Jul 11

Today’s News 11th July 2024

  • NATO Countries Closest To Russia Up Defense Spending
    NATO Countries Closest To Russia Up Defense Spending

    Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times,

    The nations on NATO’s easternmost flank are investing record amounts on defense in order to deter further Russian aggression against the region.

    Defense ministers from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania gathered on July 9 in Washington to express their dedication to the NATO alliance and encourage other allies to pull their weight when it came to defense contributions.

    Anything less, they warned, could encourage more violence in Eastern Europe and, possibly, the end of some nations outright.

    Latvia’s Minister of Defense Andris Spruds delivers a doorstep statement during a meeting of NATO Ministers of Defense at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels on June 13, 2024. (Simon Wohlfahrt/AFP via Getty Images)

    Latvian Defense Minister Andris Spruds said that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s continued targeting of civilians in Ukraine demonstrated a tolerance for “human loss.” Mr. Putin’s “absolute disregard of human life and human dignity,” he said, had to be taken into account when dealing with Russia.

    “We are dealing with an aggressive country,” he said during a fireside chat hosted by Politico on the sidelines of NATO’s 75th annual summit.

    “Russia is an existential threat, and we should be ready for this existential threat for years.”

    To that end, he added, the international community should prepare to fend off Russian aggression for years to come.

    It was vital, he said, that NATO “not engage from positions of weakness and appeasement.”

    Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were all governed by the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991.

    Now, Mr. Putin has implemented a foreign policy based on uniting the so-called Russian World, including substantial Russian-speaking communities in former Soviet states, which East European leaders fear will lead to conquests beyond Ukraine.

    As such, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have all exceeded NATO’s guideline of spending 2 percent of their GDP on defense to ensure collective deterrence against foreign aggression.

    Lithuanian National Defense Minister Laurynas Kasciunas said the investments were about “transforming the fear to preparedness.”

    Mr. Kasciunas cited the Reagan-era doctrine of “peace through strength” and said that NATO should be “prepared to work with America” to ensure such a policy regardless of the outcome of the U.S. presidential election in November.

    “Russians are not attacking when you’re strong. It’s a very simple thing. If you’re weak, they can do this,” he said.

    Six NATO nations share a land border with Russian territory, a fact that Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said would need to be taken into account when determining NATO’s pathway toward ensuring continued deterrence against Russian aggression.

    “When we take the threat of Russia, the first thing we have to understand is that we cannot change the geography,” Mr. Pevkur said.

    To that end, he added that NATO must be wholly prepared to engage in a war with Russia should Moscow attack any member state.

    “We will start defending our countries from the first inch,” Mr. Pevkur said. “We will not keep away anything, and if that means that we also have to make attacks into Russian territory, then we are ready for that because we cannot fight only on our territory to keep every inch of our integrity.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 07/11/2024 – 02:00

  • Modi's Trip To Moscow Was Much More Important Than Most Observers Realize
    Modi’s Trip To Moscow Was Much More Important Than Most Observers Realize

    Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

    Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi just completed his first trip to Russia in half a decade and put an end to the several-year-long hiatus in annual meetings between their leaders. The outcome was nine agreements on a wide range of subjects along with a detailed joint statement for guiding their special and privileged strategic partnership to 2030. There were no landmark deals, but nor should any have been expected, since the meeting was only planned recently for the reasons that’ll now be explained.

    “Modi’s Trip To Moscow Was Meant To Assess The Reliability Of Russia’s Geopolitical Balancing Act” after his hosts sent eight signals since the start of the year hinting at an impending pro-Chinese pivot, which the reader can learn more about by reviewing the preceding hyperlinked analysis. The indisputable personal rapport between him and Putin during their two days together put an end to concerns about Russia preparing to privilege China over India and thus breathed new life into tri–multipolar processes.

    This concept refers to the paradigm of dividing the world into three internally diverse groups: the US-led West’s Golden Billion; the Sino–Russo Entente; and the informally Indian-led Global South. These three groups became more prominent after the global systemic transition was unprecedentedly accelerated by Russia’s special operation, though they predate that development. Prior to then, however, International Relations could best be described as being in a state of Sino-US bi-multipolarity.

    What’s meant by this is that everything was trending towards an unofficial division of the world between China and the US where everyone was pressured to some extent to take one or the other’s side. A return to the pure bipolarity that marked most of the Old Cold War till the Sino-US rapprochement was always unlikely because there were already some strategically autonomous emerging players. Likewise, despite the US, China, and India being the informal leaders of their groups, none have full control over them.

    Therefore, this present tripolar system can best be described as tri-multipolar, with the key axis being the Russo-Indo Strategic Partnership since it prevents the American and Chinese superpowers from coming together to revive bi-multipolarity in the event of a New Détente between them. Russia’s perceptible shift towards China since the start of the year, which was detailed in an earlier analysis, caused serious concern in India because it suggested that Moscow was abandoning their shared grand strategic goal.

    Before those eight signals were sent, India assumed that Russia would continue cooperating with it to accelerate tri-multipolar processes with a view towards midwifing complex multipolarity, which required neither Russia nor India pivoting towards China or the US respectively. What changed over the past year was the emergence of a pro-BRI policymaking faction in Moscow whose members concluded that Sino-US bi-multipolarity is inevitable so it’s best for Russia to turbocharge China’s superpower trajectory.

    The ruling establishment’s balancing/pragmatic faction had a tough time fending off their “friendly rivals”, the latter of whom compellingly argued that their envisaged policies would represent the sweetest revenge against the US after all that their adversary did to Russia since 2022. This explains the signals that Russia sent since the start of the year hinting at an impending pro-Chinese pivot, which finally prompted India to dispatch Modi to Russia to investigate what’s really going on and why.

    He considered this to be such a priority for his country’s objective national interests that he broke with tradition by traveling to Russia as the first trip of his third term instead of to a nearby country like usual. The timing also coincided with the annual NATO Summit, thus showing that India is strategically autonomous of the West and impervious to its pressure to curtail ties with Russia. The official US criticism that followed only served to reinforce the aforementioned points.  

    Russia is always happy to host Modi, even more so than usual due to the timing that was described above as well as the fact that it was his first visit to the country in half a decade, which is why such pomp and circumstance were prepared for him. His three-hour-long informal meeting with Putin at the latter’s dacha was presumably when those two friends candidly discussed the most sensitive aspects of their countries’ strategic partnership and clarified the confusion caused by Russia’s recent pro-Chinese signals.

    They clearly worked everything out as proven by their exuberant mood during those informal talks and the official ones the day after. Putin even awarded Modi Russia’s highest civilian honor, the Order of St. Andrew the Apostle, thus showing his country’s pro-BRI faction that he doesn’t approve of their plans to pivot to China. Instead, Russia will continue to pragmatically balance between China and India, thus reaffirming its tri-multipolar grand strategy and putting an end to bi-multipolar speculation.

    To be sure, the pro-BRI faction isn’t going away and will continue to make their case that Russia’s best interests are served by acknowledging the supposedly inevitable reversion to Sino-US bi-multipolarity and accordingly turbocharging China’s superpower trajectory, but few in Moscow will listen to them. The most spectacular achievement from Modi’s trip to Russia wasn’t whatever they formally agreed to, but him and Putin informally agreeing to redouble their joint efforts to accelerate tri-multipolarity processes.  

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/10/2024 – 23:40

  • Cocoa Grinding Estimates Suggest Demand Destruction Nearing 
    Cocoa Grinding Estimates Suggest Demand Destruction Nearing 

    With cocoa prices hovering over $8,000 a ton in New York, the long-anticipated demand destruction for cocoa is finally approaching. New estimates indicate that global bean processing likely declined in the second quarter. 

    According to six analysts and traders tracked by Bloomberg, second-quarter global grindings—where cocoa transforms into butter and powder used in food products—likely fell from a year earlier. Estimates from European grindings likely fell 2% in the quarter, hitting lows not seen since early 2020. All of the analysts forecasted much larger declines in the second half of the year. 

    “The cheap stuff is beginning to drop off, and the expensive stuff is coming in,” said Jonathan Parkman, head of agricultural sales at broker Marex Group.

    Parkman said, “The worst of input inflation will affect the second half of this year.”

    The grinding numbers are nowhere near the deterioration to end elevated cocoa prices, but the estimates suggest emerging demand destruction. 

    “We are more likely to see a significant change in the grind number in the second half of the year,” said Darren Stetzel, vice president of soft commodities for Asia at broker StoneX.

    Stetzel noted that the market has been forced to adapt to the scarcity of beans, which should alleviate some demand pressure. He pointed out that chocolate makers are increasingly using substitutes like palm oil.

    Grinding data from Europe is due on Thursday, and Asia and North America will report next week. 

    Last month, the KitKat-maker warned ‘cocoaflation‘ will soon send candy bar prices higher. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/10/2024 – 23:20

  • China: The Helpless Giant
    China: The Helpless Giant

    Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

    Myths die hard. Among these is the great myth that China’s poised to take over the world. Today I’ll debunk that myth.

