Today’s News 11th November 2022

• The Government Is Still Waging War On America's Military Veterans
  The Government Is Still Waging War On America’s Military Veterans

  Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “For soldiers … coming home is more lethal than being in combat.” 

  – Brené Brown, research professor at the University of Houston

  The U.S. government is still waging war on America’s military veterans.

  

  Especially veterans who exercise their First Amendment right to speak out against government wrongdoing.

  Consider: we raise our young people on a steady diet of militarism and war, sell them on the idea that defending freedom abroad by serving in the military is their patriotic duty, then when they return home, bruised and battle-scarred and committed to defending their freedoms at home, we often treat them like criminals merely for exercising those rights they risked their lives to defend.

  As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, the government even has a name for its war on America’s veterans: Operation Vigilant Eagle.

  This Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program tracks military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and characterizes them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.”

  Coupled with the DHS’ dual reports on Rightwing and Leftwing “Extremism,” which broadly define extremists as individuals, military veterans and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely,” these tactics bode ill for anyone seen as opposing the government.

  Yet the government is not merely targeting individuals who are voicing their discontent so much as it is taking aim at individuals trained in military warfare.

  Don’t be fooled by the fact that the DHS has gone extremely quiet about Operation Vigilant Eagle.

  Where there’s smoke, there’s bound to be fire.

  And the government’s efforts to target military veterans whose views may be perceived as “anti-government” make clear that something is afoot.

  In recent years, military servicemen and women have found themselves increasingly targeted for surveillance, censorship, threatened with incarceration or involuntary commitment, labeled as extremists and/or mentally ill, and stripped of their Second Amendment rights.

  In light of the government’s efforts to lay the groundwork to weaponize the public’s biomedical data and predict who might pose a threat to public safety based on mental health sensor data (a convenient means by which to penalize certain “unacceptable” social behaviors), encounters with the police could get even more deadly, especially if those involved have a mental illness or disability coupled with a military background.

  Incredibly, as part of a proposal introduced under the Trump Administration, a new government agency HARPA (a healthcare counterpart to the Pentagon’s research and development arm DARPA) will take the lead in identifying and targeting “signs” of mental illness or violent inclinations among the populace by using artificial intelligence to collect data from Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo and Google Home.

  These tactics are not really new.

  Many times throughout history in totalitarian regimes, such governments have declared dissidents mentally ill and unfit for society as a means of rendering them disempowering them.

  For example, government officials in the Cold War-era Soviet Union often used psychiatric hospitals as prisons in order to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally through the use of electric shocks, drugs and various medical procedures.

  This age-old practice by which despotic regimes eliminate their critics or potential adversaries by declaring them mentally ill and locking them up in psychiatric wards for extended periods of time is a common practice in present-day China.

  What is particularly unnerving, however, is how this practice of eliminating or undermining potential critics, including military veterans, is happening with increasing frequency in the United States.

  Remember, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) opened the door for the government to detain as a threat to national security anyone viewed as a troublemaker. According to government guidelines for identifying domestic extremists—a word used interchangeably with terrorists—technically, anyone exercising their First Amendment rights in order to criticize the government qualifies.

  It doesn’t take much anymore to be flagged as potentially anti-government in a government database somewhere—Main Core, for example—that identifies and tracks individuals who aren’t inclined to march in lockstep to the government’s dictates.

  In fact, as the Washington Post reports, communities are being mapped and residents assigned a color-coded threat score—green, yellow or red—so police are forewarned about a person’s potential inclination to be a troublemaker depending on whether they’ve had a career in the military, posted a comment perceived as threatening on Facebook, suffer from a particular medical condition, or know someone who knows someone who might have committed a crime.

  The case of Brandon Raub is a prime example of Operation Vigilant Eagle in action.

  Raub, a 26-year-old decorated Marine, actually found himself interrogated by government agents about his views on government corruption, arrested with no warning, labeled mentally ill for subscribing to so-called “conspiratorial” views about the government, detained against his will in a psych ward for standing by his views, and isolated from his family, friends and attorneys. Within days of Raub being seized and forcibly held in a VA psych ward, news reports started surfacing of other veterans having similar experiences.

  “Oppositional defiance disorder” (ODD) is another diagnosis being used against veterans who challenge the status quo. As journalist Anthony Martin explains, an ODD diagnosis

  “denotes that the person exhibits ‘symptoms’ such as the questioning of authority, the refusal to follow directions, stubbornness, the unwillingness to go along with the crowd, and the practice of disobeying or ignoring orders. Persons may also receive such a label if they are considered free thinkers, nonconformists, or individuals who are suspicious of large, centralized government… At one time the accepted protocol among mental health professionals was to reserve the diagnosis of oppositional defiance disorder for children or adolescents who exhibited uncontrollable defiance toward their parents and teachers.”

  That the government is using the charge of mental illness as the means by which to immobilize (and disarm) these veterans is diabolical. With one stroke of a magistrate’s pen, these veterans are being declared mentally ill, locked away against their will, and stripped of their constitutional rights.

  If it were just being classified as “anti-government,” that would be one thing.

  Unfortunately, anyone with a military background and training is also now being viewed as a heightened security threat by police who are trained to shoot first and ask questions later.

  Feeding this perception of veterans as ticking time bombs in need of intervention, the Justice Department launched a pilot program in 2012 aimed at training SWAT teams to deal with confrontations involving highly trained and often heavily armed combat veterans.

  The result?

  Police encounters with military veterans often escalate very quickly into an explosive and deadly situation, especially when SWAT teams are involved.

  For example, Jose Guerena, a Marine who served in two tours in Iraq, was killed after an Arizona SWAT team kicked open the door of his home during a mistaken drug raid and opened fire. Thinking his home was being invaded by criminals, Guerena told his wife and child to hide in a closet, grabbed a gun and waited in the hallway to confront the intruders. He never fired his weapon. In fact, the safety was still on his gun when he was killed. The SWAT officers, however, not as restrained, fired 70 rounds of ammunition at Guerena—23 of those bullets made contact. Apart from his military background, Guerena had had no prior criminal record, and the police found nothing illegal in his home.

  John Edward Chesney, a 62-year-old Vietnam veteran, was killed by a SWAT team allegedly responding to a call that the Army veteran was standing in his San Diego apartment window waving what looked like a semi-automatic rifle. SWAT officers locked down Chesney’s street, took up positions around his home, and fired 12 rounds into Chesney’s apartment window. It turned out that the gun Chesney reportedly pointed at police from three stories up was a “realistic-looking mock assault rifle.”

  Ramon Hooks’ encounter with a Houston SWAT team did not end as tragically, but it very easily could have. Hooks, a 25-year-old Iraq war veteran, was using an air rifle gun for target practice outside when a Homeland Security Agent, allegedly house shopping in the area, reported him as an active shooter. It wasn’t long before the quiet neighborhood was transformed into a war zone, with dozens of cop cars, an armored vehicle and heavily armed police. Hooks was arrested, his air rifle pellets and toy gun confiscated, and charges filed against him for “criminal mischief.”

  Given the government’s increasing view of veterans as potential domestic terrorists, it makes one think twice about government programs encouraging veterans to include a veterans designation on their drivers’ licenses and ID cards.

  Hailed by politicians as a way to “make it easier for military veterans to access discounts from retailers, restaurants, hotels and vendors across the state,” it will also make it that much easier for the government to identify and target veterans who dare to challenge the status quo.

  Remember: no one is spared in a police state.

  Eventually, as I make clear in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we all suffer the same fate.

  It stands to reason that if the government can’t be bothered to abide by its constitutional mandate to respect the citizenry’s rights—whether it’s the right to be free from government surveillance and censorship, the right to due process and fair hearings, the right to be free from roadside strip searches and militarized police, or the right to peacefully assemble and protest and exercise our right to free speech—then why should anyone expect the government to treat our nation’s veterans with respect and dignity?

  Certainly, veterans have enough physical and psychological war wounds to overcome without adding the government to the mix. Although the U.S. boasts more than 20 million veterans who have served in World War II through the present day, large numbers of veterans are impoverished, unemployed, traumatized mentally and physically, struggling with depression, suicide, and marital stress, homeless, subjected to sub-par treatment at clinics and hospitals, and left to molder while their paperwork piles up within Veterans Administration offices.

  At least 60,000 veterans died by suicide between 2008 and 2017.

  On average, 6,000 veterans kill themselves every year. However, a recent study suggests that the rate of suicide among veterans may be more than double what federal officials report annually.

  The plight of veterans today—and their treatment at the hands of the U.S. government—remains America’s badge of shame.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/10/2022 – 23:40

• OR Gun Control Referendum Nears Goal Line; Iowans Approve Gun Rights Amendment
  OR Gun Control Referendum Nears Goal Line; Iowans Approve Gun Rights Amendment

  Gun rights and gun control advocates were both eyeing two major state gun referendums this week. There may be something for both crowds to cheer about — as Iowans firmly embraced gun rights, while Oregonians may have approved a strict gun control regime in a vote that’s still being tallied.  

  In addition to criminalizing possession of a magazine that can hold more than 10 rounds, Oregon’s “Measure 114” would require a permit to purchase any firearm. To obtain the permit, Oregonians would have to: 

  • Pay a fee that’s expected to be $65

  • Be fingerprinted

  • Pass a criminal background check

  • Complete a safety training course 

  Gun owners’ privacy would be violated:

  “State police would be required to maintain an electronically searchable, publicly available database of all permit applications,” reported The Epoch Times.

  With 72% of the vote counted as this article is written, “Yes” is leading 50.8% to 49.2%. Though most outlets have not indicated a final result, The Oregonian raced to declare the measure’s adoption on Election Night, on the basis that most of the votes left to be counted are from areas favoring the referendum. 

