Jul 14

Today’s News 14th July 2022

  • Russia, Ukraine Reach Breakthrough Over Blocked Grain Exports: UN Chief
    Russia, Ukraine Reach Breakthrough Over Blocked Grain Exports: UN Chief

    Is this the beginning of a solution to the Ukraine grain export impasse which has been threatening to put large swathes of dependent populations across the Middle East and Africa on the brink of famine? 

    On Wednesday UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced that warring powers are on the cusp of a deal to free up Black Sea exports after multiple intense rounds of talks in Istanbul, saying an “important and substantive step” was made towards reaching a comprehensive agreement.

    Source: Turkish Defense Ministry/EPA

    “Next week, hopefully, we’ll be able to have a final agreement. But, as I said, we still need a lot of goodwill and commitments by all parties,” Guterres said from UN headquarters in New York. He qualified that despite this rare instance of Ukraine and Russia engaging the other in negotiations, it remains that “for peace we still have a long way to go.”

    Turkey’s Defense Minister Hulusi Akar also confirmed that a deal is close, saying it would be signed next week, when both sides are expected to meet again. Moscow and Kiev have reportedly agreed to “joint controls for checking grains at harbors” – though details of the draft deal haven’t been fully revealed.

    The BBC additionally reported that talks are appearing to focus on neutral external parties – such as Turkey for example – safeguarding international vessels through the Black Sea:

    Talks on opening up a “green corridor” through the Black Sea took place in Turkey on Wednesday. But any agreement will require support from President Vladimir Putin, who meets Turkey’s president in Iran on 19 July.

    And Bloomberg sources revealed the following:

    Talks were held in Istanbul with representatives from Ukraine, Russia and Turkey, plus the United Nations. The sides agreed on the “main technical principles,” Turkey’s defense minister said in a statement.

    Ukrainian and Russian delegations will meet again in Turkey next week to further discuss details, Turkey said. There has been no statement issued yet from Kyiv or Moscow. The parties agreed to form a coordination center, among other discussion points, Turkey said.

    Further, according to Al Jazeera citing two sources privy to the Istanbul talks, the parties “are close to a deal or perhaps they even have a deal.”

    In a Spring forecast by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, it was estimated that the globe will see a 20% decline in global wheat production this year due to the ongoing situation in Ukraine, where the country’s Ministry of Agriculture recently warned a third of the country’s farmland is occupied or unsafe.

    The issue of a theoretical deal being reached vs. the reality of actually executing it remains an entirely different question, given the presence of thousands of mines around many of Ukraine’s key ports. Russia has put the issue in central focus as it has sought to combat accusations from the West that it alone is to blame for the blockade of crucial wheat supplies from the country. The Kremlin has laid fundamental blame for the crisis on Ukraine’s military mining its own ports.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 07/14/2022 – 02:45

  • Climate Mandates Imposed On Dutch Farmers Will Ruin Their Livelihoods: War Correspondent
    Climate Mandates Imposed On Dutch Farmers Will Ruin Their Livelihoods: War Correspondent

    Authored by Ella Kietlinska and Joshua Phillipp via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The livelihoods of Dutch farmers are under attack due to the Dutch government’s proposed nitrogen policy, which could necessitate the mass slaughter of livestock and potentially shut down almost a third of the country’s farms.

    War correspondent Michael Yon in an interview for EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program on July 2, 2020. (Screenshot via EpochTV)

    If this policy is implemented, it will have “major security consequences, not just for the Netherlands, but for all of Europe and the world,” said Michael Yon, a war correspondent who has recently arrived in the Netherlands to report on the ground from the Dutch farmers’ protests.

    The Netherlands is a small country in Europe with a population of 17 million people, but it is the second-largest food exporter in the world, Yon said in a recent interview for EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program. “They have the most efficient farmers in the world.”

    King Willem-Alexander (L) and Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands sign the Royal Decrees as part of the inauguration of the new prime minister’s cabinet at Noordeinde Palace in The Hague on Jan. 10, 2022. (Sem Vander Wal/AFP via Getty Images)

    In 2021, the Netherlands’s coalition government proposed slashing livestock numbers in the country by 30 percent to meet nitrogen greenhouse gas emission targets.

    The country has already implemented stringent restrictions on new construction, intending to curb nitrogen emissions.

    Dutch bank Rabobank has argued that those new hurdles have slowed home building in the Netherlands, intensifying a housing shortage in the densely populated coastal nation.

    On June 10, Christianne van der Wal, the Dutch Minister for Nitrogen and Nature Policy, unveiled a plan to reduce nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands, according to a statement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

    “The Dutch Provinces are responsible for developing corresponding measures to reach the nitrogen emission reductions between 12 and 70 percent, depending on the area,” the statement said.

    “Farmers in some provinces will be particularly hard hit … and the Dutch government acknowledged ‘there is not a future for all {Dutch} farmers within [this] approach.’”

    The Netherlands Chamber of Commerce says that nitrogen environmental pollution comes from burning fossil fuels but also from manure produced by livestock and fertilizers used in farming. It is estimated that to implement the proposed plan, farmers would need to reduce their cattle herds by 30 percent, according to Barron’s.

    But Yon said Dutch farmers are not polluting the environment and that they’ve been farming the land for thousands of years.

    Nitrogen is being labeled as a pollutant and used as a decoy by the World Economic Forum (WEF) to put the farmers out of business and control the food supply, Yon said.

    Dutch Farmers Protest Against Climate Policy

    Dutch farmers protesting against the government’s plans to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide and ammonia gather for a demonstration at Stroe, Netherlands, on June 22, 2022. (Aleksandar Furtula/AP Photo)

    The proposed measures sparked protests among Dutch farmers in June, with a large protest joined by truckers which started on July 4.

    Dutch farmers, truckers, and others have used social media in a decentralized way to organize blockades of food distribution hubs across the northwest European country, which resulted in empty shelves in supermarkets.

    The protesters also planned to demonstrate at many of the nation’s airports, specifically mentioning Schiphol Airport and Eindhoven Airport.

    Dutch farmers and truckers realize that their government is following the recommendations of the WEF, which has been trying to take their land and control their food supply, Yon said.

    “If you control the food supply, you control that population completely,” he said.

    Dutch farmers are very educated, and they are both businesspeople and farmers, Yon said. They know that if they lose, they will lose their livelihood, and the consequences of their loss will be felt for many generations, he said.

    “The farmers are rising up. They know they’re going to be put out of business … which would put all of Europe on its knees, foodwise,” Yon said.

    Similar policies are being introduced in Germany and some other countries, Yon said. Some German farmers who want to show their solidarity are also involved in the Dutch protest, he added.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 07/14/2022 – 02:00

  • Johnstone: Three Illuminating Quotes About The War In Ukraine
    Johnstone: Three Illuminating Quotes About The War In Ukraine

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, and Chris Hedges have lent their expertise to the subject of the war in Ukraine with some recent comments that help bring some much-needed clarity to an often confusing and always contentious issue.

    Here they are:

    “I’ve spent my career working in the mainstream, and I’ve covered probably seven, eight, nine shooting wars; I’ve never seen coverage so utterly consumed by a tsunami of jingoism, and of manipulative jingoism as this one.”

    ~ John Pilger

    This comment comes from a recent interview with the legendary Australian journalist by the South China Morning Post, and it says so much about the information ecosystem we now find ourselves floundering around trying to understand things in.