    No one seriously disputes the importance of China to the global economy. It’s the world’s second-largest economy after the U.S. and accounts for 17% of global GDP (or an even larger percentage if one uses an alternative accounting method called purchasing power parity).

    It has the world’s second-largest population at 1.41 billion people, just slightly behind India. It has the third-largest landmass in the world behind Russia and Canada. China also has the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal after Russia and the U.S.

    But size can be deceptive. Most observers translate China’s large economy into the status of global superpower soon to surpass the U.S. in economic and military strength.

    That extrapolation has been a chimera for some time. In reality, China’s economy is fragile and weakening by the day.

    China may soon find itself in economic turmoil including a credit crisis, currency crisis and economic recession all at the same time. Following is a close look at China’s inherent weakness. Unfortunately for U.S. investors, China’s problems threaten to drag the global economy down with it.

    The China Myth

    China’s economic problems exist at two levels — the long-term macro level and the short-term technical level. Let’s consider these in order: At the long-term level, China is confronting three material obstacles — the middle-income trap, declining demographics and wasted investment.

    The middle-income trap afflicts developing economies that have reached the middle-income level of about $10,000 per capita annually. Moving from low-income (about $5,000 per capita annually) is straightforward.

    Countries move populations from rural to urban environments, build suitable housing and infrastructure, attract direct foreign investment with cheap labor and low operating costs, engage in assembly-type manufacturing and run significant trade surpluses by exporting the manufactured goods.

    The difficulty is in moving from middle-income to high-income ($20,000 per capita annually or higher). For that, low value-added manufacturing isn’t enough. It’s necessary to move to high-tech, high value-added manufacturing, which requires original research and development and access to high-tech tools such as semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

    China has acquired some of these tools through theft of intellectual property, but not enough. China also faces fierce competition from those already engaged in high-tech manufacturing including Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Japan.

    Only a handful of countries have ever made the move from middle-income to high-income, including those just mentioned. Many more including Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, India and South Africa are stuck in the same middle-income trap as China.

    The prospects of China breaking out of the middle-income bracket are slim, especially now that foreign direct investment is moving toward India and Vietnam and away from China. This conundrum alone is enough to put the brakes on Chinese growth.

    China’s Demographic Disaster

    China is also confronted with what will become the greatest demographic disaster since the Black Death in the 14th century. This is the bitter fruit of China’s one-child policy from 1980–2015 combined with mass infanticide of girls. The demographic challenge is increased by greater educational and career opportunities for women, which impacts family formation, and an historic shift in the role of the family.

    China’s population may decline from 1.41 billion to 750 million over the next 50 years. That’s a loss of over 650 million people.

    Considering that one definition of GDP is working-age population x productivity, it follows that China’s GDP will suffer a spectacular decline over the remainder of this century. (Note: The total GDP will decline but per capita GDP may be maintained because the population itself is shrinking.)

    Finally, China has wasted much of the wealth it did earn during the past 30 years with bad investments in unneeded infrastructure. A mature economy devotes about 25% of GDP to new investment (plant, equipment, homes, transportation, etc.) and about 65% to consumption. (The remaining 10% is split between trade surpluses or deficits and government spending.)

    In China, that split is reversed. About 45% of GDP goes to investment and only about 25% goes to consumption.

    That amount of investment can lead to high productivity gains in the future if it is spent intelligently on essential infrastructure, transportation, high-tech plants and equipment as well as research and development.

    Instead, China wasted the money on “ghost cities” (ample infrastructure with no residents or business tenants) and extravagant white elephants such as the Nanjing South train station, which has marble walls and 128 escalators but very few train passengers.

    Such show projects do produce short-term jobs and demand for copper, glass, steel and aluminum. But when the project is finished, the jobs disappear (unless diverted to another wasteful project) and the infrastructure is nonproductive with high maintenance costs.

    If Chinese GDP were adjusted for losses due to wasted investment in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, the reported growth figures of the past 30 years would have been reduced 20% or more. Those losses are real whether the figures are adjusted or not.

    A Dead End for China

    Based on these three factors — the middle-income trap, declining demographics and wasted investment — the so-called Chinese miracle has turned into a dead end.

    China’s failing growth engine is not due solely to these long-term factors. Among the short-term headwinds to growth are an excessive debt-to-GDP ratio, a drying up of direct foreign investment, a dollar shortage and a rapidly declining currency.

    Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff have demonstrated that debt-to-GDP ratios in excess of 90% will reduce the Keynesian multiplier of additional debt-financed government spending below 1.0.

    This means that for economies in that condition, if they borrow a dollar and spend a dollar, they receive less than a dollar of added GDP. Of course, this process drives the ratio even higher (since the GDP denominator grows more slowly than the debt numerator), which slows growth even further.

    In plain language, you can’t borrow your way out of a debt crisis.

    China has one of the highest debt-to-GDP ratios in the world, well over 300%. (Much of this debt is buried at the provincial level or in state-controlled banks rather than sovereign bonds, but the debt/growth dynamic is the same.) This debt overhang will retard Chinese growth independent of the other factors mentioned in this article.

    Because of trade wars, tariff wars and deteriorating Chinese-U.S. relations, direct foreign investment is being diverted from China to other high-growth centers, including India. China’s ample (but declining) labor force cannot be productive without foreign direct investment to fund state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities and new technology.

    China is doomed to stagnate along the lines of the former Soviet Union without a continual supply of new capital and technology.

    China’s dollar-denominated trade surpluses cannot fill the gap because those reserves are needed to service dollar-denominated debt of Chinese state-owned enterprises and to prop up Chinese bank balance sheets.

    That’s the real reason why Chinese holdings of U.S. Treasury securities are declining. It’s not because China is “dumping” Treasuries. It’s because China must sell the Treasuries to obtain dollars to prop up its debts and to deal with a global dollar shortage.

    Get out of Chinese Stocks

    All of these negative trends are expressed in the rapid decline of the USD/CNY exchange rate. After hitting an interim peak of 7.10 to $1.00 on Jan. 31, 2024, the Chinese yuan broke through a central bank target of 7.25 in mid-June and is now trading at 7.27. CNY will continue this decline, perhaps hitting 7.30 to $1.00 in the weeks ahead.

    A crashing currency is not as advantageous for exports as many imagine since China’s value added on exports is only about 5%. It has to import most of the inputs it uses to manufacture exports from Japan, South Korea, Germany and Taiwan.

    A declining currency increases the cost of those imports and reduces China’s competitiveness. It also makes foreign direct investment less attractive and hurts China’s efforts to move to a consumer economy by causing inflation on imported goods.

    It would be a serious matter if China were slowing rapidly and the problems were confined to China. They’re not. Slower growth in China hurts Japanese banks, which are heavily invested there. It hurts South Korean, Taiwanese and Australian exporters that rely on Chinese markets.

    It also contributes to a global slowdown that’s already affected Germany, France, Japan and the U.K. And it hurts U.S. investors who are facing a wave of company failures and bond defaults.

    The U.S. won’t be insulated from this global slowdown that threatens to become a global recession and financial crisis. U.S. investors should dump Chinese stocks and ETFs and reduce equity holdings generally.

    We’re entering another “cash is king” stage with China leading the way.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/10/2024 – 23:00

  • What Taxes Must Be Paid When You Have A Trust?
    What Taxes Must Be Paid When You Have A Trust?

    Authored by Mike Valles via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    When you create your estate plan, consider setting up a trust to pass your assets on to your beneficiaries. The holdings in some trusts do not go through probate, enabling your beneficiaries to receive them faster. They also can help you save a lot of money on taxes.

    Types of Trusts

    Taxes on a trust and who pays for them depend on the type of trust it is. Trusts generally fall into one of two categories: revocable and irrevocable. There are many varieties of trusts, and you can design them to fit many needs, but they fall into these two categories.

    • The Revocable Trust

    A revocable trust, often called a living trust, means that the grantor—the person who created the trust—still has the assets under his control. He can add or remove assets when he wants, and he will pay the taxes on any gains. Gains get taxed at the grantor’s income tax bracket level.

    • The Irrevocable Trust

    The assets in an irrevocable trust are under the control of a trustee, and the grantor has little or no control over them. They also are no longer in the grantor’s taxable estate. The trust pays all taxes on any gains except when distributed.

    An irrevocable trust enables your assets to escape the hands of creditors, but only after the assets are in it. The more assets you put into the trust, the less taxes your estate must pay. TrustandWill says that the estate tax exemption for 2024 is $13.61 million. This figure will likely revert to $5 million in 2025. You can also reduce your estate by giving individuals up to $18,000 per person each year.

    • The Grantor Retained Annuity Trust 

    For those who have more money, you might want to create a grantor retained annuity trust (GRAT), which is a type of irrevocable trust. It can pay you a set amount of money per year (or monthly) for a specific number of years. Taxes are paid on the assets when you put them into the trust. At the end of the set time, any remaining assets pass to the beneficiaries tax-free.

