May 14

Today’s News 14th May 2021

  • Poll Shows 27% Of European Adults Likely To Refuse Vaccine In Latest Threat To Growth Outlook
    Poll Shows 27% Of European Adults Likely To Refuse Vaccine In Latest Threat To Growth Outlook

    After getting off to a rocky start, Europe’s vaccination campaign has accelerated in recent weeks, despite lingering restrictions on the continent’s “workhorse” AstraZeneca jab (over concerns about deadly cerebral blood clots that have affected a small number of patients with low blood-platelet counts), and lingering skepticism among many younger people, including health-care workers.

    According to the latest numbers from Bloomberg, more than 1.36 billion doses of various vaccines have been administered (though this figure likely leaves out many millions who have been vaccinated in China) and of these, EU countries have administered just over 200M. Still, only 12% of European adults have been fully vaccinated, and that number has been rising with agonizing slowness.

    And as the US prepares to start vaccinating children as young as 12, vaccine skepticism remains a major long-term obstacle to Europe’s long-term growth outlook, which is becoming an increasingly important piece of many investors’ outlook for an expected sharp rebound in global growth over the coming year as the developed world emerges from the COVID era.

    Just this morning, Starwood’s Barry Sternlicht exclaimed during an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that Europe is still mostly under lockdown. But when it reopens “hold on to your chair.”

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    Well, the latest data out of Europe show that what the FT calls “vaccine hesitancy” remains widespread:

    In the bloc, 27 per cent of adults said they were “very unlikely” or “rather unlikely” to agree to a coronavirus shot, the Eurofound survey showed.

    Hesitancy is highest in eastern countries, with Bulgaria leading with 61% saying they’re “nervous” about the jab.

    Rejection is higher in many eastern European countries, with Bulgarians the most hesitant of all: 61 per cent are nervous of receiving the jab. Elsewhere in the region, the report finds more than 30 per cent hesitancy in Latvia, Croatia, Slovenia, Poland and Slovakia. Some are as high as 50 per cent.

    But the most skeptical among the larger EU countries might surprise readers: It’s France – where only half of adults say they are “likely” or “rather likely” to get the vaccine. The numbers for Spain and Italy are much lower at just 20%.

    All this begs the question: As Europe’s biggest economies remain under lock and key (with the notable exception of the UK), will the Continent ever reopen?

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/14/2021 – 02:45

  • Ahmadinejad Is Back: Iranian Firebrand Announces Bid For Presidency 
    Ahmadinejad Is Back: Iranian Firebrand Announces Bid For Presidency 

    At a moment that Iranian domestic politics are on a knife’s edge of tension, particularly following the recent hardliner vs. ‘moderate’ row in the wake of the ‘Zarif Gate’ audio leak scandal wherein the foreign minister blasted the military establishment for often sabotaging diplomacy, the Islamic Republic’s former firebrand president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is vying again for leadership of the country.

    On Wednesday he formally submitted and announced his name as a candidate in the upcoming June 18 presidential elections. His Islamic conservative and ‘hardline’ reputation could have drastic impact on the continuing nuclear negotiations with the West should he be elected. 

    He out of the gate referenced that the centrality of the Islamic revolution is vital for safeguarding the country’s interests during a press conference announcing his candidacy.

    “My presence today for registration was based on demand by millions for my participation in the election,” he told reporters after registering. He added: “considering the situation of the country, and the necessity for a revolution in the management of the country.”

    VOA described of his announcement, “Thronged by shouting supporters, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad marched to a registration center at the Interior Ministry where he filled out registration forms. He held up his hands in a ‘V for Victory’ salute, before addressing reporters.”

    The 64-year old Ahmadinejad was Iran’s president from 2005 through 2013 during a period of constant tensions with Washington prior to the 2015 nuclear deal, given the US had accused Iran of sponsoring attacks on American troops in neighboring Iraq, and as Iranian support for Assad during the early period of Syria’s war became more entrenched.

    His disputed 2009 re-election, it should be noted, sparked mass protests which found support from the Western leaders who lambasted Tehran for suppressing the demonstrators.

    Current president Hassan Rouhani, reputed a “moderate” and who famously struck the JCPOA nuclear deal with world powers during Obama’s presidency, cannot run again due to term limits. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/14/2021 – 02:00

  • Escobar: An Insider's View Of The Tragedy Of The US Deep State
    Escobar: An Insider’s View Of The Tragedy Of The US Deep State

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Henry Kissinger, 97, Henry the K. for those he keeps close, is either a Delphic oracle-style strategic thinker or a certified war criminal for those kept not so close…

    He now seems to have been taking time off his usual Divide and Rule stock in trade – advising the combo behind POTUS, a.k.a. Crash Test Dummy – to emit some realpolitik pearls of wisdom.

