Today’s News 12th August 2021

• The End Of The Merkel Era
  The End Of The Merkel Era

  Angela Merkel’s reign is coming to an end after 16 years in office as the German chancellor. The 67-year-old is no longer the German conservative party’s candidate to head a new government after the September 26 elections, the usual procedure for a chancellor completing a fourth term.

  During her time in office, Merkel became known as one of the most powerful and influential women on the planet. At the national level, she distinguished herself by stoic leadership and firm crisis management while leaving room for public opinion. She steered the country through the financial crisis of 2008, the Fukushima disaster in 2011 (including its repercussions for atomic energy stronghold Germany) and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic as well as her government’s decision to welcome more than one million refugees to Germany in 2015.

  During her long career, Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes that Angela Merkel – or Mutti (“mommy”) as the Germans call her – has seen many world leaders come and go.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  At the helm since 2005, she has been a peer to four American and four French presidents as well as five British and eight Italian prime ministers (one of whom, Silvio Berlusconi, even had two separate terms).

  Only the Japanese were able to match the musical chairs at the top of the Italian government. Eight Japanese premiers made their introductions to Angela Merkel (and she to them), also including one returning one, Shinzo Abe. Abe had the longest consecutive term of any Japanese prime minister opposite Merkel between 2012 and 2020. This beats the longest consecutive term for an Italian prime minister of around 3.5 years, but also means that the Japanese were changing their prime ministers in even quicker succession during the rest of the time.

  Fewer different faces greeted Merkel as the top politicians in India and China. Manmohan Singh shared 8.5 years in office with Merkel from 2005 to 2014. Narendra Modi and the German longtime chancellor are going on 7.5 years of shared time in office come September. While Modi’s reelection is coming up in 2024, another one of Merkel’s familiar faces, Chinese president Xi Jinping, already made provisions to extend his reign for longer. Xi has served opposite Merkel since 2013 – longer than any other world leader in the analysis – and since term limits for Chinese presidents were abolished in 2018, he is now bound to see the chancellors pass him by for a change.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/12/2021 – 02:45

• US Officials Condemn China Over Diplomatic Retaliation Against Lithuania
  US Officials Condemn China Over Diplomatic Retaliation Against Lithuania

  Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,

  The U.S. State Department and some members of Congress on Aug. 10 voiced support for Lithuania, after China threw a diplomatic tantrum over the Baltic nation’s decision to allow Taiwan to open an office in Vilnius under its own name.

  

  State Department spokesperson Ned Price pauses while speaking during a briefing at the State Department in Washington on Aug. 2, 2021. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

  On Tuesday, China’s foreign ministry recalled its ambassador to Lithuania and demanded it recall its ambassador to China. The ministry said the Baltic nation “brazenly violates” the ties between China and Lithuania, and it warned that there would be “potential consequences” if the Taiwan office were indeed opened.

  “We do stand in solidarity with our NATO ally Lithuania and we condemn the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China’s] recent retaliatory actions,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price told a briefing on Aug. 10.

  He added, “We support our European partners and our allies as they develop mutually beneficial relations with Taiwan and resist the PRC’s coercive behavior.”

  Price said there are benefits for countries to engage with Taiwan, since the self-ruled island is “a global leader in public health, advanced manufacturing, and democratic governance.”

  “Each country should be able to determine the contours of its own ‘one-China’ policy without outside coercion,” Price said.

  Many countries, including the United States, have long held a “one-China policy,” which asserts that there is only one sovereign state with the name “China.” The Chinese regime demands nations accept its “one-China principle” under which Beijing asserts sovereignty over Taiwan.

  Taiwan, a de facto independent nation with its own military and constitution, establishes trade offices that act as de facto embassies in countries without formal relations. For example, Taiwan’s de facto embassy in the United States is called the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States.

  

  This general view shows the Lithuanian Embassy in Beijing on Aug. 10, 2021. (Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images)

  Neither Washington nor Vilnius has formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan. The self-ruled island currently has 15 diplomatic allies, with the Vatican being the only one in Europe.

  The Taipei Mission in the Republic of Latvia (TMIL) handles affairs between Taiwan and the three Baltic nations—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

  Lithuania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a statement, expressed regret over China’s decisions. However, the ministry added that the country is “determined to pursue mutually beneficial ties with Taiwan like many other countries in the European Union and the rest of the world do.”

  Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told Reuters on Tuesday that, “We are considering our next moves.”

  China’s hawkish state-run media Global Times, in an op-ed published on Tuesday, said Beijing’s diplomatic actions against Lithuania are a warning to the rest of the world.

  “If the Chinese government does not take action, it may leave the rest of the world a false impression that countries that offend China over Taiwan will not get punished,” it stated.

  The outlet’s editor-in-chief, Hu Xijin, slammed Lithuania as a “crazy, tiny country” and a “U.S. running dog” in an article. He said the Baltic country will “eventually pay the price.”

  Several U.S. lawmakers took to Twitter to voice support for Lithuania.

  “The PRC’s punitive diplomacy will not silence democratic nations in their support for #Taiwan, a shining example of democracy in the Indo-Pacific,” wrote Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

  Rubio added:

  “Free nations, like #Lithuania, have the right to engage with a fellow democracy. We must all stand up to the #CCP’s aggression.”

  Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.) applauded Lithuania for “remaining firm in their relations with Taiwan,” despite pressure from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

  “Taiwan is a crucial ally for our struggle against the evils of Beijing’s communism,” he added.

  

  Taiwanese sailors salute the island’s flag on the deck of the Panshih supply ship after taking part in annual drills at the Tsoying naval base in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, on Jan. 31, 2018. (Mandy Cheng/AFP via Getty Images)

  In July, Lithuania announced that it will open a trade office in Taiwan’s capital Taipei in autumn this year.

  In recent months, Lithuania has not been shy about voicing its criticism of the Chinese regime. In May, it decided to withdraw from China’s “17+1” cooperation platform, which it joined in 2012. In the same month, the country’s parliament passed a resolution calling out the communist regime’s treatment of Uyghurs in China’s far-western Xinjiang region as “genocide.”

  On Tuesday, Lithuania’s foreign ministry stated it stood with Canada in “condemning #China’s decision to uphold the death penalty of Robert Schellenberg.”

  Schellenberg, a Canadian citizen who has been detained in China since 2014, had his appeal struck down in a Chinese court on Aug. 10. He was sentenced to death in 2018 over a drug case.

  On Aug. 11, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs took to its Twitter account to applaud Lithuania for its “courageous [and] principled stance” on Taiwan.

  “As forces for good, we’ll continue working together to safeguard freedom & democracy for the benefit of our citizens,” the Taiwanese ministry wrote.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 08/12/2021 – 02:00

• Does The New US-Led 'Quad' With Pakistan, Uzbekistan, & Afghanistan Have China In Its Sights?
  Does The New US-Led ‘Quad’ With Pakistan, Uzbekistan, & Afghanistan Have China In Its Sights?

  Authored by Maria Siow via The South China Morning Post,

  • Analysts remain divided over whether the new grouping is aimed at countering China’s growing influence in the region, especially its Belt and Road Initiative

  • Its stated aim is expanding trade, but some see a US attempt to keep military supply lines into Afghanistan open – the choice of name has also raised eyebrows

  Little is known about the new quadrilateral framework announced last month between the United States, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan except that it is aimed at enhancing regional connectivity.

  

  Afghan security forces stand guard at a checkpoint in Herat, Afghanistan, last month. Photo: EPA

  A July 16 statement from the US State Department said the four countries aimed to “expand trade, build transit links, and strengthen business-to-business ties” with an eye on “the historic opportunity to open flourishing interregional trade routes”.

  Few other details were provided in the one-paragraph statement, except that the four members of the “Quad Regional Support for Afghanistan-Peace Process and Post Settlement” all “consider long-term peace and stability in Afghanistan critical to regional connectivity and agree that peace and regional connectivity are mutually reinforcing”, and would further discuss their cooperation in the coming months.

  

  The use of the word ‘Quad’ has invited comparisons to the US-Australia-India-Japan Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. Photo: EPA

  The use of the word “Quad” for the new partnership has invited comparisons to the US-Australia–India–Japan Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which Beijing has criticised as an anti-China alliance and is also known as the Quad. But with such scant information to go on, analysts remain divided over whether the new grouping is actually aimed at countering China’s influence, and how effective it will be at achieving its stated aims.

  Derek Grossman, a senior defence analyst at the Rand Corporation, a US think tank, said the new Quad was expected to have more of an economic focus. “That said, it is difficult to focus on forging economic connectivity without security, so we’ll have to see how this plays out,” he said.

  Focus on Afghanistan

  With the US on track to fully withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by the end of the month, the Taliban’s recent seizures of checkpoints and districts from Afghan government forces have fuelled worries of a return to civil war and instability in the region.

  The new Quad could help by ensuring that landlocked Afghanistan remains engaged with its neighbours and the outside world by facilitating cross-border trade and access to the wider region, said Kashish Parpiani, a strategic studies fellow at the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation think tank.

  He said the inclusion of Pakistan and Uzbekistan made sense as the two countries have stakes in ensuring stability in Afghanistan. The US has also been working with Islamabad on military and intelligence engagements, and Tashkent on relocating Afghan refugees and locals who worked with the US military, Parpiani said.

  The grouping’s second purpose, according to Mark N. Katz, a government and politics professor at George Mason University in the US, was to keep supply lines open so that Washington could continue to support government forces in Afghanistan.

  “Afghan forces may not succeed in defending the Kabul government even if they receive US supplies. But they definitely will not succeed if they do not,” Katz said.

  He said Washington’s decision to include both Pakistan and Uzbekistan in the new partnership was to ensure that neither country had a “monopoly” on supply lines, so the US could “at any time choose to route supplies bound for Afghanistan” through either of the neighbours.

  Umida Hashimova, an analyst at the US-based Centre for Naval Analyses who specialises in Central Asia affairs, said one motivation for Uzbekistan joining the new Quad was to receive US political support – and “whatever financial backing Washington can provide”– for a planned railway across Afghanistan that, once complete, would provide a new route linking Central Asia to Pakistan’s seaports.

  She noted that Tashkent began funding discussions in November with the US state-run International Development Finance Corporation for the project, which aims to connect Peshawar in Pakistan to Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan – and onwards to Uzbekistan via an existing rail link. Construction of the 573-km long railway’s first section, between Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif, is expected to begin next month.

  Two Quad’s a crowd?