  “Sadly, this blatant assault on the Second Amendment rights of honest citizens narrowly passed — restrictions that include mandatory training, background checks, fingerprinting, and permitting. All of these infringements are completely contrary to the Supreme Court’s Bruen precedent, and ultimately, will be overturned.” Erich Pratt Senior VP, GOA.

  In social media posts on Wednesday, at least two Oregon sheriffs said they’ll defy the measure, either in whole or part: 

  • “This is an infringement on our constitutional rights and will not be enforced by my office!” said Union County Sheriff Cody Bowen in a Facebook post. “Hear this! When it comes to our constitutional rights I’ll fight to the death to defend them. No matter what crazy law comes out of Salem!”

  • “I want to send a clear message to Linn County residents that the Linn County Sheriff’s Office is NOT going to be enforcing magazine capacity limits,” said Sheriff Michelle Duncan.  

  Beyond its imposition of barriers to the exercise of a fundamental human right, the referendum has a Catch-22 built into it, according to Oregon trial attorney Leonard Williamson. 

  “In order to obtain the permit, an applicant would have to show up with a firearm to demonstrate the ability to load, fire, unload, and store the firearm,” Williamson told The Epoch Times. “But you can’t get a firearm without the permit. And under Oregon’s highly restrictive gun storage laws, no one can legally loan a firearm to another. That creates an impassable barrier.”

  There’s another built-in problem: 

  “Firearms dealers will not be able to sell a firearm to anyone without a permit; since the permit system does not exist, all legal firearms sales in the State of Oregon will stop until a permit system is established,” says Klamath County Sheriff Chris Kaber, who opposed the measure.

  He anticipates that, upon a challenge, a federal judge will stay the measure’s enforcement until a permitting process is put in place. 

  On the plus side, the magazine size-restriction has an exception for “current owners/inheritors,” which would seem to shoot a big hole in its enforceability. Sheriff Kaber nonetheless recommends documenting current possession of such magazines, such as with a dated photo. 

  The Firearms Policy Coalition, a frequent litigator against gun control measures, has already promised to challenge Oregon’s scheme:  

  OREGON! If 114 passes, we’re coming and the lawsuit printer is ready to go! Stay tuned for more info.

  — Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) November 9, 2022

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

  The news from the Hawkeye State is much cheerier. Until now, Iowa has been one of only six of states without a constitutional provision safeguarding gun rights. That’s changing, as Iowans approved a constitutional amendment by a lopsided 65% to 35% vote. 

  Iowans for Responsible Gun Laws said “the potential consequences of this amendment’s passage…will be far reaching and dire.”  

  Judge for yourself — here’s the text of the amendment: 

  “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The sovereign state of Iowa affirms and recognizes this right to be a fundamental individual right. Any and all restrictions of this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.”

  The text initially echoes the operative part of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment. With the second sentence, it pointedly counters the flawed notion that gun rights are necessarily limited to current militia service.

  The third sentence explicitly selects the legal standard by which Iowa courts should evaluate challenges to gun control measures. “Strict scrutiny” is the highest standard of review, requiring that a given law be narrowly tailored to further “a compelling governmental interest.” 

  “This is a very high standard,” Iowa Sen. Brad Zaun said when the amendment was advanced by the legislature in 2018. “What this bill is about – let’s put the cards on the table – is judicial activism.”

  Thanks to this summer’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, Iowa’s strict scrutiny provision may be a little redundant. However, like a gun, it’s better to have one and not need it than need one and not have it. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/10/2022 – 23:20

• 'We’re Not Permitted To Make The Connection': Social Worker Shares Aftermath Of COVID Vaccine Injury
  ‘We’re Not Permitted To Make The Connection’: Social Worker Shares Aftermath Of COVID Vaccine Injury

  Authored by Carly Mayberry via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  As a social worker known for her expertise when handling high-stress conflict management cases, Angela Loerzel Swafford figured she’d navigate her own concerns when it came to addressing her employers’ vaccination mandate last fall.

  And she definitely had concerns. 

  

  Like many hospitals and health systems across the nation during that time, the hospital where the 46-year-old was and is still employed required their health workers to get the jab. But Swafford suffers from a venous malformation, a condition where veins in the body develop in an unusual way. Because the abnormality can increase the risk of developing blood clots and deep vein thrombosis, she was hesitant about getting the COVID jab. 

  Still, worried about the possibility of losing the job she loved, the licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) practicing in both Oregon and Washington, was willing to do what was needed to protect her patients from COVID-19.

  “I love that job,” said Swafford who had always gotten the flu vaccine every year to protect the vulnerable patients she visits in hospice care. “I have this concern about my own safety but I also understand what I need to do to protect the community.”

   “It stops with you,” she added, or so she had always been told.

  No Space for Questions

  Swafford reached out to a few of her health providers, asking which vaccine would be best for her situation. However, she claimed that she didn’t feel supported during her inquiry and decision-making process. 

  “I think there should be space that we can be curious and pause and ask questions,” she said, noting she did express her health concerns but that her employer and health providers didn’t really allow any questions. “I feel that the physicians had a script and I was not heard and was kind of pushed through.”

  Seizure-like Symptoms, Blurred Vision 

  After being one of the last of her cohort of colleagues to receive the first Pfizer shot, what transpired next for Swafford was nothing short of horrifying. 

  Four hours later she started noticing pain in her upper body and difficulty charting her patients. Driving home that night, she lost orientation as to where she was.

  “Taking the exit to my house, I remember it felt like my face was exploding in pinpricks–like I had all of these sharp needle feelings all over my face,” she recalled. “My tongue, lips, and face felt swollen, my vision was blurred and I wasn’t processing information.”

  Once home, the strange sensations were followed by a repeated jerking of her whole body, what she said resembled Tonic-Clonic seizures. She also experienced blurred vision and terrible headaches.

  “The biggest thing was my vision, confusion in my thinking, trying to walk with coordination and dizziness,” she went on. “I couldn’t figure things out.”

  During some neurology psychiatry testing, Swafford said she fell under the two percentile of the people in her peer group when it came to her “processing speed” and “impaired ability to learn new information.”

  “They found I’m not encoding new information–that my processing is really slow,” she explained.

  Ultimately, Swafford was diagnosed with a severe adverse reaction to the mRNA vaccine.

  Now, more than a year later after undergoing numerous lab tests, MRIs, CT scans, and a plethora of visits to healthcare professionals (including neurologists, an epidemiologist, an occupational medicine specialist, a speech therapist, and others), Swafford continues to suffer cognitively, from an abrupt change in her vision and sleep abnormalities. She doesn’t drive because of double vision and a loss of peripheral vision and hasn’t returned to work.

  Doctors: Neurological Side Effects Have Been More Unusual

  Meanwhile, despite cases of myocarditis having made the headlines in terms of adverse reactions to the vaccines, neurological side effects like the ones experienced by Swafford, haven’t gotten the same attention. 

  That, along with what she described as her health providers’ lack of acknowledgment, has been frustrating for both her and her husband.

   “We kept running into providers in every system saying, ‘We’re not permitted to make the connection’ or ‘It doesn’t mean anything until studies support it’ or ‘It doesn’t exist until the scientific community writes about it,” recounted Swafford.

  “One of the saddest things I see is the diagnosis of functional neurologic disorder (FND) lumped together for these patients,” said Dr. Diane Counce, medical director of neurology and neurodiagnostics in Alabama, noting that such a diagnosis makes patients feel like “it’s all in their head.”

  Counce describes Swafford’s symptoms as neurological. 

  Data from the Center for Disease Control’s Vaccine Adverse Reporting System (VAERS) calculated through Oct. 28, 2022, has shown a total of over 37,000 reported neurological symptoms. 

  In terms of neurological symptoms similar to Swafford’s, there have been 4,659 cases of balance disorder, 10,190 cases of migraines, 5,192 seizures, and 573 seizure-like phenomena on VAERS. Also documented among many other neurological incidents were 4,737 cases of visual impairment.

  “When you have a patient like Swafford who within four hours is having symptoms that she’s never experienced before, clearly this is not just a migraine,” added Counce, noting the number of physicians that aren’t willing to take on patients like her or don’t know how to treat such patients. “She’s one of the more severe cases I’ve heard of experiencing multiple things including confusion, headaches, visual, hearing, mood, and behavioral changes.”

  After reviewing Swafford’s case, epidemiologist, professor, and author Daniel Halperin also concluded that as a young, healthy person who experienced these symptoms soon after receiving the shot, the most likely explanation for the health ailments must be vaccine-related. 

  Like many experts, Halperin, who has written myriad peer review education articles and the book, “Facing COVID Without Panic: 12 Common Myths and 12 Lesser Known Facts about the Pandemic: Clearly Explained by an Epidemiologist,” acknowledges that no vaccine is 100 percent safe.

  “Early on, we thought vaccination was important not only to help people be protected from death or severe illness, but also because it could greatly cut down on the transmission of COVID,” Halperin said, noting the common sense approach and the belief that health professionals should get the vaccine not just for themselves but for their patients and others they might be exposed to.

  “Now that we know they don’t actually do very much to prevent transmission, I’m not sure how convincing that argument is anymore,” he added. 

  Prescribing a Vaccine Injury Regimen

  For her part, Counce is working with Swafford and has prescribed a regimen for her that includes intermittent fasting—known to have a strong effect on promoting immune system homeostasis, taking probiotics and certain supplements including vitamin D, resveratrol, melatonin, and omega-3 fatty acids.

