- Military Official Predicted mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines Might Be Paused Over Heart Inflammation
Military Official Predicted mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines Might Be Paused Over Heart Inflammation
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A U.S. military official predicted a pause in the administration of the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines could happen if more cases of post-vaccination heart inflammation were detected, according to newly obtained emails.
A nurse prepares a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in Hartford, Conn., on Jan. 6, 2022. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images) Harry Chang, a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, made the prediction on April 27, 2021—the same day the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the agency was not seeing a safety signal when it came to heart inflammation experienced after getting a COVID-19 vaccine.
Chang noted the pause in the administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine over blood clots and said an increased number of heart inflammation issues could trigger a similar action.
“A pause of the Pfizer/Moderna administration (much like the J&J blood clot pause) will have an adverse impact on US/CA vaccination rates; assessed as unlikely due to causes of myocarditis can come from multiple sources (eg. COVID, other conditions, other vaccines/prescriptions, etc),” Chang wrote in an email.
Myocarditis is a type of heart inflammation.
“However, increased reported #s & media attention is likely to trigger a safety review pause by ACIP/FDA,” he added, referring to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which advises the CDC on vaccines, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which decides whether to clear immunizations.
Chang was talking to Tricia Blocher, an official at the California Department of Public Health, and other California and military officials. He was reacting to a story about the U.S. Department of Defense detecting a higher-than-expected number of cases of heart inflammation in troops following COVID-19 vaccination.”
The email was one of 19 pages of messages obtained by The Epoch Times through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Members of ACIP’s COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Technical Work Group (VaST) were sent the Pentagon story, as were some CDC officials, the emails show.
Among them was Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, a leader of the Vaccine Safety Team, part of the CDC’s COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force.
Shimabukuro almost immediately asked colleagues for data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink, a tracking system co-run by the CDC and nine health care organizations to monitor vaccine safety. Eric Weintraub, the project leader for the datalink, found that 24 cases of myocarditis had been automatically detected in the tracking system.
The email chain ended there, with no indication that the officials probed further to see if there was a possible link between the vaccines and heart inflammation.
Weintraub did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Chang, who assessed that the discovery of heart issues was “likely to add to further concerns by general public over vaccine safety and make the ‘vaccine wall’ more challenging to overcome.”
The emails “reveal there was an early red flag with post-mRNA COVID vaccine-related myocarditis reports in the U.S. and Israel” but that officials were concerned that acknowledging the risk “would have a negative effect on public perception of COVID vaccine safety and uptake,” Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, told The Epoch Times in an email.
“The historic reluctance of public health officials to acknowledge that vaccines carry serious risks, which are greater for some people, is one of the biggest impediments to improving the safety of the mass vaccination system,” she added.
Both the Moderna and Pfizer shots are built on messenger RNA, or mRNA, technology.
On the same day as the emails, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, told reporters during a virtual briefing that after learning of the Pentagon’s discovery, the CDC examined its data and did not see an elevated rate.
“We have not seen a signal, and we’ve actually looked intentionally for the signal in the over 200 million doses we’ve given,” she said.
It’s not clear what data Walensky was relying upon. She did not respond to an inquiry.
Shimabukuro, asked if he had advised Walensky on whether a pause should be imposed, referred comment to the CDC. A spokeswoman for the agency told The Epoch Times in an email, “Vaccination policy is the purview of CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and it would be best to contact the CDC ACIP staff with questions concerning pausing vaccination.”
The CDC sets vaccination policy, but often consults with the ACIP before doing so.
The ACIP did not return emailed questions.
“To think that Walensky said she had reviewed the data and wasn’t convinced of the causal nature of this—really, really perplexing,” Dr. Anish Koka, a cardiologist based in Philadelphia, told The Epoch Times in a Twitter message.
Myocarditis and a similar condition, pericarditis, are serious issues that often force people to stop exercising and undertaking other physical activities for a period of time. In some cases, the conditions may lead to death. Most cases detected following vaccination require hospitalization. Some people are suffering long-term effects.
“I understand that the public health authorities are using a very different risk/benefit calculus because the disease in question is infectious, but there were certainly other options to consider rather than take a one note approach of 2 vaccines for every young healthy male 20 some days apart,” Koka said.
Both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are administered in 2-dose primary series. Boosters are now recommended because the vaccines aren’t as effective as previously claimed.
Neither the CDC nor ACIP released reports on post-vaccination heart inflammation for weeks after the Pentagon detection went public.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, answers questions during a Senate committee hearing in Washington on Jan. 11, 2022. (Greg Nash/Pool/AFP via Getty Images) The first report from ACIP, a summary of presentations given behind closed doors, said that myocarditis rates after vaccination did not differ from expected rates, which are established using baselines based on the regular occurrence of the condition in the general population.
A few weeks later, however, the panel acknowledged that there were higher than expected rates of post-vaccination heart inflammation, detailing the numbers in a report dated May 24, 2021.
Shimabukuro presented data on the higher-than-expected rates during public meetings the following month. He revealed that myocarditis and pericarditis were being reported at much higher rates than expected in males aged 12 to 29, but claimed it was too soon to indicate a link between the issues and the vaccines. He and others soon said data points “suggest an association with immunization,” and VaST said the data suggested a “likely association.”
Around the same time, the FDA added warnings about heart inflammation to fact sheets that are distributed to vaccine recipients, caregivers of recipients, and medical professionals who administer the shots, and military doctors reported more cases than expected among troops who received one of the vaccines.
Approximately 341 cases of myocarditis or pericarditis following vaccination had been reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a passive system managed by the CDC and the FDA, by the end of April 2021.
As of June 8, over 5,000 cases have been reported.
Some reports have been deleted, potentially skewing the numbers. Additionally, studies indicate reports to VAERS are an undercount.
Based on the reports that have been made, rates of myocarditis are higher than expected in males as young as 5 and as old as 49 after the second dose, according to data Shimabukuro shared at an FDA meeting on June 7. The highest rate is among 16- and 17-year-old males, with 76 reports per one million second doses and 24 cases per one million third doses.
“The current evidence supports a causal association between mRNA COVID-19 vaccination and myocarditis and pericarditis,” Shimabukuro said.
The CDC in February advised some people to wait longer between the first and second shots to try to minimize the risk of heart inflammation.
But some experts say the rates mean that healthy, young people should not get any of the doses, since COVID-19 primarily presents severe problems to the elderly and those with underlying conditions such as kidney disease.
“Based on currently available data, the risks of administering COVID-19 vaccination among healthy children may outweigh the benefits,” Dr. Joseph Ladapo, Florida’s surgeon general, said earlier this year.
Multiple countries have paused the Moderna vaccine for youth, due to the heart inflammation.
Other experts say at least one dose is recommended, while still others, and the CDC, continue to recommend vaccination for virtually all Americans 5 and older.
The pause on Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine over blood clots was eventually lifted, but the FDA in May restricted its use. There was never a pause on the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines in the United States.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/11/2022 – 23:30 - Australian Housing Expected To Drop By 15% According To Country's Largest Bank
Australian Housing Expected To Drop By 15% According To Country’s Largest Bank
Housing prices in Australia are expected to drop by 15% over the next 18 months – with prices in Sydney and Melbourne pegged to fall by 18%, according to economists from Commonwealth Bank.
The warning comes as Australia’s central bank raised interest rates by 50 basis points (0.5%) on Tuesday – the steepest increase in 22 years, which the economists say will have a “chilling” impact on Australian real estate when combined with more “aggressive” rate hikes expected to hit in the coming months, according to news.com.
Head of Australian economics at CBA Gareth Aird predicted an 11 per cent fall in Sydney house prices this year, followed by a further 7 per cent drop next year.
Melbourne would experience a 10 per cent drop over the rest of the year and another 8 per cent decline in 2023, the CBA analysis found.
Hobart’s hot property market was also expected to take a hit with a drop of 4 per cent in house prices this year and 9 per cent next year, with Canberra also expected to be impacted by the same declines. -News.com
CBA believes the official interest rate will rise as high as 2.1% by the end of this year, up from its current 0.85%.
Elsewhere, Aird predicted that prices in Darwin would drop by just 1% this year, and 9% next year, while Brisbaine, Adelaide and Perth would likely see increases this year before dropping between 8 and 11 percent in 2023.
Of note, the CBA’s forecast has changed dramatically from the 3% drop in housing prices they previously predicted for 2022.
“Home prices will move lower from here given the RBA is expected to tighten policy via rate hikes quickly,” said Aird. “The extent to which prices contract will depend in large part on the speed and magnitude at which the RBA lifts the cash rate.”
During the last downturn in Australian real estate, houses slid nearly 10% nationally between mid-2018 through mid-2019, while Sydney in particular was hit with a decline of 15%.
That said, Aird has suggested that just because housing will dip, it won’t crash because “the low jobless rate means households will continue to pay off mortgages but higher rates come at the expense of less discretionary spending.”
But while Aird and the CBA thinks interest rates will rise as high as 2.1%, financial markets are pricing in 3% – which UBS economist George Tharenou warned would “likely crash housing and drive a recession.”
The silver lining? CBA predicts that the Australian Central Bank will have to cut rates in mid-2023 almost as quickly as they raised them since the aggressive hikes will start tanking the economy to the tune of 2.1%, vs. 2022’s expected growth of 3.5%.
“In the short-term however, housing markets will again be confronted by the fear factor with the usual predictions from the usual suspects of house price crashes and an uncertain outlook on rates and the economy, motivating buyers and sellers to sit on their hands,” said Dr Andrew Wilson, consultant economist at Bluestone Home Loans. “The usually quieter winter selling season will be exacerbated this year by falling confidence and the fear factor resulting in likely continued downward pressure on home prices with non-discretionary sellers just having to accept what the market offers.”
That said, overall demand for housing is expected to remain strong due to tight supply.
“With borders now open, migrants and international student numbers will surge, significant numbers of first homebuyers are set to take advantage of recently announced government support policies, and high levels of investors will continue to be attracted to rental markets with record low vacancy rates and skyrocketing rents,” said Wilson. “And with recent underbuilding – particularly apartments – set to continue, the prospect remains of demand well below supply.”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/11/2022 – 23:00 - Biden's Homeland Secretary Lied About Disinformation Board: Whistleblower Documents
Biden’s Homeland Secretary Lied About Disinformation Board: Whistleblower Documents
Authored by Mark Tapscott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas misled Congress when he testified under oath in May that the Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) “had not yet begun its work,” two Republican senators claim.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas testifies before a Senate panel in Washington on May 4, 2022. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images) In fact—according to documents obtained from a DHS whistleblower by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)—planning, decision-making, and concrete work by senior DHS officials, including Mayorkas, had begun at least as early as September 2021.
In addition, the documents provided to the senators show that Mayorkas was asked by DHS officials tasked with planning and establishing the DGB for his approval to proceed as early as January 2022 and that Mayorkas gave his approval for doing so in February 2022.
A Different Picture
“On May 4, 2022, Secretary Mayorkas testified under oath to Senator Hawley that the Disinformation Governance Board ‘had not yet begun its work.’
“On May 1, 2022, the secretary told the news media that the board would be focused on disinformation ‘from foreign state adversaries [and] the cartels’ and would not monitor American citizens,” the GOP senators said in a joint statement.
“At the White House on May 2, White House press secretary Jen Psaki claimed that the board would be focused on ‘human traffickers and other transnational criminal organizations.’”
Despite those claims by Mayorkas and Psaki, Grassley and Hawley said in their statement that the documents they were provided reveal a different picture of the DGB’s development.
The documents said the DGB was conceived from the beginning in part to monitor the domestic speech of U.S. citizens concerning “conspiracy theories about the validity and security of elections” and “disinformation related to the origins and effects of COVID-19 vaccines or the efficacy of masks.”
