Today’s News 12th February 2024

• The Coming 2024 Leftist Election Grift
  The Coming 2024 Leftist Election Grift

  Authored by Daniel Street via American Greatness,

  The 2024 U.S. presidential election will likely pit former President Donald J. Trump against current President Joseph Biden in an epic rematch of the 2020 election.  As most Americans know, in 2020, the Democrats and their allies on the far left reached deep into their bag of dirty tricks to put Biden in the White House.  They will undoubtedly pull out all of the stops yet again in 2024.  This time, however, far more people are watching and are aware of the grifts being run in our elections by the left. 

  With so many election integrity groups and concerned citizens watching this time around, what will the Democrats do to tilt the results in their favor? 

  They have quite a few arrows in their quiver, but virtually every trick relies on one thing: dirty voter rolls.

  

  Voter rolls filled with unqualified voters—for instance, voters without a valid address or with an insufficient or incorrect address—are ready-made for fraud.  A mailed ballot may go out to that person, but if the address is wrong or incorrect, the ballot will not reach the voter.  These “floating ballots” are often gathered and cast as votes illegitimately.  These practices, along with many others, are widely practiced around the country.

  Election integrity groups all over America are fighting to clean voter rolls, state-by-state and town-by-town.  Progress has been made.  For instance, election integrity groups worked hard to clean up Wisconsin’s voter rolls after the 2020 election.  Using fractal technology to tie voter rolls to addresses in state property tax databases, phantom voters are being removed from voter rolls throughout the country, making mail in ballot shenanigans more difficult.  In Michigan, an election integrity group puts qualified voter file data at your fingertips, allowing ineligible voter registrations to be readily identified.  These are just a smattering of the efforts going on across the country to clean up voter rolls, but hopefully the point is made: A lot of people are doing good work to try to clean up the voter rolls all over the country.

  What is the problem, then?  How will the Democrats and far-left non-governmental organizations (NGOs) tip the scales back in their favor? 

  Part of the answer is the National Voter Registration Act(NVRA). This Act is commonly known as the Motor Voter Law, because it mandates states to allow people to register to vote when obtaining a driver’s license.  While this law actually requires states to remove the names of ineligible voters and to maintain “accurate” lists of registered voters and is used by election integrity groups to challenge inaccurate voter rolls, other provisions are problematic.

  The NVRA provision presenting the problem in this context is  52 U.S.C. §20507(c)(2)(A). 

  This provision creates what is known as the “quiet period” in the 90 days leading up to a federal election and prohibits states from “systematically” removing “names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters” during that 90-day window.  As the court observed in Arcia v. Fla. Sec’y of State, 772 F. 3d 1335 (11th Cir. 2014), the NRVA allows three forms of removals in the 90 days before an election: (1) removals at the request of the registrant; (2) removals for criminal conviction or mental incapacity; and (3) removals upon the death of the registrant.  In that case, the court prohibited the Florida secretary of state from systematically removing illegally registered people who were not American citizens in the 90-day “quiet period.”

  How will the left seek to take advantage of this 90-day “quiet period” where voters may not be systematically removed from the rolls? 

  What happened in Muskegon County, Michigan, in 2020 is illustrative. In October 2020, thousands of voter registration applications were filed in Muskegon County, Michigan.  The city clerk was immediately suspicious, as many of the applications were in the same handwriting and contained incomplete or invalid addresses.  The city clerk reported the matter to local police.  An investigation confirmed many of the registrations were fraudulent and that the company gathering and submitting the registrations worked with Democratic political organizations, including working with the Biden campaign in multiple States in 2020.

  The police interview with the contractor’s “compliance officer” was obtained by an independent researcher and released in November 2023.  In it, the employee outlines the problems with “false registrations” that were happening “everywhere,” not just in Muskegon.  Listen to this person’s interview for more on the type of organization this is and how it operates.

  Under a provision of the Federal Voting Rights Act, 52 U.S.C. §10307(c), a person who knowingly or willfully gives false information as to his “name, address, or period of residence” to register to vote or “who conspires with another individual” for the purpose of encouraging false registration may be imprisoned for 5 years.  Despite this, no one was prosecuted for the thousands of false voter registrations submitted in Muskegon, Michigan.  In fact, instead of expanding the investigation to other jurisdictions in Michigan as well as into other states, the investigation was shut down, according to news reports.  That does not inspire much confidence in the people in charge of maintaining the integrity of our elections, does it?

  In the 90-day “quiet period” established by the NVRA, local election officials are effectively the only screening system in place to block unlawful voter registrations.  While challenging an individual registration remains possible in the 90-day “quiet period,” challenging thousands of registrations submitted on a particular day or series of days will undoubtedly be a prohibited “systematic” challenge.  Do you think these officials in many of the Democrat bastions in big cities would refuse to accept these bogus registrations?  Do you think what happened in Muskegon, Michigan, was an aberration? In jurisdiction after jurisdiction and city after city, piles of fraudulent registration applications will probably be readily accepted.  After all, why not?

  The bottom line is that the entire Democrat and far-left get-out-the-vote apparatus will be in overdrive in the 90 days before the 2024 presidential election, submitting as many voter registrations as possible (valid or not) in order to harvest as many ballots as conceivably possible. 

  This will be one of the primary battlegrounds that will determine the outcome of the 2024 election.  Is the RNC ready for it? 

  If “what’s past is prologue,” the answer is probably not. Election integrity groups are doing what they can, but they will need your help. 

  If Americans hope to maintain legitimate elections, 2024 is the time for “all hands on deck.”

  *  *  *

  Daniel R. Street is an attorney with over 25 years of litigation experience.  He is the author of the Fake News Exposed about Trump book series.  Links to his books, substack, social media and more may be found at his website danielrstreet.com.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 23:20

• Nor'easter Aims For Northeast Early Next Week
  Nor’easter Aims For Northeast Early Next Week

  Unseasonably warm temperatures in the Northeast are ending to start the week as a snowstorm approaches. We have been following a “pattern change” since mid-last week, warning days ago of the increasing possibility of a snowstorm impacting the Mid-Alantic and Northeast regions. 

  AccuWeather meteorologists say Ohio Valley, Mid-Atlantic, central Appalachians, and southern New England will see rain or a mixture of rain, wet snow, and sleet to start Monday. By night, portions of the central Appalachians, the upper mid-Atlantic, and New England will transition to all snow, and some areas could receive significant accumulation. 

  

  “The way the cold air will invade the storm it appears the best bet for a heavy snowfall will be from northern Pennsylvania to southeastern upstate New York, and southern and central New England, especially from northeastern Pennsylvania on to the east from Monday night to Tuesday evening,” AccuWeather Chief On-Air Meteorologist Bernie Rayno said. 

  

  Richmond, Virginia, Washington, DC and Baltimore are forecasted to receive mostly rain. Philadelphia might receive a coating, with higher odds of a few inches in northern and western suburbs. On Monday night, New York City, Manhattan could receive upwards of 2 inches. As for Boston and Hartford, Connecticut, these areas could expect meaningful snowfall. 

  More from Accuweather on the snow forecast: 

  The Poconos in northeastern Pennsylvania and the Endless Mountains along Pennsylvania’s northern tier are likely to pick up 6-10 inches of snow, while the lower elevation cities along the Susquehanna River, like Harrisburg and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, may struggle to pick up 3 inches of slush. Other spots with the best chance for 6-10 inches of snow and locally higher amounts include the Catskills of eastern New York and much of Massachusetts, including the hills west of Boston.

  “For much of the central Appalachians to central and southern New England, accumulations will be highly dependent on elevation, where hilly areas and the mountains will pick up much more snow than the valleys or immediate coastal places,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Adam Douty said.

  

  Here’s what other meteorologists on X are saying about the upcoming storm:

  much stronger…. NYC and juuuuust north gets heavy snow on this run pic.twitter.com/97TgPgcbFI

  — NsfwWx ❄️ (@NsfwWx) February 11, 2024

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  National Weather Service forecasts updating for Nor’easter storm event 💣❄️

  Boston 10.4″ 📈
  NYC 1.5″

  Maximum location would receive: 14.1″ pic.twitter.com/LKot5jxu10

  — Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) February 11, 2024

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

  The impact map for tomorrow night through Tuesday has been updated! Premium Consulting Members, the impact map in the Premium Dashboard is zoomable down to your street! #nywx #njwx #pawx #ctwx pic.twitter.com/t0IBso6a0k

  — NY NJ PA Weather (@nynjpaweather) February 11, 2024

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

  Could it be… a Bulls-eye in the Wyoming Valley???
  No. Probably not.#PAwx #wxtwitter #NEPA #wxX pic.twitter.com/5AawkzRd1K

  — Mark Margavage (@MeteoMark) February 11, 2024

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

  Meanwhile, Punxsutawney Phil – the famous groundhog weather oracle – might have been wrong in his early spring forecast. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 22:45

• When "Good For You" Is Too Good
  When “Good For You” Is Too Good

  Authored by Todd Hayen via Off-Guardian.org,

  The ultimate “good for you” is to be dead. At least that is what it would be if some outside authority, or entity, was watching our human behaviour and assessing what looks to be the “best” for us – meaning that if we are dead, nothing bad can happen to us. I would assume that if we fed all of the information a typical human life creates into a supercomputer, and then asked it “What is the best state of being for a human being” it would spit out, “that it never be born, and if alive, it would be safest, (best, good,) for it to be dead.”

  The next notch down from this perfection would be to live in a bubble, literally.

  Apparently, there are some people who have no immune systems who have to do this (remember the Seinfeld episode, “The Bubble Boy”?)

  

  The next notch down is to be a recluse, to live on some little patch of land, in a little house, and venture out only into your local neighbourhood to buy fish sticks, Twinkies, and RC Cola.

  You would never fly in a plane, and never drive as well.

  The next notch down is the spot that most people seem to wish they occupied.

  This place in the sun is actually sunless. Or at least as sunless as you can make it. Here we find gobs of sunscreen, dark glasses on cloudy days, heavy coats in the fall, and umbrellas in summer. We find ourselves avoiding nearly everything that can be avoided, except the things, of course, that actually do harm us, like McDonalds’ “Big Macs” and a nice can of Diet Coke. Here we avoid travel to dicey countries (which includes nearly all of them), if we travel at all. We avoid being in the same room with someone who is coughing or sneezing or looking the least bit odd, and we essentially avoid taking any risks whatsoever. Nearly everything is dangerous, and it is best to avoid anything unknown, dubious in nature, or not recommended by the guys and gals in white coats with the antique medical device hanging around their neck.

  A person at this level of existence is alive but certainly not living.

  Why are people into this?

  Well, once again, we can thank Mr. Agenda.

  Before I was “awakened” I used to muse at this phenomenon and wonder how it could have happened naturally and organically. I thought about all the men clambering on board boats and planes to go to Europe to fight in the trenches in 1917, as well as in 1941. I thought of the scads of pioneers setting out on the perilous journey across the American continent during the decades after the Civil War. I thought of the untold numbers who left the comfort of their homes (which at the time probably wasn’t all that comfortable) to hazard the jungles of Central America to work on the malaria-infested Panama Canal, and the same untold numbers of brave men and women who set out on various journeys in dark and dangerous parts of the world to pursue fame and fortune, or to lend their humanitarian hand in helping others less fortunate.