  “It’s frustrating we don’t have specific labs to check these things,” Counce added, noting that when she started seeing patients developing negative symptoms from the vaccinations, injuries seemed to be all over the place.

  But, she said when she sees a vaccine-injured patient, she has ruled it down to about five different things that could be going on with their body. These include decreased immunity, autoimmune response, inflammatory/histamine response (similar to Mast Cell Syndrome), fibrin activation causing micro clotting, and amyloidosis (a disease that occurs when a protein called amyloid builds up in organs).

  Counce said it’s been shown by an electron microscope that damage has been done to the cells’ mitochondria, which likely contributes to brain fog and fatigue that patients experience.

  As a neurologist, she reported seeing an increasing number of vaccine-injured patients with personality changes, sleep issues, and nerve and muscle issues, among others.

  “It’s hard to say,” said Counce, who has been treating Swafford for the last month, as to what her prognosis is and if she will ultimately improve or not.

  “All vaccine injuries respond so differently,” said Counce. “This is a brave new world for us.”

  ‘I’m Really Out’

  Meanwhile, Angela Loerzel Swafford and her family wish she could get a “do-over” when it comes to getting that jab.

  “I did the shot to keep everything and more so to protect the community I work in because that’s what they were telling me, but in the end, I lost everything,” she said. “I am not the same.”

  “Angela would like people to understand that there are folks out there that have actually suffered a vaccine injury and it’s totally okay to say ‘Yep, that happened,’” said her husband. “Too many doctors are willing to say ‘There are no studies to support that,’ instead of gathering the evidence.”

  “I think it was either you’re vaccinated and you’re with us or you’re not,” recalled Swafford, regarding the mood at the time. Now, she said, most of her friends don’t know how to be with her because she’s so different from who she once was.

   “It became you’re in or you’re out and I’m really out,” she said.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/10/2022 – 23:00

• Iran Claims It Developed A Hypersonic Missile
  Iran Claims It Developed A Hypersonic Missile

  Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Thursday issued a surprising statement claiming that it has developed a hypersonic missile “capable of penetrating all defense systems,” according to the words of the commander of the IRGC aerospace unit overseeing the project.

  General Amirali Hajizadeh claimed in the statement cited in state-run Fars news agency, “This hypersonic ballistic missile was developed to counter air defense shields.” Hypersonic missiles can reach more than five times the speed of sound, and very few countries in the world possess the capability. Iran is now for the first time claiming to be among them.

  

  “It will be able to breach all the systems of anti-missile defense,” said the general, stressing that no anti-air system has yet been developed by any foreign nation which is capable of intercepting them. “This missile, which targets enemy anti-missile systems, represents a great generational leap in the field of missiles,” the IRGC commander added.

  Israel, the US, and the West more broadly is sure to take this as a shocking and dangerous development if confirmed, given already there’s been years of scrutiny placed on Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic missiles programs, amid ongoing threats to Israel especially.

  The only three countries in the world believed to possess hypersonics include the United States, Russia, and China. It remains Russia that is likely most out front in testing its hypersonic arsenal, having touted multiple successful launches and even limited deployment on the Ukrainian battlefield.

  North Korea last year also claimed to have tested a hypersonic missile, though there was little in the way of verification as to how far along its program really is. Some Western analysts think Pyongyang was bluffing, and this could be the current case with Iran as well.

  While there remains cause for skepticism over the new hypersonics claim, in recent years Western defense officials have consistently underestimated Iran’s defense technology sector and capabilities…

  The commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force has announced
  Iran has developed hypersonic ballistic missiles that can’t be countered by any missile defense system.

  Remember how in the past western media & elites would sneer and claim Iranian military achievements were photoshopped? pic.twitter.com/MOuFHVpsJr

  — Seyed Mohammad Marandi (@s_m_marandi) November 10, 2022

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

  Iran has within the last year launched ballistic missiles on neighboring Iraq, targeting what it called terrorist militia groups seeking to undermine the state, which had camps hosted in Kurdish areas. Washington has also accused Iran of launching attacks via proxies on Saudi Arabia and the UAE, specifically out of Yemen. “These attacks are a reminder that Iran’s development and proliferation of ballistic missiles pose a serious threat to regional and international security,” the US government said at the time.

  More recently there have been rumors that Iran is supplying ballistic missiles to Russia alongside drones for use in Ukraine. Tehran has vehemently denied it is giving missiles to Moscow, but has just this month belatedly admitted to supplying drones. 

  As for this new claim to possess hypersonic projectiles, if Israel sees any validity in it, Israeli forces could potentially see reason enough to launch preemptive strikes on the Islamic Republic’s missile manufacturing facilities. However, Iran has long tried to conceal aspects of its long-range missile program in deep underground bunkers.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/10/2022 – 22:40

• China Develops 'Back To The Future-Style Hoverboard' Able To Climb 10,000 Feet
  China Develops ‘Back To The Future-Style Hoverboard’ Able To Climb 10,000 Feet

  A Chinese defense contractor is preparing for the first human test flight of a jet-propelled skateboard next year, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported.

  The vertical take-off device, in the shape of Back to the Future II’s Marty McFly’s Mattel Hoverboard, can lift a person weighing up to 220 pounds to an altitude of nearly 10,000 feet. The operator of the skateboard, dubbed “SF-FB-30,” can fly for as long as ten minutes at speeds up to 93 mph. 

  SF-FB-30’s flight control system is powered by artificial intelligence, allowing the operator to maneuver the flying board just like a “skateboard,” the Beijing Institute of Power Machinery, a contractor for China’s space program and hypersonic weapons, wrote in a poster at the International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai, Guangdong, this week. 

  “We are making the fastest progress in China. Our machine is simpler and easier to use than similar projects in other countries,” a Beijing Institute of Power Machinery representative told SCMP.

  

  The representative said the board’s artificial intelligence could fly itself and haul cargo or even transport a passenger. 

  The institute said the board has defense applications, such as using it to board a hijacked container ship. Besides military use, the board could be used in the civilian world for search and rescue operations, building evacuation, and urban transport. 

  Meanwhile, in the Western world, British soldiers fly around in ‘Iron Man-style’ jetpacks to practice boarding enemy or hijacked vessels.  

  Gravity Industries, a human flight start-up based out of the UK, recently released footage of these jetpacks flying around New York City’s harbor.

  

  So besides hypersonic weapons, AI drones, and fifth and soon sixth-generation planes, global superpowers are seeking jet-propelled skateboards and jetpacks for new mobility capabilities on the modern battlefield. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/10/2022 – 22:00

• 'Industrial Sabotage': Former Army Pilot Sentenced For Spying For China
  ‘Industrial Sabotage’: Former Army Pilot Sentenced For Spying For China

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

  A former U.S. Army helicopter pilot was sentenced to 20 months in prison this week for spying on behalf of China’s communist regime.

  

  Shapour Moinian was sentenced on Nov. 7 for his part in accepting thousands of dollars from representatives of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in exchange for providing the regime with classified aviation-related information taken from his defense contractors who employed him.

  “This was industrial espionage, bordering on military espionage. … These were extremely serious offenses against the United States,” said Judge Jeffrey Miller at the sentencing.

  Moinian served in the U.S. Army from 1977 to 2000, according to a Justice Department statement on the sentencing. After his service, he worked for various cleared defense contractors in the United States as well as the Department of Defense itself. “Cleared” means that the contractors were permitted to work on projects involving classified information.

  A man in China who claimed to be a technical recruiter reached out to Moinian in 2017. The man offered Moinian a job consulting for China’s aviation industry and expressed interest in Moinian’s work on classified aviation projects for the U.S. military and intelligence agencies.

  Moinian traveled to Hong Kong to meet with the man, where he agreed to provide information and materials related to multiple aircraft types, either designed or manufactured in the United States. He received between $7,000 and $10,000 in exchange for the information, as well as a cell phone and instructions on how to communicate with his new contacts in China.

  

  According to his plea agreement, Moinian knew that the individuals at that meeting and all subsequent meetings were, in fact, directly employed by the CCP or otherwise directed by CCP authorities.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/10/2022 – 21:40

• Texas Judge Strikes Down Biden's Student-Loan Forgiveness Plan As Unconstitutional
  Texas Judge Strikes Down Biden’s Student-Loan Forgiveness Plan As Unconstitutional

  First two years of lame duck gridlock, now this.

  Late on Thursday, a federal judge in Texas ruled that 80-year-old (ok, fine 79 for another 10 days) President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt was unlawful and must be vacated, delivering a victory to conservative opponents of the program.

  District Judge Mark Pittman, an appointee of former Donald Trump in Fort Worth, ruled in a lawsuit backed by the Job Creators Network Foundation on behalf of two borrowers.

  Pittman in a 26-page ruling wrote that the HEROES Act – a law that provides loan assistance to military personnel and that was relied upon by the Biden administration to enact the relief plan – did not authorize the $400 billion student loan forgiveness program.

  “The Program is thus an unconstitutional exercise of Congress’s legislative power and must be vacated,” Pittman wrote.

  Cheers to U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman (N.D. Tex.) for striking down President Biden’s unconstitutional $400 billion student-loan forgiveness program.

  Good to know we have federal judges with the brains and backbones to check government overreach.https://t.co/tpoyQPyoP5 pic.twitter.com/062FSUwUX9

  — 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) November 11, 2022

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

  Biden’s debt relief plan was already temporarily blocked by the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals while it considers a request by six Republican-led states to enjoin it while they appealed the dismissal of their own lawsuit.

  Biden’s plan has been the subject of several lawsuits by conservative state attorneys general and legal groups, though plaintiffs before Thursday had struggled to convince courts they were harmed by it in such a way that they have standing to sue.

