi should only be regulated by code and economic incentives.

  Seventh, we need to start differentiating between good innovations and the inevitable get-rich-quick schemes that result. Ethereum (which only ever raised $16m) was a good innovation. The fifth smart contract platform based on the Move programming language (which has already raised a billion dollars) is not. Digital scarcity as applied to art and collectibles was a good innovation. Almost every BYAC clone is not.

  As a corollary, we need to refocus tokenomics on building sustainable economic security and adoption. Bitcoin did this, but countless projects that have launched since have not. If your project gives more tokens to insiders and early investors than users will ever get then you have the wrong priorities. If your project needs a hundred million dollars to launch then you are in the wrong industry. There’s a high correlation in crypto between projects that have raised a lot of money and those that have failed spectacularly.

  Eighth, decentralization is not binary and exists on a spectrum. So much time and energy is wasted on arguing the extremes in the abstract, but the real world is always gray. This is one of those areas where a bit of nuance goes a long way. Yes, Bitcoin is decentralized but no, mining and exchange are not. And that’s OK, because the underlying protocol is censorship-resistant so there will always be competition.

  As a corollary, we need to be better at engaging with our skeptics, and that can only come from taking a balanced approach. For example, we need to concede the fact that hacks are a drawback of DeFi. Only then can we point out that one reason why DeFi gets hacked is because everything is transparent, so vulnerabilities are easy to spot. (Our legal system works much the same way, but we don’t try to end due process every time a criminal gets off on a technicality.)

  Ninth, we need to stop rushing to embrace the next hot thing. I love DeFi, but I would never put all my money into a brand new protocol with an unproven economic model, even if I believe in the model.

  Ours is an industry that likes to experiment in production, which is great. But we need to recognize that experiments can (and do) end badly.

  Tenth, we need to stop relearning the hard lessons of history. Direct democracy doesn’t work, too much leverage is deadly, systems tend towards hierarchies, and financial institutions need to manage risk. Disrupting the old ways can only come from a place of awareness, not ignorance. If you haven’t studied the reasons why fiat currencies came to be, then you can’t have an informed opinion on Bitcoin. And if you aren’t an expert on banking, then you shouldn’t be building in DeFi.

  Eleventh, we are all going to make it. Well, most of us anyway. Next year will be my tenth in crypto and this is my fourth bear market. Each one has its low points, but none have shaken my belief that crypto will eventually re-architect the global economy because my thesis is based on history and a deep understanding of the technology, as opposed to prices and prophets.

  While it’s true that debacles like FTX now happen on a bigger scale, that’s only because the industry has grown. It will continue to do so, even if at an uneven pace.

  [UPDATE] A friend just pointed out something that was missing from my 10 bullet points, which is a need to diversify the talent pool. This is a very important point so I’m adding it here. Part of the problem with the crypto industry is the way it attracts a certain kind of person — young, male, risk-seeking and likely to buckle convention. This might have been beneficial in the early days but we need older people to take leadership roles, along with more women and more people with experience from other industries.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/26/2022 – 20:30

• Jeff Bezos Announces $123 Million In Donations To Combat Homelessness
  Jeff Bezos Announces $123 Million In Donations To Combat Homelessness

  It looks as though Jeff Bezos is following through on his promise to give away most of his fortune in his lifetime…

  The Amazon founder and billionaire announced last week on Instagram that he recently awarded 40 grants as part of his Bezos Day 1 Families Fund initiative, which will go to fight homelessness. 

  They make up a portion of a $2 billion commitment Bezos has made to fight homelessness, according to CNN. In an exclusive interview with the network, Bezos had previously said he “plans to donate the majority of his $124 billion net worth during his lifetime”. 

  “With these funds, the organizations will continue their compassionate, needle-moving work to help families move from unsheltered homelessness and shelters to permanent housing with the services they require to achieve stability,” a statement from Bezos said. 

  

  The causes Bezos will be donating to in the future, according to the report, include “fighting climate change and supporting people who can unify humanity in the face of deep social and political divisions”. 

  Bezos says that giving away his wealth is a question of how to do it in a “levered way”. He told CNN: “It’s not easy. Building Amazon was not easy. It took a lot of hard work, a bunch of very smart teammates, hard-working teammates, and I’m finding — and I think Lauren is finding the same thing — that charity, philanthropy, is very similar.”

  He continued: “There are a bunch of ways that I think you could do ineffective things, too. So you have to think about it carefully and you have to have brilliant people on the team.”

  Several weeks ago Bezos also made a $100 million grant to Dolly Parton’s charity to use towards her philanthropic efforts. Bezos’ ex-wife Mackenzie Scott also announced that she would be donating another $2 billion to charity after Bezos’ interview with CNN. She has given away almost $4 billion to 465 organizations, CNN wrote. 

   

   

   

   

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  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/26/2022 – 20:00

• Former Employee Sues United Furniture Industries Over Mass Firing
  Former Employee Sues United Furniture Industries Over Mass Firing

  By Clarissa Hawes of FreightWaves

  A former United Furniture Industries employee claims the furniture manufacturer, headquartered in Tupelo, Mississippi, violated federal law by failing to give 60 days’ notice of its abrupt shutdown to nearly 2,700 employees and truck drivers, who found themselves without jobs two days before Thanksgiving.

  

  Former UFI employees, operating under the Lane Furniture brand name, were blindsided early Tuesday morning after receiving either an email or text message instructing them not to report to work that day because their jobs were being immediately terminated “due to unforeseen business circumstances.”

  As of publication Wednesday, Todd Evans, CEO of UFI, failed to respond to FreightWaves’ requests seeking comment about what precipitated the mass firing.

  Toria Neal, a resident of Lee County, Mississippi, who worked for UFI for more than eight years, alleges in her proposed class-action complaint that the company violated the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act and did not provide at least 60 days’ written notice of a pending closure.

  In the suit filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, Neal claims she and potentially thousands of other United employees received an email and/or text message “that it was terminating all of its employees effective immediately” just minutes before midnight on Monday.

  The message from UFI stated that the “terminations were expected to be permanent and that all benefits would be terminated without provision of COBRA.”

  Langston & Lott, based in Booneville, Mississippi, filed the first class action against United Furniture Industries, Inc., alleging it violated the WARN Act when terminating all 2,700 of its employees.

  “Under the WARN Act, the employees of United Furniture were entitled to either a 60-day notice or 60 days of severance pay — neither of those were provided,” Jack Simpson, attorney for Langston & Lott, told FreightWaves.  “If appointed class counsel, we look forward to vigorously investigating the actions of United Furniture and seeking as much compensation the terminated employees are legally entitled to.”

  Thousands fired by email, text

  “At the instruction of the board of directors of United Furniture Industries Inc. and all subsidiaries, we regret to inform you that due to unforeseen business circumstances, the company has been forced to make the difficult decision to terminate the employment of all its employees, effective immediately, on Nov. 21, 2022,” according to the statement to employees obtained by FreightWaves.

  One former employee said generations of her family had worked for Lane Furniture before United Furniture Industries bought the furniture manufacturer from Heritage Home Group in 2017.

  She said nothing prepared her and other family members who worked for the company that they would be fired via email or would no longer have health insurance.

  “We would go over to our friends’ houses and say, ‘Hey, that chair or that piece of furniture was made at our plant,’” the former employee, who didn’t want to be named for fear of retaliation, told FreightWaves. “We really took pride in our work — and this is how we are treated.”

  Some employees questioned the timing of UFI’s mass firing just before Thanksgiving.

  However, over-the-road truck drivers for furniture delivery division UFI Transportation who are currently making deliveries “will be paid for the balance of the week,”  the company stated in the letter to workers.

  According to the UFI statement, it directs truckers with loads to “immediately return equipment, inventory and delivery documents for those deliveries that have been completed to one of the following locations: Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Verona, Mississippi; or Victorville, California.”

  According to the Federal Motor Safety Administration’s SAFER website, UFI has 40 power units and 42 drivers. 

  In July, Pitchbook listed that the company had nearly 3,000 employees working in its 18 plants and distribution centers in North Carolina, Mississippi and California, as well as in Vietnam.

  Another former employee said she was aware the company was experiencing some difficulties but had no clue UFI would fire its entire workforce.

  In late July, the furniture manufacturer closed its plants in Winston-Salem and High Point, North Carolina, resulting in more than 270 workers losing their jobs, according to WARN Act notices filed at the time with the North Carolina Department of Commerce.

  Another 220 jobs were eliminated in late July at the company’s plant in Amory, Mississippi. “The new leadership had been working extremely hard to put new processes in place,” the former employee told FreightWaves. “There was too much effort being put in for anyone to really know they would close overnight.”

  While there was no communication from UFI executives as to what led to its abrupt closure, former employees did receive an update message late Tuesday about retrieving their belongings. 

  “As soon as the property manager can provide a safe and orderly process for former employees to come and gather their belongings, they will do so,” UFI/Lane Corporate Communications said in an email, which was obtained by FreightWaves. “We are not certain of the timeframe for this but will communicate proactively.”

  Retrieving their belongings is the last thing on former workers’ minds, one former employee said.

  “It is not fair to the laborers who seriously worked so hard to be blindsided like this,” the employee told FreightWaves. “It is not fair to the mom who just had a baby to wonder if she even has health insurance to cover it. It is not fair to the cancer patient in the midst of chemo about how to pay for her treatments.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/26/2022 – 19:30

• Biden's 'Buy American' Rules Undermining Infrastructure Spending
  Biden’s ‘Buy American’ Rules Undermining Infrastructure Spending

  The $1.2 trillion infrastructure package that Congress passed in November 2021 is touted as one of the signature accomplishments of the Biden administration. However, a fatal flaw in the law is gumming up the works and making it hard to turn all that money into new bridges and roads.  

  That flaw is a far more expansive “Buy American” provision than what’s been typically used previously. As state and local government “trade” publication Route Fifty explains: 

  “The law added more materials that must be produced in the United States on projects getting federal money. Before, for example, the Buy America provisions applied to iron and steel. Now, they’ll apply to construction materials such as copper wiring, glass, fiber optic cable, and plastics.”

  That’s causing a rising backlash from state transportation departments — in red and blue states alike.     

  This month, Roger Millar, Washington state’s secretary of transportation, sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Transportation on behalf of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials begging for relief from the red tape: 

  “The quick implementation of Buy America requirements for such a broad range of materials will cause delays in project delivery while states, contractors, manufacturers, and suppliers continue working to determine how best to track and verify these materials.“

  Thus, in trying to give favors to U.S. manufacturers, the Buy American rule in the Democrats’ infrastructure package undercuts construction firms that face project delays and disruptions for lack of compliant materials.  

  To the typical person, Buy American rules sound great. However, when the rubber hits the road, they’re garbage.

  Thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, this year we will begin fixing more than 65,000 miles of highway. And when we use taxpayer dollars to rebuild America — we are going to Buy American. pic.twitter.com/uv7inLMCNE

  — The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 2, 2022

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  In addition to all the extra bureaucracy needed to scrutinize and track the materials being used, Buy American rules force government project managers to spend more for materials since their choice of vendors is drastically reduced. 

  “Given the current supply chain constraints, moving to all U.S.-sourced construction materials will inevitably lead to project sponsors paying a premium to meet the Act’s requirements,” wrote American Public Transportation Association President Paul Skoutelas in June. “The question then becomes whether the market/industry can absorb a doubling, tripling or even a quadrupling of costs for construction materials.” 

  That means that $1.2 trillion won’t go nearly as far as it could if project managers had unfettered access to the global market for materials. 

  Washington, D.C.’s transit system is a case study in these effects. Over a ten-year period, Buy American rules made the city’s revamp of its train fleet cost an extra $400 million, according to Reason. That’s the equivalent of an extra 150 train cars.  

  Buy American bureaucratic idiocy isn’t limited to infrastructure projects. It’s also showcased in food aid to other countries.

  “Americans dole out $2.5 billion annually in food assistance,” writes Katrin Park at Foreign Policy. “About 75 percent of that money is used to cover the cost for processing and shipping U.S.-grown food overseas…A 2013 study found that buying grains locally in recipient countries resulted in 50 percent savings and shortened the delivery time from about six months to three.”

  Then there’s the Jones Act, which blocks foreign vessels from transporting freight or people from one U.S. port to another, shaving tens of billions of dollars out of the American economy every year — with the costs ultimately borne by consumers, and the benefits reaped by politically influential shipbuilders, shippers and unions.  

  Bottom line: Like all Buy American rules, the ones in the Democrats’ infrastructure package force the government to spend more and get less. They do accomplish a principal purpose however: giving politicians something to boast about to ill-informed citizens who can’t see the unintended consequences.  

  The future is #AmericanMade, and it’s because Democrats passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the #CHIPSandScience Act. These bills are job creators, and they will make easier to Buy American!

  — Congressman Donald Norcross 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@DonaldNorcross) November 1, 2022

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  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/26/2022 – 19:00

• Gingrich: New Trump Special Counsel Is A 'Left Wing Hatchet Man'
  Gingrich: New Trump Special Counsel Is A ‘Left Wing Hatchet Man’

  Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The newly appointed special counsel to oversee probes related to former President Donald Trump is a “left wing hatchet man” in pursuit of a “witch hunt,” according to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

  

  Attorney General Merrick Garland’s pick for the role is Jack Smith, a registered independent and a veteran federal prosecutor who most recently served as the chief prosecutor of the special court in The Hague.

  Coming days after Trump officially declared his 2024 presidential candidacy, the appointment put Smith in charge of two investigations: one involving Trump’s handling of classified materials in Mar-a-Lago, and another on the alleged interference of the transition of power following the 2020 presidential election and the certification of electoral votes.

  

  While proponents of the move have applauded Smith’s appointment, pointing to his long career fighting corruption, Gingrich, an Epoch Times contributor, does not agree.

  “This guy is not an independent counsel. He’s a left wing hatchet man,” he said in an interview, describing Garland’s choice as “outrageous.”

  “I think the Justice Department figured out that when Trump announced for president that they couldn’t just continue the normal process, because they have always avoided prosecuting candidates,” he said.

  

  “But what they’re doing is it absurd,” he added.

  “Most Americans will rapidly figure out this is one more example of the kind of witch hunt that has been dealing with the whole process of the Trump candidacy, starting in 2015.”

  Following Garland’s announcement, the White House denied foreknowledge, saying that the Department of Justice “makes decisions about its criminal investigation independently.”

  While Smith, in a statement, pledged to carry out the investigations “independently and in the best traditions of the Department of Justice,” Gingrich remains skeptical, citing Smith’s record working under the Obama administration.

  During the five years serving as the Justice Department’s public integrity chief from 2010, Smith oversaw the conviction of former Virginia Governor, Republican Bob McDonnell, on bribery and extortion charges. The Supreme Court later unanimously reversed the conviction, ruling that the government’s “boundless interpretation of the federal bribery statute” was unconstitutional.

  The former speaker called Smith’s impartiality into question, citing his involvement in what Gingrich called the IRS scandal. The House Oversight Committee in 2014 found Smith to be responsible for arranging a meeting with an official in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to scrutinize nonprofits’ political activities. This meeting would set in motion the IRS’s campaign targeting Tea Party groups, which later resulted in a public apology from the agency and a $3.5 million Justice Department settlement for two lawsuits.

  Selective Prosecution

  Gingrich also pointed to the absence of similar treatment to Democrat politicians, such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who used a private email server for government business, and the president’s son Hunter Biden, whose foreign business dealings are set to be a top focus of a new Republican House from January.

  “I think that it is strange that they can find one more excuse to go after Donald Trump even though he keeps getting found innocent, but neither Hillary Clinton nor Hunter Biden have gotten independent counsel, and it tells you how corrupted the system is,” Gingrich said.

  

  Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who is in line to chair the House Oversight Committee, said the committee Republicans have found business deals by the Biden family in more than 50 countries, including Russia and China which were often led by Hunter. They also allege that the elder Biden had knowledge of and was involved in some deals.

  Tony Bobulinski, Hunter’s former business partner, has welcomed Republicans’ plan to probe the Biden family’s business operations in the hopes that it will prove the senior Biden played a part.

  Trump’s Reaction

  Gingrich was at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort when the news of the special counsel appointment came out. Trump, he said, seemed “very balanced,” “positive, and cheerful.”

  “He knew what they were doing. He’s been through this now for six years,” he said.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/26/2022 – 18:30

• License Plates Could Be Printed On McDonald's Bags To Stop Littering
  License Plates Could Be Printed On McDonald’s Bags To Stop Littering

  There’s been talk about McDonald’s in southwest Great Britain could print car license plates on drive-thru bags to prevent customers from littering. 

  “It’s not clear exactly how the number plate would be printed on packaging, but it could be scanned onto the brown bags that contain the food,” Daily Mail noted. 

  Chris Howell, Swansea Council’s head of waste, parks and cleansing, told a climate change corporate delivery committee meeting: 

  “The Welsh Government has explored with McDonald’s, or their franchises, whether or not they could print number plates of cars collecting takeaways from their drive-throughs with a view that that would discourage people from discarding their materials (litter).”

  

  Howell said one of the biggest hurdles with fast-food companies is that if one chain adopts the climate initiative, customers will go to competitors that don’t print license plates on bags. 

  “If McDonald’s do it, then people will just go to Burger King instead of McDonald’s, because nobody wants to have their private details printed on that packaging.” He added: “I think it’s a really good idea but at the minute it’s fraught with some difficulties.” 

  The nationalist political party in Wales, Plaid Cymru, first proposed the idea more than two years ago during the pandemic lockdown when party leaders noticed a spike in fast-food trash along city streets and highways. 

  Welsh Government spokesperson told MailOnline:

  “There are no current plans to introduce a requirement for drive-through restaurants to add vehicle registration details to fast food drive-through packaging.

  “We are continuing to support Keep Wales Tidy with other initiatives to tackle roadside litter including their No Regrets campaign and their Adopt a Highway initiative.”

  Now ‘the cat is out of the bag’. It’s only a matter of time before governments start forcing fast-food companies to print license plate numbers on drive-thru bags. The dangers of this could be more surveillance, and who knows what corporations would do with license plate data if such a system were implemented. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/26/2022 – 18:00

• The Great Gold Robbery Of 1933
  The Great Gold Robbery Of 1933

  Authored by Thomas Woods via The Mises Institute,

  It’s been [89] years since the federal government, on the spurious grounds of fighting the Great Depression, ordered the confiscation of all monetary gold from Americans, permitting trivial amounts for ornamental or industrial use. This happens to be one of the episodes Kevin Gutzman and I describe in detail in our new book, Who Killed the Constitution? The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush. From the point of view of the typical American classroom, on the other hand, the incident may as well not have occurred.

  

  A key piece of legislation in this story is the Emergency Banking Act of 1933, which Congress passed on March 9 without having read it and after only the most trivial debate. House Minority Leader Bertrand H. Snell (R-NY) generously conceded that it was “entirely out of the ordinary” to pass legislation that “is not even in print at the time it is offered.” He urged his colleagues to pass it all the same:

  “The house is burning down, and the President of the United States says this is the way to put out the fire. [Applause.] And to me at this time there is only one answer to this question, and that is to give the President what he demands and says is necessary to meet the situation.”

  Among other things, the act retroactively approved the president’s closing of private banks throughout the country for several days the previous week, an act for which he had not bothered to provide a legal justification. It gave the secretary of the Treasury the power to require all individuals and corporations to hand over all their gold coin, gold bullion, or gold certificates if in his judgment “such action is necessary to protect the currency system of the United States.”

  The Emergency Banking Act reached back in time to amend the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, which had originally been intended to criminalize economic intercourse between American citizens and declared enemies of the United States. One provision of the act granted the president the power to regulate and even prohibit “under such rules and regulations as he may prescribe … any transactions in foreign exchange, export or earmarkings of gold or silver coin or bullion or currency … by any person within the United States.” In 1918, the act was amended to extend its provisions two years beyond the conclusion of hostilities, and to allow the president to “investigate, regulate, or prohibit” even the “hoarding” of gold by an American.

  After those two years elapsed, people generally assumed that the Trading with the Enemy Act had passed into desuetude. But the Supreme Court later explained that the act’s provisions were not limited merely to World War I and the two years that followed — it “stood ready to meet additional wars and additional enemies” and could be called into service once again under those circumstances. (Little did anyone suspect in 1917 that these “additional enemies” would turn out to be the American people themselves.) As amended by the Emergency Banking Act of 1933, the Trading with the Enemy Act no longer said that simply “during time of war” could the president prohibit the export of gold or take action against “hoarding” (i.e., holding on to one’s money). Now these actions could be taken during time of war or “during any other period of national emergency declared by the President.”

  A month later, claiming authority from the Emergency Banking Act and its amendment to the Trading with the Enemy Act, the president ordered all individuals and corporations in America to hand over their gold holdings to the federal government in exchange for an equivalent amount of paper currency. The paper currency they were receiving in exchange for the gold had always been redeemable in gold in the past, so few saw anything amiss in this coerced transaction, and most trusted the government’s assurances that this was somehow necessary in order to combat the Depression. Only later would they discover that they weren’t getting that gold back, and that the paper dollars they were being given in exchange would be devalued. Soon only foreign governments and central banks would be able to convert dollars into gold — and even that link to gold would be severed in 1971.

  On June 5, 1933, at the behest of the president, Congress took the next step, passing a joint resolution making it illegal to “require payment in gold or a particular kind of coin or currency, or in an amount in money of the United States measured thereby.” Any provision in a private or public contract promising payment in gold was thereby nullified. Payment could be made in whatever the government declared to be legal tender, and gold could not be used even as a yardstick for determining how much paper money would be owed.

  For the next six months President Roosevelt pursued an erratic monetary course. Every day a new gold price was declared, on a basis no one could figure out. Private lending in effect came to a halt, with the value of the dollar in constant flux amid the prospect of ongoing devaluation. As Senator Carter Glass (D-VA) put it, “No man outside of a lunatic asylum will loan his money today on a farm mortgage.” And thus the government could triumphantly announce that since the private sector was cruelly depriving Americans of credit, it would have to step in and provide relief.

  Meanwhile, Senator William Borah was assuring his countrymen that when it came to the nation’s monetary system, “there is no limitation upon the power of Congress. It is not circumscribed in any respect whatever. It is given full and plenary power to deal with that subject; and therefore it is the same as if there were no Constitution whatever.” Borah also tried to argue that “when an individual takes an obligation payable in gold” he does so “with the full understanding that the Government may change its monetary policy at any time and that he must accept whatever the Congress says at a particular time shall constitute money.”

  The general rule (to which there are occasional exceptions) that no senator should ever be listened to on anything holds here: the power of Congress over money is in fact very limited. It has the power to “coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.”

  Coining money simply refers to the process of taking a precious metal, converting it into coins, and stamping those coins with an indication of their metal content. The power to regulate the value of money does not involve a power to dilute the value of money by inflation, an absurd and self-serving rendering. Regulation of the value of money is a power of declaration and comparison, whereby some monetary standard is compared to other coins in circulation and an exchange rate for these various kinds of currency established according to the amounts of precious metals (with due allowance for the distinct values of different precious metals) in each. In other words, if Congress were to declare by statute what the prevailing market exchange rate between gold and silver was, and thus to “regulate” gold and silver coins vis-à-vis one another — or, more precisely, vis-à-vis the Spanish silver dollar that constituted the American monetary standard — then it would be properly exercising its constitutional power, which consists of nothing more than this.

  That is why this power appears in the same clause with the power to “fix the Standard of Weights and Measures,” which involves the measurement of fixed standards in order to assure uniformity throughout the nation. That power does not give Congress the power to declare that one-tenth of a pound shall now be declared a pound, but to take an already-existing standard and codify it. Every single monetary statute enacted from the ratification of the Constitution until the 1930s understood the congressional power to regulate the “value” of money not in the sense of declaring money to possess some arbitrary value that suits the whims of politicians or central bankers, but in the sense of establishing the relative values of gold and silver coins in terms of the ever-shifting relative values of those metals on the free market. (Needless to say, the market is perfectly capable of doing this on its own.)

  Moreover, the “dollar” was not an arbitrary term at the time the Constitution was drafted. In the late 18th century, everyone knew what the “dollar” referred to: the silver Spanish milled dollar, which was in widespread use in the United States. The Constitution twice refers to the dollar — in Article I, Section 9, Clause 1 (a clause that everyone understood to involve a tax on the import of slaves), and in the Seventh Amendment (which protected the right to a jury trial in civil cases involving at least twenty dollars). If the dollar had been something that Congress could manipulate at will, or if “dollar” had been merely a generic term to refer to whatever Congress should arbitrarily choose to recognize as currency, the South would never have accepted that clause — or the Constitution itself. Congress might have manipulated the dollar so as to make the tax on slave imports prohibitively expensive. It could also have effectively abolished trial by jury in civil cases by making twenty “dollars” an astronomically high amount of money.

  The Court never pronounced upon the constitutionality of the gold seizure (for reasons we speculate on in our book), the legality of which it simply took for granted. The cases it chose to hear involved the cancellation of gold clauses in public and private contracts. Known as the Gold Clause Cases, Norman v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co., Nortz v. United States, and Perry v. United States were argued in January 1935 and decided the following month. In each case Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote the opinion for the Court; Justice McReynolds composed a single dissent that he applied to all three.

  The Court declared in the first two cases that the federal government had been entitled to cancel all private contracts in gold. The perpetuation of gold clauses would have amounted to the “attempted frustration” of “the constitutional power of the Congress over the monetary system of the country…. [T]hese clauses interfere with the exertion of the power granted to the Congress.” Not a stitch of evidence existed for any aspect of this argument.

  Perry, the third case, involved a man who had purchased in gold a US bond that was payable in gold, and was seeking payment either in gold or in the equivalent in paper currency. Since the government intended to pay in depreciated dollars, he believed he was receiving far less than he was entitled to under the terms of the bond. The bond’s face value was $10,000 in gold. In the inflated dollars of post-gold-standard America, it would have taken nearly $17,000 in paper currency in order to satisfy what the government had contracted to pay him.

  The Court declared that the plaintiff was indeed entitled to his gold, since the government had an obligation to live up to its promises. But in not paying him his gold, the government wasn’t really wronging him, since gold was now illegal to hold. In other words, if the government paid him in gold, it would then have to confiscate that gold from him anyway since holding gold was against the law.

  Speaking for the minority, Justice McReynolds declared:

  Just men regard repudiation and spoliation of citizens by their sovereign with abhorrence; but we are asked to affirm that the Constitution has granted power to accomplish both. No definite delegation of such a power exists; and we cannot believe that the farseeing framers, who labored with hope of establishing justice and securing the blessings of liberty, intended that the expected government should have authority to annihilate its own obligations and destroy the very rights which they were endeavoring to protect. Not only is there no permission for such actions; they are inhibited. And no plenitude of words can conform them to our charter.

  To the argument that the bondholder had suffered no damage in being denied payment in gold since it was now illegal for people to own gold, the dissent replied: “Obligations cannot be legally avoided by prohibiting the creditor from receiving the thing promised…. There would be no serious difficulty in estimating the value of 25.8 grains of gold in the currency now in circulation.” The contract to pay in gold having been broken, the holder was at least morally entitled to receive in currency not just the nominal amount of the bond but an amount in paper dollars equivalent to what he would have earned if the payment could have been made in gold. “For the government to say, we have violated our contract but have escaped the consequences through our own statute, would be monstrous. In matters of contractual obligation the government cannot legislate so as to excuse itself.” Suppose a private individual tried to do the same thing, “secreting or manipulating his assets with the intent to place them beyond the reach of creditors.” Any such attempt “would be denounced as fraudulent, wholly ineffective.”

  “Loss of reputation for honorable dealing,” the dissent concluded, “will bring us unending humiliation; the impending legal and moral chaos is appalling.”

  By the 1970s the federal government had once again permitted Americans to hold gold coins. But when it came time to actually mint them again, it made sure that gold coins could never circulate and displace the constantly depreciating paper currency printed by the US government: the law required that such coins could circulate with a face value only a tiny fraction of their market value.

  The full story of the gold confiscation is actually much worse than this, and we tell it in Who Killed the Constitution? What this episode teaches us is not so much that we need to “return to the Constitution,” though that would be an improvement over what we have now, but rather that pieces of paper that governments themselves interpret cannot be expected to prevent governments from doing what they think they can get away with.

  Lysander Spooner once said that he believed “that by false interpretations, and naked usurpations, the government has been made in practice a very widely, and almost wholly, different thing from what the Constitution itself purports to authorize.” At the same time, he could not exonerate the Constitution, for it “has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.” It is hard to argue with that.

  [Originally published August 13, 2008]

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/26/2022 – 17:30

• Crypto Facing A "Crisis Of Confidence" But Bitcoin "Is Not Going Away": Mike Novogratz
  Crypto Facing A “Crisis Of Confidence” But Bitcoin “Is Not Going Away”: Mike Novogratz

  Last week crypto investor Mike Novogratz took to CNBC in an attempt to help analyze the fallout from the FTX scandal. Speaking to Aaron Ross Sorkin, Novogratz – who suffered major losses (and humiliation himself) when Terra/Luna collapsed – laid out how trust has been lost in the asset class for the time being. 

  “This is about transparency and disclosure in a lot of ways. Our industry has failed to self-regulate. I think the money side of crypto, companies like ours, are going to get regulated and should be,” he says to start the interview. 

  “The tech side of crypto, the on-chain stuff, that has its own series of regulatory challenges. But that should be kept separately. Right now we’re in a deficit of trust – people think there’s a black swan around every corner,” he continues.

  “Isn’t this an indictment of crypto? The entire premise of crypto was to create trust,” Aaron Ross Sorkin asks. 

  

  “That still is the long-term goal. Why did companies like mine get set up? We are a bridge company to bridge people into this new economy. It accelerates the capital going in, it helps people understand it. All the capital that has moved into crypto has come from centralized companies. But just like a centralized company, they need to build trust…” Novogratz says.

  “This is not really an indictment of crypto, its an indictment of FTX and other companies that were poorly run or fraudulently run,” he continues. 

  “Do you feel like investors are going to take advantage of any crisis of confidence. Do we have a crisis of confidence in this market?”

  “We certainly do have a crisis of confidence in the industry and we’re not out of the woods yet. FTX was a major player so it’s going to take a few weeks for people to even get their balance back. Bitcoin’s not going away,” he concludes. 

  “I don’t think it’s going to be a ‘v’ recovery, it’s going to be a grind out of gaining trust.”

  You can watch Novogratz’s full interview on CNBC here. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/26/2022 – 17:00

• 'Redo The Arizona Election' Says Trump, Pointing To Voting Issues In Maricopa County
  ‘Redo The Arizona Election’ Says Trump, Pointing To Voting Issues In Maricopa County

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

  Former President Donald Trump suggests that Arizona redo its 2022 elections after a memo revealed widespread problems at voting sites in Maricopa County on Election Day.

  

  “This Election was a disgrace,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Nov. 22. “They should at minimum redo the Arizona Election,” Trump added, pointing to the memo written by attorney Mark Sonnenklar, who was one of 11 roving attorneys working with the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) Election Integrity program in Maricopa County.

  According to the memo, 72 of the 115 voting centers the attorneys visited, or 62.61 percent, witnessed “material problems.”

  The long lines negatively affected GOP candidates on election day, according to the memo.

  “Because Republican voters significantly outnumbered Democrat voters in the county on election day, such voter suppression would necessarily impact the vote tallies for Republican candidates much more than the vote tallies for Democrat candidates,” Sonnenklar added.

  Additionally, Sonnenklar disputed claims by county officials that printer/tabulator problems were resolved as of 3 p.m. local time and their impact was “insignificant.”

  “Collectively, I and the other 10 roving attorneys also reported that voters had to wait in significant lines at 59 of the 115 vote centers we visited (51.3 percent). In many cases, voters had to wait 1-2 hours before they received a ballot for voting,” Sonnenklar wrote.

  He added, “It is certainly safe to assume that many voters refused to wait in such lines, left the vote center, and did not return to vote later.”

  In response to Trump’s comments, Arizona Republican governor’s candidate Kari Lake took to Twitter to thank the former president.

  “It was nothing short of mass disenfranchisement for the entire Arizona First slate and the people of Arizona,” Lake added.