  As the scant US State Department statement on the new Quad did not mention China, some analysts have suggested the grouping is not intended as a counter to Beijing.

  But Muhammad Ali Baig, a research associate at Pakistan’s Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, said the grouping’s name had raised eyebrows as “the very word ‘Quad’ is worrisome for some Chinese policymakers”.

  He said the original Quadrilateral Security Dialogue had rapidly turned into an “Asian Nato”, in reference to the transatlantic security alliance set up to provide collective security against the Soviet Union after the second world war. In October last year, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi described the earlier Quad as an “Indo-Pacific Nato”.

  China keen to position itself for influence in a post-US Afghanistan

  Yan Liang, an economics professor at Willamette University in the US state of Oregon, said the new Quad was clearly an attempt by Washington to rival China’s growing global influence, following on from the launch of the US-led Build Back Better World initiative at the G7 summit in June as a rival to Beijing’s multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative to boost global connectivity and trade.

  “From Beijing’s perspective, it certainly looks like a strategy to form a ‘bloc confrontation’ and an anti-China encirclement,” Liang said.

  But Nishank Motwani, research and policy director at Kabul-based ATR Consulting, said China was unlikely to lose sleep over the new grouping as it had far more political and economic clout in the region than the US.

  Between 2005 and 2020, Chinese companies invested nearly US$50 billion in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, according to the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute think tank’s China Global Investment Tracker.

  Rand Corporation’s Grossman said he agreed that the use of the term “Quad” held negative connotations for Beijing, but said that it “it is hard to argue that all four of these countries are on the same page” as the US in regards to China.

  “Pakistan, of course, is an ‘ironclad’ and decades-long partner of Beijing,” he said, adding that Afghanistan’s government had previously welcomed belt and road projects to help build infrastructure in the war-torn country.

  Beijing’s ties with the Kabul government could be jeopardised, however, by its recent overtures to the Taliban, Grossman said. Foreign Minister Wang met representatives of the group in China late last month.

  Uzbekistan, meanwhile, is closer to the US but maintains a working relationship with China and did not necessarily wish to alienate Beijing, Grossman said, further noting that if the new Quad was to survive, it would have “to focus on building economic connectivity instead of building an anti-China bloc”.

  At the first Belt and Road Forum held in Beijing in 2017, Uzbekistan and China signed 115 deals worth more than US$23 billion to strengthen cooperation in areas ranging from electrical power and oil production, to transport, infrastructure and agriculture.

  An ineffective partnership?

  Analysts also cast doubt on how effective the new Quad would be at achieving its aims, given the troubled ties its other members have had with the US in the past.

  Katz from George Mason University said Pakistan’s reliability as a US partner was “clearly questionable” given its previous support for the Taliban.

  Pakistan has long been accused of providing military, financial and intelligence support to the group that ruled most of Afghanistan as a fundamentalist Islamic emirate where women had few rights and entertainment was banned until it was ousted by a US-led invasion in 2001. Islamabad has denied the charges.

  Motwani from ATR Consulting said that with its military withdrawal – after two decades of war and some 47,600 civilian deaths – the US had “abandoned” Afghanistan, “the most pro-American government in the region to a terrorist organisation whose modus operandi is to bring about death, darkness, and destruction to civilians”.

  He said Washington’s “desperation in salvaging its diminishing profile” was on show in its “stitching” together of a regional connectivity mechanism such as the new Quad.

  Liang, the economics professor who sees the new Quad as an extension of the US-led Build Back Better World G7 initiative, said it was unclear where funding for new transit links and trade routes in Afghanistan would come from at a time when Washington was struggling to pass a domestic infrastructure bill whose had already been slashed in half, to US$1 trillion.

  The G7’s infrastructure plan was “unlikely to collaborate and cooperate” with the nearly 2,600 belt and road projects – worth some US$3.7 trillion – that China had launched in developing countries, Liang wrote in a commentary for the East Asia Forum last month, adding “this could lead to repetitive, window-dressing, uncoordinated and even disorderly efforts to build global infrastructure.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/11/2021 – 23:40

• Former College Professor Arrested For Setting Fires Near Dixie Blaze
  Former College Professor Arrested For Setting Fires Near Dixie Blaze

  A former college professor living out of his car is accused of setting fires near the area of the massive Dixie Fire in Northern California. 

  CBS Sacramento reports forty-seven-year-old Gary Stephen Maynard was arrested Saturday for setting fire to public land. He’s accused of setting the Ranch Fire near the Mendocino National Forest.

  US Forest Agents began investigating the former Santa Clara University and Sonoma State University criminal justice professor on July 20 when he was spotted by someone acting strangely near the Cascade Fire. 

  

  Court documents reveal a witness saw Maynard come out of the woods where one of the fires was sparked. They said the man was “mentally unstable.” 

  “Witness 1 believed the man was mentally unstable, describing the man as, ‘mumbling a lot and having bipolar-like behavior,'” the court documents detailed. 

  Investigators were quick to place a tracking device on Maynard’s vehicle looking for answers for who or what sparked the Dixie Fire, the largest single wildfire in California history. They also found additional evidence he might have stoked more fires. 

  “The two small ground fires were each determined to be acts of arson and, indeed, classified as two additional arson fires,” wrote one investigator.

  Another court document read:

  “He entered the evacuation zone and began setting fires behind the first responders fighting the Dixie fire. In addition to the danger of enlarging the Dixie fire and threatening more lives and property, this increased the danger to the first responders. Maynard’s fires were placed in the perfect position to increase the risk of firefighters being trapped between fires. But for the dedication and efforts of U.S. Forest Service investigators working around the clock to track Maynard, those fires would not have been discovered in their infancy.”

  On Tuesday, federal Judge Kendall Newman ordered Maynard to stay in custody pending a hearing on Wednesday. 

  While in custody, Maynard showed signs of anger and instability as he lashed out at police in the Lassen County Jail:

  “I’m going to kill you, f—king pig! I told those f—kers I didn’t start any of those fires!” 

  Commenting on the case is Jonathan Turley, a Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, who said:

  “There is an abundance of evidence of a mental disability and crisis in this case. This is someone who clearly needs help and hopefully will now get some. The question will become whether that evidence is sufficient as an insanity defense.”

  Maynard’s motive has yet to be released by police. Still, perhaps the fires around Dixie or even Dixie itself were aided by the possible arsonist and not as much climate change as liberals want everyone to believe. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/11/2021 – 23:20

• Ethiopia Calls For Full Mobilization In Attempt To Stoke Civil War
  Ethiopia Calls For Full Mobilization In Attempt To Stoke Civil War

  Submitted by South Front,

  A sense of desperation is setting in among the Ethiopian government.

  On August 10th, Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed issued a statement calling on all Ethiopians capable of wielding a weapon to enlist in the military and crush the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). He said that “now” was the right time for all capable Ethiopians “who are of age” to join the Defense Forces, Special Forces and militias. The purpose for this is for citizens to show their patriotism, and fight against other citizens of their own country.

  The statement also takes aim at some in the international community, blaming them for the “machinations of foreign hands” in the nine-month war that has spilled from Tigray into the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions.

  The call by Ahmed furthermore reinforces the idea that the unilateral government-imposed ceasefire has entirely failed, after being openly mocked by the TPLF.

  Tigray forces say they want to secure their blockaded region, end the fighting and see the prime minister leave office. The TPLF claim they don’t want further gains, or control over large swathes of the country. This isn’t Afghanistan and the Tigray Forces are not the Taliban. Still, the central government is painting a picture of existential crisis, in which the TPLF threaten the everyday existence of the normal Ethiopian citizen.

  To reinforce that, the government statement also calls on all Ethiopians to be “the eyes and ears of the country in order to track down and expose spies and agents” of the Tigray forces. Everybody could be an enemy, and the very status quo, the way of life is under threat, at least it is presented as such in claims. All these claims are accompanied by dubious attacks and raids, all of which are denied by the TPLF.

  After retaking control of most of Tigray in late June and early July, Tigrayan forces have pushed into the adjoining Afar and Amhara regions, capturing the United Nations World Heritage site of Lalibela. In an alleged attack in the Afar region on August 5th, 12 people who had been forced from their homes by violence were killed, said Mohammed Yesuf, head of the Dubti Hospital. 46 people were treated for injuries at the hospital, he told Reuters by phone.

  The TPLF entirely denied responsibility for these attacks, while the central government accuses them.

  When the tables were turned and Addis Ababa was in control of Tigray’s capital Mekelle, there were opposing claims saying the government was hunting ordinary citizens and detaining them for allegedly spying and other “crimes”. Quite questionable conduct for a Prime Minister who won a Nobel Peace Prize. Furthermore, what Abiy Ahmed is doing now is stoking full-blown civil war, because the TPLF wishes for him to resign and a new government to be formed.

  If the “full mobilization” strategy turns into reality, it is entirely unknown how the pieces will fall and what the remains of Ethiopia will look like in the ensuing chaos.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/11/2021 – 23:00

• China Credit Growth Unexpecteldy Collapses
  China Credit Growth Unexpecteldy Collapses

  One month ago we observed that after tumbling for much of 2020 and even turning negative early Q2, China’s credit impulse had finally troughed with significant consequences for global reflation. But with China’s economy rapidly slowing and Beijing considering what is the best way to stimulate the economy without leading to another overheating, the latest Chinese credit data released overnight which missed every consensus expectation, confirmed that Beijing’s latest attempt to reflate the local (and global) economy will not be a walk in the park.

  Here are the key numbers reported by the PBOC this morning:

  • New CNY loans: RMB 1080bn in July (RMB loans to the real economy: RMB 839.1bn) missing consensus of RMB 1200bn. Outstanding CNY loan growth was 12.3% yoy in July, unchanged from June’s 12.3% yoy.
  • Total social financing: RMB 1060bn in July, badly missing consensus of RMB 1700bn. This was the lowest TSF print since February  2020 when the Chinese economy was effectively shut down.
  • TSF stock growth (after adding all government bonds) was 11.0% yoy in July, lower than 11.3% in June. The implied month-on-month growth of TSF stock moderated to 9.3% (seasonally adjusted annual rate) from 9.9% in June.
  • M2: 8.3% yoy in July (-0.9% SA ann mom) also missing the Bloomberg consensus of  8.7% yoy. June: 8.6% yoy (10.2% SA ann mom estimated by GS).