They added that Mayorkas and his team sought a partnership with social media outlet Twitter designed to censor content unapproved by the DGB and planned a meeting with Twitter executives to discuss such a joint effort.
In addition, the papers show the DGB charter that was officially drafted in January 2022 was personally signed by Mayorkas on Feb. 24, 2022, with the stipulation in the document that the secretary’s approval marked the immediate effect of the charter.
Mayorkas told the Senate in May that the DGB hadn’t yet begun its work even as a meeting with social media executives was apparently being staffed by Nina Jankowicz, who had only been nominated in April by President Joe Biden to be the board’s executive director, according to the documents.
Leaked Documents
The Twitter meeting was, again according to the documents, scheduled for April 28 and would include Twitter head of global public policy Nick Pickles and head of site security Yoel Roth.
“The meeting is off-the-record and closed to [the] press,” one of the leaked documents stated.
The papers also suggest that DHS officials drafted legislation to codify a “Rumor Control Program of the Department of Homeland Security to Counter Mis-information, Dis-information, and Mal-information,” including a public-facing website known as “Rumor Control.”
In addition, the leaked documents concerning the Twitter meeting mention numerous “discussion points,” including one noting that “the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) created a domestic terrorism branch within its counterterrorism mission center to ensure DHS develops the expertise necessary to produce sound and timely intelligence, at the lowest possible classification level in order to inform our stakeholders.”
In a June 7 letter to Mayorkas, the senators expressed their fear that the DGB would, in fact, act as a government censor targeting political opinions that, while being unapproved by the Biden administration, are nevertheless protected speech under the First Amendment.
The leaked documents include multiple references to the DGB relying on “clear, objective facts,” but the senators told Mayorkas in their letter that “it is unclear how DHS defines ‘clear, objective facts,’ and it is unclear what safeguards, if any, DHS has put in place to ensure that individuals charged with determining which issue areas have ‘clear’ and ‘objective facts’ are not influenced by their own ideological and political beliefs.”
Combat Terrorist Threats
“While the memo boldly asserts that the department’s ‘counter-disinformation mission, including the choices as to what issue areas to focus on, must not be politicized and must be protected from perceptions of politicization,’ some of the examples of disinformation given in the memo relate not only to foreign disinformation, but issues that have been at the heart of domestic political discourse for the past several years,” the letter states.
“For instance, the memo refers to ‘[c]onspiracy theories about the validity and security of elections’ and ‘[d]isinformation related to the origins and effects of COVID-19 vaccines or the efficacy of masks.‘”
Congress established DHS after it was proposed in 2002 by President George W. Bush as a result of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.
The new federal department was intended to unify the federal government’s efforts to combat international terrorist threats, especially those mounted by violent Islamic radicals based in the Middle East and Iran against targets within U.S. borders.
A DHS spokesman didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/11/2022 – 22:30 - Labor Union Threatens US Foods With "Work Stoppages," Could Impact East Coast Restaurants
Labor Union Threatens US Foods With “Work Stoppages,” Could Impact East Coast Restaurants
Disruptions to US food supply chains could worsen if the Teamsters Warehouse Division and several Teamster locals walk off the job at foodservice distribution centers throughout the East Coast because of unresolved labor contracts.
Teamsters released a statement revealing contract negotiations with US Foods are souring, and they “put the foodservice giant on notice that work stoppages are imminent.” This means that unresolved work contract negotiations between the labor union and the foodservice distributor could result in a strike that may disrupt the flow of food products to tens of thousands of restaurants.
Teamsters point out US Foods is under investigation by the National Labor Relations Board for allegations of unfair labor practices, including terminations, unilaterally changing working conditions, and bargaining in bad faith with union representatives.
“US Foods executives seem more interested in how they can violate the rights of their essential employees than they do in offering them a fair return on their work. My members have patiently tried to work in good faith to negotiate an agreement, but they’ve had enough,” said Todd Robertson, President of Teamsters Local 171 in Salem, Virginia.
Robertson said drivers at one of US Foods distribution centers have been trying to negotiate a fair contract for nearly a year and have yet to make progress. Workers are getting fed up, which may result in the possibility of a strike.
“Unfair labor practices and unsettled contracts are not the way to thank your essential workers.
“Local leaders across the country have told me their members have had it with the way US Foods treats them,” said Tom Erickson, Teamsters International Vice President and Director of the Teamsters Warehouse Division.
For some context about how serious a strike of drivers and warehouse employees at US Foods would be, we must understand the company has 28,000 employees and more than 70 locations across the country and delivers food products to approximately 300,000 restaurants.
“We aren’t going to be afraid to strike,” said Sean M. O’Brien, Teamsters General President.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/11/2022 – 22:00 - Why Progressives Love Government "Experts"
Why Progressives Love Government “Experts”
Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
In twenty-first-century America, ordinary people are at the mercy of well-paid, unelected government experts who wield vast power. That is, we live in the age of the technocrats: people who claim to have special wisdom that entitles them to control, manipulate, and manage society’s institutions using the coercive power of the state.
We’re told these people are “nonpolitical” and will use their impressive scientific knowledge to plan the economy, public health, public safety, or whatever goal the regime has decided the technocrats will be tasked with bringing about.
These people include central bankers, Supreme Court justices, “public health” bureaucrats, and Pentagon generals. The narrative is that these people are not there to represent the public or bow to political pressure. They’re just there to do “the right thing” as dictated by economic theory, biological sciences, legal theory, or the study of military tactics.
We’re also told that in order to allow these people to act as the purely well-meaning apolitical geniuses they are, we must give them their independence and not question their methods or conclusions.
We were exposed to this routine yet again last week as President Joe Biden announced he will “respect the Fed’s independence” and allow the central bankers to set monetary policy without any bothersome interference from the representatives of the taxpayers who pay all the bills and who primarily pay the price when central bankers make things worse. (Biden, of course, didn’t mention that central bankers have been spectacularly wrong about the inflation threat in recent years, with inflation rates hitting forty-year highs, economic growth going negative, and consumer credit piling up as families struggle to cope with the cost of living.)
Conveniently, Biden’s deferral to the Fed allows him to blame it later when economic conditions get even worse. Nonetheless, his placing the economy in the hands of alleged experts will no doubt appear laudable to many. This is because the public has long been taught by public schools and media outlets that government experts should have the leeway to exercise vast power in the name of “fixing” whatever problems society faces.
The Expert Class as a Tool for State Building
The success of this idea represents a great victory for progressive ideology. Progressives have long been committed to creating a special expert class as a means of building state power. In the United States, for example, the cult of expertise really began to take hold in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and it led directly to support for more government intervention in the private sector. As Maureen Flanagan notes in “Progressives and Progressivism in an Era of Reform,”
Social science expertise gave political Progressives a theoretical foundation for cautious proposals to create a more activist state…. Professional social scientists composed a tight circle of men who created a space between academia and government from which to advocate for reform. They addressed each other, trained their students to follow their ideas, and rarely spoke to the larger public.
These men founded new organizations—such as the American Economics Association—to promote this new class of experts and their plans for a more centrally planned society. Ultimately, the nature of the expert class was revolutionary. The new social scientists thought they knew better than the patricians, religious leaders, local representatives, and market actors who had long shaped local institutions. Instead,
Progressives were modernizers with a structural-instrumentalist agenda. They rejected reliance on older values and cultural norms to order society and sought to create a modern reordered society with political and economic institutions run by men qualified to apply fiscal expertise, businesslike efficiency, and modern scientific expertise to solve problems and save democracy. The emerging academic disciplines in the social sciences of economics, political economy and political science, and pragmatic education supplied the theoretical bases for this middle-class expert Progressivism.
The Progressive impulse for expertise-based rule was perhaps exemplified by the Progressive transportation planner Emory Johnson, who advocated for a strong federal executive branch that would be resistant to political pressure while relying on the supposedly “scientific” judgments of government planners and other bureaucrats. Johnson
explicitly took up the question of the role of expertise in the American state…. he maintained that success relied upon what he termed “executive functions.” He sought to empower the federal government’s executive branch as experts’ natural home.
In the Progressive view, business leaders and machine politicians lacked a rational and broad view of the needs of society. In contrast, the government experts would approach society’s problems as scientists. Johnson felt this model already somewhat existed in the Department of War, where Johnson imagined the secretary of war was “quite free from political pressure and [relied] on the counsel of the engineers.” Johnson imagined that these science-minded bureaucrats could bring a “really economic and scientific application” of policy.
“Disinterested” Central Planners
Johnson was part of a wave of experts and intellectuals attempting to develop “a new realm of state expertise” that favored apolitical technocrats who would plan the nation’s infrastructure and industry.2 Many historians have recognized that these efforts were fundamentally “state-building activities … [and that] their emergence marked and symbolized a watershed in which an often-undemocratic new politics of administration and interest groups displaced the nineteenth century’s partisan, locally oriented public life” (emphasis added).
In short, these efforts sowed the seeds for the idealized technocracy we have today: unresponsive to the public and imbued with vast coercive power that continually displaces private discretion and private prerogatives.
Indeed, the Progressive devotion to expertise followed “the core pattern of Progressive politics,” which is “the redirection of decision making upward within bureaucracies.”4 Thus, in contrast to the populist political institutions of an earlier time, decision-making in the Progressive Era became more white-collar, more middle class—as opposed to the working-class party workers—and more hierarchical within bureaucracies directly controlled by the state’s executive agencies.
Although Progressives thought of themselves as the saviors of democracy, they nonetheless recognized the conflict between their professed democratic ideals and a reliance on experts:
[Progressives] reconciled the conflict between using hierarchical bureaucracy to seek efficiency and dispersing power to achieve equality by depicting bureaucratic systems as safeguards of public order…. Since authority flowed from supposedly disinterested facts and “scientific” expertise, bureaucratic systems were presented by their champions as objective, coherent, and essentially democratic structures.5
This idealized notion of the “disinterested expert” formed a key component of the Progressive agenda:
Progressive reformers proposed an antidote to the corruption of patronage politics, emphasizing disinterested experts and rationalized administration: a city council would appoint an executive officer, the city manager, who would in turn appoint qualified lieutenants to assist him. The rationalized and centralized bureaucracies presided over by city managers would be run “scientifically,” meaning objectively, insulated from patronage politics.6
Who Should Rule?
In many ways, then, this aspect of Progressive ideology turned the political agenda of laissez-faire classical liberalism on its head. Liberals of the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian variety had sought to increase outside political influence in the policy-making process through elections and the appointment of party activists loyal to elected representatives. This was because liberals feared that an insulated class of government experts would function more in its own interests than those of the taxpayers.
The Progressives, however, imagined they could create a disinterested nonpolitical class of experts devoted only to objective science. The fundamental question, then, became who should rule: insulated experts or nonexpert representatives with closer ties to the taxpayers.
We can see today that the Progressives largely succeeded in granting far greater power to today’s technocratic class of experts. The technocrats are praised for their allegedly scientific focus, and we are told to respect their independence.
If the goal was ever to protect public checks on state power, however, this was always an unworkable ideal. By creating a special class of expert bureaucrats with decades-long careers within the regime itself, we are simply creating a new class of officials able to wield state power with little accountability. Anyone with a sufficiently critical view of state power could see the danger in this. Interestingly, it was anarcho-communist Mikhail Bakunin who recognized the impossibility of solving the problem of state power by putting scientific experts in charge. Such a move only represented a transfer of power from one group to another. Bakunin warned:
The State has always been the patrimony of some privileged class or other; a priestly class, an aristocratic class, a bourgeois class, and finally a bureaucratic class.
Moreover, state bureaucratic efforts to plan society from the center, Bakunin noted,
will demand an immense knowledge and many “heads overflowing with brains” in this government. It will be the reign of scientific intelligence, the most aristocratic, despotic, arrogant, and contemptuous of all regimes. There will be a new class, a new hierarchy of real and pretended scientists and scholars.