  The Congressional Budget Office in September calculated the debt forgiveness would eliminate about $430 billion of the $1.6 trillion in outstanding student debt and that over 40 million people were eligible to benefit.

  The plan, announced in August, calls for forgiving up to $10,000 in student loan debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 per year, or $250,000 for married couples. Borrowers who received Pell Grants to benefit lower-income college students will have up to $20,000 of their debt canceled.

  Of course, the Biden admin won’t let this aggression against socialism stand, and after it wins on appeal at one of the extremely liberal appeals courts across the country, a final decision is going right to the Supremes.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/10/2022 – 21:20

• Chinese Loans Grow Less Than Expected Again, A Reflection Of Weak Loan Demand And A Weak Economy
  Chinese Loans Grow Less Than Expected Again, A Reflection Of Weak Loan Demand And A Weak Economy

  By Iris Pang, Chief Greater China Economist at ING Bank

  The fourth quarter is usually a quiet time for loans and credits, but this set of data for October is just too soft. 

  Overall credit growth was only CNY907.9 billion in October, lower than the previous month’s CNY3530 billion, and less than CNY1617.6 billion a year ago. Among all credit growth, yuan loan growth was CNY615.2 billion, also lower than the previous month’s CNY2470 billion. Outstanding yuan loans grew 11.1% year-on-year, slower than 11% in the previous month and 11.9% during the same month in 2021.

  

  This indicates that demand for loans was weak in October. Together with PMI and trade data, we believe that there could be a deeper-than-expected slowdown during the month.

  

  The housing market should still be quiet as mortgage loans, which are a big part of household long-term loans, grew only CNY33.2 billion.

  Yuan loans made up nearly 68% of total new credit in the month of October. Most of the rest were net issuance of corporate and government bonds, which contributed nearly 26% and 31%, respectively, of total new credit. 

  Local government special bonds will raise funds for the 2023 quota in the fourth quarter of this year. The issuance amount for 2023 is likely to be higher than the issuance amount of around CNY4.15 trillion in 2022. We believe funding raised will be used on finishing uncompleted home projects, buying back land from some property developers, infrastructure projects that have already started, and Covid-19-related spending.  

  What will be interesting to find out is how much more local government bond quotas are set for 2023. We believe that both central government and local governments will be key supporters of the economy until there is more relaxation in Covid measures.

  We are still keeping GDP growth at 3.3% for 2022 and USD/CNY at 7.4 by the end of the year.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/10/2022 – 21:00

• Conservative Candidates Take Note – DeSantis Dominated In Florida For These Reasons
  Conservative Candidates Take Note – DeSantis Dominated In Florida For These Reasons

  Many Republicans are experiencing a bittersweet election week with some impressive wins, but not the “red wave” that they were hoping for.  With a Congressional majority looking like a certainty and the Senate up in the air, it’s an overall victory for conservatives but not a slam dunk defense against leftists and Joe Biden.  What we do know is that while there was no red wave, there was certainly no blue wave either.  

  This tells us a few things:  For one, Americans are more entrenched in their political views than ever and they aren’t likely to budge.  When governors like Gretchen Whitmer or Kathy Hochul can win reelection after attempting to impose hardcore authoritarian measures on their constituency during the covid scare, it becomes clear that Democrat voters are too mentally challenged to recognize they are harming themselves.  Maybe those people deserve what they get.

  By extension, conservative voters are far more nuanced.  They aren’t interested in voting for a candidate just because they identify as GOP, they want that candidate to share their values and concerns and take action.  If a candidate doesn’t show courage and stand immovable against establishment agendas, conservatives may just stay home rather than vote for them.  

  For example, in Pennsylvania, John Fetterman managed to defeat Dr. Mehmet Oz despite Fetterman’s brain being scrambled by a stroke during the campaign.  Democrats will vote for ANYONE that will keep their state blue, they even reelected a dead Democrat House candidate in PA (Tony DeLuca).  Meanwhile, Oz avidly promoted the covid mRNA vaccines after pretending to be skeptical of them, and tried to sell his followers on them despite there being many questions of safety and efficacy.  A lot of conservatives fought hard and took considerable risks in defying the mandates, and some felt betrayed by Oz’s apparent truce with Big Pharma.  This may have contributed to his election loss.  

  One Republican that fully dominated during his campaign was Ron DeSantis.  There is no denying that there was a red wave in Florida, which was considered a swing state only a few years ago.  Now, Democrats see the state as a lost cause for the 2024 presidential race with zero chance of retrieval.  DeSantis carried nearly 60% of the vote, with Charlie Crist left with 40%.  DeSantis’ success also helped the majority of other GOP candidates in Florida gain a voter majority, with Republicans winning 20 congressional seats.

   

  Why did DeSantis crush leftists in his state while many other Republicans barely squeezed a win or lost by slim margins?  What did he do that they did not do?  Yes, he’s an incumbent, which helps by allowing the candidate to show what he has already accomplished, but that can be a double edged sword.  What measures did DeSantis accomplish that won over Florida voters en masse and also prevented potential vote count “uncertainty”?  Let’s examine a list:

  Hard Stand Against Woke Politics

  DeSantis never wavered on his stance against woke politics, social justice agendas and far-left ideology.  He never tried to make a deal with leftists or appease them.  In fact, he instituted several measures and supported multiple bills in Florida that prevent woke politics from being taught in public schools.  

  He stopped Critical Race Theory from being implanted into school textbooks.  He prevented sexually driven lessons from being taught and is punishing activist teachers for sexualizing (grooming) children.  He has ended the injection of LGBT and Trans indoctrination for young students.  He also took on one of the largest media corporations in the world, Disney, and punished them for trying to control state politics and impose woke ideology through the company’s massive monetary influence.

  Leftists hate DeSantis for a reason – He has been effective against their tactics and they fear that other red states will follow his lead.  In his victory speech DeSantis proclaimed:  “Florida is where woke goes to die.”

  Hard Stand On Illegal Immigration

  A lot of people including many Democrats said that the strategy of busing illegal migrants from red states to far left cities like New York and Washington DC would fail.  Instead, it has been a resounding success, with Democrats scrambling just to keep their city budgets from imploding under the weight of a mere 10,000 to 15,000 illegals.  

  While Texas gets most of the credit for this action, DeSantis and Florida did one better and sent the migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, the pristine island vacation home of many leftist elitists.  The fact that the people of Matha’s Vineyard put on a fraudulent show by feeding the migrants some cheap lunches and then bused them straight out of town the next day to a camp on a military base was a huge embarrassment for Democrats.  It proved that they can’t live up to their own standards and take care of a handful of migrants while expecting border states to deal with millions per year.  It was a major coup for DeSantis.

  Hard Stand Against Covid Mandates And Vaccine Passports

  The population of Florida is the third largest in the nation, with a high percentage of retirees and seniors citizens.  The amount of pressure on DeSantis by the Federal Government and Biden along with the CDC and Anthony Fauci over the pandemic was immense.  If Florida folded to the mandates, then many red states may have followed suit.  This did not happen.  

  One of the most important characteristics of a great leader is the ability to stand by one’s principles even when the majority of the public or your peers seem to be against you.  When you know you are right based on reason, logic, facts and evidence, never submit or give in.  DeSantis showed this kind of fortitude over the past two years and this most of all is what likely won him another term as governor.    

  Passing Bills For Election Integrity

  DeSantis supported measures which secured Florida’s election integrity and prevented any potential chicanery in the 2022 midterms.  He signed a law strengthening voter identification at the polls.  Mass mailings of ballots, drop boxes and ballot harvesting are now illegal in Florida.  Private financiers are not allowed to administer elections.  He also established the Office of Election Crimes and Security, which monitors election integrity and enforces stiff penalties for anyone caught trying to cheat.

  If these rules were enforced in every state in the country, one might wonder how differently elections might turn out.  Future conservative candidates should take note of DeSantis and his overwhelming victory; it pays to actually defend the values you claim to represent, because conservative voters are not Democrats, they have standards.   

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/10/2022 – 20:40

• Biden Admin Tells Supreme Court To Let House Democrats Have Trump's Taxes
  Biden Admin Tells Supreme Court To Let House Democrats Have Trump’s Taxes

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

  President Joe Biden’s administration is urging the Supreme Court to let House Democrats get access to former President Donald Trump’s tax documents.

  In a 30-page brief filed Nov. 10, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said that earlier rulings finding House Democrats’ request had legitimate legislative intent were correct, and that the nation’s top court should not diverge from them.

  

  U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, said the request from House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) served a valid legislative purpose because Neal says he will use the returns to examine whether new or adjusted legislation is needed for the IRS program that audits presidents.

  An appeals court later upheld the ruling.

  Trump then lodged an emergency application for a stay to the Supreme Court, which triggered a temporary block on Neal’s panel obtaining the documents.

  Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, entered the stay and asked the government to respond to Trump by Nov. 10 at noon.

  Trump’s lawyers said there is “a fair prospect” that the Supreme Court will stay the lower court rulings and deny the Democrat request, and that without a stay Trump will suffer issues such as a loss of confidentiality.

  Prelogar, a Biden appointee,  argued Trump had not met the bar for a stay, which includes an applicant showing a reasonable probability that four justices will agree to review the appeals court ruling and showing there is a fair prospect that a majority of the court would reverse the ruling.

  Because the appeals court relied on Supreme Court precedent, including Trump v. Mazars, there’s no need for the Supreme Court to review the ruling, Prelogar asserted.

  “The court of appeals’ factbound application of the Mazars factors does not warrant further review. And this case would be a particularly poor vehicle for elaborating on the Mazars analysis,” she said, noting that the two lower courts “each took somewhat different approaches to the separation-of-powers questions presented here, but all of them reached the same conclusion—and none of them regarded the case as particularly close.”