    From the earliest days of the invasion it was clear that the western world was being smashed with a deluge of propaganda unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. In the first full month of the conflict, American network TV stations gave more coverage to the war in Ukraine than any other war that the US has been directly involved in, including Iraq and Vietnam. Literal Iraq war architects were some of the first pundits sought out for analysis of the conflict by the mainstream press, and calls for insane escalations against Russia succeeded in pushing the Overton window of acceptable debate in the direction of warmongering extremism and away from support for diplomatic solutions.

    And this was all easily piped into mainstream consciousness because the way had been lubricated by years of Russia hysterica resulting from the mass scale psychological operation known as Russiagate. America’s most dangerous confrontation in generations just so happens to have been preceded by years of media-generated panic about that very same country, despite the Ukraine invasion having ostensibly nothing whatsoever to do with the conspiracy theory that the Kremlin had infiltrated the highest levels of the US government. Heckin’ heck of a coincidence right there, buddy boy.

    “It’s quite interesting that in American discourse, it is almost obligatory to refer to the invasion as the ‘unprovoked invasion of Ukraine’. Look it up on Google, you will find hundreds of thousands of hits. Of course, it was provoked. Otherwise they wouldn’t refer to it all the time as an unprovoked invasion.”

    ~ Noam Chomsky

    This quote, from an interview last month with Ramzy Baroud, is self-evidently true and should be pointed out more often.

    People don’t go adding the same gratuitous adjectives and modifiers to something over and over again unless they’re trying to manipulate how it’s perceived. If your neighbor always referred to his wife as “my wife who I definitely never beat,” you’d immediately become suspicious because that’s not how normal people talk about normal things. We don’t say “round Earth” or “the Holocaust that totally happened,” we just say the words, because their basic nature is not seriously in dispute and we’ve got nothing invested in manipulating or obfuscating people’s understanding about them.

    The need of the political/media class to continually bleat this phrase “unprovoked invasion” over and over again is itself a confession that they know they’re not telling the whole truth. It’s the imperial propaganda version of this classic tweet:

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

    Chomsky outlines many of the provocations the US/NATO power structure engaged in prior to the conflict, which many western analysts spent years warning was coming as a result of the provocative actions that were already being taken by the empire. The invasion could easily have been prevented with a little diplomacy and some low-cost, high-reward concessions ike honoring the Minsk agreements and providing assurances of neutrality for Ukraine, but they chose provocation and escalation instead. Add to that the exponentially increased shelling of the Donbas by Kyiv immediately prior to the invasion and you can understand why empire spinmeisters are working so hard to push the “unprovoked” line.

    None of this is to say that Russia is blameless in this war; if I provoke someone into punching somebody they are still morally responsible for having thrown the punch, but I am also responsible for having provoked it. Russia is responsible for its actions, and the US/NATO/Ukraine power structure is responsible for its actions. Putin is responsible for invading, the western empire is responsible for provoking that invasion. Not complicated.

    In the same interview Chomsky also says that “censorship in the United States has reached such a level beyond anything in my lifetime” regarding this war. That assessment plus Pilger’s testimony about war propaganda unlike anything he’s ever seen shows that imperial narrative management is at an all-time high, which wouldn’t be happening unless the empire had some major agendas it wanted to roll out in the coming years.

    “At no time, including the Cuban missile crisis, have we stood closer to the precipice of nuclear war.”

    ~ Chris Hedges

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

    Echoing the urgent warnings that Stephen Cohen was making at the end of his life, a new article by Hedges outlines the profoundly dangerous games the empire is playing with a nuclear superpower in its continually escalating proxy war against Moscow.

    The observations by Pilger and Chomsky about how much effort is going in to manipulating people’s understanding of this war make sense when you realize that the agendas the empire is trying to roll out against Russia now and then China later down the road stand not only to throw the world into poverty and starvation, but to wipe us off the face of this planet.

    It doesn’t have to be this way. There’s no good reason the world’s most powerful government needs to risk the life of everyone on earth in a bid to secure planetary domination. It is possible for all nations and peoples to simply get along and collaborate toward the common good together. All that would need to happen is for these agendas of total hegemony to be abandoned.

    Unfortunately the managers of empire don’t seem to have any plans to abandon their goal of global conquest anytime soon, so we the ordinary people of this world may end up having to force the issue with them at some point in the interests of our very survival.

    This is a hell of a time to be alive, but man they’ve been keeping it interesting.

    *  *  *

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 07/14/2022 – 00:00

  • Earnings Season Begins As Wall Street Scrambles To Get Ahead Of The Carnage With Over 500 Downgrades In 5 Days
    Earnings Season Begins As Wall Street Scrambles To Get Ahead Of The Carnage With Over 500 Downgrades In 5 Days

    According to Goldman trader John Flood, this morning’s CPI print coming with a much higher than expected 9+ handle will keep institutional investors frozen and the bank expects very little offense to be played over the next few weeks. Furthermore, as discussed earlier, 75bps was thought of as a lock for July but now this: Raphael Bostic signaled the Fed could hike by 100 bps after June’s inflation report. “Everything is in play,” the Atlanta branch chief said. Asked if that included by raising rates by that amount, he replied, “it would mean everything.” Just an hour earlier Nomura made a 100bps rate hike its base case.

    As Flood notes, there were “plenty of incomings on the “sharp reversal higher” in the mkt post CPI.” Here is his explanation why stocks ramped:

    “We flagged that the level of pre-trading (shorting) into this print was quite noteworthy. Institutional positioning remains VERY light…L/Os running record high cash levels and HFs gross/nets in bottom percentiles on 1, 3 and 5 yr look backs. Does it makes sense for mkt to move higher after a 9.1% print and BOC hiking by 100bps…of course not…but that was max pain trade today and this market seeks max pain. Difficult to truly analyze intraday moves with liquidity stuck at the lowest levels we have seen in years (S&P futures top of book liquidity near $3mm again).

    At the end of day, Flood observes, “inflation remains incredibly sticky and earnings growth estimates are coming down. Be very patient buying the dips and use squeezes as opportunities to lighten up. We in for a long summer. Below chart is HF current gross and nets.”

    And speaking of declining earnings growth estimates, tomorrow we get the first bank earnings (preview here) and as Goldman notes, there is plenty of angst regarding cautious commentary on calls which will lead to further sell side downgrades and PT cuts. To underscore just how much concern there is heading into earnings season, Flood notes that he got this nugget which sums up earnings sentiment nicely: “Sell-side analysts are scrambling to get ahead of Q2 earnings; over the last 5 days they’ve downgraded more than 500 names (on a net basis).  Since the Financial Crisis, there’s only been 4 other weeks when that many names have been downgraded that quickly.“

    For a slightly more balanced take we go to the first Q2 Earnings Tracker from BofA’s Savita Subramanian (full note available to pro subscribers), in which she previews the starting earnings season as follows: “expect a ‘meet’ at best and a weak guide.” Below are the key highlights:

    Miss more likely than beat

    All of the macro barometers we track that tend to lead earnings results are pointing to a miss – a falling guidance ratio…

    …ailing corporate sentiment…

    …. slowing signs in both consumption and industrial activity plus negative economic surprises.

    But channel checks in Industrials and Software are healthy, and early reporters have beat EPS by a median of 3% – typically early reporters don’t fare as well ahead of a disappointing quarter. Expectations for 2Q have come down 1% versus the average cut of 4% in the last three months, but excluding Energy the cut has been a deeper 5%.