  

  Arizona 

  Lake currently trails Democrat Katie Hobbs by about 17,100 votes, 49.7 percent to 50.3 percent, according to the Arizona secretary of state’s office.

  Last week, Hobbs declared victory in the race, but Lake has not conceded yet.

  The Arizona Attorney General’s Elections Integrity Unit has sent a letter (pdf) to Maricopa County officials demanding answers to “myriad problems” that voters in the county had to deal with on Election Day.

  “The Elections Integrity Unit of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office has received hundreds of complaints since Election Day pertaining to issues related to the administration of the 2022 General Election in Maricopa County,” Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright wrote in the letter. “These complaints go beyond pure speculation, but include first-hand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law.”

  Wright is demanding a response from the county by Nov. 28.

  After the letter was sent, Lake told the Daily Mail that she “will become governor.”

  “The way they run elections in Maricopa County is worse than in banana republics around this world,” Lake told the outlet.

  On Nov. 21, Lake posted a video on Twitter, saying that “whistleblowers are coming forward” about voting issues on election day in Maricopa County and her attorneys are “working diligently to gather information.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/26/2022 – 16:30

• Iranian Protesters & Government Supporters Clash At World Cup
  Iranian Protesters & Government Supporters Clash At World Cup

  Rival sets of Iranian protesters have been confronting each other at the World Cup in Qatar, and a moment anti-government demonstrations and unrest has been raging inside Iran for over the past two months.

  Tensions spilled over in and outside the stadium for Iran’s 2-0 win over Wales on Friday. As the AP and ESPN reported, “fans supporting the Iranian government harassed those protesting against it and stadium security seized flags, T-shirts and other items expressing support for the protest movement that has gripped the Islamic Republic.”

  

  Stadium security reportedly cracked down on any flags or symbols seen as undermining the officially recognized Iranian state, including preventing fans from carrying Persian pre-revolutionary flags into the venue, Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium.

  In some cases pro-government supporters were seen trying to rip signs or imagery with protest slogans from the fans holding them. Some groups were heard chanting “Woman, Life, Freedom” during the match.

  Controversy was unleashed when during a previous game the Iranian team appeared not to participate in the singing of Iran’s national anthem, while during Friday’s game that changed as the players sang. 

  The Associated Press observed further of Friday’s scenes in the stadium: 

  Small mobs of men surrounded three different women giving interviews about the protests to foreign media outside the stadium, disrupting broadcasts as they angrily chanted, “The Islamic Republic of Iran!”

  Many women fans appeared shaken as Iranian government supporters shouted at them in Farsi and filmed them close-up on their phones.

  

  And according to more from the report:

  Inside the stadium, a woman with dark red tears painted from her eyes held aloft a football jersey with “Mahsa Amini – 22” printed on the back — a reference to the 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman whose death in police custody two months ago ignited the nationwide protests in Iran, a Reuters photo showed.

  A CNN report from earlier this month cited a human rights monitor to say that at least 326 people have been killed since the start of what’s been dubbed the “anti-hijab” protests. 

  Tehran says dozens of police and security services personnel have also been killed, and has accused “rioters” of being part of a foreign-backed plot to topple the government. 

  Meanwhile, there have also been tensions more broadly between local Arabs and the presence of Israelis at the World Cup: 

  A Saudi football fan confronting an Israeli journalist. The look on the journalist’s face should tell you everything about the situation. No amount of “Peace Deals” will normalize Israel in the region. It was, is and will forever be Palestine. pic.twitter.com/CgwDamLubL

  — Hadi Nasrallah (@HadiNasrallah) November 26, 2022

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

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/26/2022 – 16:00

• Oil Market Metrics Signal Sufficient Supply And Weakening Demand
  Oil Market Metrics Signal Sufficient Supply And Weakening Demand

  By Irina Slav of OilPrice.com

  Oil futures and swaps globally are increasingly showing signs of easing supply concerns and resurfaced concerns about further weakness in crude oil demand.

  

  The prompt spreads in the U.S. benchmark, WTI Crude, are already in contango, signaling enough near-term supply. Brent Crude front-month to second-month futures prices also dipped into contango earlier this week.

  Contango is the state of the market in which prices for delivery at later dates are higher than prompt prices—a market situation signaling oversupply and one which traders use to store oil for delivery at a later date. The opposite market situation—backwardation—typically occurs at times of market deficit and in it, prices for front-month contracts are higher than the ones further out in time.

  Another oil market metric closely followed for signs of demand in the key oil-importing region, Asia, is the premium of Oman futures over Dubai swaps. That premium dropped on Thursday to below $1 per barrel – compared to a premium of over $15 a barrel in March this year – signaling much softer demand. The premium has fallen by around 80% in November alone, according to Bloomberg’s estimates.

  So far this month, oil prices have dropped amid growing fears of economic slowdown and spiking Covid infections in China, where some forms of restriction on mobility have returned in nearly 50 large cities. 

  China is registering near-record numbers of new Covid infections daily—close to the April 2022 peak when the financial center Shanghai was under lockdown for weeks—likely depressing fuel demand as 48 Chinese cities currently have some form of restrictions on movements. 

  According to analysts at Nomura, as of Monday, areas accounting for almost 20% of China’s GDP were suffering from the latest Covid restrictions. China’s rising Covid cases and the return of restrictions have weighed on oil prices this month as the market fears another slowdown in Chinese economic growth and fuel demand, on top of global recession fears.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/26/2022 – 15:30

• The Santa Pause Rally
  The Santa Pause Rally

  Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

  People who have been reading my blog and listening to my podcast for years know that I hold a special disdain for the idea that markets can, and should, only go up. 

  On more than one podcast, and in more than one article, I’ve noted that this fallacy is just one of many nefarious concepts that I believe do a major disservice to the average investor.

  When these otherwise illogical concepts are dumbed down to be made digestible to the average investor, it casts a signal that the financial industry, and the media that peddles it, are simply too embarrassed or incapable of leveling with the American public about the innerworkings of monetary policy and markets.

  Rather than take concepts like the market only going up – which, when observed casually, sound ridiculous to even the most uninitiated market participants – and deliver them with a straight face, they are instead broadcast with a zany, sensational, insulting ethos that the industry thinks resonates better with the American public.

  This is how we wound up with Jim Cramer – and why Cramer’s deadpan admission of market manipulation, caught on video, has gone mostly unnoticed and without consequences – but his show where he routinely rings bells and whistles while screaming, panting loudly and sweating profusely, WWF-style, is celebrated.

  

  In addition to giving us the poor man’s stock market infotainment, financial media has also given us an unlimited number of “easily digestible”, yet equally as inane and useless acronyms, which conveniently help do away with critical thinking about investing when employed.

  For example, Jim Cramer coined the term “FANG” year ago, which was an acronym for “Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google”.

  

  While Cramer was trying to just be cute for beginner investors, the acronym – eventually adopted by mainstream media – sent another message: stock market investing is so easy, we don’t even need to decouple these names from one another anymore.

  After all, Cramer talked about these companies so much that it was just easier to refer to them by one name, saving him time whenever he wanted to recommend or talk about these securities, but not necessarily the entire NASDAQ (despite the fact that these are completely different companies with completely different valuations).

  But when referred to by their acronym, which is easy to remember by retail investors, where they went one, they went all.

  ---

  The market for retail investors has been so similarly dumbed down and gamified with acronyms like ESG, FOMO and BTFD and stock ticker symbols like YOLO, HERO, BOOM and FUN, it has never been easier for retail investors to dump their money into an overpriced flaming bag of dog shit with a clever name than it is now.

  But one of the most odious examples of dumbing down already idiotic Wall Street Keynesian thinking to retail investors has been the annual tradition of rooting for a “Santa Claus Rally”. Once used to describe the rally at the end of December heading into the new year, this term is now used by the financial media to describe any stock market rally that happens, for any reason, at the end of the year, on any given year.

  

  Rather than being used to describe a rally that is taking place for legitimate means, the term has now taken on a life of its own over the last decade and has gone from a label to a reason that markets rally. The tail, in other words, is wagging the dog, despite the fact that everybody knows there’s no really good reason to buy stocks just because it’s the end of the year.

  Everybody knows that companies are cyclical and everybody knows that holidays result in more sales for many companies. It’s safe to say that this century-old tradition has already been priced into stock markets.

  So what, exactly, is a “Santa Claus Rally”?

  In reality, it’s nothing – it’s a gimmick, like “FANG” – or to quote Chasing Amy – “a figment of your f*cking imagination!”

  

  The “Santa Claus Rally” is nothing more than an easily understood analogic vessel that Keynesians in the financial media use to continue to implant the idea that the market should always go up into the minds of novice investors. It’s the anti-fundamental analysis, and it’s all wrapped up with images of everybody’s favorite holiday – a time of joy, cheer, prosperity, family and friends: Christmas.

  That’s right: it’s a gimmick so nefarious, it invokes the time of year when people feel most complete. I mean, what do people look for from an investment? They look for financial security so as to live comfortably. And when do most people feel the most comfortable and secure? Around the holidays.

  ---

  Get 50% off: If you enjoy this article, would like to support my work and have the means, I would love to have you as a subscriber and can offer you 50% off for life: Get 50% off forever

  ---

  But this year I’m calling it the “Santa Pause Rally” – not just because of how toxic the saying is to begin with, but because, as we have been figuring out the hard way for the last 9 months, there really is no reason for random celebration in markets right now.

  Markets, and our economy, are in absolutely unprecedented waters right now, with our central bank stuck in a minefield of catch-22s that they can’t get out of without collapsing the economy or letting inflation run rampant. Thus, new paradigms in how investing and markets work are being written daily – and none of them include random stock rallies just because the financial media says so. That shit may have flown when volatility was at all time lows and the world financial and geopolitical order wasn’t in disarray – but that’s hardly the case today.

  If 2018 wasn’t a stark enough reminder that the “Santa Claus Rally” is complete and total bullshit (recall, markets collapsed after slow and steady 25 bps rate hikes totaling barely 3%), this year should be.

  

  Above: 2018’s “Santa Claus Rally”

  I’m not saying that the market won’t rally at the end of the year, but what I am saying is that any rally we undergo will more than likely be a bear market rally and be short lived. I am sticking by my analysis that, as we speak, there is a 400 basis point pipe bomb making its way through the economic plumbing of the nation, just waiting to blow up and tank markets on any given day.

  At the very least, hopefully this reminder of the idiocy not only of monetary policy, but of Wall Street naming conventions used to feed the hogs, serves to arrest any remaining mindless optimism mainstream media-watchers have heading into the end of the year.

  There’s no way to say it without playing into the criticisms that I’m nothing but a fear mongering permabear, but I honestly believe there isn’t really anything to look forward to heading into the end of 2022 with markets or the economy.

  ---

  All this market wants for Christmas is a soft landing, but instead, it’s almost certainly going to be getting a lump of coal over the next six months.

  When that happens – or the next time some lobotomized television anchor uses the “Santa Claus Rally” notion – I beg of you to return to this piece and read the following paragraph, provided in bold font for your visual convenience.

  Using cute names and anecdotal slogans does nothing to help educate mom and pop investors about monetary policy, which is the main driving force behind the nation’s current inflationary crisis. This dumbing down of markets and the economy will also be the reason behind any forthcoming panic in markets or economic depression for our country, as shock will be amplified due to investors believing things are better than they actually are. These terms are used as vessels in order to further an extremely misguided policy agenda that has gotten us into this mess to begin with – they put exceptional looking gift wrap on financial lumps of coal.

  For more on how I’m positioned heading into 2023, you can read my latest update here.

  Thank you for reading QTR’s Fringe Finance. This post is public so feel free to share it: Share

  

  QTR’s Disclaimer: I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. These positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.

   

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/26/2022 – 14:30

• Foxconn Riot Could Cut China iPhone Production By More Than 30%
  Foxconn Riot Could Cut China iPhone Production By More Than 30%

  Apple’s top manufacturing partner, Foxconn Technology Group, is set to see November iPhone shipments from a massive factory in Zhengzhou, China, known as iPhone City, plunge after a week of unrest, Reuters said, citing a source with direct knowledge of the matter. 

  They said iPhone production would be slashed by more than 30% at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant in November versus an earlier estimate of up to 30% when problems at the factory began in late October. 

  Most of the 200,000-person workforce has been living in isolation since last month. New hires were brought in recently as management wanted to keep churning premium iPhone models, including the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro. 

  But Foxconn failed to live up to its promises of higher pay for new hires, which sparked a riot across the world’s largest iPhone factory earlier this week. To squash the violence, Foxconn began distributing 10,000 yuan ($1,400) to newly recruited workers to leave by Thursday.

  “The source said more than 20,000 workers, mostly new hires not yet working on production lines, took the money and left,” Reuters said. 

  The Zhengzhou plant accounts for 70% of global iPhone shipments, and a reduction in production will ripple through the supply chain. Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, is Apple’s top supplier, which means any manufacturing disruption in China could leave AT&T, Best Buy, and Verizon stores without iPhones.  

  

  Another source said it’s “impossible” for Apple to resume full iPhone production by the end of the month. 

  ODDO BHF, a Franco-German financial services group, said even if Apple shifts production to other plants, “the impact will probably be significant, as long as these protests are continuing in Zhengzhou, with significant delays to be expected for the iPhone 14.” 

  Foxconn acknowledged it made errors in managing new hires while blaming local officials for unpredictable health policies that impacted meal delivery and made maintenance nearly impossible, according to Bloomberg, citing a person familiar with the company.  

  “You see cases like Foxconn, and every company is now asking themselves, ‘Will that happen to me?’

  “Any company that depends on manufacturing has to consider alternatives. It will be costly, but it will be less costly than only relying on China and then China doesn’t open up,” Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief Asia Pacific economist at Natixis, said. 

  In early November, Foxconn revised its earning expectations down for Q4 on zero Covid disruptions at the assembly facility, while Apple warned iPhone capacity would be reduced. After chaos this week, more downward revisions could be ahead. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 11/26/2022 – 14:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• The Average Home Size In Every US State In 2022
  The Average Home Size In Every US State In 2022

  Over the last century, the average home size in the U.S. has skyrocketed. In 1949, the typical single-family home was just 909 square feet—by 2021, it had shot up to 2,480 square feet.

  However, as Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang details below, while U.S. homes are getting larger on the whole, they still vary drastically depending on the location. What areas in the U.S. have the largest homes, and which ones have the smallest?

  This graphic by American Home Shield uses data from the 2022 American Home Size Index to show the average home size in every U.S. state.

  

  The 2022 American Home Size Index

  The index uses data from 474,157 listings of both houses and condos for sale on Zillow as of May 2022. After the data was compiled, it was organized by state and city, and the median home size was then calculated for each area.

  According to the findings, there was a strong correlation with the average size of a home and the age of the area’s housing stock. For instance, Utah is the U.S. state with the largest average home size, with an average of 2,800 square feet. And since the state’s average home was built in 1989, it has the third-youngest home stock of any state across the country.

  This trend is apparent on a city-level as well. Here’s a look at average home size across America’s top 50 most populated cities (with available data):

  

  As the graphic shows, up-and-coming tech hubs like Raleigh and Colorado Springs have some of the largest homes.

  Colorado Springs in particular has seen a significant influx in employment over the last few years, which has attracted high-income tech workers to the area driven up demand for spacious single-family dwellings.

  The Price of Real Estate Compared to Average Home Size

  The data also showed a relationship between an area’s average price of real estate and the average home size. For instance, Hawaii has the smallest average home size of any state, as well as the most expensive at $743.86 per square foot.

  

  This trend is apparent in the state of New York as well, which had the second smallest average home size. New York’s average home costs were $421.49 per square foot, the third-most expensive of any state.

  Lot Size vs. Home Size

  Interestingly, while average home sizes in the U.S. have gotten larger over time, the average lot size has shrunk over the years.

  In 1978, the average lot size for a U.S. property was 18,760 square feet, but by 2020, this figure had dropped to a record low of 13,896 square feet.

  With lot sizes shrinking, will there come a point where home size growth across the country starts to plateau, or even shrink?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/25/2022 – 23:30

• Escobar: Electric Wars
  Escobar: Electric Wars

  Authored by Pepe Escobar,

  Footfalls echo in the memory
  Down the passage which we did not take
  Towards the door we never opened
  Into the rose-garden. My words echo
  Thus, in your mind.
  But to what purpose
  Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
  I do not know.

  T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

  Spare a thought to the Polish farmer snapping pics of a missile wreckage – later indicated to belong to a Ukrainian S-300. So a Polish farmer, his footfalls echoing in our collective memory, may have saved the world from WWIII – unleashed via a tawdry plot concocted by Anglo-American “intelligence”.

  Such tawdriness was compounded by a ridiculous cover-up: the Ukrainians were firing on Russian missiles from a direction that they could not possibly be coming from. That is: Poland. And then the U.S. Secretary of Defense, weapons peddler Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin, sentenced Russia was to blame anyway, because his Kiev vassals were shooting at Russian missiles that should not have been in the air (and they were not).

  Call it the Pentagon elevating bald lying into a rather shabby art.

  The Anglo-American purpose of this racket was to generate a “world crisis” against Russia. It’s been exposed – this time. That does not mean the usual suspects won’t try it again. Soon.

  The main reason is panic. Collective West intel sees how Moscow is finally mobilizing their army – ready to hit the ground next month – while knocking out Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure as a form of Chinese torture.

  Those February days of sending only 100,000 troops – and having the DPR and LPR militias plus Wagner commandos and Kadyrov’s Chechens do most of the heavy lifting – are long gone. Overall, Russians and Russophones were facing hordes of Ukrainian military – perhaps as many as 1 million. The “miracle” of it all is that Russians did quite well.

  Every military analyst knows the basic rule: an invasion force should number three times the defending force. The Russian Army at the start of the SMO was at a small fraction of that rule. The Russian Armed Forces arguably have a standing army of 1.3 million troops. Surely they could have spared a few tens of thousands more than the initial 100,000. But they did not. It was a political decision.

  But now SMO is over: this is CTO (Counter-Terrorist Operation) territory. A sequence of terrorist attacks – targeting the Nord Streams, the Crimea Bridge, the Black Sea Fleet – finally demonstrated the inevitability of going beyond a mere “military operation”.

  And that brings us to Electric War.

  

  Paving the way to a DMZ

  The Electric War is being handled essentially as a tactic – leading to the eventual imposition of Russia’s terms in a possible armistice (which neither Anglo-American intel and vassal NATO want).

  Even if there was an armistice – widely touted for a few weeks now – that would not end the war. Because the deeper, tacit Russian terms – end of NATO expansion and “indivisibility of security” – were fully spelled out to both Washington and Brussels last December, and subsequently dismissed.

  As nothing – conceptually – has changed since then, coupled with the Western weaponization of Ukraine reaching a frenzy, the Putin-era Stavka could not but expand the initial SMO mandate, which remains denazification and demilitarization. Yet now the mandate will have to encompass Kiev and Lviv.

  And that starts with the current de-electrification campaign – which goes way beyond the east of the Dnieper and along the Black Sea coast towards Odessa.

  That brings us to the key issue of reach and depth of Electric War, in terms of setting up what would be a DMZ – complete with no man’s land – west of the Dnieper to protect Russian areas from NATO artillery, HIMARS and missile attacks.

  How deep? 100 km? Not enough. Rather 300 km – as Kiev has already requested artillery with that kind of range.

  What’s crucial is that way back in July this was already being extensively discussed in Moscow at the highest Stavka levels.

  In an extensive July interview, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov let the cat – diplomatically – out of the bag:

  “This process continues, consistently and persistently. It will continue as long as the West, in its impotent rage, desperate to aggravate the situation as much as possible, continues to flood Ukraine with more and more long-range weapons. Take the HIMARS. Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov boasts that they have already received 300-kilometre ammunition. This means our geographic objectives will move even further from the current line. We cannot allow the part of Ukraine that Vladimir Zelensky, or whoever replaces him, will control to have weapons that pose a direct threat to our territory or to the republics that have declared their independence and want to determine their own future.”

  The implications are clear.

  As much as Washington and NATO are even more “desperate to aggravate the situation as much as possible” (and that’s Plan A: there’s no Plan B), geoeconomically the Americans are intensifying the New Great Game: desperation here applies to trying to control energy corridors and setting their price.

  Russia remains unfazed – as it continues to invest in Pipelineistan (towards Asia); solidify the multimodal International North South Transportation Corridor (INTSC), with key partners India and Iran; and is setting the price of energy via OPEC+.

  A paradise for oligarchic looters

  The Straussians/neo-cons and neoliberal-cons permeating the Anglo-American intel/security apparatus – de facto weaponized viruses – won’t relent. They simply cannot afford losing yet another NATO war – and on top of it against “existential threat” Russia.

  As the news from the Ukraine battlefields promise to be even grimmer under General Winter, solace at least may be found in the cultural sphere. The Green transition racket, seasoned in a toxic mixed salad with the eugenist Silicon Valley ethos, continues to be a side dish offered with the main course: the Davos “Great Narrative”, former Great Reset, which reared its ugly head, once again, at the G20 in Bali.

  That translates as everything going swell as far as the Destruction of Europe project is concerned. De-industrialize and be happy; rainbow-dance to every woke tune on the market; and freeze and burn wood while blessing “renewables” in the altar of European values.

  A quick flashback to contextualize where we are is always helpful.

  Ukraine was part of Russia for nearly four centuries. The very idea of its independence was invented in Austria during WWI for the purpose of undermining the Russian Army – and that certainly happened. The present “independence” was set up so local Trotskyite oligarchs could loot the nation as a Russia-aligned government was about to move against those oligarchs.

  The 2014 Kiev coup was essentially set up by Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski to draw Russia into a new partisan war – as in Afghanistan – and was followed by orders to the Gulf oil haciendas to crash the oil price. Moscow had to protect Russophones in Crimea and Donbass – and that led to more Western sanctions. All of it was a setup.

  For 8 years, Moscow refused to send its armies even to Donbass east of the Dnieper (historically part of Mother Russia). The reason: not to be bogged down in another partisan war. The rest of Ukraine, meanwhile, was being looted by oligarchs supported by the West, and plunged into a financial black hole.

  The collective West deliberately chose not to finance the black hole. Most of the IMF injections were simply stolen by the oligarchs, and the loot transferred out of the country. These oligarchic looters were of course “protected” by the usual suspects.

  It’s always crucial to remember that between 1991 and 1999 the equivalent of the present entire household wealth of Russia was stolen and transferred overseas, mostly to London. Now the same usual suspects are trying to ruin Russia with sanctions, as “new Hitler” Putin stopped the looting.

  The difference is that the plan of using Ukraine as just a pawn in their game is not working.

  On the ground, what has been going on so far are mostly skirmishes, and a few real battles. But with Moscow massing fresh troops for a winter offensive, the Ukrainian Army may end up completely routed.

  Russia didn’t look so bad – considering the effectiveness of its mincing machine artillery strikes against Ukrainian fortified positions, and recent planned retreats or positional warfare, keeping casualties down while smashing Ukrainian withering firepower.

  The collective West believes it holds the Ukraine proxy war card. Russia bets on reality, where economic cards are food, energy, resources, resource security and a stable economy.

  Meanwhile, as if the energy-suicide EU did not have to face a pyramid of ordeals, they can surely expect to have knocking on their door at least 15 million desperate Ukrainians escaping from villages and cities with zero electrical power.

  The railway station in – temporarily occupied – Kherson is a graphic example: people show up constantly to warm up and charge their smartphones. The city has no electricity, no heat, and no water.

  Current Russian tactics are the absolute opposite of the military theory of concentrated force developed by Napoleon. That’s why Russia is accumulating serious advantages while “disturbing the dust in a bowl of rose-leaves”.

  And of course, “we haven’t even started yet.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/25/2022 – 23:00

• San Francisco PD Proposes Letting Robots Kill Suspects
  San Francisco PD Proposes Letting Robots Kill Suspects

  A policy drafted by the San Francisco Police Department has sent a petition to the city’s Board of Supervisors which would allow police officers to deploy robots with the intent to kill suspects in situations where “risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option available to SFPD,” Engadget reports, citing Mission Local.

  

  Where have we seen this one before?

  

  According to Mission Local, the draft proposal has already received significant pushback from both within and outside of the Board – including supervisor Aaron Peskin, who initially resisted the idea until he inserted language which would completely neuter the death-bots.

  “Robots shall not be used as a Use of Force against any person,” he wrote, which the SFPD then removed in a subsequent draft.

  The police force currently maintains a dozen fully-functional remote-controlled robots, which are typically used for area inspections and bomb disposal. However, as the Dallas PD showed in 2016, they make excellent bomb delivery platforms as well. Bomb disposal units are often equipped with blank shotgun shells used to forcibly disrupt an explosive device’s internal workings, though there is nothing stopping police from using live rounds if they needed, as Oakland police recently acknowledged to that city’s civilian oversight board. -Engadget

  In short, if this proposal ever sees the light of day:

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/25/2022 – 22:30

• Musk: Exposing Twitter's Internal Discussion Of Hunter Biden Laptop Story "Necessary To Restore Public Trust"
  Musk: Exposing Twitter’s Internal Discussion Of Hunter Biden Laptop Story “Necessary To Restore Public Trust”

  Revealing Twitter’s internal discussions surrounding the censorship of the New York Post‘s Hunter Biden laptop story right before the 2020 US election is “necessary to restore public trust,” according to new owner Elon Musk.

  

  Musk was responding to a tweet by the recently-unbanned @alx, who said: “Raise your hand if you think @ElonMusk
   should make public all internal discussions about the decision to censor the @NYPost’s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 Election in the interest of Transparency.”

  This is necessary to restore public trust

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2022

  The Post had its Twitter account locked in October 2020 for reporting on the now-confirmed-to-be-real “laptop from hell,” which contains unprosecuted evidence of foreign influence peddling through then-Vice President Joe Biden – including a meeting between Joe and an executive of Ukrainian gas giant Burisma, in 2015.

  The laptop contained caches of emails detailing business dealings with Burisma and state-owned CEFC China Energy Co, from which his firms received $4.8 million in wire transfer payments from its founder, Ye Jianming, according to a Senate report. -Daily Caller

  Twitter had restricted any user from sharing links of the Post‘s coverage, both publicly or via direct message – while the social media giant also locked out former White House spox Kayleigh McEnany’s personal account, as well as former President Trump’s campaign account, for sharing the link.

  In the ensuing years, the authenticity of the laptop has been confirmed by both the Washington Post and the New York Times, while CBS News authenticated the laptop on Monday.

  Indeed: 

  ✋ https://t.co/KHFWshK9hz

  — Matt Orfalea (@0rf) November 24, 2022

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

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/25/2022 – 21:35

• US Bird Flu Outbreak Officially Becomes Worst On Record
  US Bird Flu Outbreak Officially Becomes Worst On Record

  The US outbreak of avian influenza or bird flu is now the worst on record, with 50.54 million birds culled, US Department of Agriculture data showed on Thursday. 

  Earlier this week, the outbreak at a commercial turkey farm in South Dakota resulted in tens of thousands of birds being culled to avoid spreading. This was enough to top the previous record of 50.5 million birds that died in the 2015 avian-flu outbreak. 

  Readers have been well-informed this year about the devastating bird flu outbreak ravaging commercial poultry farms nationwide. Here’s the latest map of the epidemic spreading across the US. 

  

  We cautioned at the start of this month of the “possibility of additional outbreaks” and noted ahead of Thanksgiving that supermarket egg prices were hyperinflating because a large swath of the nation’s egg-laying hens was wiped out. 

  

  “The virus has mostly impacted turkey and egg operations, sending prices to all-time highs and contributing to soaring food inflation. While the spread slowed during the warmer months, it continued to fester and now risks further spread as cooling temperatures prompt more birds to migrate,” Bloomberg said. 

  

  The outbreak began in February and has so far infected flocks of poultry and non-poultry birds across 46 states. 

  “Wild birds continue to spread HPAI throughout the country as they migrate, so preventing contact between domestic flocks and wild birds is critical to protecting US poultry,” Rosemary Sifford, the USDA’s chief veterinary officer, said. 

  Some experts have warned the highly pathogenic bird flu could easily continue spreading into 2023 and devastate even more commercial farms. This may only suggest egg prices are heading higher. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/25/2022 – 21:30

• FDA Approves World's Most Expensive Drug At $3.5 Million Per Dose To Treat Hemophilia
  FDA Approves World’s Most Expensive Drug At $3.5 Million Per Dose To Treat Hemophilia

  Authored by Naveen Anthrapully via The Epoch Times,

  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved CSL Behring’s hemophilia B gene therapy, a one-off infusion treatment with a list price of $3.5 million, making it the world’s most expensive medicine.

  

  The approval of CSL Behring’s Hemgenix “provides a new treatment option for patients with Hemophilia B and represents important progress in the development of innovative therapies for those experiencing a high burden of disease associated with this form of hemophilia,” said Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.

  Hemgenix is used for treating hemophilia B patients who currently use factor IX prophylaxis therapy or suffer from serious spontaneous bleeding episodes or have had a life-threatening hemorrhage. Based on clinical trials, the infusion reduced annual bleeds and “94 percent of patients discontinued factor IX prophylaxis and remained prophylaxis-free,” said the company, opening the possibility for the drug to eliminate the need for lifelong routine treatment in adult patients.

  Arising from a single gene defect, hemophilia B is a rare, lifelong bleeding disorder with the current available treatment requiring patients to undergo strict, lifelong prophylactic infusions of factor IX. Although effective, patients are prone to experiencing spontaneous bleeding episodes, whereas Hemgenix allows people to “produce their own factor IX,” according to CSL Behring.

  Hemgenix treats patients at the genome level, with an engineered virus carrying the gene expressed in the liver to produce clotting factor IX. Gene therapies are touted to significantly improve medical conditions by resolving underlying causes.

  “While the price is a little higher than expected, I do think it has a chance of being successful because 1) existing drugs are also very expensive and 2) hemophilia patients constantly live in fear of bleeds,” said Brad Loncar, chief executive of Loncar Investments, to Bloomberg.

  “A gene therapy product will be appealing to some.”

  Hemgenix’s one-time treatment can enable people to bypass regular infusions from current treatment providers, Biogen and Pfizer. The list price is not necessarily what patients pay for the drug.

  Hemophilia Symptoms, Causes

  Hemophilia is a bleeding disorder that is characterized by the body’s inability to clot blood properly due to the absence of enough blood-clotting proteins or clotting factors. Almost always a genetic disorder, it is concerning when the bleeding occurs internally, and leads to life-threatening organ and tissue damages.

  Symptoms include excessive bleeding from cuts, blood in urine, and bleeding into the brain. Many people are born with the disorder, and the most common type is hemophilia A, associated with a low level of factor VIII, followed by hemophilia B with a low factor IX. Acquired hemophilia can happen from autoimmune conditions and adverse drug reactions.

  According to Mayo Clinic, hemophilia almost always occurs in boys, and is passed from mother to son through one of the mother’s genes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that hemophilia occurs in about 1 of every 5,000 male births.

  Hemgenix Trials, Results

  The FDA approved Hemgenix following findings from an ongoing, multinational, open-label, single-arm Phase III HOPE-B clinical trial that evaluated the safety and efficacy of the treatment.

  Based on one study which had 54 participants, Hemgenix increased factor IX activity levels, and decreased the need for routine replacement prophylaxis, while the participants were found to have a 54 percent reduction in annualized bleeding rate compared to baseline.

  The gene therapy allowed patients to produce mean factor IX activity of 39 percent at six months and 36.7 percent at 24 months post-infusion, said CSL Behring. Post-treatment, 51 out of 54 participants discontinued use of prophylaxis, and remained free of previous continuous routine prophylaxis therapy.

  The most common adverse effects following Hemgenix gene therapy were liver enzyme elevations, headache, elevated levels of a certain blood enzyme, flu-like symptoms, infusion-related reactions, fatigue, nausea, and feeling unwell.

  Patients should be monitored for adverse infusion reactions and liver enzyme elevations (transaminitis) in their blood, said the FDA.