    At a recent forum in Arizona, referring to the festering, larger than life Sino-American clash, Henry the K. said,

    “It’s the biggest problem for America; it’s the biggest problem for the world. Because if we can’t solve that, then the risk is that all over the world a kind of cold war will develop between China and the United States.”

    In realpolitik terms, this “kind of Cold War” is already on; across the Beltway, China is unanimously regarded as the premier U.S. national security threat.

    Kissinger added U.S. policy toward China must be a mix of stressing U.S. “principles” to demand China’s respect and dialogue to find areas of cooperation:

    “I’m not saying that diplomacy will always lead to beneficial results…This is the complex task we have… Nobody has succeeded in doing it completely.”

    Henry the K. actually must have lost the – diplomatic – plot. What Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov are now involved in, full time, is to demonstrate – mostly to the Global South – how the American-enforced “rules-based international order” has absolutely nothing to do with international law and the respect of national sovereignty.

    At first I had archived these Henry the K. platitudes out of sight. But then someone who used to hold a stellar position at the top of the U.S. Deep State showed he had been paying close attention.

    This personality – let’s call him Mr. S. – has been one of my invaluable, trustworthy sources since the early 2000s. Mutual confidence was always key. I asked him if I could publish selected passages of his analysis, not naming names. Consent was given – ruefully. So fasten your seat belts.

    Dancin’ with Mr. S.

    Mr. S., in a quite intriguing fashion, seems to be expressing the collective views of a number of extremely qualified people. Right from the start, he points out how Henry the K.’s observations explain today’s Russia-China-Iran triangle.

    The first point that we make is that it was not Kissinger who created policy for Nixon, but the Deep State. Kissinger was just a messenger boy.  In the 1972 situation the Deep State wanted to get out of Vietnam, which policy was put in place as containment of communist China and Russia.  We were there based on the domino theory.

    He goes on:

    The Deep State wanted to achieve a number of objectives in approaching Chairman Mao, who was antagonized by Russia. It wanted to ally in 1972 with China against Russia. That made Vietnam meaningless, for China would become the containing party of Russia and Vietnam no longer meant anything. We wanted to balance China against Russia.  Now, China was not a major power in 1972 but it could drain Russia, forcing it to place 400,000 troops on their border.  And our Deep State policy worked. We in the Deep State had thought it through, and not Kissinger. 400,000 troops on the Chinese border was a drain on their budget, as later Afghanistan became with over 100,000 troops, and the Warsaw Pact had another 600,000 troops.

    And that brings us into Afghanistan:

    The Deep State wanted to start a Vietnam for Russia in Afghanistan in 1979.  I was among those against it, as this would needlessly use the Afghani people as cannon fodder and that was unfair. I was overruled. Here Brzezinski was playing Kissinger; another overrated nothing who just carried messages.

    The Deep State also decided to crash the oil price, as that would economically weaken Russia. And that worked in 1985, driving the price to eight dollars a barrel, which ate up half the Russian budget. Then, we basically gave permission for Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait as a ploy to send in our advanced army to knock him out and demonstrate our superiority to the world in weaponry, which very much demoralized the Russians and put the fear of God into Islamic oil.  Then we created the Star Wars fiction.  Russia to our surprise lost their nerve and collapsed.

    Mr. S. defines all of the above as “wonderful” in his opinion, as “communism went out and Christianity came in”:

    We then wanted to welcome Russia into the community of Christian nations, but the Deep State wanted to dismember them. That was  stupid, as they would balance against China at least from their Mackinder point of view. It was naive on my part to hope to a return of Christianity, as the West was moving rapidly toward total moral disintegration.

    In the meantime, our ally China continues to grow as we were not finished with the dismemberment of Russia and the advisors we sent to Russia destroyed the whole economy in the 1990s against my objections. The 78-day Belgrade bombing finally woke Russia up and they started a massive re-militarization as it was obvious that the intention was in the end to bomb Moscow into the ground. So defensive missiles became essential. Thus, the S-300, S-400, S-500 and soon S-600s.

    The Deep State had been warned by me at our meetings on how bombing Belgrade in 1999 would cause Russia to remilitarize and I lost the argument. Belgrade was bombed for 78 days versus the vengeance bombing of Hitler for two days.  And China continues to grow.

    Why balance of power doesn’t work

    And that bring us to a new era – that started in practice with the Chinese announcement of the New Silk Roads in 2013 and Maidan in Kiev in 2014:

    China wakes up to all of this in that they begin to realize that they have been just used, and that the U.S. fleet controls their trade routes, and decides to approach Russia in 2014 just about the time of their witnessing the Maidan overthrow of Ukraine.  This overthrow was organized by the Deep State when they started to understand that they had lost the arms race, and did not even know what was happening.