    We expect in-line EPS in 2Q ($55.35/+5% YoY). Weakening guidance will remain the focus: 2H-2023 consensus EPS will come down substantially; 2023 earnings are at least $20 too high.

    Tech: from secular growth & defense to cyclical risk

    Investors who view Tech as defensive, citing stable earnings during the past two recessions, may be disappointed in the next one. Consensus earnings for the Nasdaq 100 have lagged S&P 500 earnings for nine months running. Since the ‘80s, Tech has seen more frequent sales declines than the S&P 500…

    … but has been buoyed by cost benefits from globalization and (more recently) a pull forward in demand. But mega-cap Tech companies could now face the biggest challenges amid de-globalization.

    Capex: should be slowing (pro-cyclical) but now a must-do

    S&P 500 capex surged in 1Q earnings: +20% YoY. Capex has been pro-cyclical, and leading indicators are starting to roll over (e.g., our capex guidance ratio, Business Roundtable CEO Survey).

    But capex may be more necessary than in prior cycles: supply chain challenges revealed by the pandemic, emerging geopolitical risks and ambitious greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction pledges have conspired to push mentions of near-shoring capex to record highs.

    Tight labor incentivizes companies to spend to automate; and capital stock is old – we haven’t had a refurbishment capex cycle for decades. At a point when earnings are slowing, mandatory capex could represent an unwelcome draw on free cash: buy capex takers, not spenders.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/13/2022 – 23:42

  • Florida Sheriff Supports Man Who Defended Home With "AK-47-Style Gun"
    Florida Sheriff Supports Man Who Defended Home With “AK-47-Style Gun”

    A Florida sheriff went viral on social media after saying a homeowner with an “AK-47-style gun” won’t be charged for shooting at armed intruders. 

    “He started shooting for his own protection, to get them out of his house and to protect himself,” Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons said in a prerecorded video uploaded on Facebook. 

    Simmons said three suspects broke into the man’s home where at least one pointed a handgun at the homeowner, and the other two shoved him to the ground. The victim tried to reach for his pistol when one of the suspects knocked it to the floor. 

    The victim was able to escape and ran to a back room of the house, where he retrieved an AK-47-style rifle and unleashed a hail of bullets on the three suspects.  

    Simmons said two suspects were identified, and a third person suffered a headshot wound. 

    “We get a report of a third individual that had a wound to the head not long after [the home invasion]. The stories he’s giving us as to how he got shot in the head are inconsistent at best. In short, we don’t believe him. So what we’re looking at is to determine whether this is the third person involved,” Simmons said but did not identify the wounded individual. 

    “Those of you who may ask a question, is the homeowner going to be charged for shooting at these people? Absolutely not,” the sheriff added. “The homeowner’s protecting himself, and in Florida, in Escambia County, you can protect yourself.”

    Not too long ago, another sheriff in Florida said: 

    “If somebody’s breaking into your house, you’re more than welcome to shoot them in Santa Rosa County, and we prefer that you do actually.” 

    One of the highly debated firearm topics is whether or not a semi-automatic rifle is a good home defense gun. Democrats are on a crusade to ban AR-15s and limit magazine capacity that may inhibit a homeowner from defending themselves against multiple intruders. 

    Here’s GOP congressional candidate Jerone Davison from Arizona explaining why “you just might need that semi-automatic [AR-15] and all 30 rounds” in a political ad. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/13/2022 – 23:20

  • Taibbi On 'The New Kremlinology': Reading The New York Times
    Taibbi On ‘The New Kremlinology’: Reading The New York Times

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

    On Monday, the New York Times ran a story pegged to a new poll, showing Joe Biden dragging a sub-Trumpish 33% approval rating into the midterms. The language was grave:

    Widespread concerns about the economy and inflation have helped turn the national mood decidedly dark, both on Mr. Biden and the trajectory of the nation… a pervasive sense of pessimism that spans every corner of the country…

    The article followed another from the weekend, “At 79, Biden Is Testing the Boundaries of Age and the Presidency.” That piece, about Biden’s age — code for “cognitive decline” — was full of doom as well:

    Mr. Biden looks older than just a few years ago, a political liability that cannot be solved by traditional White House stratagems like staff shake-ups… Some aides quietly watch out for him. He often shuffles when he walks, and aides worry he will trip on a wire. He stumbles over words during public events, and they hold their breath to see if he makes it to the end without a gaffe.

    Biden’s descent was obvious six years ago. Following the candidate in places like Nevada, Iowa, and New Hampshire, I listened to traveling press joke about his general lack of awareness and discuss new precautions his aides seemed to be taking to prevent him engaging audience members at events. Biden at the time was earning negative headlines for doing things like jamming a forefinger into the sternum of a black activist named Tracye Redd in Waterloo, Iowa, one of several such incidents just on that trip.

    The New York Times has declared the President’s age acceptable for discussion.

    My former editor at Rolling Stone John Hendrickson, a genial, patient person whom I like a great deal, insisted from afar that Biden’s problems were due to continuing difficulties with a childhood stutter, something John had also overcome. He went on to write a piece for the Atlantic called “Joe Biden’s Stutter, and Mine” that became a viral phenomenon, abetting a common explanation for Biden’s stump behavior: he was dealing with a disability. The Times added op-eds from heroes like airline pilot Captain “Sully” Sullenberger with titles like, “Like Joe Biden, I Once Stuttered, Too. I Dare You to Mock Me.”

    But I’d covered a much sharper Biden in 2008 and felt that even if the drain of overcoming a stutter had some effect, the problems were cognitive, not speech-related. He struggled to remember where he was and veered constantly into inappropriateness, challenging people physically, telling crazy-ass stories, and angering instantly. He’d move to inch-close face range of undecideds like Cedar Rapids resident Jaimee Warbasse and grab her hand (“we’re talking minutes,” she said) before saying, “If I haven’t swayed you today, then I can’t.” I called the mental health professionals who were all too happy to diagnose Donald Trump from afar for a story about the effort to remove Trump under the 25th amendment, and all declined to discuss Biden even off the record for “ethical” reasons.

    This week, all that changed. Add stories like “Biden Promised to Stay Above the Fray, but Democrats Want a Fighter” and Michelle Goldberg’s “Joe Biden is Too Old to Be President Again,” and what we’ve got is a newspaper that catches real history spasmodically and often years late, but has the accuracy of an atomic clock when it comes to recording the shifting attitudes of elite opinion.

    Whether through Emily Bazelon’s Times Magazine piece “The Battle Over Gender Therapy,” or Michael Powell’s “A Vanishing Word in the Abortion Debate: Women,” or even the Editorial Board argument from late May, “The War in Ukraine is Getting Complicated, and America Isn’t Ready,” the Times has become a place where the public often learns about key facts, pressing international controversies, or trends in American thought only once these have been deemed suitable for public consumption by an unseen higher audience. An all time effort in this direction was “Hunter Biden Paid Tax Bill, but Broad Federal Investigation Continues,” in which the paper allowed some of its better reporters to quietly confirm a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop two years after keeping more or less mum as the story was tabbed Russian disinformation.

    Along with companion outlets like the Washington Post and The Atlantic (as pure a reflection of establishment thought as exists in America), the paper in this sense fulfills the same function that Izvestia once served in the Soviet Union, telling us little or even less than nothing about breaking news events (“Can NATO Long Exist?” was among Pravda’s final questions in 1991) but giving us comprehensive, if often coded, portraits of the thinking of the leadership class.