It is not necessary, of course, to have full-blown socialism to create this “new class.” The modern state with its mixed economy in most cases already has all the bureaucratic infrastructure necessary to make this a reality. As long as we defer to this ruling class of “scientists and scholars,” the Progressives have won.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/11/2022 – 21:30 - Federal Judge Blocks Biden Administration Restrictions On Immigration Arrests
Federal Judge Blocks Biden Administration Restrictions On Immigration Arrests
It’s undeniable that Democrats want an open southern border; all of their policies and demands show that this is the case. Not only that, but they viciously attack any attempt to pass voter ID laws, which correlates rather well with their immigration stance. During the covid pandemic the only meaningful government intervention was the actual enforcement of border protections and the expulsion of illegal immigrants under Title 42, as common sense and the law requires. However, with the covid doomfest over Democrats returned, calling for Joe Biden to end border protections and open the floodgates.
Biden did them one better and initiated a policy through the Department of Homeland Security that was designed to greatly limit which illegal immigrants Border Patrol officers and ICE agents were allowed to arrest and deport.
Luckily, that order has now been negated by US District Court Judge Drew Tipton in Texas, who states that the DHS had no authority to issue a September 2021 memo which directed immigration officials to focus only on illegals that are deemed a “threat to public safety or national security” and those illegals that are in the midst of crossing the border. In other words, they were to ignore any illegals that have already managed to sneak into the US. One could argue that ALL illegal immigration is a threat to national security.
Judge Tipton added that the memo was enacted in an “arbitrary and capricious fashion” contrary to federal administrative law.
During Title 42 enforcement and covid era border protections, border patrol agents expelled over 1.6 million illegal immigrants from the US. After Biden’s new policy initiatives, illegal immigration rose by over 1 million people and the rate of border crossings is climbing.
Democrats now argue that the war in Ukraine justifies open border initiatives because of asylum seekers, but such asylum seekers represent a tiny minority of actual immigrants coming into the US, and an even smaller percentage of illegal immigrants crossing the border without going through proper channels. Furthermore, Ukrainians are not special and should have to go through the normal asylum process as any other immigrant. There is no excuse for illegally crossing into the US.
The Biden White House now faces over a dozen separate lawsuits over its destructive border rules and its blatant attempts to hinder or cripple border officers.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/11/2022 – 21:00 - Does Biden's Solar Tariff Waiver Help China?
Does Biden’s Solar Tariff Waiver Help China?
Authored by Andrew Moran via The Epoch Times,
President Joe Biden authorized an emergency declaration to suspend tariffs on solar panels produced in four Southeast Asian countries for 24 months.
The White House described it as a “bridge” to temporarily permit cheap foreign solar panels to enter the U.S. market while simultaneously supporting the domestic solar manufacturing sector.
Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended the declaration, telling reporters during a news conference that “the emergency is a threat to the availability of sufficient electricity generation capacity to meet expected customer demand.”
But there is a concern that the Biden administration is diminishing the severity of the Commerce Department’s investigation into potential Chinese trade violations.
In March, the U.S. government announced a probe to determine if China had been using solar panel parts companies in Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam to circumvent tariffs. Washington had imposed anti-dumping duties to penalize Beijing for subsidizing and installing predatory pricing strategies.
President Joe Biden speaks after meeting virtually with baby formula manufacturers at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington on June 1, 2022. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The White House insists that its emergency actions are separate from the present trade investigation.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo described imported solar panels as critical to “addressing the immediate demands of bringing additional energy sources online.”
“I remain committed to upholding our trade laws and ensuring American workers have a chance to compete on a level playing field,” she said in a statement, adding that tariffs would remain in place on solar products produced in China and Taiwan.
“The President’s emergency declaration ensures America’s families have access to reliable and clean electricity while also ensuring we have the ability to hold our trading partners accountable to their commitments.”
About 80 percent of solar panels consumed by U.S. firms are imported from the four overseas markets.
Auxin Solar Inc. CEO Mamun Rashid had initially filed the complaint earlier this year. He slammed the president’s measure, accusing the administration of “open[ing] the door wide for Chinese-funded special interests to defeat the fair application of U.S. trade law.”
Abigail Ross Hopper, chief executive officer of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), called Biden’s decision “a much-needed reprieve from this industry-crushing probe.”
Investors cheered the news as both U.S. and Chinese solar stocks rallied. China’s LONGi Green Energy Technology Co Ltd, which manufactures photovoltaic solar modules, has jumped more than 8 percent this week. Sunrun, a U.S. provider of residential solar panels, has advanced 6 percent this week. The Invesco Solar ETF (TAN), which holds positions in Enphase Energy, Xinyi Solar Holdings, and Hanhwa Solutions, is up more than 4 percent this week.
But Harrison Rogers, the founder and CEO of HJR Global, a venture capital firm, called it a “bad policy” that will not improve market conditions for the U.S. renewables sector.
“Lifting tariffs on roughly $335 billion in Chinese goods is not an America First strategy,” Rogers told The Epoch Times.
“In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It will harm American workers and provide little to no benefit in the effort to fight runaway inflation.”
When they were first introduced under the previous administration, the tariffs were meant to level the playing field with China, says Rogers.
“Supporting Chinese solar panel supply and production will only make America’s failing energy policy even worse,” he added.
This might be another step in the administration’s quest to reduce former President Donald Trump’s influence on U.S. trade policy, which is what officials have stated is in the process of happening.
Biden Reconfiguring Trump-Era Tariffs
Speaking in front of a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told lawmakers that the White House is attempting to “reconfigure” the Trump-era tariffs applied on approximately $300 billion worth of Chinese goods.
According to Yellen, the administration wants to make these levies more “strategic.”
“This administration inherited a set of 301 tariffs imposed by the Trump administration that I think really weren’t designed to serve our strategic interests,” she told Congress.
Last month, Biden confirmed to reporters during a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida that he is weighing cutting tariffs on Chinese goods to ease rampant price inflation.
“I am considering it. We did not impose any of those tariffs. They were imposed by the last administration and they’re under consideration,” Biden said.
Secretary Raimondo told CNN on Sunday that lifting some tariffs on a broad array of products, from household goods to bicycles, “may make sense.”
“We are looking at it. In fact, the president has asked us on his team to analyze that. And so we are in the process of doing that for him and he will have to make that decision,” she told the cable news network.
Although Yellen conceded that Chinese tariffs have added to inflationary pressures, she does not “think tariff policy is a panacea with respect to inflation.”
According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), removing tariffs on imports from China could trim the consumer price index (CPI) by 0.26 percentage points.
If the administration were interested in cutting tariffs to fight inflation, PIIE asserts that officials need to “think more broadly about trade liberalization and consider reducing duties beyond those placed on China.” The group estimates that a 2 percentage point tariff-equivalent decrease on a wide range of goods entering the U.S. market would offer a one-time 1.3 percentage points reduction in CPI inflation.
Labor unions have been pressuring the administration to keep the tariffs intact, writing in an official comment to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative that doing so would “undermine competitive and national security interests.”
“Our government must act in the national interest to strengthen our economy for the future,” stated Thomas Conway, the president of the United Steel Workers, in a comment filed on behalf of the Labor Advisory Committee for Trade Negotiations and Trade Policy.
“Too many U.S. companies have failed to take needed actions to address the threat posed by CCP [Chinese Communist Party] policies. Many continue to outsource production and research and development, undermining U.S. competitiveness and national security interests.”
The U.S. annual consumer price inflation rate for May was just released, printing a shocking 8.6%, significantly higher than the 8.3% that economists were expecting.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/11/2022 – 20:30 - Starbucks CEO Considers Walking Back 'Open Bathroom' Policy To Protect Customers
Starbucks CEO Considers Walking Back ‘Open Bathroom’ Policy To Protect Customers
Starbucks considers walking back its “all inclusive” bathroom policy, first instituted in 2018 following the arrest of two black men at a store in Philadelphia who were denied bathroom use until they made a purchase.
The policy was an unmitigated disaster as Starbucks bathrooms in some areas of the country transformed into homeless shelters and a safe space for drug addicts to shoot up.
CEO Howard Schultz appears to have found a possible out to reverse former CEO Kevin Johnson’s disastrous open bathroom policy.
Speaking on Thursday at NYTimes‘ DealBook D.C. policy forum, Schultz said increasing threats to public safety and an expanding mental health crisis have made it challenging for employees to manage stores under open bathroom policies. He said the decision was an “issue of just safety.”
“We have to harden our stores and provide safety for our people,” the CEO of America’s largest coffee chain said. “I don’t know if we can keep our bathrooms open.”
One example of how the policy backfired was in 2019 at shops across the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metropolitan region, where employees complained about possible exposure to HIV/AIDS, Hep C, Hep B, etc., after drug addicts used bathrooms to shoot up heroin and left behind dirty needles.
Schultz’s possible policy reversal for stores nationwide comes as execs at the coffee chain realize that allowing non-paying ones at risk of violence.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/11/2022 – 20:00 - Protection From A Currency Collapse
Protection From A Currency Collapse
Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,
While markets seem becalmed, financial conditions are rapidly deteriorating. Last week Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase gave the clearest of signals that bank credit is beginning to contract. Russia has consolidated its rouble, which has now become the strongest currency by far. The Fed announced the previous week that its balance sheet is in negative equity. And there’s mounting evidence that we have a nascent crack-up boom.
Russia now appears to be protecting the rouble from these developments in the West, while previously she was only attacking the dollar’s hegemony. China has yet to formulate a defensive currency policy but is likely to back the renminbi with a commodity basket, at least for foreign trade.
If it is taken up more widely by the members if the Shanghai Cooperation organisation and the BRICS, the development of a new commodity-based super-currency in Central Asia could end the dollar’s global hegemony.
These are major developments. And finally, due to widespread interest in the subject, I examine the outlook for residential property values in the event of a collapse of Western fiat currencies.
The mechanics of an apocalypse
Against the grain of the establishment, for years I have been warning that the world faces a fiat currency collapse. The reasoning was and still is because that’s where monetary and economic policies are taking us. The only questions arising are whether the authorities around the world would realise the dangers of their inflationary and socialistic policies and change course (extremely unlikely) and in that absence in what form would the final crisis take.
History tells us that fiat currencies always fail, only to be replaced by Mankind’s sound money — metallic gold, and silver. And now that fiat currencies have seen a rapid debasement followed by soaring commodity and raw material prices, interest rates should be considerably higher. Yet, in the Eurozone and Japan they are still suppressed in negative territory. The reluctance of the ECB and the Bank of Japan to permit them to rise is palpable. Worse still, even with just the threat of a slowdown in the issuance of extra credit by the commercial banks, we suddenly face a sharp downturn in economic and financial activities.
Commercial banks in the Eurozone and Japan are uncomfortably leveraged and unlikely to survive the mixture of higher interest rates, contracting bank credit, and an economic downturn without being bailed out by their respective central banks. But so massive are the central banks’ own bond positions that the losses from rising yields have put them in negative equity. Even the Fed, which is in a far better position than the ECB and BOJ, has admitted unrealised losses on its bond portfolio are $330bn, wiping out its balance sheet equity six times over.
So, without the injection of huge amounts of new capital from their existing shareholders the major central banks are bust, the major commercial banks soon will be, and prices are rising uncontrollably driving interest rates and bond yields higher. And like a hole in the head, all we now need to complete the misery is a contraction in bank credit. On cue, last week we got a warning that this is also on the cards, when Jamie Dimon, boss of JPMorgan Chase, the largest commercial bank in America and the Fed’s principal conduit into the commercial banking network, upgraded his summary of the financial scene from “stormy” only nine days before, to “hurricane”. That was widely reported. Less observed were his remarks about what JPMorgan Chase was going to do about it. Dimon went on to say the bank is preparing itself for “a non-benign environment” and “bad outcomes”.