  HEMGENIX is still currently under assessment by other regulatory agencies.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/25/2022 – 21:00

• GA Runoff: Why A 51st Senate Seat Matters So Much
  GA Runoff: Why A 51st Senate Seat Matters So Much

  In Georgia’s January 2021 runoff, control of the Senate was at stake. With Democrats already holding 50 seats plus Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote, that won’t the the case with the Dec. 6 runoff pitting GOP challenger Herschel Walker against incumbent Raphael Warnock. 

  Still, both parties are pouring millions into this race — because winning a 51st seat in Georgia would greatly ease Democrats’ rule over the Senate.

  

  A tied Senate “slows everything down,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told the Associated Press. “So it makes a big difference to us.” 

  That would be true right from the start of the next session of Congress. If Democrats are stuck on a 50-50 tie, Schumer will have to once again negotiate a power-sharing arrangement with the GOP’s Mitch McConnell, covering the composition of committees and rules for advancing legislation for a floor vote. Last time around, McConnell used that process to obtain assurances from Democrats that they wouldn’t kill the filibuster. 

  In the current Senate, committees have an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. If Warnock wins, expect Democrats to have a two-seat majority on each committee. Tied committee votes necessitate extra steps on the Senate floor to advance nominations and legislation.  

  A two-seat edge in the full Senate would dull the moderating power of Democratic Senators Joe Manchin (WV) Kyrsten Sinema (AZ). Today, each one effectively holds a veto power over Democratic proposals, and has used it to frustrate the most ambitious proposals of the progressive left. With both facing reelection races in 2024, they’ll be motivated to continue showcasing moderation for their respective states. 

  Fifty-one votes is all it takes to approve federal judicial nominations, so a Warnock win would free the Democrats to easily pump more leftist judges into the system. 

  Perhaps nobody’s as excited about the prospect of 51 Democratic senators than Kamala Harris. The Senate math forces her to stay close to Washington so she can cast her tie-breaking votes. Indeed, she’s a handful of votes away from breaking a nearly two-century-old record set by Vice President John Calhoun.

  Liberated from a beltway orbit, Harris would be free to travel the nation and the world, spewing her trademark word salads, empty blather and cringy cackles everywhere she goes. 

  All Kamala Harris does is get her silk presses and cackle all day. Love that for her 🤣 pic.twitter.com/pWOmCAEZ07

  — Skai (@skaijackson) November 14, 2022

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

  Kamala Harris blunders her way through a speech. Trips into a new word salad: “there is such great significance to the passage of time” pic.twitter.com/f3nTOJFxGt

  — Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 21, 2022

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

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/25/2022 – 20:30

• Reefer Madness: Demand For Illegal Pot Soars In California Due To High Taxes
  Reefer Madness: Demand For Illegal Pot Soars In California Due To High Taxes

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  It appears that illegal pot growers are giving thanks this holiday for California lawmakers who legalized pot only to fuel demand for illegal cannabis due to massive taxes.

  It is the same problem that I wrote about in New York’s program in an earlier Wall Street Journal column.

  Politicians continue to pile on taxes as if they have no impact on pricing and demand. It just seems like free money if you ignore every economic metric and principle. 

  Even with a recent recognition that they have killed their own market, California lawmakers are being criticized for offering too little too late in terms of tax relief.

  

  Sgt. James Roy of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department is quoted in Fox News as saying that “The illegal industry is competing with the legal industry and essentially putting them out of business.”

  Why? As with bathtub gin after Prohibition, few people would prefer bootlegged products rather than the safer lawful alternatives. The only reason is economics — and the refusal of the California lawmakers to recognize basic rules of supply and demand. Not only is pot cheaper due to the massive taxes imposed on lawful businesses, but it is also being sent to the East Coast where similar price differentials are also fueling the illegal trade.

  Despite being a relatively new industry, state and city officials imposed thick layers of regulations, charges, and taxes on the budding businesses. Some estimates put the taxes at 70 percent of current costs.

  Even with a recent recognition that lawmakers strangled the industry, a temporary tax cut is not expected to be enough to make lawful businesses competitive. There remain a host of other taxes, required regulatory obligations, and even bars on claiming certain expenses used by other businesses. The result, according to one study, is that “the effective tax rate on marijuana in California ranges from $42 to $92 per ounce, depending on the jurisdiction, compared to an estimated wholesale production cost of $35 per ounce.”

  So you have a high demand product that has been strangled out of the legal market by politicians who cannot resist adding their own taxes and demands on these nascent businesses. The result is a bonanza for illegal cannabis growers. The alternative was to show a modicum of restraint and allow this industry and market to stabilize and grow. It would then might produce greater revenue even with lower taxes. That, however, requires the one thing that is seemingly beyond our current political environment: restraint.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/25/2022 – 20:00

• "This Is Appalling": Major Tax Filing Services Have Been Sending Financial Information To Facebook
  “This Is Appalling”: Major Tax Filing Services Have Been Sending Financial Information To Facebook

  Major tax filing services, including H&R Block, TaxAct and TaxSlayer, have been covertly sending Facebook sensitive financial information when Americans file their taxes online, according to The Markup.

  

  The data includes names, email addresses, income, filing status, refund amounts and college scholarship information – which is sent to Facebook regardless of whether a person even has a Facebook account – or with other platforms owned by Meta. The company can then be used to fine tune advertising algorithms.

  It is sent through widely used code called the Meta Pixel.

  Of note, Intuit-owned TurboTax does use Meta Pixel, however the company did not send financial information – just usernames and the last time a device signed in. Beyond that, they have kept Pixel entirely off pages beyond sign in.

  Each year, the Internal Revenue Service processes about 150 million individual returns filed electronically, and some of the most widely used e-filing services employ the pixel, The Markup found. 

  When users sign up to file their taxes with the popular service TaxAct, for example, they’re asked to provide personal information to calculate their returns, including how much money they make and their investments. A pixel on TaxAct’s website then sent some of that data to Facebook, including users’ filing status, their adjusted gross income, and the amount of their refund, according to a review by The Markup. Income was rounded to the nearest thousand and refund to the nearest hundred. The pixel also sent the names of dependents in an obfuscated, but generally reversible, format. -The Markup

  TaxAct, which services around three million “consumer and professional users,” also sends data to Google via the company’s analytics tool, however names are not included in the information.

  

  “We take the privacy of our customers’ data very seriously,” said TaxAct spokeswoman Nicole Coburn. “TaxAct, at all times, endeavors to comply with all IRS regulations.”

  H&R Block embedded a pixel on its site that included information on filers’ health savings account usage, dependents’ college tuition grants and expenses. The company similarly claimed in a very boilerplate statement that they “regularly evaluate[s] our practices as part of our ongoing commitment to privacy, and will review the information.”

  While TaxSlayer – which says it completed 10 million federal and state returns last year – provided Facebook information on filers as part of the social media giant’s “advanced matching” system which attempts to link information from people browsing the web to Facebook accounts. The information sent includes phone numbers and the name of the user filling out the form, as well as the names of any dependents added to the return. Specific demographic information was also obscured, but Facebook was still able to link them to existing profiles.

  Another tax filing service, Ramsey Solutions, told The Markup that the company “implemented the Meta Pixel to deliver a more personalized customer experience,” but that they “did NOT know and were never notified that personal tax information was being collected by Facebook from the Pixel.”

  “As soon as we found out, we immediately informed TaxSlayer to deactivate the Pixel from Ramsey SmartTax.”

  Harvard Law School lecturer and tax law specialist Mandi Matlock said the findings showed that taxpayers have been “providing some of the most sensitive information that they own, and it’s being exploited.”

  “This is appalling,” she added. “It truly is.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/25/2022 – 19:30

• How To Manage Risk In Crypto
  How To Manage Risk In Crypto

  Authored by Conor Ryder via Kaiko.com,

  The FTX collapse was perhaps the single biggest risk management failure in the history of finance. Today, we provide a crash course in basic risk and liquidity metrics which should be required reading for anyone managing crypto investments.

  

  We’ve seen enough incidents over the last few months, let alone years, to conclude there is a complete lack of adequate risk management in crypto. Throughout the Terra collapse, crypto credit crisis, and spectacular implosion of FTX we have collectively witnessed the industry’s largest (and most opaque) firms become insolvent in an instant.

  This begs the question: where were the basic financial risk controls that are mandatory in any other industry?

  A neglect of proper risk and liquidity management in a market as volatile as crypto has proven to be a death sentence for any business or investor. Today, we will demonstrate why risk metrics such as VaR and expected shortfall, alongside CeFi and DeFi liquidity metrics, are an absolute necessity for any crypto firm in a post-FTX world.

  Part 1: Risk Metrics

  While commonplace (and required by law) in traditional finance, risk metrics have been neglected in crypto largely because most crypto businesses have been extremely profitable up until lately. When numbers go up, risk management gets swept under the carpet. But the industry’s inherent lack of transparency and regulation has also contributed to a culture of negligence that eschewed basic controls.

  Below, we explore three basic risk metrics: Value at Risk, expected shortfall, and implied volatility. 

  Value at Risk

  VaR is a risk indicator to quantify the extent and probability of potential losses in a portfolio. It is particularly useful in risk management as it can essentially assign a cash value to a confidence level. These confidence levels usually range from 90% – 99%. For example, if the 95% daily VaR of my portfolio is $30k, it means that:

  – My portfolio has a 95% chance of losing less than $30k over the next one day period.

  – On average I will lose more than $30k one day out of 20 (5 days out of 100 = 5%).

  VaR can be viewed as an acceptable loss, given a confidence level, which makes it a particularly useful metric for compliance purposes as well as capital requirement planning. Since the VaR for different confidence levels exhaustively describes the investment profitability, it can be used for investment management, allowing us to define limit-order levels to crystallize profits or cut losses. 

  Kaiko’s VaR estimator can be applied to any cryptocurrency portfolio to accurately track VaR over time. Below, we have charted the Daily VaR of an equally weighted $200k portfolio of BTC and ETH.

  Suppose I’m setting my risk budget for my portfolio, and I want a 95% probability of not losing more than $30k (-15%) each day. I would set my VaR confidence level to 95%, charted below, and monitor when my portfolio exceeds that $30k level. When the portfolio VaR exceeds that level I would look to de-risk my portfolio so that my Value-at-Risk is under that $30k threshold. We can see that in November as the FTX fallout began, VaR tripled in a matter of days to surpass the $30k max loss which would tell me to de-risk.

  

  For a more conservative risk budget, perhaps for an exchange or lender, VaR at a 99% confidence level would be more appropriate. 99% VaR will impose stricter risk measures as the max loss is higher, due to the degree of certainty that it requires. We can see in the chart below that in times of higher volatility or returns, such as this time last year when the bull market came crashing to a halt, the max loss using 99% VaR was nearly double that using 95% VaR. This results in more stringent liquidity management being put in place, which will give businesses a better chance to remain solvent in volatile markets.

  

  Expected Shortfall

  Expected shortfall (ES) is another useful metric, and particularly relevant for a volatile asset class like crypto where investors want to try and quantify their losses in the worst of cases. While VaR estimates a max loss 95% of the time, expected shortfall quantifies the average loss in the 5% of times. ES answers the question: If VaR is exceeded, how bad will our losses be?

  Distribution of returns in a crypto portfolio have historically had what are known as fat left tails, or black swan events, that alter the makeup of the return distributions. As we can see below, crypto markets exhibit more of the characteristics of chart 2. Both charts have the same VaR but result in different expected shortfalls: chart 2 losses are more extreme in the worst case scenario.

  

  Charting the expected shortfall, or the average loss in the worst 5% of scenarios, for the same $200k portfolio above, we observe a decline in the average loss this year as crypto volatility generally eased. However, we can see expected shortfall spike during the recent FTX collapse, doubling in a matter of days. ES compliments VaR and gives risk managers a sense of how bad things may get in the worst of scenarios. This allows business to determine a risk budget, ensuring solvency during market crashes. 

  

  Implied Volatility

  Risk managers can also turn to the options market to get a better idea of how much risk is being priced into markets. Volatility is one of the criteria that makes up an option price, and by calculating how much volatility the market is pricing into an option, it is possible to come to a conclusion as to how much volatility to expect until the option expiration date. Using the December 2nd expiry date as an example, the market is pricing in implied volatility of 81% for ETH options until the end of the month, decreasing from 98% since mid-November. Implied volatility can be one of the most useful metrics risk managers monitor when looking to adjust the risk of the portfolio.

  

  Part 2: Liquidity Metrics

  Market Depth on Centralized Exchanges

  Two of the black swan events this year, the collapse of Celsius and FTX, were directly related to liquidity issues surrounding stETH and FTT, respectively. Holders of either tokens could have seen that there was little to no liquidity available on spot markets and if everyone rushes to the exit at the same time, the price of the token crashes.

  We saw this happen with stETH, which hit a discount of +6% as liquidity dried up on exchanges as Celsius rushed to liquidate their holdings amid record redemption requests for ETH.

  FTT didn’t have many buyers apart from FTX themselves, and the bid side liquidity was not enough to support immense selling pressure of the token throughout the FTX scandal, despite Alameda’s best efforts to defend the price. Bid side liquidity within 2% of the mid price for FTT was only $6m pre-collapse. A fund engaging in adequate liquidity management would have flagged this and likely reduced exposure to FTT on the off-chance a rush to the exit happened.

  

  Looking at some other tokens which could be relevant from a liquidity management perspective, DOT, the token of the Polkadot ecosystem, had very similar bid depth to FTT pre-crash. Post-crash, DOT only has about $4m of bid side support within 2% of the mid-price across 12 exchanges it trades on, meaning a wave of sell orders could quickly crash prices.

  

  KCS is the native token of the Hong-Kong based exchange Kucoin. Kucoin is ranked 32 out of 42 exchanges in the latest Kaiko Exchange Ranking, largely thanks to a 42/100 score for Governance. According to recent proof of reserves releases from exchanges, the Block claims Kucoin holds nearly 20% of its reserves in its own token, KCS. Looking at 2% bid depth for KCS we can see there is only about $60k of bid side support for the token. A rush for the exit could see the KCS price crash and Kucoin taking a significant hit to their reserves.

  

  Understanding liquidity is thus a vital component in a robust risk management framework. The valuation of a fund’s balance sheet is only as strong as its ability to efficiently liquidate their holdings.

  DeFi Liquidity Data 

  As centralized and decentralized markets become increasingly integrated, CEX market depth is no longer enough to fully understand a cryptocurrency’s liquidity

  As mentioned earlier, staked Ether (stETH) played a large role in the liquidity issues faced by Celsius and Three Arrows Capital this summer. This caused market wide contagion at the time as investors scrambled to cash out of stETH and move into the more liquid ETH. In this case, the majority of liquidity for stETH wasn’t on centralized exchanges; rather, it was in DEX liquidity pools.

  Diligent monitoring of the Curve stETH/ETH pool would have flagged a drop in the total value locked in real time as stETH made up over 80% of the pool at the height of the rush for liquidity. That allocation has improved slightly since, but remains quite imbalanced as stETH now makes up 67% of the pool.

  

  Going forward, crypto firms will need to understand liquidity on both centralized and decentralized markets to be able to simulate large liquidations and price impact. 

  Part 3: Exchange Due Diligence

  The importance of exchange due diligence has never been more relevant than it is today. FTX was one of the most trusted names in all of crypto, but after Coindesk did a bit of digging the whole charade unraveled and FTX ended up insolvent. Not only did customers lose money, but many sophisticated hedge funds and trading desks had their funds stored on FTX and now have to explain that decision to investors.

  It is vital that going forward, as part of a robust risk management process, that businesses do their due diligence on exchanges, monitoring everything from liquidity to governance. Kaiko is aiming to assist investors in this vetting process for exchanges with our Exchange Ranking, which is structured around six criteria with a proprietary scoring methodology internally developed and maintained by Kaiko’s Indices team. Over the next few months, we will incorporate proof of reserves and other transparency metrics into this ranking.

  

  Conclusion

  When liquidity is plentiful, risk management is less of a concern as most companies’ balance sheets look healthy and liquid. However, when a bear market hits, the tide goes out and we see who was swimming naked. Those with significant positions in illiquid tokens, such as FTT or stETH, have paid the price for not monitoring the liquidity of those positions and not accurately assessing the outsized risk of their positions should prices go down.

  Risk management and crypto are two words that up until lately have rarely been mentioned in the same sentence. To quote the new CEO of FTX, John Ray III, he had never seen “such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information.”

  If businesses investing in crypto are to survive going forward, risk management must play a central role in the investment process. Liquidity metrics, combined with traditional risk metrics such as VaR or Expected Shortfall will allow investors to survive bear markets like these and reap the rewards of survival come the next bull market.

  *  * *

  Learn more about Kaiko’s Value at Risk, Implied Volatility, and liquidity data.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/25/2022 – 19:00

• California Mulls Ban On All Gas And Diesel Truck Fleets
  California Mulls Ban On All Gas And Diesel Truck Fleets

  California’s Air Resources Board has laid out a plan to ban all diesel-powered trucks that would cause inflationary ripples throughout the entire economy.

  

  The plan would mandate that all new trucks operating around busy railways and ports be zero emission vehicles by 2024 – while all diesel trucks would be phased out by 2035, and eventually, banishing every truck and bus fleet from California roads by 2045, where feasible, according to SFGATE.

  The proposed Advance Clean Fleets regulation first targets the busiest trucking areas in the state — around warehouses, sea ports and railways. The board says the pollution in these areas affects communities disproportionately.

  “Many California neighborhoods, especially Black and Brown, low-income and vulnerable communities, live, work, play and attend schools adjacent to the ports, railyards, distribution centers, and freight corridors and experience the heaviest truck traffic,” wrote the board, which asserts that this type of pollution creates health risks for those communities.

  Representatives from the trucking and construction industries were livid at a recent hearing on the issue – where over 150 public commenters voiced their opinions ranging from the state’s woefully inadequate grid, to a general lack of charging capacity to handle a massive shift to zero-emission vehicles so quickly (whose electricity would in part be generated by coal).

  “The infrastructure cannot be established in the timeframe given,” said American Trucking Association representative Mike Tunnell. “Fleets will have to deploy trucks that cannot do the same job as their current trucks.”

  Another speaker, construction company CEO Jamie Angus, pointed to logistical issues involved with charging electric vehicles.

  “This will do damage to us. We don’t really understand how to charge these vehicles,” he said, adding “Those pieces of equipment go home with those men every day, so they’ll need to be charged from home? How do you compensate that person for that?“

  On the other side of the fence, environmentalists – including the Sierra Club, argued in favor of an expedited timeline to rid California roads of internal combustion engines as quickly as possible.

  Maybe they can also figure out how to solve the massive logistical and economic issues that would surely ensue, as well as what to do with all that lithium when the batteries eventually go bad?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/25/2022 – 18:30

• Qatar & The World Cup: Alcohol Ban Bad, Fueling War In Syria Good?
  Qatar & The World Cup: Alcohol Ban Bad, Fueling War In Syria Good?

  Authored by Gavin O’Reilly via The Ron Paul Institute For Peace & Prosperity,

  In the lead up to the 2022 Qatar World Cup, the hosting of the tournament by the conservative Muslim state has been the source of much controversy in Western media.

  On Thursday, less than 48 hours before the opening match between the host country and Ecuador, it was announced that alcohol would be prohibited from being sold in any of Qatar’s football stadiums. Controversy also arose on Monday afternoon when a plan for England captain Harry Kane to wear the rainbow-themed “OneLove” armband in his country’s match against Iran, was cancelled at the last minute due to an intervention from FIFA.

  What has received virtually zero-coverage or criticism in the run up to Qatar’s hosting of the World Cup however, has been Doha’s instrumental role in fueling the 11-year long proxy war on Syria, a conflict that has led to thousands of deaths, an exacerbated refugee crisis, and the rise of ISIS.

  

  In 2009, plans for the construction of a pipeline that would begin in the Qatari-managed North Dome gas field in the Persian Gulf, and which would then pass through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey on its way to Europe, were halted by the refusal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to take part, his close relationship with Russia being a deciding factor.

  With the Arab Republic being a long-time opponent of the US-NATO hegemony, in which the Gulf States behind the pipeline play a key role, this refusal would act as a final straw for the regime-change lobby. A plan was quickly put in place to remove Assad from power.

  To this end, the United States and a host of other countries would authorize a plan to provide arms, funding and training to Salafist militants in the hope that a sectarian conflict would topple Syria’s secular government, thus allowing a Western-friendly regime to be put in place.

  Timber Sycamore, the official codename for this regime change operation, would officially erupt in March 2011, when protests in Damascus and Aleppo calling for government reform would rapidly escalate into violence that soon swept the entire country.

  By 2013, the “Syrian Revolution” had seen vast swathes of the Arab Republic come under terrorist control, with Salafist groups from neighboring Iraq, itself having been destabilized following the 2003 US-led invasion, crossing over to form the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in April of that year.

  In order to counter this onslaught and avoid the same fate that had befell Libya following a similar regime change operation, a common defence agreement between Syria and key-ally Iran was enacted and the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah would launch a military intervention in June 2013, with Tehran being acutely aware that had Damascus fell, Iran would have been next in line for the regime-change lobby. 

  

  Though this Iranian intervention would play a key role in repelling the Western-backed terrorists, what would perhaps be the most decisive factor in turning the conflict in Damascus’ favour would come in September 2015, when a Russian air campaign was launched in defense of the Arab Republic, allowing it to retake territories that had come under the control of the militants, such as the key city of Aleppo, liberated in December 2016.

  Sensing that their regime change operation wasn’t going to plan, Washington’s Neocons would soon resort to desperate measures. In April 2017, a likely false flag chemical attack in the town of Khan Shaykhun was blamed on the Syrian government in the hope of triggering a US-led military intervention, something that almost came to fruition several days later when the then-Trump administration launched cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase.

  Just stopping short of the full-scale intervention that had been hoped for, the same strategy would be carried out almost a year to the day later in the Syrian city of Douma, this time resulting in the United States, Britain and France launching airstrikes against government targets, again just stopping short of a military intervention that would have triggered a wider conflict between Russia and NATO.

  We told you & told you again.

  “Al-Qaeda is on our side in #Syria.” – email from policy advisor to Sec. of State Hillary Clinton (Feb 2012). pic.twitter.com/EcYlpdeAgm

  — H. Sumeri (@IraqiSecurity) April 14, 2017

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

  Despite Qatar being a key player in the geopolitical impact of the Syrian war via its arming and funding of the terrorists who carried it out, a situation that almost led to a third world war, Doha has come in for little to no criticism from the Western media for its involvement amidst the 2022 World Cup coverage, Qatar’s banning of alcohol, and rainbow armbands, being a seemingly more pressing issue.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/25/2022 – 18:00

• As Negotiations Fracture, EU Postpones Talks On Russian Oil Price Cap To Monday
  As Negotiations Fracture, EU Postpones Talks On Russian Oil Price Cap To Monday

  Although today was the deadline for EU diplomats to determine the specifics of the Russian oil price cap, we pointed out earlier just how “great” discussions were going with Poland rejecting a proposed cap of $65 per barrel as being too soft, while Greece refusing to consider anything below $70.

  EU oil price cap discussions going great: Poland rejected proposed price of $65 per barrel as being too soft, while Greece doesn’t want to go below $70.

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 25, 2022

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

  Meanwhile, amid the growing discord, in typical European fashion – where nobody has even looked at the math ahead of time – the entire concept of a price cap was clearly meaningless as explained in “The Ridiculous Reality Of The Russian Oil Price Cap Debate In One Picture.”

  Which is why it wasn’t at all surprising that on Friday, European Union diplomats suspended talks on capping Russian oil prices, as Poland and the Baltic states objected to a proposal they consider too generous to Moscow.

  Confirming none planned over weekend. Nonetheless a variety of EU sources still think a deal will come in the coming days.

  — laurence norman (@laurnorman) November 25, 2022

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

  As Bloomberg reports, diplomats had expected a deal to be done on Friday night but positions remained entrenched and the talks were postponed to Monday.

  *EU DIPLOMATS POSTPONE OIL PRICE-CAP TALKS TILL AFTER WEEKEND

  they need 48 hours to learn math

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 25, 2022

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

  As previewed earlier this week, the bloc has been locked in a fight over how strict the Group of Seven-led price cap should be. Poland and the Baltic nations are outraged at a proposal to cap Russian oil prices at $65 per barrel limit, as the level is above the rates Moscow sells crude now, making the entire price cap discussion completely meaningless and purely an exercise in virtue signaling.

  Poland is demanding additional sanctions, a review mechanism, and a price below the market level, according to a senior diplomat.

  

  And as always happens when Europe has to reach a unanimous decision, with Poland and the Baltic states digging their heels in, the spat has laid bare the fundamental tension at the heart of the price cap idea. Countries are being forced to choose between two priorities that are almost impossible to resolve: trying to choke off revenue to Russia and avoiding potentially painful spikes in the oil price that could damage the global economy.

  “If you put the price cap too high, it doesn’t really bite,” European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “Oil is the biggest source of revenue for Russian budget, so it’s very important get this right so it really has an impact on Russia’s ability to finance this war.”

  On the other end of the spectrum from Poland are shipping nations like Greece, which favor a higher level that will help keep trade flowing, and boosting state revenues derived from quietly helping Russia break the oil embargo by turning a blind eye to an entire industry of ship-to-ship transfers that has taken Greece by storm.

  The talks have been fraught because at $65, the cap is above the prices that Russia is already accepting for its crude from ravenous buyers such as China and India – a level which is heavily discounted to global benchmarks.

  Such a “cap” would allow Moscow to argue that it’s business as usual; at the same time, the Kremlin had said it would refuse to sell oil to anyone signing up to the cap – but on Thursday appeared to hint it could soften its stance.

  Still, Europe can only kick the can so long: the Dec. 5 deadline is looming, at which point EU sanctions on Russian oil are set to kick, and the disruption to the market will likely be greater if the price cap isn’t in place as all Russian oil exports would be suspended, unless of course Europe stops being a vassal state of the US State Department and decides to do away with the Russian sanctions entirely (for an objective assessment of who holds the upper hand in Europe, read Ambrose Evans-Pritchard with “Putin has another gas shock for us: the deindustrialisation of Europe “.

  The EU sanctions would bar access to insurance and services for any ship transporting Russian oil. The cap allows access to those services, but only if the crude is purchased below a certain price. The US proposed the price cap earlier this year as an alternative to EU sanctions that were so strict they risked shutting down swaths of production.

  The US argued that a spike in prices caused by EU sanctions could eventually help Putin — as well as being ruinous for the global economy.

  Oil prices have fallen in recent days, partly on signs a deal could keep Russian oil flowing, easing the pressure on the global market. Then again this is Europe, and anything that is seen as a consensus outcome will never happen…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/25/2022 – 17:30

• Newly Elected Conservative School Board Fires Superintendent, Bans Critical Race Theory
  Newly Elected Conservative School Board Fires Superintendent, Bans Critical Race Theory

  Authored by Jackson Elliott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  In one meeting, Deon Jackson went from South Carolina’s Berkeley County school superintendent to unemployed.

  

  His firing came at the hand of a newly-elected school board, which appears to have declared a judgment day for woke practices in its district.

  In its first meeting after the Nov. 8 election, the board fired superintendent Jackson and school counsel Tiffany Richardson. Then it hired Anthony Dixon as superintendent and retained Brandon Gaskins as counsel. And before the day was over, the board banned teaching critical race theory and created a board to review library books for pornographic content.

  Moms for Liberty, an activist group that supports parental rights in education, endorsed six of the board’s nine members. Many Moms for Liberty candidates won school board elections this November, as reported previously. The group’s leaders say more aggressive school management decisions may soon be in order.

  In Berkeley, the candidates’ aggressive approach was a response to student discipline policies and slow learning post-COVID-19, said Christi Dixon, the Moms for Liberty chapter chair for Berkeley.

  “Parents were seeing that their children weren’t achieving at the levels that they had been previously. And there were a lot of changes,” Dixon said.

  

  Fire and Firings

  When Jackson left the board meeting at which he was fired, it appeared that not everyone supported the board’s decision.

  Some parents watching walked out with him in protest, video from local network Live 5 WCSC News shows. Others cheered.

  Former school board chair David Barrow called the firings a “travesty” and a “political witch hunt,” according to NBC.

  So far, the board has yet to explain its rationale for firing Jackson and Richardson.

  Board members Yvonne Bradley and Crystal Wigfall walked out of the room in protest after Jackson departed.

  Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice said the board might be newly-elected but that it knows exactly what it’s doing.

  “These are people that have watched the former board. They interacted and watched the former superintendent. They have watched and interacted with the staff attorney,” she said. “The newly elected school board members have been keeping a list and checking it twice.”

  According to Dixon, Jackson changed school discipline policies in ways that caused problems and usurped parental authority.

  Schools under his authority told parents that school staff should be able to discipline students for behavior outside the school, she said.

  “The example that they gave was that if a child and another student in their neighborhood got into some type of disagreement and it was going to spill over into the school environment, then they should be able to insert themselves into that situation,” Dixon said.

  Jackson also supported “restorative practices,” she said.

  According to the University of Florida, a “restorative” school justice system replaces suspensions and detentions with “restorative meeting circles” where offenders and victims practice “Restitution Planning.”

  The previous school board wanted to spend $1 million to hire five district-level administrators, said Dixon.

  “We don’t have teachers’ aides. Could that money not be better served to get down into the schools and into the classrooms to help the teacher than to hire more top-heavy district-level administrators?” she asked.

  Finally, the school district’s library included the book “Looking for Alaska,” which has sexually graphic language, Dixon said.

  Dixon added that she didn’t know exactly why the board moved so fast to fire Jackson and Richardson but that she trusted they had good reason.

  

  “I’m not a board member, and they have protected information that they can’t share,” she said. “I just have to trust that they made the best decision with the information that only they had.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/25/2022 – 17:00

• Hopes Rise For Cannabis Banking Relief During Lame Duck Session
  Hopes Rise For Cannabis Banking Relief During Lame Duck Session

  Federal legislators seeking to free state-legal cannabis businesses to use the country’s banking system have high hopes of finally pushing legislation across the finish line during the upcoming lame duck session. 

  After November’s latest batch of state referendums, recreational marijuana is now legal in 21 states — but remains illegal under federal law. As a result, current federal rules force even legal marijuana businesses to use cash instead of normal banking services. 

  That makes them prime targets for criminals, exposing owners, employees and customers to violent crimes and necessitating expensive security measures. 

  Ben Koltun, director of research at Beacon Policy Advisors, told MarketWatch that the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act has about a 70% chance of passing by year end: “There’s a lot of positive momentum. It’s just can they come to agreement over some of the details that are outstanding?”  

  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has struck his own optimistic tone last week:

  “I’m still holding productive talks with Democratic and Republican colleagues in the House and the Senate on moving additional bipartisan cannabis legislation in the lame duck. We are going to try very, very hard to get it done.”

  The SAFE Act would bar federal regulators from punishing banks for serving legitimate cannabis related businesses.

  It also stipulates that proceeds from a transaction involving activities of a legitimate cannabis-related business are not considered proceeds from unlawful activity — thus removing legit cannabis revenue from the scope of anti-money-laundering laws. 

  The SAFE Act has 180 cosponsors, including 26 Republicans. Despite the measure of bipartisan support, the looming Republican takeover of the House of Representatives is sparking urgency among the SAFE Act’s backers. 

  

  The House of Representatives has passed some form of the SAFE Act seven times, only for it to repeatedly die in the Senate. This key to finally enacting it is twofold, says Politico: 

  They must find a pairing of financial services and criminal justice reform-centered cannabis legislation that progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans can all accept. And then they must receive signoff from the leaders of the Senate Banking Committee, House Financial Services Committee, and the four corners of party leadership in both chambers.

  Demands for accompanying criminal justice measures have included grants for state expungement programs, various forms of help for communities damaged by marijuana prohibition.  

  “The parameters of a deal are pretty easy to imagine, but I am getting the sense that Republicans feel like Democrats are asking for too much in terms of concessions,” Tobin Marcus, senior U.S. policy and politics strategist at Evercore ISI, told MarketWatch. 

  Liberals have been making the perfect (in their eyes) the enemy of the good. Even the Drug Policy Alliance, which has backed cannabis reform, has opposed the SAFE Act, on the head-scratching premise that it “prioritizes marijuana profits over people.” 