    TK News subscribers can read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/13/2022 – 23:00

  • "Take The Tragedy In Sri Lanka And Multiply By Ten": The Fed Just Lobbed A Financial Nuke That Will Obliterate The Global Economy
    “Take The Tragedy In Sri Lanka And Multiply By Ten”: The Fed Just Lobbed A Financial Nuke That Will Obliterate The Global Economy

    By Larry McDonald, author of the Bear Traps Report

    We are living in a period of mass “Jonestown” economic delusion. Just twenty months ago – central bankers were offering to buy nearly every junk bond known to mankind, dramatically distorting the “true cost of capital.” All the way from crypto to emerging markets – it was a moral hazard overdose. Everyone on earth was borrowing money at fantasy-land bond yields.

    Now, the Fed is promising endless rate hikes and $1T of balance sheet reduction onto a planet with emerging market and Euro-zone credit markets in flames.

    Listen, all I have is an economics degree from the University of Massachusetts, but after having spent the last 20 years trading bonds professionally and embarking on a 20k feet deep autopsy on the largest bank failure of all time – from my seat the current Fed agenda is sheer madness and will be outed very soon.

    The true cost of capital was distorted for so long, we now have hundreds of academics– clueless to the underlying serpent inside global markets. When the 6 foot seven, Paul Volcker walked the halls of the Marriner S. Eccles Building of the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, our planet embraced about $200T LESS debt than we are staring down the barrel at today. Please call out the risk management imbeciles that make any reference of “Powell to Volcker.”

    In 2021, global debt reached a record $303T, according to the Institute of International Finance, a global financial industry association. This is a FURTHER jump from record global debt in 2019 of $226T, as reported by the IMF in its Global Debt Database. Volcker was jacking rates into a planet with about $200T LESS debt. Please call out the risk management imbeciles that make any reference of Powell to Volcker.

    Many economists in 2022 are highly delusional – a very dangerous group indeed. When you hike rates aggressively with a strong dollar you multiply interest rate risk, which was already off the charts coming from such a low 2020 base in terms of yield – it’s a convexity nightmare. Interest rate hikes today – hand in hand with a strong U.S. Dollar – carry 100x the destructive power than the Carter – Reagan era.

    At the same time, you add lighter fluid on to the credit risk fire in emerging markets with a raging greenback. Global banks have to mark to market most of these assets. If global rates reset higher and stay at elevated levels, the sovereign debt pile is in gave danger. The response to Lehman and Covid crisis squared (see above) has left a mathematically unsustainable bill for follow on generations. The Fed CANNOT hike rates aggressively into this mess without blowing up the global economy. We are talking about mass – Jonestown delusion on roids.

    Then Covid-19 placed a colossal leverage cocktail on top. Emerging and frontier market countries currently owe the IMF over $100B. U.S. central banking policy + a  strong USD is vaporizing this capital as we speak.

    A dollar screaming higher with agricultural commodities – priced globally in dollars – is a colossal tax on emerging market countries – clueless academics at the Fed are exporting inflation into countries that can least afford it. Emerging – and
    frontier market countries owe the IMF over $100B – U.S. central banking policy – strong USD, is vaporizing this capital.

    A quarter-trillion dollars of distressed debt is threatening to drag the developing world into a historic cascade of defaults. The number of developing nations trading distressed has doubled, with El Salvador, Ghana, Egypt, Tunisia and Pakistan appearing particularly vulnerable. With the low-income countries, debt risks and debt crises are not hypothetical – try buying oil in USD in an EM currency. A fifth — or about 17% — of the $1.4 trillion emerging-market sovereigns have outstanding in external debt denominated in dollars, euros or yen, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

    Academics at the Fed are exporting inflation into countries that can least afford it – decimating communities all over the planet. The tragedies are piling up. While given cover from their well-placed collection of pawns, tough guy Powell is playing his Volcker act – right out of a scene in a poor man’s poker game. In terms of who ́s actually running the show – emerging market bonds are plunging 10 points a week and Powell wants you to think he’s got pocket Kings.

    Truth is, the global credit risk dynamic has the Aces, and the Fed is looking down at pocket 2s, if that. The IMF has total lending capacity near $1T, Powell is currently wiping out 10% of that. Ultimately, this lost tribe will be coming back, “hat in hand” – yet again to the U.S. taxpayer.

    So now we have global bank balance sheets, stressed by $20T to $30T in mark to market losses from Equities, Treasuries, European government bonds, Crypto, Private equity and Venture capital – in the middle of the worst emerging market credit crisis in decades. All after just 150bps of rate hikes from the Fed? Hello?? Anyone home? There are A LOT of bonds that look like this! Oh – by the way – Egypt owes the IMF $13B, the Fed just lit these liabilities on fire.

    If the Fed keeps its policy path promises, take the tragedy in Sri Lanka and multiply it by ten across the globe over the next six months. Check-mate FOMC.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/13/2022 – 22:40

  • Three Arrows Capital's Remaining Assets Frozen By New York Judge
    Three Arrows Capital’s Remaining Assets Frozen By New York Judge

    On Tuesday, a New York Judge officially froze the assets of Three Arrows Capital, the troubled crypto hedge fund that recently saw its founders disappear in the midst of its very public blowup and bankruptcy. 

    Judge Martin Glenn of the Southern District of New York granted the motion, according to CNBC. The judge said only the assigned liquidators can “transfer, encumber or otherwise dispose of any assets of the Debtor located within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.”

    Teneo, which was assigned to manage the liquidation, was also given authority to subpoena the two missing co-founders and other companies that have done business with the firm. 

    There have been fears that the firm’s founders may be trying to syphon assets out of the firm ahead of the liquidation. Adam Goldberg, an attorney representing Teneo, said Tuesday: “A key part of this motion is to put the world on notice that it is the liquidators that are controlling the debtor’s assets at this stage.”

    Nic Carter of Castle Island Ventures said resolution could take years: “I wouldn’t hold my breath to see the situation resolved. I’d be extremely concerned about dispositions of assets and trying to extricate them or maybe expropriate assets that are owed to creditors, and siphon those out of the process for the personal usage of the principles here.”

    We noted yesterday that both founders had gone missing. Those founders, Kyle Davies and Zhu Su, had not contacted representatives setup to help liquidate the firm by a BVI judge last week, the report says. However, lawyers for the two men have reportedly said they intend on cooperating. 

    A photo posted by Bloomberg this week shows the company’s headquarters seemingly abandoned….

    3AC has been just one of the major firms – joining names like Celsius and Voyager – that have collapsed as a result of the plunge in bitcoin. Insolvency proceedings in the BVI have started, as has a Chapter 15 bankruptcy filing in the US. 

    Liquidators went to Three Arrows’ office address in Singapore, which “appeared dormant”. Bloomberg reported:

    “…the door was locked, computers were inactive and mail was stuffed under the door. People working in the surrounding offices said they hadn’t seen anyone enter or exit the office recently.”

    Lawyers for the two men were on a Zoom call with the liquidators last week, but it was unclear if Zhu and Kyle were even on the call:

    “While persons identifying themselves as “Su Zhu” and “Kyle” were present on the Zoom call, their video was turned off and they were on mute at all times with neither of them speaking despite questions being posed to them directly.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/13/2022 – 22:00

  • Can Biden Break The Alliance Between Saudi Arabia And Russia?
    Can Biden Break The Alliance Between Saudi Arabia And Russia?