    The Deep State wanted to draw Russia into a Vietnam again in the Ukraine to drain them and crash the oil price again, which they did.  Beijing studied this and saw the light. If Russia is overthrown, the West will control all their natural resources, which they see themselves needing as they grew into a giant economy larger than the U.S.  And Beijing starts to open up a warm relationship with Moscow seeking to obtain land based natural resources as oil and natural gas from Russia to avoid the seas for natural resources as much as they can. In the meantime, Beijing massively accelerates its building of submarines carrying missiles capable of destroying the U.S. fleets.

    So where does Kissinger in Arizona fit in?

    Now, Kissinger reflects the Deep State angst on the Russia-Chinese relationship and wants this split up for dear life. This is interestingly covered here by Kissinger. He does not want to tell the truth about balance of power realities. He describes them as “our values”, when the U.S. has no values left but anarchy, looting, and burning down hundreds of cities. Biden hopes to buy all these disenfranchised masses as money printing goes wild.

    So we are back to Kissinger shocked at the new Russian-Chinese alliance. They must be separated.

    Now, I do not agree with the balance of power intriguers in that morality or noble values should govern international relations, and not power. The U.S. has been following balance of power dreams since 1900 and now it faces economic ruin. These ideas do not work.  There is no reason the U.S. cannot be a friend of Russia and China and the differences can be worked out. But you cannot get to first base as balance of power considerations dominate everything. That is the tragedy of our time.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/14/2021 – 00:05

  • Desperate Indian Communities Embrace Anti-Malaria Drugs To Protect Against COVID Surge
    Desperate Indian Communities Embrace Anti-Malaria Drugs To Protect Against COVID Surge

    For the past month and a half, the international community has watched in horror as India has suffered from one of the world’s deadliest national outbreaks of COVID-19, provoked in part by a prime minister who held massive political rallies, and allowed massive gatherings for the celebration of Hindu religious holidays, gatherings that epidemiologists say helped seed the latest outbreak.

    Even as the US and Europe have sent vaccines, medicine, oxygen tanks and other supplies, the government has refused to impose more restrictive measures, and the number of daily deaths has continued to accelerate.

    The number of deaths eclipsed 4K on Thursday, topping that level for the second day in a row, as hundreds of patients succumbed to the disease while waiting in ambulances and cars in lengthy queues stretching from the nation’s overrun hospitals.

    As doctors search for alternatives to remedies like Gilead’s remdesevir, a recent Reuters report highlighted just how desperate communities have become to protect against the virus. The situation is so dire, a small number of communities have embraced the unconventional strategy of dosing their populations with anti-malarial drugs to protect against COVID-19 – even though anti-malarial treatments like hydroxychloroquine supposedly don’t function as a COVID-19 prophylactic (that is, according to certain studies widely cited by the medical establishment. Others suggest that the strategies being used by these communities just might work).

    Reuters reports that at least two Indian states have said they plan to dose their populations with the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin to protect against severe COVID-19 infections. And they’re moving ahead with this plan despite the WHO’s statement in late March that the current evidence is “inconclusive”.

    The move by the coastal state of Goa and northern state of Uttarakhand, come despite the World Health Organization and others warning against such measures.

    “The current evidence on the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients is inconclusive,” WHO said in a statement in late March. “Until more data is available, WHO recommends that the drug only be used within clinical trials.”

    Merck, a manufacturer of the drug, has also said available data does not support using the drug as a COVID-19 treatment

    “We do not have enough data to support its use,” said Anita Mathew, an infectious diseases expert in Mumbai.

    While one of the states plans to distribute the medicine to those older than 18, the other plans to administer the medicine to all residents above the age of 2.

    The state of Goa, a major tourist haven, said earlier this week it plans to give ivermectin to all those older than 18, while the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand announced plans on Wednesday to distribute the tablets to any person over the age of two, except for pregnant and lactating women.

    “An expert medical panel has recommended this” Uttarakhand’s Chief Secretary Om Prakash told Reuters. “We are waiting for supplies to come in. Once they do we will distribute this drug.”

    Uttarakhand state in March and April played host to the Kumbh Mela, a weeks-long Hindu gathering that attracted millions of devotees from across the country. Images of the gathering showed scant evidence of any mask wearing or social distancing as throngs of people congregated for a holy dip in the river Ganges.

    The state, ruled by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, has since early April seen its COVID-19 cases surge from under 300 a day to above 7,000 a day and the death toll has also risen sharply.

    One local health official rattled off some evidence that the population-wide dosing might help ameliorate the impact of the pandemic.

    Goa Health Minister Vishwajit Rane said an expert panel based in Europe had found the drug ivermectin reduced the time to recovery and risk of death, but regulators such as WHO and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration say there is little evidence of this.