  As Jacob Sullom wrote at Reason: 

  The bizarre implication was that marijuana merchants, who face an ongoing danger aggravated by the failure to approve banking reform, do not qualify as “people.” Michael Arthur, the 44-year-old Portland budtender killed in the 2020 robbery that Willamette Week mentioned, was a person. So was Jordan Brown, the 29-year-old employee who was killed last March during an armed robbery at World of Weed, a dispensary in Tacoma, Washington.

  If liberals keep their demands within the bounds of reason and the SAFE Act passes, it would still leave state-legal cannabis businesses with plenty of financial headaches courtesy of the federal government. For example, they can’t even claim business deductions on federal income tax returns, to say nothing of the fact that their every transaction is a federal drug felony.

  Of course, the federal government has no constitutional basis for criminalizing marijuana or any other intoxicant…but here’s hoping this particular chunk of the destructive prohibition regime get peeled back before New Year’s Day. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/25/2022 – 16:30

• The Doctor Who Can Rebuild Trust: Joseph Ladapo
  The Doctor Who Can Rebuild Trust: Joseph Ladapo

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

  If you are like me, you are exhausted of the lies. Every day seems to bring new revelations about how our lives came to be upended. The connections are becoming clearer between the pandemic response and the growing economic crisis, the ballooning debt, the growth of the surveillance state, the corruption and scams, chilling absence of integrity in public life, and, with the failure of FTX, the way in which an outright financial scam was integral to the calamity. 

  While we await new revelations, depositions, coverups, pleas for amnesty, and bad economic news, whom can we trust? Is anyone telling the truth? 

  Today was Anthony Fauci’s last White House press conference, and he spoke as if life is all normal and everything is fine. It’s as if the whole disaster never happened. He never locked anyone down, he says. He has happy for any investigations, he says, because he has nothing to hide. And then he ended with a final push for everyone to get booster #5 or whatever number we are on. 

  It’s like we live in two universes: our own lives in which we read true things in some places, and official life, in which shills and publicists keep repeating the same nonsense over and over without flinching or providing anything like an honest account of these last three years. 

  Perhaps for this reason – and also because by any historical standard this is a tremendous autobiography – reading Dr. Joseph Ladapo’s Transcend Fear is a welcome relief from the nonsense of our times. It is brutally honest. It is emotionally affecting. It is careful and precise but also deeply radical in its observations. If what’s called the “public health world” has lost touch with both the public and health, this book provides a path to restoring it. In short, it is a beautiful and inspiring experience. 

  

  Dr. Ladapo is the Surgeon General of the State of Florida, picked by Governor Ron DeSantis to forge and explain the state’s health decisions and priorities to the public in the midst of a grave crisis. He has faced down the national press time and time again with Zen-like wisdom. He seems emotionally unflappable while also sticking to the science as he understands it. He is the only public health official in the country who has been upfront about the limits of the vaccines and warned healthy young people that they don’t need them. 

  What we learn from this book is that he has been a warrior against pseudoscience from the very beginning of this pandemic and the government response. After the lockdowns, most scientists and health professionals fell silent, fearing reputational and financial loss. Dr. Ladapo was different, On March 24, 2020, still within the window of “15 Days to Flatten the Curve,” he wrote in USA Today:

  We are fretting and we are fuming. As a country, we have been caught miserably flat-footed after receiving warnings about what lay ahead when cases of Covid-19 began exploding in Wuhan, China. Messages from local and state leaders about how to respond to the pandemic change almost daily—a sure sign they have no idea what they are doing. Shutdowns are happening here in California and in New York, and will probably spread to the rest of the nation….

  Here’s the problem: Because of the (understandable) fear and hysteria of the moment, few US leaders are seriously talking about the endgame. The epidemiologic models I’ve seen indicate that the shutdowns and school closures will temporarily slow the virus’ spread, but when they’re lifted, we will essentially emerge right back where we started. And, by the way, no matter what, our hospitals will still be overwhelmed. There has already been too much community spread to prevent this inevitability. 

  We don’t have a totalitarian government like China, and we value our civil liberties too much to take the measures (i.e., total lockdown) that would be needed to rapidly decrease the infection rate to zero. This means that, even with shutdowns, the virus will still spread. Unfortunately, this also means that rates of “community immunity,” often referred to as “herd immunity,” will slow. As a result, we will always be vulnerable to the virus spreading rapidly again as soon as shutdown measures are lifted, unless they are immediately reimplemented—over and over and over again.

  Was he the first post-lockdown voice from public health profoundly to object in a public forum of this magnitude? Perhaps so. Consider the bravery and presence of mind it required to write those sentences. The entire country was on a wartime footing with unprecedented horribles taking place. The media was screaming “Run for your lives” but most of us weren’t even allowed out of our homes to do that. 

  These were utterly crazy times. The whole world was going bonkers. And yet this man kept his cool. 

  This book explains where his cool comes from. You see, he is the son of an immigrant from Nigeria, born 1979. A math and science whiz, he attended Wake Forest and then entered Harvard Medical School. While he was involved in his studies, he noted the existence of the Kennedy School of Government and enrolled there too. On graduation day, he was granted a MD plus a PhD in public policy. So essentially: the highest credentials in two fields that this country offers. He became professor of medicine at New York University and then the University of California, Los Angeles. 

  The trouble was that none of his training had prepared him to deal with medical issues closer to home, namely his wife’s unrelenting migraines that often landed her in the hospital and his own underlying psychological fears of social interaction. The details are very painful and told in this book with disarming detail. Long story short: his search for answers led him toward alternative medical paths that eventually fixed both issues, and burned a lesson in his mind. Health is individual, and the right path is not the same for everyone and not always found in expertise as codified in the textbooks and institutions. 

  It was soon after these difficult times that the pandemic broke and, along with it, the claims that the experts had all the answers in lockdowns and eventual universal mandates for vaccination. 

  Dr. Ladapo had meanwhile developed the self-confidence to speak about such matters truthfully and fearlessly. And he never stopped. He wrote for every venue he could, month after month, urging an end to the lockdowns, a focus on therapeutics, attention to the science we had, and genuine concern for the health of actual individuals, who are not lab rats but people with human rights and freedom. 

  Even though Dr. Joseph Ladapo is obviously a hero (and one for the ages, so far as I’m concerned), the prose here is remarkably lucid, humble, and precise. That’s why I say that the humane concern in this book is an inspiration. Moreover, reading it is a form of therapy because he connects with a common sense that we all had in 2019 before the world descended into utter madness. 

  What’s more, this book shows a path forward not only for public health but for all of us as individuals. He urges personal reflection as the first step in recovery, overcoming whatever hidden fears we had that caused too many among us to go along with the preposterous parade of dangerous nonsense that controlled our lives for so long. 

  In my own view, this book is a classic of our times. Its value added is not only the author’s credentials, though he has them galore, or even how it speaks so directly to issues that have profoundly affected all our lives. Its real value is as a model of autobiography that offers lessons for all of us without exception. 

  We at Brownstone are deeply honored that Dr. Ladapo will be our dinner speaker at our annual conference and gala in Miami, December 3, 2022. There is still time to attend. You can register here. 

  I write as Dr. Fauci just finished his last press conference without offering so much as a hint of apology for what has happened. Meanwhile, I’m sure Dr. Ladapo is tending to his work in Florida where he has been charged with dealing with public health policy with honesty, truth, and wisdom. I know who gets my vote for hero of the pandemic. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/25/2022 – 16:00

• Clothes Pile Up At Bangladesh Warehouses As Western Imports Collapse
  Clothes Pile Up At Bangladesh Warehouses As Western Imports Collapse

  Exactly half a year ago, on May 23, we warned that as the “bullwhip effect” was set to end with a bang, and as inventories were set to go from zero to massively overstocked, prices were “about to fall off a cliff.” Well, with purchase orders having fallen off a cliff, and with containership rates crashing at the fastest pace on record as demand for Chinese imports has evaporated in the US…

  

  … this is precisely what we are now seeing, and as the FT reports, with US inventories in freefall amid a collapse in domestic demand, clothing is instead piling up at warehouses in Bangladesh as consumers tighten belts in the US, Europe and other big markets.

  Citing manufacturers, the Financial Times notes that orders in the world’s largest garment exporter after China had been slowing since July because of the war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia, and their impact on inflation, interest rates and mortgages across the world.

  “Everything has gone up, so the clothing budget has squeezed,” Faruque Hassan, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, told the Financial Times. “That’s why some of the brands, some of the importers have slowed down their orders.” Hassan said that some retailers had asked Bangladeshi suppliers to stop making garments or to delay shipments for up to three months.

  “That is having a huge impact because all our factories . . . have bought fabric to produce the garments and now they are having a serious crisis.”

  

  In other words, we are seeing not just the reverse bullwhip effect kick in, but smaller, secondary bull-whippets being unleashed as the butterfly of the coming global recession flaps its wings.

  And it’s about to have profound political consequences too: the downturn in global clothing demand comes as Sheikh Hasina Wazed’s Bangladeshi government, which faces an election next year, contends with higher prices for imported gas, leading to power cuts that have hit some garment producers. The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist party has staged large rallies in recent weeks in a bid to capitalize on discontent with a weakening economy ahead of the poll.

  In response, this month Bangladesh turned to the IMF for help, and secured a $2.3 billion credit facility and another $1.3 billion from its Resilience and Sustainability Facility, meant to help poorer countries address climate change and other long-term challenges.

  That good news is that for now, Bangladesh has not faced a full-blown liquidity crisis unlike its neighbours Sri Lanka and Pakistan.  But its foreign exchange reserves have fallen this year against the backdrop of a strengthening dollar and pressures on prices and consumer demand.

  And it’s about to get worse: clothing and textile production is by far the biggest industry in Bangladesh, which profited from surging sales when Covid-19 lockdowns eased and consumers indulged in “revenge buying”. The result was a burst in income and the south Asian country exported garments worth $42.6bn and textiles worth $2.6bn in the 12 months to the end of June, accounting for about 85% of total exports, according to the BGMEA exporters association.

  

  Making clothes for Walmart, Primark, H&M, Target and other global chains is a cornerstone industry that has helped lift many of its more than 160 million people, primarily women, out of poverty.

  According to Ranjan Mahtani, chief executive of Epic Group, which has a factory in Bangladesh and a large business in the US, clothing sales “really spiked post-Covid because there were so many stimulus cheques”, but were now falling again, leading to “huge” inventories at retailers; and unlike the US where so far collapsing inventories haven’t led to mass layoffs, in Bangladesh the lack of US stimmies means millions are about to be fired, leading to social instability.

  In the first months of the pandemic, Bangladesh’s garment makers were hit hard when many retailers cancelled orders. Some responded by pivoting to making masks and personal protective equipment as demand for those products climbed rapidly.

  “In a country that looks chaotic from the outside, everybody was really focused,” says Vidiya Amrit Khan, director of the family controlled Desh Garments, which supplies brands including Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger in the US, and Crew Clothing in the UK. “This was because we had to survive.”

  Hassan, the BGMEA president, said that in the latest slowdown, retailers were not cancelling orders outright. Instead they were asking for discounts or factoring warehouse charges into what they paid manufacturers whose clothing they could not sell immediately. He added that the industry had asked the Bangladesh Bank, the country’s central bank, to press lenders to defer suppliers’ loan payments so that factories could give priority to paying wages and utility bills.

  Additionally, the FT notes that power cuts have caused further problems at manufacturers. “Energy is a problem and because of that, a very large section of the industry is going through terrible months,” said Syed Naved Husain, chief executive of Beximco, one of Bangladesh’s largest companies, whose customers include Target and Zara owner Inditex. Husain said that he thought the industry should “buy energy at the cost it’s available”, even if it meant the cost of a garment shot up.

  The bottom line is that in a fiercely competitive industry with thin margins, clothing producers in Bangladesh are especially vulnerable to changes in global consumer tastes and demand. As clothing chains respond to pressure from shoppers and shareholders to improve their sustainability practices, garment-makers have invested in machinery and equipment aimed at reducing the use of water, power and other resources.

  “What’s happening now is that fashion is under attack,” said Husain, whose company has installed solar panels, new denim washing machines and other equipment.

  Tipu Munshi, Bangladesh’s commerce minister, confirmed the slowdown in clothing exports, but noted that people would “still have to wear garments”, even during leaner economic times.

  “Maybe you buy two out of four [garments], but you still have to buy it,” he said. “And no one can beat our price.”

  While we admire Munshi’s optimism, he has no idea just how low the price will have to fall to find buyers one the US recession collapses import demand across the world. And while Bangladesh and its clothing industry will be the first domino to fall as the reverse bullwhip effect hammers global supply chains, it’s only the first of countless other dominos that are about to topple over.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/25/2022 – 15:30

• Treasury Curve Inversion Has Even More To Come Than Feared
  Treasury Curve Inversion Has Even More To Come Than Feared

  By Ven Ram, Bloomberg Markets reporter and analyst

  One of the most-watched segments of the US yield curve is now caught in the throes of the biggest inversion since the 1980s.

  Ten-year Treasuries now offer a yield that is about 77 basis points lower than the two-year maturity. Still-to-come tightening from the Federal Reserve is holding front-end yields higher, while concerns about an economy losing momentum are spurring investors toward longer-dated notes.

  

  While it may be tempting to draw far-reaching conclusions about the depth of the inversion, the evidence is that it reflects that interim state of play where the economic narrative hasn’t yet gone completely pear-shaped. That is especially the case with the labor market, which is still extremely tight from all available evidence. Simultaneously, inflation in this economic cycle is a beast whose contours are yet hard to fully fathom, and it would be premature to equate a peak in price pressures with a headline print that is somewhere where the Fed would want it to be.

  While the markets have been quick to run ahead with the idea of an end to Fed tightening, the story just ain’t as simplistic. My two cents is that the Fed will pause on rates once it reaches circa 5%-5.25% and then watch how the economy evolves. If the inflation cookie crumbles, then the early birds may have something to show for their risk-taking ability, but if it doesn’t, the chance that we get into a second stage of further tightening from thereon can’t be ruled out. After all, history shows us that the Fed hasn’t been able to conclude its hiking cycle any time before inflation-adjusted policy rates reached a full 200 basis points. For the record, that rate is now -90 basis points.

  The import of all this is that the yield curve is likely to invert even more in the days to come as markets wait for that conclusive inflection point on the economy and inflation.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/25/2022 – 15:05

• For Thanksgiving, Biden Stuffs America's 401(k)s With ESG
  For Thanksgiving, Biden Stuffs America’s 401(k)s With ESG

  On Tuesday, the Department of Labor finalized a rule that provides regulatory cover for retirement plan sponsors who want to emphasize environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in plan management. 

  Since 1974, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) has rightly required that plan sponsors act “solely in the interest” of employees and beneficiaries when selecting and monitoring investments and casting shareholder votes.  

  The Trump administration reinforced that principle by prohibiting retirement plans from considering investment attributes that aren’t material to risk or performance. Trump’s DOL explicitly prohibited funds with ESG principles from being used as the default investment for plan participants.

  With Biden’s Thanksgiving week move, that’s all out the window, setting up tens of millions of Americans to have their retirement potential clipped as woke corporations corral their money into ESG-tainted investments. 

  The administration knows it’s doing something that a broad swath of society would find objectionable: In choosing Tuesday of Thanksgiving week to post the rule, the White House was clearly aiming to minimize reporting and public awareness.  

  In Orwellian fashion, Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh issued a statement declaring that “removing the prior administration’s restrictions on plan fiduciaries will help America’s workers and their families as they save for a secure retirement.”

  However, by its very nature, ESG reduces diversification by eliminating broad swaths of the investment universe. That means leaving money on the table. An ESG-managed 401k plan, for example, would have likely prevented employees from benefiting from the 79% year-to-date gain in Exxon Mobil.   

  As if that weren’t bad enough, the Biden ESG rule is also a handout to asset managers — with the expense borne by employees who are just trying to save for a comfortable future. As Kenneth P. Pucker and Andrew King wrote in the Harvard Business Review in August: 

  “ESG funds typically charge fees 40 percent higher than traditional funds, making them a timely answer to asset management margin compression.” 

  But there’s more at stake than dollars and cents. This is just one more scheme by which society is being force-marched into the depths of the broad progressive agenda.

  While the pursuit of green energy is often used as an example of ESG principles, don’t forget they also include pushing the diversity, equity and inclusion programs and mandatory “anti-racism” training sessions that stoke divisions rather than promote harmony.  

  

  To appreciate how brazenly leftist the Biden administration’s retirement plan move is, consider that the DOL’s official introduction to the new rule justifies it by saying it’s consistent with…

  “The policy of the Administration to listen to the science; improve public health and protect our environment; bolster resilience to the impacts of climate change; and prioritize both environmental justice and the creation of the well-paying union jobs necessary to deliver on these goals.”

  It’s one thing for a 401k to provide an ESG option for individual employees who want to invest their money that way — hopefully after being cautioned that doing could put a dent in their nest egg. It’s another thing altogether to let plan sponsors unilaterally impose ESG across the full spectrum of asset classes  — but here we go. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/25/2022 – 14:40

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• Cancel Culture's War On History, Heritage, & The Freedom To Think For Yourself
  Cancel Culture’s War On History, Heritage, & The Freedom To Think For Yourself

  Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “All the time – such is the tragi-comedy of our situation – we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible… In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

  – C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

  There will come a time in the not-so-distant future when the very act of thinking for ourselves is not just outlawed but unthinkable.

  We are being shunted down the road to that dystopian future right now, propelled along by politically correct forces that, while they may have started out with the best of intentions, have fallen prey to the authoritarian siren song of the Nanny State, which has promised to save the populace from evils that only a select few are wise enough to recognize as such.

  As a result, we are being infantilized ad nauseum, dictated to incessantly, and forcefully insulated from “dangerous” sights and sounds and ideas that we are supposedly too fragile, too vulnerable, too susceptible, or too ignorant to be exposed to without protection from the so-called elite.

  

  Having concluded that “we the people” cannot be trusted to think for ourselves, the powers-that-be have taken it upon themselves to re-order our world into one in which they do the thinking for us, and all we have to do is fall is line.

  Those who do not fall in line with this government-sanctioned group think—who resist, who dare to think for themselves, who dare to adopt views that are different, or possibly wrong or hateful—are branded as extremists, belligerents, and deplorables, and shunned, censored and silenced.

  The fallout is as one would expect.

  Cancel culture – political correctness amped up on steroids, the self-righteousness of a narcissistic age, and a mass-marketed pseudo-morality that is little more than fascism disguised as tolerance – has shifted us into an Age of Intolerance, policed by techno-censors, social media bullies, and government watchdogs.

  Everything is now fair game for censorship if it can be construed as hateful, hurtful, bigoted or offensive provided that it runs counter to the established viewpoint.

  In this way, the most controversial issues of our day—race, religion, sex, sexuality, politics, science, health, government corruption, police brutality, etc.—have become battlegrounds for those who claim to believe in freedom (of religion, speech, assembly, press, redress, privacy, bodily integrity, etc.) but only when it favors the views and positions they support.

  The latest victim of this rigid re-ordering of the world into one in which vestiges of past mistakes are scrubbed from existence comes from the New York Department of Education, which has ordered schools to stop using Native American references in mascots, team names and logos by the end of the current school year or face penalties including a loss of state aid.

  Citing concerns about racism and a need to comply with the state’s Dignity for All Students Act, which requires schools to create environments free of harassment or discrimination, New York officials are telling communities—many of which are named after Native American tribes—that longstanding cultural associations with their towns’ Indian namesakes are offensive and shameful.

  More than 100 schools in 60 school districts across New York State have nicknames or mascots that reference Native Americans. The cost to divest their communities of such branded names and images will be significant. One school district estimates that the cost to remove its Indians imagery from the gym floor alone will be upwards of $60,000.

  This drive to sanitize New York schools of “offensive” Native American logos and imagery comes on the heels of iconoclastic campaigns to rid the country of anything and anyone that may offend modern-day sensibilities.

  Monuments have been torn down, schools and streets have been renamed, and the names of benefactors stripped from prominent signage in the quest for a more enlightened age.

  These are not new tactics.

  Since the days of the Byzantine Empire, when “Emperor Leo III ordered the destruction of all Christian images on the grounds that they represented idolatry and were heretical,” political movements have resorted to destroying monuments, statues and imagery of the day as a visual means of exerting their power and vanquishing their enemies.

  We have been caught in this intolerant, self-righteous, destructive, mob-driven cycle of book-burning, statue-toppling, history-erasing iconoclasm ever since.

  As art critic Alexander Adams explains:

  “Iconoclasm is an activity evenly distributed between both left and right of the political spectrum, mainly at the extreme ends… The intolerant ideology, which refuses to accept the co-existence of alternative views, takes the stance that…the ideals within the art are no longer utterable or supportable: they are actually injurious and dangerous to the vulnerable… The political activist reserves to himself the right to retrospectively edit our history for his satisfaction by removing monuments, those fixtures of civic life, embedded in the memories of generations… Iconoclasm is an expression of domination and a demonstration of willingness to act—illegally and unethically—to impose the will of one group over an entire population. It asserts control over all aspects of society… The campaigner argues that public art, accumulated piecemeal over 1,000 years of history, must reflect our society and values today—even if that means altering or erasing stories of the values our past society expressed via its monuments, or suppressing evidence of how we arrived at our current situation… The iconoclast believes that it is only the values of today that count—that it is only her values that count. She takes it upon herself to correct history through monstrous acts of egotism. That correction, when it involves destruction, permanently alters the cultural legacy. It shrinks the breadth of human experience available to the generations which follow ours.”

  In such a world, there can be no debate, no journey to understanding, no chance to learn from one’s mistakes or even make mistakes that are uniquely your own; there is only obedience and compliance to the government, its corporate overlords and the prevailing mob mindset.

  Censorship, cancel culture, political correctness, woke-ism, hate speech, intolerance: whatever label you assign to this overzealous drive to sanitize the culture of anything that might be deemed offensive or disturbing or challenging, be assured they are sign posts on a one-way road to graver dangers marked by “suppression, persecution, expulsion and the massacring of people.”

  Whether those smashing monuments and erasing history are doing so for noble purposes or more diabolical reasons, the end results are the same: criminalization, confiscation, imprisonment, exile and genocide.

  “Look at mobs which gather to smash monuments,” says Adams. “These monuments may be the statues of deposed dictators who terrorized populations, causing untold death and suffering. They may be monuments to fallen soldiers who died defending causes that are no longer fashionable. The mob’s anger is the same. The viciousness and triumphant celebrations are the same. Only the causes differ in seriousness, topicality and justification.”

  Adams continues:

  “The Civil War statue destroyers think they are assaulting the posterity of slave owners, but they themselves are in the grip of ideological fervor. They are unaware that they are running a biological code, hardwired in their brains by evolution and activated by political extremists. The activists of today heedlessly erase history they haven’t yet learned to read. They act as the hammer that extremists use to deface the cathedrals and museums our ancestors built.”

  What’s different about this present age, however, is the use of technology to censor, silence, delete, label as “hateful,” demonize and destroy those whose viewpoints run counter to the cultural elite.

  “In the last few years,” writes Nina Powers for Art Review, “what is understood to be contentious has become increasingly broadly defined… The range of what counts as acceptable gets smaller and smaller… [W]e thus find ourselves… in the midst of a new culture war in which the freedom to think, feel and express ourselves comes at the risk of economic impoverishment, social ostracism and mob justice.”

  Where this leads is the stuff of dystopian nightmares: societies that value conformity and group-think over individuality; a populace so adept at self-censorship and compliance that they are capable only of obeying the government’s dictates without the ability to parse out whether those dictates should be obeyed; and a language limited to government-speak.

  This is what happens when the voices of the majority are allowed to eliminate those in the minority, and it is exactly why James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, fought for a First Amendment that protected the “minority” against the majority, ensuring that even in the face of overwhelming pressure, a minority of one—even one who espouses distasteful viewpoints—would still have the right to speak freely, pray freely, assemble freely, challenge the government freely, and broadcast his views in the press freely.

  Freedom for those in the unpopular minority constitutes the ultimate tolerance in a free society.

  The alternative, as depicted in Ayn Rand’s novella Anthem, is a world in which individuality and the ability to think for oneself independent of the government and the populace are eradicated, where even the word “I” has been eliminated from the vocabulary, replaced by the collective “we.”

  As Anthem’s narrator Equality 7-2521 explains, “It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. . . . And well we know that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone.”

  As I make clear in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are not merely losing the ability to think critically for ourselves and, in turn, to govern our inner and outer worlds, we are also in danger of losing the right to do so.

  The government’s war on thought crimes and truth-tellers is just the beginning.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/24/2022 – 23:50

• Have Shopping Holidays Jumped The Shark?
  Have Shopping Holidays Jumped The Shark?

  After years of unabated growth, Black Friday and Cyber Monday online sales dipped for the first time last year, as many shops spread out deals over the entire Thanksgiving week or even further.

  “With early deals in October, consumers were not waiting around for discounts on big shopping days like Cyber Monday and Black Friday,” said Taylor Schreiner, Director at Adobe Digital Insights.

  As Statista’s Felix Richter notes, according to Adobe’s estimates, U.S. consumers spent $10.7 billion on Cyber Monday last year, slightly down from $10.8 billion in 2020. Black Friday spending also just missed the 2020 record, coming in at $8.9 billion in 2021 vs. $9.0 billion the year before.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  The fact that the dedicated shopping holidays didn’t beat spending records last year doesn’t mean that shoppers were cutting back on their holiday spending generally. They merely spread it out throughout the holiday season. Between November 1 and November 29, U.S. consumers spent $109.8 billion online, up 11.9 percent from the same period in 2020. Moreover, 22 days exceeded $3 billion in online sales in November 2021, up from just 9 days in November 2020 and further proof of shoppers spending their holiday cash more evenly than before.

  

  With all that said, do we even need Black Friday and Cyber Monday anymore? Well, it depends. While it certainly feels like the overabundance of discounts throughout the year has watered down the importance of special shopping days, people will always be willing to save money on genuinely good offers. So it’s up to the retailers to counter the deal fatigue with discounts that offer genuine savings instead of just marking down inflated original prices.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/24/2022 – 23:15

• War On Cash: India Rolling Out Retail Pilot Program For Digital Rupee
  War On Cash: India Rolling Out Retail Pilot Program For Digital Rupee

  Via SchiffGold.com,

  We recently reported that the Federal Reserve plans to launch a 12-week pilot program in partnership with several large commercial banks to test the feasibility of a central bank digital currency (CBDC). The US isn’t alone in experimenting with digital currency. India is working on developing a digital rupee and recently announced the second phase of testing.

  

  After successfully running a pilot program to test its digital currency at the wholesale level, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced it will test the digital rupee in a retail setting.

  According to the RBI, the central bank digital currency “is a legal tender issued by a central bank in a digital form. It is the same as a fiat currency and is exchangeable one-to-one with the fiat currency. Only its form is different.”

  Digital currencies are similar to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. They exist as virtual banknotes or coins held in a digital wallet on your computer or smartphone. The difference between a government digital currency and bitcoin is the value of the digital currency is backed and controlled by the state, just like traditional fiat currency.

  As the RBI put it, “Unlike cryptocurrencies, a CBDC isn’t a commodity or claims on commodities or digital assets. Cryptocurrencies have no issuer. They are not money (certainly not currency) as the word has come to be understood historically.”

  According to a report in the Economic Times of India, the National Payments Corporation of India will host the platform for the digital rupee payment system during the testing phase. The Reserve Bank of India wants each commercial bank in the pilot to test retail use of the digital rupee with 10,000 to 50,000 users.

  State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Yes Bank and IDFC First Bank will participate in the pilot program. If the pilot is successful, the RBI will roll out the program to the entire Indian banking system.

  “The e-rupee will be stored in a wallet, the denominations will be available as per the customer’s request, just like you request cash from an ATM. Banks are launching this only in select cities,” a person involved in the program told the Times.

  In a concept note, the RBI touted the benefits of digital currency.

  It is believed that retail CBDC can provide access to safe money for payment and settlement as it is a direct liability of the central bank. Wholesale CBDC has the potential to transform settlement systems for financial transactions and make them more efficient and secure. Going by the potential offered by each of them, there may be merit in introducing both CBDC-W and CBDC-R.”

  Government-issued digital currencies are sold on the promise of providing a safe, convenient, and more secure alternative to physical cash. We’re also told it will help stop dangerous criminals who like the intractability of cash. But there is a darker side – the promise of control.

  At the root of the move toward government digital currency is “the war on cash.” The elimination of cash creates the potential for the government to track and even control consumer spending, and it would make it even easier for central banks to engage in manipulative monetary policies such as negative interest rates.

  Imagine if there was no cash. It would be impossible to hide even the smallest transaction from government eyes. Something as simple as your morning trip to Starbucks wouldn’t be a secret from government officials. As Bloomberg put it in an article published when China launched its digital yuan pilot program, digital currency “offers China’s authorities a degree of control never possible with physical money.”

  The government could even “turn off” an individual’s ability to make purchases. Bloomberg described just how much control a digital currency could give Chinese officials.

  The PBOC has also indicated that it could put limits on the sizes of some transactions, or even require an appointment to make large ones. Some observers wonder whether payments could be linked to the emerging social-credit system, wherein citizens with exemplary behavior are ‘whitelisted’ for privileges, while those with criminal and other infractions find themselves left out. ‘China’s goal is not to make payments more convenient but to replace cash, so it can keep closer tabs on people than it already does,’ argues Aaron Brown, a crypto investor who writes for Bloomberg Opinion.”

  China launched its digital yuan pilot program last year. The Chinese government-backed digital currency got a boost when the country’s biggest online retailer announced the first virtual platform to accept the Chinese digital currency.

  Economist Thorsten Polleit outlined the potential for Big Brother-like government control with the advent of a digital euro in an article published by the Mises Wire. As he put it, “the path to becoming a surveillance state regime will accelerate considerably” if and when a digital currency is issued.

  Governments around the world have quietly waged a war on cash for years. Back in 2017, the IMF published a creepy paper offering governments suggestions on how to move toward a cashless society even in the face of strong public opposition.

  As with most things the government does, you should be wary of the digital dollar. It has a dark side that you can be sure the mainstream will mostly ignore.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/24/2022 – 22:40

• Black Friday Chaos: Amazon Warehouse Workers Set To Strike Across 40 Countries
  Black Friday Chaos: Amazon Warehouse Workers Set To Strike Across 40 Countries

  Thousands of workers across approximately 40 countries are planning to take part in ‘Black Friday’ protests to demand better wages and working conditions in the company’s warehouses, as the global cost-of-living crisis increases

  

  The protests will coincide with the largest holiday shopping season of the year, which means Amazon warehouse workers are going to be very busy for the next week as consumers panic buy deeply discounted items, though there might be a huge problem: less than 24 hours before the big sale begins, Bloomberg reported Amazon warehouse workers across 40 countries are about to strike.

  We would note that the world’s biggest retailer has longstanding ambitions to automate its warehouses – with robots that don’t strike. 

  Amazon workers in the US, UK, India, Japan, Australia, South Africa, and across Europe are set to walk out of warehouses on Friday as they demand higher wages and better working conditions amid the worst inflationary environment the world has seen in decades. 

  The labor action is called “Make Amazon Pay” and is coordinated by an army of trade unions, with support from civil society and environmental groups. 

  “For workers and consumers, the price of everything is going up. And for everyone, the global temperature is rising and our planet is under stress. But instead of supporting its workers, communities and the planet, Amazon is squeezing every last drop it can,” Make Amazon Pay’s website said. 

  Make Amazon Pay is correct by outlining “real wages are going down”… and as we noted not too long ago, have been negative for 19 months — hence why labor unions have gained so much traction. 

  

  “It’s time for the tech giant to cease their awful, unsafe practices immediately, respect the law and negotiate with the workers who want to make their jobs better,” said UNI Global Union general secretary, Christy Hoffman.

  The group also outlines Amazon’s corporate greed, not paying taxes, and polluting the world. It also published a map of all the strike locations. 