  After strong prints in June, new RMB loans, total social financing (TSF) and M2 all surprised to the downside in July, as both corporate and household loans slowed, while government bond net issuance was also smaller in July vs June due to the large amount of maturing bonds in the month. Meanwhile, shadow banking credit continues to contract. Tight regulations likely continued to slow credit extensions to property, consumers and LGFV sectors, and credit demand in the rest of the economy has likely been weak, as interest rates declined along with the slowdown in credit growth in July.

  

  Some more detailed observations:

  July TSF flow and new CNY loans both came in below expectations, after both indicators surprised to the upside in June. Sequential growth of TSF stock moderated to 9.3% mom annualized sa in July from 11.1% in June, and overall RMB loans growth also decelerated to 8.8% month-over-month annualized, from 11.5% in June. M2 growth was also lower than market expectations and slowed from June.

  

  Among major TSF components, RMB loans slowed meaningfully. Here, as Goldman reminds us, the RMB loans under TSF differs from the headline new RMB loans separately reported by the PBOC as the latter includes loans between financial institutions while the former only includes loans to the real economy. New RMB loans to the real economy were even lower than the headline new RMB loans. More specifically, the slowdown in RMB loan growth in July appeared broad-based: both corporate and household loan growth decelerated in July. Household short-term loans showed the biggest deceleration. After adjusting for seasonality, household short-term loan growth slowed to 6.3% month-over-month annualized, from 15.3% in June. Corporate and government bond net issuance was lower on the back of the large amount of maturing bonds in the month. Meanwhile China’s shadow banking system – trust and entrust loans – continued to contract, although bank acceptance bills showed a small rebound in July after seasonal adjustment.

  According to Goldman, the slowdown in TSF and RMB loans likely reflected the weak credit demand amid tightened regulations on property, LGFV, and consumer credit (through regulations on online lending platforms), as interest rates in general drifted lower in the month after the broad RRR cut in the middle of the month. Disruptions such as the virus outbreak and related control measures, floods and typhoons likely also contributed.

  The broad TSF growth was slow even if one looks at the average growth rate in June-July combined: average TSF growth was around 9.6% annualized in June and July, vs an average month-over-month annualized growth rate of 11.3% in the first five months of the year, and was also tracking below our 11.5% full year forecast of TSF growth.

  While this may initially appear problematic, Beijing is all too aware of the credit conditions in its economy whose GDP forecast has been downgraded by every major bank in the past week amid the continued slowdown in Chinese trade, while the continued overheating in CPI and PPI means that unless China reboots its economy – and fast – it faces a stagflationary hard landing.

  Needless to say, that is not an acceptable outcome to Beijing, and as a result Goldman concludes that the weak credit data and the recent resurgence of virus (along with the strict virus control measures) increased the likelihood of incremental policy easing. In fact, Goldman’s China economists continue to expect one more RRR cut later this year, and expect government bond net issuance to increase in the next few months which would support overall TSF growth.

  Said otherwise, the latest data was ugly and it will hammer China’s credit impulse pushing it to the lowest level in over two years. However, it is that very downshift in Chinese credit flows that ensures that Beijing will have no choice but to aggressively easy in the coming months and push China’s hibernating credit growth back into overdrive.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/11/2021 – 22:40

• An Open Letter To The Person Who Gave Me COVID
  An Open Letter To The Person Who Gave Me COVID

  Authored by Thomas E. Woods via The Libertarian Institue/Tom Woods.com

  To the Person Who Gave Me the Virus:

  I have no idea who you are, but our paths almost surely crossed last month in Las Vegas.

  Even now I wouldn’t change a thing about that trip, by the way, which was a blast.

  The existence of the virus, it’s true, made my life a fraction of one percent more dangerous than it was before.

  But since I don’t have any mental disorders, I hadn’t calibrated my risk tolerance so precisely that such a tiny change would make me radically alter my life.

  Naturally if you knew you were sick, you should have stayed home.

  Of all the advice they’ve given—mask wearing, social distancing, and all the rest—staying home when you’re sick would do by far the most good, yet we hear it urged upon us the least.

  At the same time, The Hill reports that you can easily confuse the symptoms of the virus for allergies, so it’s entirely possible not to be aware that you’re contagious. I see no reason to assume bad will on your part.

  

  Every time I leave my house I am taking a risk. We all are. I don’t blame you for the constraints imposed by reality.

  If the chance of being struck by lightning increased tenfold tomorrow, this would not affect my behavior in any way. Not being neurotic, I don’t live my life as if the present rate of lightning strikes is precisely as high as I can tolerate.

  It has become almost impossible to have a rational conversation about any of this.

  For one thing, most people are shockingly misinformed. Ask the average person what the likelihood is of someone in his age cohort needing to be hospitalized for COVID, and his answer will be off by a factor of 10, if not 100. Guaranteed.

  For that matter, I cannot believe how many people think masks are accomplishing anything. The laughable “studies” on masks generally assume what they set out to prove, and/or confine themselves to strangely arbitrary timeframes, before explosions in COVID spread.

  Dozens of countries have seen their COVID charts go almost vertical after (not necessarily immediately after, but after) introducing large-scale masking, which is what the charts would look like if masks accomplished absolutely nothing. These places are ignored, because nobody is told about them.

  Meanwhile, there have been essentially zero COVID deaths in Sweden over the past month, and the rest of Scandinavia is also doing very well despite very little masking or other restrictions.

  The world acts as if these countries do not exist. As usual with the “you’re to blame for the virus” people, success stories like these are of no interest, because there’s nobody they can demonize—and demonizing people is their favorite pastime.

  My God. They’re just cancelling life. https://t.co/s7gRepVqxD

  — Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) August 10, 2021

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

  The case of Nepal is interesting, too. After a lockdown that ended in July 2020, they decided essentially to proceed as normal. They’re a poor country, and they chose the radical, unheard-of approach of overturning a policy that would have had them starving to death.

  And guess what?

  They’re doing fine.

  “Public health officials” were stumped, but at this point who can be surprised by that? What we laughingly call our “public health” establishment has made fools of themselves during this entire fiasco. Nepal is at 340 deaths per million. Compare that to locked-down countries like the UK (1909), Spain (1756), Belgium (2170), or Peru (5883).

  Back in the United States, the Sun Belt spike of 2020 came down with zero behavioral changes of any kind. The “COVID is your fault” people are too determined to blame someone to show any curiosity about this, even though it absolutely should evoke curiosity.

  COVID comes and goes seasonally and regionally, and blows its way past our silly masks and six-foot floor stickers.

  With my friend Tim Scott, I created a website where people can test their ability to determine which alleged mitigation measures accomplished what. If they work, it should be easy and obvious to choose which line on a graph represents a state or country that implemented it and which line represents one that did not. So go ahead. Try your hand at it. If any of the insanity accomplished anything, it’ll be a breeze: CovidChartsQuiz.com

  We have uncensored discussions of all this inside the Tom Woods Show Elite, my increasingly indispensable private group.

  Now it’s true: I was definitely laid up in bed for a while. But not a single kid should have missed a single basketball practice to keep me from getting sick. Imagine the selfishness involved in that kind of demand.

  Screw that.

  And nor should you, mysterious Las Vegas person, feel sorry for me. I don’t want you staying in your house! I don’t want you refusing to live! I’m glad you were out living your life, enjoying things that make life worth living. Merely preserving your biological existence is unworthy of a human being.

  This is especially so when we’ve been given no indication of precisely what would constitute an all-clear. It’s all arbitrariness piled upon more anti-scientific arbitrariness. We should all be inspired by the words of Lord Sumption in the UK:

  “What sort of life do we think we are protecting? There is more to life than the avoidance of death. Life is a drink with friends. Life is a crowded football match or a live concert. Life is a family celebration with children and grandchildren. Life is companionship, an arm around one’s back, laughter or tears shared at less than two meters. These things are not just optional extras. They are life itself. They are fundamental to our humanity, to our existence as social beings. Of course death is permanent, whereas joy may be temporarily suspended. But the force of that point depends on how temporary it really is.”

  Thank you, Las Vegas person, for refusing to be inhuman, for refusing to be an automaton, and for saying yes to those things that bring us joy and make our lives meaningful.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/11/2021 – 22:20

• Erdogan Might Host Taliban Leader As US Ex-Ambassador Blasts Biden For "Handover" To Enemies
  Erdogan Might Host Taliban Leader As US Ex-Ambassador Blasts Biden For “Handover” To Enemies

  At a moment the Biden administration seems to have resigned itself to sitting by and watching as the Taliban takes back all of Afghanistan, and as the Pentagon has revised its assessment saying it fears Kabul will fall within one month to 90 days, Turkey is setting itself up to be a major player in the country after the dust settles. 

  This could involve Turkey doing its own deal with the Taliban, while being the last major NATO member presence in the country amid the US exit, given Turkish troops are still running and guarding Kabul international airport as the last foreign troops are still flying out.

  On Wednesday President Tayyip Erdogan raised eyebrows by for the first time saying he might soon meet with the leader of the Taliban, Haibatullah Akhundzada, in Turkey.

  

  Erdogan made the statements to CNN Turk, and cast the prospect of such a controversial potential meeting as part of efforts to end the fighting in Afghanistan. Here’s what he said according to translation on Daily Sabah:

  “The latest developments and the situation of the Afghan public are really, really troubling,” Erdoğan said.

  “Maybe I will even be in a position to receive the person who is their leader,” Erdoğan added, after referring to efforts by Turkish officials for talks with the Taliban.

  Erdoğan last month said Turkey would hold discussions with the Taliban as part of the peace process.

  “Why? Because if we do not get control of things like this at a high level, it won’t be possible to secure peace this time in Afghanistan,” he added

  He also in Wednesday statements criticized the US for encouraging allies on the ground in Afghanistan who had worked with the US coalition – such as local Afghan translators and security personal (now being threatened by the Taliban and other Islamists) – to seek the safety of regional countries before seeking asylum in the US.

  As Bloomberg describes of the scathing comments: 

  Turkey on Wednesday blasted the U.S. for recommending that Afghans fearful of a vengeful Taliban seek asylum in America from third countries.

  “Turkey does not, and will not, serve as any country’s waiting room,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s communications director, Fahrettin Altun, told Bloomberg on Wednesday. “We will continue to do everything in our power to preserve the safety of our borders.”

  Meanwhile the Biden administration continues to face criticism and anger over the scale of just how fast things have deteriorated, given as one senior EU official has pointed out over 65% of the country is now firmly in Taliban control, including at least eight provincial capitals. 