    By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

    The Kremlin hopes that the U.S. diplomacy will not seek to turn Saudi Arabia against Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday, commenting on U.S. President Joe Biden’s visit to the Middle East.

    “We certainly hope that the building and the development of relations between Riyadh and other world capitals will in no way be directed against us,” Peskov was quoted as saying at a briefing on Wednesday by Russian news agency TASS.

    “We highly appreciate the work we are doing with our partners, including leading partners such as Saudi Arabia,” Peskov said, asked to comment on President Biden’s visit to the Kingdom.

    President Biden began on Wednesday a visit to the Middle East, which will include a stop in Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil exporter and a key partner of Russia in the OPEC+ oil production deal. 

    Despite the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Saudi Arabia and Russia have reiterated several times the importance of their OPEC+ partnership.

    President Biden, for his part, will visit Saudi Arabia for the first time after making a U-turn in his attitude toward Riyadh as gasoline prices in America hit a record high of $5 per gallon last month.

    OPEC has the capacity to raise crude oil production, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said earlier this week.

    “We do believe there is a capacity for further steps that could be taken,” Sullivan said during a press briefing on Monday.

    President Biden and his team will make the case for higher OPEC oil production during meetings with leaders from the Gulf states in Saudi Arabia, Sullivan said at the briefing.

    “We will convey our general view…that we believe that there needs to be adequate supply in the global market to protect the global economy and to protect the American consumer at the pump,” Sullivan said.

    Analysts say that OPEC’s actual spare capacity could be less than official figures suggest and that, in fact, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—two producers believed to hold most of the world’s spare capacity—cannot pump too much crude oil above current levels for a sustainable period.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/13/2022 – 21:40

  • Ex-CIA Engineer Who Leaked "Vault 7" Tools Convicted Of Biggest Theft In Agency History
    Ex-CIA Engineer Who Leaked “Vault 7” Tools Convicted Of Biggest Theft In Agency History

    A former CIA software engineer who leaked the so-called “Vault 7” tools was convicted Wednesday of causing the largest theft of classified information in the history of the agency.

    Joshua Schulte, who has been sitting behind bars without bail since 2018 and chose to defend himself at trial, told the jury that the CIA and FBI made him a scapegoat for the 2017 WikiLeaks release of up to 34 terabytes of information.

    Separately, Schulte awaits trial on possession of child ponography and transport charges, which he has pleaded not guilty to, according to Military.com.

    As part of his defense, Schulte claimed he was singled out because “hundreds of people had access to (the information),” adding “Hundreds of people could have stolen it.”

    “The government’s case is riddled with reasonable doubt,” he said. “There’s simply no motive here.”

    Assistant U.S. Attorney David Denton countered that there was plenty of proof that Schulte pilfered a sensitive backup computer file.

    “He’s the one who broke into that system,” Denton said. “He’s the one who took that backup, the backup he sent to WikiLeaks.”

    The prosecutor also encouraged jurors to consider evidence of an attempted cover-up, including a list of chores Schulte drew up that had an entry reading, “Delete suspicious emails.”

    “This is someone who’s hiding the things that he’s done wrong,” Denton said.

    Once the jury got the case, Furman complimented Schulte on his closing argument. -Military.com

    The judge complimented Schulte on his defense, saying “that was impressively done.”

    “Depending on what happens here, you may have a future as a defense lawyer.“

    In March of 2020, the trial of former CIA computer engineer Joshua Schulte ended in a hung jury on eight counts, including illegal gathering and transmission of national defense information, according to the New York Times.

    As we noted two years ago, according to a 2017 report created by the CIA’s WikiLeaks Task Force and released in June 2020, there were major security lapses at the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), which made cyber weapons – including tools to crack into smartphones, hijack smart TVs, or make it look like a foreign adversary hacked someone.

    “In a press to meet growing and critical mission needs, CCI had prioritized building cyber weapons at the expense of securing their own systems,” reads the report. “Day-to-day security practices had become woefully lax.“

    “CCI focused on building cyber weapons and neglected to also prepare mitigation packages if those tools were exposed. These shortcomings were emblematic of a culture that evolved over years that too often prioritized creativity and collaboration at the expense of security,” the report continues.

    The leak marked the largest data breach in the CIA’s history and included information on hacking tools used by the agency to break into smartphones and other internet-connected devices. 

    The task force noted that due to failures to address vulnerabilities in IT systems, if WikiLeaks had not published the stolen information, the CIA “might still be unaware of the loss — as would be true for the vast majority of data on Agency mission systems.”

    In a letter to Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Tuesday, Wyden criticized the intelligence community for its “widespread cybersecurity problems.” –The Hill

    The Vault 7 release – a series of 24 documents which began to publish on March 7, 2017 – reveal that the CIA has a giant arsenal of tools to use against adversaries, including the ability to “spoof” its malware to appear as though it was created by a foreign intelligence agency, as well as the ability to take control of Samsung Smart TV’s and surveil a target using a “Fake Off” mode in which they appear to be powered down while eavesdropping. 

    The CIA’s toy chest also includes:

    • Tools code named “Marble” – which can misdirect forensic investigators from attributing viruses, trojans and hacking attacks to their agency by inserted code fragments in foreign languages.  The tool was in use as recently as 2016.  Per the WikiLeaks release:

    “The source code shows that Marble has test examples not just in English but also in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi. This would permit a forensic attribution double game, for example by pretending that the spoken language of the malware creator was not American English, but Chinese, but then showing attempts to conceal the use of Chinese, drawing forensic investigators even more strongly to the wrong conclusion, — but there are other possibilities, such as hiding fake error messages.”

    • iPads / iPhones / Android devices and Smart TV’s are all susceptible to hacks and malware. The agency’s “Dark Matter” project reveals that the CIA has been bugging “factory fresh” iPhones since at least 2008 through suppliers. Another, “Sonic Screwdriver” allows the CIA to execute code on a Mac laptop or desktop while it’s booting up.

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    • The increasing sophistication of surveillance techniques has drawn comparisons with George Orwell’s 1984, but “Weeping Angel”, developed by the CIA’s Embedded Devices Branch (EDB), which infests smart TVs, transforming them into covert microphones, is surely its most emblematic realization.
    • The Obama administration promised to disclose all serious vulnerabilities they found to Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other US-based manufacturers. The US Government broke that commitment.

    “Year Zero” documents show that the CIA breached the Obama administration’s commitments. Many of the vulnerabilities used in the CIA’s cyber arsenal are pervasive and some may already have been found by rival intelligence agencies or cyber criminals.

    In addition to its operations in Langley, Virginia the CIA also uses the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt as a covert base for its hackers covering Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

    CIA hackers operating out of the Frankfurt consulate ( “Center for Cyber Intelligence Europe” or CCIE) are given diplomatic (“black”) passports and State Department cover.

    • The CIA laughs at Anti-Virus / Anti-Malware programs.

    CIA hackers developed successful attacks against most well known anti-virus programs. These are documented in AV defeats, Personal Security Products, Detecting and defeating PSPs and PSP/Debugger/RE Avoidance. For example, Comodo was defeated by CIA malware placing itself in the Window’s “Recycle Bin”. While Comodo 6.x has a “Gaping Hole of DOOM”.