We can be sure that the Fed will have spoken to Mr Dimon about this. JPMorgan’s chief economist, Bruce Kasman was then urgently tasked with rowing back, saying he only saw a slowdown. No matter. The signal is sent, and the damage is done.
We are unlikely to hear from Dimon on this subject again. But you can bet your bottom dollar that the cohort of international bankers around the world will have taken note, if they hadn’t already, and will be drawing in their lending horns as well.
The importance of monitoring bank credit is that when it begins to contract it always precipitates a crisis. This time the crisis revolves more around financial assets than in the past, because for the last forty years, bank credit expansion has increasingly focused not on stimulating production of real things — that has been chased overseas, but the creation of financial ephemera, such as unproductive debt, securitisations of securities, derivatives, and derivatives of derivatives. If you like, the world of unbacked currencies has generated a parallel world of purely financial assets.
This is now changing. Commodities are creeping back into the monetary system indirectly due to sanctions against the world’s largest commodities exporter, Russia. Financing for speculation is already contracting, as shown in Figure 1. Given recent equity market weakness this is hardly surprising. But it should be borne in mind that this is unlikely to be driven by speculators cleverly taking profits at the top of the bull market. It is almost certainly forced upon them by margin calls, a fate similarly suffered by punters in cryptos.
Bank deposits, which are the other side of bank credit, make up most of the currency in circulation. Since 2008, dollar bank deposits have increased by 160% to nearly $19.5 trillion (M3 less bank notes in circulation). But there is the additional problem of shadow bank credit, which is unknowable and is likely to evaporate with falling financial asset values. And Eurodollars, which similarly are outside the money supply figures will likely contract as well.
We are now moving rapidly towards a human desire to protect what we have. This is fear, instead of the desire to make easy money, or greed. We can be reasonably certain that with the reluctance of banks to even maintain levels of bank credit the move is likely to be swift, catching the wider public unawares. It is the stuff of an apocalypse.
A financial and economic crisis is now widely expected. Everyone I meet in finance senses the danger, without being able to put a finger on it. They are almost all talking of the authorities taking back control, perhaps of a financial reset, without knowing what that might be. But almost no one considers the possibility that this time the authorities will fail to stop a crisis before it turns our world upside down.
Nevertheless, a crisis is always a shock when it comes. But its timing is always anchored in what is happening to bank credit.
The bank credit cycle
The true role of banks in the economy is as creators of and dealers in credit. The licence granted to them by the state allows them to issue credit where none had existed before. Initially, it stimulates economic activity and is welcomed. The negative consequences only become apparent later, in the form of a fall in the expanded currency’s purchasing power, firstly on the foreign exchanges, followed in markets for industrial commodities and raw materials, and then in the domestic economy. The seeds for the subsequent downturn having been sown by the earlier expansion of credit. As night follows day it duly follows and is triggered by credit contraction. Since the end of the Napoleonic wars, this cycle of credit expansion and contraction has had a regular periodicity of about ten years —sometimes shorter, sometimes longer.
A cycle of bank credit is a more relevant description of the origin of periodic booms and slumps than describing them as a trade or business cycle, which implies that the origin is in the behaviour of banking customers rather than the banking system. How it comes about is important for an understanding of why it always leads to a contractionary crisis.
The creation of bank credit is a simple matter of double entry bookkeeping. When a bank agrees to lend to a borrower, the loan appears on the banker’s balance sheet as an asset, for which there must be a corresponding liability. This liability is the credit marked on the borrower’s deposit account which will always match the loan shown as an asset. This is a far more profitable arrangement for the bank than paying interest on term deposits to match a bank’s loan, which is the way in which banks are commonly thought to originate credit.
The relationship between his own capital and the amount of loan business that a banker undertakes is his principal consideration. By lending credit in quantities which are multiples of his own capital, he enhances the return on his equity. But he also exposes himself to a heightened risk from loan defaults. It follows that when he deems economic prospects to be good, he will lend more that he would otherwise.
But bankers though their associations and social and business interactions tend to share a common view of economic prospects at any one time. Furthermore, they have their own sources of economic intelligence, some of which is shared on an industry-wide basis. They are also competitive and prepared to undercut rivals for loan business in good times, reducing their lending rates to below where a free-market rate would perhaps otherwise be.
Being dealers in credit and not economists, they probably fail to grasp the fact that improving economic conditions — growth in Keynesian jargon — is little more than a reflection of their own credit expansion. The currency debasement from extra credit results in prices and interest rates rising, especially in fiat currencies, undermining business calculations and assumptions. Bankruptcies begin to increase as the headline below from last Monday’s Daily Telegraph shows:
While this headline was about the UK, the same factors are evident elsewhere. No wonder Jamie Dimon is worried.
As a rule of thumb, bank credit makes up about 90% of the circulating media, the other 10% being bank notes. Today in the US, bank notes in circulation stand at $2.272 trillion, and M3 broad money, which also contains narrower forms of money stands at $21.8 trillion, so bank notes are 10.4% of the total. The ratio in December 2018 following the Lehman crisis was 10.7%, similar ratios at different stages of the credit cycle. Therefore, at all stages of the cycle, it is the balance between greed for profit and fear of losses in the bankers’ collective minds that set the prospects for boom and bust, and not an increase in the note issue.
A further consideration is the lending emphasis, whether credit has been extended primarily to manufacturers of consumer goods and providers of services to consumers, or whether credit has been extended mostly to support financial activities. Since London’s big-bang and America’s repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, the major banks have increasingly created credit for purely financial activities, leaving credit for Main Street in the hands of smaller banks. Because credit expansion has been aimed at supporting financial activities, it has inflated financial assets values. So, while central banks have been suppressing interest rates, the major banks have created the credit for buyers of financial assets to enjoy the most dramatic, widespread, and long-lasting of investment bubbles in financial history.
Now that interest rates are on the rise, the bubble environment is over, to be replaced with a bear market. The smart money is leaving the stage, and the public faces an unwinding of the bubble. The combination of rising interest rates and contracting bank credit is as bearish as falling interest rates and the fuel of expanding bank credit were bullish. As loan collateral, banks have retained financial assets to a greater extent than in the past, and their attempts to protect themselves from losses by fire sales of stocks and bonds when they no longer cover loan obligations can only accelerate a financial market collapse.
Russia’s new priority is to escape from the West’s crisis
While the financial sanctions imposed on Russia have led to a tit-for-tat situation with Russia saying it will only accept payments in roubles from the “unfriendlies”, there can be little doubt that sanctions have come at an enormous cost to the imposers. In a recent interview, Putin correctly identified the West’s inflation problem:
“In a TV interview that followed his meeting with the African Union head Macky Sall in Sochi, Putin added that attempts to blame Ukraine’s turmoil for the West’s skyrocketing cost of living amount to avoiding responsibility. Almost all governments used the fiscal stimulus to help people and businesses affected by the Covid-19 lockdowns. Putin stressed that Russia did so “much more carefully and precisely,” without disrupting the macroeconomic picture or fuelling inflation. In the United States, by contrast, the money supply increased by 38% – or $5.9 trillion – in less than two years, in what he referred to as the ‘unprecedented output of the printing press’.”
This is important. While the West’s monetary authorities and their governments have suppressed the connection between the unprecedented increase in currency and credit and the consequence for prices, if the quote above is correct, Putin has nailed it. In all logic, since the Russians clearly understand the destabilising ramifications of the West’s monetary policies, it behoves them to protect themselves from the consequences. They will not want to see the rouble sink alongside western currencies.
And indeed, the policy of tying Russian energy exports to settlements in roubles divorces the rouble from the West’s mounting financial crisis. It is further confirmation that Zoltan Pozsar’s description of a Bretton Woods 3, whereby currencies are moving from a world of financial activity towards commodity backing, is correct. It’s not just a Russian response in the context of a financial war, but now it’s a protectionist move.
Russia enjoys the position of the world’s largest exporter of energy and commodities. For the West to cut itself off from Russia may be justifiable in the narrow political context of a proxy war in Ukraine, but it is madness in the economic perspective. The other nation upon which the West heavily relies, China, has yet to formulate a proper currency policy response. But the alacrity with which China began stockpiling commodities and grains following the Fed’s reduction of interest rates to the zero bound and its increase of QE to $120bn monthly in March 2020 shows she also understands the price consequences of the West’s inflationism.
The difference between China and Russia is that while Russia is a commodity exporter, China is a commodity importer. Her currency position is therefore radically different. The Chinese advisers who have absorbed Keynesian economics will be arguing against a stronger currency relationship with the dollar, particularly at a time of a significant slowing of China’s GDP growth. They might also argue that they have preferential access to discounted Russian exports, the benefits of which would be squandered if the yuan strengthened materially. One can imagine that while Russia is certain about her “Bretton Woods 3 strategy”, China has yet to take some key decisions.
But everything is relative. It is true that China is offered substantial discounts on Russian energy and other commodities. It is in her interests to accumulate as much of Russia’s commodities as she can — particularly energy. But it must be paid for. Broadly, there are two sources of funding. China can sell down its US Treasury holdings, or alternatively issue additional renminbi. The latter seems more likely since it would keep the dollar well away from any Chinese-Russian trade settlements and could accelerate the start of a new offshore renminbi market.
All these moves are responses to a crisis brought about by Western sanctions. Given the history of price stability for energy and most other commodities measured in gold grammes, Russia’s move represents a barely transparent move away from the world of fiat and its associated financial ephemera to a proxy for a gold standard. It is a statist equivalent of the latter, whereby Russia uses commodity markets without having to deliver anything monetary. While protecting the rouble from a collapsing western currency and financial system it works for now, but it will have to evolve into a monetary system that is more secure.
One possibility might be to use the new commodity-based trade currency planned for the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), which is likely to rope in all the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation network, and possibly the commodity-exporting BRICS as well. It has been reported that even some Middle Eastern states have expressed interest though that’s hard to verify. In the financial war against the dollar, the announcement of the new currency’s terms would represent a significant escalation, cutting the dollar’s hegemony down at a stroke for over half the world’s population.
It would also raise a question mark over the estimated $33 trillion dollars of US financial assets and bank deposits owned by foreigners. Timing is an issue, because if the new EAEU trade currency is introduced following a crisis for the dollar, the move would be protectionist rather than aggressive, but it seems likely to trigger substantial dollar liquidation in the foreign exchanges either way.
The elephant in the currency room is gold. It is what Zoltan Pozsar of Credit Suisse terms “outside money”. That is, money which is not fiat produced by central banks by keystrokes on a computer, or by expansion of bank credit. A basket of commodities for the proposed EAEU trade currency is little more than a substitute for linking their currencies with gold.
So, why don’t Russia and China just introduce gold standards? There are probably three reasons:
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A working gold standard, by which is meant an arrangement where members of the public and foreigners can exchange currency for coin or bullion takes away control over the currency from the state and places it in the hands of the public. This is a course of action that modern governments will only consider as a last resort, given their natural reluctance to cede control and power to the people. Nowhere is this truer than of dictatorial governments such as those governing Russia and China.
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It could be argued that to introduce a working gold standard would give America power to disrupt the currency by manipulating gold prices on international markets. But it is hard to see how any such disruption would be anything other than temporary and self-defeating.
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Proceeding nakedly into a gold standard, when America has spent the last fifty years telling everyone gold is a pet rock, yet at the same time grabbing everyone else’s gold (Germany, Libya, Venezuela, Ukraine… the list is pretty much endless) is probably the financial equivalent of a nuclear escalation, only to be considered as a last resort. Clearly, it is the most sensitive subject and a frontal challenge to the dollar’s post-Bretton Woods hegemony.
The flight into real assets
While national governments are considering their position in the wake of sanctions against Russia, the status of their reserves, and how best to protect themselves in a worsening financial conflict between Anglo-Saxon led NATO and Russia, ordinary people are acting in their own interest as well.
Most of us are aware that second hand values for motor cars have soared, in many cases to levels higher than new models. The phenomenon is reported in yachts and power boats as well. And on Tuesday, it was reported that US citizens had escalated their credit card spending to unexpected heights. Is this evidence of a flight from zero-yielding bank deposits, or the emergence of wider concerns about rising prices and the need to acquire goods while they are available at anything like current prices?
When it comes to their own interests, people are not stupid. They understand that prices are rising and there is no sign of this ending. Their mantra is to buy now before prices rise further, while they can be afforded and the liquidity is to hand. While it is probably too dramatic to call this behaviour a crack-up boom, unless something is done to stop it a crack-up boom appears to be developing.
But the asset which is on many peoples’ minds is residential property. Where residential property prices are dependent on the availability and cost of mortgage finance, rising interest rates will undermine property values. Given that the loss of currencies’ purchasing power fails to be reflected yet in sufficiently high interest rates, mortgage rates for new and floating rate loans can be expected to rise substantially, driving residential property prices lower. But this assumes that a financial and currency crisis won’t occur before interest rates have risen sufficiently to discount future losses of a currency’s purchasing power.
It seems unlikely that that will happen. It is more likely that increases of not more than a few per cent will be sufficient to destabilise the West’s monetary order, with systemic risk spreading rapidly from the weakest points — the Eurozone and Japan, where interest rates rising from negative values will expose as demonstrably insolvent the ECB and the Bank of Japan, while major commercial banks in both jurisdictions are the two most highly leveraged cohorts.
That being the case, and if a banking crisis originating in a deflating financial asset bubble requires insolvent central banks to rescue commercial banks, there is a significant risk that the West’s fiat currencies could lose credibility and collapse as well. Therefore, as well as the effect of rising mortgage costs (which will probably be capped by the emerging crisis) we must consider residential property values measured in currencies which have imploded. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that measured nominally in fiat currencies, after a brief period of uncertainty property prices might rise. A million-dollar house today might become worth many millions, but many millions might buy only a few ounces of gold.
That appears to have been the situation in 1923 Germany, reported by Stefan Zweig, the Austrian author who in his autobiography recounted that at the height of the inflation US$100 could buy you a decent town house in Berlin. It might have been several hundred million paper marks, but at the time US$100 was the equivalent of less than five ounces of gold.
Any investor in real assets such as real estate and farmland must be prepared to look through a collapse of financial asset values and a currency crisis. For a time, they will have to suffer rents which don’t cover the costs of maintaining property.
But the message from Germany in 1923 is that it is far better to hoard what the Romans told us is legally money, that is everlasting physical gold. And the lessons of history backed up by pure logic tell us loud and clear that gold is not a portfolio investment. It is no more than money. An incorruptible means of exchange to be hoarded and spent after all else has failed.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/11/2022 – 19:30 -
- 'Made-For-TV' Jan. 6 Hearings Are Ratings Disaster
‘Made-For-TV’ Jan. 6 Hearings Are Ratings Disaster
After throwing two impeachments and a Russia hoax at Donald Trump, Congressional Democrats’ latest political theater against the former president – produced by a former TV exec for prime time – is a ratings disaster.
Their unifying theory seems to be that Trump masterminded a rag-tag mob of (fed infiltrated) groups, which ‘stormed’ the capital (through doors that were opened for them), then sauntered into various parts of the Capital – some even engaging in mayhem, in an ‘attempt to subvert Democracy’ and, we suppose, topple the US government?
Congress was back to work two hours after the interruption (aka the darkest moment in American history).
In any event, ratings for the Democrats’ latest Trump takedown attempt aren’t exactly a success, relatively speaking, as just 20 million viewers tuned in for Thursday night’s ‘prime-time’ event, according to The Hill.
At CBS alone, last week’s episode of “Young Sheldon” got more views (3.86 million vs. 3.24 million), according to the Washington Free Beacon.
By contrast, an estimated 38 million people tuned in to Trump’s inauguration, 20 million watched Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony against Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and 38 million tuned in to Biden’s State of the Union Address in March.
On a typical day, around 9 million people watched former President Trump’s 2020 impeachment trial, and 13 million or so watched the second.
In short – nobody cares.
On Thursday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) slammed the trial as “a Hollywood paid political advertisement,” adding “they hired a producer to put this thing on.”
As Summit News notes:
Rubio also noted that Democrats have enshrined into law that if any protest like January 6th ever happens again at the Capitol “they’re going to put a fence up,” further asserting “They won’t do that for our country.”
Rubio pointed to the authoritarian power grab Democrats have presided over with January 6th as a pretext, noting “They still have metal detectors in the House chamber, so members have to go through them.”
Referring to destructive Black Lives Matter riots, Rubio said Democrats “will do all these extraordinary things and mobilise the National Guard, but if you’re among the hundreds of small businesses that got burned to the ground, the people that were killed, the people that were harassed, the people that suffered from that, well [they] don’t care about that, that [they’re] going to condone.”
“It doesn’t matter if you torched a police car, killed a security guard, that’s not as big a deal… and if you call out the National Guard or marshalls or anybody else, that’s nothing but the Gestapo, that’s their attitude,” Rubio urged.
“It reveals hypocrisy and the good news is that people see it for what it is, and that’s why they’re getting it handed to them all over the country,” the Senator declared.
Rubio tweeted out his comments made on Hannity, asking when the trial begins for the 2300 acts of looting and 600 acts of arson that were committed during the BLM riots.
Have they set a date yet for prime time hearings on the riots that left 19 dead,2,000 officers injured,97 police cars burned,over 600 acts of arson,2300 acts of looting & over $2 billion in property damage? pic.twitter.com/b27RrurJLb
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) June 9, 2022
Republicans noted Thursday as the show trial got underway that teleprompters were being used:
Is Pelosi’s sham political witch-hunt really using teleprompters right now? pic.twitter.com/JiRAJxejQI
— House Republicans (@HouseGOP) June 10, 2022
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
WOW they are using teleprompters. pic.twitter.com/S58eNIt9qR
— House Republicans (@HouseGOP) June 10, 2022
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
It’s all part of the show, folks…
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/11/2022 – 19:00 - Elon Musk's Starlink Makes China 'Very Scared': Space Expert
Elon Musk’s Starlink Makes China ‘Very Scared’: Space Expert
Authored by Gary Bai via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
As Americans try out the newest Starlink dishes on their R.V.s, a space expert says Elon Musk’s Starlink makes the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “nervous” as the “only” player in the field now when it comes to the U.S.’s strategic space race with China.
“It is important to understand that Elon Musk’s SpaceX company is the only thing keeping the U.S. in the Space Race with China,” Brandon Weichert, space expert and author of “Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower,” told The Epoch Times in an interview in late-May.
Countdown and launch of Falcon 9 into orbit at Cape Canaveral in Fla., on May 18, 2022. (SpaceX via AP/Screenshot via The Epoch Times) The expert says Starlink, now “possibly a vital component of war-making,” is making America’s rivals “nervous,” yet Elon Musk is under a two-fold “attack” by the White House and the military establishment.
Starlink, a satellite internet constellation operated by Musk’s spacecraft company SpaceX, currently consists of over 2,400 satellites that orbit the earth at an altitude more than 60 times lower than the satellites that carry most of the world’s internet today.
CCP is ‘Nervous’
The reason that U.S. adversaries are nervous about Starlink, according to the space expert, is that the satellite system is resilient to mass-scale attacks U.S. adversaries are currently capable of and thus makes “destroying” America’s space infrastructure much more difficult than before.
“Starlink is a great example of a private-sector profit motive providing a key example of how the military’s vital-yet-vulnerable satellite constellations can be protected,” Weichert said.
“The strength of Starlink is its redundancy. So basically, we saw last summer, a solar flare knocked out something like 20, or maybe it was even 40, Starlink satellites, and Musk didn’t even bat an eye within a day. Those systems were replaced because they’re small, and they’re cheap,” he noted.
As Weichert details in his book, Russia and China previously had the capability to deny the U.S. military from accessing communication networks by attacking U.S. satellites by using, for example, electromagnetic pulse attacks.
Now, he says, Starlink threatens U.S. adversaries because the satellite network’s replaceability deprives them of maintaining an edge over the U.S. in space warfare.
“Russia and China are both are threatened by this capability because they know how the Americans could use that to an advantage,” he added. “And that is why those two countries are livid right now and trying desperately to figure out countermeasures to maintain what they think is their advantage, with counter-space capabilities, the ability to deny the Americans use of space in the event of a conflict.”
According to the expert, one sign indicating that the CCP is threatened by Starlink is when the CCP complained to the United Nations that the Chinese Space Station “Tiangong” had to maneuver to avoid collision with Starlink satellites in two separate incidences.
“China came out and they were screaming about how Elon Musk’s one of his Starlink satellites almost collided with their new modular space station, which of course was an over-exaggeration … but they were tipping their hand by telling us that they are very scared of this new communication system,” Weichert said.
The U.S. refuted the CCP’s claims in a responding note verbale. SpaceX issued a statement acknowledging the encounter and saying it monitors its satellites’ flight trajectory to maintain a safe distance from Tiangong.
The expert added that Starlink has cyber-defense capabilities that seemed impressive even to defense specialists at the Pentagon.
“Pentagon’s electronic warfare (E.W.) specialist was witnessing in real-time Starlink operators at SpaceX defend the Starlink satellite onboard system from the Russian cyber attacks, ceaseless cyber attack,” Weichert said, quoting Dave Tremper, the Pentagon’s director of electronic warfare, who told Breaking Defense that SpaceX’s capabilities are “eye-watering” to him.
Therefore, if China’s military attempted a cyber-attack on Starlink’s onboard operating systems, Weichert says, “they would be in for a very rude awakening.”
Sole Player in Space Race
Weichert says SpaceX is now the “only thing keeping the U.S. in the space race with China” that needs to maneuver through institutional forces within the U.S. to become successful.
“The problem now is our own government seems to not recognize or care much for the fact that SpaceX is the only property right now that’s keeping America in the new space race, keeping us competitive,” Weichert said, “NASA is asleep at the switch and Space Force can’t figure out what it wants to do,” Weichert said.
“Meanwhile, American leaders, for the most part, are not envisioning space as a strategic domain. China does. Musk does,” he added.
The reasons for this lack of action, Weichert said, include a glaring disagreement in political ideology between Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, and the White House.
“[SpaceX] is also under a lot of political pressure because of Elon Musk’s political stances, particularly recently. Elon Musk is not a friend of the Biden administration,” Weichert said, adding that this disagreement has “put a giant target” on Musk’s back.
Musk’s recent criticism of the Biden administration and the Democratic Party has stirred up controversy in the political world. The billionaire suggested that Biden is not the “real” U.S. president and called the Democratic Party the party of “division” and “hate.”
“They started now going after Musk. They’re going to go after him right with a regulatory issue over the purchase of Twitter: not because of anything wrong, just because he’s a political rival,” Weichert said. “So the problem now is not the Chinese or the Russians.”
Another key reason behind America’s stagnation in the space race, Weichert said, is a “cartel”-like military establishment who are “nowhere near as innovative these days as SpaceX.”
“What you have now is basically a cartel of a handful of very powerful defense contractors who don’t really care about creating weapons systems that are both efficient, that are time-friendly, in terms of development, and that are cheaper than what they are right now,” the expert said.
“And so SpaceX undermines that old cartel approach to the defense industry. That’s why Musk is hated. That’s why he’s under attack from the bureaucracy plus all the political attacks in the Biden administration,” he added.
The expert suggests that America adopt SpaceX’s innovative model of using networks of easily replaceable satellites to make America’s space infrastructure more resilient to space-directed attacks in wartime scenarios.
“Whether it’s SpaceX getting the contract to do this or another firm, they’ve got to replicate that SpaceX model. That’s the key,” Weichert said.
In his book, Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Weichert warns that America must undergo a paradigm shift in its vision of space and see space as a “strategic domain” so as to prevent a “catastrophic surprise attack” from Russia or China—which he calls, the “space Pearl Harbor”—during future times of war.
“America is a juggernaut. When we get moving as a country, we are unstoppable. Taking the initial steps, however, is always the hardest for our country,” Weichert remarks.
“Today, the United States faces a space Pearl Harbor—and everyone in Washington knows it.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to the U.S. Space Force for comments.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/11/2022 – 18:30 - The Inflation Crisis Is Worse Than Admitted – Will Interest Rates Go To Record Highs?
The Inflation Crisis Is Worse Than Admitted – Will Interest Rates Go To Record Highs?
Inflation is not a new problem in the US; there has been a steady expansion of price inflation and a devaluation of the dollar ever since the Federal Reserve was officially made operational in 1916. This inflation is easily observed by comparing the prices of commodities and necessities from a few decades ago to today.
The median cost of a home in 1960 was around $11,900, which is the equivalent of $98,000 today. In the year 2000, the median home price rose to $170,000. Today, the average sale price for a home is over $400,000 dollars. Inflation apologists will argue that wages are keeping up with prices; this is simply not true and has not been true for a long time.
In today’s terms, a certain measure of home price increases involve artificial demand created by massive conglomerates like Blackstone buying up distressed properties. We can also place some blame on the huge migration of Americans out of blue states like New York and California during the pandemic lockdowns. However, prices were rising exponentially in many markets well before covid.
Americans have been dealing with higher prices and stagnant wages for some time now. This is often hidden or obscured by creative government accounting and the way inflation is communicated to the public through CPI numbers. This is especially true after the inflationary crisis of the late 1970s and early 1980s under the Carter Administration and Fed Chairman Paul Volcker.
It’s important to understand that CPI today is NOT an accurate reflection of true inflation overall, and this is because the methods used by the Fed and other institutions to calculate inflation changed after the 1970s event. Not surprisingly, CPI was adjusted to show a diminished inflation threat. If you can’t hide the price increases, you can at least lie about the gravity of those increases.
Today, the official CPI print from the Fed came in much hotter than expected at 8.6%. For market investors hoping for a lower print and more Fed stimulus, the dream is dead, or it should be treated as such. There is very little chance that the central bankers will reverse course in the midst of the largest inflationary crisis since the 1970s. What they aren’t telling you, though, is that REAL inflation is much worse that what the CPI shows us.
By the 1990s the Fed and the government had effectively upended the traditional calculation methods for inflation and, ever since, the CPI has been subdued. If we look at numbers from Shadowstats, which uses the same calculation methods that were used in the 1980s, we can see that CPI is actually closer to 17%. This makes much more sense given the dramatic increases in food and energy prices, as well as home and rent costs just in the past two years. The 1970’s crisis peaked at around 14.5%.
It’s also important to note that the crisis of the 1970s was the product of a decade long decline in the US economy. The real trigger event happened in 1971 when Richard Nixon fully removed the US dollar from the gold standard. It was not long after in 1973 that CPI rose to around 8%. By 1980 inflation was officially at 14%. Volcker and the Fed responded by dramatically increasing interest rates to a record high of 15.8% by 1981.
Recession hit hard and unemployment grew to 10%. High inflation followed by high interest rates also made manufacturing in the US difficult and likely helped to precipitate the exodus of factories from America to Asia.
The difference between the 1970’s crisis and today’s crisis is that we are facing far worse conditions. Our crisis started around 2008 after the credit bubble collapse, which facilitated an endless stream of bailouts and stimulus packages. The Federal Reserve has printed or created tens of trillions of dollars over the course of the past 14 years.
The official US national debt has tripled in that time. In 2020 alone, the Fed created over $6 trillion from thin air and injected it directly into the economy through covid relief checks and PPP loans. Unemployment is low, for now, but this is a fleeting condition created by covid stimulus. Joblessness will likely skyrocket over the next year now that covid checks are spent and the average consumer has maxed out their credit cards.
If the Fed takes the same actions as they did in the 1970s, then it is likely that interest rates will be aggressively hiked within the next couple of years to levels even beyond those seen in 1981. The current planned pace of rate increases by the Fed will do nothing to stall rising inflation, and they know this is a fact though they will not admit it to the public until it’s too late. Inflation will continue to climb well beyond current CPI. They will have to hike to the point of extreme economic pain, and this may still not stop rising prices.
Obviously, interest rates anywhere beyond 2%-3% will lead to a stock market crash, because stocks are highly dependent on corporate buybacks fueled by cheap loans. The central bank has yet to even begin true rate hikes and already we are seeing stocks decline in response to the mere prospect that the easy money train is over.
Recession is a commonly used word in the media for what we are facing, but this is a softball term that misrepresents reality. It’s more accurate to say that the party is over – The deflationary crisis we should have dealt with in 2008 will return with a vengeance, but this time we have the added inflationary pressures caused by years of fiat money printing. In other words, it’s a stagflationary disaster that needs to be taken far more seriously in the mainstream than it currently is.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/11/2022 – 18:00 - Officials Won't Release Video Of Paul Pelosi's DUI Arrest: Letter
Officials Won’t Release Video Of Paul Pelosi’s DUI Arrest: Letter
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,
Officials in Northern California say they will not release a video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) husband’s arrest last month.
“The Public Records Unit (PRU) has determined the Department possesses records responsive to your request,” the California Highway Patrol told Fox News in response to a California Public Records Act request from the news outlet.
The law enforcement agency added:
“However, the Napa County District Attorney’s Office has advised the release of records would jeopardize an ongoing investigation. As such, records are being withheld pursuant to Government Code section 6254 (f).”
On Thursday, the Napa County District Attorney’s office said it hasn’t yet decided on what charges, if any, Paul Pelosi would face. Pelosi, 82, was arrested for allegedly driving under the influence of alcohol last month, officials said.
“This is standard protocol in any DUI case that is referred by a law enforcement agency in Napa County,” the DA’s office stated, according to media reports.
“No decision has been made at this time. Any speculation to the contrary is incorrect.”
He might face two misdemeanor charges including driving under the influence and driving with a blood alcohol content level of 0.08 or more. According to a news release from the California Highway Patrol, Pelosi was arrested after his 2021 Porsche was involved in a collision with a Jeep in Napa County, where he and the House speaker own a vineyard.
The DA’s office confirmed that he will be arraigned on Aug. 3 at 8:30 a.m. in the Napa County Superior Court.
His attorney, Larry Kramer, released a statement to outlets several days ago that “news reports about” the “traffic incident involving Paul Pelosi have included incorrect information.”
“Mr. Pelosi was attending a dinner party at the home of friends near Oakville,” Kramer said following the incident.
“He left that party at 10:15 p.m. Saturday, to drive to his home a short distance away. He was alone in his car,” he added.
Pelosi was also “fully cooperative with California Highway Patrol officers who arrived a few minutes later,” his lawyer added.
“A prior driving offense erroneously attributed to Mr. Pelosi is untrue and likely refers to an unrelated person with the same name. This error must be corrected,” Kramer added in a statement to the Daily Beast.
“There are also incorrect reports that misstate the timing of events.”
Around the time of the arrest, Drew Hammill, a spokesperson for Speaker Pelosi, said that she will not be making a comment on the matter. Pelosi was in Rhode Island at the time of the DUI arrest, Hammill said.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/11/2022 – 17:30 - Michigan Sheriff's Department Reduces 911 Call Responses Due To "Exhausted" Funds For Gas
Michigan Sheriff’s Department Reduces 911 Call Responses Due To “Exhausted” Funds For Gas
With regular gasoline prices climbing over $5 a gallon, a sheriff’s office in Michigan announced that it has blown through its fuel budget and will avoid responding to non-urgent 911 calls.
“Isabella County Sheriff’s Office is feeling the pain at the pump as well. We have exhausted what funds were budgeted for fuel with several months to go before the budget reset.
“I have instructed the deputies to attempt to manage whatever calls are acceptable over the phone. This would be non-in-progress calls, non-life-threatening calls, calls that do not require evidence collection or documentation.
“Deputies will continue to provide patrols to all areas of the county, they will respond to those calls that need to be managed in person. Any call that is in progress with active suspects will involve a response by the deputies. I want to assure the community that safety is our primary goal, and we will continue to respond to those types of calls,” Isabella County Sheriff Michael Main said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.
The announcement comes as the average price of gasoline in the US hit another milestone of $5 a gallon this week and reached as much as $5.22 in Michigan.
Fuel prices are set to keep rising as refining bottlenecks and robust consumer demand during peak driving season have depleted national stockpiles for refined products, such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.
So now Biden’s inflation is jeopardizing public safety?
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/11/2022 – 17:00 - Fed Warns Biden Admin: Price Controls Should Stay In The History Books
Fed Warns Biden Admin: Price Controls Should Stay In The History Books
As inflation soars, a growing number of progressives are blaming ‘gouging’, first by ‘Big Oil’ and now by ‘Big Shippers’, pressuring the Biden administration to impose price controls.
The problem is – they never work! And as Christopher Neely, the vice president of The St.Louis Fed, warns, price controls distort signals that are used to allocate scarce resources, leading to the inefficient allocation of goods and services, adding that such controls have significant costs that increase with their duration and breadth. Neely suggests appropriate fiscal and monetary policies can reduce inflation without the costs imposed by price controls.
Simply out, as Neely explains below, price controls have had a very long but not very successful history.
The burst of inflation that followed the COVID-19 crisis and the expansionary policy of international central banks, including the Federal Reserve, has returned the topic of price controls to the news. For example, recent articles have advocated forms of price controls to reduce U.S. inflation and achieve other goals.
This article reexamines price controls, discussing their history, operation and disadvantages, and economists’ views on the policy. It explains why most economists believe broad price controls to be costly and ineffective in most situations.
U.S. PCE Inflation Is at Its Highest since 1982
SOURCE: FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data).
Price controls are government regulations on wages or prices or their rates of change. Governments can impose such regulations on a broad range of goods and services or, more commonly, on a market for a single good. Governments can either control the rise of prices with price ceilings, such as rent controls, or put a floor under prices with policies such as the minimum wage. The following table shows some examples of common price controls.
Types of Price Controls
The History of Price Controls
Price controls have a long history: The Code of Hammurabi prescribed prices for goods 4,000 years ago, and the Massachusetts and Virginia colonies did likewise 400 years ago.2 Governments have commonly restricted prices during wartime, with all major belligerents instituting broad limits on prices during World War II. Western countries commonly employed broad price controls into the 1970s. The U.S. government last used broad controls in a series of schemes from 1971-74 following the withdrawal of the dollar from the gold standard. Many developing countries control the prices of staples, sometimes combining price controls with subsidies.
The Impact of Price Controls
Let’s consider the impact of price ceilings. High prices have two economic functions:
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They allocate scarce goods and services to buyers who are most willing and able to pay for them.
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They signal that a good is valued and that producers can profit by increasing the quantity supplied.
That is, prices allocate scarce resources on both the consumption and production sides. Price controls distort those signals.
The next figure shows a stylized supply-demand graph for a competitive market in which the equilibrium price-quantity pair would be defined by the point at which the supply and demand curves cross, at {PE, QE}. In the presence of the price ceiling, however, consumers want QD units, while the suppliers are willing to offer only QS units. QD is much greater than QS and the difference is a shortage of the product (Q) at the price ceiling.
Supply and Demand with a Price Ceiling
SOURCE: The author.
The next figure similarly shows how a price floor, such as a minimum wage, changes the equilibrium {price, quantity} combination in a competitive market. In this figure, the price floor produces a glut of supply—for example, unemployment in the case of a minimum wage.
Supply and Demand with a Price Floor
SOURCE: The author.
Costs of Price Controls
Price controls have costs whose severity depends on the broadness of the control and the degree to which it changes the price from the free-market price. The costs include the following:
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A government bureaucracy and law enforcement must be funded to enforce the controls.
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Goods and services are allocated inefficiently, both in consumption and production.
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Competition shifts from production to political markets as firms attempt to influence price-setting decisions.
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Widespread evasion of price controls promotes disrespect for the law.
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Suppressed inflation appears when temporary controls are relaxed.
Most of these costs are straightforward, but allocative inefficiency requires some explanation: Because QD is greater than QS in the second figure, there is a shortage of the product, and sellers must figure out how to allocate a limited supply. Perhaps they sell only to longtime customers or customers who also buy other products, or they just limit the quantity that each customer can buy.3 Rent control forces landlords to keep renting to existing tenants at artificially low prices. Such “non-price rationing” is inefficient because some buyers who don’t get the good would be willing to pay more for them. Producers would be willing to increase production and sell to consumers who want to buy at a higher price, but price controls make that illegal.
How Do People and Firms Evade Wage and Price Controls?
When a price ceiling prohibits a desired transaction, the buyer and seller will often evade the price ceiling by transacting in a closely related but unregulated product or by trading illegally in black markets. Similarly, sellers might change a good slightly to prevent it from being subject to the same price limit. The economist Hugh Rockoff notes that the price of clothing has been particularly difficult to control because an article of clothing can be upgraded easily to a higher-priced category by adding inexpensive decoration or reduced in quality by substituting cheaper materials.
The historian Jennifer Klein has documented that the current dependence of the U.S. health care system on employer-provided insurance is a relic of the evasion of wage controls during World War II. During that conflict, defense industries wanted to hire more workers but could not legally raise wages. To make their jobs more attractive, some employers began offering health insurance as a legal fringe benefit.
Price controls prompt greater behavioral changes in the long run. Consider how firms might respond to a higher minimum wage that increases the cost of entry-level labor. In the short run, employers might raise prices and economize on labor. Firms will tend to raise prices, even in a competitive market, because producers must pay higher wages to their employees. People will consume less of the higher-priced products that use entry-level labor intensively. In the longer run, employers will install more capable machines, such as dishwashers or automated cooking machines, to reduce the quantity of entry-level labor they use.
What Do Economists Think about Price Controls?
Economists generally oppose most price controls, believing that they produce costly shortages and gluts. The Chicago Booth School regularly surveys prominent economists on questions of interest, including price controls. Most economists do not believe that 1970s-style price controls could successfully limit U.S. inflation over a 12-month horizon, and many of those economists cite high costs of controls.
Economists do know, however, that price controls can be theoretically beneficial when imposed appropriately on a monopolist or monopsonist, and they do tend to work better in imperfectly competitive markets.4 The economist Hugh Rockoff cautiously suggests a limited role for price controls during some inflation episodes in his book Drastic Measures: A History of Wage and Price Controls in the United States. Rockhoff reported that even the late Milton Friedman, a noted free-market advocate, accepted a limited role for temporary price controls in breaking inflation expectations during a disinflation.
Conclusion
Price controls have had a very long but not very successful history. Although economists accept that there are certain limited circumstances in which price controls can improve outcomes, economic theory and analysis of history show that broad price controls would be costly and of limited effectiveness. Appropriate fiscal and monetary policies can reduce inflation without the costs imposed by price controls.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/11/2022 – 16:30 -
- Russia Issues Unusually Bitter Condemnation Of Israeli Attack On Damascus Airport
Russia Issues Unusually Bitter Condemnation Of Israeli Attack On Damascus Airport
Israeli media is on Saturday describing an “unusually bitter condemnation” as Russia has lashed out at Israel’s latest airstrikes on Syria, which disabled Damascus International Airport.
Following the Friday pre-dawn raid, ostensibly against Iranian weapons shipments and assets according to Israeli reports, Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Friday evening slammed the—
“vicious practice” of Israeli strikes on civilian infrastructure, which it said were “provocative” and “in violation of the basic norms of international law.”
Image from a 2020 Israeli attack on Damascus International Airport, via AFP. Syria had been forced to halt all flights from its largest commercial international airport following the fresh Israeli airstrikes, as we detailed earlier, with the country’s main international transit hub likely to be halted into next week pending urgent repairs.
The statement from Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said, “We are compelled to reiterate that the ongoing Israeli shelling of the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic, in violation of the basic norms of international law, is absolutely unacceptable.”
It continued: “We strongly condemn Israel’s provocative attack on the most important object of the Syrian civilian infrastructure.”
“Such irresponsible actions create serious risks for international air traffic and put the lives of innocent people in real danger.” it said.
According to The Times of Israel, the damage to the runways is extensive: “An Israeli satellite intelligence firm published images showing significant damage to the runways, which it said disabled the entire airport.”
Photo released by ImageSat International on June 10, 2022, shows Syria’s Damascus International Airport with multiple craters on runways. This week, and following a prior Israeli strike on Syria, Russian jets joined Syria’s air force in a rare joint patrol and exercise:
The ministry said two Russian SU-35 fighter jets and six Syrian MiG-23 and MiG-29 aircraft simulated facing “hostile” warplanes and drones. Syrian pilots dealt with them with cover and support from the Russian warplanes, it said.
“All illusive targets were monitored and completely destroyed while aerial targets were hit at night for the first time,” the Syrian Defense Ministry said in a statement. It also released a video of the warplanes that it said took part in the drill.
While Russia has in the past years of war provided Damascus with S-300 missile systems, it has typically not engaged Israel – but has in the last month stepped up warnings against Israeli overreaching in its purported ‘anti-Iranian’ operations over Syria.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/11/2022 – 16:00 - The Seven Pillars Supporting The Bitcoin Revolution
The Seven Pillars Supporting The Bitcoin Revolution
Authored by Sylvain Saurel via ‘In Bitcoin We Trust’ Substack,
Bitcoin is a monetary revolution that will change the world of the future. Bitcoin will not only change the world of the future forever, but it will also change it for the better. The Bitcoin system will enable the construction of a fairer and simply better world for everyone.
When I explain this, some people seem dubious.
The fact that I am a Bitcoiner would prevent me from seeing things objectively. In reality, I think it’s quite the opposite. Being a Bitcoiner allows me to see things as they are.
I swallowed the famous metaphorical red pill that Morpheus has been presenting to Neo in the movie The Matrix for a long time.
From then on, I discovered the ugly truth about the current monetary and financial system. This allows me to better appreciate all the characteristics of Bitcoin.
I am convinced that it is impossible to appreciate Bitcoin at its true value if you have not discovered the ugly truth about the current system.
You cannot appreciate the solution to a problem if you have not become aware of the problem yourself.
This is obvious, but I like to repeat it because many people do things the wrong way around by first buying Bitcoin without trying to understand the problems it solves.
Without being aware of why Bitcoin is there, you can’t have complete confidence in Bitcoin and apply the best strategy when its price fluctuates sharply.
The Bitcoin revolution is made possible by the seven fundamental pillars on which the Bitcoin system is based. I will present them to you in the following without the order of appearance indicating a greater importance of one of the pillars over the others.
1. Open Source
The Bitcoin system is based on the open-source software Bitcoin Core. It is an essential pillar that has contributed to the incredible success of Bitcoin. Anyone can access the Bitcoin source code.
Everyone can check by himself how the Bitcoin network works. Even better, everyone can contribute to the evolution of Bitcoin. The community of developers who contribute every day to improve Bitcoin is one of the main strengths of Bitcoin in the face of all the competitors who claim to be able to supplant Bitcoin one day.
Bitcoin is above all a monetary revolution.
Its disruptive technology serves to give credibility to its monetary attributes that make all the difference. Many are mistaken in thinking that Bitcoin will one day be supplanted by more powerful technology. This is not where the real competition lies.
So there is no need to look for the next Bitcoin. The real revolution took place with the invention of Bitcoin. In the years to come, Bitcoin will evolve in the same way that the Internet has evolved since its creation.
Thanks to its developers, Bitcoin will become safer and more reliable every day to guarantee the security of the billions of dollars its users have invested in it. Even more than money, the security of the Bitcoin network is essential to ensure that the Bitcoin revolution can continue to progress smoothly.
2. Transparent
Bitcoin Blockchain is based on open-source code. This allows everyone to check what their source code does. In addition, its Blockchain is permissionless and trustless. Anyone can become a node of the Bitcoin network.
Any user can check all transactions validated on the Bitcoin network from the Genesis block mined on January 3, 2009, by Satoshi Nakamoto:
Bitcoin Genesis Block
This transparency of Bitcoin allows all its users to form their own opinion about the truth. The consensus obtained gives weight to the Bitcoin network.
This ability to verify everything for yourself is reflected in Bitcoin’s motto:
Don’t trust, Verify.
Bitcoin will never impose on you a truth that is not yours as the current monetary and financial system does.
You will be free to determine what the truth is for yourself. When you become a Bitcoiner, you then get into the habit of developing an acute critical mind that pushes you to verify everything for yourself.
3. Neutral
In creating Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto was well aware that he was inventing a technology capable of revolutionizing the current monetary and financial system.
Rather than wanting to benefit financially from his invention as all Altcoins founders do, Satoshi Nakamoto decided to offer Bitcoin to all the inhabitants of the Earth as a magnificent gift.
It is then up to its users to make Bitcoin a success or a failure.
This is an important concept in the Bitcoin world. There is no leader. All Bitcoin users have the same weight, and this is something truly revolutionary.
As long as you have the private keys to your Bitcoin, no one can take them away from you. Furthermore, no one can stop you from making the transactions you want to make.
While the U.S. dollar has been the world’s reserve currency for 100 years, more and more people are realizing that its life expectancy in this position is now counted. The incredible weakening of the U.S. dollar since 1971 seems never to stop and drives the value of the U.S. dollar towards zero.
Some believe that the U.S. dollar cannot be replaced because there is no alternative.
These people quickly forget that Bitcoin is precisely the only credible alternative to the U.S. dollar that is at the heart of the current monetary and financial system.
Many countries are beginning to no longer accept the exorbitant advantage that the U.S. dollar provides to the United States. Many are seeking to reduce their dependence on the U.S. dollar. Neutral politically, Bitcoin will be an increasingly preferred alternative in the years to come.
4. Decentralized
The Bitcoin network is decentralized. This decentralization is an incredible strength of Bitcoin. A real pillar that allows it to make a difference with all the existing Altcoins.
This decentralization makes Bitcoin more resistant to potential attacks. Its network has an uptime of 99.985% since its creation:
Bitcoin uptime
This uptime has nothing to envy those of the Web giants. It’s incredible when you think that Bitcoin has developed only thanks to the will of its users to build a better world for everyone. Bitcoin has never received any financial help from private investment banks or States.
Its current market cap of 570 billion dollars is a phenomenal success, and this is only the beginning. The best is yet to come for Bitcoin.
Currently, Bitcoin remains the most efficient solution for transferring money quickly and borderless. Transaction fees are virtually zero compared to bank fees for such transfers.
Moreover, the 10-minute transfer time for the order is incomparable with the SWIFT interbank payment network, where it takes 2 to 5 days at best.
Bitcoin’s total independence allows you to transfer money without having to answer indiscreet questions that bankers or governments love to ask those who transfer money through the SWIFT interbank system.
Bitcoin gives you the freedom to live your life on your own terms.
5. Censorship-resistant
The absence of a leader has allowed Bitcoin to become a true democracy where all users are equal. Each user is free to use his Bitcoin as he wishes.
No one can force you to use your Bitcoin against your will. You can send your Bitcoin to whomever you want over the network.
Your Bitcoin can never be confiscated as long as you have the private keys. As a reminder of this necessity, please remember this golden rule that is enshrined in the heart of the Bitcoin Club’s rules:
Bitcoin, therefore, allows you to preserve your wealth over time in a censorship-resistant manner.
With today’s banking system, governments can put pressure on you by threatening to confiscate what you own. With Bitcoin, you no longer have that fear. It’s an incredible guarantee in a world as uncertain as to the one we live in currently.
6. Secure
The proper functioning of the Bitcoin network, as well as its security, is ensured by Bitcoin users. This is essential because it implies that without its users, Bitcoin would be nothing.
In the world of Bitcoin, you will discover a double dependence: Bitcoin needs you as much as you need Bitcoin.
Bitcoin miners make their computing power available to the network to validate blocks of transactions. A transaction block is validated every 10 minutes on average.
To encourage the miners to ensure the smooth operation of the network, Satoshi Nakamoto has planned two things:
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A Bitcoin reward that halves every 210,000 blocks issued in an automatic operation called Halving.
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A transaction fee.
New Bitcoin units are therefore predictably issued with each block successfully added to the Bitcoin Blockchain. This allows everyone to predict the timing of new Bitcoin issuance until 2140 when all Bitcoin units have been issued.
Currently, Bitcoin is the most secure decentralized network in the world.
Its network is becoming more and more secure over the years as its Hash Rate increases:
It is also an indicator of the network’s good health, protecting it from potential attacks such as a 51% takeover of the network’s Hash Rate.
Such a secure network reassures users and investors alike that the Bitcoin revolution will be a success in the years to come.
7. Monetary policy
With the decentralization of the Bitcoin network, this last pillar is probably the most important. Bitcoin’s monetary attributes make it a species apart in a world where everything is going digital.
This is what will prevent Bitcoin from disappearing in the future.
While the U.S. dollar, and all fiat currencies, can exist in unlimited quantities since the establishment of the current monetary and financial system in August 1971, Bitcoin exists in finite quantities.
There will never be more than 21 million BTC in circulation.
This gives an incredible guarantee to all Bitcoin users. When you buy a Bitcoin, you know that you will still own 1 Bitcoin out of 21 million in 10, 20, or 50 years. Bitcoin thus avoids devaluing what its users own.
Aside from time, you will find nothing scarcer on Earth than Bitcoin. It is the most scarce thing ever created by humans.
Bitcoin’s monetary policy is also distinguished by the fact that the issuance of new Bitcoin units is predictable. It is automated in the Bitcoin source code and does not depend on any arbitrary human decision. No one can decide to accelerate the rate at which new Bitcoin units are issued.
The inflation of the supply of new Bitcoin units inevitably reduces over time. For every 210,000 blocks issued, the reward for miners is halved. The last Halving took place on May 11, 2020. Since then, the inflation of the supply of new Bitcoin units has been only 1.8% per year.
At the next Halving, at a block height of 840,000, this inflation will drop below zero for the first time in history. Bitcoin will become the most scarce asset in the world ahead of gold and its annual inflation of 1.6%.
This inflation will reach zero in 2140 when all Bitcoin units have been issued.
Bitcoin’s monetary policy is to be contrasted with the quantitative easing practiced by central banks. In the case of Bitcoin, we speak of quantitative hardening. This is an incredible virtue of Bitcoin that protects all its users.
Final Thoughts
Bitcoin is the biggest technological disruption since the Internet. Bitcoin’s technology is there to give credibility to its monetary attributes. These attributes make Bitcoin a true monetary revolution.
Based on the seven pillars that I have just presented to you, Bitcoin builds day after day a fairer and better world for all its users.
It is only a matter of time before the greatest number of people realize this. Bitcoin adoption will explode in the coming years. With a limited supply, and with inflation decreasing over time, the Bitcoin price is expected by some to reach $1 million within the next 20 to 30 years.
Those who choose to support Bitcoin sooner will naturally be the ones who will get the biggest reward. The good news is that we are still early for Bitcoin, and you still have the opportunity to enjoy it to the fullest.
It’s up to you.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/11/2022 – 15:30 -
- Biden Approval Plummets To 22% Among Young Adults, 24% Among Hispanics
Biden Approval Plummets To 22% Among Young Adults, 24% Among Hispanics
Despite how great the White House insists the average American is doing, President Joe Biden’s approval rating continues to fall.
According to a Wednesday poll by Quinnipiac University, Biden’s overall job approval is just 33%, and 22% among those aged 18-34. What’s more, just 24% of Hispanic voters and 49% of black voters say they think Biden’s doing an ok job.
Although elected with the most votes in US history, Biden’s support cratered about seven months into office during the chaotic US pullout from Afghanistan and remained low as inflation and violent crime spiked.
In the new poll, 64% of respondents said they disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy and 34% said inflation is the most pressing national issue. Annual inflation was above 8% in March and April, which critics blame on Biden’s policies. –NY Post
Meanwhile, 59% of respondents say they disapprove of how Biden has handled “gun violence,” with 57% supporting stricter gun laws and 92% supporting background checks for all buyers.
Biden’s best category? Covid-19 – with 47% approving of how he’s handled the pandemic, and 46% disapproving. Then there’s how Biden has handled the Russian invasion of Ukraine – with 42% approving and 50% disapproving.
Who likes Biden the most? Old folks – with 43% approval coming from those aged 65 or older, and Democrats – who approve by a margin of 79%.
Across all major polls, Biden’s approval rating has sunk to 39.4% according to RealClear Politics.
The Post also notes that Biden’s last sit-down interview with the press took place four months ago on Feb. 10.
“I can’t think of a parallel situation,” longtime NYT White House correspondent Peter Baker told Politico. “It’s the fifth president I’ve covered and the first one I haven’t interviewed. They feel neither the obligation nor the opportunity.”
“The president talks about defending democracy and that’s part of democracy too – answering questions from people not on your side,” he added.
As the Post notes, Donald Trump had a 42.2% approval rating at the same point in his presidency, while Barack Obama was at 48%.
The silver lining for Democrats? No mean tweets.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/11/2022 – 15:00 - DeSantis Aims To Target Gun "Lunatics", Not Guns
DeSantis Aims To Target Gun “Lunatics”, Not Guns
Authored by Jannis Falkenstern via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Gov. Ron DeSantis said he wants to focus on gun “lunatics” rather than targeting Second Amendment rights when it comes to preventing mass shootings.
“When you’re dealing with [gun-related crime] … you focus on the criminal,” he said at a June 8 press conference.
“You focus on the lunatic—you don’t kneecap the rights of law-abiding citizens.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a press conference at the University of Miami Health System Don Soffer Clinical Research Center in Miami on May 17, 2022. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Mental health issues notwithstanding, some shooters are just “really bad people … who are doing things, targeting kids, targeting innocent people,” the governor said.
During the question-and-answer session, DeSantis was asked about the closing in 2002 of a large mental hospital that held people who were deemed a threat to society.
Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) demonstrates assembling his handgun as he speaks remotely during a House Judiciary Committee mark up hearing in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC, on June 2, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) While DeSantis did not call for a return of that type of institution, he seemed to question the decision of then Gov. Jeb Bush to close G. Pierce Wood (GPW), a mental health facility located in Southwest Florida.
“I mean, honestly, they used to have people [who] would go to these insane asylums—these are folks that couldn’t function in society,” he said. “They were a danger to the community, and they were basically committed. We’ve kind of deinstitutionalized that now, so you really need to have a concerted effort to be able to have interventions to identify some of the people who are not safe to be around the community.”
In 1947 the Florida legislature recognized a need for mental health facilities and voted to build a large complex in DeSoto County that would accommodate long-term mental health patients. It was named after a legislator who advocated for the mentally ill, G. Pierce Wood, Sr. It was a 500-acre property that accepted patients from 17 counties across the state. The property included staff housing, a patient ward, and buildings for occupational training and recreation.
In 2014, then Gov. Rick Scott, along with members of the Florida Cabinet, voted to sell the property to Power Auto Corporation for $2.5 million with plans to use it for car-racing training. That plan was put on hold and the facility remains empty except for a small helicopter repair business.
The governor went on to say that mental health “spans a variety of things,” and that traditional mental health is “people going through normal things in life.”
“Most people who need mental health services [are] not a danger to the community,” DeSantis said. “But you do have some people that are just really just off their rocker and you need an intervention when you have that.”
Shannon Waedell-Collins pays her respects at the scene of Saturday’s shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., on May 18, 2022. (Matt Rourke/AP Photo) Some, however, are just bad people, he said.
“They are not dumb, because they pick their targets and they know. The Buffalo guy said he wanted to go where he knew there wouldn’t be blow-back from people being armed, and so he tried to find a gun-free zone,” he said referring to the gunman who murdered 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y., in May.
The governor issued a warning to would-be shooters: “If you’re one of these nut jobs, just know: If you try that … it’s not going to end up being pretty, and you’re not going to walk out of there alive.”
In recognition of the importance of mental health issues, DeSantis has allotted a significant amount in the 2022-2023 budget to address them, Christina Pushaw, the governor’s press secretary, told the Epoch Times in an email.
“The need for behavioral health services is increasing across the state. The Freedom First Budget provides nearly $294 million in funding for community-based behavioral health services, forensic bed capacity, and operations of the state mental health treatment facilities,” Pushaw wrote. “Additionally, this funding will provide a comprehensive array of behavioral health treatment services that seek to reduce overdoses, suicides, and unemployment and help break the cycle of hospitalization and homelessness.”
During the press conference, the U.S. House voted to raise the age of purchasing a semiautomatic rifle from the age of 18 to the age of 21, which Florida has already passed. The House version of the gun law sought a number of measures, including closing a loophole allowing bump stocks, which allow semiautomatic weapons to simulate a fully automatic weapon. Senate negotiations were already underway when Congress voted on the bill.
Florida Democratic legislators are working to call a special session to address guns but say they are not attempting to ban the AR-15-assault-type weapon that was used in the Uvalde school shooting and elsewhere but instead want to restrict high-capacity rifle magazines, universal criminal background checks for all firearms and expand Red Flag laws used to seize firearms from people who pose a serious threat to themselves or others.
People are brought out of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after a shooting at the school left 17 people dead on February 14, 2018 in Parkland, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) he current Red Flag laws, or the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act of 2018, included a measure allowing law enforcement to seize firearms from people who the court deems “pose a serious threat” to themselves or others. According to a legislative analysis, the bill intended to temporarily prevent those experiencing a significant mental health crisis from obtaining firearms until that person can “reasonably prove” they are no longer a threat. The analysis went on to say that the law attempts to balance “the rights of the person (respondent) including due process of law, and reducing death or injury as a result of his or her use of firearms during a mental health crisis.”
According to the Florida Department of State, the Florida constitution requires three-fifths of lawmakers in each of the chambers, the House and the Senate must agree to such a session. The Secretary of State, Cord Byrd, launched a poll to all legislators on June 7 that ends at 3 p.m. on June 10. The poll question asked: “Should a special session of the Florida Legislature be convened for the purpose of considering proposals to address gun violence?”
On June 7, DeSantis signed HB 1421, which made small changes to the 2018 law, such as requiring law enforcement to be present on school campuses during an active shooter drill, school resource officers to complete mental health crisis intervention training and school districts as well as public charter school to create family reunification plans when schools are closed or unexpectedly evacuated.
The governor said he recognized after the Feb. 14, 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High school, failures were made by both law enforcement and the school as there were signs that the shooter was dangerous.
“The failures of both law enforcement and the school system I think were really, really difficult,” he said of the 2018 shooting. “When something could have been prevented by holding this guy accountable when you had all these different opportunities to do it and you don’t … that’s a problem.”
“So, they do analyze it like that, but they have something that’s wrong with them that would cause them to do it; and most of the time, there will be signals…”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/11/2022 – 14:30
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