  “The application should be denied,” she added.

  Roberts has not yet indicated whether he will solicit a reply to the brief from Trump’s lawyers.

  Roberts is handling the application because he oversees the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

  He can keep the stay in place or lift it on his own, or choose to refer the matter to the full court for consideration.

  If the stay had not been imposed, the IRS was under orders to transmit Trump documents from tax years 2015 to 2020 to Neal.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/10/2022 – 20:20

• Loan Demand For Mortgage Loans Crashes To Depression Levels
  Loan Demand For Mortgage Loans Crashes To Depression Levels

  In all the chaos over the past few days, we missed the release of the Fed’s latest Senior Loan Officer Survey which came out Monday. The results were striking: as one would expect from an economy in recession (and in some cases, depression), in nearly all categories, banks are reporting both tighter lending standards and sliding demand for new loans…

  

  … and nowhere more so than in mortgages, both qualifying and otherwise, where demand has collapsed to “depression” levels as a result of the fastest every surge in interest rates.

  

  While C&I loans are still doing ok, and demand for credit card debt is still near record highs – to be expected at a time when revolving credit debt is soaring at the fastest pace in history, record APRs be damned – it’s only a matter of time before these two core credit categories follow mortgage loan demand into purgatory at which point the US economy will be a complete disaster.

  Here are some more details courtesy of Goldman:

  1. Lending standards for commercial and industrial (C&I) loans tightened in 2022 Q3. 39% of banks on net tightened lending standards for large and medium-market firms (vs. 24% on net in the previous quarter), while the number of banks tightening lending standards for small firms increased to 32% (vs. 22% on net in the previous quarter). 30% of banks on net widened spreads of loan rates over the cost of funds for large firms (vs. 12% on net in the previous quarter), while 25% on net widened spreads for small firms (vs. 13% on net in the previous quarter).
  2. For banks that tightened credit standards or terms for C&I loans or credit lines, all cited a less favorable or more uncertain economic outlook as playing a role; 61% cited reduced tolerance for risk; 59% cited a worsening of industry-specific problems; 39% cited decreased liquidity in the secondary market for these loans; 26% cited less aggressive competition from other lenders; 20% cited a deterioration in their bank’s current or expected capital position; and 20% cited a deterioration in their current or expected liquidity position as playing a role.
  3. Demand for C&I loans from large- and medium-sized firms weakened in Q3. 9% of banks on net reported weaker demand for C&I loans for large and medium-market firms, compared to 24% on net reporting stronger demand in the previous survey. 22% of banks reported weaker demand for C&I loans from small firms, compared to 18% reporting stronger demand the previous quarter.
  4. Standards for commercial real estate (CRE) loans tightened in 2022Q3. 58% (+10pp) of banks on net reported tightening credit standards for construction and land development loans, and 40% (+10pp) on net reported tightening lending standards for loans secured by multifamily residential properties. The number of banks that reported tightening standards for loans secured by non-farm non-residential properties increased to 53% (+11pp). Demand for loans secured by multifamily residential properties, loans secured by nonfarm nonresidential properties, and construction and land development loans all decreased.
  5. Credit standards on mortgage loans tightened somewhat. Standards eased slightly or were basically unchanged for non-jumbo, non-GSE eligible (-3.4pp to -3.4%) and GSE-eligible mortgages (flat at +1.7%). Meanwhile, standards tightened for Qualified Mortgage jumbo (-0.1pp to +5.2%); non-Qualified Mortgage jumbo (+3.8pp to +7.4%); non-Qualified Mortgage non-jumbo (-1.8pp to +3.8%); and subprime residential mortgages (-1.4pp to +11.1%).
  6. Banks’ willingness to make consumer installment loans decreased in Q3 (-7% on net vs. +5% on net previously). The portion of banks tightening credit standards for approving credit card applications increased (+19pp to +19%), and 2% of banks on net tightened standards for auto loans (flat). The portion of banks reporting stronger demand for credit card loans decreased but remained positive (-7pp to +11% on net), while demand for auto loans also declined (-12pp to -28% on net).

  But loan supply and demand aside, the punchline from the survey is that “most banks assigned probabilities between 40 and 80 percent to the likelihood of a recession in the next 12 months, with no bank reporting a probability less than 20 percent. Although banks in general assigned relatively high probabilities to a recession occurring in the next 12 months, most banks reported expecting the recession to be mild to moderate, should one occur. In addition, most foreign banks assigned a probability between 40 and 80 percent that a recession would occur in the next 12 months.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/10/2022 – 20:00

• The Election Won't Change Much In DC. The Real Battle Is Now In The States
  The Election Won’t Change Much In DC. The Real Battle Is Now In The States

  Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

  The votes are still being counted, but one thing is already clear: very little will change in Washington after this election. 

  

  The House of Representatives will likely be controlled by Republicans, but the majority enjoyed by the GOP in the House will be small. This will provide a veto over some of the worst legislation being pushed by the Biden administration, but history has made it abundantly clear that the GOP is more than willing to compromise and “work with” Democrat administrations rather than simply kill bills.

  As for the US Senate, we’re still waiting on the results in Nevada and Arizona. Georgia is headed to a runoff election. But it’s clear that the Senate will again be close to a 50-50 split. If the GOP manages to eke out a majority, that will help sink some of the worst legislation and some of the worst presidential appointees. But the direction of policy will not fundamentally change. 

  After all, so much of federal policy is now determined by the executive branch that moderate changes in party leadership in Congress will do very little to change the course of the nation’s administrative agencies such as the EPA, the IRS, and the FBI. These agencies have immense power over the daily lives of countless Americans, yet even sizable majorities of so-called conservatives have shown little stomach for doing much to rein in this power. Certainly, the small GOP majority now headed for the House will do little. 

  From Global Warming to Money Printing to Foreign Policy, Expect Little Change

  This all combines to mean we should expect very little change on policies at the federal level. For example, we can expect to keep hearing plenty about the evil of fossil fuels. The administration will continue to press for less drilling for oil and gas, and the war on coal will continue. The administration will continue to issue new edicts for “fighting global warming.” This, of course, will continue to drive up the cost of living. 

  On foreign policy, it was clear nothing much would change short of an overwhelming victory by “America First” types in Congress. That hasn’t happened, so we can expect more of the same foreign interventionism we’re seeing now. The US regime will add to the $65 billion it has already sent to Ukraine, and will continually ratchet up its involvement in the region as with a recent deployment of US troops near the Ukraine border. Even worse, the US will likely continue to flirt with nuclear war, as the Pentagon now has more leeway in using nuclear arms in the regime’s new National Defense Strategy document. The US will not, any time soon, remove the approximately 900 American troops that are currently conducting a regional occupation in Syria. 

  Naturally, as far as social spending goes, we can expect zero change. Under Donald Trump, Republicans signed off on massive new spending increases, and were headed towards approving trillion-dollar deficits even before 2020. With covid, of course, spending exploded even more, and only a small handful of Republicans expressed doubts.  (Trump naturally threw a tantrum about even this small bit of opposition.) The only disagreements we’ll see in Washington in the next two years will be over how exactly to run up the next massive annual deficit. 

  Indeed, if the economy continues to slide as we’re now seeing it do—with thousands of new layoffs coming from the tech sector just this week, and with real estate falling—we can expect a new bipartisan consensus in Washington calling for a wide variety of new “stimulus” programs. Neither party will want to be seen as the party of austerity. 

  The Biggest Changes Will Be at the State Level

  While Washington will keep up with the same disastrous policies, the real change we’ll see will be at the state level. The GOP did not do especially well in this election with state level offices, and the Republicans lost control of legislative chambers in at least Michigan, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. On the other hand, the GOP gained supermajorities in both the house and senate in Florida, plus supermajorities in the state senates of North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Moreover, Nevada’s state house is trending toward the GOP. Republicans still control a majority of statehouses and have even added to the tally of state GOP control in recent cycles prior to 2022. 

  What all this likely means is a continued divergence between places like Washington State, New York State, and California on the one hand, and Florida, Texas, and Ohio on the other. On matters like abortion, schools, immigration, guns, and energy policy, the differences between the two blocs will only continue to grow. Covid helped illustrate the importance of state-level policy and the very different legal environments that actually exist between so-called red states and blue states. This has not been forgotten, and many state policymakers will increasingly see themselves as the last defense against federal power. As one GOP operative put it in Politico: “With minimal gains at the federal level, the Republican power we held and gained last night in the states will be all the more important for stopping Joe Biden’s disastrous agenda.”

  In a column titled “Red states are building a nation within a nation” this was noted by Ronald Brownstein at CNN who clearly disapproves of efforts within red states to separate themselves from federal political trends. He writes: 

  [R]ed states, supported by Republican-appointed judges, are engaging in a multi-front offensive to seize control of national policy even while Democrats hold the White House and nominally control both the House and Senate. The red states are moving social policy sharply to the right within their borders on issues from abortion to LGBTQ rights and classroom censorship, while simultaneously working to hobble the ability of either the federal government or their own largest metro areas to set a different course.

  To a degree unimaginable even a decade ago, this broad offensive increasingly looks like an effort to define a nation within a nation – one operating with a set of rules and policies that diverge from the rest of America more than in almost any previous era.

  Brownstein frames it all as a sinister plot against the Left’s favorite interest groups, and he no doubt exaggerates the magnitude of it all. But he is right that red states’ governments do have the ability to set up obstacles to federal policy. Gone are the days when state governments simply fell into line every time the federal government demanded some new capitulation. One example of this is the recent conflict between the Biden Administration and the Arizona government on the matter of border security. The state government had places shipping containers along the border to form a makeshift wall. The administration demanded their removal. The state refused to move them. 