  Any private who served in Afghanistan could have told you this would happen. https://t.co/ioFNErrrDr

  — Jack Murphy (@JackMurphyRGR) August 11, 2021

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  A prominent former US ambassador to Afghanistan under the Obama administration, Ryan Crocker, has gone so far as to lash out at Biden for abandoning the country the US spent 20 years attempting to secure to the Islamist enemies.

  “This is a handover to the Taliban,” Crocker told Bloomberg TV Wednesday. He said the US-backed national government now perceives “rightly that we have hung them out to dry. We did a deal with their enemy.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/11/2021 – 22:00

• The Great Keynesian Coup Of August 1971: Fifty Years Later
  The Great Keynesian Coup Of August 1971: Fifty Years Later

  Authored by William Anderson via The Mises Institute,

  On August 15, 1971, the last remains of what had been a magnificent monetary system died a terrible death, and the American academic, political, business, and media elites led the cheers. The Dow Jones Average jumped by more than 32 points the next day. A de facto national default was spun as a great liberation from a tyrannical financial arrangement that had plagued humanity for generations.

  A half century later the disinformation continues, as intellectual bankruptcy parallels the financial bankruptcy of that event.

  

  I write, of course, of the decision by President Richard Nixon to officially close the “gold window,” through which the US government was obligated to sell its gold stores to foreign governments at $35 an ounce, which even then was a bargain. As Nixon’s regime encouraged the Federal Reserve System to inflate the dollar to pay for its bloated military and welfare spending, as had the Johnson and Kennedy regimes before him, it became apparent that the US dollar was quickly losing value. The United States was in rapid decline—and the dollar was falling with the nation’s prestige.

  What happened? There are several accounts, and I will give the main ones, ending with the Austrian perspective. The first will be the Keynesian, the second the monetarist (Chicago school), the third the supply-side version, and the fourth from the Austrians. Before doing that, however, I will give a brief account of the events that began with the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 and ended in national disgrace, an ignominy that even now the official American narrative refuses to recognize.

  The Bretton Woods Conference didn’t occur in a vacuum. Just a month before, Allied troops had secured a beachhead in France and had begun to slowly push the German army eastward. Across the European continent, armies from the Soviet Union were slowly destroying the Axis forces from the other direction. In the Pacific, US bombers were beginning to lay waste to Japanese cities, and the Japanese armies were suffering defeat after defeat. Final victory for the USA and its allies would not come for another thirteen months, but even in July 1944, it was clear how the war would end.

  The US State Department explains the stated purpose of the conference: to help reestablish trading relations in the postwar world:

  The lessons taken by U.S. policymakers from the interwar period informed the institutions created at the conference. Officials such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull were adherents of the Wilsonian belief that free trade not only promoted international prosperity, but also international peace. The experience of the 1930s certainly suggested as much. The policies adopted by governments to combat the Great Depression—high tariff barriers, competitive currency devaluations, discriminatory trading blocs—had contributed to creating an unstable international environment without improving the economic situation. This experience led international leaders to conclude that economic cooperation was the only way to achieve both peace and prosperity, at home and abroad.

  Some cynicism can be excused if one sees a disconnect between the high-minded rhetoric of the document and the actual policies of the Wilson and Roosevelt administrations that played a major role in creating the calamities from 1917 to the end of World War II. But then, it is a rare occurrence when government bombast and the truth intersect. Not surprisingly, Bretton Woods was an attempt by governments to deal with the previous disastrous results of intervention by imposing even more intervention.

  In his classic What Has Government Done to Our Money, Murray N. Rothbard (who will figure heavily in my interpretation of the August 15 events) describes the Bretton Woods Agreement:

  While the Bretton Woods system worked far better than the disaster of the 1930s, it worked only as another inflationary recrudescence of the gold-exchange standard of the 1920s and—like the 1920s—the system lived only on borrowed time.

  The new system was essentially the gold-exchange standard of the 1920s but with the dollar rudely displacing the British pound as one of the “key currencies.” Now the dollar, valued at 1/35 of a gold ounce, was to be the only key currency. The other difference from the 1920s was that the dollar was no longer redeemable in gold to American citizens; instead, the 1930’s system was continued, with the dollar redeemable in gold only to foreign governments and their Central Banks. No private individuals, only governments, were to be allowed the privilege of redeeming dollars in the world gold currency. In the Bretton Woods system, the United States pyramided dollars (in paper money and in bank deposits) on top of gold, in which dollars could be redeemed by foreign governments; while all other governments held dollars as their basic reserve and pyramided their currency on top of dollars. (p. 99)

  To put it another way, the Bretton Woods Agreement really was a scheme to give the appearance of “sound money” all the while ensuring that the sound money regime that existed prior to the outbreak of World War I would not be reinstituted. Furthermore, Henry Hazlitt, who then was writing editorials for the New York Times (how the mighty have fallen!), saw through everything and predicted that the new monetary arrangements would lead to disastrous consequences. He wrote:

  The greatest single contribution the United States could make to world currency stability after the war is to announce its determination to stabilize its own currency. It will incidentally help us, of course, if other nations as well return to the gold standard. They will do it, however, only to the extent that they recognize that they are doing it not primarily as a favor to us but to themselves.

  But Hazlitt knew that governments in 1944 were institutionally incapable of returning to sound money and that the elites in government, academe, and the media were hostile to anything but fiat money. Ultimately, Hazlitt and the NYT would part ways over his disagreements with the Keynesian economic views of the era. The NYT would continue to endorse monetary socialism and today features Paul Krugman, who has all but endorsed the money printing of modern monetary theory. In other words, Hazlitt predicted the demise of the Bretton Woods accord twenty-seven years before it officially collapsed.

  As previously noted, the US dollar was set as the world’s “reserve” currency and it was set at $35 per ounce of gold, which meant that foreign governments and central banks could purchase US gold at that price if they wished to redeem their dollars on something other than dollar-denominated goods and assets. Rothbard points out that because the agreements set the currency exchange values at prewar levels, the dollar was undervalued and European currencies overvalued, thus increasing the demand for dollars.

  (For reasons of length, I do not cover the Marshall Plan and how international monetary policies fit into trying to make it work. Suffice it to say the Marshall Plan has been given far too much credit for Europe’s postwar recovery. In many instances, it actually impeded recovery and it was only after the governments of Western European nations eased the economic controls set during Nazi occupations that Europe had a true economic recovery.)

  The purposeful devaluing of the US dollar provided incentives for the Federal Reserve System to inflate the dollar, which it did in the postwar years and beyond (and is doing with a vengeance today). Because the law forbade Americans from buying and owning gold (with some exceptions for jewelry and official coin collections), the US government did not have to worry about its inflationary policies creating a domestic run on its gold reserves. That would not be the case overseas, however.

  American economists and politicians embraced Keynesian theories that emphasized expansive government programs financed through deficit spending. The few dissenters such as economists Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek were dismissed as “mossbacks” and “reactionaries,” as the American media, academic, and political establishments saw the New Economics as a gateway to easy prosperity.

  European governments, and especially the French government led by Charles de Gaulle (who was advised by the classical gold-standard economist Jacques Rueff), by the 1960s began to purchase US gold in earnest. In the early postwar years, it made sense to hold officially undervalued dollars, but in less than two decades, the dollar had become hopelessly overvalued relative to most European currencies. Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam war and his Great Society welfare programs had to be financed, and the government chose inflation. Buying US gold at what was a bargain price was a way that foreign governments could do an end run around a monetary exchange system that was becoming increasingly unbalanced.

  In 1968, the US government tried to put together a stopgap measure to stop the gold hemorrhage. (Rothbard goes into the details of the measures, noting that they were doomed to fail because they were based upon faulty economic analysis.) By trying to sever the link between the US dollar and gold sold on the free market, the Johnson administration claimed that the new measures would force down the price of gold to less than $35 an ounce, making US stores an unattractive buy.

  As any competent Austrian economist would predict, however, the runs on US gold did not diminish but rather intensified, and by the summer of 1971, the US economy was stagnant, prices were rising, and President Nixon on August 15 announced his “Phase One” economic plan of price controls and temporarily closing the gold window. Again, any competent economist would know that this move would end in failure, but the move initially was popular in the media and with the public. Gene Healy writes:

  There was no national emergency in the summer of ’71: unemployment stood at 6 percent…. Yet, after Nixon’s announcement, the markets rallied, the press swooned, and, even though his speech pre‐empted the popular Western Bonanza, the people loved it, too—75 percent backed the plan in polls.

  On the monetary side, the next step was the implementation in December of the Smithsonian Agreement, which raised the official price of US government gold to $38 an ounce and allowed some flexibility in the fixed exchange rates, but in the end, the combination of US inflation and economic stagnation on the home front would lead to the total collapse of fixed rates. By 1973, the dollar was hopelessly overvalued and ultimately the present system of floating exchange rates prevailed.

  Keynesian Policies

  One of the most famous statements to come from this episode of “Nixon Shock” was the president’s statement to his advisers, “We are all Keynesians now.” It also was the most accurate statement anyone in the government would make. In one action, Nixon cut ties to gold, what J.M. Keynes had called “that barbarous relic.” The devaluation of the dollar would help exports, and Nixon saw government intervention as necessary to “balance power” between labor unions and corporations.

  In fact, his Federal Reserve chairman, Arthur Burns, already had announced his fealty to Keynesian economics, and Nixon himself had surrendered any previous notions of free markets to Keynesian-inspired policies. The PBS Commanding Heights series reported:

  [W]hatever the effects of the Vietnam War on the national consensus in the 1960s, confidence had risen in the ability of government to manage the economy and to reach out to solve big social problems through such programs as the War on Poverty. Nixon shared in these beliefs, at least in part. “Now I am a Keynesian,” he declared in January 1971—leaving his aides to draft replies to the angry letters that flowed into the White House from conservative supporters. He introduced a Keynesian “full employment” budget, which provided for deficit spending to reduce unemployment. A Republican congressman from Illinois told Nixon that he would reluctantly support the president’s budget, “but I’m going to have to burn up a lot of old speeches denouncing deficit spending.” To this Nixon replied, “I’m in the same boat.”

  Whatever fiscal discipline Nixon had promised during his political campaign was out the window. Even if his enemies in the academic and political worlds (and they were legion) would always hate him, nonetheless he was giving them what they always had wanted: government control of the economy. Not surprisingly, while his policies were politically popular at the beginning, the 1970s ultimately became known for stagflation (simultaneous increases in unemployment and inflation—something Keynesians claimed was impossible), gasoline and natural gas shortages (due to price controls), and a general feeling of despair.