  

  The company replied to the protests, saying “While we are not perfect in any area, if you objectively look at what Amazon is doing on these important matters you’ll see that we do take our role and our impact very seriously,” pointing to the company’s green ambitions to reach net zero status by 2040, which is “continuing to offer competitive wages and great benefits, and inventing new ways to keep our employees safe and healthy.”

  Ah, that settles it then.

  Unions in France and Germany – CGT and Ver.di – are spearheading the latest collective action, with coordinated strikes in 18 major warehouses, intended to disrupt shipments across key European markets.

  Monika di Silvestre, head of Ver.di’s Amazon committee in Germany, said that workers were particularly concerned about the way their productivity was closely monitored by computers, with algorithms determining targets, for example for the number of packages they need to handle per hour. -Stars & Stripes

  “The workers are under a lot of pressure with these algorithms,” said di Silvestre, adding “It doesn’t differentiate between workers, whether they are old or have limited mobility. Workers stay awake at night thinking only of their productivity stats.”

  Amazon warehouse employees have been speaking out against working conditions for years – notably complaining of low pay, pressure not to take sick leave when ill, and having to work so many hours they’re forced to urinate in bottles.

  It’s not clear how disruptive the strikes will be for Amazon, but it’s just another reason why the world’s biggest retailer is full steam ahead in automating warehouse (read: “Amazon Unveils Warehouse Robot To Replace Human Pickers Amid Unionization Threats”). 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/24/2022 – 22:05

• MIT Reports Breakthrough In Solid-State Lithium Battery Development
  MIT Reports Breakthrough In Solid-State Lithium Battery Development

  By Brian Westenhaus of OilPrice.com

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s new discovery could finally usher the development of solid-state lithium batteries, which would be more lightweight, compact, and safe than current lithium batteries. The growth of metallic filaments called dendrites within the solid electrolyte has been a longstanding obstacle, but the new study explains how dendrites form and how to divert them. This is a goal that’s been pursued by labs around the world for years.

  The key to this potential leap in battery technology is replacing the liquid electrolyte that sits between the positive and negative electrodes with a much thinner, lighter layer of solid ceramic material, and replacing one of the electrodes with solid lithium metal. This would greatly reduce the overall size and weight of the battery and remove the safety risk associated with liquid electrolytes, which are flammable.

  But that quest has been beset with one big problem: dendrites.

  Dendrites, whose name comes from the Latin for branches, are projections of metal that can build up on the lithium surface and penetrate into the solid electrolyte, eventually crossing from one electrode to the other and shorting out the battery cell. Researchers haven’t been able to agree on what gives rise to these metal filaments, nor has there been much progress on how to prevent them and thus make lightweight solid-state batteries a practical option.

  The new research published in the journal Joule in a paper by MIT Professor Yet-Ming Chiang, graduate student Cole Fincher, and five others at MIT and Brown University, seems to resolve the question of what causes dendrite formation. It also shows how dendrites can be prevented from crossing through the electrolyte.

  Chiang said in the group’s earlier work, they made a “surprising and unexpected” finding, which was that the hard, solid electrolyte material used for a solid-state battery can be penetrated by lithium, which is a very soft metal, during the process of charging and discharging the battery, as ions of lithium move between the two sides.

  This shuttling back and forth of ions causes the volume of the electrodes to change. That inevitably causes stresses in the solid electrolyte, which has to remain fully in contact with both of the electrodes that it is sandwiched between. “To deposit this metal, there has to be an expansion of the volume because you’re adding new mass,” Chiang said. “So, there’s an increase in volume on the side of the cell where the lithium is being deposited. And if there are even microscopic flaws present, this will generate a pressure on those flaws that can cause cracking.”

  Those stresses, the team has now shown, cause the cracks that allow dendrites to form. The solution to the problem turns out to be more stress, applied in just the right direction and with the right amount of force.

  While previously, some researchers thought that dendrites formed by a purely electrochemical process, rather than a mechanical one, the team’s experiments demonstrate that it is mechanical stresses that cause the problem.

  The process of dendrite formation normally takes place deep within the opaque materials of the battery cell and cannot be observed directly, so Fincher developed a way of making thin cells using a transparent electrolyte, allowing the whole process to be directly seen and recorded. “You can see what happens when you put a compression on the system, and you can see whether or not the dendrites behave in a way that’s commensurate with a corrosion process or a fracture process,” he said.

  The team demonstrated that they could directly manipulate the growth of dendrites simply by applying and releasing pressure, causing the dendrites to zig and zag in perfect alignment with the direction of the force.

  Applying mechanical stresses to the solid electrolyte doesn’t eliminate the formation of dendrites, but it does control the direction of their growth. This means they can be directed to remain parallel to the two electrodes and prevented from ever crossing to the other side, and thus rendered harmless.

  In their tests, the researchers used pressure induced by bending the material, which was formed into a beam with a weight at one end. But they say that in practice, there could be many different ways of producing the needed stress. For example, the electrolyte could be made with two layers of material that have different amounts of thermal expansion, so that there is an inherent bending of the material, as is done in some thermostats.

  Another approach would be to “dope” the material with atoms that would become embedded in it, distorting it and leaving it in a permanently stressed state. This is the same method used to produce the super-hard glass used in the screens of smart phones and tablets, Chiang explained. And the amount of pressure needed is not extreme: The experiments showed that pressures of 150 to 200 megapascals were sufficient to stop the dendrites from crossing the electrolyte.

  The required pressure is “commensurate with stresses that are commonly induced in commercial film growth processes and many other manufacturing processes,” so should not be difficult to implement in practice, Fincher added.

  Fischer explained that in fact, a different kind of stress, called stack pressure, is often applied to battery cells, by essentially squishing the material in the direction perpendicular to the battery’s plates – somewhat like compressing a sandwich by putting a weight on top of it. It was thought that this might help prevent the layers from separating. But the experiments have now demonstrated that pressure in that direction actually exacerbates dendrite formation. “We showed that this type of stack pressure actually accelerates dendrite-induced failure,” he said.

  What is needed instead is pressure along the plane of the plates, as if the sandwich were being squeezed from the sides. “What we have shown in this work is that when you apply a compressive force you can force the dendrites to travel in the direction of the compression,” Fincher said, and if that direction is along the plane of the plates, the dendrites “will never get to the other side.”

  That could finally make it practical to produce batteries using solid electrolyte and metallic lithium electrodes. Not only would these pack more energy into a given volume and weight, but they would eliminate the need for liquid electrolytes, which are flammable materials.

  Having demonstrated the basic principles involved, the team’s next step will be to try to apply these to the creation of a functional prototype battery, Chiang said, and then to figure out exactly what manufacturing processes would be needed to produce such batteries in quantity. Though they have filed for a patent, the researchers don’t plan to commercialize the system themselves, he said, as there are already companies working on the development of solid-state batteries. “I would say this is an understanding of failure modes in solid-state batteries that we believe the industry needs to be aware of and try to use in designing better products,” he said.

  The research team included Christos Athanasiou and Brian Sheldon at Brown University, and Colin Gilgenbach, Michael Wang, and W. Craig Carter at MIT. The work was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the U.S. Department of Energy.

  ***

  Assuming the press release has adequate data for not being certain this work will yield a prototype battery, the odds are that there will be a successful prototype built. How many models are tried and what works in the end is very much in the air for now.

  On the other hand the mechanical formation research result looks quite compelling and actually makes reasoned sense now that it is explained. That raises questions. Does the dendrite formation greatly impede the battery capacity and function or does that added dendrite surface area increase it? Then one wonders how the dendrite formation impacts overall lifespan?

  This effort isn’t over yet. But this is a significant milestone with lots of clues and hints on where further research might go. It looks like solid state lithium metal batteries are just a matter of innovation, insight and creativity away from the market.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/24/2022 – 21:30

• Is Mercedes Intentionally Detuning Its EVs To Charge $1,200 Yearly "Acceleration" Fee
  Is Mercedes Intentionally Detuning Its EVs To Charge $1,200 Yearly “Acceleration” Fee

  Mercedes-Benz is the latest auto manufacturer to unveil a subscription fee to unlock perks, such as the ability to boost acceleration. 

  The $1,200 yearly subscription is called “Acceleration Increase” and can be found on Mercedes’ online store. 

  “COMING SOON – Accelerate more powerfully: increase the torque and maximum output of your Mercedes-EQ,” reads the description on the online store. It’s available for all upcoming EQ electric models that will “improvement in acceleration of 0.8 to 1.0 seconds (0-60 MPH).” 

  

  According to The Drive, the performance improvements will only cost owners $1,200 a year. Here’s what owners get: 

  • Mercedes-EQ EQE 350 4MATIC (from 288 horsepower to 349 horsepower/0-60 mph from 6.0 to 5.1 seconds)
  • Mercedes-EQ EQE SUV 350 4MATIC (from 288 horsepower to 349 horsepower/0-60 mph from 6.2 to 5.2 seconds)
  • Mercedes-EQ EQS 450 4MATIC (from 355 horsepower to 443 horsepower/0-60 mph from 5.3 to 4.5 seconds)
  • Mercedes-EQ EQS SUV 4MATIC (from 355 horsepower to 443 horsepower/0-60 mph from 5.8 to 4.9 seconds)

  Is it worth it? Absolutely no. Those 0-60 mph times are awful when compared to other EVs. Plus, you don’t have to pay extra. This might prove that Mercedes intentionally detuned the EQ models to allow such a subscription. 

  This comes several months after BMW introduced the ConnectedDrive Store, a portal for existing owners can download various apps over the air to upgrade features on their vehicle, similar to how Tesla offers upgraded Autopilot subscriptions for a hefty monthly fee. 

  However, BMW sparked social media uproar by charging an $18 monthly subscription in some countries for owners to use heated seats already installed in the vehicle. 

  Subscription fees appear to be the new normal for the automotive industry to slap customers with to unlock extra technology or performance even though the vehicles already have capabilities. These fees sound like a scam. 

  The internet wasn’t too thrilled about this…,

  The most ridiculous part of this is that if you purchase the vehicle, you shouldn’t have to spend any additional money on performance for the BASE vehicle. I feel like this would have to be easy to get around through the ECU.

  — Tyler Sloboda (@A_Username_Here) November 24, 2022

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

  In case anyone forgot this is “their” plan for us pic.twitter.com/O0MCBRmhVn

  — A man has no name 🇨🇩 (@CaptainPree) November 24, 2022

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

  Microtransactions have come to destroy everything we enjoy https://t.co/oK7uiRsZhI

  — Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) November 24, 2022

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

  Imagine your airbags won’t deploy because you missed a subscription payment 💀

  — BalaSiva (@L3VIfps) November 24, 2022

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

  This type of stuff should be made illegal before it’s too late and we’re paying to use our seatbelts

  — AxoLofa (@AxoLofa) November 24, 2022

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

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/24/2022 – 20:55

• "If You Don't Know What's On The Thanksgiving Menu, It's You"
  “If You Don’t Know What’s On The Thanksgiving Menu, It’s You”

  By Michael Every of Rabobank

  If you wanted to embody how the turkeys running things react when confronted with the fact that they voted for Thanksgiving and Christmas, it would be Bankman-Fraud being invited to speak at a New York Times event next week alongside Yellen, President Zelenskiy, and Ben Affleck/Batman. Alleged harems, billions of dollars in client money missing, and public accusations it was used as a personal and political piggy bank? Hey – have a seat alongside the global elite (and Batman) to say sorry and tell us about all the good things you did! Madoff obviously wasn’t available.

  

  If only this nonsense were a one-off, but the market heads into the US Thanksgiving holiday in fine mood because ‘the Fed minutes were dovish’, confirming their wrong-all-year view. Yet the compromise between Fed doves, who are there, and Fed hawks, who are running things, is that while the pace of hikes will slow, the ultimate level of rates will be higher. If I carve you with a smaller knife, but more times, is that ‘dovish’? Try ‘turkey-ish’! Philip Marey, well ahead of the Street in calling a 5% peak, has his view here: he thinks 50bp is coming in December, but rates aren’t going down at all until 2024. That’s a sour cranberry, or real stuffing for some turkeys given Treasury yields fell after the minutes, and the dollar sold off.

  Note the RBNZ flirted with 100bp yesterday before going a record 75, and are saying their overnight cash rate needs to hit 5.5%, even at the cost of 3-quarter recession. Yes, rates are contractionary there – and they want them to be: “Spend wisely this Christmas,” said Governor Orr as he signed off, literally encouraging Kiwis to not be turkeys, and to save, not spend. Likewise, the BOC governor just told parliament that Canadian rates need to rise even higher because inflation is not under control. Again, note the absence of turkeys.

  In China, there is buzz about another cut in banks’ reserve requirement ratios (RRR). There are still turkeys who think this matters despite umpteen RRR cuts already to no effect. As Covid cases soar, lockdowns intensify, and footage of unrest emerges at the world’s largest iPhone factory, Bloomberg asks, ‘Is a Wealth Tax How Xi Fills China’s Empty Coffers?’ Months ago Western investment banks were piling into ‘wealth management opportunities’; now, some are slashing jobs after seeing only ‘poultry’ returns. Relatedly, Bloomberg flagged ‘High-Yield Party Returns to Emerging Markets Too Cheap to Ignore’ earlier this week; how long until the ‘Oops, They Got a Lot Cheaper’ headline emerges?

  In Europe, ECB speakers were generally hawkish. However, European politicians said ‘yelp’ – which is what a turkey says, as well as having the more regular meaning of surprise/panic.

  From January, Germany will start a “double-kaboom” policy. Not losing to two late goals in football, which the rest of Europe would love, but a EUR200bn gas and electricity subsidy, which Europe won’t. Households and SMEs will see gas prices capped at 12 EUR cents gross/KwH for 80% of their previous consumption until April 2024, and electricity at 40 EUR cents/KwH. For industry, the gas cap is 7 EUR cents net for 70% of consumption, and electricity is 13 EUR cents plus taxes, levies, and surcharges. Notably, Germany has already faced EU anger over the fact that it can afford to save itself while others can’t: with Germans looking after Germans in this crisis, which Germans looking after Germans got the EU into, expect EU knives to be sharpened.

  Moreover, Politico says ‘EU plans subsidy war chest as industry faces ‘existential’ threat from US’, noting: “If it weren’t enough that energy prices look set to remain permanently far higher than those in the US thanks to Russia’s war in Ukraine, US President Joe Biden is also currently rolling out a $369 billion industrial subsidy scheme to support green industries under the Inflation Reduction Act. EU officials fear that businesses will now face almost irresistible pressure to shift new investments to the US rather than Europe. EU industry chief Thierry Breton is warning that Biden’s new subsidy package poses an “existential challenge” to Europe’s economy.

  The European Commission and countries including France and Germany have realized they need to act quickly if they want to prevent the Continent from turning into an industrial wasteland… the EU is now working on an emergency scheme to funnel money into key high-tech industries.”

  In short, the EU will resist US mercantilism; which is resisting Chinese mercantilism; which Europe has had no issue with for decades. Yet Europe overlooks that they are the least prepared bloc for such a realpolitik backdrop: talk about turkeys voting for Christmas! Indeed, they are saying they will push back against pro-EU President Biden while:

  • Running large twin deficits, as the German fiscal deficit is about to get much larger due to the “double-kaboom”, which smells like a potential market Cluster-Truss;
  • The EU energy crisis is only being tempered by imports of LNG from the US;
  • The EU are reliant on US weapons to fight the must-win war in Ukraine;
  • The EU are reliant on exports to the US; and
  • The EU are reliant on Eurodollar swaplines from the US to maintain financial stability at a time when the Fed is raising rates, which it still is.

  More realistically, the EU also announced a gas price cap that does not actually cap gas prices; and the G7 announced a Russian oil price cap that does not actually cap the price of Russian oil.

  On energy, gas prices are low now, but will only rise over 2023. Oil prices are sending a clearer signal, but wait and see what happens if the Fed does what the market wants for Christmas. I have kept saying that when we see long US yields go down and commodities tumble it will mean something: we are seeing that now.

  Yet yelp all you want, but that is not compatible with a weaker dollar. If the US is in trouble, try being everyone else with a lag. Mercantilism is a force very much on the US side, and is as much a story for 2023 as any ‘pivots’.

  As they say, if you don’t know what’s on the Thanksgiving menu – it’s you.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/24/2022 – 20:15

• "They're Trying To Run Out The Clock": Kari Lake Files 1st Lawsuit After Election
  “They’re Trying To Run Out The Clock”: Kari Lake Files 1st Lawsuit After Election

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

  Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake on Nov. 23 filed a lawsuit against Maricopa County.

  

  Lake sued Stephen Richer, the county’s recorder, and other officials in Arizona Superior Court. She’s asking the court to compel the officials to promptly produce records on the administration of the midterm elections, which featured widespread issues in the state’s largest county.

  “Given instances of misprinted ballots, the commingling of counted and uncounted ballots, and long lines discouraging people from voting, as demonstrated in the attached declarations, these records are necessary for Plaintiff to determine the full extent of the problems identified and their impacts on electors,” the 19-page suit states.

  Maricopa County officials have acknowledged that tabulators across many polling sites stopped working properly on election day. Among the advised solutions was voters placing their ballots into a box to be counted later. Declarations attached to the new suit from poll observers say that workers mixed counted and uncounted ballots in the same container at the end of the night.

  Another solution to the tabulator problem was a voter checking out of a site and utilizing a mail-in ballot. To try to figure out the extent of the problems, the Lake campaign on Nov. 15 requested information such as all records related to voters who checked into a site and who also submitted a ballot by mail. The campaign sent another request on Nov. 16. None of the records have been produced yet, which violates Arizona law that public record requests must be fulfilled “promptly,” the suit states.

  “We need information from Maricopa County,” Lake said on Steve Bannon’s “War Room.”

  “They ran the shoddiest election ever, in history, and we want some information. We’re on a timeline, a very strict timeline when it comes to fighting this botched election. And they’re dragging their feet. They don’t want to give us the information, so we’re asking the courts to force them to give us the information.”

  At present, Lake’s opponent Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who serves as Arizona’s secretary of state, is ahead in the race. Maricopa County is scheduled to canvass the results on Nov. 28, with the state following on Dec. 5. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey this week said he’s working to help Hobbs transition to become governor.

  The suit asks the court to compel the county to produce the records prior to the canvassing. “This deadline (or its substantial equivalent) is, under the circumstances presented, necessary to ensure that vital public records are furnished promptly and that apparent deficiencies can be remedied before canvassing of the 2022 general election,” it says.

  Maricopa County did not return requests for comment on a different lawsuit filed this week by Abe Hamadeh, the Republican candidate for state attorney general, and the Republican National Committee. Its offices were closed on Thursday for Thanksgiving.

  

  An election worker carries trays filled with mail in ballots to open and verify at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix, Ariz., on Nov. 11, 2022. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

  Attorney General

  The office of Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, recently requested information from Thomas Liddy, the chief of the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office’s Civil Division, after receiving hundreds of complaints about issues related to the midterms.

  “These complaints go beyond pure speculation, but include first-hand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law,” Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright wrote.

  “Furthermore, statements made by both Chairman Gates and Recorder Richer, along with information Maricopa County released through official modes of communication appear to confirm potential statutory violations of title 16.”

  The information indicated that the county did not uniformly administer the election, as is required by state and federal law, and that poll workers weren’t trained to check out voters who left sites where the tabulators weren’t working right, she added.

  Wright requested the information on or before the county submits its canvass to the secretary of state because the issues “relate to Maricopa County’s ability to lawfully certify election results.”

  Bill Gates, the Republican chairman of the county’s Board of Supervisors, said in a statement that the county would not delay the canvass.

  “Prior to the canvass, the County will respond to a letter from the Arizona Attorney General’s Office requesting information about the administration of the November General Election,” he said at the time.

  “Board members received this letter on Saturday night and had a team working on a response all day Sunday, even as staff continued counting votes. We look forward to answering the AG’s questions with transparency as we have done throughout this election.”

  Brnovich’s office has not indicated that the county has provided the information, nor has the county said it handed over the information.

  Lake said on “War Room” that the county is “trying to run out the clock,” referring to the looming canvass.

  Not the ‘Main Case’

  At least one other lawsuit is in the works, according to Lake.

  “This is not our main case. When our main case drops, they will hear it,” she said.

  Lake reiterated that whistleblowers are coming forward and that officials “better think long and hard” before certifying the election in light of the widespread issues that unfolded in Maricopa County.

  The forthcoming suit may cite findings from nearly a dozen Republican attorneys who observed the election at Maricopa County sites and attested to the tabulator failures being more widespread than county officials presented.

  The issues led to “substantial voter suppression,” attorney Mark Sonnenklar wrote in a memorandum summarizing the findings. Since Republicans voted in larger numbers on the day than Democrats, “such voter suppression would necessarily impact the vote tallies for Republican candidates much more than the vote tallies for Democrat candidates,” he added.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/24/2022 – 19:10

• The Ridiculous Reality Of The "Russian Oil Price Cap" Debate In One Picture
  The Ridiculous Reality Of The “Russian Oil Price Cap” Debate In One Picture

  By Mish Shedlock of MishTalk

  Bloomberg reports EU Talks Stall Over Price Level for Proposed Russian Oil Cap

  The EU’s executive arm proposed a level of $65 a barrel, which Poland and the Baltic nations rejected as being too generous to Moscow, the people said. But several countries with major shipping industries, including Greece, don’t want to go below $70, the upper end of the range put forward by the EU earlier Wednesday.

  $70 is about where Russian oil known as Urals trades right now. 

  

  Reuters reports EU Split on Russian Oil Price Cap Level, Talks to Resume Thursday

  • Representatives of the EU’s 27 governments met in Brussels to discuss a G7 proposal to set the price cap in the range of $65-$70 per barrel, but the level proved too low for some and too high for others.
  • Poland, Lithuania and Estonia believe the $65-$70 per barrel would leave Russia with too high a profit, since production costs are around $20 per barrel.
  • Cyprus, Greece and Malta – countries with big shipping industries that stand to lose the most if Russian oil cargos are obstructed – think the cap is too low and demand compensation for the loss of business or more time to adjust.

  Enforcing the Cap

  The kicker is amusing: “EU diplomats said most EU countries, with G7 members France and Germany taking the lead, were supportive of the price cap, worried only about the ability to enforce it.”

  This brings us back to how any economist can possibly think such a cap might work.

  The Incentive to Cheat

  For further discussion of the obvious that many economists refuse to see, please consider the Carnegie article  The Flaw in the Plan to Cap Russian Oil Prices

  Whenever countries on sanctions lists face difficulties in selling their natural resources, creative minds will find a way to thwart the proposed measures with help from companies prepared to turn a blind eye to the shady elements of ostensibly legal transactions. Oil shipments could be bundled with some symbolic but pricey services, such as customs services, laboratory analysis, or document translation. Another scheme would involve loading a supposedly full 80,000-ton oil tanker with only 50,000 barrels of oil, bringing the cargo price per barrel closer to the market price.

  Such schemes would, of course, require some collusion on the part of intermediary countries, but that is unlikely to be a problem.  In recent months, Malaysia’s oil exports to China have exceeded the country’s actual oil production by one-third. Malaysia also cooperates with Iran and Venezuela in contravention of sanctions regimes. 

  Paradoxically, Russia may get some help from the OPEC countries here. For them, an emerging buyers’ cartel risks potentially manipulating the entire oil market and its prices. If the cartel succeeds in forcing Russia to obey its rules, the Arab countries may be next. If Russia counters the price cap by reducing its output, therefore, Saudi Arabia may be reluctant to increase its oil exports to compensate for the reduction, whether it has sufficient available production capacity or not.

  Finally, the jury is still out on whether India and China, the biggest new buyers of Russian oil, are prepared to join the price cap coalition.

  Western Allies Aim to Agree on Russian Oil Price Cap Wednesday

  The Wall Street Journal reports Western Allies Aim to Agree on Russian Oil Price Cap Wednesday emphasis mine.

  The aim of the plan, which was pushed hard by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, is to crimp Russian energy exports revenue while avoiding a surge in oil prices when a European embargo on Russian oil imports kicks in early next month. Despite European reluctance at the time, the G-7 first agreed on setting the oil price cap in June following Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.

  Aim of the Plan

  The aim of the plan is to not eat Russian cake while eating Russian cake.

  It’s quite amazing that anyone thinks the plan can possibly work, but president Biden, the EU, Janet Yellen and even prominent economists think the cap is a good idea.

  Q&A Why Not?

  Q: Why not cap the price of everything and end inflation?
  A: Figure it out.

  Q: Is it possible a cap might seem to work?
  A: Yes. If the cap is set high enough it will be meaningless.

  And if by some lucky fate a cap is set where the direction of oil is headed anyway, then the economic illiterates will be hooting and cheering their alleged success.

  Why Won’t Caps Work?

  • China, India and other countries will not go along. That’s enough right there to show the ridiculousness of the idea.
  • Countries in the EU have an incentive to cheat. 

  One of Two Things

  1. The cap will fail and do nothing.
  2. The cap fail spectacularly and drive up the price by re-routing oil headed to the EU to China and India instead. Then the EU will have to get oil from the US or OPEC over longer routes increasing the cost.

  The above two points are in isolation. But things should not be viewed in isolation. Given a pending global recession, oil prices are likely to drop anyway.

  If they do, then as noted above, the economic illiterates will be hooting and cheering the alleged success of caps.

  Related Articles

  • Wild Oil Price Swings on an OPEC Rumor Followed by a Denial
  • The Biden Oil Fiasco Continues With Export Control Threats
  • G-7 Agrees to Cap the Price of Russian Oil Using a Buyer’s Cartel

  That third bullet point is from June 27. The US and EU have been struggling since then trying to get agreement on price caps. The bloc still needs approval from all 27 nations on a precise cap.

  Many of the above points were also in my November 22 post Under Pressure From the US, EU Agrees to Cap the Price of Russian Oil.

  The struggle to get agreement stems from the impossibility of the goal to not eat Russian cake while eating Russian cake. That alone tells you the plan is doomed: this cap idea is so stupid that only economists and politicians are dumb enough to believe it can work. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/24/2022 – 18:35

• EU Fails To Agree On Gas Price Caps
  EU Fails To Agree On Gas Price Caps

  By Alex Kimani of OilPrice.com

  

  Plans to introduce price caps on natural gas prices have hit a dead-end after EU energy ministers on Thursday failed to reach an agreement amid deep divisions. 

  Czech Industry Minister Jozef Sikela has, however, said that the ministers did manage to agree on other “important measures”, including joint gas purchases, supply solidarity in times of need and expediting the authorization process for renewable energy. Sikela has also revealed that the ministers will meet again In December to try and work out their differences.

  Earlier this week, the European Commission issued a statement whereby it declared what it called a “safety price ceiling” for gas prices set at 275 euros, or $283 dollars, per megawatt-hour.  

  The EC also planned to tie benchmark European gas futures prices to the price of liquefied natural gas on the spot market. The “safety price ceiling” would be triggered automatically, when “the front-month TTF derivative settlement price exceeds €275 for two weeks” and, second, when “TTF prices are €58 higher than the LNG reference price for 10 consecutive trading days within the two weeks”.

  Both moves have caused trepidation amongst gas traders, “Even a short intervention would have severe, unintended and irreversible consequences in harming market confidence that the value of gas is known and transparent,” said the European Federation of Energy Traders this week.

  Earlier in the year, Italy’s prime minister, Mario Draghi, hatched a radical plan to contain the oil price hike. The former European Central Bank president floated the idea of creating a “cartel” of oil consumers at a meeting with Joe Biden in order to increase their bargaining power similar to how the biggest oil-producing nations came together through OPEC to agree annual oil production quotas. The two met at the White House in order to coordinate their positions on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the economic fallout from the conflict.

  “We are both dissatisfied with the way things work, in terms of oil for the US and in terms of gas for Europe. Prices don’t have any relationship with supply and demand,” Draghi said.

  According to Brussels think tank Bruegel, since September 2021, Germany, France, Italy and Spain–four of the largest EU economies–have each spent €20bn-€30bn to artificially lower energy prices. However, these subsidies are viewed as less than ideal since they help to fund Moscow, drain public finances and harm the environment.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/24/2022 – 18:00

• Fired AP Reporter Who 'Risked Triggering WWIII' Actually Did Nothing Wrong
  Fired AP Reporter Who ‘Risked Triggering WWIII’ Actually Did Nothing Wrong

  On Tuesday we reported that the Associated Press had fired reporter James LaPorta, two days before his birthday, over an erroneous report which cited a ‘senior US intelligence official,’ who claimed that a Russian missile fired into Poland had killed two civilians.

  If true, the bombshell development could have potentially triggered ‘Article 5‘ – the mutual defense agreement between NATO members, risking WWIII.

  

  AP later retracted the story after it was revealed that Ukraine fired the missile, and the outlet issued the following correction which pinned blame on the anonymous intelligence official;

  In earlier versions of a story published November 15, 2022, The Associated Press reported erroneously, based on information from a senior American intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity, that Russian missiles had crossed into Poland and killed two people. Subsequent reporting showed that the missiles were Russian-made and most likely fired by Ukraine in defense against a Russian attack.

  Five days after the report, LaPorta was fired. But Slack messages obtained by Semafor reveal that he did nothing wrong – aside from working for AP in the first place.

  The messages begin with LaPorta passing along a tip from a “senior American intelligence official” who was “vetted by Ron Nixon.” Nixon is an Associated Press vice president.

  

  Next, editor Lisa Leff asked if the wire service could run with the narrative despite having a single source – which is against AP‘s rules for anonymous sources.

  “that call is above my pay grade,” LaPorta replied.

  

  Another AP reporter, Vanessa Gera, suggests moving forward with the report, writing, “I can’t imagine a US intelligence official would be wrong on this.“

  

  Leff then asks PaPorta if he is “in position to work up an urgent” – to which he replies, “No, I’m actually at a doctor’s appointment. What I passed is all I know at the moment.”

  

  Then, Gera and Leff decide to run with it.

  

  In short, LaPorta – a former USMC infantryman, was fired after forwarding a tip from a vetted source, and then demurring when asked if he thought they should run with it.

  He has since been ordered not to comment on the situation, saying that he “would love to comment on the record, but I have been ordered by the AP to not comment.” As such, Zero Hedge has not reached out for comment.

  Oddly (or maybe there’s a perfectly good reason for it), journalist John Leichester’s name was also on the byline of the article in question despite being nowhere in the slack conversation – though he wasn’t fired.

  While LaPorta said Nixon had vetted his source, Nixon later said he did not know that the source was being cited for the missile story, according to people who spoke to David Bauder, an Associated Press reporter.

  The Associated Press has taken additional disciplinary action but declined to say against whom that action was taken. There have been no reports of any person besides LaPorta losing a job, including John Leicester, who was also listed on the byline.

  According to Bauder, Leicester was not involved with the anonymously sourced material being placed into the story. –The Epoch Times

  Most importantly, however, who was the anonymous ‘senior US intelligence official’ that fed LaPorta a false narrative which risked WWIII?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/24/2022 – 17:45

• Epstein Accusers Sue JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank For Enabling Notorious Pedophile
  Epstein Accusers Sue JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank For Enabling Notorious Pedophile

  Multiple class action lawsuits filed by Jeffrey Epstein accusers accuses JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank of enabling Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse victims by turning a blind eye in order to “churn profits,” Bloomberg reports.

  

  The lawsuits, filed in a New York court, allege the banks had “knowingly benefited and received things of value for assisting, supporting, facilitating, and otherwise providing the most critical service for the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking organization.”

  JPMorgan was accused in the suit of “financially benefiting from participating” in the alleged sex trafficking through providing financial support from 1998 to August 2013. Deutsche Bank was accused of knowing that they would “earn million of dollars” from its relationship with Epstein. 

  Both suits are seeking unspecified damages and ask to be certified as a class action. A Deutsche Bank spokeswoman said the claim “lacks merit” and the bank will present its arguments in court. A spokesman for JPMorgan in London declined to comment. -Bloomberg

  “Epstein and his co-conspirators could not have victimized without assistance from wealthy individuals and financial institutions,” said Bradley Edwards of Edwards Pottinger, one of the firms representing victims. “We will not stop fighting for the survivors until everyone is held responsible.”