    The state-run Indian Council of Medical Research recommends doctors could use the drug for mild COVID-19 patients, but warns this is based on “low certainty of evidence”.

    Meanwhile, India reported 362,727 new COVID-19 infections over the last 24 hours while deaths climbed by 4,120, taking the death toll to 258,317, according to health ministry data. The country’s total confirmed cases now stands at 23.7M, though many cases and deaths are believed to have gone uncounted.

    Source: Johns Hopkins

    Meanwhile, the country’s vaccination rate has accelerated slightly as foreign batches arrive (and the benefits of India’s export restrictions have helped to enhance local supply).

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/13/2021 – 23:45

  • Ron Paul: COVID Authoritarians Are Abusing Children
    Ron Paul: COVID Authoritarians Are Abusing Children

    Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

    Centers for Diseases Control (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky has “recommended” that children wear masks while playing. Her offered reason is to ensure Covid is not spread by “heavy breathing” of children near each other while around a soccer ball.

    Dr. Walensky’s recommendation is one more example of Covid authoritarians’ refusal to “listen to the science.” The science says no to lockdowns and masks. The masks are not blocking the very small viruses in “heavy breathing.” Dr. Walensky also ignores the science showing that wearing a mask while exercising or playing sports has negative health effects.

    Dr. Walensky’s most outrageous disregard of science is ignoring the fact that children are statistically unlikely to be at risk of either spreading Covid or becoming very sick from it.

    Dr. Walensky’s recommendation is one of many examples of how children are harmed by the overreaction to coronavirus. Many children have had their physical and mental health damaged because they cannot go to school, play with their friends, or even have a birthday party because of the lockdowns.

    Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, the two major teachers’ unions — the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) — have stood in the way of reopening schools. Teachers’ union leaders have claimed it is too dangerous for teachers to resume in-person instruction, even though adults are at little or no risk of getting Covid from children. Sadly, teachers’ unions are disregarding the interest of children. Recently released emails show the CDC disregarded the science in favor of the AFT’s restrictive guidance when developing recommendations concerning reopening schools.

    The negative effects of lockdowns and school closings for children have led many parents to consider alternatives to government schools.

    Some private schools have not just remained open, they have followed the science and not forced their students to wear masks.

    Many parents are also considering homeschooling. Homeschooling parents obviously can ensure their children are not forced to obey mask, social distancing, and other unscientific mandates.

    Parents interested in providing their children with a quality education that emphasizes the ideas of liberty should consider my homeschooling curriculum. The Ron Paul Curriculum provides students with a well-rounded education that includes rigorous programs in history, mathematics, and the physical and natural sciences. The curriculum also provides instruction in personal finance. Students can develop superior communication skills via intensive writing and public speaking courses. Another feature of my curriculum is that it provides students the opportunity to create and run their own internet-based businesses.

    The government and history sections of the curriculum emphasize Austrian economics, libertarian political theory, and the history of liberty. However, unlike government schools, my curriculum never puts ideological indoctrination ahead of education.

    Interactive forums allow students to learn from each other outside of a formal setting. The curriculum’s emphasis on self-directed learning and student interaction makes it ideal for parents who need to work from home but still want to homeschool their children.

    I encourage parents looking at alternatives to government schools to go to RonPaulCurriculum.com for more information about my homeschooling program.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/13/2021 – 23:25

  • Australia "Ready" To Resume Dialogue With China As Beijing Ratchets Trade War
    Australia “Ready” To Resume Dialogue With China As Beijing Ratchets Trade War

    The past months have seen Australia-China relations reach their lowest point in history. That decline was brought about in Canberra’s decision to join the United States in seeking to curtail China’s economic and political rise, particularly during the final year of the Trump administration.

    The cost has been huge for Australian exports, given China has long been its biggest trading partner, and has since the summer played hardball as it holds all the cards in the trade war, unleashing barriers and sanctions resulting in severe collateral damage on everything from seafood to coal to barley to wine to beef, and tourism sectors – along with hitting some other commodities, even timber.

    And now Australia says it’s ready and willing to resume dialogue with Beijing. On Thursday Australia’s Foreign Minister Marise Payne announced at a press conference while standing alongside US Secretary of State Antony Blinken: “Australia seeks a constructive relationship with China we stand ready at any time, amongst all of my counterparts and colleagues, to resume dialogue.”

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    She underscored further while meeting her US counterpart in D.C. that Australia is “open, clear, consistent” on the number of immense challenges it faces with China.

    And Blinken responded by assuring its ally that the United States will not leave Australia “alone” in the face of China’s aggressive economic coercion. 

    “I reiterated that the United States will not leave Australia alone on the field, or maybe I should say alone on the pitch, in the face of economic coercion by China. That’s what allies do. We have each other’s backs so we can face threats and challenges from a position of collective strength,” Blinken said.