  Where are all of these people today? Sure, there are a few left, but nowhere as many as there used to be. Now most people are terrified to step out of their house, and if they are told by Big Brother to avoid coming close to other humans, or to wear a piece of paper or cloth over their quivering face, they do so frantically and obediently.

  Did this decline in chutzpah happen as a natural consequence of social evolution?

  No. I don’t think so.

  Now I believe it is part of the plan—the agenda.

  Ol’ Dr. Paranoia’s mind at work again. Maybe so, but I suspect there are a lot of you out there in the same psych ward as me.

  Not only have we been dumbed down, but our natural sense of “joie de vivre” has been all but entirely sucked out of our collective soul. I see this particularly in men, which needless to say have been a major focus of the agenda. But, of course, it is found in all of us, men and women alike.

  We have become a nation (or nations) of wimps. When a Covid particle allegedly enters a room, we jump up on the nearest chair and shriek, much like the proverbial fragile women of the Victorian age presumably did when they saw a mouse (if they did this, it was probably all an act to help men feel more manly). Only difference is that you can see a mouse, but you must be told the Covid particle is in the air. And guess who told us? Yep, Mr. Agenda. We are wimps. Enough said. And the agenda wishes us to be wimps because fear is the devil’s greatest and most effective weapon.

  Along with fear, there is the carrot—a reward for behaviour, or even an enticement to comply by convincing us whatever we are expected to comply with is good for us. And not only us, but for everyone! So, the vaccine is good for us because it keeps us from getting a deadly disease (or so we are told). Wearing masks is good for us, and keeping a “social distance” is good for us. All these things keep us safe, wearing latex gloves, sloshing poison disinfectant on our hands, and staying at home out of the swarm of Covid nasties flying about on the street. We must do what we can to live safe lives, safe from all the horrible things that nature wants to throw at us. Always remember, the agenda tells us, nature is our enemy.

  And this is only part of it. We are now protected from everything because just about everything wants to take a chunk out of us. Not only that, but it isn’t even good for us to own things, because owning things is a pain, and makes our life difficult. It is much easier to just rent stuff. It is also good for us to be lazy and avoid doing anything at all. Why not play virtual games rather than travel, why not have that conference that took us to Las Vegas every year in our bedroom on Zoom? Why not have therapy virtually, or even visit our doctor through the computer or phone?

  Why not get a salary paid by the government for doing nothing? How about getting an advanced academic degree without having to go to any classes? What about winning a gold medal in women’s swimming when you are a man and can beat all those little ladies’ times in your sleep? Sure, it is best for us not to drive too much or have to go out of town to meet friends or go to that cool restaurant that’s 20 miles away. It’s safer and better for us to work at home too. In fact, why not just stay at home and do everything there, and have every meal there, even if we want a nice evening without having to stay at home, which used to be a nice visit to a beautiful restaurant, with maybe some nice live music. Nope. Now it’s Uber Eats. That’s good too. It’s all good for us, safe, convenient, takes no effort or skill, and fun. We’re happy, right?

  Anyone know where you can buy a nice, cheap, plastic bubble?

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 22:10

• Beware Of The Philanthropaths!
  Beware Of The Philanthropaths!

  Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

  I think this made up word in the meme below perfectly captures the tyrannical billionaire psychopaths who seem to have gained control of the world using their billions, while portraying themselves as the saviors of humanity.

  Whenever I see the term Foundation related to one of these psychopaths, I know that Foundation is nothing more than a front to achieve their evil agenda.

  And if ever their was a poster boy for philanthropaths across the world, it would be Mister depopulation/vaccine pusher/farmer Bill Gates and his Gates Foundation.

  

  Gates, Soros, Bloomberg and the Clintons represent the evil forces in this world, using their wealth, power, and control of the regime media to push their agenda of chaos, death, destruction, and depopulation. They all use their “Charitable” Foundations as a means to their evil ends, while being portrayed by the media they have bought off, as generous philanthropists improving the lives of the poor and downtrodden.

  It is all a ruse, easily revealed to anyone willing to dig just below the surface of these Potemkin foundations.

  Bill Gates has openly articulated his belief the world needs billions less people.

  Everything he does, supports, and funds, actively promotes achieving his psychotic death wish for those he considers useless eaters. Gates funded Event 201 in October 2019, laying out the master plan for the Covid plandemic, while at the same time funding the vaccines for a disease that supposedly didn’t exist yet.

  This psychopath was front and center in pushing billions across the globe to be injected with this untested toxic DNA altering concoction.

  

  It is now unequivocally provable these vaccines killed millions immediately, millions more slowly and methodically, and stopped millions more from ever being born by drastically altering the fertility of young people who had ZERO risk from covid, but were forced to be injected by the authorities and their bought off lackeys. This psycho has also funded the introduction of GMO mosquitos into the wild. Suddenly, cases of malaria have risen. This mental defective has funded fake chemically produced meat, while buying up farmland across the country, with no intention of farming. He funds new vaccines, using Africans as his guinea pigs. He funds geo-engineering (aka chemtrails) to block the sun, because his high school degree makes him not only a vaccine expert, but a climate expert too.

  

  Psycho Soros made his billions manipulating financial markets through insider information, so now he fancies himself as puppet master of politicians, the media, and NGOs across the globe. He is single-handedly responsible for the ongoing destruction of America and most of the western world. It has taken billions of dollars to transport the millions of invaders placed at our southern border. Soros is the psychopath funding this invasion under the cover of his foundation and the hundreds of “charitable” organizations he funds to make sure the invaders have the means to successfully enter our country and western Europe.

  His sole purpose is to destroy American and western culture, create chaos, maximize societal strife, and destroy every vestige of community, normalcy, and peaceful coexistence. Soros is behind the selection of the DAs in every urban enclave in America, who refuse to enforce the law, encourage crime, and purposefully destroy the cities they were entrusted to protect. Soros wants rampant crime, illegal immigrants overwhelming cities, uncontrolled drug use, mass homelessness, rigged elections through mail-in ballot fraud, and the downfall of America. All done through “legal” means, and cheered on by the regime media he funds.

  I could go on with examples about Bloomberg and the Clintons, but it gets repetitive, as these philanthropaths all have the same general purpose. They use their massive wealth, power, and control to gain more wealth, power and control, while inflicting their psychopathic beliefs upon an unsuspecting populace just trying to live their lives.

  Most people are not psychopaths. Only this micro-fraction of truly evil people with massive levels of wealth are the true enemy of us all. They are relatively easy to expose.

  

  If the plebs ever gained the courage to stand up to these psychopaths and made examples of a few, the tide might be able to be turned. I’m not optimistic, but it just takes one.

  *  *  *

  To support Jim’s site, donate via Stripe here.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 21:00

• NYC 'Super Speeders' Amass Hundreds Of Speeding Tickets
  NYC ‘Super Speeders’ Amass Hundreds Of Speeding Tickets

  “Super speeders” in New York – or people who have racked up over 100 infractions for going 10 miles per hour or more above the speed limit – are on the rise. In New York City, of all places. Is nothing sacred anymore?

  In a report published last week by Bloomberg, it was revealed that these repeat offenders are racking up tickets at a greater share than they ever have. In fact, according to the report, the city was equipped with 1,300 automated traffic enforcement cameras spread throughout its boroughs in 2020. This amounted for just 4 drivers reaching the ‘super speeder’ threshold. 

  But by 2023, as the number of these cameras nearly doubled, the count of drivers meeting this criterion surged to 186, with one individual alone amassing 373 tickets. In the previous year, the number of speed camera tickets accumulated by fewer than 200 drivers was equivalent to the total received by the lowest-ranked 25,000 drivers.

  Amid a national rise in traffic fatalities, which has been exacerbated by the pandemic, speeding remains a key factor in roughly a third of all US roadway deaths. In response, cities are increasingly turning to automated enforcement, like speed cameras, a measure supported by health organizations for its potential to lessen accidents and save lives.

  However, the effectiveness of such strategies is not absolute.

  

  New York City’s extensive speed camera program, initiated a decade ago under the Vision Zero initiative by Mayor Bill de Blasio, now includes around 2,500 cameras, operating 24/7 since August 2022, Bloomberg writes.

  Since this expansion, there’s been a 33% drop in tickets per hour issued, indicating a general reduction in speeding as most drivers reduce their speed after receiving one or two tickets. Yet, a significant rise in repeat offenses among a small group of persistent violators highlights the complexity of addressing traffic safety solely through enforcement. These “super speeders” now represent a majority of speeding violations, with outstanding fines averaging over $11,000 each.

  New York is advancing traffic law enforcement with proposals to hike fines and lower speed limits, though their future is uncertain.

  A previous initiative targeting dangerous drivers was discontinued due to its ineffectiveness. An audit also found that illegal or missing license plates led to a $100 million revenue loss from unenforceable camera tickets. Despite challenges, New York’s method of connecting tickets to plates and its extensive camera network could inspire other cities.

  Transportation researcher Marcel Moran commented to Bloomberg: “So I think that New York has succeeded in one of its objectives. But the other piece is, ‘What do we do about the extremes?’ That’s when the penalty design really becomes suspect.”

  He continued: “There’s no lawbreaking more normalized than speeding. There is a norm in the US of driving 10 miles over the speed limit, which results in the enforcement component: You cannot be written up for speeding unless you’re going over 10. So that enforcement norm becomes a behavioral norm.”

  Read Bloomberg’s full report here. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 20:30

• The "Unassailable" Theory Faces A Potential Unanimous Rejection
  The “Unassailable” Theory Faces A Potential Unanimous Rejection

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  This week, the argument before the Supreme Court in Trump v. Anderson captivated the nation as the justices considered the disqualification of former President Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot. For some of us, the argument brought back vivid memories of covering Bush v. Gore almost 25 years ago. While one justice (Clarence Thomas) remains on the Court, the last major intervention of the Court into a close presidential election is a matter of distant history.

  

  As someone who covered both cases, much is regrettably familiar: the deep division in the country and rage of many advocates. However, unlike in 2000, the Court itself appears virtually unanimous in this case. The biggest difference is not the Court but the coverage.

  The Trump case exposed the erosion of legal coverage in the media. For millions of Americans, the cold reception of all of the justices to the novel theory under the 14th Amendment came as a surprise. Networks and newspapers have been featuring experts who assured the public that this theory was well-based and disqualification well-established. The only barrier, they insisted, was the blind partisanship of the six conservative justices on the Court.

  Twenty-four years ago, I was covering the Bush v. Gore case for CBS. I had just left NBC as an analyst when the election controversy exploded. While there were the usual partisans and some outlets slanted the merits, the legal analysis was overall balanced and informative.

  This is not a case of the Court changing. We have changed as legal analysts.

  The Court itself is deeply divided on some issues.

  However, the justices gave a fair hearing to both sides. That is not the case with the coverage.

  Looking back at the coverage, most legacy media called upon the same legal experts who have previously endorsed virtually every claim made against Trump.

  They predictably declared Trump as clearly disqualified despite the fact that this theory has never been embraced by the federal courts.

  Figures like federal court Judge J. Michael Luttig who called these arguments against disqualification as “revealing, fatuous, and politically and constitutionally cynical.” 