  And while Epstein’s client list has remained amazingly concealed during his – and sidekick Ghislaine Maxwell’s trials, the new class-action suits threaten to bring Epstein’s associations back into the spotlight – as a bevy of prominent financiers, entrepreneurs, celebrities, politicians and the British Royal Family have been associated with the dead pedophile (many of whom, like Bill Gates, had no problem hanging out with him after his first conviction).

  The UK’s Prince Andrew had to withdraw from public duties after a disastrous television interview about his ties to Epstein. Jes Staley abruptly stepped down as chief executive officer of Barclays Plc last year after UK regulators shared with Barclays the preliminary findings of their multi year probe into what he told the bank’s board about his relationship with Epstein.

  Staley has said that he knew Epstein since 2000 when he was head of JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s private bank and was told to strike up a professional relationship with the financial adviser. -Bloomberg

  “Staley made sure Epstein and his illegal sexual abuse organization was absolutely protected by the bank,” reads the lawsuit, filed Nov. 24.

  Meanwhile, anonymous accusers are being represented by David Boies of Boies Schiller Flexner, who represented Virginia Giuffre vs. Prince Andrew in a case which subsequently settled. We’re sure the prominent Democrat attorney wasn’t chosen to protect Epstein’s client list while ensuring Giuffre was also paid.

  Epstein, a prolific pedophile who was, by all appearances, running a honeypot operation on prominent men, “was found dead in his US jail cell in 2019,” Bloomberg reports – which omitted any suggestion that he committed suicide.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/24/2022 – 17:25

• Biden Allocates $1.1 Billion To Keep California’s Nuclear Power Plant Operating
  Biden Allocates $1.1 Billion To Keep California’s Nuclear Power Plant Operating

  Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  California’s last operating nuclear power plant was given another funding boost Nov. 21 as operators seek to keep it running for another eight years.

  

  The U.S. Energy Department awarded Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant $1.1 billion from the Civil Nuclear Credit Program funded by an infrastructure bill passed by Congress in 2021.

  “This is a critical step toward ensuring that our domestic nuclear fleet will continue providing reliable and affordable power to Americans as the nation’s largest source of clean electricity,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in a statement on Nov. 21.

  

  Nuclear power provides half of the nation’s carbon-free electricity, according to the agency. Since 2013, 13 reactors across the United States have shuttered.

  Final terms of the funding will need to be finalized by the Energy Department, officials said. The plant produces about 15 percent of California’s renewable energy.

  It produced about 9 percent of the state’s energy last year, according to the state’s energy commission.

  Politicians applauded the funding that will help extend the life of the once-doomed power plant located in central California near San Luis Obispo.

  “This investment creates a path forward for a limited-term extension of the Diablo Canyon Power plant to support reliability statewide and provide an onramp for ore clean energy projects to come online,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement.

  Newsom signed legislation Sept. 1 to reverse plans to terminate the plant, which was scheduled to close in 2025.

  The bill was essential to prevent rolling blackouts and increased electricity prices in California, according to author Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa). It allows Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) to continue operating the plant until 2030. It also authorized a forgivable loan of $1.4 billion from the state to help extend the operations.

  PG&E agreed six years ago to close the San Luis Obispo plant amid pressure from environmental groups and the local community.

  Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in a statement she welcomed the news.

  “This short-term extension is necessary if California is going to meet its ambitious clean-energy goals while continuing to deliver reliable power,” Feinstein wrote. “This is especially critical as California’s electric grid has faced increasing challenges from climate-fueled extreme weather events.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/24/2022 – 16:50

• "Amnesty Begins Next Week": Musk To Reinstate Suspended Twitter Accounts En Masse
  “Amnesty Begins Next Week”: Musk To Reinstate Suspended Twitter Accounts En Masse

  Elon Musk has given politically divided families all the ammunition they need for an epic pie fight this Thanksgiving – announcing ‘general amnesty’ for suspended Twitter accounts as long as they haven’t broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.

  

  On Wednesday, Musk asked in a poll whether Twitter should offer “general amnesty to suspended accounts,” to which 72.4% voted “Yes”.

  “The people have spoken,” Musk tweeted Friday, adding “Amnesty begins next week.“

  “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” he said in closing – a Latin phrase meaning “The voice of the People, the voice of God.”

  The people have spoken.

  Amnesty begins next week.

  Vox Populi, Vox Dei.

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2022

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

  Musk’s decision is sure to piss off even more advertisers, who have been pulling ad spending (as they underperform the market). Advertisers including Audi, General Mills, GM, United Airlines and Pfizer have all paused ads, leading to what Musk described as a “massive drop” in revenue.

  And… it looks like he gives exactly zero f**ks. (Though what of one Alex E. Jones?)

  Let the games begin!

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/24/2022 – 16:15

• Socialism Sounds Good On Paper But It Was Deadly For The Pilgrims
  Socialism Sounds Good On Paper But It Was Deadly For The Pilgrims

  Authored by Michael Maharrey via SchiffGold.com,

  When I was a kid, we used to say some things only “sound good on paper.” In other words, they seem like good plans, but there is no way they’re going to work in the real world.

  That’s socialism in a nutshell.

  

  The Pilgrims found this out the hard way during their first couple of years in North America. Their experiment in socialism turned out deadly.

  Turns out, you can’t just ignore economics and human nature.

  Socialism really does sound good on paper though, right? We’re all going to own everything together and take care of each other. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.“

  It sounds so nice. And we all want to be nice, right? People are emotionally drawn to socialism because it sounds so good. It sounds fair. It sounds — nice.

  But do you know what’s not nice?

  Corpses.

  That’s exactly what happened the Pilgrims got when they took a stab at socialism.

  Most Americans don’t know that the Plymouth colony was originally an experiment in socialist utopianism and were it not for a complete 180 a couple of years in, we probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the bountiful feasts most of us will indulge in today. There would have been no Thanksgiving because there would have been nobody left to give thanks.

  When the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts on November 11, 1620, they placed all their food and provisions in a “common store.” These folks were forward thinkers. They didn’t even have Marx’s scribblings to appeal to. They set things up on the socialist principle of, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

  Things got off to a bad start in the new world. Conditions were miserable, as William Bradford described them.

  That which was most sad and lamentable was, that in two or three months time half of their company died, especially in January and February, being the depth of winter, and wanting houses and other comforts; being infected with the scurvy and other diseases, so as there died sometimes two or three of a day, in the aforesaid time; that of 100 and odd persons, scarce 50 remained.”

  Now, the Pilgrim’s initial struggles didn’t really have anything to do with socialism. They just had the misfortune of landing in Massachusetts at the onset of winter. If you live in New England, you understand their pain.

  But even after their first summer, things didn’t improve much. The following fall, the Pilgrims harvested their first crops and again, they all went into the common store.

  Now, wasn’t that nice? No greed. Nobody getting any more than they should. Of course, nobody was getting much of anything at all – but still – they had to feel good about themselves, right? Because, after all, the system was fair.

  So, in November the ship Fortune arrived with more than 30 new settlers, mostly young men. More manpower was welcome, but according to accounts, they brought “not so much as a bisket-cake” with them. Now they had a meager supply of food in the common store and even more mouths to feed. The future looked bleak as food supplies ran out and the “planned socialist” community faced starvation yet again.

  The following year, the harvest was poor in spite of the added manpower. Nevertheless, the pilgrims again put the meager harvest in the common store. Because, you know, it’s going to work this time!

  It didn’t.

  That winter, they starved.

  The colonists were learning economics the hard way.

  Richard Grant in his book The Incredible Bread Machine wrote:

  “For two years the Pilgrims faithfully practiced communal ownership of the means of production. And for two years nearly starved to death, rationed at times to “but a quarter of a pound of bread a day to each person.” Governor Bradford wrote that “famine must still ensue the next year also if not some way prevented.” He described how the colonists finally decided to introduce private property:

  [The colonists] began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. [In 1623] after much debate of things, the Gov. (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set down every man for his own … and to trust themselves … so assigned to every family a parcel of land. This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Gov. or any other could use, … and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little-ones with them to set corn, which before would allege weakness, and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”

  Reflecting on the experience of the previous two years, Bradford goes on to describe the folly of communal ownership:

  “The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years, and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Platosand other ancients, applauded by some of later times; — that the taking away of property, and bringing in community into a common wealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young-men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children, without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more indivision of victuals and cloths, than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice…”

  Woah! Some people resented doing all the work? They didn’t work as hard when they knew they weren’t going to directly benefit?

  Shocking.

  Actually, it’s not shocking at all. It’s human nature. And we all know it.

  Now, we can lament the fact. We can say it shouldn’t be that way. We can finger-point and talk about greed. We can get all holier-than-thou and say we wouldn’t act that way (in other words lie). But people will still be people.

  Here’s a harsh truth: good intentions and feel-good policies can’t trump basic economics. You can dream of unicorns and lollipops all day, but it won’t change reality.

  Scarcity. Human behavior. Incentives. The experience of the Pilgrims vividly demonstrates basic economic principles. Their good intentions could not overpower the cold hard realities of economic principles. They never have. They never will.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/24/2022 – 15:40

• Musk Tweets "Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta Now Available To Anyone" In US
  Musk Tweets “Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta Now Available To Anyone” In US

  The wait is finally over for Tesla owners who paid $10,000, or as of recently $15,000, for the controversial driver-assistance system, also known as “Full Self-Driving.” 

  Twitter, SpaceX, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Thursday morning, “FSD Beta is now available to anyone in North America who requests it from the car screen, assuming you have bought this option.”  

  Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta is now available to anyone in North America who requests it from the car screen, assuming you have bought this option.

  Congrats to Tesla Autopilot/AI team on achieving a major milestone!

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2022

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

  FSD is Tesla’s upgraded “Autopilot” driver-assist feature that allows vehicles to navigate highways and city streets autonomously. Until now, some customers who paid the fee were blocked from using it “because they didn’t score high enough on metrics Tesla uses to set insurance rates,” explained Bloomberg. 

  Over the last six months, about 100,000 drivers were granted access to FSB Beta. Musk has promised a broader roll-out of FSD several times, though his timelines were off. In the latest 3Q22 earnings call, he indicated FSD would be available to all North American users who paid the fee: 

  “This quarter, we expect to go to a wide release of Full Self-Driving Beta in North America. So, anyone who has ordered Full Self-Driving will have access to the FSD Beta program this year, probably about a month from now. So – and then obviously, anyone who buys a car and purchases the Full Self-Driving option will immediately have to that available to them,” Musk said.

  The world’s richest man first promised FSD in 2018. Only a small number of “expert and careful drivers” received FSD in July 2021. On the last FSD release, Tesla lowered the requirement for at least 100 Autopilot miles and an 80 safety score, and now anyone who wants it can click a few buttons, sign a waiver, and presto… 

  Just got FSD on a car with 54 score and less than 100 miles on autopilot ! 114 kms 🇨🇦 Wide release here we goo!! pic.twitter.com/57dtzJalQp

  — 🤖FSD & Chill⚡️ (@MateenOmair) November 24, 2022

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

  Just got #FSD Beta 10.69.3.1 here in Toronto. Took it out for a drive in North York and this is the most confident FSD drive I’ve ever had. Zero takeovers within the ~30min drive.The turns are confident and navigation around parked cars on the roads are human-like.🤯10/10! #Tesla pic.twitter.com/JZzpvFqGDm

  — Ruiwen (@RuiwenHe) November 24, 2022

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

  FSD Beta Highway Merge Construction 🚧 @elonmusk $TSLA $Tesla pic.twitter.com/XTn3ADZhWp

  — Kevin Chunilal (@KevinChunilal) November 24, 2022

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

  FSD Beta 10.69.3.1 locked and loaded🙂
  Thank you team @Tesla pic.twitter.com/bSXKBHrmMK

  — Alicia Cryst  (@alicia_cryst) November 24, 2022

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

  However, over the years, we have not just pointed out delay after delay for FSD but also safety concerns around Autopilot.  

  In June, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published the first report highlighting that Tesla vehicles running on Autopilot were involved in 273 reported crashes over the past year. 

  “These technologies hold great promise to improve safety, but we need to understand how these vehicles are performing in real-world situations,” NHTSA’s administrator, Steven Cliff, told reporters over the summer. 

  Perhaps Musk’s wide release of FSD should make every non-Telsa driver a little bit more cautious when they see a Model S, Model 3, Model X, and or Model Y coasting down the highway or city street while the driver is distracted playing video games on an iPad while the car drives itself. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/24/2022 – 15:05

• How To Talk To Family Members About Bitcoin This Thanksgiving
  How To Talk To Family Members About Bitcoin This Thanksgiving

  Authored by Joakim Book via BitcoinMagazine.com,

  I don’t…

  That’s it. That’s the article.

  

  In all sincerity, that is the full message: Just don’t do it. It’s not worth it.

  You’re not an excited teenager anymore, in desperate need of bragging credits or trying out your newfound wisdom. You’re not a preaching priestess with lost souls to save right before some imminent arrival of the day of reckoning. We have time.

  Instead: just leave people alone. Seriously. They came to Thanksgiving dinner to relax and rejoice with family, laugh, tell stories and zone out for a day — not to be ambushed with what to them will sound like a deranged rant in some obscure topic they couldn’t care less about. Even if it’s the monetary system, which nobody understands anyway.

  Get real.

  If you’re not convinced of this Dale Carnegie-esque social approach, and you still naively think that your meager words in between bites can change anybody’s view on anything, here are some more serious reasons for why you don’t talk to friends and family about Bitcoin the protocol — but most certainly not bitcoin, the asset:

  1. Your family and friends don’t want to hear it. Move on.
      
  2. For op-sec reasons, you don’t want to draw unnecessary attention to the fact that you probably have a decent bitcoin stack. Hopefully, family and close friends should be safe enough to confide in, but people talk and that gossip can only hurt you.
      
  3. People find bitcoin interesting only when they’re ready to; everyone gets the price they deserve. Like Gigi says in “21 Lessons:”

  “Bitcoin will be understood by you as soon as you are ready, and I also believe that the first fractions of a bitcoin will find you as soon as you are ready to receive them. In essence, everyone will get ₿itcoin at exactly the right time.”

  It’s highly unlikely that your uncle or mother-in-law just happens to be at that stage, just when you’re about to sit down for dinner.

  1. Unless you can claim youth, old age or extreme poverty, there are very few people who genuinely haven’t heard of bitcoin. That means your evangelizing wouldn’t be preaching to lost, ignorant souls ready to be saved but the tired, huddled and jaded masses who could care less about the discovery that will change their societies more than the internal combustion engine, internet and Big Government combined. Big deal.

  2. What is the case, however, is that everyone in your prospective audience has already had a couple of touchpoints and rejected bitcoin for this or that standard FUD. It’s a scam; seems weird; it’s dead; let’s trust the central bankers, who have our best interest at heart. No amount of FUD busting changes that impression, because nobody holds uninformed and fringe convictions for rational reasons, reasons that can be flipped by your enthusiastic arguments in-between wiping off cranberry sauce and grabbing another turkey slice.

  3. It really is bad form to talk about money — and bitcoin is the best money there is. Be classy.

  Now, I’m not saying to never ever talk about Bitcoin. We love to talk Bitcoin — that’s why we go to meetups, join Twitter Spaces, write, code, run nodes, listen to podcasts, attend conferences. People there get something about this monetary rebellion and have opted in to be part of it. Your unsuspecting family members have not; ambushing them with the wonders of multisig, the magically fast Lightning transactions or how they too really need to get on this hype train, like, yesterday, is unlikely to go down well.

  However, if in the post-dinner lull on the porch someone comes to you one-on-one, whisky in hand and of an inquisitive mind, that’s a very different story. That’s personal rather than public, and it’s without the time constraints that so usually trouble us. It involves clarifying questions or doubts for somebody who is both expressively curious about the topic and available for the talk. That’s rare — cherish it, and nurture it.

  Last year I wrote something about the proper role of political conversations in social settings. Since November was also election month, it’s appropriate to cite here:

  “Politics, I’m starting to believe, best belongs in the closet — rebranded and brought out for the specific occasion. Or perhaps the bedroom, with those you most trust, love, and respect. Not in public, not with strangers, not with friends, and most certainly not with other people in your community. Purge it from your being as much as you possibly could, and refuse to let political issues invade the areas of our lives that we cherish; politics and political disagreements don’t belong there, and our lives are too important to let them be ruled by (mostly contrived) political disagreements.”

  If anything, those words seem more true today than they even did then. And I posit to you that the same applies for bitcoin.

  Everyone has some sort of impression or opinion of bitcoin — and most of them are plain wrong. But there’s nothing people love more than a savior in white armor, riding in to dispel their errors about some thing they are freshly out of fucks for. Just like politics, nobody really cares.

  Leave them alone. They will find bitcoin in their own time, just like all of us did.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/24/2022 – 14:30

• Fired Twitter Moderator Reveals "Worries" Over Platform's Free Speech Future
  Fired Twitter Moderator Reveals “Worries” Over Platform’s Free Speech Future

  Take one look at some of the employees fired from Twitter the past two weeks by Elon Musk and it’s easy to understand why the company operated as a far-left echo chamber for so long.  Though company executives claimed that the platform was “politically neutral” for many years, evidence is coming to light which confirms what we already knew – There was a severe leftist bias that permeated every aspect of the social media site which specifically targeted and censored any viewpoints or facts that did not fit with their narrative.

  Hilariously, Musk posted on the discovery of a supply closet at Twitter HQ containing activist swag including stacks of t-shirts which have “#StayWoke” printed on them.  A neutral company?  Not a chance.

  Most interesting of all has been the absolute distress and in some cases rage expressed by long time employees over Musk’s free speech position.  The level of open authoritarianism on display by the political left in the past few years has been astonishing, if not predictable.  The reaction to changes at Twitter solidifies this obsession in crystalline detail.  Here, former contracted Twitter employee (a male identifying as a trans female) hired as a “moderator” (censor) tells NBC about his worries when it comes to the company’s future as a free speech based platform.

  Musk fired over 4000 outside contractors this past week, most of them employed as moderators.  NBC’s message is relatively clear:  Free speech is a negative.  And, such an ideal being applied at Twitter overshadows the great harm being done to the poor innocent leftist employees who were doing God’s work by protecting platform users from unfiltered discussions. 

  The problem is, anyone can block anyone else on Twitter at any time and filter their own social media feeds, which completely debunks the common argument that people will be “harmed” by surprise exposure to politically incorrect discussions.  The next most exploited argument is that “hate speech” will run rampant on the site – But the term “hate speech” has become so diluted by false leftist accusations and fraudulent hype that it is now meaningless.  Even the term “groomer” was banned on Twitter before Elon Musk took over.

  The corporate media has spent the better part of the past week predicting the implosion of Twitter after the firing of several thousand workers.  At any moment the company was going to shut down, they claimed.  This has not happened, revealing a stark truth – The company runs just fine without them.  Those several thousand regular employees and contracted moderators were useless dead weight.  The proof is right there for the world to see. 

  Has the Earth exploded because of less moderation on Twitter?  No.  Has the Third Reich returned because gender identity warriors aren’t sitting on their laptops at home banning people who say Lizzo’s obesity is unhealthy or that men cannot be women, cannot menstruate and cannot have babies?  Nothing has happened.

  This leads us to a singular conclusion – Leftist censorship is about power and control, not about safety  They know it, and we know it.  And now, with Twitter out of their hands their denials can be challenged in an open forum.  It’s the one thing they fear the most.      

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/24/2022 – 13:55

• Incoming GOP Congressman Fears Democrats Will Downplay FTX Scandal, Calls for 'Thorough' Investigation
  Incoming GOP Congressman Fears Democrats Will Downplay FTX Scandal, Calls for ‘Thorough’ Investigation

  Authored by John Ransom via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A newly-elected GOP representative from New York said that he worries that Democrats will try to downplay potential campaign finance and securities law violations by former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried using a lame-duck session of Congress before the new Congress is sworn in.

  

  Republican George Santos, 34, who won New York’s 3^rd Congressional District flipping the seat red, joined his congressional colleagues by calling for a “thorough investigation” when the new GOP Congress takes over next year.

  The spectacular collapse of FTX, a crypto-currency exchange that is headquartered in the Bahamas, which filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11 has left around million customers and other investors facing total losses of billions of dollars. Since then, reports have emerged that Alameda Research, a crypto hedge fund established by Bankman-Fried, was trading billions of dollars from FTX accounts without clients’ knowledge.

  

  The House Financial Services Committee said last week it plans to hold a hearing in December to investigate the FTX collapse. It said it expects to hear from companies and individuals involved, including Bankman-Fried, FTX, and Alameda Research.

  Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said in a statement that the United States needs “legislative action to ensure that digital assets entities cannot operate in the shadows outside of robust federal oversight.”

  But Santos is not convinced the Democrat-led committee will take robust action.

  “Waters has signaled that she’s not going to investigate Bankman-Fried and FTX as a class. So I’m a little concerned that the Democrats right now as lame-ducks in Congress, will deflect the issue between now and the start of the new Congress,” Santos, who is attending leadership meetings for the GOP this week, told The Epoch Times.

  “That’s something I’m very interested in investigating,” he added.

  Santos, who worked as a financial advisor and has asked for a Financial Services Committee assignment, said that “accountability is mandatory and absolutely necessary.”

  “Nobody should get away with this with impunity,” he added.

  Santos made news last week when he called some planned investigations by the House GOP, such probes of the COVID-19 origins, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s handling of the pandemic, and Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, “hyperpartisan” issues.

  When speaking with the Epoch Times, Santos clarified his remarks, saying he was fine with any investigations, but that as a freshman legislator from New York with a background in financial services, he thought he could leave those decisions in the hands of party leadership.

  “I’m not opposed to investigating. I don’t think you’ll find someone more interested in investigating Hunter Biden and Anthony Fauci, than I am” said Santos.

  “But I’ll leave that to the senior members of Congress who know how to do those things better than I do,” he added.

  Santos said that for him these weren’t his main issues, because he felt better versed in financial and economic matters. The incoming congressman confirmed that he has asked for assignments in both the financial services committee and foreign affairs committee.

  “We don’t have the power to just pass legislation, but we also have the power to hold people accountable,” Santos said of the FTX scandal.

  Donations to Democrats

  The FTX matter has taken on added urgency given that Bankman-Fried was the second-largest Democratic donor for the 2021–22 election cycle, donating over $38 million to various Democrat-aligned PACs with another $990,000 going to individual members of Congress.

  Many of the donations came from foreign addresses in Nassau, capital of the Bahamas, and Hong Kong, according to an analysis by the Epoch Times.

  According to data by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), of the 182 donations made by Bankman-Fried this election cycle, two donations came with no address, 16 donations came from a Hong Kong address, 68 came from U.S. addresses and 96 came from two addresses in Nassau, Bahamas.

  It’s legal for American citizens to donate to campaigns from foreign accounts, said attorney John Zakhem, whose practice areas includes federal election law.

  “If he tells you that he’s a U.S. citizen living in the Bahamas, there’s no prohibition against him making a contribution,” Zakem told The Epoch Times, adding that once a campaign checks that box they only worry about the funds clearing the bank.

  There is also no prohibition against Bankman-Fried having donated money to those in Congress who regulate the financial services arena.

  The Washington Free Beacon reported this week, citing FEC records, that Bankman-Fried and his colleagues at FTX donated $300,351 to nine members of the House Financial Services Committee, with “[s]ome of the largest contributions [made] to Democrats on the committee’s Digital Assets Working Group, which worked on regulation of the crypto industry.”

  An Ethics Issue 

  It’s this nexus between Bankman-Fried and the committee members that makes Santos concerned that the Democrats might try to downplay the scandal in the upcoming investigation.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/24/2022 – 13:20

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• Liberty Is Worth The Fight
  Liberty Is Worth The Fight

  Authored by J.B.Shurk via The Gatestone Institute,

  “There comes a time,” Martin Luther King Jr. advised, “when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”

  Moral imperative, in other words, outweighs personal security, political correctness, and the psychological comfort of identifying with the crowd. During troubling times of human violence and suffering, it is always the lonely few — either blessed with innate courage or made resolute through private, grinding struggle — who dare to take a stand against encroaching evils tacitly accepted by the many. Such is the power of individual free will when man chooses principle as his guide.

  Today is a time for the voices of the few to coalesce. What is at stake is nothing less than individual control over one’s life, liberty, property, privacy, and pursuit of happiness. Freedom of speech hangs in the balance, as do freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. That many of these natural rights were recorded together in America’s First Amendment is not accidental. They are intimately interwoven. To weaken any one, weakens them all.

  To freeze the bank accounts of Freedom Convoy protesters demanding freedom from unwanted experimental “vaccines,” as was done in Canada, is to threaten speech, assembly, bodily autonomy, religious objection, property rights, and public resistance to government-caused harm.

  To forbid a football coach from publicly praying is to force him to sacrifice both his religious freedom and freedom of expression; if the very things that most define us are relegated to the home, then religious identity and freedom of speech do not have far to roam.

  Aside from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to create an official “Disinformation Governance Board” to “combat” free speech antithetical to the government’s point of view, reports show that DHS employees have regularly met with Facebook and Twitter to suppress and censor certain facts and opinions in online discussion of numerous issues dominating public debate — including such broad topics as the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Covid-19, and “racial justice.”

  To hand Western governments the power to decide what may or may not be published on social media deprives the public square of both unfettered free speech (within the bounds of Brandenburg v. Ohio) and a truly free press. To empower government actors with the authority to designate some thoughts as “mis-,” “mal-,” or “dis-” information — in other words, to permit politicians and bureaucrats to arbitrate what is true or false, helpful or harmful, protected opinion or malicious deception — is to abrogate entirely the protections of America’s First Amendment. To use private sector cutouts as the government’s implicit censors is not only a nefarious and cynical workaround — it is also illegal to act as a government agent to enable it to circumvent constitutional prohibitions, in this instance limiting who may participate in the modern-day equivalent of the traditional town square.

  To censor dissenting views on experimental, yet coerced, medical treatments, two-tiered economic shutdowns (during which “Big Box” stores are inexplicably “allowed” to operate while economically vulnerable neighborhood shops are not), is mass censorship in the name of public health, shielding from scrutiny monstrous tyranny draped in the false cloak of the “greater” or “common good.”

  

  When governments censor dissenting opinions from public debate, they serve no greater interests than their own. When governments claim to act for the people’s “own good” while banning contrary points of view, they all too often augment their own power at the public’s expense. When governments camouflage their orders behind claims of “good intentions,” then the most atrocious evils can be blissfully undertaken.

  If you allow yourself to be blinded by any government’s “good intentions,” your eyes may one day be flooded with the sights of unspeakable harms. Hugo Chávez’s socialist government made many such promises “for the good” of the people of Venezuela, while his government’s endless public betrayals have left that nation’s citizenry suffering immeasurably still today.

  This is a pivotal moment in human history, when centuries of steady progress toward human emancipation and individual liberty will either find new, urgent momentum or suffer regrettable retreat. Either freedom means something, or it does not. Either personal agency resides in the hands of every individual, or it disappears behind a view of people as nothing more than parts of collective groups. Either self-government demands each citizen have a voice, or the many must obey the edicts of an ever-expansive government run by the few. Either citizens are uniquely empowered to control the direction of their governments, or legal citizenship and nationality mean nothing at all. These are the simple yet serious stakes we face today. They are clear, unforgiving, and unavoidable.

  The reason we are here now at this intersection in the history of liberty is not complex: it is the outcome of human nature. For most people in the West today, war and its painful consequences are unknown or have been distorted by time. Although violence and bloodshed continue uninterrupted in many places around the world, most Westerners have long been spared the horrors of war directly outside their doors. The difficulty for humans to appreciate what they cannot see has made them careless in preventing what they do not intimately know.

  Many politicians cavalierly embrace totalitarianism once again. Citizens, once aware of the attendant dangers to peace when large corporations and national governments work hand in glove to push “politically correct” ideas upon society, are apparently so far removed from the twentieth century’s vivid lessons in fascist, communist, and Nazi propaganda that they fail to see the harm in bureaucrats and officeholders dictating to the public what it may believe.

  Many Westerners have forgotten that freedom of speech and personal liberty — far from menacing “microaggressions” deserving of sanction — are the surest safety valves for mediating animosities inherent within any society before outright violence is unleashed in their stead. For many people, decades of relative peace have transformed hard-fought Western freedoms into disposable inessentials. Governments and international corporations think little of the risks to social cohesion — and probably do not even care — when they purposefully manipulate populations with mass media propaganda meant to reinforce the elite agendas of the World Economic Forum covering everything from energy use and food production to medical mandates and health passports. The same allure of ultimate power and control that fueled both world wars remains all too enticing.

  Governments already acclimated to universal public surveillance and warrantless online tracking see central bank digital currencies, human tracking implants, and the imposition of social credit scores all on the horizon and believe the time for total control over citizens is near, so long as they are the ones doing the controlling.

  As always, technology’s liberating benefits are accompanied by its powers to threaten populations and to suppress information that its directors may abhor. Radio and television connected the world as never before, but mass communication also rapidly fueled the rise of dictators and the spread of public indoctrination to new heights. Nuclear energy has provided both abundant power and the potential for apocalyptic destruction. Personal computers, smartphones and the internet have given ordinary individuals megaphones through which to articulate new ideas, yet that same cyberspace has opened up a brand new battlespace for government surveillance, propaganda, and mass manipulation.

  Rather than ensuring citizens’ economic security and fostering freer markets, some governments appear to view technology as providing not only more efficient tools for redistributing wealth, limiting personal income, and levying taxes but also the means for creating a technocratic system of total surveillance in which bureaucratic control over what consumers buy and sell and the implementation of social credit scores can both reward “politically correct” behaviors and punish “wrong” points of view.

  Technological advancement provides the means for both greater human freedom and absolute human abasement. When governments are allowed to make that choice for us, they will often choose the latter. Their concern is not our personal liberty but their power. For human freedom to flourish, only the people are capable of keeping government power in check.

  It is therefore imperative that Westerners not lose sight of the most important battle already raging — one pitting individual freedom against total state control. Every other issue should be scrutinized through this lens. We are, indeed, at an intersection in the history of human liberty. Even if only a small minority comprehend what is now at risk, those few would do well to fight for preserving our individual freedoms against those governments and corporations working diligently to dilute them.

  Either the light of liberty is once again rekindled, or it will be extinguished until a later day.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/23/2022 – 23:55

• US Army Will Select Winner Of Next-Gen Assault Helicopter This Year
  US Army Will Select Winner Of Next-Gen Assault Helicopter This Year

  US Army officials are preparing to announce the winner of the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft. The contest comes down to Bell Textron and Lockheed Martin Sikorsky competing for the FLRAA contract to replace the Army’s decades-old Black Hawk.

  Bloomberg spoke with the Army assistant secretary for acquisition, Douglas Bush, who said the winner of the FLRAA contest would be announced “this calendar year.” And with only 40 days left until 2023, that decision is imminent. 

  Bell Textron has offered the Army a tiltrotor aircraft called the V-280 Valor, while the Sikorsky has produced the Defiant X with coaxial rotors. 

  V-280 Valor

  

  Defiant X

  

  Bush said the winner would need to build prototypes in the next fiscal year for flight tests in 2025. The new aircraft will replace the Black Hawk by 2030. 

  

  Besides the Army, the Air Force plans to reveal the B-21 Raider by Dec. 2. There have been rapid modernization efforts by the military as it prepares for possible conflict with either and or China. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/23/2022 – 23:30

• JFK Assassination: 59 Years Of Lies Still Haven't Buried The Truth
  JFK Assassination: 59 Years Of Lies Still Haven’t Buried The Truth

  Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

  President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was not assassinated with three shots from the book depository fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. And almost all of us know it.

  

  In opinion polls going back to November 29th 1963, just a week after the shooting, at least a sixty-percent majority has rejected the official line every single time.

  In short, regarding JFK, the “crazy conspiracy theorists” make up two-thirds of the population, and always have done.

  This is a good thing. A victory for truth in the face of stark odds, overcoming fifty-nine years of propaganda.

  It doesn’t matter what you think of JFK the man – whether you believe he was trying to change things, or hail from the Chomsky school of “he was just like Obama” – the simple facts reflect he was killed by state agencies of his own government.