    Payne had followed up further with saying her country “seeks a constructive relationship with China” and that “We stand ready at any time, amongst all of my counterparts and colleagues, to resume dialogue.”

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    “But we have also been open and clear and consistent about the fact that we are dealing with a number of challenges. We welcome the clear expressions of support from Washington as Australia works through those differences. It is hard to think of a truer expression of friendship,” the top Australian diplomat added.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/13/2021 – 23:05

  • Scholars Line Up To Join Anti-‘Woke’ Online Education Platform
    Scholars Line Up To Join Anti-‘Woke’ Online Education Platform

    Submitted by Peter Svab of The Epoch Times,

    Hundreds of scholars, including some distinguished figures, have applied for positions at an online education startup that promises explicitly non-“woke” instruction in a number of academic disciplines.

    A college student follows a remote class in Los Angeles (Getty Images).

    Named “American Scholars,” the project was started several months ago by Matthew Pohl, former University of Pennsylvania admissions officer. As soon as word got out, résumés started to stream in from academics offering their participation, its leaders said.

    Pohl described the project as the fruit of his gradual disillusionment with his career in the academic world, where he drove admissions at several prestigious universities. He noticed that with regard to education, most students weren’t getting their money’s worth, attributing that to the “administrative bloat” of establishment colleges, as well as the spread of quasi-Marxist ideologies that have come to be collectively known as “wokeness.”

    He intends the project as an antidote to both. The interactive format of part-lecture, part-documentary video with quizzes, and feedback sessions will aspire to demonstrate that quality learning can be furnished at a fraction of the cost of a modern-day college. Meanwhile, the content itself will be rooted in traditional American values, in sharp contrast to the ideologies currently dominating most universities that promote hostility toward such values.

    “There is a massive and unrecognized demand for actual professors, business leaders, real thinkers whom regular people can associate with and learn from to better understand how they can live better lives through the Constitution and through conservative values,” Pohl told The Epoch Times, later adding that the guiding principles of the project could be more accurately described as “classical liberalism.”

    “We actually expect a significant number of people who do not identify as conservative to join us—simply because they agree with our values,” he said in an email.

    For the role of chief academic officer, who is responsible for the scholarly grade of the content, Pohl tapped Michael Rectenwald, a retired liberal studies professor at New York University.

    Having given up his communist beliefs, Rectenwald left his job after he irked colleagues by criticizing the woke ideology. He went on to become an authority on corporate socialism, a convergence of government and business interest in establishing a novel form of totalitarian, socialist rule. He’s authored several books on the topic, including “Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom,” which warns against the rising power and ambitions of gigantic digital companies.

    American Scholars will offer modules taught by bona fide academics on history, the Constitution, the natural sciences, math, writing, business, economics and personal finance, ideological studies, literature, technology science, law, and religious studies, Rectenwald said.

    He’s already received applications from several hundred scholars, including some prominent names, from which he’ll be soon picking the first 10 instructors.

    “We even have chairs of departments interested in working for us,” he said.

    Rectenwald shared with The Epoch Times a sample of the applicants’ names under the condition that they won’t be released for now, as none of them has yet been selected for any of the positions. In addition, Rectenwald has his own list of “top-notch talent” he’ll ask to come onboard.

    “It’s going to be something where they’re able to deliver content in the way they want to, without the pressures that are being exerted on them in the university system to accommodate various ideologies like critical race theory and socialism and postmodernism and so forth,” he said, adding that such ideologies also will be taught, but from a critical standpoint.

    The first offerings, planned to start in the fall, will focus on history, the Constitution, economics, and personal finance, he said.

    The material will be suited for homeschoolers, college prep, as well as adult learning.

    The project doesn’t seek to be accredited as an actual university, but rather to equip its alumni with the knowledge to “push back against some of the pernicious ideologies that are being purveyed in the system,” Rectenwald said.

    “We’ve got to be frank. We’re in the midst of a major culture war.”

    The content range, as well as the format of the platform, was selected based on a series of focus group polls of a total of about 1,000 families, Pohl said. Personal finance, for example, stood out as both an acute interest of the poll respondents as well as a blind spot of the current university system, where students often sign up for massive debt with little to no calculation of return on investment that would allow them to make such decisions adeptly, according to Pohl.

    Development of the online platform is run by an expert who for now requires anonymity, due to his involvement with Big Tech, Pohl said.

    So far, the project is self-funded with some offers coming in from investors, he said. He plans a subscription model starting at $19 a month and scaling up to about $39 a month for premium access.