    Quite the suite of toys, no?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/13/2022 – 21:20

  • World Health Organisation: Gender "Is Not Limited To Male Or Female"
    World Health Organisation: Gender “Is Not Limited To Male Or Female”

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    The World Health Organisation has reconfirmed its status as an unscientific politically driven globalist body by officially stating that there are more than two biological genders.

    The WHO has announced that it intends to update its “widely-used gender mainstreaming manual.” 

    The suggestion that there’s a need for a manual on how many genders there are should tell you something about this organisation off the bat.

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    The body says of the manual that it is “updating it in light of new scientific evidence and conceptual progress on gender, health and development.”

    What exactly that ‘scientific evidence’ is is still a mystery.

    The press release from the WHO states that part of its new findings to go into the manual is that “sex is not limited to male or female.”

    The WHO states that it is “going beyond binary approaches to gender and health,” in order “[t]o recognize gender and sexual diversity, or the concepts that gender identity exists on a continuum and that sex is not limited to male or female.”

    The globalist body, in partnership with the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health, also intends to introduce “new gender, equity and human rights frameworks and tools to further support capacity building around these concepts and the integration of their approaches.”

    These, whatever they are, will be ‘finalised and rolled out’ in August and beyond:

    In other words, the WHO is realigning to further push the social engineering message that is already being rammed down our throats ceaselessly via politics, business, policing and what passes for culture and entertainment.

    However, despite its relentless promotion in virtually every sector of society, belief in the reality of this ideology is falling amongst Americans, with only 38% believing biological sex does not determine whether someone is a man or a woman.

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    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

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

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/13/2022 – 21:00

  • Putin Using Western Wokeness As A Weapon: WSJ Op-Ed
    Putin Using Western Wokeness As A Weapon: WSJ Op-Ed

    Left-wing wokeism is one of America’s greatest weaknesses, which both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are using as a weapon against the West, according to a Monday Wall Street Journal Op-Ed by Hudson Institute Fellow Walter Russell Mead.

    After suggesting that Ukraine is giving Russia more than they bargained for on the battlefield thanks to “Western high-tech arms” among other things, Mead notes that Putin has had the most success in the domains of economics and politics, giving the West a run for its money.

    Fears that a Russian gas embargo could cripple European economies and leave comfortable German burghers freezing in the dark next winter have replaced hopes that Western sanctions would bring Moscow to its knees. Thoroughly intimidated by the consequences of an economic war with Russia, Germany is beginning to weasel out of its pledges to increase defense spending. -WSJ

    According to Mead, hopes that the world would unite against Russian aggression has “fizzled,” adding: “Led by China and joined by India and Brazil, countries around the world are choosing trade with Russia over solidarity with the Group of Seven.“

    The author suggests that in order to prevent “another major setback” such as those in Georgia, Crimea, the South China Sea and the Middle East, the West must “recalibrate” against the “revisionist powers” (China, Russia and Iran), and “rethink assumptions and conventional doctrines that have demonstrably failed.”

    The West also needs to understand that the revisionist powers “seek the destruction of what they see as an American-led, West-dominated global hegemony,” which is “decadent and vulnerable.”

    Specifically, there are several vulnerabilities the West needs to protect against; including protectionism (“which reduces the economic attraction of the WWestern system for developing countries”), and self-righteous “values-based” entitlements “with its origins in the age of European imperialism.”

    Why else, people ask, are Britain and France permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, while there is only one permanent member from Asia, and none from Africa, the Islamic world or Latin America? What possible justification is there for including Italy and Canada in the exclusive G-7?

    Conventional defenders of the Western world order respond by touting its commitment to universal values such as human rights and the fight against climate change. The current world order may, they acknowledge, be historically rooted in Western imperial power, but as an “empire of values,” the Western world order deserves the support of everyone who cares about humanity’s future. -WSJ

    Wokeness as a weakness

    After laying out the current situation, Mead writes that “the West’s increasingly “woke” values agenda is not as credible or popular as liberals hope,” noting that President Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia this week puts America’s leftist hypocrisy on full display – reminding the world “of the limits on Western commitments to human rights.”

    Many values dear to the hearts of Western cultural leaders (LGBTQ rights, abortion on demand, freedom of speech understood as allowing unchecked Internet pornography) puzzle and offend billions of people around the world who haven’t kept up with the latest hot trends on American campuses. -WSJ

    Mead also notes that woke Western banks are pissing off ‘elites and the public at large’ in developing countries over blocking financing for fossil-fuel extraction as part of their virtue-signaling ESG agenda.

    What’s more, liberal West’s “new, post-Judeo-Christian values agenda divides the West,” as culture wars at home “don’t promote unity overseas.”

    Also, Western leftists have totally lost their shit in front of the world.

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    Bringing it home, Mead writes:

    The moral and political confusion of the contemporary West is the secret weapon that the leaders of Russia and China believe will bring the American world order to its knees. Messrs. Putin and Xi might be wrong; one certainly hopes that they are. But their bet on Western decadence has been paying off handsomely for more than a decade. Western survival and global flourishing require more thought and deeper change than the Biden administration and its European allies can currently imagine. -WSJ

    As we’ve noted many times, Americans were explicitly warned about weakening the West by KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov.

    How do we cure wokeism and actors who peddle it to score points?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/13/2022 – 20:40

  • Wisconsin Elections Commission Fails To Release Guidance For Clerks After Supreme Court Rules Ballot Drop Boxes Illegal
    Wisconsin Elections Commission Fails To Release Guidance For Clerks After Supreme Court Rules Ballot Drop Boxes Illegal

    Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) has yet to release new guidance on how to handle absentee ballots for the Aug. 9 primary election after the state’s Supreme Court ruled that ballot drop boxes are illegal.

    A woman holding her ballot walks past a Vote by Mail Drop Box for the 2020 U.S. Elections in Monterey Park, Calif., on Oct. 5, 2020. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)

    Republicans and Democrats on the commission repeatedly hit an impasse on July 12, when it came to deciding the meaning of the court’s July 8 ruling and how it should be interpreted and handled by more than 1,800 municipal clerks ahead of the primary.

    The court ruled 4–3 that drop boxes that enable people to drop off ballots cast by themselves and others are illegal under state law and voters must return their ballots in person.

    “We hold the documents are invalid because ballot drop boxes are illegal under Wisconsin statutes,” Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote in the majority opinion on July 8. “An absentee ballot must be returned by mail or the voter must personally deliver it to the municipal clerk at the clerk’s office or a designated alternate site.”

    The court didn’t address the question of who can put an absentee ballot in the mail.

    While state law says an absentee ballot “shall be mailed by the elector,” federal law allows for disabled people to receive assistance with their ballot, meaning the Supreme Court’s decision could make it more difficult for the disabled, as well as the elderly, to vote.

    Potentially Confusing

    At the commission meeting on July 13, Republicans said the panel should provide guidance to clerks running the elections to help them better understand the ruling, while Democrats argued that it’s unclear what the commission can tell clerks, saying that the proposed guidance went too far and could potentially confuse clerks and spark a slew of lawsuits.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/13/2022 – 20:20

  • Amazon Ring Video Handed To Police Without Users Consent Sparks "Surveillance Crisis Of Accountability"
    Amazon Ring Video Handed To Police Without Users Consent Sparks “Surveillance Crisis Of Accountability”

    While people purchase Ring cameras on Amazon and mount them on their front doors to keep their homes safe, law enforcement agencies use them without the user’s permission, according to a press release published by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts).

    The heading of the press release reads, “Senator Markey’s Probe Into Amazon Ring Reveals New Privacy Problem,” highlighting the alarming access to “the close relationship between Ring and law enforcement, including the proliferation of policing agencies on the Ring platform.” 

    Ring, which Amazon bought in 2018, responded to Markey’s June letter and said law enforcement partnerships on its platform had jumped a staggering five-fold increase since November 2019. The electronic doorbell company further revealed footage was handed over to police eleven times this year without the user’s consent – under a so-called “emergency circumstance exception.” 

    “As my ongoing investigation into Amazon illustrates, it has become increasingly difficult for the public to move, assemble, and converse in public without being tracked and recorded,” Markey said.

    Amazon has an agreement with more than 2,100 police departments nationwide under the app called “Neighbors.” Police can use the app to request videos. The lawmaker warned:

    “We cannot accept this as inevitable in our country. Increasing law enforcement reliance on private surveillance creates a crisis of accountability, and I am particularly concerned that biometric surveillance could become central to the growing web of surveillance systems that Amazon and other powerful tech companies are responsible for.” 

    Lawmakers have previously said Amazon funded a lobbying campaign to relax privacy protections in more than two dozen states while harvesting vast amounts of sensitive data on its customers.

    “Amazon shamefully launched a campaign to squash privacy legislation while its devices listen to & watch our lives. This is now the classic Big Tech move: deploy money & armies of lobbyists to fight meaningful reforms in the shadows but claim to support them publicly,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) tweeted late last year. 

    Politico pointed out Congress is discussing a federal data privacy law, though it won’t cover Ring sharing data with police. 

    During the pandemic, Ring conducted a 45-day pilot program to live stream Ring cameras in Jackson, Mississippi, to test a surveillance camera network from people’s homes. 

    Ring effectively creates the most extensive corporate-owned, civilian-installed surveillance network the US has ever seen. This is very troubling. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/13/2022 – 20:00

  • Leaked Data Suggest Daily Average Of 441 Unaccompanied Children At Border This Year
    Leaked Data Suggest Daily Average Of 441 Unaccompanied Children At Border This Year

    Authored by Rita Li via The Epoch Times,

    An average of 441 children will cross the U.S.-Mexico border alone every day this year, surpassing last year’s record, data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) show.

    “DHS projections call for approximately 148,000 and 161,000 [unaccompanied children] referrals to [Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement] this year. With monthly projections exceeding those seen in FY 2021,” says a document obtained by the Washington Examiner. It reportedly detailed the response plan to the influx from the Department of Health and Human Services as of January 2022.

    Border Patrol prioritizes the transfer of those under the age of 18 who cross the border illegally without a parent or guardian. Another forecast outpaces data from a year earlier, as Customs and Border Protection recorded 147,975 total encounters of single minors in the fiscal year 2021, meaning 405 children per day on average from October 2020 to September 2021.

    Data show more than 101,000 unaccompanied minors have been seized nationwide till May in the current financial year.

    Unlike illegal adult immigrants, U.S. laws provide unaccompanied children cannot be sent back to their country of origin, except for Canada or Mexico, and will be put in border security custody. The majority of the minors apprehended by Border Patrol in 2021 were from Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, or El Salvador, most of whom are between 15 and 17 years old.

    Many children who arrive at the border alone, however, have been transported by human smugglers and cartels.

    Former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott told NTD, the sister media of The Epoch Times, in a previous interview that the influx at the southern border has given cartels the green light to human trafficking, sex trafficking, and creating routes to funnel lethal drugs.

    “The cartels have figured out how to leverage [these gaps], and then they bring in the narcotics … and the people that are being trafficked,” Scott said, warning that criminals have also been smuggled into the nation through these channels.

    The country is now seeing the largest number of apprehensions of illegal immigrants at the U.S.–Mexico border in a calendar year in history. Almost 1.9 million arrests were recorded in 2021, up from 479,000 in 2020. After rolling back key Trump-era policies, the Biden administration was also preparing for scenarios of up to 18,000 encounters per day as of late April.

    Meanwhile, annual deportations have fallen dramatically under Biden’s presidency. In the 2021 financial year, 59,011 illegal immigrants were deported, compared to about 185,884 in 2020 and 267,258 in 2019, according to data released by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimated in an April report that at the end of 2021, 15.5 million illegal aliens were residing in the United States.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/13/2022 – 19:40

  • Soaring CPI Sparks Fed 'Policy Error' Panic Across Markets
    Soaring CPI Sparks Fed ‘Policy Error’ Panic Across Markets

    The yield curve – short and long – is screaming ‘policy error imminent’ as its aggressive anti-inflation fight will inevitably trigger anything but a soft landing and spark a new round of easing/QE that will once and for all crush the central planners’ credibility.

    2s30s has now inverted…

    Source: Bloomberg

    2s10s is the most inverted since 2000…

    Source: Bloomberg

    STIRs are inferring a greater than 66% chance of a 100bps hike in July (and September almost a lock for a further 75bps hike)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    While rate-hike expectations for 2022 are rising, the subsequent rate-cut expectations – as The Fed bails us out of a deep recession – are soaring too (with over 100bps of cuts now priced in beginning in Feb 2023)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    And Q1 is pricing in a full rate-cut…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Overall, the market is now pricing in a more aggressive hiking cycle than The Fed’s Dots in 2022, and then a dramatically more dovish Fed in 2023 and 2024…

    Source: Bloomberg

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    The bond market was very volatile today with a big spike in yields at the CPI print which rapidly rolled over, leaving only the 2Y yield higher on the day (+9bps) and the long-end drastically lower at the long-end (30Y -9bps, down 14bps from the highs)

    Source: Bloomberg

    And before we leave bond-land, here’s what the yield “curve” looks like now…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The euro tumbled to parity against the dollar for the first time in 20 years after the CPI print…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Stocks plunged on the CPI print (hawkish) then bounced on a WSJ report suggesting a 100bps hike is off the table, but when Fed’s Bostic put it squarely back on the table, things rolled over again and stocks went negative.  This is the 4th straight down-day for the Dow and S&P 500…

    And if you think stocks are pricing in what STIRs are – think again. Stocks are still bipolar and squeeze driven as well as hoping beyond hope that the subsequent easing after The Fed pushes the economy into recession will save the day… The issue is whether they can withstand the path-dependent trajectory required to get that easing…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Crypto also had a chaotic day, ending just marginally higher after puking on the CPI print…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Oil ended the day marginally higher, despite demand destruction signals from the inventory data and a growth-threatening hawkish reaction to the CPI print…

    Gold managed gains, rebounding strongly after puking on the CPI print…

    US and EU NatGas prices ripped higher today (EU now triple the cost of US)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The good news continues with US gasoline prices continuing to fall, but they remain up dramatically YoY…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Oh and President Biden spewed the same shit against gas retailers!!!

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    …and as we noted earlier, the US price is drastically higher than that in Mexico…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Finally, a Chicago Fed survey on the outlook for the US economy decreased to minus 60 in June, the worst reading since the survey began and worse than at the depths of the COVID lockdowns in 2020…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Do you really think that will lead to a ‘soft landing’?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/13/2022 – 19:23

  • India Rejects US, EU Calls To Boycott Russian Oil
    India Rejects US, EU Calls To Boycott Russian Oil

    Days ago Reuters reported that Indian imports of Russian oil surged in June, reaching 950,000 barrels of cheap Russian oil per day. From May (where India imported 819,000 bpd) this marked a 15.5% rise, while simultaneously imports from its number one and (now) number three suppliers – Iraq and Saudi Arabia – dropped 10.5% and 13.5%, respectively. And this is a massive leap up from from the 277,000 bpd imported in April.

    The Reuters report further underscored that as the West moves to ban and sanction Russian oil altogether, it’s China and India that now account for 50% of Russian seaborne exports, lured by hugely discounted prices compared to the Brent international benchmark.

    Source: Bloomberg

    As we’ve been detailing, Russia’s energy earnings are already back to pre-war levels after five months of round after round of US and EU sanctions intended to “punish” Moscow and President Vladimir Putin, with analysts widely estimating Russia’s energy sales are now on track to reach $285 billion this year. 

    And the idea in Washington and Brussels all along was that efforts to block or impose a (currently still under discussion) price cap on Russian oil would somehow hinder the ongoing Russian assault on Ukraine. Instead, there appears the opposite effect emerging with blowback on US and EU populations amid higher prices at the pump.

    Yet still, Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo recently acknowledged the lure of cheap oil could be used to get wayward countries like India or China on board, saying in statements to The Associated Press, “We think that ultimately countries around the world that are currently purchasing Russian oil will be very interested in paying as little as possible for that Russian oil.”

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    But so far they remain the chief, powerful hurdles to the possibility of any effectiveness to any proposed EU price cap plan: 

    James Hamilton, an economist at the University of California, San Diego, said garnering the participation of China and India will be important to enforcing any price cap plan.

    “It’s an international diplomatic challenge on how you get people to agree. It’s one thing if you get the U.S. to stop buying oil, but if India and China continue to buy” at elevated prices, “there’s no impact on Russian revenues,” Hamilton told the AP.

    “The less revenue Russia gets from selling oil, the less money they have to send these bombs on Ukraine,” he said.

    Currently, US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is in Sydney for energy talks, where high on the agenda is to get the Quad nations – especially India and Japan – on board with a Russian oil price cap policy. 

    As earlier previewed in Bloomberg:

    Granholm is scheduled to meet with counterparts from the Quad group of nations — Australia, India, Japan and the US — during a visit to Sydney that’ll also touch on cooperation on supply of critical minerals needed for clean energy technologies.

    “We want to put on the table the option of joining a buyers’ group that will have greater market power to be able to lower the price, and therefore lower the price of Russian oil and lower the profits to Putin,” Granholm said Monday in an interview in Sydney.

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    But as emphasized in fresh analysis in Foreign Policy on Wednesday, all indicators are that New Delhi will continue rejecting these pleas “to act” out of the Biden administration. Like with last month’s G7 summit, India’s silence and apparent cold shoulder to the Biden administration’s urgings is speaking louder than words during Quad meetings in Sydney too.

    “Leaders of 12 democracies huddled in an Alpine resort in Bavaria last month,” FP recounted. “They included presidents and prime ministers of the G07 group of industrialized nations as well as their counterparts from India, South Africa, Indonesia, Argentina, and Senegal,” the report continues.

    “But the handshakes, embraces, and jokes couldn’t mask the deep divide among them: While the G07 leaders’ closing communique focused on Russia’s war in Ukraine and efforts to cut the Kremlin’s earnings from energy exports, the 12-nation statement didn’t mention Ukraine, the war, or even oil once.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/13/2022 – 19:20

  • Women Now Make Up The Largest Group Of New Gun Owners
    Women Now Make Up The Largest Group Of New Gun Owners

    Via TheFirearmBlog.com,

    The last couple of years has pushed many on-the-fence people from owning zero guns to at least own one gun. Whether it’s out of a newfound enjoyment for shooting sports or for personal protection, people just seem to be wising up to the benefits of being a firearms owner. Of those new gun owners, women now make up the largest group accounting for nearly half of new gun owners over the last five years.

    Photo: Luke C.

    Women Now Make Up the Largest Group of New Gun Owners

    According to a recent study conducted by Harvard University, women now make up 42% of new gun owners accounting for nearly half of all new gun owners over the past 5-years. This number is up 14% from that same span of time and 3.5 million women joined the ranks of new gun owners between January 2019 and April 2021. An NSSF survey partially backs up this claim by the Harvard study by stating that 1/3rd of 2021’s new gun owners were women.

    Photo: Nic Lenze feat. Carly @jerseyl18

    Keen observers of the firearms industry might have also noticed a distinct shift in the way that firearms companies are producing marketing material with many new products like the recent release of the PDP F Series being specifically marketed towards female shooters. Shooting organizations like “Shoot like a Girl” have also cropped up featuring female firearms instructors whose aim is to bring more women into shooting sports and provide them with a more comfortable environment to train in.

    https://www.instagram.com/jerseyl18/

    In the study conducted by Harvard University, one-quarter of the women surveyed said self-defense was the main reason they wanted to purchase a firearm for the first time with many citing the uptick in civil unrest and reduction of law enforcement assets during the summer of 2020. Another reason cited by many women as to why they’ve armed themselves is that many of them are now living alone and feel more comfortable having a firearm in the home for self-defense.

    https://www.instagram.com/jerseyl18/

    Regardless of what is spurring this increase in gun ownership amongst women, I think this is a net positive for the firearms industry as a whole and the women that the industry is trying to serve. Let us know if the ladies that you know are taking on an increased interest in firearms and what they are saying as to how or why they’re getting into firearms.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/13/2022 – 19:00

  • Freeport LNG Terminal Explosion Sparked 450-Foot-High Fireball, Report Says
    Freeport LNG Terminal Explosion Sparked 450-Foot-High Fireball, Report Says

    Freeport LNG’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal in Texas experienced an explosion last month that created a massive 450-feet-high fireball and had a section of pipe at the facility under inspection several weeks before the incident, according to Bloomberg. 

    A new filing published on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s website sheds light on the accident at the second-largest US LNG export plant, which was consuming about 2 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) of natural gas before it shut on June 8.

    IFO Group LLC, a Texas-based fire & explosion, and risk management consultancy, is preparing a release of a report to Freeport and federal regulators by the end of this month about the events that unfolded before the explosion. 

    Contractors performing maintenance work on a storage tank reported hearing unusual sounds the morning of the blast, according to the filing. Plant officials responded by conducting an inspection, but didn’t observe any anomalies. The sounds were reported two days after an investigation into a nearby “pipe movement.”

    The explosion happened along a 700-foot section of pipe where LNG had become trapped, causing pressure to build. The ensuing rupture released a cloud of gas that ignited. The fireball lasted for 5 to 7 seconds, while the fire burned for 30 minutes. Contractors with the firm Puffer-Sweiven performed routine tests in April on a pressure safety valve that’s part of the same system of pipes that subsequently failed. The equipment passed inspection, but Freeport LNG is investigating if a related valve was left closed after the tests. — Bloomberg 

    Bloomberg data shows the terminal impacts 20% of all US LNG exports, much of which has been designated to supply-stricken Europe. Freeport LNG has said the facility could reopen by October, but some analysts have pointed out that the facility could remain closed for much longer. 

    “The actual process (of reviews, repairs and approvals) will take longer than three months, and potentially take six to 12 months,” said Alex Munton, director of global gas and LNG at consultants Rapidan Energy Group.

    The silver lining is low US stockpiles are being filled up as the export plant in Texas has left more natgas on the grid. This is bad news for Europe.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 07/13/2022 – 18:40

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