  National Divorce Is Inevitable

  We should expect more of this type of thing in which state governments simply refuse to play along with federal policy. Democrat-controlled state governments have done this for years, of course, with policies like creating “sanctuary cities” for immigrants or legalizing recreational marijuana. (The latter has not become virtually mainstream thanks to state level resistance.)

  But the fact is that state governments do have the ability to push back against federal policy makers. States can interfere with federal education policy. States can refuse to enforce federal gun laws. States can make their own abortion policy. States can refuse to do what they’re told. 

  Over time, this will serve to further build cultural and legal differences between different states, just as the covid lockdowns and mask mandates made it clear that there were real differences between states. As the differences become more evident, this will even encourage residents to relocate to places that better suit their political preferences. For example, we’re even now hearing that American leftists are leaving the lefty enclave of Austin, Texas. It turns out Austin is in the middle of Texas, and Texas has become too “red” for some people. It’s hard to guess how numerous these cases really are, of course, but relocating for political reasons does appear to be far more meaningful than it used to be. 

  Over time, this will continue to build a real cultural divide that will inevitably lead to de facto political division between these blocs of states. “E pluribus unum” was never more than a political slogan. It’s becoming less convincing every day. “National divorce” will increasingly be evident on the horizon. 

  In the short term, with Washington, DC poised to change so little, policy changes will increasingly come within the context of state governments defining themselves as being either against national elites (as in Florida), or for them (as in California.) This is where the real political action will be. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/10/2022 – 19:40

• Lawyer For Canadian Commission Investigating Trucker Protests Collapses During Proceedings
  Lawyer For Canadian Commission Investigating Trucker Protests Collapses During Proceedings

  Gabriel Poliquin, a lawyer for the Public Order Emergency Commission “investigating” the circumstances that led to Justin Trudeau’s recent use of emergency powers, violently collapsed during commission proceedings with no indication from his family or the Canadian media as to the cause. 

  The Commission is tasked with outlining the legality or illegality of the government’s attempt to use terrorist based laws to put pressure on the mass trucker protests in Ontario. 

  The protesters were using civil disobedience actions against covid mandates and vaccine passports. 

  Trudeau specifically targeted fundraising for the protests, threatening individuals and groups with possible charges of aiding and abetting terrorists, and froze bank accounts of those involved.  The government also tried to confiscate goods and fuel brought to the protesters by sympathetic supporters.

  If history is any indication, such government commissions are generally designed to justify federal trespasses and bury independent investigations before they can take place.

  While it is not known what triggered Poliquin’s collapse during questioning, surely many people will be wondering if he is suffering from a new heart condition featuring myocarditis or blood clotting.           

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/10/2022 – 19:20

• Democracy Wasn't On The Ballot, Extremism Was
  Democracy Wasn’t On The Ballot, Extremism Was

  Authored by Michael Shellenberger,

  Democracy was on the ballot, argued Democrats in the run-up to yesterday’s elections. If voters elected Republican governors and a Republican majority in Congress, Democrats and media pundits warned, we could soon see the end of the American system of republican democracy. Those Republicans who denied the outcome of the 2020 election would use their position to help Donald Trump steal the 2024 election, tear up the Constitution, and install himself as dictator-for-life. Or something.

  

  But many Democratic candidates have themselves denied the results of past elections. In November 2002, Al Gore said he “would have won” the presidency had all the votes in Florida been counted, even though in 2001 The New York Times conducted a comprehensive review of all uncounted Florida ballots and found that George W. Bush would have won even had the United States Supreme Court allowed a manual recount of the votes to go forward. In 2005, Democratic Senate and House members objected to the certification of Ohio’s electoral college votes for George W. Bush claiming “numerous, serious election irregularities,” while the losing Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, claimed that voters were “denied their right to vote; too many who tried to vote were intimidated.” In 2017, House Democrats objected to the 2016 electoral votes, 67 Democrats boycotted the inauguration claiming his election was “illegitimate” and in 2019, Hillary Clinton said the election was “stolen” from her and that Trump “knows” he stole the election and was “an illegitimate president.”

  It’s true that election denialism is much more widespread among Republicans than it is among Democrats. Where seven Democratic House members objected to the certification of their states’ votes for Trump in 2017, 139 Republican House members and eight Republican senators objected to the certification of their states’ votes for Biden in 2021, notes Cathy Young at The Bulwark. At the state level, 19 Republican attorneys general coordinated with Trump’s legal team to invalidate the results of the vote and involved fraudulent electors sending phony certificates to Washington depicting Trump as the winner. And Trump encouraged a mob of his supporters to storm the Capitol Building on January 6 in an effort to stop the certification of Biden’s election.

  But if Democrats were really so worried that America’s democracy was on the brink of collapse, then why did they help Trump-backed election-denying Republicans defeat their moderate Republican opponents during the primaries? To be sure, it proved to be effective. “All eight Democratic candidates who benefited from the strategy,” notes Reuters, “were projected to win their races as of Wednesday morning.” But if it was a smart strategy in the short term it also undermines the credibility of the claim that Democrats care more about democracy than Republicans. If they did, why would they risk electing election deniers? Why would they put a risky political strategy above protecting American democracy?

  And if Democrats are so concerned about protecting democratic norms, then why did they spend 2016 to 2019 arguing that Trump stole the 2016 election with the help of Vladamir Putin? Not only Democrats but the mainstream news media for nearly three years prosecuted the notion that Trump was a foreign agent. They even awarded themselves Pulitzer Prizes for their misleading reporting. As a result, many Democrats, including most if not all of my progressive friends, still believe that Trump stole the 2016 election with the help of the Russians. They argue that just because Mueller didn’t find conclusive proof that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russians didn’t prove that Trump didn’t conspire with the Russians.

  The most ridiculous element of Democratic election denialism isn’t the notion that Trump accepted help from Russia but rather that the things Russia did to interfere in the 2016 election changed the outcome. Democrats are right to suspect that Trump and his campaign team would have accepted Russian help to become president. Everything about Trump’s past behavior suggests that he would have, and indeed may have, if he felt that doing so would help him and that he would get away with it. Far less plausible is the notion that the things the Russians did, namely spreading fake news articles on social media, and hacking John Podesta’s emails, had much if any impact on voters. The Mueller Report found that the Russians spent $100,000 for 3,500 Facebook advertisements from June 2015 to May 2017, an utterly insignificant sum compared to the $81 million Clinton and Trump spent on Facebook ads. Even most liberal analysts, including Hillary Clinton herself, crediting many factors other than Russian interference for Trump’s 2016 victory.

  Without a doubt, we should fight foreign interference in American elections, reject election denialism, and protect elections from fraud, but we should also recognize that those things aren’t determining factors in what wins or loses elections. Progressives have rightly noted for decades that election fraud is exceedingly rare and, to the extent it occurs, is almost always too small to change an election. But that same argument applies to Russian interference. Democrats can’t, on the one hand, dismiss concerns over election integrity when it comes to collecting ballots and, on the other, hype concerns over election integrity when it comes to $100,000 in Facebook ads.

  The failure of U.S. Capitol Police to prevent January 6 protesters from entering the Capitol building was disturbing, but it hardly constituted a near-coup. There is little reason to believe a secretary of state could change an election’s result for the simple reason that voting is far too closely monitored and decentralized for it to be stolen. “It’s really hard to rig an election in America because it’s so decentralized,” confessed one advocate to The Washington Post.

  It’s true that various means exist for someone to undermine our democratic system. The Electoral Count Act is, say, experts, too vague. A sitting vice president could point to voting irregularities, invoke the 12th Amendment, and let state delegations in the House vote on the manner. A sitting president could declare a national emergency, or the Insurrection Act, rule unilaterally, and deploy the military, without the authorization of Congress, to put down mass protests. And a secretary of state could simply refuse to sign off on election results that she doesn’t like.

  But none of those constitute a significant threat. Even if a rogue secretary of state refused to certify election results, “there are nationwide, built-in protections to stop rogue actors from taking over,” admits The Post, which has done more to exaggerate the threat Trumpism poses to the republic than any other publication. Those protections are other elected officials, like the governor, and the courts. It might make sense to reform the Electoral Count Act, but even if that doesn’t happen, the Supreme Court still exists to play the role of interpreting vague and confusing laws in light of the constitution.

  In truth, state governments are constantly making decisions about elections aimed at favoring one party or another, from 100% mail-in ballots in California, which allow for legal ballot harvesting, to the need to show identification before voting, such as in Georgia. One might argue that such rules undermine democracy, but there are legitimate differences of opinion about what the requirements should be to vote. There are always some barriers to voting if only the work of reading and filling out a ballot and stuffing it into an envelope. Whatever one thinks of such barriers, they are hardly the end of our republic.

  When you read through various articles and reports raising the alarm about the threat to the American republic, most come down to vague concerns about things like “endless audits,” “distrust in results,” and “politicians hacking away at people’s confidence in democracy.” While I agree it’s important for the public to support our democratic system, there’s no evidence that such support is weakening. The widespread belief among many Republicans that the election was stolen from Trump expresses concern about the integrity of our electoral system, not a desire to get rid of it. And even were a president to declare an emergency, or an Insurrection Act that postponed an election, that would hardly constitute the end of the Republic, as new elections would simply be held later.

  In the end, the main concerns most Democrats appear to have about election-denying Republicans center around the behavior of America’s last president. “Trump has never acknowledged defeat,” a friend of mine writes. “Yes — there has been a lot of bitching and moaning on the part of the Democrats, but most importantly, [Al] Gore not only conceded, but he, as vice-president, validated the results of the election, declaring that he lost.”