    American Scholars fits into a growing selection of education platforms that approach their material from a more traditional standpoint. The conservative Hillsdale College offers free courses on a variety of politically relevant subjects, while PragerU recently began offering an online education portal for K–12 students.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/13/2021 – 22:45

  • "This Is The Ministry Of Truth": Merriam-Webster Edits Definition For "Anti-Vaxxer" To Include Opponents Of Mandatory Jabs
    “This Is The Ministry Of Truth”: Merriam-Webster Edits Definition For “Anti-Vaxxer” To Include Opponents Of Mandatory Jabs

    In another horrifyingly Orwellian example of the media world powers-that-be – in this case, dictionary impresario Merriam-Webster, struggling for relevance in the digital age – the official definition of the word “anti-vaxxer” (a recent edition to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary) has been changed to include people who oppose forced inoculation mandates.

    It’s a subtle, but still shocking, example of how the White House’s narrative trickles down through the media firmament, from the news, to talk shows, and even to the dowdy business of reference-book publishing.

    RT reported on the change, citing a tweet from rapper and podcaster Zuby, who tweeted a photo of the changed definition with the caption “Welcome to 1984. This is The Ministry of Truth”.

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    Many others commented, with some noting that they now fit the definition of “anti-vaxxer”, a term that has sunk to just a notch above “nazi” in the parlance of American Social Justice Warriors.

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    Others pointed out that this is what happens when the left dominates the media landscape.

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    This isn’t the first time that Merriam-Webster has been embroiled in an ugly political episode. Back in October, Merriam-Webster edited its definition of the word “preference” to explicitly note that it is now considered “offensive” in reference to a person’s “sexual preference.” The revision helped back up Hawaii Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono when she accused Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett of being biased against gay people when she used the term as a synonym for ”sexual orientation.”

    For the record, the term “anti-vaxxer” is relatively new, having entered the Merriam-Webster dictionary lexicon in 2009. The connotation is that anyone who expresses skepticism about vaccines or their safety is branded as an unhinged conspiracy theorist on par with the “9/11 truthers” or those who believe in the “Flat Earth” conspiracies.

    In the 21st century, all media companies are being forced to find new ways to innovate and monetize, now that the fact that their entire dictionary is available online for free has started to cut into book sales growth, we suppose MW has, in its own way, decided to innovate. Since nobody cares about facts and the correct usage of words, it will just tell you whether using them will make you racist or not.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/13/2021 – 22:25

  • US, Japan, France Hold First-Ever Joint Drills In Japanese Territory With Eye On China
    US, Japan, France Hold First-Ever Joint Drills In Japanese Territory With Eye On China

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    The US, France, and Japan on Tuesday began joint ground and naval military exercises, marking the first time the three countries are holding drills together in Japanese territory.

    The week-long exercises come as the US is looking to boost military cooperation between its allies in the region to counter China. Tensions between Japan and China have been high due to a dispute over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.

    Getty Images

    The exercises started in the Nagasaki Prefecture at Camp Ainoura, where Japan’s Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade is headquartered. The Japanese amphibious unit was established in 2018 and was created to focus on outlying islands that Japan claims, like the Senkakus, or Diayous as they are known in China.

    Speaking to reporters, Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said Tokyo was looking to expand its military ties with “like-minded” countries beyond the US. He described France as “a like-minded country that shares with Japan the vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

    Australia will also join a part of the exercises that will be held in the East China Sea. The US, Japan, Australia, and India form the informal grouping known as the Quad, which is seen as a possible foundation for a NATO-style military alliance in Asia. France joined the Quad for military exercises when it led naval drills in the Bay of Bengal.

    Above: Opening ceremony for exercise Jeanne D’Arc 21, in Camp Ainoura, Sasebo, Japan, May 11, 2021. Source: US Marine Corps

    Strengthening military ties in Asia is a crucial part of the Biden administration’s China policy. In his first address to Congress, President Biden said he told Chinese President Xi Jinping that the US “will maintain a strong military presence in the Indo-Pacific just as we do with NATO in Europe.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/13/2021 – 22:05

  • "It's Not Great": Biden Stimulus Hits Turbulence As Pushback Grows Over Disincentivized Workers
    “It’s Not Great”: Biden Stimulus Hits Turbulence As Pushback Grows Over Disincentivized Workers

    The Biden administration’s latest push to further endebt the country with unnecessary stimulus has hit a ‘series of speed bumps‘ as The Hill puts it.

    Who would have guessed that showering unemployed people with money has disincentivized them from finding work, while the same overstimulus has led to inflation which we’re told is ‘transitory’ despite today’s y/y PPI print of 6.2% (vs. 5.8% expected) being the highest on record.

    Exhibit A:

    Exhibit B:

    Exhibit C:

    Meanwhile, eleven GOP-led states are all making moves to cancel unemployment benefits thanks to the worker shortage, and the US Chamber of Commerce urged Biden to end pandemic handouts – saying that “paying people to work” is killing the recovery.