  It was a coup.

  We don’t need to go into the details, it has been endlessly written about, on this site and a million others.

  Suffice it to say, nothing about the “official story” has ever made sense. You have to leave rationality behind to believe it.

  Much like mask-usage and the “safe and effective” vaccines during the “pandemic”, embracing the mainstream story of the “lone gunman” and his “magic bullet” has passed beyond the realm of thoughts and opinions and become a tenet of a modern-day religion.

  Blaming Lee Harvey Oswald is now an oath of fealty, a show of faith. A sign you are one of the initiated – the first and most debased commandment in the book of State Orthodoxy.

  Question it, and you question everything. Pull on that thread and six decades of carefully crafted narratives unravel in minutes.

  This is why – fifty-nine years after the fact – they are still lying about it.

  Those truly responsible are more than likely all dead. The vast majority of the people living on the planet weren’t even born when it happened…and yet the deceptions still come.

  Pathetic exercises in propaganda passed around by second and third generations of twisted servants of the establishment. Brainwashed children, repeating the lies their parents told them despite being surrounded by evidence of their delusion.

  It would be tragic if it wasn’t so insidious. Its only saving grace is its ineptitude. (See this from the New York Post, or this from The Express).

  It’s all painfully transparent. Exercises in saying, rather than believing.

  A common factor in every propaganda narrative is the repetition of “the big lie”. Over and over and over again. In the case of JFK the catechism is a simple one:

  Lee Harvey Oswald shot the 35th President in the back and head from the Texas School Book Depository.

  The Express even uses that sentence, word for word. Not one part of this mantra has ever been proven. It’s just what you have to say.

  Most tellingly it does not even reflect the official position of the US government, with the Church committee having found JFK’s death “a probable conspiracy” forty-six years ago.

  As with Covid, when official sources conflict with official “truth” they are written out of the consensus. Rejected by the modern-day Council of Nicea. Left to gather dust in the archives like the gnostic gospels.

  In 1992, following the release of Oliver Stone’s simply brilliant film JFK, the US Senate passed a new law, the Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act.

  This law “requires that each assassination record be publicly disclosed in full and be made available in the collection no later than the date that is 25 years [after the law was passed]”.

  As of October 2017 both the CIA and FBI are in breach of this law.

  Politico has a long article about it, carefully explaining to everyone that it’s definitely not because they have anything to hide and they totally didn’t do it, but also acknowledging that the secrecy does feed into “corrosive conspiracy theories”.

  In yet another betrayal of his “anti-establishment” image, The Donald let this slide. Biden is apparently going to pressure them to release something…but that’s just theatre.

  Nothing will come of it, save perhaps a few pages of token talking points that subtly reinforce the official story.

  Agencies like that won’t ever release real evidence of their own guilt, even supposing it wasn’t shredded, burned and buried next to Jimmy Hoffa decades ago.

  But you know what? It doesn’t matter.

  We don’t need official documents to corroborate the evidence of our own eyes, and we don’t need official permission before we can acknowledge the truth.

  Let the media tell their empty stories to their dwindling readership, let their aging lies echo forever in hollow headlines.

  None of us believe them. We all know what really happened, and we always have.

  *  *  *

  For a deep dive on the JFK assassination, we recommend JFK and the Unspeakable, you should also watch JFK by Oliver Stone which is a wonderfully engaging introduction to the topic. You can read all our past articles on JFK here, and Kit’s long essay on it here.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/23/2022 – 23:05

• CIA Seeking To Recruit Russians "Disgusted" By Putin's War
  CIA Seeking To Recruit Russians “Disgusted” By Putin’s War

  The Central Intelligence Agency is seeking to tap Russians as potential spies who are “disgusted” with Putin’s war in Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal reported this week, as part of a new push to bolster its ranks of Russian assets.

  The CIA’s deputy director of intelligence David Marlowe, who has been in the post since June 2021, said in a rare speech at George Mason University’s Hayden Center that the CIA is “looking around the world” for Russian who are unhappy with the invasion of Ukraine. It was Marlowe’s first public appearance while at post as deputy director. 

  

  This is “because we’re open for business,” he underscored. The attempt to gain dependable assets is said to include military officers and even oligarchs who are angry at being impacted by Russia’s extreme economic and political isolation on the world stage. 

  Offering his assessment on how the war is going for the Russians, Marlowe described, “Putin was at his best moment the day before he invaded.” Speaking of the potential for the Russian leader to put pressure on neighboring Ukraine and NATO before the decision to invade, Marlowe added: “He squandered every single bit of that.”

  At that point before the February 24 incursion, President Putin had “all the power that he is ever going to have,” according to the CIA #2 official. 

  Some international publications dubbed Marlowe’s speech, which happened last week but was first revealed on Tuesday, a “recruitment pitch”.

  “And so, for the director of operations, we’re looking around the world for Russians who are as disgusted with that as we are because we’re open for business,” Marlowe spelled out.

  As The Moscow Times wrote: 

  Despite wondering aloud if Marlowe’s comments were just an example of “CIA bravado,” The Wall Street Journal noted that the continuing war in Ukraine had unleashed an “intensified spy war” in Europe.

  Starting months ago it was widely reported that the CIA had set up a portal on the dark web for disgruntled Russians with government information or access wishing to make contact. 

  Below: the full video of the David Marlowe panel…

  “We are providing Russian-language instructions on how to safely contact CIA — via our Dark Web site or a reputable VPN — for those who feel compelled to reach us because of the Russian government’s unjust war,” a CIA official told CBS News back in May.

  At the time the CIA in the rare public disclosure indicated it is hoping that Russians, including soldiers and civilian officials, would utilize the encrypted methods to submit sensitive information to the US.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/23/2022 – 22:40

• Oregon Corrects False Information On Child COVID-19 Hospitalization Rates
  Oregon Corrects False Information On Child COVID-19 Hospitalization Rates

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

  

  A report promoted by the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) has been corrected after falsely claiming nearly 50 percent of children aged 12 to 17 who contracted COVID-19 required hospital treatment.

  The Rede Group, which created the report for the authority, acknowledged the misinformation in a memorandum obtained by The Epoch Times.

  “There was an issue with the numerator for hospitalizations in Figure 40 on page 180. When we calculated the percent hospitalized for each age group, we mistakenly thought the weekly hospitalization data from OHA were unique; they are not,” Danna Drum with the Rede Group told OHA in the memo. “We should have noticed this earlier and apologize for the error. Figure 40 has been corrected in version 1.1 of the report using data provided directly from OHA.”

  “Thank you for your attention to the matter and we apologize again for this error,” Drum added.

  The old version of the report claimed that 47.4 percent of children aged 12 to 17 who contracted COVID-19 required hospital care.

  According to OHA data, that percentage is actually at or below 1 percent.

  The report also claimed that the hospitalization rates for all age groups were at or above 30 percent and portrayed the child hospitalization rates as higher than those of the elderly.

  The new version of the report (pdf) presents significantly lower rates.

  There was no indication in the report that it had been updated besides the addition of “(corrected)” to the graph’s title.

  The Epoch Times asked OHA about the false claim, which led to OHA asking the Rede Group to examine the paper.

  “The report has been updated with the correct data, and it has been reposted. You can find the new version of the report at the same link as before,” an OHA spokesman told The Epoch Times via email.

  The Rede Group did not respond to a request for comment on the correction.

  State Sen. Dennis Linthicum, a Republican, told The Epoch Times in an email that the false information showed “poor statistical analysis” and was part of a pattern “of using public money to stir-up vast quantities of statistics, data, and meaningless factoids which veils the malfeasance and parades the contempt which our bureaucratic elites exhibit toward Oregonians, and people in living in the United States.”

  

  

  State Senator Opposed Bill

  A bill passed by state legislators and signed into law by Democrat Gov. Kate Brown in March directed OHA to study how public officials in Oregon responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and produce three reports analyzing the response.

  The legislation, Senate Bill 1554 (pdf), allocated approximately $900,000 in taxpayer money to the OHA for the purpose.

  Proponents said the legislation would help identify how the public health response could be improved in advance of future crises.

  “By beginning the After Action Report work this year, we will be better able to support public health investments and pave the way for future legislative action in the 2023 session. We must use this opportunity to learn meaningfully from this experience through a shared, iterative quality improvement process. We have a lot to learn and we must start now,” state Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, a Democrat who sponsored the legislation, said in a previous statement.

  Linthicum was among the senators voting against the bill.

  Linthicum said on the Senate floor that the report should include an assessment of the repercussions for widespread testing, including the testing of people who lacked symptoms, and an examination of how many businesses were closed due to the restrictive measures ordered by top officials.

  Linthicum feels the entire first report, which runs 725 pages, was aimed at empowering the state by making it sound like the state did its best during the pandemic.

  The report goes along with the storyline “that says, ‘oh, we had some deficiencies, we had some areas that needed improvement, but this was a good investment for Oregonians and we did our best,’” Linthicum said. “And that’s how you when you read the report, and given that insight to what the bill actually demanded of this reporting agency, you realize this is just trying to put lipstick on a pig.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/23/2022 – 22:15

• Why China Will Win (In 1 Simple Chart)
  Why China Will Win (In 1 Simple Chart)

  Becoming an astronaut has seemingly lost some of its glamor, at least in the United States and the United Kingdom, where children are three times more likely to want to be a social media influencer than to jet off into space.

  However, in a potential sign of hegemonic things to come, Statista’s Anna Fleck notes that in China, the opposite is true, with more than half (56 percent) of 8 to 12-year-olds saying that they would most like to become an astronaut when they grow up and only 18 percent an influencer.

  The following chart shows the responses of some 3,000 children who were asked which profession they are most drawn to, out of an influencer/YouTuber, astronaut, teacher, professional athlete and a musician, as part of a 2019 study by The Harris Poll and Lego Group. They could choose up to three options.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  While the exact reason for the difference in aspirations is unknown, it likely comes down to a number of factors. Eric Berger from Ars Technica suggests that one possible reason could be that the education system in China places a higher emphasis on the value of science and space exploration.

  After all, the survey also found that children in China showed more interest in space subjects than in the other two countries, and when asked about whether humans would eventually live on other planets or in outer space, 95 percent of Chinese children said they would want to live beyond Earth themselves, whereas in the U.S. and UK it was still high, but under 70 percent.

  Or perhaps it is less to do with a lack of interest in space and more about the glamorization and relative exposure to social media per country. Where the United States and the United Kingdom have upped their social media usage in recent years, China has started to tighten its restrictions on such sites, especially when it comes to kids, citing the dangers of internet addiction and negative impacts on youths’ eyesight, concentration and mental health.

  Measures have tightened further in the years since the survey took place, with a “youth mode” added to Douyin, the version of TikTok available in China, which does not permit children under the age of 14 to use it for more than 40 minutes a day or between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. The app also reportedly shows more educational content (and more political censorship) than the international version. By contrast, social media has relatively few restrictions in the United Kingdom and the United States.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/23/2022 – 21:50

• Transgender Guaranteed Income Programs Discriminatory, Critics Say
  Transgender Guaranteed Income Programs Discriminatory, Critics Say

  Authored by Brad Jones via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  

  Guaranteed income programs for transgender residents in San Francisco and Palm Springs have raised the eyebrows of some critics, who say they are a misuse of public funds and discriminatory.

  Erin Friday, a co-leader of Our Duty, a group that protests the gender transitioning of minor children and young adults, told The Epoch Times the programs could indirectly promote prostitution and other crimes by prioritizing transgender convicts and sex workers.

  “Trans-identified people need mental health assistance, not unrestricted cash,” she said.

  San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced the launch of the Guaranteed Income for Transgender People (GIFT) program on Nov. 16 to provide “economically marginalized transgender people with unrestricted monthly guaranteed income as a way to combat poverty.”

  The city and county will provide $1,200 a month in guaranteed income for 18 months to 55 transgender residents at a cost of about $1.2 million.

  “The program will prioritize enrollment of Transgender, Non-Binary, Gender Non-Conforming, and Intersex (TGI) people who are also Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC), experiencing homelessness, living with disabilities and chronic illnesses, youth and elders, monolingual Spanish-speakers, and those who are legally vulnerable such as TGI people who are undocumented, engaging in survival sex trades, or are formerly incarcerated,” according to the GIFT website.

  

  Friday, an attorney, said Our Duty is exploring legal challenges to the program, which she says is “both racist and discriminatory on the basis of sex and gender.”

  With health insurance providers mandated to provide gender transition treatment to those who seek it, and nonprofit groups such as Planned Parenthood offering cross-sex hormones at a nominal fee, Friday said trans-identified people should not be entitled to more money than other impoverished segments of the population.

  The poverty rate in California was estimated at approximately 12 percent in the fall of 2021, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, with 29 percent living near or below the poverty line. The poverty rate for seniors 65 and older was 16 percent, “markedly higher” than younger adults at 12 percent and children at 9 percent.

  In addition, public funds should not be spent to promote “an ideology that supports cancer-and-sterility-causing experimental hormones on children and removal of healthy body parts,” Friday said.

  

  She urged parents in other states to “be on the lookout” for similar policies being implemented in their cities, since others may also be planning similar pilot programs in the hopes of starting a nationwide movement, she said.

  Greg Burt with the California Family Council, a religious organization based in Fresno, told The Epoch Times in a Nov. 18 statement the programs are discriminatory and counterproductive.

  “It implies transgender poor are more valuable and deserving of help than those who are not,” he said.

  Giving money to poor people who identify as transgender with no accountability or limitations on how the money is spent isn’t compassionate because it harms the people it seeks to help, he said.

  “The policy is foolish because it will incentivize the poor to identify as transgender to get the $1,200. There is no medical test or visual identifier to know who is transgender,” he said.

  Mayors for Guaranteed Income

  Aside from the GIFT program, Breed has led two other guaranteed income pilot programs, including the Abundant Birth Project for pregnant women who are black or Pacific Islanders, and a $6 million universal basic income program for local artists affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

  The initiatives are part of the California Guaranteed Income Pilot Program, which plans to provide grants totaling $35 million for pilot programs across the state. Each program must be funded with at least a 50 percent match by local governments or organizations.

  According to the City of Palm Springs, it’s also part of a broader plan by Mayors for Guaranteed Income, an organization founded by former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs in 2020 that now has more than 80 supportive mayors in at least 29 different states. The group includes 23 mayors in California, including San Francisco’s Breed and Palm Springs’ former Mayor Christy Holstege.

  “Between the pilots that have already started disbursements and those that are in the works, our coalition will provide more than $200 million in direct, unconditional relief to everyday Americans,” the organization states on its website.

  The organization lists as its donors Jack Dorsey’s #startsmall, California Community Foundation, Carol Tolan, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Arrow Impact, Bloomberg Philanthropies, The California Wellness Foundation, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and Wells Fargo Foundation.

  

  Palm Springs

  The Palm Springs City Council voted unanimously in March to set up a guaranteed income program that would pay transgender and non-binary residents up to $900 a month. The council allocated $200,000 to two organizations, DAP Health and Queer Works, to develop the guaranteed income plan and apply for a share of the state funding.

  Mayor Lisa Middleton, who is openly transgender, voted to support the program at a March city council meeting but expressed doubts about whether the city should fund it or not.

  “For the record, I strongly support reform of our poverty programs,” Middleton said. “I do not believe that guaranteed income programs as they are currently envisioned will be able to succeed and scale up to the level of the problem that they are attempting to address, nor do I believe that placing income maintenance programs within municipal government broadly is an appropriate public policy step. Notwithstanding that statement, I’m prepared to vote for the $200,000.”

  However, Jacob Rostovsky the founder and CEO of Queer Works, indicated the city is expected to provide an additional $1 million to $1.2 million, according to a city staff report. The anticipated state grant and financial support from donors will cover 40 to 50 percent of the $2 million project.

  Randy Economy, a Republican who resides in Coachella Valley, told The Epoch Times the mayor and council of Palm Springs have taken the city from “LGBTQ friendly” to a “much more radical place.”

  In 2017, Palm Springs became the first city in the nation with an all-LGBT city council.

  “Using the transgenderism situation as a political social experiment city by city is absolutely nonsensical and dangerous,” Economy said.

  An openly gay man “who happens to be a Republican in California,” Economy said he left the Democratic Party about 20 years ago because of its “bizarre obsession with sexuality and gender.”

  “What we’ve seen in cities with predominant majorities from one persuasion or the other, whether it be racially dominant … or in this case, dominated [by] … the LGBTQ community, just because they got elected, they feel they’ve been given a green light to be able to go ahead and promote their agenda, their will, their entire philosophy—on the entire community that they represent,” he said.

  Economy played a lead role in the recall effort against California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and he ran unsuccessfully in the June 7 primary election for the District 4 seat on the California State Board of Equalization.

  He also opposes subjecting children to gender identity issues inside or outside of the classroom.

  “It has gotten to the point where it’s socially acceptable and routine to take a 5-year-old or a 7-year-old and [allow] them to start [gender] transitioning,” he said. “To me, that’s reprehensible. It’s cruelty to the children to put them through such a horrendous situation until their minds mature and develop. I understand the issue because I’ve seen it happen, and kids need to be kids.”

  

  Drag Queen Laureate

  The day after San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced the GIFT program, she issued a press release requesting applications for the city’s first drag queen ambassador.

  The Drag Laureate program will support a drag performer to promote the city’s “LGBTQ+, arts, nightlife and entertainment communities,” according to the release.

  California state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) sponsored the program in his prior elected office as a county supervisor.

  “San Francisco’s Drag Laureate program is a wonderful celebration of our drag queens,” Wiener said in the release. “Drag performers are an amazing representation of the LGBTQ community and they contribute so much to our city. I’m thrilled about the launch of this program, and excited to see who is crowned Drag Laureate.”

  British feminist Kellie-Jay Keene recently staged a protest against Wiener’s promotion of drag queens at a pumpkin carving contest for families in San Francisco that Mayor Breed attended. Keene, who opposes the transgender movement, was in the city as part of her Let Women Speak U.S. tour.

  Wiener is the author of several controversial legislative bills supporting the transgender community and “gender-affirming care.” One of his bills, Senate Bill 107, will shelter parents of trans-identified youth who seek to avoid prosecution for child abuse in other states, making California a trans sanctuary state. Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the partisan bill into law in September despite widespread opposition and no support from Republicans in the legislature.

  Transgender and Non-Binary Population

  The Williams Institute at the University of California–Los Angeles studied data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and found about 42.7 percent of people in the U.S. who identify as transgender and nonbinary are teenagers or young adults, according to a report released in June 2022.

  Youth ages 3 to 17 currently comprise about 18 percent of the transgender-identified population, up from 10 percent in previous estimates.

  More than 1.6 million adults (18 years and older) and youth (ages 13 to 17) identify as transgender in the United States, or 0.6 percent of those ages 13 and older, the institute reports.

  In California, about 1.93 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds identify as transgender, compared to 0.7 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds, 0.5 percent of 24- to 64-year-olds, and 0.34 percent of people 65 and older. The number of adult Californians who identify as transgender is 150,000 or 0.49 percent of the total state population.

  The Williams Institute research also found the racial composition of people who identify as transgender generally reflects the racial makeup of the general population, though the estimates “mirror prior research that found transgender youth and adults are more likely to report being Latinx and less likely to report being White compared to the U.S. population.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/23/2022 – 21:25

• Sequoia's FTX Mea Culpa Tour Continues
  Sequoia’s FTX Mea Culpa Tour Continues

  The mea culpa tour for Sequoia Capital, who lost $150 million in the FTX blowup, continues. 

  The venture capital firm reportedly apologized to its fund investors yet again last Thursday in a conference call, vowing “to improve its due diligence process for future investments”, Bloomberg wrote this week, citing people familiar with the matter.

  Bloomberg called it a “rare moment of contrition for Sequoia”, who has had a successful track record investing in companies like Apple, Google and Airbnb. 

  

   

  And what a surprise: the firm said that now, post-FTX blowup, it “would be able to push harder to have even early stage startups’ financial statements audited by one of the Big Four accounting firms”, Bloomberg wrote.

  If only someone had thought about due diligence before FTX blew up…

  Regardless, recall that back on November 10, we reported Sequoia had written down the entire value of its stake in FTX, a little over $210 million.

  “We are in the business of taking risk,” Sequoia wrote in a message to investors seen by Bloomberg. “Some investments will surprise to the upside, and some will surprise to the downside.”

  For a larger list of investors that lost money in FTX, consult our November 10, 2022 writeup here. 

  Here is the note we sent to our LPs in GGFIII regarding FTX. pic.twitter.com/Cgp1Yxk1pz

  — Sequoia Capital (@sequoia) November 10, 2022

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

   

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/23/2022 – 21:00

• Top Arizona Election Official Moved To 'Undisclosed Location'
  Top Arizona Election Official Moved To ‘Undisclosed Location’

  Authored by Lorenz Duchamps via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Bill Gates, chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, confirmed that he was moved to an undisclosed location for safety reasons amid security concerns in connection to the 2022 midterm elections.

  While speaking on KTAR News 92.3 FM’s “Arizona’s Morning News” on Nov. 21, Gates noted that the condition hasn’t interfered with his work in the state’s election system.

  “I’m not in hiding … but I’ll put it this way. When the sheriff suggests that I spend the night somewhere else, I do it,” Arizona’s top election official told the station.

  

  Gates was asked on the show to describe what the incident has done to him and his family emotionally, and also if he’s considering leaving public office following threats of violence.

  “I’ve been an elected official since 2009 and here’s the reality: You’re not going to make everyone happy,” he said. “I was elected and was privileged to be reelected by my constituents in 2020 and I’m going to continue to serve.”

  Gates said disruption to his family “has been minimal,” adding that the issue has been “blown out of proportion.” He also underscored that the situation did not have any impact on his official duties.

  “This isn’t about me at all. I’m going to be fine. My family is going to be fine. This is not impacting me doing my work on the election, or generally, any one of the 50 lines of business that we’re in at Maricopa County,” Gates said.

  “Threats of violence should never be normalized, of course, and I am, in particular, more concerned with our elections workers who have been dealing with this … not only here in Maricopa County but, really, nationwide for the past two years,” he added.

  Jason Berry, a Maricopa County spokesperson, told CNN that Gates moved locations after there was a specific threat made against him on an undescribed social media platform. He was under the protection of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and stayed at the undisclosed location for just one night.

  The incident occurred as the state’s most populous county has been criticized after widespread problems with ballot-tabulation equipment were reported on Election Day at approximately 70 of the county’s 223 voting centers.

  A judge in Maricopa County who was asked to adjudicate an emergency motion (pdf) filed by the Republican National Committee (RNC), as well as GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters, said that the GOP did not “have evidence there was a voter who was precluded the right to vote” in connection to the tabulation problems.

  Arizona AG Investigation

  Lake, a candidate backed by former President Donald Trump, criticized the way Maricopa County ran the Nov. 8 elections, proclaiming on Nov. 19 that she will become governor after the office of Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich demanded explanations about Election Day problems in the county.

  

  Meanwhile, Republican Arizona Attorney General candidate Abe Hamadeh is suing his opponent and a slew of election officials over what he alleges were widespread “errors and inaccuracies.”

  Officials in at least 15 counties have “caused the unlawful denial of the franchise to certain qualified electors, erroneously tallied certain ballots, and included for tabulation in the canvass certain illegal votes in connection with the election for the office of Arizona Attorney General,” Abe Hamadeh, the candidate, said in the complaint.

  That includes Maricopa County officials improperly disqualifying ballots cast by people who, as a direct result of poll worker errors, were incorrectly listed as voting previously in the midterm election, Hamadeh added.

  “Immediate judicial intervention is necessary to secure the accuracy of the results of the November 8, 2022 general election, and to ensure that candidate who received the highest number of lawful votes is declared the next Arizona Attorney General,” the complaint states.

  The filing was lodged in Maricopa County court.

  The Arizona attorney general race is headed to a recount, according to Katie Hobbs, the state’s secretary of state, due to the slim margin separating Hamadeh from Democrat candidate Kris Mayes.

  Mayes is leading by just 510 votes out of more than 2.5 million cast, according to an unofficial tally from Hobbs’s office.

  Mayes and Hobbs, who were named as defendants in the new suit, did not respond to requests for comment. A Maricopa County spokesperson did not immediately return an inquiry.

  Problems

  Maricopa County officials have acknowledged problems with tabulation equipment, saying the problem affected 30 percent of all voting centers in the county and an estimated 17,000 ballots.

  On election day the officials said that voters could place their ballots in a secure box to be counted later. Other options included “checking out” of the poll site and casting a ballot at another location, or utilizing an early ballot if one was possessed.

  Both of the latter options required poll workers to properly list the voter as checking out, or leaving the site without casting a ballot, but some workers “were unaware of the process,” the new complaint alleges.

  “This pervasive and systematic error directly and proximately resulted in three recurring scenarios in which qualified electors were unlawfully and unconstitutionally disenfranchised,” it added.

  Hamadeh and the Republican National Committee, which joined in the legal action, say that at least 146 voters who should have been checked out and who later went to another location were required to vote using provisional ballots, which they say will not be counted because the voter was erroneously listed as having already voted.

  At least 273 other voters who should have been checked out utilized early ballots but those ballots will not count because of the same issue, the Republicans said.

  Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates, a Republican, failed to outline the steps voters had to take if they left the sites at which there were problems in a widely-viewed Election Day video that featured officials acknowledging for the first time the issues with tabulators, the complaint noted. He did not mention checking out but merely said people could “go to a nearby voting center.”

  “Chairman Gates’s instructions foreseeably resulted in the disenfranchisement of a significant number of qualified electors who followed his instructions,” it says. “By inducing voters to leave polling locations and then denying-through a consistent and erroneous practice of failing to properly implement ‘check-out’ procedures-these qualified electors their right to duly cast a ballot for tabulation, the Maricopa County Defendants engaged (through their election boards) in cognizable ‘misconduct,’ and wrongfully excluded valid and legally sufficient votes from the canvass line the race for Arizona Attorney General.”

  Other Issues

  Other issues include officials allegedly violating the law when they sought to verify early ballot signatures.

  Officials must, when receiving a mail-in ballot, compare the signature on the envelope containing the ballot with the signature of the voter on record. If the signatures don’t match, the ballot is invalid unless the voter “cures” the problem within three to five days, depending on the type of election.

  A number of the ballot envelopes had mismatched signatures but were still counted because county officials determined the signature matched the signature on a different document other than the registration record, which violates state law, the complaint alleges.

  The issue happened across multiple counties, the Republicans say.

  They also alleged that in the duplication process—triggered when a ballot is too defective to be read by a tabulator—officials incorrectly transcribed some of the selections in the attorney general race, which led to an inaccurate vote count.

  “Arizonans demand answers and deserve transparency about the gross incompetence and mismanagement of the General Election by certain election officials. I will not stop fighting until ALL voters receive justice. See you in court,” Hamadeh said in a statement.

  Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, said that the committee was “proud to join in this legal action.”

  “Maricopa County’s election failures disenfranchised Arizonans,” she said. “We’re going to court to get the answers voters deserve.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/23/2022 – 20:35

• The Rise And Fall Of Global Nuclear Energy?
  The Rise And Fall Of Global Nuclear Energy?

  The global energy crisis brought about by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has increased interest in alternative energy sources, including nuclear, around the world.

  However, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz explains below, the age of nuclear infrastructure, the fact that the technology had entered a phase-out mode in many nations, and the continued resistance to new nuclear projects complicates a quick u-turn for many nuclear programs.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  As seen in data by the World Nuclear Industry Status Report, most nuclear energy programs were started in the 1970s, a fact that reflects in the age of nuclear reactors today. Despite some nuclear programs having ended (and many more scheduled for phase-out), the number of nuclear programs in the world has plateaued for many decades as some nations still take up the technology, most recently the United Arab Emirates and Belarus in 2020. Poland at the end of October announced that it is looking to start using nuclear energy in 2033. Around that time, six other nuclear programs – among them the ones in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Spain – will be scheduled to have shut down, even though this could now be subject to change. Balancing out a dip in nuclear programs could be Italy, which is discussing taking up the technology again under its new right-wing government despite abandoning and even outlawing it after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. More u-turns are possible in Sweden and the Netherlands.

  Some small steps towards nuclear extension are happening in countries known for die-hard opposition to nuclear energy, but they are facing the expected roadblocks. Germany recently extended the ability to use its remaining three reactors until April 2023 among a lively public debate. Originally, the country had planned to shut off all reactors by the end of this year. In Japan, which reduced the number of operating reactors significantly since the Fukushima disaster in 2011, some reactors are approaching 60 years of age – the former lifespan cap that the country might now do away with due to the current circumstances. In Belgium, where mean reactor age is above 40 years, a petition to postpone the September shut-off of one reactor failed, while the government extended the end-of-life of three others from 2023 to 2025 after the invasion of Ukraine and might even run some until 2035.

  Despite the plateau in nuclear energy programs, the relative importance of the technology has still decreased as the capacity of other energy types outgrew nuclear. In 2021, the technology produced less than 10 percent of global electricity, down from a high of 17.4 percent in 1995 and 1996. Looking at all of the world’s energy needs, not just electricity, nuclear contributed just 4.3 percent.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/23/2022 – 20:10

• "Blueprint For Success": DeSantis Credits Florida's Red Wave To Leadership Against "Woke Mind Virus"
  “Blueprint For Success”: DeSantis Credits Florida’s Red Wave To Leadership Against “Woke Mind Virus”

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

  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Nov. 19 acknowledged “underwhelming performances” by Republicans in the midterm elections and contrasted the losses elsewhere with what he called a “true Republican landslide” in Florida.

  “We added four new Republican Congressmen to the U.S. House of Representatives from the state of Florida,” DeSantis told attendees at the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas on Saturday.

  “We secured supermajorities in the Florida legislature—the most Republicans we have ever had in Florida’s history.”

  

  At a time when Republicans are questioning what happened to the promised midterm elections’ “red wave” and what to do going forward, DeSantis clearly and elegantly stated that in Florida, Republicans are appealing to freedom, fighting against the “woke mind virus,” and implementing common-sense legislation. As a result, Republicans, Independents, and Democrats voted for a red wave in Florida.

  “We won, by double digits, Miami-Dade County!” DeSantis said of his Republican win in the previously Democrat stronghold.

  He added that if Republicans want to win future elections, they must follow his example in Florida.

  Blueprint to Win

  According to DeSantis, Republicans were successful in Florida’s midterm elections because “Florida really has a blueprint for success.” Specifically, he explained that his “blueprint” includes exercising authentic leadership that doesn’t bend to the shifting whims of society.

  “The job of a leader is not to stick your finger in the wind and try to contort yourself to wherever public opinion may be trending at any given moment. No, the job of a leader is to set out a vision. To execute that vision. To show people that it’s the right vision, and to deliver concrete results. And when you do that, the people respond,” DeSantis stated.

  

  He continued by giving the example that Florida has millions more people than New York, but New York’s budget is “over twice the size of our budget in Florida.” Despite that, DeSantis claimed that when New Yorkers move to Florida, they remark on Florida’s much better roads, services, and infrastructure.

  DeSantis added that in Florida, K-12 schools are performing better than in New York, Florida has a record budget surplus—and it does all of that without a state income tax and one of the lowest tax burdens in the country. He said that the government wants people to succeed in Florida, and they adopt legislation to make that possible and attract people to the state.

  Plus, DeSantis said, in Florida they don’t let red tape and bureaucracy prevent them from getting the job done.

  A Return to Sanity

  Expanding on why he thinks Republicans in his state did well in the midterms, DeSantis said Florida “stood out as the free state” over the past few years. He stated that during the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns, his administration refused to “descend into some type of Faucian dystopia” and instead respected people’s rights.

  That included refusing to force people to close their businesses, keeping schools open, and standing against vaccine mandates. DeSantis added that those decisions resulted in attacks from the mainstream media and government officials worldwide, but his administration stood firm.

  DeSantis went on to say that leadership requires standing against such attacks and said he was happy to take those “arrows” to protect his constituents. He said when people witnessed that, it drew them to Florida because it was a “refuge of sanity.”