  The problem, I responded, is that the First Amendment gives people, including former presidents, the right to say all sorts of stupid things. There’s nothing that we can or should do about it. It’s better to just argue over the evidence and, after it’s clear that nobody’s mind is changing, move on.

  But what if a president refused to leave office? The answer is clear: the U.S. Supreme Court would order the U.S. military to remove him. There has been story after story of U.S. military leaders who allegedly refused to do what Trump asked them to do. Whether or not they are true, it’s clear that America’s military leaders continue to see themselves as serving the U.S. Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, over this or that president. Could that change? Could there be a military officer in the future who, in effect, overthrows the government? Of course. But there’s no evidence that such officers exist in any significant number today, much less that their numbers are growing.

  The mirrored obsession of the Right with election fraud and of the Left with election denialism are undermining America’s ability to confront the most important issues facing the country. Extremes on the Left and Right are using false, exaggerated, and hypocritical allegations of fraud and denialism to stoke anger and fear, in a shortsighted effort to attract attention, drive Internet clicks, and mobilize voters.

  

  The good news is that voters have, as a collective, rejected the extremism of both the Right and Left, and elected a divided government.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/10/2022 – 19:00

• Blizzard Pounds Plains, Midwest; "Polar Vortex" To Unleash Chill Nationwide
  Blizzard Pounds Plains, Midwest; “Polar Vortex” To Unleash Chill Nationwide

  The first blizzard of the 2022-23 winter season is unfolding across the northern Plains and through the upper Midwest today. 

  Parts of North and South Dakota and portions of Montana, Minnesota, and Nebraska are in the storm’s path. Some areas could experience more than a foot of snow and snowfall rates of up to 2 inches per hour. 

  

  “This will be the first major snowstorm of the season for the northern Plains and the combination of heavy snow, powerful winds and low visibility will result in hazardous travel,” AccuWeather senior meteorologist Brian Wimer said.

  Blizzard warnings have been posted for much of North Dakota and northern Minnesota. 

  

  Temperatures behind the system will result in much colder weather in the days ahead. US Lower 48 mean temperatures have dove from 58 degrees Fahrenheit earlier this week to a forecasted 39 degrees by November 14. 

  

  Here’s what meteorologists at private weather forecasting firm BAMWX are saying about the cold bast:

  Aka don’t bite on the model run to run changes.

  It’s all about watching the Polar Vortex & where it goes ahead.

  That’s what I love about our #energy weather updates…our forecasts don’t fluctuate based on data, but on research.

  📩Kirk@bamwx.com to inquire for service/samples. https://t.co/JswFVrtYHs

  — Kirk 🇺🇸 Hinz | BAM ⚡️Weather (@Met_khinz) November 10, 2022

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

  “With strong cold influence from a displaced Polar Vortex, now the question becomes…how long can this pattern last?” BAMWX’s Kirk Hinz tweeted. 

  Data has extended the cold longer overnight.

  With strong cold influence from a displaced #PolarVortex, now the question becomes…how long can this pattern last?

  For @bamwxcom official thoughts, 📩Kirk@bamwx.com for free info/samples of our forecasts.#natgas #oott #energy $ng pic.twitter.com/Ky60C6chv9

  — Kirk 🇺🇸 Hinz | BAM ⚡️Weather (@Met_khinz) November 9, 2022

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

  Colder temperatures will send heating demand skyrocketing across the country starting this weekend. 

  

  Increased heating demand could put a bid under natural gas prices. 

  A #polarvortex , but why is #natgas not reacting? Part of it has to do with less #lng exports to Europe & increases in U.S. nat gas production. But will this cold last? Are we second guessing #weather models? Our trade ideas? You will have to subscribe https://t.co/Q2e2L8RRQJ pic.twitter.com/SKsj0hqBrg

  — WEATHER WEALTH (@ClimatePredict) November 9, 2022

  But then again, NatGas prices have slumped this week on the delayed restart of the Freeport LNG export terminal, which would boost US NatGas storage.  

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

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/10/2022 – 18:40

• Bankman-Fried Faces SEC Probe, FTX Assets Frozen By Bahamas Regulator
  Bankman-Fried Faces SEC Probe, FTX Assets Frozen By Bahamas Regulator

  Update (1945ET): Things just went to ’11’ for the Dem darling crypto billionaire as Bloomberg reports that, according to a person familiar with the matter, Sam Bankman-Fried is being investigated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for potential violations of securities rules as the regulator deepens its probe into his crumbling FTX crypto empire.

  The SEC is scrutinizing Bankman-Fried’s involvement in recent moves that helped push FTX into a liquidity crisis, said the person, who asked not to be named discussing the confidential inquiry.

  FTX, the American platform FTX US, and Bankman-Fried’s trading house Alameda Research are already under investigation by the SEC, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday. The Justice Department is also looking into the situation.

  

  *  *  *

  The Bahamas Securities Commission has frozen the assets of FTX Digital Markets “and related parties” and has appointed a provisional liquidator as the Bahamas securities regulator seeks to place the beleaguered crypto exchange into receivership, i.e. bankruptcy, the agency said in a statement issued late on Thursday.

  The lockdown comes just hours after Sam Bankman-Fried said that he is closing his affiliated trading house at the center of the FTX scandal, Alameda Research, and after FTX said it may halt trading in FTX US, the remote US-based platform which has so far avoided scrutiny.

  An asset freeze was “the prudent course of action” to preserve assets and stabilize the company, the agency said.

  “The commission is aware of public statements suggesting that clients’ assets were mishandled, mismanaged and/or transferred to Alameda Research. Based on the commission’s information, any such actions would have been contrary to normal governance, without client consent and potentially unlawful” it warned

  

  Meanwhile, while unconfirmed but certainly not unlikely, a rumor emerged on Twitter also late on Thursday that SBF had been arrested on the tarmac at the Bahamas airport.

  I have no way of confirming this. Also, perhaps he went on his own volition. Also, perhaps not true.

  — Kevin Abosch (@kevinabosch) November 10, 2022

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

  The Bahamas crackdown comes as Japan’s government also ordered FTX.com’s local subsidiary to suspend some operations, saying it has no structure in place to properly offer cryptocurrency exchange services to users.

  And while authorities finally crackdown on the biggest crypto fraud in history, who may or may not have been arrested, investors are starting to count their money, or rather lack thereof.

  Take the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, which said it had “invested” $95 million in Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX International and FTX.US since October 2021. Pension plan initially invested $75 million in two FTX entities Oct. 2021 and made a follow-on investment of $20 million in January in FTX.US

  The fund wanted to gain small-scale exposure to an emerging area in the financial technology sector, it says in a statement
  “Naturally, not all of the investments in this early-stage asset class perform to expectations.”

  The pension fund, realizing that the money is gone… all gone, was quick to add that any financial loss on this investment will have limited impact on the fund. FTX investment represents less than 0.05% of fund’s net assets.

  Late on Thursday we also learned that the FTX-linked loss at Genesis Trading, an institutional crypto market maker, was nearly double, or $175 million “in locked funds” in its FTX account.

  As part of our goal in providing transparency around this week’s market events, the Genesis derivatives business currently has ~$175M in locked funds in our FTX trading account. This does not impact our market-making activities.

  — Genesis (@GenesisTrading) November 10, 2022

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

  And speaking of “gone… all gone”, it is ordinary retail investors who poured their life savings into crypto, for whom the stunning demise of FTX.com is a worst-case scenario.

  “I’m done and I think a lot of retail traders are done,” said Christ Keuchkerian, a 36-year-old FTX.com customer in Quebec who works in IT and hadn’t been able to withdraw his funds as of Thursday. “I don’t think at this point I want to put any more money into this.”

  Keuchkerian first started using FTX about a year ago, investing approximately C$4,500 ($3,360) in tokens like Bitcoin and Ether. He considered the platform “too big to fail.” When he heard the Binance deal fell apart, his heart started palpitating.

  “If I’ve learned anything, it’s that centralized exchanges are dead,” he said. “The philosophy behind this movement was great, but the execution has been horrible. The people running the exchanges have been horrible.”

  It’s not just FTX customers who may be hurt by Bankman-Fried’s downfall. The billionaire agreed to bail out Voyager in a $1.4 billion deal in September, as part of his distressed crypto buying spree, but the transaction still hasn’t closed. Voyager declined to comment on the status of the deal on Thursday.

  John Gould, a 45-year-old software developer in Birmingham, Alabama, had about $2,000 in his Voyager account, mostly in altcoins, when the platform froze withdrawals. When FTX first announced it would acquire Voyager’s assets, he was optimistic he would be able to cash out, but he doesn’t think that will happen now.

  “This is a like domino effect,” he said. “It’s definitely shaken my faith in exchanges.”

  As Bloomberg adds, some retail traders who plan to keep investing in crypto say they no longer trust the exchanges and are moving their tokens to offline wallets. Considering that this is precisely what this website and other exchange skeptics have been saying for years is the only proper protocol, one can only say better late than never. If only it didn’t take massive losses to make people realize just what’s at stake.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/10/2022 – 18:27

• "Difficult Times Ahead": Musk Says Twitter Bankruptcy Possible As FTC Expresses "Deep Concern"
  “Difficult Times Ahead”: Musk Says Twitter Bankruptcy Possible As FTC Expresses “Deep Concern”

  Twitter boss Elon Musk told employees at a recent all-hands meeting that the company is losing so much money that “bankruptcy is not out of the question,” according to The Information.

  

  Twitter, which hasn’t turned a profit since 2019, has seen a “massive drop” in revenue according to Musk, as advertisers step back from spending campaigns.