    Any questions?

    Of course there are, because facts are now a partisan issue. More via The Hill:

    Economists are split over the issue, but it has served as an opening for Republicans to get a toehold in the unfolding battle for public opinion on Biden’s plans.

    “It’s not great,” one Democratic strategist acknowledged of the April jobs report. “And it will certainly slow down the process and any momentum Biden had in recent weeks without a doubt because Republicans will use this to show that some of these ideas being pushed aren’t sound.”

    The above has left moderate Democrats scrambling to reel in Biden’s $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill. Some have suggested a smaller infrastructure package which would be much more narrowly focused in the hopes of gaining bipartisan support ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

    Progressive Democrats, however – apparently not understanding that members of their own party such as Joe Manchin will block aggressive money grabs – say the party needs to ‘go big’ and stop worrying about all this bipartisan malarkey.

    “Let’s not pretend that Republicans are interested in any sort of compromise. Let’s go big, go bold, and make the ultra-rich and corporations finally pay their fair share so we can invest in working families,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) in a Wednesday tweet following a meeting between Biden and bipartisan leaders regarding his infrastructure plan.

    Inflation is of course the next problem for Biden – after CPI rose 0.8% in April and 4.2% y/y leading into April – exactly what we (and former Obama economic adviser Larry Summers, as it so happens) warned of while Biden was pushing the $1.9 trillion pandemic package.

    The White House is downplaying the whole thing – with press secretary Jen Psaki describing the inflation as “transitory.”

    “We knew just as the economy sort of shrunk and shut down that as it’s turning back on there would be some of these impacts,” she said, adding: “As we experience this massive transition, we continue to chart our path to recovery and we know that a number of the investments that we have proposed were long needed even before the last several months.”

    Altogether, the latest economic data is likely to ‘complicate’ stimulus negotiations to put it lightly.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/13/2021 – 21:45

  • Ohio Offers Weekly Million Dollar Lottery Prize For Vaccinated People 
    Ohio Offers Weekly Million Dollar Lottery Prize For Vaccinated People 

    The US is reporting around 118 million people are fully vaccinated this week. At about 2.2 million shots per day, that is impressive but not enough. Ohio, in particular, has concocted a plan to boost the number of people getting the COVID-19 vaccine by entering them in a weekly drawing for a million dollars, according to local news WLWT. 

    Gov. Mike DeWine uses the old “carrot and stick” trick, otherwise known as a motivational tactic that uses a reward (such as the chance to win a million dollars) to influence human behavior and push more people to receive the vaccine. 

    Five Ohioans will be drawn over five weeks, with the first drawing held on May 26. 

    “The pool of names for the drawing will be derived from the Ohio Secretary of State’s publicly available voter registration database,” said DeWine.”Further, we will make available a webpage for people to sign up for the drawings if they are not in a database we are using.”

    The Ohio Department of Health is sponsoring the special weekly drawing for vaccinated people. DeWine is using existing federal COVID relief funds for the winning prize. 

    The only qualifications Ohioans need are to be vaccinated and over the age of 18.

    “I know that some may say, ‘DeWine, you’re crazy! This million-dollar drawing idea of yours is a waste of money.’ But truly, the real waste at this point in the pandemic — when the vaccine is readily available to anyone who wants it — is a life lost to COVID-19,” the governor said.

    Using newly printed money as a motivational tactic to manipulate human behavior to get more residents to receive the vaccine is absolutely dystopic in every way. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/13/2021 – 21:25

  • Here Are The States Hardest Hit By The Gasoline Shortage
    Here Are The States Hardest Hit By The Gasoline Shortage

    Colonial Pipeline restarted operations Wednesday evening after a ransomware attack paralyzed the entire pipeline system that spans from Texas to New Jersey since last Friday. The company warned it could take days to normalize and that its pipeline would not be fully functional immediately. 

    Colonial’s pipeline carries about 100 million gallons per day of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel, resumed operations around 1700 ET Wednesday. The company said it would take several days for deliveries to recover fully, and disruptions are still possible. 

    Four states and federal regulators relaxed fuel driver restrictions to increase deliveries of supplies to stem fuel shortages. Georgia suspended sales tax on gasoline until Saturday.

    Tracking firm GasBuddy (by the way, the number one app in the App Store) outlines the hardest hit states by the fuel shortage. 

    As of 2300 ET Wednesday (or an hour before midnight), GasBuddy provided a full list of the percent of gas stations with fuel outages per state:

    • AL 9%
    • DC 42% 
    • DE 5%
    • FL 29% 
    • GA 50% 
    • KY 3% 
    • LA 0% 
    • MD 31% 
    • MS 6% 
    • NC 74% 
    • NJ 1% 
    • SC 53% 
    • TN 27% 
    • TX 0% 
    • VA 56% 
    • WV 6%

    The Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia, Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Tennessee seem to be the hardest hit states by the gasoline shortage, with relief that may not come until the weekend. Even if Colonial’s pipeline system is flowing, there is a shortage of qualified tanker drivers that may prolong shortages or at least result in continued elevated prices. 