  As part of that “refuge of sanity,” DeSantis said Florida chose law and order over rioting and disorder. He said that when riots broke out in 2020, he immediately called out the National Guard to quash them. Then he moved to enact legislation protecting the police and their funding and said that anyone who riots in Florida isn’t getting a “slap on the wrist” but instead gets the “inside of a jail cell.”

  

  DeSantis added that if any prosecutors try to pick and choose which laws to enforce, he immediately removes them from their posts.

  Further, DeSantis said to resounding applause that Florida has chosen “education over indoctrination” and noted that Florida protects parental rights over their children. He said his administration believes parents have a fundamental role in raising their children and, as a result, he’s expanded school scholarships, so parents have more choices in education.

  Pointedly, DeSantis stated that schools are not a place for “ideology” and said Florida banned Critical Race Theory in K-12 schools. He added that in Florida, they don’t teach children to hate themselves or each other and instead teach the history of the United States and what it means to “be an American.” The governor said he wouldn’t allow inappropriate content in elementary school, referencing the gender ideology curriculum.

  All of this, DeSantis said in conclusion, is his administration’s willingness to stand against the “woke mind virus” that’s destroying society. He said people see the insanity of “woke ideology,” his administration’s appeal and return to common sense, and his “courage to lead,” and that’s why Florida experienced a red wave.

  “Guess what? When you stand up for what’s right, when you show people you’re willing to fight for them, they will walk over broken glass barefoot to come vote for you. And that’s exactly what they did for me on Nov. 8 in record numbers,” DeSantis said.

  He finished by saying that people respond to “strong leadership,” and if Republicans want to win going forward, they need to remember that to attract voters from across the political sphere.

  Lost Red Wave

  Before the Nov. 8 election, many political models estimated a red wave of up to 45 House seats because of President Joe Biden’s unpopularity, the struggling economy, and the past precedent of the majority party losing seats in a midterm. That didn’t pan out, however.

  Instead, while Republicans managed to eke out a slim majority in the House, they lost at least one seat in the Senate—the Senate runoff results in Georgia could exacerbate that or return the Senate to a 50-50 split. Consequently, the 2022 midterms were considered a decisive win for Biden and his administration.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/23/2022 – 19:45

• Fired AP Reporter Who 'Risked Triggering WWIII' Actually Did Nothing Wrong
  Fired AP Reporter Who ‘Risked Triggering WWIII’ Actually Did Nothing Wrong

  On Tuesday we reported that the Associated Press had fired reporter James LaPorta, two days before his birthday, over an erroneous report which cited a ‘senior US intelligence official,’ who claimed that a Russian missile fired into Poland had killed two civilians.

  If true, the bombshell development could have potentially triggered ‘Article 5‘ – the mutual defense agreement between NATO members, risking WWIII.

  

  AP later retracted the story after it was revealed that Ukraine fired the missile, and the outlet issued the following correction which pinned blame on the anonymous intelligence official;

  In earlier versions of a story published November 15, 2022, The Associated Press reported erroneously, based on information from a senior American intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity, that Russian missiles had crossed into Poland and killed two people. Subsequent reporting showed that the missiles were Russian-made and most likely fired by Ukraine in defense against a Russian attack.

  Five days after the report, LaPorta was fired. But Slack messages obtained by Semafor reveal that he did nothing wrong – aside from working for AP in the first place.

  The messages begin with LaPorta passing along a tip from a “senior American intelligence official” who was “vetted by Ron Nixon.” Nixon is an Associated Press vice president.

  

  Next, editor Lisa Leff asked if the wire service could run with the narrative despite having a single source – which is against AP‘s rules for anonymous sources.

  “that call is above my pay grade,” LaPorta replied.

  

  Another AP reporter, Vanessa Gera, suggests moving forward with the report, writing, “I can’t imagine a US intelligence official would be wrong on this.“

  

  Leff then asks PaPorta if he is “in position to work up an urgent” – to which he replies, “No, I’m actually at a doctor’s appointment. What I passed is all I know at the moment.”

  

  Then, Gera and Leff decide to run with it.

  

  In short, LaPorta – a former USMC infantryman, was fired after forwarding a tip from a vetted source, and then demurring when asked if he thought they should run with it.

  He has since been ordered not to comment on the situation, saying that he “would love to comment on the record, but I have been ordered by the AP to not comment.” As such, Zero Hedge has not reached out for comment.

  Oddly (or maybe there’s a perfectly good reason for it), journalist John Leichester’s name was also on the byline of the article in question despite being nowhere in the slack conversation – though he wasn’t fired.

  While LaPorta said Nixon had vetted his source, Nixon later said he did not know that the source was being cited for the missile story, according to people who spoke to David Bauder, an Associated Press reporter.

  The Associated Press has taken additional disciplinary action but declined to say against whom that action was taken. There have been no reports of any person besides LaPorta losing a job, including John Leicester, who was also listed on the byline.

  According to Bauder, Leicester was not involved with the anonymously sourced material being placed into the story. –The Epoch Times

  Most importantly, however, who was the anonymous ‘senior US intelligence official’ that fed LaPorta a false narrative which risked WWIII?

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/23/2022 – 19:20

• Federal Court Strikes Down Another Provision Of New York's New Gun Control Law
  Federal Court Strikes Down Another Provision Of New York’s New Gun Control Law

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  I have previously written about how New York has proven time and time again as the gift that keeps on giving for the National Rifle Association (NRA) and gun-rights groups. New York Democrats continue to pass laws that are virtually guaranteed to be struck down and further reinforce Second Amendment rights. The latest provision involves the possible criminal prosecution for possessing a gun on private property if owner has not approved such possession on the premises.

  

  New York Democrats have passed a series of laws that led to catastrophic losses in federal court, including the recent major ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen. This includes openly gaming litigation to the irritation of individual justices.

  After each loss, the same politicians circle the firing squad again and pass the next round of questionable gun limits. New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul promised such legislation within an hour of the release of Bruen.  It passed with the help of a special session in the resumption of this inexorable cycle and has already resulted in court losses. Now there is a new such ruling against the law.

  In New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022), the Supreme Court rejected the prior New York law under the Second Amendment to publicly carry firearms for self-defense. The Court held that New York’s “proper cause” licensing regime unconstitutionally infringed this right. New York responded roughly a week later with Senate Bill S51001 (June 30, 2022, Extraordinary Session). The new law created a target rich environment for new challenges.

  The new decision comes from Judge John Sinatra (W.D.N.Y.) in Christian v. Nigrelli: where the court ruled that the private property exclusion violates the Second Amendment.

  The state might have been able to reinforce an important right of private business owners to exclude guns with a reasonable drafting of the law. Instead, it sought to use the issue to effectively ban guns from “sensitive” and privately owned areas.

  Gov. Kathy Hochul again made the case against her own state in ill-considered comments where she proclaimed that S51001 “makes ‘no carry’ the default for private property” by “establish[ing] that private property owners must expressly allow a person to possess a firearm, rifle, or shotgun on their property[.]” That default is the problem.

  The provision at issue is § 265.01-d:

  Criminal possession of a weapon in a restricted location.

  1. A person is guilty of criminal possession of a weapon in a
  restricted location when such person possesses a firearm, rifle, or shotgun and enters into or remains on or in private property where such person knows or reasonably should know that the owner or lessee of such property has not permitted such possession by clear and conspicuous signage indicating that the carrying of firearms, rifles, or shotguns on their property is permitted or has otherwise given express consent.

  Plaintiff Brett Christian complained that he is:

  “unable to carry firearms on his person throughout the State because of S51001’s designation of private property, even private property open to the public, as “restricted locations.” Christian Dec. ¶¶ 10, 11. Christian brings his firearm with him on private property open to the public, such as weekly visits to gas stations and monthly visits to hardware stores. Christian Dec. ¶ 10. He intended to continue to do so, but for the enactment and enforcement of S51001. Christian Dec. ¶ 10. Moreover, since S51001 bars even “entering” these locations, Plaintiff will need to disable and store his firearms before driving his vehicle or walking into parking lots, which means in some instances, Plaintiff will need to stop carrying for selfdefense before he can get physically close enough to see if any “clear and conspicuous signage” Case 1:22-cv-00695-JLS Document 19-1 Filed 09/28/22 Page 14 of 30 10 exists permitting him to carry. Christian Dec. ¶ 11. Not only does this put Plaintiff at risk of uncomfortable situations with passersby observing him disable and store his firearms, but the fact he has to constantly disarm greatly reduces his ability to defend himself throughout the State. Christian Dec. ¶¶ 11, 12.”

  The court found a sufficient injury and a substantial likelihood of prevailing on the constitutional violation.

  “In sum, the vast majority of land in New York is held privately, and it encompasses homes, stores, businesses, factories, vacant land, hotels, parking lots and garages, grocery stores, pharmacies, medical offices, hospitals, cemeteries, malls, sports and entertainment venues, and so on. These are places that people exercising their rights, frequent every day when they move around outside their homes. The exclusion here makes all of these places presumptively off limits, backed up the by the threat of prison. The Nation’s historical traditions have not  countenanced such an incursion into the right to keep and bear arms across all varieties of private property spread across the land. The right to self-defense is no less important and no less recognized on private property.”

  Unfortunately, there is no evidence that New York is committed to ending its historical use of a circular firing squad on Second Amendment rights. Hochul used the law to rally support from voters despite this likely outcome. It is all crushingly predictable. Hochul won the election and yet another provision in the law was found unconstitutional. As a result, New Yorkers have once again strengthened Second Amendment precedent in support of gun rights.

  There is the opinion granting the preliminary injunction: Christian v. Nigrelli

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/23/2022 – 18:55

• Beyond Disgusting: Former Beyond Meat Employee Shares Photos, Docs, That Appear To Show Mold, Dirty Conditions
  Beyond Disgusting: Former Beyond Meat Employee Shares Photos, Docs, That Appear To Show Mold, Dirty Conditions

  So much for skipping out on meat to get healthier…

  One of Beyond Meat’s “key” factories was “reportedly riddled with mold, bacteria and other health-related concerns”, the NY Post reported this week, citing evidence that was obtained from a former employee. 

  Leaked internal documents showed that the plant “tested positive for the harmful bacteria Listeria at least 11 times in the second half of 2021”. Both photographs and documents were provided by the former employee, who said they were “worried” about the conditions at the plant.

  

  Two other workers at the plant, which is located about an hour from Philadelphia, confirmed that Listeria had been found on the site. 

  Additional documents showed that contaminants like “string, metal, wood and plastic” had all been found in products that were produced at the plant as recently as last December. 

  Photographs posted by Bloomberg, who produced the original report, appear to show dirty conditions and mold. Bill Marler, a food-safety attorney, after viewing some of the photos, told Bloomberg: “Mold growth takes a while — that underscores a lack of cleanliness.”

  

  The company pushed back on the claims, however, telling Bloomberg that two inspections this year by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture had “found no instances of nonconformance with regulations.”

  But one spokesperson from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture said that one of those two visits, performed in September, wasn’t a “complete plant inspection”. Instead, they called it an “effort to address an unpaid registration fee, which has since been paid.”

  The spokesperson said that the company’s standards “go above and beyond industry and regulatory standards”.

  “External third-party audits, including our most recent third-party audit in May 2022, gave the plant the highest-possible rating in each of the last three years,” the company concluded.

  So, who are you we to believe – the company, or our own lyin’ eyes?

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/23/2022 – 18:30

• Billionaire Mike Bloomberg Begs Forgiveness For BoJo Speech Bashing Beijing
  Billionaire Mike Bloomberg Begs Forgiveness For BoJo Speech Bashing Beijing

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

  Michael Bloomberg, chair of the Pentagon’s advisory panel, apologized to attendees at an economic forum hosted by his company after former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s speech that singled out the communist Chinese regime.

  

  Bloomberg issued the apology on Nov. 17 at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum hosted by his corporation in partnership with the Singapore government.

  “Some may have been insulted or offended last night by parts of the speaker’s remarks referencing certain countries and their duly elected leaders,” Reuters reported Bloomberg said.

  “Those were his thoughts and his thoughts alone, not cleared in advance by anyone or shared with me personally,” Bloomberg told the conference, referring to Johnson’s remarks.

  “To those of you who were upset and concerned by what the speaker said, you have my apologies,” he added.

  According to the version released by Johnson’s spokesperson, the former prime minister described China and Russia as “two former communist tyrannies” to the gathering of business leaders, academics, and government officials from dozens of countries.

  “Let’s look at Russia and China. The two former communist tyrannies in which power has once again been concentrated in the hands of a single rule, two monocultural states that have been traditionally hostile to immigration and that are becoming increasingly nationalist in their attitudes,” Johnson said, according to his spokesman.

  Johnson said China and Russia “are willing to show a candid disregard for the rule of international law, and two countries that in the last year have demonstrated the immense limitations of their political systems by the disastrous mistakes they have made.”

  The spokesperson said Johnson’s criticism was only against the Chinese authorities, not the country or Chinese people.

  

  The Epoch Times reached out to Bloomberg LP for comment.

  Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, didn’t specify whether his apologies were for the Chinese people or the communist regime.

  The billionaire has previously landed in the headlines for defending the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In 2019, the entrepreneur said the party’s top leader Xi Jinping “is not a dictator.”

  “The Communist Party wants to stay in power in China, and they listen to the public … Xi Jinping is not a dictator. He has to satisfy his constituents, or he’s not going to survive,” Bloomberg said in a television interview with Firing Line in September 2019.

  Bloomberg was asked several times about his comment when he ran for U.S. president in 2020, and the former New York mayor avoided pinning the label of “dictator” on Xi.

  Xi has become the country’s most powerful leader since the first ruler Mao Zedong. Last month, Xi secured a record-breaking third term in office and installed allies in the Party’s top decision-making body during the 20th National Congress, further tightening his grip over the party and the country.

  In the opening remarks at the conference last Thursday, Bloomberg praised China’s vice chairman Wang Qishan, who attended via video link, as a “troubleshooter” and “problem solver.” The billionaire noted he met Wang almost two decades ago, when Bloomberg served as mayor of New York and Wang was mayor of Beijing.

  Bloomberg’s apology raised concern among activists who pointed to his position in the U.S. Department of Defense.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/23/2022 – 18:05

• Thanksgiving Dinner Cost Soars 20% From 2021, Biden Admin Blames Climate Change & Putin
  Thanksgiving Dinner Cost Soars 20% From 2021, Biden Admin Blames Climate Change & Putin

  While spending time with family and friends at Thanksgiving remains important for many Americans, the cost of that indulgence has never been higher, up a stunning 20% from last year to $64.05 for the classic feast.

  

  The cost for the classic meal was the most affordable in the South – $58.42, followed by the Northeast – $64.02, Midwest – $64.26 and West – $71.37.

  “General inflation slashing the purchasing power of consumers is a significant factor contributing to the increase in average cost of this year’s Thanksgiving dinner,” said AFBF Chief Economist Roger Cryan.

  “Farmers are working hard to meet growing demands for food – both here in the U.S. and globally – while facing rising prices for fuel, fertilizer and other inputs,” said Cryan.

  Over the past two years, the grocery bill for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner has risen by 36.6%. All these changes are illustrated in the following chart from PoliticalCalculations blog:

  

  In the chart, we’ve ranked the cost of the individual items and groupings used by the Farm Bureau for their traditional turkey dinner menu from high to low according to their 2021 cost as you read from left to right. We’ve also tallied the cumulative cost of the meal, with the totals for each shown on the far right side of the chart.

  Ranking the data this way lets us see that the increase in the cost of turkey is once again responsible for most of the year-over-year increase in the cost of the meal. Here we see the cost of a 16-pound bird rose by 20.7% to $28.96 in 2022. This single item alone accounts for over 46% of the year-over-year increase in the total cost for the meal. Since 2020, the cost of turkey has increased by $9.57, making up 56% of the realized increase in Thanksgiving dinner ingredient costs over that time.

  Meanwhile, only the price of cranberries fell compared to last year, dropping by 13.8%. Every other Thanksgiving dinner items increased in cost during 2022.

  Among those items, a 1-pound veggie tray of carrots and celery registered the smallest year-over-year price increase of 7.3%. Every other item’s cost was up significantly, recording double-digit year-over-year price increases ranging from a low of 11.2% for sweet potatoes to a high of 69.4% for a 14-ounce package of cubed bread stuffing.

  During the last ten years, the cost of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner held steady within a relatively narrow range between $46.90 (2020) and $50.11 (2015). Thanks to the cumulative effect of President Biden’s inflation, celebrating Thanksgiving with a traditional turkey dinner has never been more costly for Americans.

  

  Of course, the Biden administration was quick to ascribe blame for this record surge in the cost of Americans’ most traditional meal.

  A USDA memo this month said turkey prices will be higher because of this year’s outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), which led to the death of 8 million turkeys in 2022. But USDA also said “Russia’s war on Ukraine and drought across the United States” are other factors that are “pushing up the price of Thanksgiving staples.”

  USDA told Fox News Digital that both the COVID pandemic and “Putin’s Price Hike” have boosted food prices around the world, and said Russia’s move against Ukraine cut off a “critical supply” of wheat, corn, barley and other grain. Russia’s war in Ukraine plus the pandemic have putt “pressure on food prices,” USDA said.

  As a reminder, a year ago, the St.Louis Fed offered this little beauty of a tweet, suggesting Americans switch from Turkey to Tofurkey to save some cash…

  As of the third quarter of 2021, a hearty Thanksgiving dinner serving of turkey costs $1.42.

  A tofurkey (soybean) dinner serving with the same amount of calories costs $0.66 and provides almost twice as much protein.

  

  Keep in mind that this plant-based meal would be almost 3 times larger by weight than the poultry-based meal and may either keep you at the dinner table longer or provide you with more leftovers.

  Remind us again who was responsible for soaring poultry and soybean prices back then?

  Spot the turkey…

  

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/23/2022 – 17:40

• Why Isn't Sam Bankman-Fried In Handcuffs Yet?
  Why Isn’t Sam Bankman-Fried In Handcuffs Yet?

  Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

  To be honest, it’s kind of hard to try and entertain the innuendo and rumors that Democrats and the media are working to do damage control on behalf of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, because the idea is just so reprehensible.

  But they sure do keep giving us ammunition to make that suggestion, don’t they?

  

  Bankman-Fried and House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters

  Bankman-Fried – the second biggest donor to Democrats behind George Soros – has all but admitted that he squandered billions of dollars of other people’s money carelessly, writing “I fucked up” on Twitter in a mea culpa about two weeks ago, days after a run on his exchange exposed it to be a shell of what many perceived it to be.

  Institutional investors in FTX have written their stakes in the firm to $0.

  

  The $5 billion bank-run on FTX that started it all has many everyday crypto investors worried that their “investments” with FTX are total losses. For many, it was their life savings.

  Since then, Bankman-Fried’s former company continues to be at the center of extremely shady circumstances. It has seen a “substantial amount” of its assets go missing in the days after its blowup.

  The lawyer hired to oversee the liquidation of FTX, who also was in charge of the same task for Enron, has said “he’s never seen a company in worse shape than FTX.”

  “I have over 40 years of legal and restructuring experience. I have been the chief restructuring officer or chief executive officer in several of the largest corporate failures in history. . . . Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.”

  ---

  Get 50% off: If you enjoy this article, would like to support my work, I would love to have you as a subscriber and can offer you 50% off for life: Get 50% off forever

  ---

  To add insult to injury, Bankman-Fried has also admitted that his entire persona of being an altruist was a ruse, calling it a “dumb game we woke westerners play.”

  Now widely accepted by the public and most in the financial industry to have committed a massive $30 billion fraud that has spawned innumerable comparisons to Madoff and Enron, it’s unclear to me what more of an admission of guilt is needed to extradite Bankman-Fried to the United States and place him under arrest.

  I know I’m not the only one who can hear the drumbeat of potentially covering up for Bankman-Fried beating a little louder with every day that goes by and he isn’t shown being paraded off somewhere in handcuffs.

  Instead, the only photo I have seen of Bankman-Fried since his firm’s blowup has been one of him meandering around a grocery store in the Bahamas.

  

  ---

  For historical reference, Bernie Madoff was arrested on December 11, 2008.

  On December 11, 2008, financier Bernard Madoff is arrested at his New York City apartment and charged with masterminding a long-running Ponzi scheme later estimated to involve around $65 billion, making it one of the biggest investment frauds in Wall Street history.

  His arrest came two days after he admitted to his brother that he was running a fraud.

  “On December 3, he told longtime assistant Frank DiPascali, who had overseen the fraudulent advisory business, that he was finished. On December 9, he told his brother Peter about the fraud.”

  Between the beginning of December and his arrest on the 11th, he also confessed to his sons, who “turned him in”.

  This means, at the maximum, it was 11 days between Madoff being “turned in” and being arrested.

  For reference, FTX collapsed around November 8, 2022 and Binance turned down the company’s bailout on November 9, 2022. Bankman-Fried admitted to “fucking up” on November 10, 2022 and FTX filed for bankruptcy on November 11, 2022, which means it has already been 11 days since the bankruptcy filing – and nearly 2 weeks since the firm’s collapse.

  In the interim, instead of Bankman-Fried being brought to justice in the United States, we find out that “members of the House are requesting testimonies from Bankman-Fried, top executives from FTX and Alameda at a hearing in December.”

  “The fall of FTX has posed tremendous harm to over one million users, many of whom were everyday people who invested their hard-earned savings into the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, only to watch it all disappear within a matter of seconds.

  Unfortunately, this event is just one out of many examples of cryptocurrency platforms that have collapsed just this past year. That’s why it is with great urgency that I, along with my colleague ranking member McHenry, announce the Committee’s intention to hold a hearing to investigate the collapse of FTX.”

  Rep. Maxine Waters

  Not at a criminal court – at a congressional hearing. Not anytime soon – in December.

  In the interim, we are being treated to a cushy response from the media, who has hailed Bankman-Fried as anything other than a criminal. The New York Times wrote a widely criticized puff piece on Bankman-Fried 3 days after FTX filed for bankruptcy.

  The Washington Post’s take was that he was a pandemic fighter:

  

  ---

  For a party that seems to absolutely loathe billionaires, Democrats and their friends in the media sure are taking it soft on Bankman-Fried.

  Key democrats also took it soft on Theranos founder and former billionaire Elizabeth Holmes. After she drove an $8 billion fraud into the ground and was found guilty in a court of law, Democrat Cory Booker even wrote a letter pleading for a light sentence for her. Try to keep your lunch down while reading this:

  

  Now, what do these two frauds have in common?

  

  —

  Thank you for reading QTR’s Fringe Finance. This post is public so feel free to share it.: Share

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/23/2022 – 17:15

• US Unveils $400M More In Weapons, Generators For Ukraine
  US Unveils $400M More In Weapons, Generators For Ukraine

  The White House has unveiled another $400 million in defense aid to Ukraine, which is also to include urgently needed generators as the national energy grid has been severely degraded by Russian airstrikes, leaving at least 10 million people without power. 

  This brings military aid committed thus far to more than $19 billion in weapons. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Wednesday in a statement, “Pursuant to a delegation of authority from the President, today I am authorizing our twenty-sixth drawdown of U.S. arms and equipment for Ukraine since August 2021. This $400 million drawdown includes additional arms, munitions, and air defense equipment from U.S. Department of Defense inventories.” 

  “This drawdown will bring the total U.S. military assistance for Ukraine to an unprecedented level of approximately $19.7 billion, since the beginning of the Administration,” the statement continued.

  

  Blinken underscored that the US coordinated the new aid with partner nations, “including the £50 million in air defense systems offered by UK Prime Minister Sunak,” according to the State Dept. readout.

  Meanwhile, there remain growing concerns over the US and Western partners greatly depleting their own stockpiles, as The Independent observes: 

  The continued push of weapons to Kyiv is raising questions about how long the U.S. and partner nations can continue to sustain the fight without an impact to military readiness. Many European nations have already expressed that they have pushed forward all the excess they can afford to send.

  The White House push for more defense aid comes as the administration grows nervous about GOP objections. “The flow of weapons comes as the Biden administrations seeks to pass an additional $37 billion in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine during the post-election session of Congress, before Republicans take over control of the House in January,” The Independent writes.

  The Pentagon has lately emphasized it is prioritizing getting the Ukrainians ready for the harsh winter months. There’s also a push to keep providing advanced anti-air systems to protect against attacks on the electricity stations and facilities…

  Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says the 2 NASAMS air-defense systems provided to Ukraine by the US have “a 100% success rate” against Russian missiles thus far. Delivery was this month. (Remarks from the start of another meeting of Ukraine’s partners to source arms for the war.) pic.twitter.com/rhIgXIRzIk

  — Andrew deGrandpré (@adegrandpre) November 16, 2022

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

  Currently an estimated half the national electricity grid has been degraded or destroyed due to repeat waves of Russian airstrikes. Parts of the capital on Wednesday were even said to lack water, which emergency services are working hard to restore.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/23/2022 – 16:50

• Howls Of Outrage After New York Times Confirms SBF To Speak Alongside Zelenskyy, Yellen
  Howls Of Outrage After New York Times Confirms SBF To Speak Alongside Zelenskyy, Yellen

  As we discussed last night, Sam Bankman-Fried has now demonstrated that he is both a pathological liar and a sociopath, the kind who in “explaining” to his employees how he stole billions (over $4 billion according to new FTX CEO John J. Ray) from the now bankrupt FTX, an act which left it insolvent and without liquidity, called it “loans” which were “generally” not used for “large amounts of personal consumption” (just “small amounts” used for such trivial items as $40 million penthouses and private jets).

  

  And the only reason we don’t officially call him a criminal just yet, is because he has not yet confirmed he used client money from his exchange to fund his personal hedge fund, an act which would cost any other individual decades in jail… but not prominent democrats like SBF or Jon Corzine, of course. Plus it’s the US legal system’s job to do that, not ours. Although we are growing increasingly skeptical this prominent Democratic donor will ever see the inside of a courtroom.

  It’s not just us: with much of the entire world demanding to know how this corpulent 30-year-old still has not been thrown in prison, or at least charged with a variety of crimes, the NYT just confirmed to the entire world what a farce the one-time paper of record has become, and how it is willing to whore itself out for clicks – not to mention prominent Democrat donors – because moments after SBF tweeted that he will be speaking with Andrew Ross-Sorkin moderated NYT “summit” on Nov 30…

  I’ll be speaking with @andrewrsorkin at the @dealbook summit next Wednesday (11/30). https://t.co/QocjPtCVvC

  — SBF (@SBF_FTX) November 23, 2022

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

  … Sorkin quickly confirmed as much.

  A lot of folks have been asking if I would still be interviewing @SBF_FTX at the @nytimes @dealbook Summit on Nov 30…

  The answer is yes. 👇

  There are a lot of important questions to be asked and answered.

  Nothing is off limits.

  Looking forward to it… https://t.co/lShAqXLKGS

  — Andrew Ross Sorkin (@andrewrsorkin) November 23, 2022

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

  And so, instead of being under arrest, SBF will instead be treated like a luminary alongside other such other Democrat icons as Zelenskyy (who according to some may have been intimately familiar with FTX fund flows in the past year) and of course the woman who along with Ben Bernanke and Jerome Powell, made it all possible by blowing the biggest asset bubble of all time: Janet Yellen.

  And while we are certain that the NYT – which we assume is done writing puff pieces on behalf of SBF after it became a laughing stock last week – would be quick to mercilessly cancel and expel from its “prestigious” conference anyone who had misgendered some post-op transsexual, it is willing to give this thieving pathological liar and sociopath a forum in which to profess his innocence to the entire world, and by association with other Democrat “celebrities” such as this one…

  

  …  to boost his standing within a legal system that is clearly as much as joke as the venue that he will be sharing with the following individuals:

  

  Here are all the other “top business and policy leaders” at the NYT whitewashing summit:

  • Eric Adams, New York City mayor
  • Ben Affleck, Artists Equity C.E.O.
  • Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX founder
  • Gerry Cardinale, RedBird Capital Partners founder, managing partner and C.I.O.
  • Shou Chew, TikTok C.E.O.
  • Larry Fink, BlackRock chairman and C.E.O.
  • Reed Hastings, Netflix founder and co-C.E.O.
  • Andy Jassy, Amazon president and C.E.O.
  • Van Jones, CNN host, author and Dream.Org founder
  • Scarlett Lewis, Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement founder and mother of Sandy Hook shooting victim, Jesse
  • Mike Pence, 48th vice president of the United States and author of “So Help Me God”
  • Benjamin Netanyahu, former Prime Minister of Israel, current leader of the Likud party
  • Priscilla Sims Brown, Amalgamated Bank president and C.E.O.
  • Secretary Janet L. Yellen, U.S. Department of the Treasury
  • President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine
  • Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder, chairman and C.E.O.

  The shocked, stunned and simply disgusted reactions are still coming in:

  “SBF needs to go to jail!”

  The New York Times: pic.twitter.com/ynSzdFdl0Q

  — Dr. Parik Patel, BA, CFA, ACCA Esq. (@ParikPatelCFA) November 23, 2022

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

  The @nytimes event right? Makes sense. 😂😂😂 https://t.co/mgMhc0YNrA

  — Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) November 23, 2022

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

  I’ll be speaking with @SBF_FTX at the @dealbook summit next Wednesday (11/30) by hiding in one of the bathroom stalls and surprising him while he’s using the urinal.

  What questions should I ask him?

  — davis 🐺🦊 (@basedkarbon) November 23, 2022

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

  How did this dude steal billions of dollars and is now speaking at a summit as a free man?

  Make it make sense.

  — Chairman (@WSBChairman) November 23, 2022

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

  let’s hop on a spaces right now.
  Just me and you, 1 on 1.

  — Bitcoin Archive 🗄🚀🌔 (@BTC_Archive) November 23, 2022

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

  That CNBC, the NY Times and far-left extremist Andrew Sorkin would be protecting, apologizing for and promoting this guy is zero surprise. https://t.co/xhGh0gePV0

  — John Tuld (@BradHuston) November 23, 2022

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

  FTX SBF is scheduled to speak at a @nytimes business summit with Andrew Sorkin, after defrauding clients billions of dollars. More proof that paid off politicians grant you amnesty.

  — TaraBull (@TaraBull808) November 23, 2022

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

  SORKIN: “Internet trolls are scapegoating Sam, but we should celebrate entrepreneurs even when they fail. There’s nothing illegal about taking big risks.” https://t.co/mB9KkFsRdt pic.twitter.com/FKyTtdsfl9

  — Bitcoin is Saving (@BitcoinIsSaving) November 23, 2022

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

  My theory is that Andrew Sorkin is a sensible guy disgusted by the ruling class who tries to insult it by showing how bad it’s leading figures are. He’s surprised no one gets it but at least he makes a lot of money until that happens. https://t.co/ii9pGTz3R0

  — P.C. Outsider (@PhilOutsider) November 23, 2022

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

  PERFECT—ANDREW ROSS SORKIN IS MORE FULL OF SHIT THAN SAM IS. https://t.co/Y5PsRaRgVu

  — INVESTMENT HULK (@INVESTMENTSHULK) November 23, 2022

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

  “So, what’s your favorite color lol”

  — litquidity (@litcapital) November 23, 2022

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

  Damage control is in overdrive. We can’t be the only ones observing this? This is outrageous. https://t.co/OCTOMeOY3D

  — Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) November 23, 2022

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

  “This can’t get any worse!”

  Universe: “LOL, watch me!”

  — Helin ULKER (@beautyofhelin) November 23, 2022

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  Hey @andrewrsorkin, can you also please invite AG Merrick Garland to the summit: we’d love to see him shake hands with SBF https://t.co/twLcOLQUtP

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 23, 2022

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

  When SBF flies safely back to the Bahamas after attending the @dealbook summit pic.twitter.com/qgYCyQMlUA

  — Ramp Capital (@RampCapitalLLC) November 23, 2022

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  Is this really still happening @nytimes?

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2022

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

  In 2008, Bernie Madoff was arrested within 24 hours of his fraud being revealed.

  In 2022, Sam Bankman-Fried will be attending the NYTimes dealbook summit after his fraud was revealed.

  — Fintwit (@fintwit_news) November 23, 2022

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

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/23/2022 – 16:22