  Democrats ultimately would drive Nixon from office three years later, but they endorsed his economic policies, and especially his penchant for price controls. President Jimmy Carter would push his wage-price “guidelines” in an unsuccessful attempt to bring down double-digit inflation, and when Senator Ted Kennedy ran for the Democratic nomination in 1980, he made price controls the centerpiece of his economic policies.

  Ironically, Carter and the Democrats did embark on a supply-side venture of their own, deregulating the financial and transportation sectors and laying the groundwork to deregulate telecommunications. Thus, the party of the New Deal actually undid part of the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt—and actually provided a long-run boost to the economy, all the while being ignorant of their accomplishments.

  Supply-Siders

  While the group of economists that called themselves supply-siders raised important issues about how government intervention into the economy was causing stagflation and other economic ills, nonetheless their statements on Nixon’s actions were shortsighted. During the 1980 presidential campaign in which Ronald Reagan cast his lot with supply-side economics, Jack Kemp, who championed the supply-side policies in Congress, declared that Nixon’s error had been to go to floating exchange rates instead of holding to the fixed rates of the Bretton Woods accord.

  Nixon’s actions, as dishonest as they were, did not occur in a vacuum. Holding to fixed exchanged rates and a (very) modified gold standard would have required the kind of fiscal and monetary discipline that had not existed in Washington since the Great Depression and certainly was not going to begin in August 1971. We should be clear: Nixon did not unilaterally destroy a productive arrangement. Nixon’s actions unwittingly exposed the bankruptcy of US government policies even though he would spin it as the US fending off an unjustified foreign attack on the dollar and on US gold supplies.

  During the era of the international gold standard that fell apart in 1914, currency rates were fixed, but not against each other but rather to a measure of gold. Any attempts to game the system—as the US government did on a regular basis in the postwar years—would have quickly been detected, with gold outflows ultimately helping to counter cheating. Although the Bretton Woods accord was created to emulate the old gold standard with its fixed rates, it ultimately failed because governments are destructive. By summer’s end of 1914, the governments of Europe had gone to war and destroyed an international gold standard that took decades to build. In 1971, governments armed with Keynesian dogma laid waste to an economic system almost as surely as the Guns of August brought Western civilization to its knees.

  Monetarists

  When Nixon announced the imposition of wage and price controls, Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago loudly denounced them as an “utter failure.” However, as Rothbard wrote, Friedman was not unhappy to see the last ties of the dollar to gold broken. As an outspoken advocate of floating fiat exchange rates, Friedman for years had denounced gold ties to the dollar, as Rothbard explains:

  Since the United States went completely off gold in August 1971 and established the Friedmanite fluctuating fiat system in March 1973, the United States and the world have suffered the most intense and most sustained bout of peacetime inflation in the history of the world. It should be clear by now that this is scarcely a coincidence. Before the dollar was cut loose from gold, Keynesians and Friedmanites, each in their own way devoted to fiat paper money, confidently predicted that when fiat money was established, the market price of gold would fall promptly to its nonmonetary level, then estimated at about $8 an ounce. In their scorn of gold, both groups maintained that it was the mighty dollar that was propping up the price of gold, and not vice versa. Since 1971, the market price of gold has never been below the old fixed price of $35 an ounce, and has almost always been enormously higher. (pp. 109–10)

  In Friedman’s defense, the floating exchange rates didn’t cause the inflation of the 1970s. However, those floating rates imposed no financial discipline on the US government, and when things went south presidential administrations blamed foreign governments. When the dollar fell against European currencies in 1978, President Carter signed off on a scheme in which the Federal Reserve System underwrote a massive purchase of dollars in order to prop up the currency. Not surprisingly, the arrangement failed to strengthen the dollar over time.

  Austrians

  While Keynesians and monetarists might look down on gold as money (or any monetary ties to gold), Austrians are not afraid to face the ridicule from elites. More than anyone else, however, Austrians such as Rothbard understood completely what was happening in 1971, and they were not fooled by the government’s various monetary tricks as were others. Rothbard writes:

  All pro-paper economists, from Keynesians to Friedmanites, were now confident that gold would disappear from the international monetary system; cut off from its “support” by the dollar, these economists all confidently predicted, the free-market gold price would soon fall below $35 an ounce, and even down to the estimated “industrial” nonmonetary gold price of $10 an ounce. Instead, the free price of gold, never below $35, had been steadily above $35, and by early 1973 had climbed to around $125 an ounce, a figure that no pro-paper economist would have thought possible as recently as a year earlier.

  Far from establishing a permanent new monetary system, the two-tier gold market only bought a few years of time; American inflation and deficits continued. Eurodollars accumulated rapidly, gold continued to flow outward, and the higher free-market price of gold simply revealed the accelerated loss of world confidence in the dollar. (pp. 104–05)

  The American economy and the dollar rebounded during the 1980s in part because of lower tax rates and in part because of the deregulatory efforts instituted by the Carter administration. Unfortunately, the favorable economic conditions did not lead to fiscal soundness, but, instead, seemed to encourage even more reckless behavior in Washington. For the last twenty-two years, the economy has seen one financial bubble after another: first the tech bubble of the late 1990s, then the housing bubble that burst in 2008, and now a combination of housing and equities seems to be rising well out of synch with market fundamentals.

  As they did in 1971, the elite economists of our day are the cheerleaders for fiscal foolishness. Lest one believe I am exaggerating, this is from a recent column by Paul Krugman in the New York Times, which lost its way editorially after the editorial leadership pushed out Henry Hazlitt. Endorsing the so-called Infrastructure Bill, Krugman writes:

  Imagine, to use a round number, that the federal government were to go out right now and borrow $1 trillion—and that it were to do so without making any provisions for servicing the additional debt. That is, it wouldn’t raise any taxes or cut any spending to pay off the principal; it wouldn’t even do anything to cover interest payments, simply borrowing more money as interest came due.

  Under these circumstances the debt would grow over time. But it wouldn’t grow very fast: The current interest rate on long-term U.S. debt is less than 1.2 percent, so after a decade the debt would have risen only about 13 percent.

  And debt growth would be vastly outpaced by growth in the economy: The Congressional Budget Office projects a 50 percent rise in dollar G.D.P. over the next 10 years. Debt wouldn’t snowball; relative to the economy, it would melt.

  So the fact that the infrastructure bill would, in practice, pay for public investment with borrowed money isn’t anything to worry about. If the investment is worth undertaking—and it is—we should just do it.

  One can imagine that Krugman would have championed Nixon’s moves, from abrogating the Bretton Woods Agreement to imposing wage and price controls. To a Keynesian like Krugman and those that came before him, the economy works best when governments spend recklessly with no constraints.

  Austrians know better. The collapse of the monetary order in 1971 reflected the massive dislocations and malinvestment of resources that ultimately turned the decade into one crisis after another, and the current economy is facing risks of even greater magnitude. Unfortunately, Keynesians rule the day, just as they did fifty years ago. As Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand wrote of the Bourbons in the years after the French Revolution, “They learned nothing, and they forgot nothing.” One can say the same for the Keynesians. A half century after The Crisis, Keynesians seem hellbent on creating new crises and printing money to “fix” them.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/11/2021 – 21:40

• "Now Youse Can't Leave"
  “Now Youse Can’t Leave”

  A mere few months ago any mention in public discourse of Covid passports was written off by the mainstream media as but the ravings of “conspiracy theorists” consigned to remote corners of the internet making supposedly far-fetched slippery slope arguments. On Wednesday CNBC now writes, “As the rampant delta variant of Covid threatens the post-pandemic travel and tourism rebound, there’s growing acceptance of so-called vaccine passports among a one-hesitant U.S. public and of increased calls for their mandated use across the industry.”

  Citing a recent survey by a travel industry website, CNBC informs its readers that, “A survey found 81.8% of Americans support the idea of vaccine passports, digital or physical proof of vaccination against Covid.” Looking forward, where are we headed? Australia seems to be providing the world with a ‘forward warning’ and dystopian glimpse of what will likely be enacted by many more governments across the globe assuming the Delta and other Covid variants continue to spread…

  AUSTRALIANS – You can’t leave!

  Nobody can challenge the health ministry’s directive, even under International law. Australia doesn’t have a Bill of Rights meaning no citizen can challenge the Governments decision.

  Total state control.#COVID19nsw #COVID #NoVaccinePassports pic.twitter.com/K79r0JrwVU

  — Bernie’s Tweets (@BernieSpofforth) August 11, 2021

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  The above recent local Australian news broadcast is absolutely chilling given that citizens are informed in a peppy and bright ‘reassuring’ voice by the blond bombshell reporter that they essentially have no rights and no recourse whatsoever when it comes to Health Ministry directives.

  Welcome to the future – perhaps coming to a “health ministry” near you…

  Australians living overseas could be “trapped” in Australia if they return, after the nation’s government tightened its border rules without notice.

  Since March last year, the country has banned its citizens from leaving the country as part of its Covid strategy. That restriction has not previously applied to Australians who usually live in other countries.

  But they will now need to apply for an exemption for outbound travel – in line with rules for other Australians.

  The smiling correspondent in the above clip seems to be almost gleeful as she informs her fellow Aussies, “Some Australians based overseas have told Sky News they don’t even know whether or not they’ll be able to return to the country they live in.”

  And then she immediately pivots to something that seems straight of a North Korean state TV script…

  “Is it legal? Yes it is.

  Nobody can challenge the Health Minister’s directives. 

  Even under International law, Australia doesn’t have a Bill of Rights meaning no citizen can challenge the Governments decision.”

  Perhaps the segment would have been easier if the broadcast simply informed citizens without elaborating (though with fewer smiles): “Now youse can’t leave”…

  “This change will mean no matter where you live in the world, once you are in Australia you are formally trapped,” Professor Kim Rubenstein, who writes about citizenship law from the University of Canberra, told BBC Wednesday.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/11/2021 – 21:20

• Eight Questions For The California Recall Candidates
  Eight Questions For The California Recall Candidates

  Authored by Terry Paulding via AmericanThinker.com,

  We have an election coming up in California. Yes, it’s a recall, so the current administration is invested in ignoring it, hoping it’ll go away. The large slate of candidates wishing to replace Governor Newsom, I guess, would prefer not to hear from their competitors. So once again, we are left with the election version of “you have to pass the bill to see what’s in it.” You must elect someone, to find out who they are and what they truly stand for. I would prefer to get some answers before casting my vote.