  Musk also suggested during the meeting that the company’s future depends on the success of the revamped $8 per month Twitter Blue subscription service – which is currently being bombarded by bots, scammers, and impersonators.

  Okay twitter blue has been such a success I need to do a thread. Feel free to add to the 🧵on the great launch of this product pic.twitter.com/cx1bEFp9Yn

  — Read Jackson Rising by @CooperationJXN (@JoshuaPHilll) November 10, 2022

  “The reason we’re going hardcore on subscribers is to keep Twitter alive,” Musk said, according to The Information, adding “Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn.“

  Musk also announced that the company’s “work from anywhere” policy is now canceled, telling Platformer “If you can physically make it to an office and you don’t show up, resignation accepted.”

  Banks balking at holding debt?

  As Bloomberg notes, Wall Street banks that lent Musk $13 billion to fund Musk’s buyout have been quietly approaching hedge funds to see if they would be interested in chunks of buyout debt at deeply discounted prices as low as 60 cents on the dollar – which would mark one of the deepest discounts in a decade.

  The lukewarm investor reception shows just how big of an albatross the Twitter debt is becoming for a Morgan Stanley-led cohort that committed to finance Musk’s acquisition of the social-media firm back in April, before credit markets cratered. The seven banks are now saddled with risky loans that they never intended to keep on their books, and face an increasingly uphill battle to minimize losses. -Bloomberg

  In particular, the banks want to unload their $6.5 billion leveraged loan portion of the financing, and if the loans are trading at 60 cents, that implies everything below the secured tranche in the cap structure is impaired (more or less a donut), and the EV on the company is around $8 billion.

  Just to be clear, Twitter senior secured bank loans- the top of the capital stack- at $0.60 implies that Twitter- for which @elonmusk paid $44 billion- is now worth less than $8 billion.

  — Will Slaughter (@BamaBonds) November 10, 2022

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

  Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission has sounded the alarm over an exodus of top employees from the social media giant – the latest of whom was the company’s head of moderation and safety, Yoel Roth, who – as a longstanding left-leaning executive, provided some level cover for Musk.

  The government watchdog agency said that it was “tracking the developments at Twitter with deep concern,” and that it’s considering taking action to ensure that the company is complying with a ‘consent order’ which requires the company to comply with certain privacy and security requirements related to allegations of past data misuse.

  Twitter was first put under a consent order in 2011, and it agreed to a new order earlier this year. If the FTC finds Twitter is not complying with that order, it could fine the company hundreds of millions of dollars, potentially damaging the company’s already precarious financial state. -WaPo

  “No CEO or company is above the law, and companies must follow our consent decrees,” said FTC director of public affairs, Douglas Farrar. “Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them.”

  According to the report, FTC staffers said they were most concerned about the rapid rollout of new features which have yet to undergo full security reviews governed by the FTC consent decree. The agency also objected to Musk requiring staff to work in the office at least 40 hours per week, effective Thursday.

  Former FTC officials warned that the departures of key privacy and security officials, as well as some of Musk’s proposed changes to Twitter products, opened the company to serious regulatory peril. -WaPo

  Employees were not happy in the company’s slack channel following the all-hands meeting.

  “What’s the motivation? Work hard or get fired?” asked one employee.

  “How do you plan to restore totally destroyed trust?” asked another.

  “I am ethically not okay with making the richest person in the world even richer. Also not okay with this alpha dog mentality – it’s already trickling down.”

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

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/10/2022 – 18:20

• JPMorgan Warns FTX Collapse Will Spark "Cascade Of Margin Calls"
  JPMorgan Warns FTX Collapse Will Spark “Cascade Of Margin Calls”

  Unlike the high profile crypto-linked blowups earlier this year, JPMorgan believes that there is something different about the ongoing FTX implosion.

  First the bad news: as JPM flows and liquidity strategist Nick Panigirtzoglou writes overnight, “given the size and interlinkages of both FTX and Alameda Research with other entities of the crypto ecosystem including DeFi platforms it looks likely that a new cascade of margin calls, deleveraging and crypto company/platform failures is starting similar to what we saw last May/June following the collapse of Terra.”

  Then again, this is the same Panigirtzoglou who just a few weeks ago was busy praising crypto’s nascent recovery. Nothing like a one-off event to totally U-turn your entire thesis.

  To be sure, that doesn’t mean he is wrong, and this is how he frames the current quandary facing the crypto space –  the $8bn of Alameda Research liabilities reported in the press “is big enough to create a similar wave of deleveraging to that seen following the $20bn Terra USD collapse last May. And similar to what we saw after the collapse of Terra USD, this deleveraging is likely to last for at least a few weeks unless a rescue for Alameda Research and FTX is agreed quickly.”

  Yet what makes this new phase of deleveraging more problematic is that the number of entities with stronger balance sheets able to rescue those with low capital and high leverage is shrinking within the crypto ecosystem. If nothing else, SBF was frequently referred to as the next JPMorgan (not any more). FTX and Alameda Research had emerged last May/June as the main entities with apparently strong balance sheets to rescue weaker and more leveraged entities such as BlockFi, Voyager Digital and Celsius.

  But now that the balance sheet strength of Alameda Research and FTX is under question only a few months after being perceived as strong balance sheet entities, it creates a confidence crisis and reduces the appetite of other crypto companies to come to the rescue.

  What is certain, according to Panigirtzoglou, is that the collapse of Alameda Research/FTX will increase investor and regulatory pressure on crypto entities to disclose more information about their balance sheets, to safeguard client assets, to limit asset concentration and will induce more diligent risk management including management of counterparty risk among crypto market participants.

  Paradoxically, FTX had been preferred over Binance by institutional clients such as hedge funds, so the past days’ events will likely change the way institutional investors interact with exchanges to ensure their assets are protected.

  In this context, JPM notes that it is encouraging that nine exchanges including Binance, Gate.io, KuCoin, Poloniex, Bitget, Huobi, OKX, Deribit and Bybit have issued statements that they would publish their Merkle tree reserve certificates to increase transparency. Merkle trees allow Exchanges to store each user account’s hash value of assets in the leaf nodes of the Merkle tree. Assets on a leaf node can be audited and verified by a third party

  On the positive side, and while it might take several weeks until the current deleveraging cycle peaks, the JPM strategist believes that “the hit to crypto market cap is likely to be smaller than post Terra given previous deleveraging.”

  One metric to quantify the previous deleveraging is shown in the chart below, which depicts JPM’s position proxy for CME bitcoin futures: this position proxy stands close to levels last seen in January 2020 pointing to rather advanced deleveraging.

  

  The  deleveraging phase that followed the Terra collapse had induced a 50% decline in crypto market cap from around $1.7tr at the beginning of May to a low of $0.86tr by mid-June. With the crypto market cap standing at just above $1tr before the FTX/Alameda Research collapse, JPM’s guess is that the crypto market will find a floor above $500bn in the current deleveraging phase.

  Another way of thinking about the downside from here is the bitcoin production cost which historically acted as a floor for the bitcoin price. At the moment, this production cost stands at $15k but it is likely to revisit the $13k low seen over the summer months. A production cost of $13k implies 25% downside from here which would bring the crypto market cap to a low of $650bn.

  More in the full JPM report available to pro subs in the usual place.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/10/2022 – 18:00

• LA's 'Soros DA' Gets Charges Dropped Against Election Software CEO
  LA’s ‘Soros DA’ Gets Charges Dropped Against Election Software CEO

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

  A judge in California on Nov. 9 dismissed charges against the CEO of an election software firm, who prosecutors had accused of being behind “probably the largest data breach in United States history.”

  

  The Los Angeles Superior Court judge threw out charges of conspiracy and grand theft by embezzlement of public funds against Eugene Yu, the CEO of Konnech, at the request of Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon.

  Konnech did not respond to a request for comment.

  The office of Gascon, a Democrat, said the request stemmed from potential bias that it did not detail.

  “We are concerned about both the pace of the investigation and the potential bias in the presentation and investigation of the evidence,” Tiffiny Blacknell, a spokeswoman for the office, told The Epoch Times in an email. “As a result, we have decided to ask the court to dismiss the current case, and alert the public in order to ensure transparency.”

  Gary Lincenberg, an attorney representing Yu, said the dismissal shows that his client is innocent.

  “Mr. Yu’s good name was tarnished by false narratives from fringe conspiracy theorists who bragged about enlisting Los Angeles prosecutors to further their political agenda. They have since been found in contempt of court and were imprisoned for their contempt. We are grateful that our judicial system still has checks and balances to guard against their dangerous conduct,” Lincenberg said in a statement to The Epoch Times.

  He was referring to leaders of True the Vote, who were jailed after refusing to identify a person they described as a confidential FBI informant, but released from jail this week after an appeals court overruled the judge who issued the confinement order.

  Konnech sued the leaders, Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips, alleging public comments the pair made defamed Yu, a Chinese-born American citizen, and Yu’s firm.

  Some of the comments aligned with the charging documents against Yu, which alleged in part that he violated the contract Konnech signed with Los Angeles County by storing data on poll workers on servers in China.

  “Under its $2.9 million, five-year contract with the county, Konnech was supposed to securely maintain the data and that only United States citizens and permanent residents have access to it. District Attorney investigators found that in contradiction to the contract, information was stored on servers in the People’s Republic of China,” Gascon’s office said in October.

  Phillips testified in the defamation case that he was “told by L.A. County” that they had accessed the same data he viewed in 2021.

  The charges against Yu were dismissed without prejudice. That means they can be refiled in the future.

  Prosecutors have not ruled out refiling charges.

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/10/2022 – 17:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest