Today’s News 12th September 2022

• Koala Or Elephant – How Many Hours A Day Do You Sleep?
  Koala Or Elephant – How Many Hours A Day Do You Sleep?

  Every animal has to rest in some way, but some animals need a lot more sleep than others.

  This graphic by Giulia De Amicis uses data from startsleeping.com to show the typical sleeping patterns of 40 different animals, highlighting their average sleep times, and what percentage of each 24-hour day they spend resting.

  

  Compared to the rest of the animals featured in the graphic, humans need a relatively small amount of sleep.

  We sleep for an average of eight hours – or 33% of our day.

  

  In contrast, Koalas sleep up to 22 hours a day, or 87.5% of the day. This is mostly because of the Koala’s diet – Koalas eat Eucalyptus leaves, which are toxic and take a lot of energy to digest.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/12/2022 – 02:45

• EU Ministers Call For 10% Cut In Energy Consumption
  EU Ministers Call For 10% Cut In Energy Consumption

  By Julieanne Geiger of OilPrice.com

  A meeting of EU energy ministers on Friday has suggested that each EU country implement strategies to reduce overall electricity consumption by a minimum of 10 percent, the Wall Street Journal has reported. 

  

  The EU should also reduce electricity by at least 5% during peak price hours, according to a draft document seen by the WSJ. 

  The EU asked its members earlier this summer to reduce gas consumption by 15% starting this fall and running through the winter.

  While initially a request, it left the door open for it to become mandatory should the need arise.

  The 15% gas cut framework could also be applied to Friday’s plan to cut electricity usage by 10%, the ministers said on Friday.  

  According to the WSJ, the electricity rationing plan appears to have support from many member states. 

  The emergency EU energy minister meeting was held on Friday to discuss skyrocketing consumer energy bills and a price cap on Russian natural gas. The meeting concluded without a concrete plan, with the group stating that more work needed to be done. Proposals for potentially capping the price of Russian gas—a controversial measure that critics claim will be ineffective—are due mid-September. 

  Russia, for its part, has vowed to withhold gas exports to countries engaged in price capping, threatening to let Europe freeze if it runs contrary to Russia’s interests. Nevertheless, the EU seems determined to show its resolve on the matter to find a solution to restricting Russia’s oil and gas revenues. 

  Friday’s emergency meeting is just the latest of many efforts the EU has made to quash economic upheaval due to industry shutdowns, and to prevent protests due to skyrocketing energy prices. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/12/2022 – 02:00

• Pilger: Silencing The Lambs – How Propaganda Works
  Pilger: Silencing The Lambs – How Propaganda Works

  Authored by John Pilger via ConsortiumNews.com,

  In the 1970s, I met one of Hitler’s leading propagandists, Leni Riefenstahl, whose epic films glorified the Nazis. We happened to be staying at the same lodge in Kenya, where she was on a photography assignment, having escaped the fate of other friends of the Fuhrer.

  She told me that the “patriotic messages” of her films were dependent not on “orders from above” but on what she called the “submissive void” of the German public.

  Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? I asked.  “Yes, especially them,” she said. 

  I think of this as I look around at the propaganda now consuming Western societies. 

  Of course, we are very different from Germany in the 1930s. We live in information societies. We are globalists. We have never been more aware, more in touch, better connected. 

  

  Leni Riefenstahl, center, filming with two assistants, 1936. (Bundesarchiv, CC-BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

  Or do we in the West live in a Media Society where brainwashing is insidious and relentless, and perception is filtered according to the needs and lies of state and corporate power? 

  The United States dominates the Western world’s media. All but one of the top 10 media companies are based in North America. The internet and social media – Google, Twitter, Facebook – are mostly American owned and controlled.

  In my lifetime, the United States has overthrown or attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, mostly democracies. It has interfered in democratic elections in 30 countries. It has dropped bombs on the people of 30 countries, most of them poor and defenceless. It has attempted to murder the leaders of 50 countries.  It has fought to suppress liberation movements in 20 countries. 

  The extent and scale of this carnage is largely unreported, unrecognised, and those responsible continue to dominate Anglo-American political life.

  Harold Pinter Broke the Silence

  In the years before he died in 2008, the playwright Harold Pinter made two extraordinary speeches, which broke a silence.

  “U.S. foreign policy,” he said, is

  “best defined as follows: kiss my arse or I’ll kick your head in. It is as simple and as crude as that. What is interesting about it is that it’s so incredibly successful. It possesses the structures of disinformation, use of rhetoric, distortion of language, which are very persuasive, but are actually a pack of lies. It is very successful propaganda. They have the money, they have the technology, they have all the means to get away with it, and they do.”

  In accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature, Pinter said this: 

  “The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”

  Pinter was a friend of mine and possibly the last great political sage – that is, before dissenting politics were gentrified. I asked him if the “hypnosis” he referred to was the “submissive void” described by Leni Riefenstahl. 

  “It’s the same,” he replied. “It means the brainwashing is so thorough we are programmed to swallow a pack of lies. If we don’t recognise propaganda, we may accept it as normal and believe it. That’s the submissive void.”

  

  Leni Riefenstahl and a camera crew stand in front of Hitler’s car during 1934 rally in Nuremberg. (Bundesarchiv, CC-BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

  In our systems of corporate democracy, war is an economic necessity, the perfect marriage of public subsidy and private profit: socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor. The day after 9/11 the stock prices of the war industry soared. More bloodshed was coming, which is great for business.

  Today, the most profitable wars have their own brand. They are called “forever wars” — Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and now Ukraine. All are based on a pack of lies.

  Iraq is the most infamous, with its weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist. NATO’s destruction of Libya in 2011 was justified by a massacre in Benghazi that didn’t happen. Afghanistan was a convenient revenge war for 9/11, which had nothing to do with the people of Afghanistan. 

  Today, the news from Afghanistan is how evil the Taliban are —not that U.S. President Joe Biden’s theft of $7 billion of the country’s bank reserves is causing widespread suffering. Recently, National Public Radio in Washington devoted two hours to Afghanistan — and 30 seconds to its starving people.

  At its summit in Madrid in June, NATO, which is controlled by the United States, adopted a strategy document that militarises the European continent, and escalates the prospect of war with Russia and China. It proposes “multi domain warfighting against nuclear-armed peer-competitor.” In other words, nuclear war.

  

  NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, left, and Spain’s Prime Minster Pedro Sánchez on June 28 in Madrid. (NATO)

  It says: “NATO’s enlargement has been an historic success.” 

  I read that in disbelief. 

  The news from the war in Ukraine is mostly not news, but a one-sided litany of jingoism, distortion, omission.  I have reported a number of wars and have never known such blanket propaganda. 

  In February, Russia invaded Ukraine as a response to almost eight years of killing and criminal destruction in the Russian-speaking region of Donbass on their border. 

  In 2014, the United States had sponsored a coup in Kiev that got rid of Ukraine’s democratically elected, Russian-friendly president and installed a successor whom the Americans made clear was their man. 

  

  Dec. 7, 2015: U.S. Vice President Joe Biden meets with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Kiev. (U.S. Embassy Kyiv, Flickr)

  In recent years, American “defender” missiles have been installed in eastern Europe, Poland, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, almost certainly aimed at Russia, accompanied by false assurances all the way back to James Baker’s “promise” to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in February 1990 that NATO would never expand beyond Germany. 

  NATO on Hitler’s Borderline

  Ukraine is the frontline. NATO has effectively reached the very borderland through which Hitler’s army stormed in 1941, leaving more than 23 million dead in the Soviet Union. 

  Last December, Russia proposed a far-reaching security plan for Europe. This was dismissed, derided or suppressed in the Western media. Who read its step-by-step proposals? On Feb. 24, President Volodymyr Zelensky threatened to develop nuclear weapons unless America armed and protected Ukraine.  

  On the same day, Russia invaded — an unprovoked act of congenital infamy, according to the Western media. The history, the lies, the peace proposals, the solemn agreements on Donbass at Minsk counted for nothing.

  On April 25, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin flew into Kiev and confirmed that America’s aim was to destroy the Russian Federation — the word he used was “weaken.” America had got the war it wanted, waged by an American bankrolled and armed proxy and expendable pawn.

  Almost none of this was explained to Western audiences.

  Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is wanton and inexcusable. It is a crime to invade a sovereign country. There are no “buts” — except one.

  When did the present war in Ukraine begin and who started it? According to the United Nations, between 2014 and this year, some 14,000 people have been killed in the Kiev regime’s civil war on the Donbass. Many of the attacks were carried out by neo-Nazis. 

  Watch an ITV news report from May 2014, by the veteran reporter James Mates, who is shelled, along with civilians in the city of Mariupol, by Ukraine’s Azov (neo-Nazi) battalion.

  In the same month, dozens of Russian-speaking people were burned alive or suffocated in a trade union building in Odessa besieged by fascist thugs, the followers of the Nazi collaborator and anti-Semitic fanatic Stepan Bandera.  The New York Times called the thugs “nationalists.”

  “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment,” said Andreiy Biletsky, founder of the Azov Battaltion, “is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival, a crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”

  Since February, a campaign of self-appointed “news monitors” (mostly funded by the Americans and British with links to governments) have sought to maintain the absurdity that Ukraine’s neo-Nazis don’t exist. 

  Airbrushing, once associated with Stalin’s purges, has become a tool of mainstream journalism.

  In less than a decade, a “good” China has been airbrushed and a “bad” China has replaced it: from the world’s workshop to a budding new Satan.  

  Much of this propaganda originates in the U.S., and is transmitted through proxies and “think-tanks,” such as the notorious Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the voice of the arms industry, and by journalists such as Peter Hartcher of The Sydney Morning Herald, who has labeled those spreading Chinese influence as “rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows” and suggested these “pests” be “eradicated.” 

  

  Andriy Beletsky, commanding officer of the special Ukrainian neo-Nazi police regiment Azov, with volunteers in 2014. (My News24, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

  News about China in the West is almost entirely about the threat from Beijing. Airbrushed are the 400 American military bases that surround most of China, an armed necklace that reaches from Australia to the Pacific and south east Asia, Japan and Korea. The Japanese island of Okinawa and the Korean island of Jeju are like loaded guns aimed point blank at the industrial heart of China. A Pentagon official described this as a “noose.”

  Palestine has been misreported for as long as I can remember. To the BBC, there is the “conflict” of “two narratives.” The longest, most brutal, lawless military occupation in modern times is unmentionable. 

  The stricken people of Yemen barely exist. They are media unpeople.  While the Saudis rain down their American cluster bombs with British advisers working alongside the Saudi targeting officers, more than half a million children face starvation.

  This brainwashing by omission is not new. The slaughter of the First World War was suppressed by reporters who were given knighthoods for their compliance.  In 1917, the editor of The Manchester Guardian, C.P. Scott, confided to Prime Minister Lloyd George: “If people really knew [the truth], the war would be stopped tomorrow, but they don’t know and can’t know.”

  The refusal to see people and events as those in other countries see them is a media virus in the West, as debilitating as Covid.  It is as if we see the world through a one-way mirror, in which “we” are moral and benign and “they” are not. It is a profoundly imperial view.

  The history that is a living presence in China and Russia is rarely explained and rarely understood. Vladimir Putin is Adolf Hitler. Xi Jinping is Fu Man Chu. Epic achievements, such as the eradication of abject poverty in China, are barely known. How perverse and squalid this is.

  When will we allow ourselves to understand? Training journalists factory style is not the answer. Neither is the wondrous digital tool, which is a means, not an end, like the one-finger typewriter and the linotype machine.

  In recent years, some of the best journalists have been eased out of the mainstream. “Defenestrated” is the word used. The spaces once open to mavericks, to journalists who went against the grain, truth-tellers, have closed.  

  

  Julian Assange in 2014. (David G Silvers, Wikimedia Commons)

  The case of Julian Assange is the most shocking.  When Julian and WikiLeaks could win readers and prizes for The Guardian, The New York Times and other self-important “papers of record,” he was celebrated. 

  When the dark state objected and demanded the destruction of hard drives and the assassination of Julian’s character, he was made a public enemy. Vice President Joe Biden compared him to a “hi-tech terrorist.” Hillary Clinton asked, “Can’t we just drone this guy?” 

  The ensuing campaign of abuse and vilification against Julian Assange — the U.N. rapporteur on torture called it “mobbing” — brought the liberal press to its lowest ebb. We know who they are. I think of them as collaborators: as Vichy journalists. 

  When will real journalists stand up? An inspirational samizdat  already exists on the internet: Consortium News, founded by the great reporter Robert Parry, Max Blumenthal’s  The Grayzone, Mint Press News, Media Lens, DeclassifiedUK, Alborada, Electronic Intifada, WSWS, ZNet, ICH, CounterPunch, Independent Australia, the work of Chris Hedges, Patrick Lawrence, Jonathan Cook, Diana Johnstone, Caitlin Johnstone and others who will forgive me for not mentioning them here. 

  And when will writers stand up, as they did against the rise of fascism in the 1930s? When will film-makers stand up, as they did against the Cold War in the 1940s? When will satirists stand up, as they did a generation ago? 

  Having soaked for 82 years in a deep bath of righteousness that is the official version of the last world war, isn’t it time those who are meant to keep the record straight declared their independence and decoded the propaganda? The urgency is greater than ever.

  *  *  *

  John Pilger has twice won Britain’s highest award for journalism and has been International Reporter of the Year, News Reporter of the Year and Descriptive Writer of the Year. He has made 61 documentary films and has won an Emmy, a BAFTA and the Royal Television Society prize. His ‘Cambodia Year Zero’ is named as one of the ten most important films of the 20th century. He can be contacted at www.johnpilger.com

  The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of ZeroHedge or Consortium News.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/11/2022 – 23:30

• Comparing All The Upcoming Electric Semi-Truck Models
  Comparing All The Upcoming Electric Semi-Truck Models

  Electric semi trucks are coming, and they could help to decarbonize the shipping and logistics industry. However, range remains a major limitation.

  This presents challenges for long-hauling, where the average diesel-powered semi can travel up to 2,000 miles before refueling. Compare this to the longest range electric model, the Tesla Semi, which promises up to 500 miles. A key word here is “promises”—the Semi is still in development, and nothing has been proven yet.

  In this infographic, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu and Zack Aboulazm have listed all of the upcoming electric semi trucks, complete with range and charge time estimates. Further in the article, we’ll explore the potential commercial use cases of this first generation of trucks.

  

  Model Overview

  The following table includes all of the models included in the above infographic.

  

  With the exception of Tesla’s Semi, all of these trucks are currently in operation or expected to begin delivering this year. You may want to take this with a grain of salt, as the electric vehicle industry has become notorious for delays.

   

  In terms of range, Tesla and Nikola are promising the highest figures (300+ miles), while the rest of the competition is targeting between 150 to 275 miles. It’s reasonable to assume that the Tesla and Nikola semis will be the most expensive.

  Charge times are difficult to compare because of the variables involved. This includes the amount of charge and the type of charger used. Nikola, for example, claims it will take 2 hours to charge its Tre BEV from 10% to 80% when using a 240kW charger.

  Charger technology is also improving quickly. Tesla is believed to be rolling out a 1 MW (1,000 kW) charger that could add 400 miles of range in just 30 minutes.

  Use Cases of Electric Semi Trucks

  Given their relatively lower ranges, electric semis are unlikely to be used for long hauls.

  Instead, they’re expected to be deployed on regional and urban routes, where the total distance traveled between destinations is much lower. There are many reasons why electric semis are suited for these routes, as listed below:

  • Smaller batteries can be installed, which keeps the cost of the truck lower

  • Urban routes provide greater opportunities to use regenerative braking

  • Quieter and cleaner operation in densely populated areas

  An example of a regional route would be delivering containers from the Port of Los Angeles to the Los Angeles Transportation Center Intermodal Facility (LATC). The LATC is where containers are loaded onto trains, and is located roughly 28 miles away.

  With a round trip totaling nearly 60 miles, an electric semi with a range of 200 miles could feasibly complete this route three times before needing a charge. The truck could be charged overnight, as well as during off hours in the middle of the day.

  Hydrogen for Long Hauls?

  We’ve covered the differences between battery and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the past, but this was from a passenger car perspective. The conclusion, in that case, was that battery electric has become the dominant technology. In terms of long-haul trucking, however, hydrogen may have an edge.

  If we look at what will become mainstream, probably for smaller mobility it will be EVs, and fuel cells for larger mobility. That is the conclusion so far.

  -TOSHIHIRO MIBE, CEO, HONDA

  There are several reasons for why hydrogen could be beneficial for delivering heavy cargo over long distances. These are listed below:

  • Refueling a hydrogen fuel cell takes less time than recharging a battery. Note, however, that charge times are still improving.

  • A fuel cell configuration is typically lighter than an equivalent battery pack. Less drivetrain weight translates to a higher cargo capacity.

  • Hydrogen-powered trucks could achieve a much higher range.

  This last point hasn’t been proven yet, but we can reference Nikola, which is developing hydrogen-powered semi trucks. The company has two models in the works, which are the Tre FCEV with a range of 500 miles, and the Two FCEV with a range of 900 miles.

  Keep in mind that these numbers are once again estimates and that Nikola has been accused of fraud in the past.

  Who’s Using Electric Semi Trucks Today?

  Although there are very few models available, electric semi trucks are indeed being used today.

  In January 2020, Anheuser-Busch announced that it had received its 100th 8TT. The 8TT is produced by China’s BYD Motors and was one of the first electric semis to see real-world application. The brewing company uses its 8TTs to deliver products to retail destinations across California (e.g. grocery stores).

  Another U.S. company using electric semis is Walmart. The retailer is trialing both the eCascadia from Freightliner and the Tre BEV from Nikola. The trucks are being used to pick up cargo from suppliers and then deliver it to regional consolidation centers.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/11/2022 – 23:00

• Could Russia's Sudden Ukraine Retreat Mean A Tactical Nuclear Weapons Strike Is Coming?
  Could Russia’s Sudden Ukraine Retreat Mean A Tactical Nuclear Weapons Strike Is Coming?

  Authored by Michael Rubin via 19fortyfive.com,

  How the Situation in Ukraine Could Get Far More Dangerous

  After days of a withering Ukrainian counteroffensive, the Russian defense ministry announced that it was withdrawing its forces from two areas in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. In a video statement, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky quipped, “The Russian army in these days is demonstrating the best that it can do — showing its back.” Ukrainians celebrated, and rightly so. While Russian spokesmen said that Russian forces were “repositioning” ahead of a new offensive, reporters on the ground cast doubt on such pronouncements both because they mirror Russian statements as it abandoned its drive toward Kyiv and also because Russian forces left in such great haste that they left numerous arms and equipment behind.

  Western officials are understandably happy. “This [Ukrainian progress] shows the bravery, skills, and determination of Ukrainian forces, and it shows that our support is making a difference every day on the battlefield,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at a September 9 press conference. Reflecting on his recent trip to Ukraine, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken observed at the same press conference, “Even as President Putin threw as much as he could against Ukraine earlier this summer, Ukraine absorbed the blow and now is pushing back.”

  While it is right to celebrate the Russian rout, the war may be entering a far more dangerous phase.

  

  Consider: If Russian President Vladimir Putin tired of attrition and decided to use tactical nuclear weapons, how would Russian behavior—a rapid withdrawal and even leaving key equipment behind—be different? The answer: It would not be.

  The Biden administration allowed fear of Russian nuclear weapons to self-deter and to limit deliveries of the weaponry that Ukrainian forces needed in the first weeks of the war. Fortunately, against the backdrop of Ukrainian perseverance, they recognized how unbecoming a policy governed by fear and weakness could be. That does not mean, however, that the United States and NATO should not have a contingency plan both to head off Russian use of nuclear weapons and respond to their use should Putin now cross the line.

  The White House and U.S. intelligence community may feel confident that they will have forewarning should Putin give the order to deploy tactical nuclear weapons. They may believe that satellite photographs, signals intelligence, and human intelligence will provide a clear picture.  The nature of intelligence, however, is that there is always doubt and deception. Just as late Al Qaeda leader Usama Bin Laden used old-fashioned messengers rather than email or cell phones, so too might some core Russian commanders. During its 2006 war with Israel, Hezbollah successfully demonstrated the ability to conceal long-range missiles, thanks both to diversions designed to be discovered as well as other underground facilities, all built by North Korean engineers. This is not to suggest a North Korean angle to Ukraine, but certainly, Russian strategists look at lessons learned from every conflict.

  Nor is it necessarily true that Putin would try to hide in advance tactical nuclear warhead use. In 2012, President Barack Obama drew a “redline” around the use of chemical and biological weapons in Syria. When Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces subsequently used chemical weapons against a Damascus suburb, Obama stood down. Partisans subsequently questioned the existence of a redline. This was disingenuous as senior Obama officials had supplemented press reporting at the time with background press calls to think tankers and opinion leaders to enunciate how serious Obama was about his redline. When that wordplay did not work, many opposed to enforcing the redline shifted tack and argued that from the perspective of the bombs’ victims, it mattered little whether their death came from gas or explosive maiming. After all, the result was the same. Lost was any appreciation for what the end to the stigma associated with chemical weapons might mean for future warfare.

  Putin might count on proponents fearful of any robust reaction to resurrect the post-chemical redline arguments in the aftermath of a tactical nuclear strike. He might calculate that Washington and Brussels will always look for a reason not to act or escalate and that both will be willing to engage in logical somersaults to do so. Simply put, Putin might calculate that Washington will paralyze itself until the danger of retaliation passes.

  It is for this reason that the White House and NATO should make clear upfront that this will not work. They should detail the pain Russia will suffer should withdrawal be a feint ahead of tactical nuclear use against Ukrainian forces and cities. Such pain should not only include truly crippling sanctions rather than cosmetic half-measures but also include enhancing the ability of Ukraine to expand the zone of hostility to the entirety of Russia, from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean. They should also detail the eventual financial and territorial reparations owed to Ukraine and all countries downwind from any radioactive exposure as well as those countries long victimized by the Russian informal empire.

  The free world owes Zelensky a debt of gratitude for refusing White House advice to evacuate ahead of the initial Russian invasion. Biden, to his credit, overcame that mistake and allowed Ukraine’s president to do more than any leader since Winston Churchill to defend freedom and democracy in the face of evil. Zelensky deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

  The policy decisions now looming for Biden may be as great. Celebrations may be premature if Putin seeks to achieve through nuclear weapons what he could not with manpower. To remain silent now, downplay the threat that Russia might use its tactical nuclear weapons, or let fear govern policy will mean the end of the post-World War II liberal order.

  As the Ukraine war enters a crucial new phase, it is time both to step up deterrence and plan for what comes after Russian first use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/11/2022 – 22:30

• Chinese PLA Drones Cross Taiwan Strait Median Line For 1st Time, Now Regularly Buzz Island
  Chinese PLA Drones Cross Taiwan Strait Median Line For 1st Time, Now Regularly Buzz Island

  Taiwan’s military has announced in a fresh statement that in the last days China’s PLA military has for the first time sent drones across the Taiwan Strait’s median line, which has long served as the de facto line separating Chinese from Taiwanese territory – though after Nancy Pelosi’s Aug.2nd visit to Taipei Chinese officials said the line has effectively been obliterated. 

  The ministry said, recounting PLA actions of the past days through early Monday, that “45 PLA aircraft flew around Taiwan on Thursday, 25 of which crossed the median line, including a BT-100 unmanned aerial vehicle.” And according to The South China Morning Post, Beijing “also confirmed that more drones had crossed the line on Friday and Saturday.”

  

  “On Monday, it said another PLA drone — identified as a BZK-007 — had entered Taiwan’s southwest air defense identification zone, a rare revelation of the model and its flight route,” the SCMP report continued.

  The report further cited an anonymous Chinese official with knowledge of PLA operations, who said Beijing has been stepping up its “encirclement patrols” using drones as well as manned aircraft, particularly after the earlier in the month incident wherein Taiwan shot down a civilian drone after it came near a Taiwan-controlled island just off China’s mainland.

  That prior September 1st live fire incident involved a potential ‘hobby drone’ believed to be from the Chinese mainland entering “the airspace over the restricted waters of Shiyu Island,” according to a Taiwan defense ministry statement at the time. It was a “first” which signaled further escalation between the two sides.

  The anonymous Chinese analyst or official cited by SCMP commented as follows:

  “The PLA used to send UAVs to perform reconnaissance tasks in sensitive areas of the sky before sending fighter jets for special missions, but the Taiwanese military wasn’t aware of it until recently.”

  Saturday saw a huge number of Chinese jets and warships in the area just off the self-ruled island…

  43 PLA aircraft and 9 PLAN vessels around our surrounding region were detected today (Sept. 10, 2022) until 1700(GMT+8). #ROCArmedForces have monitored the situation and responded to these activities with aircraft in CAP, naval vessels, and land-based missile systems. pic.twitter.com/eEm0HPF9kl

  — 國防部 Ministry of National Defense, R.O.C. 🇹🇼 (@MoNDefense) September 10, 2022

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

  Taiwan has meanwhile been reiterating warnings that its military won’t hesitate to exercise right of self-defense and to counter-attack in the event of Chinese forces entering its territory.

  The military will determine “whether to engage the target and exercise the right of self-defense to counter-attack,” if the foreign drones fail to depart after warnings, Major General Lin Wen-huang said earlier this month.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/11/2022 – 22:00

• Volatility And Valuations
  Volatility And Valuations

  Authored by Nick Colas via DataTrek Research,

  We will start today’s discussion with two numbers: 5.6 percent and 3.4 percent. Those are the 20-year compounded annual growth rates (CAGR) for the S&P 500 from 1999 – 2018 on a nominal and real (after-inflation) basis. If those strike you as pathetically low, you are correct:

  • That 5.6 percent nominal return is barely half the S&P’s long run average 20-year CAGR of 10.8 percent.

  • It is also the worst nominal 20-year CAGR since the period spanning the Great Depression.

  • The 3.4 percent inflation-adjusted 20-year CAGR is the worst since the 1969 – 1988 timeframe, where the 1980s bull market only barely made up for the inflationary 1970s. Long run inflation-adjusted S&P returns are 7.1 percent, more than double that 3.4 percent result.

  Now, one might say that 1999 is an unfair starting point, but the 20-year CAGR data tells much the same story about sub-par or merely average returns across other timeframes:

  • 1997 – 2016: 7.6 percent nominal, 5.5 percent real returns

  • 2002 – 2021: 9.4 percent nominal, 7.1 percent real returns

  The reason for these disappointing results for long-term equity investors comes down to two 5-year periods: 1997 – 2002 and 2007 – 2012. In both cases, the S&P 500 went nowhere for half a decade. Returns from 2003 – 2006 were decent, averaging 15 percent with no drawdown years, but that still was not enough to make up for the stagnant bookends on either side of that time span.

  Interestingly, it was not corporate earnings power than caused these two “lost” half decades:

  • S&P 500 earnings were $44.01 in 1997, when the index closed the year at 970. When the S&P got back to that level in Q2 2003, trailing 4 quarter earnings were $48.95/share. That is a difference of 11 percent.

  • In 2007, the S&P earned $82.54/share and the index finished the year at 1,475. The next time the S&P was at similar levels after the Financial Crisis/Great Recession was in early 2013, when the S&P had earned $98.35/share in the prior 4 quarters. The difference here is 19 percent, but the index was flat from 2007 to 2013.

  We cannot blame Interest rates for this contraction in price-earnings multiples. Ten-year Treasury yields were lower in 2003 than 1997 (3 versus 6 percent) and 2013 relative to 2007 (1-2 percent versus 5 percent). If anything, multiples should have recovered more quickly and been higher in 2003 and 2013 and in 1997 and 2007. And yet, they clearly were not.

  The chart below, which shows the 100-day rolling average of the CBOE VIX Index, offers a reasonable explanation for why US equity valuations contracted over 1997 – 2002 and 2007 – 2012 even with the tailwind of lower interest rates. As highlighted, in both periods the VIX was consistently above its long-run average of 20 for years on end. Yes, the S&P bottomed before the end of each period of volatility (2002 and 2009). The trouble was that valuations remained compressed for far longer than just the 2000 – 2002 and 2008 bear markets. That is why the S&P flatlined for 5 years in each case rather than just 1 – 3 years.

  

  We have highlighted the current VIX running averages on the rightmost part of the graph, and those broadly resemble prior problematic periods for equity valuations. Happily, volatility has not yet overly damaged S&P price-earnings multiples relative to pre-pandemic levels. The S&P trades for 17.5x current earnings power of $228/share. In 2019, PE ratios ran between 18.5 – 19.5x. A bit of a haircut, true, but consistent with higher interest rates so let’s call it a wash.

  I do, however, worry about long-lasting equity market volatility far more than I worry about recession. Large public companies know how to make money, even during periods of economic stress, as the data presented above shows. The market-weighted nature of the S&P indexing process constantly resets in favor of businesses that accomplish that task better than others. Recession or no, these are fundamentally positive and permanent features and the cornerstone of our view that US large caps are the most productive asset class for long term investors.

  The problem is that volatility grinds away at investor confidence. The longer it lasts, the lower stock valuations go. That is entirely rational, if unwelcomed, but it takes years to regain investors’ trust after a long bout of volatility. That is how you end up with zero stock market returns for 5 years, and subpar returns for periods as long as 2 decades.

  I think Chair Powell and the Federal Reserve understand this problem, albeit from the wider perspective of creating an environment consistent with sustainable economic growth. The Fed needs to get inflation under control quickly and permanently, because until they accomplish that goal capital markets volatility will remain high. That will limit capital formation and investment over the longer term, making the next economic cycle weaker than it would otherwise be.

  

  Takeaway: while it may be painful in the near-term, long-term US equity investors should be hoping for very aggressive and effective monetary policy over the next 6-12 months and look to add stock exposure to portfolios as that unfolds. 

  That will be the pathway to holding equity valuations at current levels and offers the possibility of better multiples in the next cycle.

  The alternative – another 1-2 years of uncertainty – would threaten structural returns for 5 years or longer. History is clear on that point.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/11/2022 – 21:00

• Alaska Reminds Us Ranked Choice Voting Is A Bad Idea
  Alaska Reminds Us Ranked Choice Voting Is A Bad Idea

  Authored by Todd Carnery via RealClear Wire,

  A few weeks ago, Alaska held a special election using ranked choice voting. This was Alaska’s first general election using ranked choice voting, and it also made the state one of the first major jurisdictions in the United States to employ the new voting system. For years many, election experts have pushed ranked choice as a way to fix the problems in America’s elections. In their view, this new system would create more excitement and give more people a voice by offering marginalized candidates a fighting chance. Over the last few years, three major jurisdictions have held ranked choice voting elections, and they have consistently created issues that could lead to more problems in elections.

  

  Maine first held an election using ranked choice voting in 2018. That cycle had a competitive congressional race where the Republican incumbent, Bruce Poliquin, initially finished ahead, but over a week later, the Democratic challenger ultimately won the election. The race led to costly litigation and heated rhetoric.

  Two years later, Maine had a competitive senate race and the media did call the election by the morning after. But this speed only came because Republican incumbent Susan Collins won in a landslide with over 50% of the vote, and by close to double digits. If Maine had had a closer race that cycle, it might have taken weeks to get the results and led to the same controversial rhetoric the rest of the nation saw. The only way to avoid a long convoluted count with ranked choice voting is for someone to win by a large margin. So in close elections, ranked choice voting will undermine confidence in the results.

  About seven months after Collins’ victory in Maine, New York City used ranked choice voting for their mayoral primary. This election faced a lot of scrutiny. In the month leading up to the election, experts noted that the race could face major delays in the count. Despite this notice, the election still experienced so many delays that it took over two weeks to declare results. The public and media faced confusion over the election results. Then-mayoral candidate Eric Adams accused two of his opponents of racist actions by trying to strategically ally using ranked choice voting.

  Vox claimed that the issues in counting the ballots did not occur due to ranked choice voting, but instead were the result of problematic policies and personnel in the New York City government. This theory may have some truth as it did take a lot of time in 2020 to count votes in New York City without ranked choice voting.

  But even if Vox’s claim is true, it still further demonstrates why ranked choice voting is a bad idea right now. Many jurisdictions currently have a lot of problems counting votes in a timely manner. The influx of mail-in voting has already complicated things, so adding ranked choice voting to these jurisdictions would put stress on an unsound structure.

  Alaska has faced similar problems. Like New York, Alaska has long had delays in counting votes, especially lately with the large amount of mail-in ballots. But ranked choice voting has still created further confusion and chaos. It took two weeks to count the initial ballots, and then after that, Alaska took another day to sort through ranked choice voting.

  A Democrat ultimately won the seat, but the Republican candidates combined had initially received roughly 59% of the vote. The results have created raucous debate over whether the outcome spells good news for Democrats, despite the fact that the Democrat only initially received about 40% of the vote.

  On top of these issues, ranked choice voting has failed to deliver on its signature promise: increased representation of third parties. Advocates for ranked choice voting have claimed that it would make voters more open to third-party candidates. But nothing has materialized. Before ranked choice voting, Maine came close to electing an independent governor in 2010, and they elected an independent senator in 2012. Yet in 2018 and 2020, the independent candidates for governor and senate had lackluster showings. In Alaska, an independent candidate who previously had a lot of support even dropped out, claiming an independent candidate could not win.

  Federalism allows for America’s states to conduct their votes in different ways. These differences allow the country to see what systems work best. It is clear from seeing ranked choice voting in action in different jurisdictions, that ranked choice voting will make elections worse in the U.S.

  Todd Carney is a lawyer and frequent contributor to RealClearPolitics. He earned his juris doctorate from Harvard Law School.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/11/2022 – 20:30

• The Credit Cycle Is Deteriorating Quickly
  The Credit Cycle Is Deteriorating Quickly

  Via The Variant Perception blog

  The downside growth risks from the bullwhip effect reversal and extreme lows in liquidity indicators favor risk-off positioning.

  We advised clients to sell equities and high yield credit into the rally that started in mid-June and put on hedges. The below is an excerpt from our Aug 9th report to clients.

  US HY spreads look too complacent relative to other market pricing and sharply deteriorating business and credit cycle indicators.

  US HY vs IG relative performance is very divergent with the S&P drawdown (left-hand chart) and spreads are still very low relative to equity and bond market implied volatility.

  

  US HY spreads are below EM IG corporate spreads again and inflows have surged back to US HY funds.

  

  The cyclical picture for HY credit is weak. Extreme lows in liquidity LEIs (left-hand chart) and falling corporate cashflows vs capex and buybacks point to sharply rising odds of a spread blowout.

  

  The latest Fed senior loan officer survey shows banks are tightening loan supply quickly, which generally happens in the run-up to recessions. Banks are also raising credit spreads, which is currently divergent with current HY credit spreads (right-hand chart).

  

  *  *  *

  Get the full picture at variantperception.com

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/11/2022 – 20:00

• Populism On The Rise In Canada As "Unelectable" Pierre Poilievre Sweeps Conservative Leadership
  Populism On The Rise In Canada As “Unelectable” Pierre Poilievre Sweeps Conservative Leadership

  Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

  Poilievre crushes Laurentian Elite Charest in first ballot

  Pierre Poilievre dispensed the naysayers in the Canadian Conservative leadership convention and swept the top job on the first ballot, something that hasn’t happened since Stephen Harper kicked off his political dynasty in 2004.

  

  The Poilievre movement brought 300,000 new members into the Conservative Party (myself and my wife included), which resulted in 68% of votes. The Laurentian elite anointed (and media approved) candidate was Jean Charest,  who was clubbed like a baby seal, stitching together a mere 16% of the vote. This morning Charest announced his departure from politics.

  

  The entirety of Charest support originated in the Ottawa and Quebec liberal strongholds. Even downtown Toronto, where the Conservatives are dominated by so-called “Red Tories”, voted overwhelmingly for Poilievre.

  Let’s check in with the #CBC 🤣 🤡 😱 pic.twitter.com/QP6sfPYG6R

  — Mark Jeftovic, The C̶r̶y̶p̶t̶o̶ ₿itcoin Capitalist (@StuntPope) September 11, 2022

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

  The few Charest supporters whose lives are confined almost entirely to a bubble-wrapped echo chamber surrounding downtown Ottawa are now ruminating that Poilievre is “unelectable” and can’t beat Justin Trudeau in an election contest.

  

  There have even been rumblings of the prospect that Trudeau may, if Poilievre were to win, call a snap election this fall in order to catch the , unelectable populist off-guard. In August, Jean Charest sent a desperate, hyperventilating email to party members begging for their support and fearmongering the prospect of Trudeau trouncing an unprepared Poilievre this fall:

  

  Firing the Governor of the Bank of Canada and embracing Bitcoin you say? lol. WHERE DO I SIGN UP?

  Any snap election this fall would be the political miscalculation of the century. The map above shows you everything you need to know about what is happening in Canada: a mad-as-hell public, betrayed, and increasingly demonized by  out-of-touch elites from an entitled political class that straddles all parties.

  When the trucker convoy started in February, I said its mishandling would cost all three party leaders their job and it had gutted any remaining credibility of Canadian mainstream media. This thesis is playing out in spades.

  The last time the Canadian public was this disenfranchised and alienated by the incumbent government was when Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative party was literally destroyed in the 1993 federal election, going from 156 seats to 2. They lost their party status, and that was the end of the PCs (until the aforementioned Harper led a reconstituted Conservative Party – with elements of the Reform Party and Canadian Alliance – to power in 2004).

  

  The Liberals are headed for a similar fate. Earlier this year Trudeau and the millionaire Marxist Jagmeet Singh merged their parties into a Liberal/Socialist coalition in a deal that would keep them in power until 2025. If the alliance hangs together that long it will remain to be seen whether Trudeau actually sticks around for the election. It’s more likely that he bows out, leaving one of his underlings holding the bag for the inevitable carnage that will see the Liberals utterly eviscerated the next time Canadian voters get a crack at them.

  *  *  *

  Mark E. Jeftovic is the CEO of easyDNS, co-founder of Bombthrower Media, author and investor. Sign up for The Bombthrower mailing list to get updates straight into your inbox and get a free copy of The Crypto Capitalist Manifesto while you’re at it. Follow me on Gettr, Telegram or if you haven’t been kicked off Twitter yet, there

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/11/2022 – 19:30

• Viral TikTok 'Kia Challenge' Sparks Nationwide Rise In Car Thefts By USB-Wielding Kids
  Viral TikTok ‘Kia Challenge’ Sparks Nationwide Rise In Car Thefts By USB-Wielding Kids

  Thefts of Kia and Hyundai vehicles have surged across the country after a dangerous “challenge” went viral on the Chinese-owned video app TikTok. 

  Viral TikTok videos provide instructions on how to hotwire models of 2010-21 Kia and Hyundai vehicles that use a key, not a push button or key fob. The ability to hotwire these models is apparently so easy that youngsters have turned it into a challenge. 

  

  Teenage boys, some barely old enough to legally drive (or even see over the steering wheel), are breaking into these cars, removing the steering column and key slot, using a USB cable to turn the ignition, unlock the steering wheel, and start the vehicle in under a minute. 

  

  Those vehicles are vulnerable to theft because there are no factory-installed anti-theft devices known as immobilizers (RFID transponder embedded in a key that allows the vehicle to recognize the owner’s key). 

  This dangerous TikTok challenge has turned into a game for teenagers:

  “It’s becoming a game even though there is nothing funny about it,” George Glassman, president of the Glassman Automotive Group in Detroit, told FOX 2. 

  Detroit Police Department Lt. Clive Stewart said kids steal the Kia and Hyundai vehicles with their buddies and go on joyrides. 

  Investigators told CNBC the TikTok challenge started last year and has spread nationwide. 

  Police in St. Petersburg, Florida, reported that a third of all cars stolen since mid-July were connected to the viral social media challenge. Los Angeles officials said Hyundai and Kia thefts were up 85% compared with last year. 

  In Chicago, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said, “We see no end in sight” to the TikTok-fueled thefts.

  “In our jurisdiction alone, [thefts of certain models are] up over 800% in the last month. 

  “The viral nature of how this has taken off on social media — it’s accelerated this like we’ve never seen … [The perpetrators are] doing it in 20 to 30 seconds. It literally is as old-fashioned as you can imagine, Dart said. 

  He added: “We had an 11-year-old who was one of our most prolific stealers … the notion that they can drive is a fantasy.” 

  CNBC said thieves post videos of stealing the vehicles on the social media platform using the hashtag “Kia Boys”… 

  In Charlotte, North Carolina, there has been a 346% increase in Kia and Hyundai thefts since last year, according to Axios. Thefts in Omaha, Nebraska, for those cars jumped 600% compared to the previous year. 

  In St. Paul, Minnesota, Kia thefts were up 1,300% compared to last year, and Hyundai thefts were up about 600%, according to FOX 9 Minneapolis. 

  There are countless more metro areas and counties across the US reporting several hundred to more than 1000% increase in thefts for Kia and Hyundai vehicles over the last year. 

  A Kia spokesperson told CNBC: 

  “It is unfortunate that criminals are using social media to target vehicles without engine immobilizers in a coordinated effort.”

  News stories across about stolen Kias and Hyundais have erupted over the last year. 

  

  Also, many of these youngsters play violent video games (such as Grand Theft Auto) for hours per day, making them used to violence and eventually become physiologically numb to it. 

  Social media plus violent video games is a toxic combination for youth — don’t even get us started on psychiatric drugs… 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/11/2022 – 19:00

• Copper Prices Are Trading Sideways, But Not For Long
  Copper Prices Are Trading Sideways, But Not For Long

  By Ag Metal Miner, via OilPrice.com

  The Copper Monthly Metals Index (MMI) moved sideways from August to September as the index rose 1.13%. Copper prices remain steady.

  Copper prices began to slide at the beginning of September. After they caught a temporary bounce in late summer, prices began to break through short-term lows, which indicates potential for further price declines. Markets remain highly volatile amid competing macro economic pressures.

  

  Energy Crisis Threatens Europe’s Metal Sector

  Although energy-intensive metals like aluminum and zinc production remain most at risk from soaring energy prices in Europe, the gravity of the crisis appears capable of threatening the continent’s entire metal industry.

  According to Guy Thiran, Director General of the European non-ferrous metals trade association Eurometaux, “European metal producers are already preparing for a life-or-death winter.” Thiran went on to say, “any further reduction of European metals production risks being permanent, threatening job losses and knock-on impacts on a complex web of essential and strategic EU value chains – from medical equipment and critical infrastructure to automotive and aerospace.”

  Impact on Copper and Copper Prices

  For copper, the energy crisis presents three primary challenges. High energy prices will immediately translate to increased input costs for European producers. Roland Harings, CEO of Europe’s largest copper producer Aurubis AG, told investors those costs would be eventually passed down to consumers.

  For this year, Aurubis hedged roughly two-thirds of its electricity costs. However, Europe’s crisis will likely not be resolved in the near term, which would mean prices could see sharp increases by next year. While copper ingot prices have declined since late August, European-sourced products will likely begin to carry a premium over their global counterparts. Over time, this could lead to a deterioration of Europe’s role within the global supply chain.

  Secondly, consumer price pressures will continue to weigh on demand and copper prices. For the second consecutive month, the Eurozone Manufacturing PMI remained in contraction territory in August with a score of 49.6. This represents the lowest reading since June 2020 and was dragged downward by a sharp contraction of new orders.

  Some European businesses have already noted a three-fold increase in energy bills just this year. According to Goldman Sachs, average monthly household energy bills in Europe could rise from 160 euros in 2021 to 600 euros in 2023. Increasingly less affordable energy prices ahead of and into the winter months will likely lead the continent into a recession. Continued demand declines will have a downward effect on prices. 

  Europe Feels the Energy Crisis Strain

  Lastly, as has already occurred with numerous aluminum, zinc and steel producers, shutdowns remain a possibility. Harings noted this as a worst-case scenario outcome in his comments to investors and suggested any such shutdowns would be “very controlled.” Aurubis continues to lobby politicians and regulators for capped energy prices, which could insulate the industrial sector from the current crisis. How the sector fares as a whole will largely depend on whether or not European countries adopt a protectionist approach to such industries as it manages limited energy supplies.

  Chile Rejects New Constitution

  In a historic Sept. 4 referendum, Chilean voters overwhelmingly rejected the new constitution. A resounding 62% of voters and all 16 regions of Chile voted to reject the document. How will this effect copper prices?

  A vote to approve the new constitution would have likely added support to prices amid the current market uncertainty. Most bull narratives for copper are underpinned by waning supply against growing demand. This is largely due to the green energy movement. While annual copper output within Chile remains within a downtrend since 2018, the new constitution would have increased mining restrictions and impeded foreign mine investment. Chile accounts for roughly 28% of global copper output, which makes it the largest copper producer in the world. 

  The rejection means the market dynamics will remain unchanged within Chile. In a broader sense, it could also indicate collapsing momentum of the leftward swing within Chilean politics. President Gabriel Boric vowed to work with Congress for a “new constitutional process.” With such a resounding defeat, however, this will likely mean any future drafts will be far less progressive.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/11/2022 – 18:30

• Ukraine's 2nd Largest City Plunged Into Total Darkness As Russia Strikes Key Infrastructure
  Ukraine’s 2nd Largest City Plunged Into Total Darkness As Russia Strikes Key Infrastructure

  Kharkiv, which is Ukraine’s second largest city and is the biggest population center closest to Russia’s border, has been plunged into total darkness Sunday night amid alleged Russian attacks on key infrastructure sites, including large power stations.

  “The center of Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv was plunged into darkness on Sunday evening by an electricity blackout,” Reuters has confirmed of the large-scale outage. It’s further being reported that some city districts are also without water, creating a severe crisis for residents.

  

  “The cause and extent of the blackout in the northeastern city were not immediately clear. There were also unconfirmed social media reports of blackouts in other places and regions,” the report said initially.

  However, Ukrainian officials are pointing to stepped up and deliberate Russian attacks on civilian electrical facilities crucial to the city’s operations. They are viewing it as punishment for the at this point largely successful Ukrainian military counteroffensive which has regained at least 40 towns and villages to the north and east of Kharkiv.

  President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a brief statement to social media along with footage of destroyed infrastructure, denouncing “Deliberate and cynical missile strikes on civilian, critical infrastructure.” He stressed they were not “military facilities” that were attacked. “Kharkiv and Donetsk regions were cut off. In Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy there are partial problems with power supply.”

  Zelensky just posted this video with brief statement: “Deliberate and cynical missile strikes on civilian, critical infrastructure. No military facilities. Kharkiv and Donetsk regions were cut off. In Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy there are partial problems with power supply.” pic.twitter.com/8BullYcdAr

  — Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) September 11, 2022

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

  The governor of the eastern Kharkiv region said that both electricity and water supplies had been disrupted Sunday, citing ongoing Russian attacks on “critical infrastructure” had disrupted electricity and water.

  Additionally, a top Ukraine offical of the Dnipropetrovsk region blamed the Russian military for hitting  “energy infrastructure” – calling it retaliation for “defeat on the battlefield.”

  ⚠️ Confirmed: Real-time network data show a major internet disruption in #Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine; the incident is attributed to a Russian strike on TEC-5 thermal power plant as Ukrainian forces recover Russian-occupied territory 📉

  📰 Background: https://t.co/S0qJQ7CbNv pic.twitter.com/5sXDAwjbS7

  — NetBlocks (@netblocks) September 11, 2022

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

  Global network monitoring site NetBlocks also confirmed a mass disruption in internet access across Kharkiv oblast, citing a “Russian strike on TEC-5 thermal power plant” amid pro-Moscow forces being pushed back.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/11/2022 – 18:00

• Sweden's Conservative Right Opposition Bloc Takes Lead In General Election
  Sweden’s Conservative Right Opposition Bloc Takes Lead In General Election

  Update (1800ET): With 80% of the vote counted in Sweden’s general election, the right-wing opposition bloc has taken the lead

  

  Moderate party leader Ulf Kristersson’s conservative bloc, which includes the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats, moved ahead of current Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson’s Social Democrats by a narrow margin on Sunday night. The far-right ‘Sweden Democrats’ took 20.7% of the vote (better than pre-election polls) – making it the second largest party in Sweden now…

  

  The results cement the ascent of Akesson’s party, which was previously shunned as extremists by all established parties.

  As we noted earlier, the bottom line is that for the first time in Swedish history, a far-right populist party appears to have secured serious clout over key policy areas including immigration and policing.

  *  *  *

  Sweden will hold general elections tomorrow, September 11, 2022.

  At the same time, the country is rocked by a wave of violent crime that is unprecedented in modern Scandinavian history.

  Sweden has in just two generations gone from being one of the safest countries in the world to being one of the most dangerous countries in Europe. During the same time, mass immigration has dramatically altered Sweden’s population. 1.2 million of those eligible to vote in the elections in September 2022 were born outside Sweden — about 200,000 more foreigners than in the previous election, in 2018. Nearly one in four first-time voters aged 18-21 was either born abroad or has two parents born abroad. In central Malmö, almost every second person eligible to vote for the first time has a foreign background.

  Muslim immigrants in Sweden, as in other European countries, tend overwhelmingly to vote for the Social Democrats or other socialist or left-wing parties. However, they have now become so numerous and self-confident that they also create their own political parties. Mikail Yüksel, a Turkish-born Muslim, heads Partiet Nyans, which has a following in cities such as Malmö.

  However, the last few weeks has seen the far-right, anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats (SD) party Continues to build on its lead over the main right-wing opposition party in the polls ahead of tomorrow’s parliamentary elections , becoming Sweden’s second largest party general elections in September, Politico reported.

  One recent opinion poll showed support for SD is surging, with around 22 percent saying they would vote for the party, giving it the second largest backing after the ruling Social Democrats on 28 percent. POLITICO’s Poll of Polls, which aggregates polling, has the SD on 20 percent and the Social Democrats on 29 percent.

  

  While similar parties have recently held sway in nearby Finland, Denmark and Estonia, in Sweden SD has been ostracized by mainstream rivals for decades because of its roots among neo-Nazi groups active in the country in the 1990s.

  As Politico notes, the emergence of SD as a key player in Swedish policymaking would still be a radical shock to the Nordic state’s political system, which for the past century has been based largely on consensus building.

  While Sweden’s immigration policies have long been liberal, SD’s platform would aim for zero asylum seekers. Sweden’s criminal justice system has traditionally focused on rehabilitation rather than punishment but SD is calling for longer prison sentences and wider use of deportation.

  “Deport foreign criminals … and no discussion,” says one of SD’s new election posters.

  

  “It is time for the Swedish people to give us a chance,” Sweden Democrats (SD) leader Jimmie Åkesson told a crowd of several hundred on a recent weekday evening.

  “It’s time to give us a chance to make Sweden great again.”

  Åkesson claimed the Social Democrat government had let the welfare state fall apart and said his party was growing because it dared to call out such failings and “call a spade a spade.”

  “Sweden has been a great country, a safe country, a successful country and it can be all these things again,” he said.

  The bottom line is that for the first time in Swedish history, a far-right populist party has a realistic shot at securing serious clout over key policy areas including immigration and policing.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/11/2022 – 17:40

• Former Virginia Election Official Hit With Felony Charges Linked to 2020 Election
  Former Virginia Election Official Hit With Felony Charges Linked to 2020 Election

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

  A former Virginia election official faces three charges related to the 2020 election, including corrupt conduct, according to charging documents filed this week.

  

  Michele White, who resigned as registrar for Prince William County in 2021, was indicted on Sept. 6 for three felonies, according to documents reviewed by The Epoch Times.

  White engaged in corrupt conduct between Aug. 1 and Dec. 31, 2020, a grand jury charged. That time period encompassed the 2020 presidential election.

  White is also accused of making a false statement regarding the election and neglecting her duty as an election officer.

  White faces up to 21 years in prison if convicted on all three charges.

  White abruptly resigned weeks ahead of the June 2021 primary election, the Prince William Times reported. At the time, the secretary for the Prince William County Electoral Board told the paper that the resignation didn’t relate to White’s handling of recent elections, while White declined to comment on why she resigned.

  White couldn’t be reached for comment. The secretary didn’t respond to a request for comment.

  Pamela Walker, vice chair of the board, declined to comment. “It’s before my appointment to the Board,” she told The Epoch Times in an email.

  London Steverson, chair of the board, also noted that the events occurred before he was sworn in.

  “I only pray that Justice will prevail,” he told The Epoch Times via email.

  Conduct Allegedly Did Not Impact Outcome

  White’s conduct didn’t influence the 2020 election results, according to the Prince William County Office of Elections.

  “Her conduct did not impact the outcome of any election contest,” the office told The Epoch Times in an email.

  Eric Olson, who replaced White, gave information to authorities that led to the charges, according to the office.

  “In 2022, the Electoral Board and new Director of Elections have built an entirely new leadership team that is dedicated to fair and accurate elections. Many improvements and best practices have been adopted to ensure a safe and transparent voting experience for the voters of Prince William County. It was the new Director of Elections that reported these discrepancies to the Commissioner of Elections and State Board of Elections earlier this year that led to this investigation by the Attorney General of Virginia,” the office said.

  “The Office of Elections has no further comment at this time as this is pending litigation and our office will preserve the office’s records for public review when the matter has concluded.”

  Approximately 62 percent of the votes cast in Prince William County for president went for Joe Biden, according to the results the county reported. Donald Trump received 35 percent of the vote, with the rest going for Jo Jorgensen or write-in candidates.

  Before White served as the Prince William County registrar, she worked in the same position for Culpeper County.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/11/2022 – 17:30

• Average US Credit Card Rate Hits Highest On Record
  Average US Credit Card Rate Hits Highest On Record

  While the Fed’s rate hiking cycle is about to push the overnight Fed Funds Rate to 2.50% in two weeks, banks have so far completely refused to translate these sharply higher wholesale rates into benefits for US savers. In fact, as the following breakdown of consumer deposit rates at the largest US bank, one would think that the US is still stuck at ZIRP.

  

  But while big money center banks refuse to even consider lifting the rate on their savings accounts, they have no such qualms when it comes to how much they charge on credit cards, and according to Bankrate.com’s latest survey, the average credit card rate is now 18.03%, the highest on record since January 1996.

  According to Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate, “the average credit card rate is now a record-high 18.03%, surpassing the previous record of 17.87% which was set in April 2019. And Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has made it clear that the Fed is not done raising rates – not by a long shot. According to the CME FedWatch tool, there’s a strong likelihood the Fed will implement another 75-basis point hike later this month, with smaller increases projected for November and December. The best guess, according to investors, is that rates will rise another 150 basis points by the end of the year.”

  
   
  “Almost all credit cards have variable rates which track the Prime Rate, which is typically three percentage points higher than the federal funds rate which is set by the Federal Reserve. So there’s a direct pass-through from the Fed’s actions to credit cardholders. Card issuers tack a profit margin onto the Prime Rate, often something like 12% or 13%. Rate hikes generally affect new and existing balances, so most credit cardholders are currently facing rates that are 225 basis points higher than they were just six months ago. During the last rate hike cycle, it took the Fed three years to raise rates 225 basis points (from December 2015 to December 2018). This time, it only took them 4 ½ months from mid-March to late July. And there’s more to come.”

  “There’s a significant cumulative effect to these rate hikes. Let’s say you started the year with a $5,000 balance on a credit card charging 16%. Minimum payments would have kept you in debt for 184 months and racked up $5,406 in interest charges. That would have been bad enough, but at 18.25%, those minimum payments will now drag on for 189 months and accumulate $6,241 in interest. That’s an increase of $835. Of course, the best practice is to pay way more than the minimum – pay it all if you can. If that’s not possible, forget about chasing rewards and seek the lowest interest rate possible. There are 0% balance transfer offers (https://www.bankrate.com/finance/credit-cards/balance-transfer/) that last as long as 21 months.”

  We get more details on these record rates courtesy of creditcards.com, according to which the average APR is even higher, at 18.17%, and writes that more than a month after the Federal Reserve announced its latest three-quarter-point rate hike, several more lenders adjusted the APRs they advertise on brand-new cards, including Discover, USAA and Navy Federal Credit Union.

  Until this week, Discover was among the last major lenders to match the Fed’s most recent rate hike. Bank of America, Chase, Citi, American Express, Wells Fargo, Barclaycard and U.S. Bank have also recently hiked the APRs they advertise by 0.75 percent. So have most smaller lenders, such as Fifth Third Bank, PNC, Union Bank, HSBC and KeyBank, among others.

  As a result, the national average card APR has broken record after record this summer, ultimately soaring to its highest point ever in recent weeks. Until this summer, the highest APR average CreditCards.com had ever recorded was 17.8 percent — a difference of 0.37 percentage points.

  Now, APRs are set to soar again as the Federal Reserve gears up for another big rate announcement and other lenders continue to catch up to previous federal rate hikes. So far, the Federal Reserve has increased rates by a historic 2.25 percentage points since March and is expected to hike rates again later this month.

  And with more lenders still due for another rate hike, the average card APR is poised to soar

  Already at a record high, the national average card APR won’t hold still for long. The average APR for brand-new cards is already well-above previous record highs, with the average minimum card APR climbing well above 18 percent. A year ago, by contrast, the national average credit card APR registered at just 16.22 percent.

  

  Meanwhile, the average maximum APR on a brand-new card offer has also climbed sharply in recent months, increasing most recently to 25.59 percent, according to CreditCards.com data. As a result, many new cardholders are currently being assigned APRs well above 20 percent.

  CreditCards.com only considers a card’s lowest possible interest rate when calculating the national average. However, most credit card offers advertise a wide range of possible APRs — particularly on general market and rewards cards that appeal to a broad audience. Although some applicants with the very highest credit scores may be assigned a card’s lowest rate, many others are instead assigned either a card’s maximum possible interest rate or an APR that falls directly in the middle of the two extremes.

  Currently, the average median card APR is 21.88 percent, according to CreditCards.com data.

  But cardholders hoping for a reprieve from such high rates are unlikely to get one anytime soon. The Fed has made it clear that it plans to continue hiking rates for the foreseeable future until prices cool off more substantially.

  As a result, it is likely that the average real APR will hit a mindblowing 20% by the time the Fed finally pushes the economy into recession.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/11/2022 – 17:00

• The 'Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste' Crowd Strikes Again
  The ‘Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste’ Crowd Strikes Again

  Authored by By Matt Weidinger & Tim Sprunt via RealClear Wire (emphasis ours),

  Rahm Emanuel, then chief of staff to President-elect Barack Obama, famously issued what has come to be known as Rahm’s rule: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that [is] it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”

  

  Emanuel argued that the 2008 financial crisis afforded the new Obama-Biden administration the opportunity to “do things” they couldn’t otherwise. Trillions of dollars in higher spending later, President Biden recently dusted off Rahm’s Rule for yet another purpose — justifying his administration’s college debt cancellation plan.

  The plan is controversial. Experts estimate it will cost taxpayers between $500 billion and $1 trillion over the coming decade, all added to the federal debt. The Wall Street Journal suggests “there has never been an executive action of this costly magnitude in peacetime….Nothing comes close to this half-trillion-dollar or more executive coup.” Vulnerable Democratic candidates are rejecting the proposal, and economists Larry Summers and Jason Furman warn of serious inflationary effects from cancelling loans for 43 million Americans. 

  For President Biden, the plan also marks an abrupt about face on presidential authority. In April 2020, just after Congress enacted the mammoth CARES Act, then-candidate Biden said “the next recovery package” should include “an immediate cancellation of a minimum of $10,000 of student debt per person.” At the height of the pandemic, Biden thought it was Congress’ job — and not the President’s — to legislate debt cancellation. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was even more explicit in July 2021, stating that “People think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not. He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress.”

  The Biden administration repudiated that position, while pointing to the waning pandemic as the crisis that permits them to act without Congress. The Washington Post notes that the unemployment rate for college graduates is now just two percent so “it’s hard to make the case that college graduates are still facing an unprecedented crisis.” Nonetheless, the administration argues their action is consistent with a 2003 statute behind the current college loan payment pause. As Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona put it, “this is targeted relief based off of [the] pandemic.” The Trump Department of Education took the opposite view, and the courts may ultimately decide the fate of the Biden policy.

  The bigger picture suggests that the pandemic is an all-too-convenient excuse. How do we know?

  Because prominent Democratic lawmakers proposed college debt cancellation well before its onset in early 2020. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), while campaigning for president in June 2019, called for the cancellation of up to $50,000 of debt for 95 percent of borrowers. Fellow presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) went a step further, proposing that same month to cancel all Americans’ college debt. Then-candidate Joe Biden was late to the debt cancellation party, but his eventual running mate Kamala Harris in July 2019 proposed “to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for borrowers who received Pell grants,” as the Biden-Harris administration has just done.

  This is only the latest example of the administration applying Rahm’s Rule during the pandemic. The expanded child tax credit paid to 65 million children under the March 2021 American Rescue Plan is another. That policy had nothing to do with the pandemic, as evidenced by the administration’s subsequent calls to make the expanded benefit permanent. Yet new monthly federal checks paid even to non-working parents during the second half of 2021 effectively revived work-free federal welfare, long a liberal goal. Those expanded monthly checks have since expired — perhaps until the next crisis strikes.

  If implemented, the administration’s college debt cancellation plan is similarly unlikely to be the end. In fact, it might even be an accelerant for more debt. Why would parents save for college and pay out of pocket when they could take out loans in anticipation of a future taxpayer bailout? And what liberal politician won’t promise to relieve those and other debts for key constituencies — especially in an election year? It would be foolish to expect otherwise if the costs can again be passed on to federal taxpayers. That will be especially likely when future crises strike, and another generation of politicians dusts off Rahm’s Rule.

  Matt Weidinger is a Rowe Fellow in poverty studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Tim Sprunt is a research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/11/2022 – 16:30

• Ukraine Retakes Towns Within 50km Of Russian Border Amid Rumors Putin To Issue Full Declaration Of War
  Ukraine Retakes Towns Within 50km Of Russian Border Amid Rumors Putin To Issue Full Declaration Of War

  The Ukrainian government is touting a weekend advance in the county’s east at an “astonishing” rate as the major counteroffensive announced by Kiev over a week ago continues. Western news headlines are also widely echoing the new optimism after months of the steady Russian takeover of the east, which lately drifted into a stalemate along the front lines.

  “Ukrainian troops are advancing in eastern Ukraine, liberating more cities and villages. Their courage coupled with Western military support brings astonishing results,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleh Nikolenko announced. He urged the West to help keep the momentum against Russian front lines, adding in the statement: “It’s crucial to keep sending arms to Ukraine. Defeating Russia on the battlefield means winning peace in Ukraine.”

  

  On Saturday the Russian military issued a rare acknowledgement of a “regrouping” of its forces in Kharkiv Oblast. Kiev and its Western backers are taking the statement as an admission of retreat: “To achieve the goals of the special military operation to liberate Donbas, a decision was made to regroup Russian troops stationed in the Balakliya and Izyum regions, to bolster efforts along the Donetsk front,” the defense ministry explained.

  Ukraine’s deputy head of the Kharkiv region military administration, Roman Semenukha, has since announced on a public TV broadcast the liberation of at least 40 towns and villages: “We can officially announce the liberation of more than 40 settlements. The situation is changing incredibly quickly and there are many, many more such [de-occupied] settlements,” he said.

  “The situation is dynamically positive. And indeed the situation is changing,” he said, noting these 40 settlements were places where Ukrainian forces now have total control of the situation. In the comments he denied that it was simply a matter of Russian forces strategically withdrawing from these front lines to deploy elsewhere, but that—

  “There are fierce, fierce battles in many areas of the front and everything is very, very difficult. If we are talking about the military component, then you just have to be patient.”

  In some cases towns which have been held by the Russian army for multiple months running appear to have been penetrated by the Ukrainian counteroffensive, such as Kupiansk in east Ukraine, which served as a strategic supply hub for Russian forces.

  .@TheStudyofWar map shows the extent gains Ukraine has made (blue) during its ongoing counteroffensive. It’s simply staggering. Russian forces have been routed with many abandoning their positions and weapons to retreat. pic.twitter.com/0EZ4BSVwDn

  — Alex Plitsas 🇺🇸 (@alexplitsas) September 10, 2022

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  Ukrainian forces have also entered the key city of Izium. A number of social media videos have emerged showing Ukrainian soldiers posing with captured Russian weapons and tanks.

  According to The Moscow Times, pro-Russian Donetsk officials have acknowledged the intensified fighting is putting pro-Kremlin forces under strain in the east:

  Ukraine’s push appears to have caught Russian troops largely off guard. Moscow made the surprise announcement Friday it was dispatching reinforcements to Kharkiv, with images on state media showing tanks and artillery and support vehicles moving in columns on dirt roads.

  Denis Pushilin, a pro-Russia separatist official, said Saturday that the situation in the town of Lyman in the Donetsk region was “very difficult” and that there was also fighting in “a number of other localities,” particularly in the northern part of the region.

  Ukrainian troops and tanks with captured Russian ammunition. https://t.co/s6L6r8sYoH pic.twitter.com/2IPv0N3udp

  — Rob Lee (@RALee85) September 11, 2022

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  Ukraine’s chief commander of the armed forces General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said on Sunday that his army has pushed Russian forces away from the north of Kharkiv to within 50km of the border with Russia for the first time since the invasion began more than six months ago.

  Ukrainian flags have been seen and widely reported as being raised in villages close to the Russian border, including the town of Kozacha Lopan.

  Expect a Russian escalation in the US proxy war soon. The NATO led counteroffensive with NATO weapons is putting pressure on Putin inside of Russia. This may lead to a change of status from “Special Operation” to a declaration of war and the use of a far more aggressive approach.

  — Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) September 10, 2022

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  Currently there are media rumors saying Moscow is preparing to issue a formal declaration of war, as opposed to a current limited “special operation” – which would mean greater mobilization across armed forces branches and society. The pressure within Moscow political circles on Putin to do so will continue to grow amid Ukrainian forces’ positive momentum, as as the US and NATO continue ratcheting up the already steadily flowing weapons systems.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/11/2022 – 16:00

• Hedge Fund CIO: "Illiquidity Is The New Leverage And Flows Are More Important Than Fundamentals"
  Hedge Fund CIO: “Illiquidity Is The New Leverage And Flows Are More Important Than Fundamentals”

  By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

  La Haine

  “Illiquidity is the new leverage and flows are more important than fundamentals,” said the CIO, one of our industry’s great thinkers. “This has been our framework for considering vulnerabilities in the post-2008 world,” he said. “Following the GFC, an intended consequence of successive rounds of quantitative easing was a shift of systemic risk from banks to the asset management industry,” he explained, the Fed’s $9trln balance sheet now bloated beyond comprehension, quantitative tightening accelerating, rates rising at an unprecedented pace.

  

  “Asset managers do not have flexible balance sheets — they buy assets when they get inflows and sell assets when they have outflows,” continued the CIO, sitting high atop a prodigious pile, amassed through decades of navigating monetary mischief, financial crises, bull markets, bears. “For over a decade, QE expanded balance sheets and asset managers have only experienced inflows. In contrast, banks – if they have sufficient capital – can take on risk when others are selling assets. They can choose to flex their balance sheets.”

  “This shift of fragility from leverage in banks to liquidity in asset managers has occurred in tandem with a move to higher allocations to risky assets because of very low, or negative, interest rates,” continued the CIO. “Now, central banks are fighting an inflation problem they underestimated. They are forced to sharply tighten monetary policy and need to tighten financial conditions in the form of falling asset prices. The key is that the process be orderly, which it has been thus far. No dislocation yet. So far, so good.”

  

  “The first half of 2022 was a discount rate shock,” he said. “From here, as short rates march higher, investors will allocate away from risky and into risk-free assets.” Outflows expose the liquidity mismatch between the liquidity terms offered to the investor and the actual liquidity of the underlying investments. “The authorities and markets implicitly assume liquidity is plentiful and market behavior will remain orderly. We have been questioning that assumption and examining what might cause a disorderly liquidation?”

  “I think we see the answer,” said the CIO in response to his own question. “The liquidity available to financial markets is being pincered between the forces of:

  1. the Federal Reserve’s Reverse Repo Facility (RRP) facility, its interaction with central bank reserves and the level of interest rates,
  2. the inflating nominal economy’s need for more of the commercial banks’ aggregate balance sheet, and
  3. the reticence of commercial banks to expand their balance sheets because of regulatory pressure on them to be crisis proof in the face of an oncoming hurricane.”

  “And these liquidity pressures are weaponized by poor trailing 6-month portfolio performance and rising real rates, creating a genuine threat that we may be on the brink of The Great Liquidation,” explained the CIO.

  “La Haine is a French film,” he said, translating a passage for his unsophisticated American friend. “In it, a man falls from a 50-story building. The chap, as he falls, repeats something to himself constantly for reassurance: ‘So far so good… So far so good… So far so good.’ But the important thing is not the fall. It’s the landing.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/11/2022 – 15:30

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