  

  Candidates running to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom in the recall election include, clockwise from top left: businessman John Cox, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, retired Olympian/reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner, Larry Elder, nationally syndicated conservative radio host, Assemblyman Kevin Kiley and billboard model Angelyne.

  Here’s a list of the things I’d like each candidate to address.

  I hope they will:

  1. Wildfires have consumed millions of acres of our state and destroyed multiple communities. They are getting worse every year. Governor Newsom eliminated his entire budget for forest management and brush clearing this last year. We once had thriving a logging industry in our state, that clear-cut and replanted, managed the forests for their own profit, and created jobs. Since the industry was hounded out of existence, we’ve operated on an alternative philosophy, one of letting everything grow wild and unmanageable, in the name of preservation. Clearly, that hasn’t worked. Please tell us your philosophy about how we will solve this problem.

  2. Homelessness is rampant in our cities. Encampments breed violence, disease, and destruction. Garbage lines our streets, human feces, needles, filth on our sidewalks. Nobody has come up with any solution to this problem. What would you do?

  3. Violence in the streets is becoming the norm. People are being accosted and robbed, punched, shot, randomly murdered. Police are demoralized, unsupported, and demonized. It is becoming unsafe to go out in the daytime, much less evening, for fear of violence. Do you have a plan to fix this?

  4. Our schools are embarrassing. Our Superintendent of Education has embedded CRT in the curriculum. Teachers are being paid not to teach. Our children are languishing at home, or being forced to wear filth-ridden, toxic masks to school. Mental health problems among school children, whose vivid imaginations are not balanced by being able to see the expressions of their schoolmates, are very high. The teacher’s unions rule the roost. Would you support school choice, and having the budget per student available to all parents who want to exercise the right to find a better alternative for their children? How would you deal with these problems?

  5. Water supply in this state has always been a challenge. We either have drought or flood. We have done nothing to improve the water-retention infrastructure for years, nor have we exercised ourselves, as a state, to find alternatives. Would you support (a) desalination plants on a scale to alleviate the stress on our water system and allow our farmers to farm, (b) construction of more reservoirs to capture runoff, (c) exploring the possibility of piping water from the north?

  6. Energy infrastructure and supply are unreliable. We have the highest energy and gasoline prices in the nation. We are wedded to turning to electricity for all our needs, and we are eliminating reliable sources of power such as clean natural gas, in favor of solar and wind farms. These farms only operate when the sun shines and the wind blows, kill massive amounts of birds, and the energy needs to be subsidized to be affordable when it’s working at all. What will you do about the problem?

  7. Our taxes are astronomical and the “services” we get for paying them are more draconian than helpful. We are over-regulated and under-supported as a business community, and as residents. Our roads are a shambles, despite massive supposedly targeted gas taxes. How would you deal with taxes?

  8. COVID restrictions are killing business in the state. Forced vaccination, scare tactics, and masking, despite the clear and demonstrable uselessness of the last-mentioned measure, leave us residents under the thumb of a bureaucracy we don’t trust. Common sense has been supplanted by generalized fear. Residents are uneducated about the medical realities, which is that the virus is easily treated, that most of the death has come from being forced not to treat early, and that children don’t die from COVID unless they have an underlying condition. Censorship is the enemy of success when it comes to dealing with the disease. Famously, our current governor doesn’t obey the rules he set for all of us to follow. What is your intention regarding COVID rules?

  I’m sure I’ve missed some things. But answering this simple set of pressing questions would educate us all, in terms of our vote next month. I’m not sure how to make that happen, even though we all would be better off knowing each candidate’s answers.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/11/2021 – 21:00

• CDC Forced To "Adjust" Sunday's Florida "Record" COVID Count Lower By Almost 50% After State Health Department Cries Foul On Data
  CDC Forced To “Adjust” Sunday’s Florida “Record” COVID Count Lower By Almost 50% After State Health Department Cries Foul On Data

  The CDC has been forced to “adjust” its Covid-19 case tracker for Florida after the state’s health department took to Twitter earlier this week to call out incorrect data.

  As of Tuesday, the CDC “was working with the state’s health department” to get the data right, according to a report from Fox News. 

  Florida’s health department called out the incorrect CDC information publicly, stating earlier this week: “Wrong again. The number of cases @CDCgov released for Florida today is incorrect. They combined MULTIPLE days into one. We anticipate CDC will correct the record.”

  Wrong again. The number of cases @CDCgov released for Florida today is incorrect. They combined MULTIPLE days into one. We anticipate CDC will correct the record. https://t.co/nbKnBNLzvU

  — Florida Dept. Health (@HealthyFla) August 10, 2021

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  The CDC had reported 28,317 new Covid cases on Sunday, but had “adjusted” the number to 19,584 cases by Tuesday, the report says. Florida’s health department claimed that there were 15,319 cases on Sunday a number that is almost 50% lower than the CDC’s originally reported number. 

  “On Tuesday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the state has surpassed 20,000 for its 7-day average of new cases, a day after the federal agency misreported numbers given by the Florida Department of Health by combining data from the last three days into two,” Fox reported on Wednesday, after first pointing out the data discrepancy earlier in the week.

  Florida’s hospitalizations were up by more than 1,110 to 14,787 on Tuesday. 

  Recall, earlier this week we noted that Governor Ron DeSantis was threatening to withhold salaries from school officials who defied his mask mandate ban. 

  According to a statement issued by DeSantis’ office – just days after his threat to cut funding resulted in a ‘pause’ on a proposed mask mandate in Broward County – one potential consequence for defiant school officials would be a loss of income.

  “With respect to enforcing any financial consequences for noncompliance of state law regarding these rules and ultimately the rights of parents to make decisions about their children’s education and health care decisions, it would be the goal of the State Board of Education to narrowly tailor any financial consequences to the offense committed. For example, the State Board of Education could move to withhold the salary of the district superintendent or school board members, as a narrowly tailored means to address the decision-makers who led to the violation of law,” reads the statement.

  …unintentional? Too late to correct all those Sunday morning political shows ‘gloating’ over DeSantis’ state outbreak.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/11/2021 – 20:44

• "This News Is False": China Caught Fabricating Non-Existant Swiss Biologist To Refute COVID Origin Story
  “This News Is False”: China Caught Fabricating Non-Existant Swiss Biologist To Refute COVID Origin Story

  Another day, another shameless lie by China – which clearly has “nothing to hide” – about the origin of the Chinese coronavirus which either leaked or was created at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

  According to the SCMP, several Chinese newspaper websites removed comments about the coronavirus pandemic that were “wrongly presented” as coming from a Swiss biologist who does not appear to exist, Switzerland ’s foreign ministry said Wednesday.

  The press and social media comments attributed to a non-existent biologist identified as Wilson Edwards took aim at alleged US pressure on researchers amid the pandemic. Chinese authorities and state media outlets have led an aggressive pushback against criticism abroad of China’s handling of the Covid-19 outbreak; in fact they have pushed back to so hard at allegations they created the covid virus, they are now fabricating “experts” instead of merely bribing them as was the case with the World Health Organization.

  The Swiss embassy in Beijing highlighted its suspicions about the quoted scientist on Tuesday with a Twitter post: “Looking for Wilson Edwards, alleged [Swiss] biologist, cited in press and social media in China over the last several days.”

  “If you exist, we would like to meet you!” the embassy tweeted.

  Looking for Wilson Edwards, alleged 🇨🇭 biologist, cited in press and social media in China over the last several days. If you exist, we would like to meet you! But it is more likely that this is a fake news, and we call on the Chinese press and netizens to take down the posts. pic.twitter.com/U6ku5EGibm

  — Embassy of Switzerland in Beijing (@SwissEmbChina) August 10, 2021

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  A message inserted with the post, written in English and Chinese, said no Swiss citizen named Wilson Edwards appeared on registries or academic articles from the biology field. It said the Facebook account where comments attributed to Wilson were published was opened on July 24.

  The embassy said that while it appreciated Switzerland receiving attention, it “must unfortunately inform the Chinese public that this news is false”.

  “While we assume that the spreading of this story was done in good faith by the media and netizens, we kindly ask that anyone having published this story take it down and publish a corrigendum,” the embassy post said.

  Pierre-Alain Eltschinger, a spokesman for the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs, said the comments were “wrongly presented as coming from a Swiss biologist”.

  “Several Chinese newspapers have since pulled down those comments,” he said in an email, without specifying.

  Meanwhile, the biggest “crusader” against fake news – the propaganda central that is Facebook – was the only outlet that was still citing the non-existing person. According to SCMP, an authenticated Facebook account of China’s People’s Daily newspaper still had an English language reference to an article from CGTN, the international arm of the Chinese state broadcaster, quoting Wilson.

  In the CGTN article, Wilson was quoted as saying he and fellow researchers had faced pressure and intimidation from the US and some media outlets for supporting conclusions in a joint study by China and the Geneva-based World Health Organization on the origins of Covid-19.

  Not only did that not happen, but it’s clear that China will do absolutely everything to deflect attention from its creation of a virus that has cost the world tens of trillions in damages and countless deaths.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/11/2021 – 20:40

• "No Mingling": Hawaii Revives COVID-19 Restrictions Over Fear Of Delta Variant
  “No Mingling”: Hawaii Revives COVID-19 Restrictions Over Fear Of Delta Variant

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  The state of Hawaii announced it would reintroduce restrictions on social gatherings due to the COVID-19 Delta variant.

  “With COVID-19 cases going up, the State of Hawaiʻi is taking precautions now to avert a strain on our healthcare systems. To that end—I’ll be signing an Executive Order that will limit social gatherings, effective immediately,” Gov. Dan Ige, a Democrat, announced Wednesday on Twitter.

  The order would limit capacity at restaurants, bars, gyms, and social establishments to 50 percent of capacity. It also caps indoor and outdoor gatherings to 10 and 25 people, respectively.

  “Patrons in restaurants bars and social establishments must remain seated with parties maintaining at least 6 ft distancing between groups (with maximum groups size of 10 indoors and 25 outdoors); there will be no mingling, and masks must be worn at all times except when actively eating or drinking,” according to a news release from his office.

  The order also stipulates that county governments “will review proposals for all professionally sponsored events for more than 50 people, to ensure that appropriate safe practices will be implemented.”

  “Organizers of these professional events must notify and consult with the following county agencies prior to the event. County approval is required for professional events for more than 50 people,” Ige’s office added.

  The policies will remain in effect until Oct. 18, according to Ige’s office, unless another order is implemented.

  

  The government of Hawaii in June raised social gathering limitations to 25 indoors and 75 outdoors amid a decline in cases.

  Hawaii, with more than 60 percent of its population fully vaccinated, has witnessed a rise in cases by 168 percent between July 26 and August 8, said the state’s department of health.

  Across the United States, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of COVID-19 cases has surged in recent weeks.

  The CDC’s data, however, also shows that the U.S. death count is nowhere near as high as it was in early January 2021, when more than 4,100 people died across the country in a single day. As of Aug. 9, the seven-day average for COVID-19 deaths is 434 per day.

  Ige’s move comes as the federal government has increasingly pushed for vaccinations. This week, the Department of Defense announced it would mandate all military members to get the COVID-19 shot, while the CDC on Wednesday recommended that pregnant women get the vaccine.

  Last week, New York City officials announced they would, starting in August, roll out a vaccine passport-type system for bars, restaurants, gyms, and theaters.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/11/2021 – 20:20

• Newsom Announces Nation's First Vax-Or-Test Rule For All Teachers And Staff
  Newsom Announces Nation’s First Vax-Or-Test Rule For All Teachers And Staff

  California has become the first state in the nation to require all teachers and school employees to be vaccinated or submit to regular Covid-19 testing.

  In a Wednesday announcement, Governor Gavin Newsom (D) made official a policy already employed by several school districts, including Long Beach Unified and districts in San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento.

  Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) announces California will be the first state to require all school staff be vaccinated or tested weekly. pic.twitter.com/c5I5w2RKbR

  — The Recount (@therecount) August 11, 2021

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  As Fox5 notes, Los Angeles Unified School District – the largest in the state, and second-largest in the nation – has a slightly stricter policy in place, requiring weekly testing for all students and staff regardless of vaccination status.

  Newsom’s order, first reported Tuesday night by Politico and later confirmed by various media outlets, was announced by the governor during a late-morning visit to an elementary school in Alameda County. Newsom said California is the first state in the nation to implement such a sweeping requirement.

  The vaccination-or-testing requirement already has the support of the powerful Service Employees International Union, which represents thousands of school workers across the state. –Fox5

  Newsom’s latest edict won hilarious praise from the Service Employees International Group (SEIU) union, which less than two weeks ago opposed Newsom’s order requiring state workers show proof of vaccination or undergo regular testing due to the ‘abruptness’ of notification.

  “We share Governor Newsom’s commitment to increasing the rate of vaccination so we can better protect the students and families we serve from sickness and death, and prevent the virus from spreading to our own families and communities, and we support public health measures such as this which are designed to do so while giving workers a choice,” said SEIU California executive board member, Max Arias. “Worker-led school safety protocols have created the model for safe school reopening, and many school workers have already created similar agreements.”

  So – state workers: absolutely not until we can bargain over it.

  Students and teachers: follow Newsom’s science. 

  Also supportive are the state’s two major teacher’s unions, the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers. According to the CTA, nearly 90% of its members are already vaccinated based on a March survey.

  Undoubtedly opposed to Newsom’s order is the Orange County Board of Education, which announced last week that it will take legal action to challenge Newsom’s statewide mask mandate in schools. In addition, a pair of parent groups have filed lawsuits in San Diego challenging Newsom’s order.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/11/2021 – 20:00

• Epstein: They Knew Everything And Did Nothing
  Epstein: They Knew Everything And Did Nothing

  Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary (emphasis ours),

  It has been two years since Jeffrey Epstein died.

  I refuse to say he committed suicide because that would require trust in the DOJ’s investigation into his death. Not that it’s inconceivable that Epstein committed suicide. He was facing serious charges that would have resulted in serious time. He revised his will two days before he died. (Indicative of planning his death or being fearful he’d be killed, however you want to look at it.) Rather, it’s that we’ve learned from the Epstein saga that the DOJ, which serves the broader interests of the US government, can’t be trusted.

  

  Two years gone and we still have no good answers about Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to intelligence.

  There are sources telling Vicky Ward of Rolling Stone that “Epstein’s dealings in the arms world in the 1980s had led him to work for multiple governments, including the Israelis.” Ward’s sources said that Epstein “was known in the intelligence world as a ‘hyper-fixer,’ somebody who can go between different cultures and networks.”

  As to the allegations that Epstein was dealing arms in the 1980s – if true, then likely in conjunction with US or Israeli intelligence – that might explain why he had an Austrian passport that was used to enter France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia in the 1980s.

  And it’s easy to imagine Epstein being a “hyper-fixer” in the 1990s-2000s, given his ties to influential political and corporate figures. Think Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, and Leslie Wexner (of Victoria Secret’s fame), to name a few.

  Adding to the intrigue is this excerpt we reported from Ghislaine Maxwell’s deposition, where Epstein had reportedly told people he worked for the US government to “recover stolen funds.”

  

  One can’t help but think it all goes deeper than this, with intelligence relationships and handling agents and the US government either supporting or turning a blind eye to Epstein’s depravity because he was useful. There has to be something else. Yet without concrete specifics, and with a government unwilling to provide answers, these allegations remain unproven.

  What they knew.

  In July 2019, prosecutors with the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) held a press conference announcing the arrest and indictment against Epstein for sexual exploitation of minors from 2002 through 2005.

  

  In explaining the SDNY’s decision to prosecute Epstein, US Attorney Geoffrey Berman stated they were “assisted from some excellent investigative journalism.”

  If only that were true.

  In reality, this was federal prosecutors in New York cleaning up the mess left behind by federal prosecutors in South Florida and federal officials in DC. Make no mistake: the 2019 decision to prosecute Epstein was the result of public outrage from Epstein’s 2007 federal non-prosecution agreement. Public relations got so bad the DOJ had to do something.

  Background.

  A couple dates to keep in mind. First, Epstein signed his non-prosecution agreement (NPA) with federal officials in September 2007. He pleaded guilty to Florida state charges in June 2008.

  The Evidence.

  The evidence to prosecute Epstein was always there. In 2015, during a South Florida civil case brought by Epstein’s victims against the federal government, it was revealed through privilege logs (summaries of the evidence the government was keeping secret) that the DOJ and FBI boxes and boxes of evidence against Epstein. This included an FBI filed called “Summary of Sexual Activity,” which contained information on victims, grand jury evidence, and travel records.

  

  The Feds also had volumes of information on Epstein’s corporations and bank accounts.

  

  Here’s where the dates matter. Epstein signed his federal non-prosecution agreement with DOJ officials on September 24, 2007. Court documents revealed that the investigation of Epstein was ongoing – not completed, not finished, but ongoing – at the time that document was signed.

  In fact, the FBI was still interviewing witnesses after the non-prosecution agreement was signed. (It is standard practice for federal prosecutors offer a plea deal after they identify the victims – not before.)

  For example, court filings indicate that “In October 2007, after the NPA was signed, federal agents spoke with three of the more than 30 identified victims.”

  

  Approximately four months after Epstein signed the NPA, the FBI met with a victim and gathered “additional details about Epstein’s abuse as well as the direct sexual abuse by one of his co-conspirators, Nadia Marcinkova – who participated in the abuse of other victims as well.” (Unfortunately for the victims, Ms. Marcinkova was protected from prosecution by the Epstein NPA.)

  

  As to victims in New York, privilege logs show the FBI/DOJ knew of these victims dating back to 2008.

  

  It went all the way up to the top.

  According to Epstein attorney Alan Dershowitz, the federal non-prosecution agreement “went through numerous levels of approval at main justice.” This means DC.

  The plea bargain went through numerous levels of approval at main justice. It was by the book. You just don’t like result. https://t.co/BMp7JJvVhM

  — Alan Dershowitz (@AlanDersh) January 30, 2019

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  Our own research confirms what Dershowitz says. Andrew Oosterbaan, then-DOJ Chief of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, was advised of plea negotiations and the non-prosecution agreement.

  Main Justice official Andy Lourie was also involved. (Lourie was the acting chief of the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division in Washington in 2006, before becoming the acting principal deputy assistant attorney general and chief of staff to the Criminal Division by 2007. In 2007, he was also an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida.)

  

  In early 2008, as there were discussions of a renewed federal plea agreement and concerns about press coverage, the FBI was involved in Epstein meetings in DC. This is consistent with the involvement of Main Justice in some of the most important aspects of the Epstein matter, from reviewing the non-prosecution agreement to apparently delaying the development of the case.

  

  Main Justice was even blamed for the delay in presenting the Epstein case to a grand jury.

  

  Eventually, in Spring 2008, DC would sign-off on the Epstein deal.

  

  Main Justice assisting Epstein’s attorneys.

  As prosecutors in South Florida consulted with Main Justice in DC, so too did Epstein’s lawyers.

  Ken Starr, one of Epstein’s lawyers, had requested meetings with Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher to stop the DOJ from executing its lawful duty and notifying Epstein’s victims of the plea deal.

  These appeals worked. According to April 2008 correspondence from Starr to Deputy Assistant Attorney General Sigal Mandelker, the victim notification letters were “halted by an eleventh hour appeal to AAG Fisher.”

  

  These victim notification letters, which would inform them of Epstein’s plea deal and afford them the right to be heard at any plea or sentencing hearing, were rights conferred by the Crime Victims’ Rights Act. The upper levels of the DOJ, in conjunction with local prosecutors and Epstein’s defense team, conspired to deny these rights.

  As the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals recently observed, “it appears that prosecutors worked hand-in-hand with Epstein’s lawyers – or at the very least acceded to their requests – to keep the NPA’s existence and terms hidden from victims.”

  I lay out this evidence – of prosecutors and federal officials fast-tracking the Epstein NPA, of reaching the NPA before victims were interviewed, of high level DOJ participation in the Epstein deal – because there’s one important question that remains unanswered:

  Why did the federal government go to these lengths to protect Epstein and his co-conspirators?

  We suspect the answer goes back to what we started with – Epstein’s ties to intelligence.

  According to Alex Acosta, the former US Attorney who signed the NPA, he was instructed to back off the case because Epstein was above his pay grade. Acosta supposedly told Trump transition officials that “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.”

  And who gave Acosta those instructions to leave Epstein alone? A good starting point might be those federal officials identified in this article.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/11/2021 – 19:40

• "People Are Genuinely Trying To Make An Informed Decision" – Why Vaccine Giveaways & "Freebies" Don't Work
  “People Are Genuinely Trying To Make An Informed Decision” – Why Vaccine Giveaways & “Freebies” Don’t Work

  Since the vaccines were first offered to the broader population earlier this year, state and municipal governments across the US have tried to incentivize more adults to get the jabs by offering money, free beer, and entry into a lottery for millions of dollars to try and draw more people to get the vaccine. For some, this has bred resentment, as the vaccinated have questioned why they’re being penalized for complying with the government’s demands.

  As France resorts to using more heavy handed measures, like requiring vaccination passports for people to dine at restaurants The FT is the latest to take on this issue as the world wonders whether there might be a more humane alternative to government’s forcing people to take an experimental vaccine. As the FT points out, across the US “inducements to receive COVID jabs are proliferating…states are offering rewards ranging from $100 cash to free beer, theme park tickets and lottery tickets. In the UK, freebies include fast food and free taxi rides.”

  

  But now that NYC has started requiring vaccine passports for gym-goers and restaurant patrons, many other cities are considering following in their footsteps. And when the time comes, how will the rest of the world handle it? For now, per the FT,  battling vaccine hesitancy is still very  much a “rich-country problem”.

  Any governments considering adopting additional “incentives” (perhaps before choosing a harsher, more authoritative route) should probably consider these criticisms, laid out by the FT, which spoke to a handful of academics, including Psychology Professor Stephen Reicher, from the University of St. Andrews.  He told the FT that incentive schemes have “many complexities and many pitfalls” and – like vaccine passports – could have a “polarizing effect.”

  “People who were going to get vaccinated anyway might say to themselves: ‘OK well I’ll do it a bit more quickly’ . . . On the other hand, those who are reluctant become more negative and more resistant,” says Reicher. “Precisely the people you want to win over can be the people you alienate.”

  Initial data show that, in France, the introduction of Macron’s strict requirements led to a bump in demand for vaccination appointments, but that this only lasted a week, before bookings for appointments trended lower once again.

  

  Source: FT

  A public health official from Arkansas perhaps put it best: when it comes to vaccines “people genuinely wish to make an informed decision and that doesn’t add new information, she said, referring to “freebies” like lotteries and giveaways.

  So, if giveaways and don’t work, then what are some strategies that might?

  Others believe recruiting more “influencers” to act as “age-appropriate” spokespeople for the 18-34s who are still refusing to get the jab might be an effective strategy. The US has already tapped into this by enlisting teenage pop star Olivia Rodrigo in its campaign.

  While they’re trying to reach out to the right age demographic, they should also take a second to figure out which demographic groups are also worth targeting. While much ink has been spilled about minorities and their skepticism of vaccines, one recent study showed that the most highly educated Americans are also the most vaccine-hesitant.

  Research in the UK shows that vaccination rates are lower among “people of black Caribbean and African heritage” as well as those “living in ore deprived areas”, according to the FT.

  It’s this second group that some experts believe to be the “lowest hanging fruit.”

  Although information campaigns and vaccine passports and incentives attract public attention, many experts say the most effective way to increase uptake is simply to make it as easy as possible for those who are short of time and motivation — but not actively opposed to vaccination — to get their jabs. 

  “The lowest hanging fruit are those who continue to lack access to the vaccine,” says Maureen Miller, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Columbia University in New York. She adds that adverts in languages other than English, making clear that jabs are free and do not require health insurance or proof of immigration status, are critical for capturing those who want a jab but are nervous.

  “Anything that gets anybody vaccinated is important, but in order to get the larger numbers we need to make it convenient, and not scary,” she adds.

  NYC is probably done the most of any western city in this regard, due to its pop-up vaccination centers in subways and other public spaces. Success has still been pretty limited, however.

  The experts quoted in the FT report all reportedly agreed that vaccine requirements should be in place for international travel, due to a “long history of vaccination certificates” as well as some jobs involving human contact (thought French PM Emmanuel Macron’s and Mayor de Blasio’s edicts requiring health-care workers to be vaccinated have proven more controversial than those leaders may have anticipated).

  While governments will likely mandate jabs for international travel, three US carriers – Delta, Southwest and American announced on Wednesday that they would break with United and opt not to require proof of vaccination from customers flying domestic.

  Especially as “the science” raises more questions about the efficacy of the vaccines, for now, the best strategy for convincing people that the jabs are safe would be for the FDA to finally officially approve them. Though even that might not be enough for many skeptics concerned about the long-term effects.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/11/2021 – 19:20

• CNN Medical Propagandist: Kids In Schools Need Industrial Grade Masks, Weekly Tests
  CNN Medical Propagandist: Kids In Schools Need Industrial Grade Masks, Weekly Tests

  Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

  CNN’s resident fear monger medical “expert” Dr. Leana Wen declared Tuesday that children returning to school need to be forced to wear industrial grade face masks and should be subjected to weekly COVID tests until they are fully vaccinated.

  

  “This is now one of the most dangerous times in the pandemic when it comes to children because we have the more contagious Delta variant, we have surges, and we have so adults many letting down their guard, not wearing masks, not getting vaccinated. That’s contributing to this really dangerous environment for children,” Wen declared.

  “That said, we do know what it takes to get our children back in school safely,” she continued, referring to forcing kids into face masks.

  “We also know that it requires layers. So when we remove a layer, for example, we remove the layer of distancing because we can’t get kids back in school in-person full time if we still keep six feet instancing, but if we remove that layer, then indoor masking becomes even more important universal making,” Wen further proclaimed.

  She also claimed that the “type of mask also matters, N95 or K95 if the children are able to tolerate that, if not at least a three-ply surgical mask.”

  Wen further emphasised that “cloth masks are not enough.”

  She added that “improved ventilation and very importantly, testing as well. We should at least be having weekly testing for all the unvaccinated children and staff. Putting all that together is how we can get kids back in school safely.”

  Watch:

  This is interesting because when Senator Rand Paul pointed out that cloth masks are useless, citing two peer reviewed scientific papers, he was attacked by leftists, and censored by YouTube.

  Yet here is Wen admitting the same thing, they don’t work, albeit using the fact to advocate forcing children to wear stronger masks that it is recommend adults do not wear for prolonged periods because they severely impair breathing.

  So when Rand Paul says cloth masks don’t work, it’s anti-science. But when CNN’s “expert” says the same thing, it’s pro-science and should be applauded?

  Given that it’s now well established that vaccinated people can still spread the virus, there is no evidence to wholly blame the “surge” of the delta variant on unvaccinated people.

  Wen is merely continuing her narrative of attempting to frame the unvaccinated as second class citizens who should face discrimination.

  A “medical analyst” on Cuomo Primetime says that states should not reopen because it’s easier to control people when they can’t enjoy their freedoms: pic.twitter.com/PmDN7zmuOi

  — Eddie Zipperer (@EddieZipperer) April 2, 2021

  CNN medical advisor continues campaign for vaccine passports and universal masking pic.twitter.com/ND52HAkmeB

  — The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) July 22, 2021

  During a previous appearance on CNN, Wen asserted that, “It needs to be hard for people to remain unvaccinated,” calling on workplaces and schools to start making life difficult for those who refuse to take the shot.

  CNN guest @DrAliSKhan: “In certain settings we should be mandate vaccination. Health-care settings, long-term care settings, prisons, other large settings with lots of people. We should be mandating vaccination and I’d like to see that extended to other settings, obviously” pic.twitter.com/0mD894gebV

  — Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 12, 2021

  Last week, Wen declared that “we can’t trust the unvaccinated,” and everybody should still be wearing masks.”

  “We can’t trust the unvaccinated…. pic.twitter.com/eq7H4hZBuK

  — Pembrokeshire-Patriot (@DarrenEdmundso1) August 3, 2021

  *  *  *

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  In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support our sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/11/2021 – 19:00

• US Intelligence Revises Afghan Estimate: Kabul To Be Overrun "Sooner Than Feared"
  US Intelligence Revises Afghan Estimate: Kabul To Be Overrun “Sooner Than Feared”

  Previously a widely reported US intelligence assessment from June predicted that after the US troop exit from Afghanistan is complete (which at this point has essentially been accomplished), the densely populated capital of Kabul could fall within six months.

  US defense officials have now greatly revised that estimate after this past week which saw the Taliban overrun no less than eight provincial capital cities within a mere week. Officials told The Washington Post Kabul’s fall could likely occur within the next 90 days, according to a new military intelligence assessment, with some officials offering the more dire prediction of one month.

  

  The revised bleaker assessment comes a day after a senior EU official was widely cited as saying 65% of the country’s territory is now under Taliban control, much of it gained without significant resistance, given the many reports of US-trained national forces fleeing in retreat. Further, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby conceded there’s “not much” the US can do at this point if the Afghan Army isn’t willing to put up more of a fight.

  The Washington Post writes Wednesday, “The Biden administration is preparing for Afghanistan’s capital to fall far sooner than feared only weeks ago, as a rapid disintegration of security has prompted the revision of an already stark intelligence assessment predicting Kabul could be overrun within six to 12 months of the U.S. military departing, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.”

  The outlook is such that US officials are said to be debating whether to even keep the sprawling, high-secured embassy in Kabul open; however, they assure plans remain the same to keep it in operation with hundreds of additional military security personnel guarding it.

  Amid the daily bad news reports of a rapid Taliban offensive to retake the country, President Biden says he has no regrets. “Look,” Biden began at a White House press briefing, “we spent over a trillion dollars over 20 years. We trained and equipped, with modern equipment, over 300,000 Afghan forces.” He indicated plans remain the same to declare ‘mission accomplished’ by the highly symbolic 9/11 anniversary.

  Video reportingly shows #Taliban captured Kunduz airport with #Afghanistan Air Force Mi-35 Hind attack helicopter pic.twitter.com/u7jZJdR800

  — Joseph Dempsey (@JosephHDempsey) August 11, 2021

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  He still urged the war-torn nation’s factions and leaders to unite and “fight for their nation”. The Pentagon this week confirmed that there are no plans to call in extra air support to assist the Afghan military. But if Kabul is directly threatened or under siege, it’s unclear if plans would change.

  The Pentagon’s Kirby struggled to essentially say on Monday that Afghan forces are on their own at this point: “I mean, if – if – if it, – the –we don’t have forces on the ground in partnership with them, and we – we can’t  – we – we will certainly support from the air, where feasible, but that’s no substitute for leaders on the ground, it’s no substitute for political leadership in Kabul, it’s no substitute for using the capabilities and capacity that we know they have.” 

  Meanwhile, the Taliban says it has no interest in ceasefire talks, with Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid telling Axios on Wednesday: “We have never yielded to any foreign pressure tactics before and we do not plan to capitulate any time soon either.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 08/11/2021 – 18:40

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