    When you create a GRAT, SuperMoney says that the interest market rate (the 7520 rate) is set and sent to the government annually. A successful GRAT will give considerable assets to your beneficiaries, but it requires that the market rate stays above the interest rate.

    If you die before the end of the period, all assets in a GRAT will become part of the estate. Some people create a series of GRATs, which can have periods as short as two years. It helps ensure your beneficiaries receive some money—even if you do not outlive all of them.

    Trust Beneficiaries Will Pay Some Taxes

    A trust distribution may include part of the principal and some interest. Investopedia says that no taxes will be due on the principal, but you must pay taxes on the interest. The principal can be any amount deposited originally or in the year the distribution is made. Any distributions from a trust throughout the year are taxable as interest, SuperMoney says, because principal distributions are only made once a year after depositing all contributions.

    If all the interest in the trust gained during the year is not distributed to the beneficiaries, the trust pays the taxes on the remaining amount. Beneficiaries receive a tax report (Form 1041) each year from the trust stating how much money is principal and how much is interest. It also shows them how much they need to pay in taxes.

    Taxes From Trusts Are Much Higher Than Regular Taxes

    Money received as a distribution from a trust is taxed at a higher rate than ordinary income. People in the first income tax bracket, the Internal Revenue Service says, including those with income ranging from $0 to $11,000, pay 10 percent in taxes. The next higher tax bracket ranges from $11,001 to $44,725, and they pay 12 percent in taxes.

    In comparison, the first tax bracket on income from a trust, Forbes says, ranges from $0 to $3,100. They will pay 10 percent in taxes. The second tax bracket is from $3,101 to $11,150, and they must pay $310 plus an additional 24 percent of anything over $3,100. Taxes on regular income reach a maximum of 37 percent, which is the same (maximum) for trust income, but it starts on trust income as low as $15,201.

    The Interest Earned Determines the Taxes

    When a trust earns interest, there will be taxes, but Fidelity says that part of it may be considered principal. If the assets in the trust do not earn interest, any distributions made are principal.

    A trust that distributes $10,000—but only has $5,000 in dividends and another $5,000 in capital gains will have a split between principal and income. Other amounts and situations may also see a split between income and principal, enabling the beneficiary to have lower taxes.

    When selling assets out of a trust, Fool says, state laws determine when capital gains are principal or income. A trust can be created so that only income is distributed, but not capital gains. The recipient of the capital gains pays the taxes on it.

    A trust can be created to prevent assets in it from going through probate. The laws concerning trusts change frequently and they must be set up correctly—and changed when necessary. When doing your estate planning, it is important to consult a trust lawyer or estate planning attorney to ensure it meets current laws.

    The Epoch Times copyright © 2024. The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors. They are meant for general informational purposes only and should not be construed or interpreted as a recommendation or solicitation. The Epoch Times does not provide investment, tax, legal, financial planning, estate planning, or any other personal finance advice. The Epoch Times holds no liability for the accuracy or timeliness of the information provided.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/10/2024 – 22:20

  • KFC Now Serving Halal Chicken, Removing Pork From Menus In Ontario
    KFC Now Serving Halal Chicken, Removing Pork From Menus In Ontario

    Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in Ontario are all now “Muslim-friendly”, with halal chicken and no pork on their menus, according to a new report from True North. 

    Halal refers to what is permissible or lawful in traditional Islamic law, particularly regarding food and drink. It dictates that foods must be prepared and processed according to specific guidelines, such as the humane slaughter of animals and the prohibition of certain substances like alcohol and pork.

    Nearly all chains in Ontario have implemented the changes, taking bacon off their menus. 

    In a May letter to Muslim community leaders, KFC wrote it has “ensured all chicken products are Halal Certified including but not limited to chicken.”

    “This initiative is a testament to our commitment to providing diverse and inclusive menu options for all our customers,” the letter continued, promising the changes would take place by the end of the year. 

    “Everything in the store is halal,” True North confirmed after calling multiple stores in Ontario.

    KFC partners with halal suppliers like Maple Lodge Farms, owner of Zabiha Halal, Canada’s top halal food brand. Zabiha Halal ensures each bird is alive before slaughter, using automated blades to cut specific channels while a Muslim recites the blessing: “In the name of Allah, Allah is the greatest!” 

    Zabiha Halal’s website says: “We employ more than 25 Muslim blessers to ensure that the chickens are properly blessed on the slaughtering line.”

    “Our halal slaughter is a continuous process. The Muslim blessers recite Tasmiah at the time each bird comes under the rotary blade. We understand that it is not possible for a person to continuously recite Tasmiah, over long periods, at the same rate.”

    “To keep the speed consistent, the blessers at the slaughter station are rotated with other blessers to prevent fatigue. This rotation continues for the duration of the slaughter process.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/10/2024 – 22:00

  • Is Saudi Arabia Set On Becoming A Global Gas Leader?
    Is Saudi Arabia Set On Becoming A Global Gas Leader?

    Authored by Simon Watkins via OilPrice.com,

    • Saudi Arabia aims to become a major gas exporter by 2030, as part of its ‘Vision 2030’ plan.

    • Saudi Aramco announced over $25 billion in contracts for gas sector expansion.

    • Despite these efforts, Saudi Arabia’s projected gas output by 2030 may still fall short of covering its own power needs.

    Saudi Arabia may be the third largest producer of crude oil in the world, after the U.S. and Russia, but its gas output has struggled over the years to make much of a mark in the global market. Currently, it produces around 4.2 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) a year – making it the ninth biggest producer in the world – but this goes to meeting domestic consumption needs. Associated (with oil drilling) gas accounts for around half of the Kingdom’s present production, although the non-associated percentage has more than doubled since 2012. However, last week saw twin announcements that might begin to change that, in line with Saudi Arabia’s target of becoming a major gas exporter by 2030 as part of its ‘Vision 2030’ plan.

    The two announcements came as part of the statement from the country’s flagship hydrocarbons firm, Saudi Aramco, that it has signed over US$25 billion in contracts to undertake major new gas sector expansion projects.

    • The first of these, according to the firm’s chief executive officer, Amin Nasser, is that US$8.8 billion is to be spent to increase the scale and scope of the Kingdom’s gas network, in particular through the third phase development of its MGS. In addition to new rigs and ongoing capacity maintenance expenditure, the money is to fund the addition of around 4,000 kilometres of pipelines to the current infrastructure and 17 new gas compression trains. These are aimed at boosting capacity by about 3.15 billion standard cubic feet per day and connecting several more cities to the network. As part of its plans to substitute gas for oil in local power generation, domestic demand for natural gas in the country is expected to grow by 3.7% each year from now to 2030, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

    • The second announcement was that a further $12.4 billion will be invested in the second phase of Saudi Aramco’s expansion of the much-vaunted Jafurah unconventional gas field. The money is split across 16 new contracts, including the construction of gas compression facilities and associated pipelines, and the expansion of the Jafurah Gas Plant to incorporate the building of new gas processing trains, and utilities, and export facilities. It will also include construction of Saudi Aramco’s new Riyas Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) fractionation facilities in Jubail, which is designed to process NGLs received from Jafurah. This increased gas output would provide very welcome export dollars for a country that has struggled to recover fully from the Oil Price Wars of 2014-2016 and 2020, as analysed in full in my new book on the new global oil market order. It could also replace some of the oil used in domestic power generation, so freeing up more high-value crude for export over time. Last year, Saudi Arabia generated slightly less than 70 percent of its electricity from gas, with the vast bulk of the remainder from oil. The key question for this gas field, then, is will it achieve what it is meant to?

    March this year saw an unexpected sudden increase of 15 Tcf in the level of gas deposits apparently now contained in the field. If true, this would take the total reserves in the eastern Saudi field – which is the largest unconventional non-oil associated gas field in the country, and potentially the biggest shale gas development outside the U.S. – up to about 229 Tcf, or about 6.5 trillion cubic metres (Tcm). By comparison, total proven gas reserves for Russia stand at around 48 Tcm, for Iran at about 34 Tcm, and for Qatar over 24 Tcm. At the same time, the amount of crude oil being burned for domestic energy consumption has risen in the past few years to well over 500,000 barrels per day. In the extreme temperatures of the summer months, this rises to around 900,000 bpd as air conditioners remain on full for much of the period.

    The longstanding plan was that production from Jafurah should reach 2.2 billion cubic feet per day (bcf/d) of gas production by 2036. The new plan is for sales gas (gas at the outlet of a plant that is primarily methane) production to reach 2 bcf/d by 2030 instead, allowing room for considerable exports to be undertaken. That said, all other factors remaining equal, one billion cubic feet of gas equals 0.167 million barrels of oil equivalent, so 2 bcf/d (Jafurah’s estimated 2030 output) equals 0.3340 million barrels of oil equivalent, or 334,000 barrels. Therefore, the total projected new amount of gas to come from the unconventional gas field by 2030 is around 334,000 barrels per day, which is not even enough to cover the current amount of oil – 500,000 bpd to 600,000 bpd – being burned for power generation in Saudi Arabia, never mind any increase in demand between now and 2030. Moreover, based on independent industry estimates of the changing demographics of Saudi Arabia and the corollary changing power demand patterns, the Kingdom will probably need gas production of around 23-25 bcf/d within the next 15 years just to cover its own power and industrial demand. In sum, then, even if the quality of the Jafurah find is unparalleled in the history of Saudi gas finds, the Kingdom would still be in deficit in its power generation sector if there was a straight switch from crude oil burning to gas-only burning.

    Over and above the practical shortcomings of these announcements, certainly in Jafurah’s case, they do highlight an increasing awareness by the Saudis that gas, especially LNG, has been the key emergency energy source since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and is likely to remain so in an increasingly dangerous world. It is readily available in the spot markets and can be moved quickly to anywhere required, unlike gas or oil sent through pipelines. Unlike pipelined energy as well, the movement of LNG does not require the build-out of vast acreage of pipelines across varying terrains and the associated heavy infrastructure that supports it. They also highlight that the Kingdom understands that the U.S. led the way in engineering a massive increase in LNG availability for it and its key allies with the express intention of making its NATO partners less vulnerable to Russian threats to remove gas and oil supplies from them. The U.S.’s success in doing this remains the key reason why Russia did not go unpunished for yet another invasion of a European sovereign state – as it did with Ukraine in 2014, and Georgia in 2008, as detailed in my latest book on the new global oil market order. Indeed, the U.S. went from zero LNG exports before 2016, to become the world’s biggest exporter of the gas, with around 86 million metric tonnes of LNG shipped in 2022. And around two-thirds of all the U.S.’s LNG exports since Russia invaded Ukraine have gone to Europe.  

    Given the U.S.’s dominance in this field, and Saudi Arabia’s awareness that it has fallen behind in this sector, these two announcements from Riyadh may signal new opportunities for Washington to restore a beneficial relationship for it with the Kingdom. The very recent signing of a landmark 20-year deal for the U.S.’s NextDecade Corporation to sell LNG to Saudi Aramco may well end up having a significance way beyond the confines of the energy market.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/10/2024 – 21:40

  • Canada Has Become The "Car Theft Capital Of The World", Interpol Warns
    Canada Has Become The “Car Theft Capital Of The World”, Interpol Warns

    This summer, Interpol ranked Canada among the top 10 worst countries for car thefts out of 137, a “remarkable” achievement given Canada’s data integration with Interpol only began in February, according to the BBC. 

    After the cars are stolen, they are “either used to carry out other violent crimes, sold domestically to other unsuspecting Canadians, or shipped overseas to be resold,” the BBC wrote. 

    Since integrating the Canadian Police Information Centre’s stolen vehicle data with INTERPOL’s database in February 2024, over 1,500 stolen Canadian vehicles have been detected globally, Interpol wrote in May. 

    The RCMP’s database, which tracks around 150,000 stolen vehicles, now helps identify over 200 stolen cars weekly, primarily at international entry ports.

    The BBC noted that the Insurance Bureau of Canada declared car theft a “national crisis” after insurers paid out over C$1.5bn in vehicle theft claims last year. Police have issued public bulletins on preventing theft, while some Canadians are installing trackers and private security measures, such as retractable bollards.

    Mississauga resident Nauman Khan, who started a bollard-installation business after experiencing theft, reports high demand for his services due to widespread car thefts. 

    He told the BBC: “It’s been very busy. We had one client whose street had so many home invasions that he’d hired a security guard every night outside his house because he just didn’t feel safe.”

    Despite its smaller population, Canada’s car theft rate (262.5 per 100,000) surpasses that of England and Wales (220 per 100,000) and is close to the US rate (300 per 100,000). The rise in thefts is partly due to a pandemic-driven car shortage and a strong international market for certain models, making auto theft lucrative for organized crime. Canada’s port system, which focuses more on imports than exports, also contributes to the problem.

    In a press release, INTERPOL Secretary General Jürgen Stock said: “Stolen vehicles are international criminal currency. Not only are they used to traffic drugs, but also as payment to other criminal networks as well as fueling activities from human trafficking to terrorism.

    “Sometimes overlooked, a stolen car is not just car theft. It is part of a major revenue stream for transnational organized crime. Through increased data sharing at the global level, we can better screen vehicles at border points, identify trafficking routes and arrest the perpetrators.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/10/2024 – 21:20

  • Why Gavin Newsom Must Never Become US President
    Why Gavin Newsom Must Never Become US President

    Authored by Edward Ring via American Greatness,

    As President Biden’s age threatens to derail his reelection campaign, waiting in the wings and trying not to appear too eager is Gavin Newsom. It’s not easy. Wanting to be president with an intensity that might make Gollum’s lust for the One Ring appear prosaic, California’s governor knows that if Biden drops out, he’s the oddsmakers’ favorite.

    But there is absolutely nothing Gavin Newsom has ever done that qualifies him to be president of the United States. If Newsom becomes the next U.S. president, he will accelerate a process that is already well underway and must be stopped at all costs: turning all of America into California.

    There are glaring examples of California’s over-the-top embrace of progressive extremism. Identity politics. Race and gender “equity.” Decriminalizing crime and hard drugs. A complete failure to manage the state’s homeless, much less help them. An obsession with climate change that has inspired laws that reach into virtually every facet of life. Shortages of energy, water, and housing. And prices for goods and services so punitive that millions have fled.

    Under Gavin Newsom’s watch, the state is devolving into feudalism: a massive underclass that can’t survive without government assistance, supervised by an elite minority that will retain political power by continuing to dole out that assistance. The formula is simple: make life progressively more difficult for ordinary Californians, tell them their travails are the result of bigotry and climate change, then secure their votes by offering them more government benefits.

    And herein lies Newsom’s biggest crime, one shared by the progressive elites that run California and intend to take over the world. It is the biggest lie of modern progressivism—the corrupt foundation of their power. Newsom and his ilk are telling California’s middle class that what they have attained is socially unjust and ecologically unsustainable. They tell us that the ideals of equity and environmentalism compel us to live in high-density, low-impact housing, utilize shared transportation, and limit our consumption of anything that elevates our “carbon footprint.” And they are telling us that our taxes must be utilized to offer these same limited amenities to anyone who is “underserved,” “historically disadvantaged,” “unhoused,” or in any way a victim of “systemic discrimination.”

    All of these assertions are monstrous lies. California is unaffordable because of decades of political choices, escalating every year, that have created high prices for everything. And more to the point, the elites that Newsom is part of and represents are themselves profiting from all of these policies that have condemned most Californians to lives of constant work and constant economic struggle. Which is to say that Newsom’s lies about the “climate crisis” and the alleged pervasive ongoing scourge of bigotry are not even noble lies in the service of achieving a better future for all. They are lies in the service of corruption, a con job designed to further enrich and empower a small elite.

    Newsom is unqualified to be president of the United States for the same reason he is unfit to be governor of California. His entire public policy agenda is a rhetorical farce, existing only to fool voters, while across every major industry, politically connected players consolidate their power and their profits. Examples of this are comprehensive.

    Across every business sector, owners and executives face cruel choices: fight a losing battle to preserve competition and manage costs, or stop doing business in California entirely, or join the cabal. Some still fight. Countless businesses have left. And a growing number choose to accommodate. They accept stifling regulations, knowing they have reduced the number of competitors. They accept higher costs and pass them on to increasingly captive customers with fewer and fewer options. They become bloated with attorneys and bureaucrats to deal with myriad government agencies, and for whatever the customer cannot bear, they collect in government subsidies. It’s a vicious circle, and as California spirals into feudalism, it’s taking America with it.

    There is the homeless industrial complex, a consortium of government bureaucracies, “nonprofit” developers and operators, and for-profit vendors that have consumed tens of billions over just the past few years to house a laughably small fraction of California’s homeless, while simple shelters where sobriety was enforced would get them safe and on a path to recovery for a fraction of the cost.

    There is Environmentalism Inc., unifying ambitious and zealous government agencies with powerful environmentalist nonprofit advocacy groups, trial lawyers, “renewables” importers, manufacturers and systems integrators, joined with utilities that love high energy prices because their profit is held to a fixed percentage of revenue. Higher costs per kilowatt-hour or therm of natural gas equal more absolute profit.

    There are public sector unions—perhaps the most powerful special interest in the state—committed to the growth of government because it grows their membership dues. And the worse things get in California, the more unionized government employees are necessary to deal with crime, the homeless, and poverty. Societal failure is public sector success.

    Not least, of course, are the tech billionaires, who to date have used their personal wealth and the unprecedented influence of their companies to manipulate state and national politics according to their agenda. As described, that agenda checks all the rhetorical boxes but obscures raw ambition. History provides no comparable example of wealth and power this concentrated, and they want more.

    In every sphere, creating scarcity and shortages enriches the elites in California. Setting land aside to be preserved as “open space,” cordoning off urban areas and preventing expansion, is a perfect way to ensure that real estate investment portfolios—often held by huge hedge funds and public employee pension funds—continue to appreciate. And as ordinary Californians are priced out of owning homes, investment banks gobble up the inventory and rent the properties back to the plebes.

    This is what Gavin Newsom offers America.

    This is the scam—the historic, tragic, malevolent agenda that Newsom and the people he represents have resolved to inflict on the world.

    The alternative is not a mystery. Spend government money on practical infrastructure that yields long-term benefits instead of squandering hundreds of billions on absurd make-work projects like high-speed rail and floating offshore wind, which will be permanent drains on the economy. While recognizing reasonable environmental concerns, deregulate energy, mining, timber, water, transportation and housing so millions of Californians can be employed in high-paying jobs instead of collecting government benefits. And most of all, by restoring competition in all sectors of California’s economy, we can lower the cost of living.

    Gavin Newsom is smart enough to know this solution would work. But the people who donate to his campaigns, and who donate to the campaigns of the supermajority of progressives who are party to the same fraud, have no intention of ever permitting this solution to again become reality. That is why Newsom—and any politician like Newsom—can never be allowed to become U.S. president.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/10/2024 – 21:00

  • This Week In US Aviation: Boeing 757 Loses Wheel, 737 Aborts Takeoff Due To Tire Failure, Near-Miss In Syracuse
    This Week In US Aviation: Boeing 757 Loses Wheel, 737 Aborts Takeoff Due To Tire Failure, Near-Miss In Syracuse

    US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has prioritized combating systemic racism as the center point of his role in overseeing the federal transportation system, should really get back to basics and ensure taxpayers the aviation industry is safe once again following a series of mid-air mishaps with commercial jets this year. 

    The latest incident occurred early Wednesday morning when an American Airlines 737-800 aborted takeoff at Tampa International Airport due to a tire failure. Captain Steven Markovich posted footage of the incident online: 

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    American Airlines acknowledged the mechanical issue with American Airlines Flight 590: 

    “American Airlines flight 590 with service from Tampa (TPA) to Phoenix (PHX) experienced a mechanical issue on the runway prior to taking off. Customers safely deplaned and were bussed to the terminal.”

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    Earlier this week, on Monday, United Flight 1001, a Boeing 757-200, lost a main landing gear wheel while taking off from Los Angeles International Airport. A video of the incident was posted on X.  

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    Also on Monday, a Delta Connection flight nearly collided with an American Eagle flight at Syracuse Hancock International Airport. Fox News said the two planes came about “700 to 1,000 feet from each other vertically.” 

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    And there’s this. 

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    Come on, ‘Mayor Pete,’ do better. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/10/2024 – 20:40

  • Homes In California's Big Cities Cost 10 Times More Than Average Income
    Homes In California’s Big Cities Cost 10 Times More Than Average Income

    Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times,

    Buying a home in California slid further out of reach for many residents in 2023, especially in larger metropolitan areas, according to a recent Harvard University housing study.

    The report found some of the highest disparity between wages and housing prices in Northern California.

    According to the report released June 20, the Silicon Valley cities of San Jose, Sunnyvale, and Santa Clara had a median home sales price 11 times higher than the area’s average annual wage of nearly $113,000 in 2023.

    Median home sales prices are determined by finding the midpoint of all sales, where half sold for more and half for less.

    The same was found at the coast in Santa Cruz and Watsonville, where 2023 housing prices were also 11 times higher than the average yearly wage of almost $68,000.

    In Los Angeles County and Anaheim—in Orange County—the median home sales price was about 10 times more than the average wage of $98,200.

    Further south in San Diego and Carlsbad, housing reached nearly nine times more than the average wage of $76,000 last year.

    “Both homeowners and renters are struggling with high housing costs,” the authors of the report, called “The State of the Nation’s Housing 2024” wrote in its summary.

    Millions of potential homebuyers across the U.S. have been priced out of the market by rising home prices and interest rates. The cost of owning a home is also increasing as insurance and property taxes continue to rise, according to the report.

    And single-family home construction is likely limited by ongoing development hurdles and high construction costs, among other restrictions.

    California has taken several steps in the past few years, though, to try to make owning a home easier.

    San Francisco on Feb. 23, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    State officials have relaxed permitting and environmental review requirements to make projects easier, quicker, and cheaper to build.

    The state also rezoned land owned by religious institutions and colleges in 2023 to enable affordable housing development, resulting in 171,000 new developable acres.

    California is also offering a new grant program that provides low-income earners with $40,000 in pre-construction costs, as well as down payments in the amount of 20 percent—up to $150,000—for some first-time homebuyers.

    Still, the country is facing sharp price increases for rent and housing that started during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Dan McCue, a senior research associate and one of the lead authors of the report.

    Prices for homes nationwide are up 46 percent, and rental prices have jumped 26 percent since 2022, Mr. McCue said in a press conference on the report June 20.

    “Not only are prices high, but they’re rising once again,” he said. “It’s really adding insult to injury.”

    High-rise buildings in downtown San Diego, Calif., on Oct. 4, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    The number of houses on the market nationally is about 30 percent below those available before the pandemic, Mr. McCue added.

    Part of the reason for the shortage can be attributed to homeowners who are staying put and not selling while interest rates remain around 7 percent, he said. The combination of high prices and high interest rates has driven housing inventory to its lowest point in 20 years, he said.

    Rental growth has also slowed because rents have remained high after the pandemic. Such is a problem for the record number of renters—over 12 million nationally—who pay more than half of their income on housing, which is most common among middle- and low-income earners, according to Mr. McCue.

    Rising home insurance costs, which have gone up about 35 percent, are also hurting low-income homeowners, according to the report.

    “We are also concerned that homeownership is increasingly out of reach for all but the highest income households,” Mr. McCue said.

    “Access to homeownership has really been cut off in over half of the cities.”

    The demand for rentals and single-family homes, however, continues to grow, with 1.7 million more households in the U.S. in 2023, according to the report.

    Mr. McCue said he expects Gen Z, the generation that is now 12 to 27 years old, has added 8 million more households over the past four years.

    Immigration has also put pressure on available housing.

    “It’s a big increase, and it’s really propping up demand,” he said.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/10/2024 – 20:20

  • House Oversight Subpoenas Top Biden Handlers To Find Out Who's Running The Country
    House Oversight Subpoenas Top Biden Handlers To Find Out Who’s Running The Country

    The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed three top White House aides on Wednesday, and has demanded that they sit for depositions concerning President Joe Biden’s health – and who’s actually running the country.

    Aide Annie Tomasini, who referred to Hunter Biden as a ‘brother’ in emails, has been subpoenaed.

    As Axios reports, Oversight chair James Comer (R-KY) subpoenaed First Lady Jill Biden’s top aide Anthony Bernal, deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini, and senior adviser Ashley Williams, who the outlet described as “low-profile but very influential” inside the White House.

    According to Wednesday letters, Comer cites Bernal and Tomasini’s access to the first family’s residence – which White House residence staff found ‘unusual,’ as ‘political staffers often don’t have such access.’

    According to one former Biden aide, these three employees – Annie Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, and Ashley Williams – have created “a protective bubble around” President Biden and he is “staffed so closely that he’s lost all independence.” –House Oversight Committee

    Comer also writes that the committee is “concerned” that each official is “one of several White House staffers who have taken it upon themselves to run the country while the President cannot.”

    In his letter to Bernal — whose influence extends well beyond the first lady’s office — Comer wrote: The “Committee seeks to understand the extent of Mr. Bernal’s influence over the President and his knowledge of whether the President is personally discharging the duties of his office.” -Axios

    Tomasini, a close friend of the Biden family, maintained close relations with Hunter throughout the Obama administration – sometimes referring to him as her “brother,” and often ending emails with “LY” (Love You), according to emails dating from 2010 to 2016.

    “The White House has shielded three key aides from testifying about President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents and now we’ve learned through reporting these same aides are also seeking to cover up President Biden’s declining cognitive state inside the White House. President Biden is clearly unfit for office, yet his staff are trying to hide the truth from the American people. Key White House staff must come before our committee so we can provide the transparency and accountability that Americans deserve,” said Comer in a statement.

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/10/2024 – 20:00

  • 'Boots On The Ground' In The World's Bitcoin Paradise
    ‘Boots On The Ground’ In The World’s Bitcoin Paradise

    Authored by James Hickman via SchiffSovereign.com,

    [Editor’s note: This letter was written by Schiff Sovereign’s CEO, Viktorija Simulynaite, who is on the ground in El Salvador.]

    The first thing my driver said to me after I got off the plane in El Salvador was, “Welcome to my country. It’s very safe here now.”

    I chuckled to myself because this seemed like such an odd greeting. But the more time I spent mingling with locals in El Salvador, the more it made sense.

    The transformation that has taken place in the country over the past five years cannot be overstated.

    Five years ago El Salvador had one of the highest murder rates in the world. It was basically a war zone. Gangs such as MS-13 and Barrio 18 were far more powerful than the government, and they enforced their own laws in their respective territories, sort of like the Taliban in Afghanistan.

    The country’s young president, Nayib Bukele, put an end to all that when he was elected in 2019.

    Bukele invoked emergency powers and arrested more than 100,000 suspected gang members, then shipped them off to a special prison far away from the rest of society. In a country of 6.3 million, that amounts to over 1.5% of the entire population that’s now locked up.

    It was a controversial move to say the least… and I wonder about innocent people who may have been wrongfully imprisoned.

    But El Salvadorans seem quite happy with the results; today their country boasts a lower homicide rate than anywhere else in the Western Hemisphere aside from Canada.

    Simultaneously, El Salvador also put itself on the map by being one of the first countries in the world to get behind crypto; they even made Bitcoin legal tender and passed a number of pro-crypto tax incentives.

    Those are pretty much the two things that El Salvador is known for these days– putting tens of thousands of criminals in jail, and Bitcoin.

    But I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the country has so much more going for it.

    This was a place that was scraping the bottom of the barrel just a few years ago. Even aside from the crime problem, the economy was in the dumps. Corruption and bureaucracy ruled the day, and debts were rising.

    In just a few short years, however, El Salvador has managed to turn itself around, and the economy has taken off.

    It’s not an accident. The government has slashed bureaucracy and established a number of incentives to bring in foreign capital and businesses.

    One is the recently passed International Services Law, which offers significant tax incentives to service-based businesses, similar to Puerto Rico’s famous Act 60.

    El Salvador’s law, though, is perhaps even more generous than Puerto Rico’s because it includes exemption for import duties, income taxes, municipal taxes, and more.

    Service industries like call centers, data centers, software development, and other back-office services are starting to be growing industries in El Salvador, and I met a number of foreign entrepreneurs who are starting businesses in the capital.

    Foreign investment is flowing in, and you can see construction projects everywhere– the capital city is quickly becoming sleek and modern, and it completely defied my expectations. Even the restaurant scene is really great.

    More importantly, there’s an optimism in El Salvador– one that I haven’t seen in Europe and North America for a long time. People feel like the worst days are over and the future will continue to be much brighter.

    Now, all that said, I’m not trying to suggest that El Salvador is some perfect paradise or that anyone should move their business there. I’m really writing about it as a sort of case study.

    We talk a lot about how governments and politicians and “inspired idiots” wreck their economies.

    They rack up massive debts and engineer painful inflation and higher energy prices… and generally make things worse with their every move.

    But it’s fair to point out that sometimes governments do smart things. And El Salvador is a great example.

    They knew they had to figure out how to turn their economy around. And rather than go down a destructive rabbit hole of wage and price controls, which are standard approaches for bankrupt nations, El Salvador’s government got out of the way and is allowing the free market to blossom.

    The one thing they have done very deliberately is market themselves.

    Advanced western countries don’t do this.

    Joe Biden doesn’t travel the world pushing foreign nations to invest in America. Rather, he takes America’s standing for granted and simply assumes that everyone wants to invest there.

    El Salvador is a tiny country plagued by a bad reputation for its past challenges.

    But rather than let that reputation fester, its leaders are hustling to promote their country all over the world with a clear message: El Salvador is open for business.

    It’s fascinating to watch such a positive transformation unfold for an entire nation in real time– and to see politicians deliberately do the right things to foster economic growth.

    Given how many Western countries are rapidly deteriorating from their own idiotic political decisions, El Salvador is an obvious example of how much better things could be if reason and sanity were restored in government.

    Imagine what the US would look like if politicians were actually cooperating and hustling to bring in new business, to make smart investments, to embrace capitalism, or even to simply rein in spending and slash bureaucratic waste…

    We’re planning a boots on the ground trip to El Salvador for members of our Total Access group (i.e. our highest tier premium members at Schiff Sovereign). It’s going to be pretty great.

    We’ll be meeting with senior officials and business leaders and checking out, firsthand, what’s going on in the country so that our members can see the transformation for themselves.

    We’ll also eat at some of the country’s nicest restaurants and tour the beautiful countryside. And we might even leave with an investment or two.

    (We’ve already had Total Access trips to places like Cuba, Singapore, the Republic of Georgia, Uzbekistan, and more, so El Salvador fits perfectly.)

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/10/2024 – 19:40

  • Stranded Astronauts On ISS Still 'Confident' In Issue-Plagued Boeing Starliner
    Stranded Astronauts On ISS Still ‘Confident’ In Issue-Plagued Boeing Starliner

    Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams have been living on the International Space Station (ISS) for over a month after their Boeing Starliner spacecraft encountered a series of technical issues, including helium leaks and a thruster malfunction.

    Wilmore and Williams blasted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force on June 5 and docked with the ISS one day later. Both astronauts were expected to spend just a week aboard the ISS and return to Earth by June 14.

    However, five separate helium leaks in the Starliner’s thruster system and five failures of its reaction control system thrusters, critical systems for safely orienting the spacecraft into Earth’s atmosphere, were detected. These unresolved problems have stranded both astronauts on the ISS ever since.

    On Wednesday, Sunita Williams, 58, a former Navy service member, told reporters via a remote video link, “I feel confident that if we had to — if there was a problem with the International Space Station — we’d get in our spacecraft and we can undock, talk to our team and figure out the best way to come home.” 

    Williams added, “I have a real good feeling in my heart that the spacecraft will bring us home, no problem.”

    “We’re absolutely confident,” flight commander Wilmore, 61, a former Navy captain, told reporters. He said the “Safe Haven procedure” with Williams had already been conducted inside the Starliner in the event of an ISS incident. 

    Williams noted, “We’ve been through a lot of simulations…and I think where we are right now…I feel confident that if we had to, if there was a problem with the International Space Station, we could get in our spacecraft, we could undock, talk to our team and, and figure out the best way to come home.” 

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    Wilmore and Williams are considered the ‘guinea pig’ test pilots for Starliner’s inaugural ISS mission. There was recent news from Boeing that teams at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico were conducting simulated ground-based thruster tests. 

    “This testing is trying to replicate what the worst-case thruster saw inflight,” Mark Nappi, Boeing’s vice president of its Commercial Crew Program, told reporters. 

    Based on the engineers’ findings from the test, NASA and Boeing will determine the next step for Starliner. 

    Wouldn’t that be something if Elon Musk’s SpaceX was called up to emergency deploy a Dragon capsule to rescue the stranded astronauts? 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/10/2024 – 19:20

  • The Nationwide 500,000 EV Charger Charade
    The Nationwide 500,000 EV Charger Charade

    Authored by Geoffrey Pohanka via American Greatness,

    The word charade has several meanings, and including an act or event that is clearly false (Cambridge Dictionary), something done just for show (Vocabulary.com), or a situation in which people pretend that something is true when it clearly is not (Oxford Leaner’s Dictionary).

    The charade I refers to is President Biden’s $7.5 billion dollar investment to install 500,000 electric charging stations along America’s highways by 2030. A reliable and convenient public EV charging infrastructure is critical to achieve the President’s goal of meeting the recent EPA CO2 emission regulation that require nearly 72% of U.S. new light vehicle sales to be fully electric or plug-in hybrid by 2032. Without diving deeper into the announcement, one would likely assume that $7.5 billion is sufficient to construct the 500,000 charging stations, one every 50 miles along the nation’s highways.

    To identify the charade, one must first, look at the math:

    • 500,000 charging stations, each with a minimum of four chargers, accomplished with an investment of $7.5 billion dollars.

    • But that is only $15,000 per charging station, installed.

    • A single high capacity charger can cost $100,000 or more, and most stations have multiple chargers.

    • We are now in the second year of the program and only seven stations have been opened so far.

    • At this rate, it will require thousands of years to build all 500,000 charging stations, assuming there are sufficient funds to do so.

    Global consulting firm McKinsey and Company estimates that the U.S. will need 28 million charging ports by 2030.

    There are just two million charging ports today.

    To meet the goal, about 12,000 new public and private charging ports will need to be added every single day to reach the goal by 2030.

    It is true that significantly more government funded charging stations are in the works and will be opened.

    The stations completed so far cost significantly more than what has been promised.

    With retailers contributing land to the projects opened so far, the cost of each station has averaged one-million dollars, with the government participation of 80% of the cost.

    Eight-hundred-thousand dollars for each station is significantly more than the 15,000 committed by the administration.

    At this rate, the 500,000 charging stations will cost the government $400 billion, not the $7.5 billion the President has promised.

    If the administration is so wrong with this program, one must consider how many government programs designed to bring electric vehicles to the masses are similarly defective.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/10/2024 – 19:00

  • Et Tu, Zelensky? Ukrainian Leader 'Concerned' About Biden's Health
    Et Tu, Zelensky? Ukrainian Leader ‘Concerned’ About Biden’s Health

    The White House is likely asking: Et tu, Zelensky?… after the Ukrainian leader has belatedly voiced concerns over Biden’s health in the wake of his disastrous presidential debate with Trump.

    While in Washington D.C. for the big NATO summit, which is heavily focused on the war in Ukraine, Axios writes that “President Volodymyr Zelensky is among the leaders who watched the presidential debate and is concerned about the situation, according to a Ukrainian source.”

    Via Reuters

    Zelensky, who has been given tens of billions by the Biden administration to help fight off the Russians, didn’t shy away from telling a press conference in Washington, “Let’s be candid and frank: Everyone is waiting for November.”

    “The whole world is looking to November, and truly speaking, Putin awaits November too.” Zelensky is set to meet with President Biden on Thursday, even as the whole world begins preparing for a likely Trump presidency after the election.

    An unnamed European diplomat voiced the same sentiment, telling Axios, “People are coming [to the NATO summit in Washington] to witness whether Biden is or is no longer [in charge].”

    This as the White House continues to give mixed signals, with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre having openly admitted that a “team” is actually in charge and not the elected Commander-in-Chief…

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    Meanwhile, Bloomberg in a fresh report has said European countries have begun holding secretive meetings with the Trump team, in another sign that confidence in Biden is dropping fast.

    “Delegations from across Europe were quietly slotting in meetings with advisers and others with links to Donald Trump as they grapple with the possibility — some say likelihood — that he will reclaim the Oval Office,” Bloomberg says in its Wednesday report. “They were hoping to get a clearer sense of just what a Trump victory might mean for an alliance he regularly targets for criticism.”

    And more: “Many NATO and European Union nations have asked for meetings with officials who served under Trump, as well as with prominent Republican legislators seen to be close to him, according to people familiar with the planning.”

    The report further points to an unexpectedly ironic state of affairs concerning George Clooney suddenly coming out against Biden re-running:

    Biden faced new calls on Capitol Hill Wednesday to step aside. Even actor George Clooney went public with an opinion piece Wednesday calling on him not to run. It was an irony of sorts: after a summit in Italy last month, Biden said goodbye to many of the same leaders and joined a California fundraiser hosted by Clooney instead of attending a Ukraine peace summit.

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    The Ukrainians too are panicking, it could actually hasten some kind of deal-making with Moscow to wind down the war. Bloomerg’s White House correspondent Jennifer Jacobs has written on X: “Kyiv wants to convene a second meeting to achieve a fair peace settlement in Ukraine before the US elections in November — this time with Russia attending.”

    It would further be an ultra-ironic state of affairs if Trump was able to bring peace just by getting elected, and before he even enters office, which would be a fulfillment of his prior campaign vows to achieve peace ‘within 24 hours’.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/10/2024 – 18:40

  • In 'Brutal' CNN Interview, Dem Senator Says Trump Could Beat Biden In "Landslide"; Stephanopoulos Doubts Another Term
    In ‘Brutal’ CNN Interview, Dem Senator Says Trump Could Beat Biden In “Landslide”; Stephanopoulos Doubts Another Term

    Sen. Michael Bennett (D-CO) on Tuesday became the first Democratic senator to publicly cast doubt on President Joe Biden’s chances against Donald Trump in November.

    “Donald Trump is on track, I think, to win this election, and maybe win it by a landslide, and take with him the Senate and the House,” Bennett told CNN‘s Kaitlan Collins on Tuesday – after telling colleagues the same in private. “So for me, this isn’t a question about polling. It’s not a question about politics. It’s a moral question about the future of our country.”

    “The White House, in the time since that disastrous debate, I think, has done nothing to really demonstrate that they have a plan to win this election,” he continued.

    Watch:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsBennet’s comments echo those of a growing number of congressional Democrats who say Biden’s reelection bid could hurt the entire party in down-ballot races this fall. As CNN reports, “Democrats, including those inside the administration, view this week as critical to Biden’s political survival, and lawmakers on Capitol Hill gathered privately for their weekly meetings on Tuesday.”

    “The stakes could not be higher,” said Bennett, who says his voters have “deep concerns” over whether Biden can win.

    Punchbowl News had a sobering take on the state of affairs for Democrats in their Wednesday AM newsletter, saying Biden has “made a mess of the Democratic party.“

    Senate Democrats were far from united about whether Biden is the best person to defeat Trump. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told us that Biden needs to “continue to aggressively make his case” to his fellow Democratic senators in order to “earn full support.”

    New Jersey Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill issued a statement Tuesday afternoon calling on Biden to step aside in favor of another Democratic candidate.

    Fellow New Jersey Democratic Rep. Andy Kim — who’s running for Senate — walked right up the line of whether Biden should get out.

    “What steps can we actually take right now [to replace Biden.] That’s where some of the confusion is. Especially with all the talk of what are the actual deadlines. It’s hard to kind of make a decision without fully understanding that. We need to get a better grasp on it,” said Kim.

    Meanwhile, House Democratic leaders met privately on Tuesday morning with some of their most vulnerable members, for a conversation that was “honest, brutal and intense,” and left some members crying, according to sources with knowledge of the meeting.

    Stephanopoulos Opines

    ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos, meanwhile, told TMZ that he doesn’t think Biden can serve another four years.

    The 63-year-old Stephanopoulos sat down for a closely-watched interview with Biden last week following the president’s disastrous debate performance last month against Donald Trump.

    “Do you think Biden should step down?” the TMZ journalist asked the “Good Morning America” co-host and moderator of “This Week.”

    “I don’t think he can serve four more years,” replied Stephanopoulos after a pause.

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    Stephanopoulos walked back his comment hours later, telling Puck News “Earlier today I responded to a question from a passerby. I shouldn’t have.”

    ABC News told the outlet: “George expressed his own point of view and not the position of ABC News.“

    During the interview between Stephanopoulos and Biden, the president failed to tamp down concerns over his cognitive fitness to continue as president – claiming that he was “exhausted” and “sick” with a “bad cold” heading into the June 27 debate against Trump in Atlanta.

    At another point in the interview, Biden rejected calls to exit the race, saying “If the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race’, I’d get out of the race, but the Lord Almighty’s not coming down.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/10/2024 – 18:35

  • "Laughable & Propesterous" 198 Democrats Vote Against Republicans' Election Integrity Bill
    “Laughable & Propesterous” 198 Democrats Vote Against Republicans’ Election Integrity Bill

    Update (1830ET): Just as expected, the Democrats – en masse – voted against Speaker Johnson’s bill and therefore for ‘cheating’ in the election.

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    We would be interested to see who the five Democrats that voted for law and order and election integrity were though.

    Co-sponsor of the bill, Congressman Paul A. Gosar, D.D.S. (AZ-09), issued the following statement:

    “I find it both laughable and preposterous that the same people who, for the past four years, forced you to carry a vaccine passport to dine in a restaurant, hold a job or get on a flight are the same people now opposing common-sense legislation requiring individuals to show proof of American citizenship to vote in elections.

    Voters are overwhelmingly concerned about the integrity of elections and rightfully so.  In fact, most states today continue to allow illegal aliens to receive a driver’s license, thus allowing voter registration materials.  With 11 million lawbreakers pouring across Joe Biden’s open border, this legislation is a crucial step towards ensuring our elections are fair and honest,” concluded Congressman Gosar.

    Hakeem Jeffries labels the SAVE Act as the “Extreme MAGA Republican Voter Suppression Bill.”

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    This wholesale rejection of common sense merely exposes the Democrats’ not so cunning plan during the election and into the future.

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    As @WesternLensman explains perfectly in a post on X:

    Jeffries frames the bill as being designed to cover for a Trump loss in the 2024 election, and somehow ties a bill that makes it harder for non-citizens to vote to January 6.
     
    Where do we even start.

    Here’s what in the SAVE Act, and what Jeffries is really against:

    • Require proof of US citizenship to register to vote in federal elections

    • Prevent non-citizens who receive drivers’ licenses from registering to vote

    • Require states to acquire documentary proof of US citizenship in person when registering to vote

    • Require states to establish a process for applicants who do not have documentary proof of US citizenship, but are US citizens

    • Require states to remove non-citizens from their voter rolls, with free access to federal and state databases with citizenship information

    • Provide states with resources to remove non-citizens form their voter rolls

    There is only one reason to oppose this legislation.

    You want to cheat.

    *  *  *

    Back in May, House Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled legislation designed to ensure that only American citizens vote.

    The unfortunate reality is that Joe Biden has let in millions of illegal immigrants, and the risk that these immigrants could influence our elections is extremely high. Legislation like this is absolutely necessary.

    As Matt Margolis previously detailed below via PJMedia.com, Johnson was pushing for the bill before the Independence Day recess with a thread explaining what the legislation does to ensure that only U.S. citizens vote. 

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    Many on the left oppose this legislation, claiming that it’s unnecessary because it is already illegal to vote if you’re not a U.S. citizen. However, Johnson addressed this when he introduced the bill earlier this year.

    “Some have noted that it’s already a crime for noncitizens to vote in a federal election, and that is true. But here are four things that are also true,” Speaker Johnson said back in May.

    “(1) It is true that there is no mechanism to ensure only those registering or voting are actually citizens…

    (2) It is true that Biden has welcomed millions and millions of illegal aliens, including sophisticated criminal syndicates and agents of adversarial governments, into our borders and even on humanitarian parole…

    (3) It is true that a growing number of localities are blurring the lines for noncitizens by allowing them to vote in municipal elections…

    (4) It is true that Democrats have expressed a desire to turn non-citizens into voters.”

    So, what does the bill do?

    Johnson explained in a thread on X/Twitter that the legislation requires state election officials to verify citizenship before providing voter registration forms, mandates proof of citizenship to register for federal elections, and accepts various documents to ease the registration process for citizens. It also gives states access to federal databases to remove noncitizens from voter rolls and confirms citizenship for those lacking proof.

    Additionally, it directs DHS to consider removal proceedings for noncitizens registered to vote and ensures naturalized citizens are notified of their voting rights.

    Who could oppose such commonsense legislation to protect our elections?

    The Democrats, of course. 

    [ZH: House Democratic leadership is bringing out the big guns against a Republican bill set to be voted on next week that would require proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in federal elections, Axios has learned.

    In a whip question – a roundup of the coming week’s votes with instructions for how leadership wants rank-and-file members to vote – House Minority Whip Katherine Clark’s (D-Mass.) office told House Democrats they are “urged to VOTE NO” on the bill.

    That means that Democratic leadership will send its whip team to cajole colleagues into not supporting the legislation.

    The bill, Clark’s office said, would create an “extreme burden for countless Americans” and “further intimidate election officials and overburden states’ abilities to enroll new voters.”]

    Elon Musk weighed in on the proposed legislation by reposting Johnson’s thread on X.

    He dubbed those who oppose it “TRAITORS,” and then rhetorically asked what the punishment for treason is.

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    The punishment for treason in the United States, as laid out in 18 U.S. Code § 2381, is the death penalty, or a minimum of five years in prison.

    Also, they are to be fined no less than $10,000 and rendered constitutionally ineligible to hold office in the United States.

    I’m perfectly okay with Democrats who oppose election integrity being barred from holding office. How about you?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/10/2024 – 18:30

  • Nationalism: The Great Rethinking
    Nationalism: The Great Rethinking

    Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The year was 1882 and the speaker at the University of Paris, Sorbonne, was the essayist and historian Ernest Renan. His topic: “What Is a Nation?” The thesis rocked the continent and the world. What he called for, in essence, was nations by choice not by force.

    Portrait of Ernest Renan (1823-1892) by Antoine Samuel Adam-Salomon. (The Art Institute of Chicago/Public Domain)

    I know that it is hard for us today to imagine that the words of any academic intellectual could or would have that impact but times were different. People in those days took intellectuals seriously, probably because they existed and earned their reputations.

    Renan listed five markers of what could be considered a nation: heredity, geography, language, race, and religion/culture. All are potentially coercive, and tempted states with the power to grab people out of their lives and cultures and draft them into some grand project. This, he said, was inconsistent with liberalism as understood in the 19th century, which revolved around the freedom of choice.

    The only kind of nationalism that is conscionable is that which calls for a regular plebiscite, the consent of the people. Nations are self-organizing, not created from without but from within. They can only be assembled by the consent of the governed.

    Why should this even matter so much at the time? The 1880s were a time of dramatic change for the world in politics. The old multinational monarchies were dying out. The Papal states were slipping away under the pressure of the demand for political independence. The Spanish Empire was long gone and the Holy Roman Empire was a fading memory except to populate fashionable cocktail parties with personages of past prestige. The British Empire was already receding. The ethos of democracy was winning the day the world over.

    There was an urgent need to decide some standard by which political independence was recognized as legitimate, without hurling the world into chaos and war. Renan’s goal was to provide such a standard.

    A few decades later, this became supremely important following the catastrophe of the Great War. The multinational monarchies met their final doom and it fell to the world community to decide what nations are and could be.

    In the end, and tragically, it was left to the victors in the war to decide. That meant leaving it to a deeply unpopular U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, who only held office due to a split in the Republican Party that swept him into office in 1912. He barely won reelection in 1916 but following the Great War, it fell to his office to determine which European nations would be granted legitimacy. He knew almost nothing about the topic, which left it to the lobbying of European leaders to explain the lay of the land to him.

    The results were obviously imperfect. Together with the rough terms of peace with the Versailles Treaty, the defeated foes were left with huge debts and an incentive to inflate, and a seething political anger that intensified over the decades. The result was the most dreaded outcome of all: a second world war.

    In any case, Renan’s template for the good kind of nationalism dominated after the Great War. All responsible intellectuals saw nationalism as a path to peace and freedom in a war-torn continent. To form one’s nation by consent was seen as an extension of freedom. Wilson called this “self-determination” and mostly people agreed that this was the ideal. This kind of nationalism was regarded as the best post-monarchical model for liberal international relations.

    My own top intellectual influence is the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. His 1919 book was “Nation, State, and Economy.” In his view, language (speech) was the best basis to define nationhood. It’s hard for Americans to understand this since it would seem to put us in one nation with England and Australia. At the time, however, this theory made sense in a European context. Think of the strange and unsustainable amalgams of Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia; a language-centered nationalism could have predicted their demise.

    Mises himself was Austrian, of Jewish heritage, and was thinking in those terms.

    If a group was united in language, he argued, it was a viable nation. And this is a good path to peace.

    “The nationality principle above all bears no sword against members of other nations,” he wrote. “It is directed in tyrannos. Therefore, above all, there is also no opposition between national and citizen-of-the-world attitudes. The idea of freedom is both national and cosmopolitan. It is revolutionary, for it wants to abolish all rule incompatible with its principles, but it is also pacifistic. What basis for war could there still be, once all peoples had been set free? Political liberalism concurs on that point with economic liberalism, which proclaims the solidarity of interests among peoples.”

    It’s fascinating to read that passage in light of what came after. As it turns out, a different form of nationalism was rising in Germany from 1923 and onwards. It absolutely bore a sword. It took the idea of race and ran with it, postulating that the German nation should extend to everyone of “Aryan” race, purging territories of groups that fall outside that designation. In this, the rise of German nationalism drew on race studies of the late 19th century, and trampled all over both Renan’s postulates and Mises’s hopes for the future of nationalism.

    What makes for fascinating reading is Mises’s own 1944 wartime history of the rise of the Nazis. His book “Omnipotent Government” offered a diametrically opposed view of nationalism. In chapter after chapter, he shredded the racial view of political community, condemned all forms of imperialism, and blasted militarism based on nationalistic ambitions. Clearly, his attitudes had changed in light of events. The Second World War caused him to turn against the ideology of nationalism, treating it as potentially aggressive and the enemy rather than the friend of freedom.

    The purpose in recounting this history is simply to say that there is not one correct view of nationalism. It depends on the historical and political context and the cultural and political assumptions behind nationalist feelings.

    After the end of the Cold War, many had hoped that the United States would return to its roots as a peaceful commercial Republic, doing as George Washington said: trading with all and making political alliances with no one, being a light unto all nations while staying out of the internal affairs of foreign nations. This view was widely held on the left and right. However, many in power had different views. They wanted to deploy the newly earned status as the world’s only superpower to become the globe’s policeman, with war after war, intervening in every border dispute or otherwise.

    It was in those days that my own attitudes on nationalism shifted. On matters of political organization, nationalism struck me as mostly benign. But on matters of race and migration, globalism seemed to me to be the right answer. Yes, I was a product of my times and did not know it.

    What I and others had not seen coming was something different, the rise of globalist institutions—built from both public and private monies—that had every intention of trampling on sovereign rights, not only of the domestic political community but also on foreign peoples.

    This new globalism was never more on display than in the pandemic policy response, which the World Health Organization urged every nation to adopt the strategies and tactics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in China, locking citizens in their homes and attempting to protect health through use of extreme force. All nations in the world adopted this tactic, save only a few, and this approach wrecked economies, destabilized political systems, and demoralized people of the world. If nothing else, this experience highlighted the dangers of globalist ideology.

    Here we are nearly a century and a half after Renan’s Sorbonne lecture and still grappling with the great question of nationalism. We do have experience to draw on. We know now that nationalism can be a check on globalist power, exactly as Mises imagined it after the Great War, but we are also aware of the dangers associated with chauvinism and imperialism in the name of nation building too, as Mises also mapped out.

    For now, I’m inclined to have a warmer view toward the nationalist temperament if only to guard against the real and present threat of a globalist ruling class imposing rules on the entire planet, creating a regime for the world over which national political systems have no influence. This danger is real and all around us.

    For now, the urge to reassert national sovereignty—whether in the form of American patriotism or European skepticism toward the European Union—strikes me as a necessary frame of mind to get us back to the fundamental principle of freedom itself.

    In theory, the path toward freedom seems easy: human rights, governments that are limited to strict functions only, and diplomacy over war. In practice, this ambition ends up taking a circuitous route. It was true in the last century and it is true in ours as well.

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

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/10/2024 – 18:20

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