  Others insisted that the argument that the provision might not apply to presidents was “absurd.” That was the argument pushed by Justice Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson.

  Many of the media turned to Professor Laurence Tribe despite a long record of constitutional claims rejected by the Court, in some cases unanimously.

  Tribe assured the public that the theory was “unassailable” and also insisted that the theory (later voiced by Jackson) is “an absurd interpretation.”

  It is important that such views are heard in the coverage.

  The problem is that the media has, once again, pushed this novel (and in my view unfounded) theory to the point that many assumed that it was indeed unassailable.

  What was most troubling is the repeated attacks on the Court by legal experts who suggested that the only thing keeping Trump on the ballot was the bias of conservative justices.  Rep. Jamie Raskin (D. Md.) declared “This is their opportunity to behave like real Supreme Court justices.”

  It appears that both Justices Kagan and Jackson did not behave like “real Supreme Court justices” in oral argument by objecting to core aspects of this theory.

  We will have to wait for the final opinion but most of us are predicting a reversal of Colorado and the possibility of a unanimous or near unanimous decision.

  The question is whether such a result will change how media outlets frame these disputes in the future.

  After weeks of portraying the opposition as only resting with the right of the Court, the coverage had a weird disjointed feel as some of the same commentators reported that the justices appeared uniformly unconvinced by this “unassailable” theory.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 20:00

• Gaslight Supreme: Mayorkas Says "We Don't Bear Responsibility" For Border Crisis
  Gaslight Supreme: Mayorkas Says “We Don’t Bear Responsibility” For Border Crisis

  The Biden administration can’t stop lying to the American public.

  

  On Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had the audacity to claim that the Biden administration doesn’t bear responsibility for the border crisis, despite, among other things:

  • Terminating the National Emergency at the Southwest border
  • Revoking a Trump-era Executive Order that was designed to ensure there was meaningful enforcement of U.S. immigration laws.
  • Issuing an executive order protecting DACA recipients
  • Unveiling the U.S. Citizenship Act, which would provide amnesty to millions of illegal aliens in the U.S., demonstrating intent to reward illegal border crossers with a path to citizenship.
  • Announcing a 100-day moratorium on deportations and immigration enforcement, effectively providing amnesty to criminal and other removable aliens

  (It’s a really long list…)

  And since Biden was sworn in as president in January 2021, there have been at least 7 million encounters near the southern border, while the government deals with a backlog of more than 3 million asylum cases in US courts.

  Appearing on NBC‘s “Meet the Press,” Mayorkas claimed: “It certainly is a crisis. And, well, we don’t bear responsibility for a broken system, and we’re doing a tremendous amount within the system. But fundamentally, Congress is the only one who can fix it.”

  And of course, zero pushback from the ‘journalist’ sitting across from him.

  “Do you bear responsibility for what is happening at the border?”

  MAYORKAS: “We don’t bear responsibility” pic.twitter.com/rCdwOIAIAX

  — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 11, 2024

  So the narrative is: Biden inherited a broken border from Trump.

  How much gaslighting can a country take before even Democrats call bullshit?

  Mayorkas’ comments come after a failed effort by House Republicans to impeach him – in part because Rep. Al Green (D-TX) was wheeled into Congress from the hospital to vote following abdominal surgery.

  “Sometimes when you’re counting votes and people show up when they’re not expected to be in the building, it changes the equation,” said Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) afterward, the NY Post reports.

  According to Mayorkas, “They’re baseless allegations,” adding “That’s why I really am not distracted by them and focused on the work of the Department of Homeland Security.”

  House Republicans have accused Mayorkas of “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” while presiding over the border crisis and “breach of public trust” for allegedly lying to Congress by saying the border is “secure” and that DHS has “operational control” of it.

  In addition to the impeachment effort against Mayorkas falling by the wayside, a sweeping bipartisan border security reform package in the Senate collapsed last week.

  The deal had been negotiated for some four months and was widely seen as a means of unlocking Republican support for a broader supplemental featuring aid to Ukraine, Israel and Indo-Pacific allies. -NY Post

  “The system has not been fixed for 30 years. A bipartisan group of senators [has] now presented us with the tools and resources we need … and yet Congress killed it before even reading it,” said Mayorkas, following a failed Senate spending plan which would allocate a scant amount to the border, while providing Ukraine and Israel with roughly $80 billion in aid.

  And yet, Biden could simply issue executive orders like Trump in order to close the border.

   

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  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 19:35

• Gold Wars: The US Versus Europe During The Demise Of Bretton Woods
  Gold Wars: The US Versus Europe During The Demise Of Bretton Woods

  By Jan Nieuwenhuijs of Gainvesville Coins

  The story on the emergence of the US dollar hegemony.

  * * *

  After the collapse of Bretton Woods in 1971 several European central banks tried setting up a new gold pool to stabilize the price and move to a quasi gold standard. The US wanted to phase out gold from the system and enforce a dollar standard on the world.

  What frightened the US was that Europe held the most gold and alluded to raising the gold price periodically to create liquidity, giving them the dominant means of creating reserves. Through its military presence in Germany, protecting it from the Soviet Union, the US was able to pressure the Germans not to cooperate with the gold pool. Without Germany the other European countries couldn’t materialize the pool and gold lost its anchor role in the monetary system. In the meantime, the US made a secret deal with Saudi Arabia to recycle oil dollars into US government bonds.

  The United States didn’t manage to phase out gold from the system altogether, but it did succeed in establishing a global dollar standard which yielded them unprecedented power.

  

  For the sake of simplicity “Europe” will generally refer to Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, most of which also cooperated during the classic gold standard in the 19th century.

  The Beginning of the End

  At a conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in July 1944, no less than 730 delegates from 44 nations forged a new international monetary system. With the currency wars of the 1930s in fresh memory an agreement of fixed exchange rates and free trade was reached. Because the United States had the strongest hand at the negotiation table, only the dollar was convertible into gold at $35 per troy ounce, making it “as good as gold” and stimulating its use as a reserve currency. Other currencies were pegged to the dollar (or gold). Gold was thus the ultimate anchor of “Bretton Woods,” granted by the Federal Reserve that was obligated to convert (buy and sell) dollars into bullion for foreign central banks.

  

  While pound sterling was still held by central banks the world over from the previous arrangement, Bretton Woods incentivized central banks to hold dollars and gold as reserves. An advantage of the dollar, relative to gold, was that it accrued interest; a disadvantage was that it could devalue against gold (or be seized). In practice, the system created demand for dollars as a trade, intervention, and reserve currency.

  The evolution of the composition of global international reserves (#gold and foreign exchange) since 1950. pic.twitter.com/ZYbHZh6dIi

  — Jan Nieuwenhuijs (@JanGold_) January 24, 2024

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

  The “rules of the game” were enshrined in the Articles of Agreement of the newly erected International Monetary Fund (IMF) that was to administer the system and support countries with temporary balance of payments deficits through lending reserves. In consultation with the IMF countries could devalue (revalue) their currency in case of chronic balance of payments deficits (surpluses) to restore equilibrium. The system was stable as long as its members implemented similar domestic monetary policies (countries with relatively loose policies had to devalue), which didn’t happen.

  In the late 1950s the United States’ balance of payments deteriorated, resulting in a buildup of dollar balances held abroad, and, as central banks could convert dollars into gold, a decline of the US’s monetary gold stock. At first an increase in the supply of dollars abroad was welcomed because it inflated international liquidity beyond the growth of gold supply. Though, in 1960 the United States’ external dollar liabilities exceeded its monetary gold holdings, which prompted global concern. A run on the dollar could coerce a devaluation or default of the US.

  

  

  In November 1961, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Alfred Hayes, presented a plan at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Bazel, Switzerland, to collectively defend the price of gold at $35 dollars an ounce in the free market (Bordo et al 2017). European central banks assented to form a Gold Pool with the US—buying and selling gold in the London Bullion Market to keep the free market price close to the official price—and protect the international monetary system from disintegrating. France accepted to join on the condition the US would restore its balance of payments deficit (Avaro 2022).

  

  Although the new club started as a secretive syndicate, it didn’t take long before the Pool’s operations were leaked to the press to amplify its impact. On March 8, 1962, the Pool was first covered by Le Courrier de Genève (Bordo et al 2017, Naef 2022). Creating public awareness likely worked in its maiden years of existence when the Pool was a net buyer of gold. But as the US started printing more money to finance the war in Vietnam throughout the 1960s, downward pressure on the dollar mounted. The Pool was challenged in its bluff selling gold.

  In February 1965, the President of France, Charles de Gaulle, gave a speech in which he conveyed his criticism of Bretton Woods and America’s “exorbitant privilege”: to the extent countries were willing to hold dollars in reserve, the US could print dollars out of thin air to pay for imports and make investments abroad. In reality, Bretton Woods was designed for the world to accumulate dollars. Additionally, the inflationary policies of the US in the late 1960s were exported abroad through its balance of payments deficit and fixed exchange rates, pushing foreign central banks to buy dollars with their printing presses (Dibooglu 1999, Bordo et al 2017).

  According to De Gaulle, international settlement should be done in gold and the use of reserve currencies had to be limited. De Gaulle and his economic advisors foresaw a dollar crisis advancing. To protect itself from devaluation France ramped up dollar conversions into gold at the Fed, in part to supply the Pool.

  

  Shortly after, Belgium and France expressed their doubts about the viability of the Pool at BIS meetings (Bordo et al 2017). European central banks didn’t want to defend the dollar-gold peg indefinitely for what was essentially a problem of the United States. France dropped out in June 1967 when the Pool’s resources needed to be increased (Avaro 2020).

  In November 1967, Great Britain was forced to devalue pound sterling. If sterling could fail, so could the dollar, the market reckoned. Slowly but surely things started spiraling out of control and the Pool was confronted with significant losses. “The gold markets were faced with numerous bouts of speculative buying in late 1967 and early 1968,” the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas remarks in its 1968 annual statement. From March 8 through 14, 1968, the Pool sold nearly 1,000 tonnes of gold. “US air force planes rushed more and more Fort Knox gold to London, and so much piled up in the Bank of England’s weighing room that the floor collapsed,” writes Timothy Green in The New World of Gold.

  Belgium and Italy also became anxious to opt out as their gold reserves contracted (Green 1973 135). It became senseless to sell gold into a black hole. The next day, on March 15, 1968, the London Bullion Market was closed for two weeks at the behest of the US. Quickly the central bankers of the Pool flew to Washington for a conference.

  A prominent person at that time was Jelle Zijlstra, President of the Dutch central bank and Chairman of the BIS from 1967 until 1981. Zijlstra writes the Europeans had a different interpretation than the US from the agreements reached in Washington (Zijlstra 1978 191):

  The Washington conference of March 1968, … gave rise to many difficulties afterwards, because almost from the outset the decisions taken there were interpreted in two very different ways. Some countries were of the opinion that the only decision taken in Washington was to abolish the gold pool, to stop gold sales by central banks in the free market in order to keep the free market gold price close to the official price. The Americans took the position that it had also been decided that the central banks would never again buy gold on the free market, or in other words, that a first step had been taken towards the removal of gold from the international monetary system, the so-called demonetization of gold.

  Clearly, the communique from the conference doesn’t state that central banks would never again buy gold from the free market. In any case, the Pool was disbanded and the free market price of gold allowed to float.

  

  In favor of the Americans, the IMF’s Articles of Agreement (Article IV Section 2) stipulated that no central bank would buy or sell gold at a price other than the official price. And so, as a consequence from the Pool’s moratorium, a two-tier gold market was born. Private entities could trade gold at the free market price and central banks could transact at the official price.

  This setup subsided the role of gold in the international monetary system, as it severed the link between gold production and other sources of gold and monetary reserves. Gold also became increasingly illiquid, because no central bank wanted to sell at $35 an ounce knowing gold was worth much more. Gresham’s Law assured the use of the dollar as intervention and trade currency by its presumed overvaluation with respect to gold (Mundell 1971 13). The world began creeping towards a dollar standard (Bordo 1993 4).

  Europe got cornered. By then they held the largest gold reserves, and it would have been a pity, to say the least, to render it useless.

  

  Zijlstra’s solutions to resuscitate Bretton Woods were simple. The official gold prices in all currencies should have been raised to increase global liquidity and make sure the dollar would stay convertible into gold (Zijlstra 1978 190). He adds, “it was curious that in the post-war world, where everything was at least three to four times more expensive than in the 1930s, the gold price had remained unchanged” (Zijlstra 1992 222). In addition to the first measure the official gold price of the dollar should have been raised even more, thus devaluing the dollar against all other currencies to restore the United States its balance of payments. “However, the Americans opposed both solutions tooth and nail. … After all, this would put the dollar in second place to gold, and the Americans’ ideal was and is for the dollar to play a central role on the economic stage” (Zijlstra 1978 191, 1992 222).

  The Heat is On

  European central banks continued converting dollars at the Federal Reserve, whilst the Americans tried to block such requests.

  

  As shown in chart 6, Germany held less of its total reserves in gold than its European peers. Having American troops on its soil, protecting Germany from the Soviets, came at a cost: not being allowed to convert dollars at the Fed. Germany held large gold reserves, but this was mainly obtained via trading partners in Europe (Bundesbank 2018 99).

  Germany’s commitment not to convert dollars was sealed in a letter to the Fed, dated March 30, 1967, by Karl Blessing, President of the German central bank (Bundesbank). Blessing also concurred to invest $500 million dollars in US government bonds, financing both America’s balance of payments and fiscal deficit.

  

  Shortly before Blessing died he gave an interview published in Der Spiegel:

  BLESSING: … the threat was always in the background. Former US High Commissioner McCloy once visited the German government and said: “Look, we’ve now had a Senate decision; there is soon a majority that we will withdraw our boys. We have to do something.” So, he called me at home on a Sunday afternoon at half past three and said: “I have to fly back tonight, can’t we see each other?” And I said to him: “My dear McCloy, your situation is clear, this is a balance of payments problem for you, nothing more. You have seen that we are sensible and do not convert our dollars into gold. I am even willing to give you that in writing for a certain time.” Unfortunately, the letter that I wrote back then is still valid today.

  I should have been more rigorous with regard to the US. The dollars that we were accumulating should simply have been rigorously converted into gold.

  Other European countries were better off. In one of his books Zijlstra describes how he was pressured by the Americans but stood his ground. From Zijlstra (1978 191):

  That the mood was becoming more threatening became apparent to me when on July 7, 1971, the US Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Paul Volcker, and my American colleague, Dewey Daane, came to visit me in Amsterdam [the Netherlands]. They urged me to cancel the exchange of $250 million into gold. We had already exchanged nearly $600 million worth of dollars into gold … since the beginning of 1971. The fact that such a heavy delegation came to Amsterdam to ask me to refrain from conversion was the clearest proof to me that the storm was really about to break. I explained that I could not comply with their request. We held dollars only up to an amount that we considered working stock. Everything above that we wished to exchange for gold …. Volcker then said to me, “You are rocking the boat.” My response was: “if that boat rocks too violently as a result of converting $250 million, that boat has already sunk.”

  

  All along the intent of the Americans was to phase out gold from the international monetary system; for the rest of the world to import their dollars and hold as reserves so the US could live beyond its means and secure the dollar hegemony. Illustrative of this scheme is an action memorandum from Henry Kissinger, the US President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs, to President Richard Nixon dated June 25, 1969. “We can try to finance our deficits,” Kissinger wrote, to “borrow implicitly by inducing other countries to build their dollar holdings. At the extreme, this would mean getting (or forcing) the world to go onto a ‘dollar standard’.” In international economics holding foreign exchange as reserves is a loan to the issuer of that money because technically that issuer still has to settle a trade imbalance with something real.

  Primarily “the [dollar-gold] convertibility link,” was blocking the United States’ agenda, as noted by a Volcker Group Paper from 1969. The paper continues:

  Perhaps one of the most important long-term problems facing the US is how to move out of this commitment in a graceful manner without causing undue disturbance to the monetary system and with a fair measure of international approbation, at some time in the future. It is not yet clear whether this can be done, and a breaking of the link may have to come in the context of some crisis and a threatened run on the dollar.

  A run on the dollar, from the viewpoint of the US, arrived early August 1971 when both the British and French called on the Fed to redeem more dollars (Bordo et al 2017). Finally, on August 15 President Nixon announced to temporarily suspend dollar convertibility, although this has never been reactivated. The “Nixon Shock” de facto terminated Bretton Woods and one can imagine countries holding dollars were not amused. Kindly note, in chart 2, how external dollar liabilities of the US exploded from then on.

  

  At the same time, European countries, trading a great deal with one another, were integrating through the European Economic Community (EEC) and introduced their own framework for managing exchange rates (aimed to progress toward a monetary union) called “the snake.” A unified Europe showed the world its strength and leadership. Kissinger said to Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, William Simon, at one point: “I basically have only one view right now which is to do as much as we can to prevent a united European position without showing our hand. … I don’t think a unified European monetary system is in our interest.”

  Because the dollar had become grossly overvalued relative to several other currencies, a group of ten developed countries (G10) met in Washington in December 1971 to negotiate exchange rate realignment. In what became known as the Smithsonian Agreement the dollar was devalued by 10.7% versus a basket of currencies (De Vries 1976 555). The official (“fictional”) gold price was raised to $38 as exchange rates were formally still expressed in parities vis-à-vis the official gold price.

  Over a year later pressure on the dollar broke its peg again. In March 1973 the G10 accorded that 6 EEC currencies would jointly float against the dollar, effectively discontinuing what was left over from Bretton Woods. IMF members were free to choose any form of exchange arrangement, “except pegging their currency to gold.”

  Among IMF members there was a desire to reform the monetary system, for which a novel reserve asset was developed: the Special Drawing Rights (SDR). In general, both the US and Europe supported the introduction of the SDR in 1969, albeit for different reasons. The Europeans wished the SDR could substitute the dollar (Zijlstra 1992 222), while the US concocted “the nations of the world come to accept Special Drawing Rights in lieu of gold.” All the while Bretton Woods crumbled, the SDR was used as a decoy by the United States.

  

  A European Gold Pool

  The US received intelligence that the Europeans were preparing to mobilize their gold by transacting bullion among themselves at the free market price. Then Secretary of the Treasury, George Shultz, wrote to President Nixon:

  Some—but not all European officials— … see the proposed move as enhancing the probability that gold will work its way back into the center of the international monetary system and facilitate a French-European vision of a new monetary system.

  We should actively support … amending existing agreements so that monetary authorities may sell gold into private markets at the market prices but may not buy gold from any source except at the established official price. It would be hoped that this procedure would permit a gradual phase-out in the official monetary use of gold.

  Although the exact date from the above memo isn’t known, it’s likely from October 1973. At BIS headquarters, in November 1973, Zijlstra suggested rescinding the Washington agreement of March 1968. Chairman of the Fed, Arthur Burns, proposed to allow selling (not buying) by central banks in the private market (De Vries 1985 609). Burns’ offer was accepted and from that day central banks could sell gold, just as envisioned by Schultz.

  Apparently, it was irrelevant where policy makers met (in Bazel or elsewhere), as long as they had a majority vote in the IMF a decision could be made. Although the US had broken the rules of the Articles of Agreement by ceasing to convert dollars in 1971, the Europeans were cautious to do the same.

  Of course, the Europeans wanted more than being able to sell gold. In a Wikileaks cable from 1973 it reads the Minister of Finance of the Netherlands, Willem Duisenberg, told an American ambassador that all currencies should be convertible “or money has no meaning.” In other cables (here and here) from early 1974 it reads that France wanted to regulate (stabilize) the free market price of gold and the EEC oriented to use their gold for international settlement. The former being a prerequisite for the latter (Zijlstra 1981 10). If the EEC joint float would be pegged to gold it would result in “a new gold-based currency bloc.” Within the EEC the Germans weren’t enthusiastic about these ideas, because, as we shall see, they were still being played by the US.

  Zijlstra made his views public on March 13, 1974, in a speech in Zurich, Switzerland (Zijlstra 1974):

  Central banks holding gold should be free … to … buy and sell gold in the free market – perhaps regulating the price a little through a new-style gold pool – or … use it in settlements between one another. In this latter context one might think in particular of regional groupings like the EEC.

  One month after, the Ministers of Finance of the EEC held a conference in Zeist, the Netherlands, that conceptually produced the same as Zijlstra’s views in Zurich (EEC 1975 19).

  1. Monetary authorities should be permitted to buy and to sell gold among themselves at a market related price and to buy and sell on the free market (hold gold in the center of the monetary system).
  2. Monetary authorities periodically fix a minimum and a maximum price beyond which they would not respectively sell or buy on the market (stabilizing the gold price).
  3. Creating a buffer stock to be managed by an agent who would be charged by the monetary authorities to sell or buy on the market such as to ensure orderly conditions on the free market for gold (a new gold pool).

  

  The Americans countered the EEC from the inside. First, on June 3, 1975, Burns wrote to a colleague (Alan Greenspan) that he has “a secret understanding in writing with the Bundesbank—concurred in by [Minister of Finance] Mr. Schmidt—that Germany will not buy gold, either from the market or from another government, at a price above the official price,” which pretty much blocked the Zeist initiative. Without Germany the EEC wasn’t able to form a gold pool, stabilize the price and use gold for international settlement.

  Burns’ secretive understanding can be traced to a letter dated November 14, 1973, by then Bundesbank President, Karl Klasen, to the Fed pledging adherence, with Schmidt’s consent, to Article IV Section 2 about not trading gold at a price other than the official par value.

  Second, ample leverage equipped the US to go the extra mile. Advisors of US President Ford wrote on June 4, 1975, on the role of gold in the international monetary system: “We must first swing Germany, thus isolating France.” On June 6 President Ford felt comfortable to tell Minister Schmidt:

  We … do feel strongly that some safeguards are necessary to ensure that a tendency does not develop to place gold back in the center of the system. We must ensure that there is no opportunity for governments to begin active trading in gold among themselves with the purpose of creating a gold bloc or reinstating reliance on gold as the principal international monetary medium.

  Most definitely the Germans obeyed and threw a wrench in the Zeist initiative, as it was strangely never realized.

  By not converting dollars into gold when the Fed’s gold window was still open, Germany dug itself into a hole. Next to being dependent on US troops, Germany’s gold to total reserves ratio was so much lower than in surrounding countries that any revaluation of monetary metal relative to dollars would have been sorely embarrassing (chart 6).

  Aside from the US the least developed countries (LDCs) of the world also opposed the activation of official gold holdings, for the simple reason they owned fairly little.

  The IMF began selling 750 tonnes of gold from its own stock to use for concessional loans to LDCs in 1976 (De Vries 1985 662). At the announcement of the sale the gold price in the free market declined. Ironically, the Swiss central bank (SNB) considered buying some of the gold at auction “to demonstrate its attachment to gold and participate in efforts to stabilize the gold price,” SNB reminisces in its centenary. Four years later in 1979, when the gold price skyrocketed, SNB “considered selling gold on the market, in a coordinated action with other central banks, with the aim of stabilizing the price.”

  By 1978 the IMF’s Articles of Agreement had been amended and central banks could buy and sell gold in the private market (De Vries 1985 656). The idea to put monetary gold to use hadn’t died in Europe and so in 1979 the idea to intervene floated again. This time also for gold not to make a mockery out of their fiat currencies and calm monetary unrest.

  Before me, attempts of forming a European gold pool in 1979 have been covered by precious metals analyst Ronan Manly (here and here). Manly was able to get his hands on documents from the Bank of England (BOE) in which a new gold pool was discussed. What stands out from Manly’s publications, in relation to our present analysis, is that France didn’t want to participate because Germany resisted and the pool never saw the light of day.

  The following quotes are from multiple BOE documents regarding meetings at the BIS in 1979. Paul Jeanty was a dealer in the London Bullion Market, all the others government officials. In brackets it’s clarified who is representing which country:

  Paul Jeanty told me [McMahon, UK] that Zijlstra had told him personally a couple of weeks ago that he would now be in favor of a central bank operation to stabilize the price within a moving band. Leutwiler [Switzerland] and Clappier [France] have said this to him in the past and he believes … that de Stryker [Belgium] and Baffi [Italy] would go along with such a plan. All recognize, however, that Emminger [Germany] has no disposition to support.

  Fritz [Switzerland] had told Jeanty, what Jeanty already knew, that Zijlstra would be interested; however, apparently Clappier indicated that he was against. This was a reversal of view which Leutwiler attributed to pressure from the Élysée [France] which was itself influenced by the Germans. … Emminger continued to be strongly against.

  Leutwiler and Zijlstra then said that although they did not think a very large group was necessary to undertake the operation it probably had to be bigger than two: specifically, they really needed either the French or the Germans.

  The core of Europe tried to form a gold pool, but Germany was jamming the project again! Very likely the Germans were still on a leash of the United States.

  The US Oil Deal with Saudi Arabia

  Suppressing the role of gold was one part in the bigger picture of the US to install the dollar hegemony. In part two “risk free” dollar assets were required to become the prime international reserves.

  The oil crisis in the early 1970s was a blessing and a curse for the US. It caused expenses to go up, but a higher price of oil also created more demand for dollars abroad. Now those dollars needed to be invested in US governments bonds (Treasuries).

  In July 1974, Secretary of the Treasury, William Simon, visited the Middle-East to dust off a proposal by Saudi Arabian Oil Minister, Yamani, from 1970. Simon’s endeavor was for the Saudis to recycle dollars in bonds.

  Eventually the deal encompassed Saudi Arabia to supply oil to the United States and invest the proceeds in Treasury securities. In return, the US would provide military aid and hand the kingdom an “add-on” in the form of a special treatment in Treasury auctions. On request of Saudi King Faisal the deal would remain “strictly secret.”

  

  The add-on allowed the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) non-competitive bidding outside of the normal auctions held by the New York Fed and avoid disrupting the market caused by large security purchases on their part. “The sine-qua-non for the Saudis in this arrangement is confidential and we have assured them that we will do everything in our power to comply with their desires,” Undersecretary of the Treasury for Monetary Affairs, Jack Benett, writes in a memo to Kissinger in 1975.

  For starters $2.5 billion was expected to be invested by SAMA, but shortly after the Treasury inadvertently raised $800 million more than it intended to borrow at auction. Dollars were recycled alright.

  

  

  Conclusion

  It wasn’t all smooth sailing for the dollar in the 1970s, but the US managed to secure its currency as the sun in the international monetary cosmos. In his memoirs, Zijlstra looks back on how it happened (1992 211):

  Gold disappeared as the anchor of monetary stability. An attempt to replace it with a newly created substitute (the IMF’s [SDR] …) virtually failed. The fixed parities, apart from our own EEC system, have disappeared. … The road from dollar supremacy, through endless vicissitudes, to a new dollar hegemony was paved with many conferences, with faithful, shrewd, and sometimes misleading stories, with idealistic visions of the future and impressive professorial speeches. (For every notion, no matter how extreme, there is always a professor of economics available.) The political reality was that Americans supported or fought any change, depending on whether they saw the dollar’s position strengthened or threatened.

  According to Zijlstra and De Gaulle, final settlement in cross-border trade should be done in gold and the use of reserve currencies restricted (Zijlstra 1972). What frightened the US was that Europe held the most gold and alluded to raising the gold price periodically to create liquidity, giving them “the dominant means of creating reserves.” A few days after the Zeist conference an advisor of Kissinger explained it to him well:

  Mr. Enders: It’s against our interest to have gold in the system because for it to remain there it would result in it being evaluated periodically. Although we have still some substantial gold holdings … a larger part of the official gold in the world is concentrated in Western Europe. This gives them the dominant position in world reserves and the dominant means of creating reserves. We’ve been trying to get away from that into a system in which we can control—

  Secretary Kissinger: But that’s a balance of payments problem.

  Mr. Enders: Yes, but it’s a question of who has the most leverage internationally. If they have the reserve-creating instrument, by having the largest amount of gold and the ability to change its price periodically, they have a position relative to ours of considerable power.

  Remarkably, everything that held back the envisioned monetary system of Zijlstra and friends in the 1970s has been resolved. Since Germany repatriated gold from New York several years ago we may assume it has released itself from bondage. Gold is globally more evenly distributed (chart 5), there is a gold leasing market for those that are looking for a yield, and the gold market is liquid. The fact the Dutch central bank recently signaled that it has prepared for a new gold standard makes perfect sense from a historical perspective.

  

  Experience from Bretton Woods and the need to periodically increase the gold price suggests that Europe would target the price in the free market in order to stabilize it. The remaining questions are, (i) what could trigger Europe to stabilize the gold price in the future, and (ii) at what price level?

  For a full list of sources, see here

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 19:10

• The Next ZeroHedge Live Debate: The Fate Of The US Dollar
  The Next ZeroHedge Live Debate: The Fate Of The US Dollar

  It’s perhaps the most important question in all of finance, so much so that Vladimir Putin and Elon Musk have both asked it in just the past few days: what is the fate of the US dollar, and will it remain the world’s reserve currency?

  To be sure, the US Dollar is – and has been for the past century – the most important means of exchange, involved in 88% of all global transactions. That’s according to the latest Bank for International Settlements survey But how long can this hegemony last?

  

  As the IMF cautioned recently, 2020 was the first year in over two decades that foreign central bank dollar allotment dipped below 60%, a figure which has inched lower since: Meanwhile, foreign holdings of US Treasury bonds have steadily declined since 2012, a testament to the declining faith of the rest of the world in the reserve currency.

  

  Still, the greenback remains the most ubiquitous currency and reserve asset of choice around the globe. To determine whether dollar-dominance will persist indefinitely, or a historic transition looms ZeroHedge has assembled a panel of top macroeconomic experts for our next debate: The Fate of the U.S. Dollar.

  

  The two-on-two debate features the following financial luminaries:

  • Jim Rickards: the NYT-best selling author who predicted the 2008 Great Recession and successfully brokered the $3.6 billion takeover of Long-Term Capital Management. 

  • Michael Every: regular ZeroHedge readers are intimately familiar with the research of Rabobank’s head of Global Strategy. Michael brilliantly weaves geopolitical and economic trends into actionable market insights, which have made his daily note a must read for every finance professional. 

  • Bob Murphy: senior fellow at the Mises Institute, Bob is among the upper echelon of Austrian Economists with his work quoted by Argentinian President Javier Millei.

  • Brent Johnson: famous for the “Dollar Milkshake Theory,” Brent runs Santiago Capital where he manages over $175 million in assets. 

  • Adam Taggart: from Peak Prosperity to Wealthion to his new channel Thoughtful Money, Adam is a veteran of the contrarian financial space and will be moderating this epic debate. 

  The live, in-person debate will take place on Tuesday, February 13 at 7pm ET, and will air concurrently on this website and on X.

  We also have an extremely limited number of seats set aside for readers who wish to watch the debate in person and engage the participants over dinner (if interested please email Debates@zerohedge.com for details and price).

  As usual, we will also dedicate a portion of the debate to responding directly to questions submitted by our premium subscribers.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 18:55

• "Stupid No Longer": Trump Says No More Foreign Aid Without Guarantees, Warned NATO Countries Who Refuse To Pay Fair Share
  “Stupid No Longer”: Trump Says No More Foreign Aid Without Guarantees, Warned NATO Countries Who Refuse To Pay Fair Share

  While the Biden administration reels from its own Justice Department concluding that the president is too senile to be prosecuted for mishandling classified documents, the left is lashing out over recent comments made by former President Donald Trump about NATO and US foreign aid.

  

  “NATO was busted until I came along. I said, everybody’s going to pay,” said Trump during a Saturday campaign rally in South Carolina. “They said, ‘Well, if we don’t pay, are you still going to protect us?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ They couldn’t believe the answer.”

  “One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay, and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’ I said, ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Let’s say that happened. No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.’ You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.”

  Trump said that due to his pressure to convince NATO members to pay their agreed upon share in the alliance, “hundreds of billions of dollars” came into the organization, “and that’s why they have money today, because of what I did,” Trump continued.

  During his 2016 campaign, President Trump had warned that under his leadership, the United States would be able to abandon its NATO commitments to nations that don’t commit two percent of their GDP to military spending as mentioned in the alliance’s guidelines.

  According to a 2023 NATO report, only seven of the 31 allies met the 2 percent GDP spending target on defense in 2022. Even this was an improvement over 2014, when only three allies fulfilled the minimum requirement. –Epoch Times

  Distract!

  White House spox Andrew Bates called Trump’s comments “unhinged,” telling Reuters: “Encouraging invasions of our closest allies by murderous regimes is appalling and unhinged – and it endangers American national security, global stability and our economy at home.”

  EU Commissioner Thierry Breton told France’s LCI television that Trump’s comments were “nothing new under the sun,” adding “He maybe has issues with his memory, it was actually a female president, not of a country, but of the European Union,” referring to  European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen and a conversation she had with Trump in 2020.

  (Not exactly calling the President of Egypt the President of Mexico while trying to think of the President of Israel ‘issues with his memory,’ eh Theirry?)

  “Stupid no longer”

  Over the weekend Trump also called on US Congress to stop gifting US aid to foreign nation without “strings” attached.

  “From this point forward, are you listening U.S. Senate(?), no money in the form of foreign aid should be given to any country unless it is done as a loan, not just a giveaway,” he wrote in a Saturday post on Truth Social.

  “It can be loaned on extraordinarily good terms, like no interest and an unlimited life, but a loan nevertheless.

  “The deal should be (Contingent!) that the U.S. is helping you as a nation, but if the country we are helping ever turns against us, or strikes it rich sometime in the future, the loan will be paid off and the money returned to the United States.“

  As the Epoch Times notes further;

  The suggestion comes as the GOP front-runner and leader of the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement campaigns for the 2024 presidency with a foreign policy record that caused somewhat of a stir on the international stage.

  As the 45th president of the United States, President Trump pushed many contrarian views on the world stage, questioning why the United States has been expected to fund more than its fair share in multilateral efforts. He said at the time that he believed many of the international platforms were no longer serving the U.S. interests he wanted to prioritize, such as providing benefit to U.S. producers and manufacturing over those of other countries.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 18:45

• State AGs Pressure CBS To Not Run Temu's 2024 Super Bowl Ad
  State AGs Pressure CBS To Not Run Temu’s 2024 Super Bowl Ad

  Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times,

  A group of six state attorneys general are asking CBS and its parent company, Paramount Global, not to run Super Bowl ads from Temu, a rapidly growing Chinese online shopping platform they claim is selling products of forced labor.

  

  This will be the second time Temu has spent millions of dollars for an ad spot at a high-profile football event. Its first Super Bowl commercial last year featured the tagline, “Shop like a billionaire,” highlighting a business model of swaying customers with ultra-discounted merchandise predominantly sourced from China.

  In a Feb. 10 letter to CBS and Paramount Global, the attorneys general said they have reason to believe that Temu is selling products made with forced labor.

  “Congressional investigators believe Temu is illegally selling products made by forced labor in an area of China in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is committing genocide,” they wrote in the letter, first reported by Daily Wire.

  “CBS should not elevate a company profiting from forced labor and genocide during America’s biggest game.”

  The letter is led by Attorney General Austin Knudsen of Montana. He was joined by Attorneys General Tim Griffin of Arkansas, Raúl Labrador of Idaho, Brenna Bird of Iowa, Lynn Fitch of Mississippi, and Alan Wilson of South Carolina.

  “The United States House Select Committee on the CCP has revealed disturbing information about Temu’s failure to comply with American laws prohibiting use of forced labor by Uyghurs,” they added, referring to the Select Committee’s interim report published last June.

  In that report, the Select Committee details the preliminary findings of a bipartisan investigation into Temu and its Chinese rival, Shein. According to the Committee, Temu has no system to ensure compliance with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2021 to ban any goods produced in Xinjiang—where the CCP’s human rights abuses against the Uyghurs took place—or by entities associated with CCP authorities in Xinjiang from entering the United States.

  The report also suggested that Shein and Temu were exploiting the United States’ de minimis rule to evade customs enforcement—wherein nearly all their products are valued under $800 and can enter the country uninspected and free from duties that most American clothing brands pay.

  “Temu is doing next to nothing to keep its supply chains free from slave labor,” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), Select Committee’s chairman, said at that time.

  “Temu and Shein are building empires around the de minimis loophole in our import rules—dodging import taxes and evading scrutiny on the millions of goods they sell to Americans.”

  Several big apparel retailers with a manufacturing presence in China, including Adidas and Nike, have been under congressional investigation by the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party since last May.

  While Adidas, Nike, and Shein are able to regularly audit their manufacturers and publish data on how often cotton and other raw materials that can be traced to forced labor are found in their products, Temu has yet to make such data public.

  In Saturday’s letter, the attorneys general also took issue with Temu’s parent company, Pinduoduo, or PDD, accusing the Chinese online retailer of being linked to the CCP.

  “Given the virtual guarantee that Temu is selling products made with forced labor in China and its links to the CCP, CBS should not broadcast Temu’s commercials during the Super Bowl. Americans deserve better,” the attorneys general conclude.

  The same concern was echoed in an earlier letter to CBS and Paramount Global by a group of 11 Republican members of Congress. Allowing Temu’s commercial to air “would be a touchdown for the Chinese Communist Party against the home team,” they argued.

  CBS and Paramount Global declined to comment on the petitions.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 18:20

• SecDef Austin Hospitalized… Again
  SecDef Austin Hospitalized… Again

  Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has been readmitted to hospital, the Pentagon said on Sunday afternoon.

  Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder gave an update on the defense leader’s condition, saying that the hospital admission had occurred early Sunday afternoon.

  “Today, at approximately 2:20 pm, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III was transported by his security detail to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to be seen for symptoms suggesting an emergent bladder issue,” he said.

  As The Epoch Times’ Melanie Sun reports, following criticism over an earlier hospitalization that was kept a secret from the public and even the White House, the press secretary said that the deputy secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had been notified of this admission.

  

  The White House and Congress have also been notified, he added.

  Secretary Austin then revealed that he had received a prostate cancer diagnosis in January after experiencing complications with a urinary tract infection following surgery.

  The update also said that as of Sunday evening, the secretary “is retaining the functions and duties of his office.”

  “The Deputy Secretary is prepared to assume the functions and duties of the Secretary of Defense, if required,” the statement from Mr. Ryder said.

  “Secretary Austin traveled to the hospital with the unclassified and classified communications systems necessary to perform his duties.

  “We will provide an update on Secretary Austin’s condition as soon as possible.”

  It comes just under two weeks after Austin’s Jan. 29 return to the Pentagon after a weeks-long hospitalization in early January.

  He was hospitalized on Jan. 1 for an infection stemming from a Dec. 22 surgery for prostate cancer. The New Year’s emergency placed Austin in the intensive care unit (ICU) for days and forced Austin to carry out his duties from home for nearly two weeks after being released from Walter Reed.

  …so, to summarise: the commander-in-chief is “an elderly man with a poor memory” and his SecDef is in hospital… again…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 17:55

• One Nation, Two Anthems?
  One Nation, Two Anthems?

  Via The Washington Examiner,

  The NFL will continue trying to disunite America by featuring two separate “anthems” to begin the Super Bowl. Our country has only one national anthem, which speaks for all its citizens. To suggest otherwise is anathema.

  

  As also happened last year, fans will be asked to stand at attention not just for “The Star-Spangled Banner” but also for “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” long known colloquially as the “black national anthem.”

  It’s a lovely song, a paean to liberty, and a worthy expression of black people’s historical struggle to overcome unspeakable mistreatment.

  Its final sentiments, despite the “gloomy past,” are admirably patriotic: “May we forever stand/ True to our God/ True to our native land.”

  This being so, it is important to explain why it is a bad idea that it be sung alongside the national anthem.

  The affront lies not in the message within the song but in the message sent by when and how the song is to be presented. By pairing it with the national anthem and expecting attendees to stand at attention, the NFL signals that “The Star-Spangled Banner” does not speak for everyone. Rather than respecting a single unifying anthem, the league presents two, one for white people and one for black people, as if the latter were not included in the meaning and grandeur of the first.

  This is part of the political Left’s radical racial agenda of national division. Identity politics define people by racial or sexual group membership while immutably characterizing each group and each person within it as either victim or victimizer. Rather than one history in which modern sensibilities demand that black people receive equal recognition, separatism posits that there must be a separate month for black history. Rather than one course of mathematics, the “woke” educrats push a separate black mathematics. The separate black anthem is a musical endorsement of the forces and agenda that are driving deep fissures into our culture and threatening our society.

  Even institutions such as the Smithsonian tell us that black people are oppressed by supposed attributes of “whiteness” that include individualism and “self-reliance,” the “nuclear family,” the “scientific method” using “objective, rational linear thinking,” and the “Protestant work ethic” emphasizing (Lord forbid!) that “hard work is the key to success.” To suggest this is to insult black people by asserting that they uniquely lack these qualities.

  But the work ethic, self-reliance, rational thinking, and the rest are not congenitally foreign to people who have dark complexions.

  When scores of NFL players several years ago refused to stand for the national anthem, their message was based on the misguided notion that the United States corporately was responsible for what was claimed to be a nationwide epidemic of police abusing black people. No data support those calumnies about police, nor did right reason support the condemnation of America as a whole as a racist nation.

  The logic of those distorted assessments produced the idea that the national anthem itself is disreputable, or at least is exclusive of black people. This notion is horribly wrong. Frederick Douglass, a great black advocate of emancipation, loved to play “The Star-Spangled Banner” on his violin for his grandchildren, and he argued that the Constitution of the land the song honored was rightly interpreted as a document promising freedom to black and white alike.

  The national anthem began being played ritually at sports contests at the end of World War I, and its playing became a universal practice for the NFL as World War II ended. It defies reason to think the song that, for generations, was understood to represent all Americans suddenly, about three years ago, became only for white people.

  “To sing the ‘black national anthem’ suggests that black people are separatist and want to have their own nation,” said Timothy Askew, an English professor at historically black Clark Atlanta University, in a 2010 interview.

  “This means that everything Martin Luther King Jr. believed about being one nation gets thrown out the window.”

  Askew, who did copious research into the origins of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” added, “I think it is important that African Americans nationally understand that we should be moving towards racial cohesiveness,” but the idea of a “black national anthem” does the opposite.

  Askew is right. The NFL is wrong.

  It’s fine to play a lovely song at some point during the festivities. There’s everything wrong, though, with using it to balkanize a civic ceremony of national unity and pride.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 17:30

• Which Teams Have Played The Most Super Bowl Games?
  Which Teams Have Played The Most Super Bowl Games?

  The Kansas City Chiefs will play the San Francisco 49ers in the LVIII Super Bowl in Las Vegas, Nevada today.

  The game is a rematch from four years ago, when the same two teams faced off in Miami Gardens, Fla. That year, the Chiefs took home the trophy, as they did in 2023 and back in 1970s.

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, both teams are among the top competitors in the championship, with the Kansas City Chiefs having competed six times – also in 2021 and 1967 – and the San Francisco 49ers even eight times between 1982 and 2024.

  Six Super Bowl appearances give the Chiefs more Super Bowl clout than the Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants.

  Three wins put them on the same level as the Washington Commanders or the Oakland/Las Vegas Raiders, with both teams needing just as many tries to take home three trophies.

  At eight appearances, the San Francisco 49ers competed as many times as the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Dallas Cowboys and the Denver Broncos and can look back on a quite a good track record in terms of wins.

  There are still four teams – the Cleveland Browns, the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Detroit Lions and the Houston Texans – which have never played the Super Bowl, and 12 which have never won the game.

  Jacksonville and Houston only joined the competition in 1995 and 2002, respectively.

  There is one more team, the New England Patriots, which have racked up the most Super Bowl appearances, according to statistics published by ESPN.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Yet, the Patriots are among the teams with below average wins-to-participation ratios, with only six wins out of 11 Super Bowls played.

  The most unlucky teams among the Super Bowl participants are the Minnesota Vikings and the Buffalo Bills.

  They each played in the Super Bowl four times but failed to win any of those competitions.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 15:45

• Hillary Admits Biden's Age Is "Legitimate Issue" As Trump Urges Mandatory Cognitive Tests For All Candidates
  Hillary Admits Biden’s Age Is “Legitimate Issue” As Trump Urges Mandatory Cognitive Tests For All Candidates

  …well, well, well, how the turn tables…

  Something just changed. Instead of an overwhelming avalanche of gaslit headlines and bullshit punditry projecting mental un-fitness on the opposition (as we have seen from every Democratic operative and mainstream media lackey over the past five years), it’s different this time – since special counsel Hur’s (independent) report official raised questions about President Biden’s mental acuity, describing him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

  Peter Doocy is a hero: “If the special counsel says President Biden’s got significant limitations on his memory, then who is helping him run the country?”

  White House Press Sec. Karine Jean-Pierre: “The president of the United States runs the country.”

  pic.twitter.com/Kun4iUUEY6

  — Kambree (@KamVTV) February 9, 2024

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  Finding anyone willing to actually defend Biden against these accusations – in any other way but proclaiming that ‘well Trump appointed Hur’ – has been nigh on impossible (even on Sunday’s political talk-shows which seemed designed to do just this week in and week out for years).

  

  Instead, the opposite – some actual reflection by Democrats that maybe, just maybe, all the glitches, stumbles, stammers, gaffes, shaking hands with no-one, angry outbursts, mis-remembering, and talking-to-dead-people – are a thing after all.

  Here’s top Clinton Advisor Paul Begala practically admitting defeat live on CNN:

  “…This is terrible for Democrats. And anybody with a functioning brain knows that… This is going to be a really rough, ugly, unpleasant campaign.”

  PANIC: Top Clinton Advisor Paul Begala ADMITS Defeat LIVE on CNN after Joe Biden proves to the world he’s senile hours after federal prosecutors declare him UNFIT for office:

  “I slept like a baby last night. I woke up every two hours and wet the bed. This is terrible for… pic.twitter.com/oBYrYkYssq

  — Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 9, 2024

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

  And here’s the horse’s mouth herself, no lesser mortal than Hillary Clinton, admitting to MSNBC’s Alex Wagner in an interview aired Saturday, that Biden’s age is an issue…

  “I talk to people in the White House all the time, and you know, they know it’s an issue, but as I like to say, look, it’s a legitimate issue,” Clinton told

  Of course, she added that it is a “legitimate issue” for former President Donald Trump (who is three and a half years younger than Biden).

  But it gets better, as former Obama advisor David Axelrod declared Friday that Joe Biden’s angry reaction to Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report suggesting his memory has faded only served to “reinforce a meme that’s out there,” adding that Biden’s cognitive acuity “is a problem.”

  “The central meme that is hurting the president is this issue of age. It’s a big barrier,” he further urged, also noting “you can’t unring the bell.”

  Former Obama advisor David Axelrod says Biden’s mental acuity “is a problem,” and his behaviour only serves to “reinforce the meme that’s out there,” that he’s not fit to run, adding “you can’t unring the bell.” Report here: https://t.co/ey3my6ba0U pic.twitter.com/PcjRCSL0fE

  — m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) February 10, 2024

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  Axelrod’s comments should not be a total surprise, however, as he has been questioning Biden’s running for re-election since November…

  Only @JoeBiden can make this decision. If he continues to run, he will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it’s in HIS best interest or the country’s?

  — David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) November 5, 2023

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  Furthermore, The Daily Mail reports that sources indicate Democrats are considering a ‘nuclear option’ of ditching Biden before or at the Party convention in August in favour of either California Governor Gavin Newsom or Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

  The report cites a “former senior Democrat White House official” who has previously worked with Biden.

  “I think it is now panic time. Biden should not be our standard bearer,” the source is quoted as saying. 

  Of course, the Trump campaign has been questioning Biden’s fitness for office for months, and the former president suggested during a speech at a rally in South Carolina, that “anybody running for President should have tests, and I pass them every time,” adding “I don’t think Nikki would pass the test.”

  

  Trump further stated that “regardless of age,” all candidates for major offices, including Vice President also should be mentally tested.

  “They say it’s not Constitutional, I’d be willing to wave it,” Trump urged, before going on to describe Haley as “the candidate of globalists and warmongers who want to spend trillions and trillions of dollars on endless wars.”

  Trump went on to tell the crowd of thousands that if you asked Joe Biden what MAGA stands for “he would not be able to tell you,” because his “brain is not working too well.”

  

  Finally, returning to the left side of the aisle, even James Carville is raising doubts about Biden’s ability (on CNN no less)…

  The fact that Biden isn’t doing the Super Bowl interview and probably won’t debate, says James Carville, “that’s a sign your staff doesn’t have much confidence in you.”

  And while it’s “never too late” to change candidates, Carville warns “the later it gets the more confusing the process gets.”

  Oh, and in case you wondered what Biden is doing on Super Bowl Sunday, he is blaming ‘big corporate greed’ for shrinkflation and the rising cost of snacking…

  While you were Super Bowl shopping, did you notice smaller-than-usual products where the price stays the same?

  Folks are calling it Shrinkflation and it means companies are giving you less for every dollar you spend.

  I’m calling on the big consumer brands to put a stop to it. pic.twitter.com/wL1NsEh78F

  — President Biden (@POTUS) February 11, 2024

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  Read the fucking room, you clueless twat “well-meaning old man with a poor memory.”

  And Biden’s odds have tumbled in the last few days…

  

  Tick, tock, Mr.President.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 14:35

• A Retrospective Of All-Time Highs
  A Retrospective Of All-Time Highs

  By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

  If you were hoping for a review of Cheech & Chong movies, you will be sorely disappointed. With the S&P 500 breaching 5,000 and setting all-time highs, it seemed like a good time to do a retrospective of all-time highs. At least those that I remember, so we only have to go back to the 1980s.

  One Thing That I am Certain of Regarding All-Time Highs

  We will all get sick of hearing about “all-time” highs. Yes, if the S&P 500 goes up a measly 1 point on Monday, we will have a “new” all-time high. Every dip that gets bought will create “new” all-time highs. We will probably all get sick of being told about “intraday” versus “closing” all-time highs. 5,100 on the S&P 500 will be cause for “wild celebration” in the media, despite it “only” being 1.5% away (which could easily happen in a day at its current pace).

  All that “all-time” high chatter (and cheerleading) will be a distraction from our real jobs – figuring out where the market is headed next. Which is why I think that a “retrospective” would be interesting and potentially useful.

  All Sorts of Things Happen Around All-Time Highs

  Let’s start with a quick “synopsis” of what has happened since 1980. I probably should have used a log chart or something to dampen recent moves relative to prior moves. However, since I went down this path, I didn’t feel like going back and think that it is quite effective in illustrating some points.

  

  There are a few things that stick out to me:

  • We tend to get long periods of relatively steady uptrends. I guess that is common sense since we started in 1980 at 115 and are now at 5,027.
  • It is easier to put labels on the “bad” moments rather than the “good” moments. Again, in part, this is because going up is much more common.
  • It was easier, at least for me, to put labels on more recent moves rather than historical moves, as my recollection is better and I was much more directly involved.
  • On one hand, even adjusting for scale over time, some things that seemed “critical” at the time were mere blips in the grand scheme of things. On the other hand, what seemed like nice long-term trends often had periods of volatility in both directions. The “tech bubble” bursting had several tremendous reversals.
  • While some of the labels might be accurate overall, they don’t do justice to the complexities of each event. During what is commonly referred to as the “tech bubble” bursting, the world had to deal with the tragic attacks on 9/11 and the aftermath.

  Let’s examine a few of these in more detail to see what we can learn.

  The Crash of 1987

  Portfolio “hedging,” where managers tried to dynamically manage their portfolio rather than buying options, allegedly contributed to what (at the time) was called “Black Monday.”

  

  In a matter of days, the stock market gave up about 18 months of gains. While I’ve drawn a trendline from September 1986 to October 1987, there were some meaningful pullbacks. In hindsight, was that first 5% “dip” a warning sign or a precursor of what was to come? Or was it just noise like previous dips? While we bounced on efforts to “solve” the issue (with massive liquidity, though long before QE was a household term), I didn’t realize that we dropped more than 10% from there as we headed into November and early December. A further 10% decline would be memorable in most situations, but that brief sell-off was so large that everything else was forgotten (at least by me).

  The Greenspan Put

  While the “Greenspan Put” started in 1987, it seemed like a reasonable response to a set of circumstances that had exposed flaws in market structure. 1998 seemed different to me. Yes, Russia was teetering on default. Yes, Long-Term Capital (the “smartest people in the room”) was apparently threatening to bring down Wall Street. This included massive bets, unheard of at the time, on esoteric instruments that were moving several standard deviations and wreaking havoc with collateral management. But were they really “systemic?” Did the Fed really need to intervene as aggressively as it did not just on monetary policy, but also by “encouraging” (and I use that term very loosely) the banks to cooperate in previously unheard-of ways? This one was near and dear to my heart as I was directly involved. One lesson that I learned from this, which only became apparent as the GFC unfolded, is that if you are a CEO of an entity and asked by the Fed to help, you sure as heck better help! (See Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers).

  

  The Greenspan Put, maybe because it was “unnecessary” or certainly not as necessary as it was in 1987, helped stocks recover their losses very quickly and we moved to new highs!

  The “Tech Bubble”

  First, what was commonly referred to as a “tech bubble” at the time, merely looks like a moderate misalignment of capital in retrospect. While some companies never grew into their valuations and never returned, several of today’s market leaders look “dirt cheap” now even at levels that were then considered “bubbles.” The data has pointed to a resilient consumer. I’ve been skeptical of how strong the consumer will be going forward. My impression, albeit subjective, is that discounts were very prevalent during this holiday season (pulling future demand forward) and inflation continued to skew spending higher (as we still have to spend more to get the same amount of stuff). While that might have been a sufficient argument a few weeks ago, we need to dig deeper. Some of the high yield issuers (I was more involved with them) wound up defaulting but came roaring back over time. I still have “fond” memories of AOL being acquired and a lot of specific CDS related questions about dilution not having to get resolved. But I digress.

  

  You can see 9/11 in the chart. What I don’t highlight, which I think is a problem when we discuss the period, was the failing of WorldCom and Enron. Two “allegedly” investment grade companies went “poof” relatively quickly. How could analysts do their jobs when the data was misleading or outright fraudulent? I strongly believe that the concern those two bankruptcies caused for credit markets played a great role in not just the depth of the problem, but also why it took well over 5 years to recover!

  It will forever be known as a “tech bubble” but I think that is a misnomer and too simplistic.

  What you can see from the chart is that it was a “great” period for traders, if you caught some of the moves correctly, or it was one of the few times that “buy the dip” failed, repeatedly.

  Yes, the “bubble burst” but there were multiple moves higher of 10% or more, and remember, this is the S&P 500, not the Nasdaq, which had even “crazier” moves.

  The 2007 “All-Time” High

  Of all the all-time highs, this is the one that I’m most bitter about, and it seems bizarre in almost every respect.

  

  I jammed a lot into this chart. I feel obligated to highlight my “frustration” with Michael Lewis’s book “The Big Short.” It makes it sound like only a select few saw housing start to crack. From my seat, many people saw it, but the timing was incredibly difficult, and you were certainly “fighting the Fed.”

  We “finally” got back to the “tech bubble” highs in the summer of 2007. It was helped by housing, but also incredibly tight credit spreads, as products like CPDOs seemed “miraculous” in that you could take BBB credits, leverage them in a vehicle, and get a AAA rating (flawed). This was coupled with everything that went on in the mortgage-backed market (where issues with the original tranching models were multiplied when tranches were re-tranched into CDO squared).

  But it was the “Bernanke Put” that strikes me as the most odd. The all-time highs in stocks were set after some serious problems had been exposed. But the measures Bernanke took (from monetary policy to the media) helped us reach new highs. Then, while we tried to bounce every time the Fed (or D.C.) intervened, we continued to slide. We didn’t bottom until March of 2009, a full 6 months after Lehman defaulted. I still think that the Lehman Moment is the greatest misnomer in financial markets as stocks rallied that week and there were far more problems (many greater than this). But maybe a “scapegoat” helps everyone feel better?

  But, to this day, I still do not understand how the Bernanke Put, which came shortly after all-time highs were breached, could overcome all of the obvious problems.

  Having said that, I did learn the hard way that you don’t need to understand something to trade it, which came in very handy, most recently during COVID.

  More “at the highs” Thoughts

  Almost all are surrounded by frantic volatility, especially after they fail.

  It is almost disturbing (actually I find it quite disturbing) how many highs seem dependent on monetary policy, which may explain why the uptrends and downswings both seem more manic.

  Brexit, which caused markets to trade limit down after the surprise vote, was “solved” by the time markets opened for business with central banks providing “globally coordinated” support. Ditto for the 2023 “banking crisis.” This was the first time that I was asked to participate in a “crisis” special – which was an obvious buy signal. 😊

  We’ve all lived through the past few years, so no reason to expound on them anymore, other than that they too seem to fit the patterns of the past.

  Bottom Line

  Could this be just the start of breaking through to higher and higher highs?

  • If AI is passing on cost/benefit analysis already, then it is certainly a real possibility!
  • As supply chains shift and we redevelop a strong “working class” in America, where jobs are more secure and higher paying, then it is certainly a real possibility.
  • If the Fed cuts and forces “savers” back into equities on anything like the scale that occurred during ZIRP, then it is a real possibility.

  On the other hand, if all we have done is chase monetary policy to levels that aren’t currently sustainable through innovation, jobs, and real economic growth, then the decline is likely to be rapid and leave a lot of people scratching their heads and wondering how it was possible to sell off so quickly (even though historically, that is the “norm”).

  I guess that if I was writing to Ann Landers, this is where I’d sign the report “torn and confused.”

  I remain resolute on higher yields and tighter credit spreads, but I am truly struggling with what to do with stocks here, except to add to commodity related holdings and wait to see how commercial real estate does.

  Good luck, enjoy the Super Bowl, and take the over on the number of times Taylor Swift is mentioned!

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 14:00

• Alcohol Sales Halted After Drunk Chaos Erupts At WM Phoenix Open
  Alcohol Sales Halted After Drunk Chaos Erupts At WM Phoenix Open

  The Waste Management Open in Phoenix is well-known for being one of the biggest parties in the golf world. However, even this event has limits, as fans quickly found out on Saturday afternoon when tournament organizers suspended alcohol sales. 

  “On Saturday at the WM Phoenix Open, I observed more chaos in the last eight hours than I have cumulatively in the last decade of my life,” golf reporter Claire Rogers wrote. 

  Rogers continued: “I saw men bleeding from the face, people napping on muddy hills and adults knocking each other over because they couldn’t walk straight.” 

  Videos on social media platform X captured the rowdiness of the crowd: 

  🚨#WATCH: CHAOS IN PHOENIX 🍺💀
  (via wrush08 / Reddit) pic.twitter.com/M4QJDNwQK1

  — NUCLR GOLF (@NUCLRGOLF) February 10, 2024

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  I would say he did not stick the landing pic.twitter.com/Y8bI8Eu9IK

  — Paige Spiranac (@PaigeSpiranac) February 10, 2024

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  Man & Earth become one at the Waste Management @ForePlayPod pic.twitter.com/bBzsPe6gBL

  — Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) February 11, 2024

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  After Saturday, has the Waste Management Open officially gone too far with the drunkenness? Is it time for organizers to rein it in? pic.twitter.com/EqLGVlyFPZ

  — Joe Kinsey (@JoeKinseyexp) February 11, 2024

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  Besides cutting off alcohol to fans, event organizers also closed “entrance gates,” which they blamed on “larger than usual crowds.” 

  Due to larger than usual crowds, the WM Phoenix Open entrance gates are temporarily closed and shuttle service to the event is on hold. Shuttle service back to parking lots will remain running. Regularly check our channels for updates. pic.twitter.com/NAi1nYuuCu

  — WM Phoenix Open (@WMPhoenixOpen) February 10, 2024

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  The crowds chanted: “We Want Beer!” 

  🚨🍺🚫 #DRY IN THE DESERT: ‘WE WANT BEER’ chants have broken out! — The fans in Phoenix are getting restless after officials put a stop to alcohol. (Via IG / eric_gliebe) pic.twitter.com/11Y0fOlbUu

  — NUCLR GOLF (@NUCLRGOLF) February 10, 2024

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  Sounds epic. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 13:25

• CDC Is Now Retaliating Against Its Own Scientists For 'Wrong' Mask Research
  CDC Is Now Retaliating Against Its Own Scientists For ‘Wrong’ Mask Research

  Authored by Paul D. Thacker via The Disinformation Chronicle (subscribe here),

  In a congressional hearing last November on restoring trust in science, CDC Director Mandy Cohen kept evading questions on whether she would bring back mask mandates for toddlers.

  

  “We have a lot of different tools to protect our children,” Dr. Cohen said during her cagey response.

  Six days later, a BMJ journal published a study that found “mask recommendations for children are not supported by scientific evidence.”

  

  Director Cohen’s scientific bumbling continued last week as her agency began fighting with CDC’s own researchers over another contentious declaration: N95 respirators work better than surgical masks. In recent years, mask advocates have shifted goalposts and demanded N95 respirators, which they claim perform better than surgical masks at stopping the COVID virus.

  Not true say CDC’s own scientists, according to CDC documents I uncovered.

  During a presentation last summer, a CDC expert stated there was no difference between N95 respirators and masks in stopping viruses. These findings have been supported by CDC scientists in a study CDC published on the agency’s website last November—just a few weeks before Director Cohen testified before Congress.

  To shut down this controversy, CDC wrote a blog last week warning researchers that to suggest that facemasks and respirators are the same “is not scientifically correct.” 

  Soon after the pandemic started, the CDC began promoting masks to stop the spread of COVID. And it did so despite CDC publishing a May 2020 policy study in their own journal “Emerging Infectious Diseases” that did not find a “substantial effect” for masks in stopping the transmission of respiratory viruses.

  

  Does this sound like a problem? Not really.

  The CDC then began a policy pivot. On their website and on social media, the CDC started plugging N95 respirators as superior to simple surgical masks.

  

  However, on their webpage promoting the superiority of N95 respirators, the CDC did add one critical disclaimer: there’s not a whole lot of evidence that N95 respirators do in fact work better than masks at stopping viruses. In one example, CDC noted that a 2019 study in JAMA compared respirators to masks and found “no significant difference.”  

  Oops. See the JAMA conclusions, below.

  

  Over the last year, CDC’s researchers have supported scientific findings that N95s perform the same as masks in stopping viruses. At a meeting last summer in Atlanta, a CDC health analyst presented the findings from a CDC meta-analysis on the effectiveness of surgical masks compared to N95 respirators.

  Guess what CDC findings suggested: no difference. Here’s the health analyst’s testimony below:

  Subscribers to The Disinformation Chronicle can read the rest here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 12:50

• Egypt Warns Israel: Rafah Invasion Could Negate '79 Peace Treaty
  Egypt Warns Israel: Rafah Invasion Could Negate ’79 Peace Treaty

  With Israel on the verge of invading Gaza’s southernmost city, Egypt is warning that such a move could trigger a suspension of the treaty that has maintained peace between the two countries since 1979, the Wall Street Journal reports. 

  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday directed the Israeli Defense Forces to plan the evacuation of the city of Rafah, which lies on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt and reportedly holds more than a million refugees already forced from their homes elsewhere in the 25-mile-long strip. 

  Therefore, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the IDF and the security establishment to submit to the Cabinet a combined plan for evacuating the population and destroying the battalions.

  — Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) February 9, 2024

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  One particularly sensitive slice of real estate is the so-called Philadelphi Route or Philadelphi Corridor, which stretches nine miles along the Gaza-Egypt border. Diplomatic accords establish limits on the number of troops that either Israel or Egypt can position in several delineated zones along and near the border, and certainly don’t authorize large numbers of Israeli troops and armored vehicles. 

  In late December, Netanyahu said the Philadelphi Route “has to be in our hands” if Gaza is to be effectively and permanently demilitarized. In January, an Egyptian official said, “It must be strictly emphasized that any Israeli move in this direction will lead to a serious threat to Egyptian-Israeli relations.” 

  

  While an Egyptian diplomatic delegation visited Tel Aviv on Friday to discuss the situation in Gaza, Mexican Egyptian President Sisi has rejected several phone calls from Netanyahu over recent weeks, sources tell the Journal. 

  The threat that large numbers of Palestinian refugees could soon be pouring across the border raises many deep concerns for Egypt. Perhaps more than the challenge of managing a humanitarian crisis, if displaced Palestinians launch attacks on the IDF from Egypt, that could trigger Israeli retaliatory strikes across the border. If Israel doesn’t allow the Palestinians to return, tensions between Israel and Egypt would be sharply increased for years to come.  

  With the threat of a looming ground invasion by the Israeli occupation is in Rafah, the situation has become dire.

  The lives of more than 1 million displaced Palestinians are at imminent risk of being taken. pic.twitter.com/pBTWhh35vh

  — TIMES OF GAZA (@Timesofgaza) February 11, 2024

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  Nor does Egypt want to be seen as facilitating an ethnic cleansing of Gaza by Israel — an option that was presented by Israel’s intelligence ministry in the wake of the Oct 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel, and embraced by various Israeli officials. 

  Since the war began, Egypt has been reinforcing its border with Gaza, building a concrete, barbed-wire-topped wall that extends six meters into the ground below it, while also boosting surveillance capabilities, and moving tanks and armored vehicles into the vicinity. The Israel-Hamas war is proving costly for Egypt in other ways, as Suez Canal traffic has plummeted some 30%.  

  Egypt’s warning comes alongside expressions of concern by a variety of countries both inside and outside of the region:

  • “Military operations right now would be a disaster for those people, and it’s not something that we would support,” said US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

  • “Invading Rafah… which is the last refuge for hundreds of thousands of civilians whom the brutal Israeli aggression displaced will have [grave] consequences,” said the Saudi foreign ministry.

  • “Deeply concerned about the prospect of a military offensive in Rafah – over half of Gaza’s population are sheltering in the area,” tweeted UK foreign secretary David Cameron.  

  • “The people of Gaza cannot disappear into thin air…[it is a] “humanitarian catastrophe in the making,” said German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. 

  • A Rafah invasion would create an “unspeakable humanitarian catastrophe,” said EU Foreign Minister Joseph Borrell. 

  • Israel’s plan “threatens to cause the loss of more innocent life and exacerbate the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip,” said the United Arab Emirates foreign ministry.

  However, if past is prologue, watch for the Israeli government to disregard the protests of its partners and benefactors — protests that may be offered primarily for domestic consumption.  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 12:15

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