    All week, drivers across the Southeast US have waited in long lines to fill up, panic hoarded fuel, were given a taste of what it’s like to live in socialist Venezuela. 

    With the fuel shortage crisis entering the sixth day, seventeen states and Washington, DC, are still under emergency declarations to address fuel shortages. 

    The emergency declaration covers Alabama, Arkansas, D.C., Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. 

    The shortage has pushed up the average US price of gasoline above the $3 mark for the first time in 6.5 years. 

    Just how much inflation is the consumer willing to take? Well, a breaking point could be nearing as consumer prices are exploding at the fastest pace since the early 1980s. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/13/2021 – 21:05

  • Stockman: Good Riddance, Liz Cheney!
    Stockman: Good Riddance, Liz Cheney!

    Authored by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

    There have been few politicians in modern times who have done more to undermine personal liberty, capitalist prosperity, small government and especially world peace than the Cheney Clan. So upon Liz Cheney’s ouster from the #3 job in the US House GOP hierarchy, we say: Good riddance!

    And, no, we don’t begrudge her vote to impeach the Donald. The man is such an insufferable bully-boy and megalomaniac that upon his richly deserved exile from Washington her “yes” vote amounted to little more than a slightly offensive Bronx cheer. But what is profoundly offensive about the Cheneys is their central role in high-jacking the Republican Party in behalf of the demented worldview of a small priesthood of neocon intellectuals. The latter have turned the Warfare State of the now defunct cold war with the Soviet Union into a globe-spanning imperialist monster that has bled America dry fiscally and unleashed unjustified destruction and mayhem all around the planet in a manner that would have put even Imperial Rome to shame.

    Via CQ Roll Call/Getty Image

    The immorality, stupidity and monumental fiscal waste of the neocon Forever Wars is bad enough, but actually there is something even more lamentable. To wit, in today’s world, prosperity and liberty depend more than ever on fiscal rectitude and a conservative party that fights relentlessly and effectively to uphold it. Otherwise, the inherent self-aggrandizing proclivities of the state and the pork-barrel propensities of elected politicians will mushroom unchecked.

    Yet impairment of the fiscally conservative party was the basic and original reason why the Reagan Revolution failed. It was hard enough to get elected GOP legislators to walk the plank in behalf of canceling popular Washington handouts or curtailing the entitlement benefits of up to 45% of the public that gets checks directly or indirectly from Uncle Sam. And that was even with the tailwind of a charismatic communicator in the Oval Office.

    But when they were asked to face the slings and arrows of domestic interest groups and beneficiaries enraged by the Gipper’s budget cuts while simultaneously voting for massive defense increases even larger than the domestic cuts, well, they just didn’t.

    After the early 1981 round of modest spending cuts it was all over except the shouting because the incipient neocons of the day convinced Reagan that the economically and industrially collapsing Soviet Union was still striving for world domination and first strike nuclear capacity, when both propositions amounted to exaggerations, lies and self-serving propaganda of the military industrial complex.

    As a result, Reagan essentially threw in the towel on domestic spending retrenchment to save his huge and wholly unnecessary defense buildup. In turn, that meant that virtually no domestic programs of material import were abolished, thereby insuring that the programs modestly cut in 1981 could live for another day and an eventual recovery and make-whole, which is what actually happened.

    So when the defense budget kept rising and some of the domestic cuts just got pushed back to state and local governments, the total spending share of GDP barely missed a beat during the Reagan era. In fact, the government spending share of GDP ended higher than during any previous presidential term since WWII.

    Total Government Spending Share of GDP:

    • Eisenhower 1960: 27.5%;
    • Kennedy-Johnson 1968: 30.7%;
    • Nixon-Ford 1976: 32.9%;
    • Carter 1980: 32.7;
    • Reagan 1988: 33.7%

    Still, contrary to neocon revisionism, the Reagan defense buildup did not cause the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. It was the inherent impossibility of communist dictatorship and central planning that caused its economy to fail, the morale of its people to wither and its military to run out of resources.

    This not only put the lie to the Reagan defense buildup, but, more importantly, offered the Republican party a historic reprieve. It could now jettison its embrace of Big Government on the Pentagon side of the Potomac and its politically motivated acquiescence to the Welfare State to assure funding for the the Warfare State.

    But that was not to be and it’s Liz Cheney’s old man more than anyone else who is responsible. By becoming a stalwart war-hawk, he helped lose the strategic moment in history in 1991 when the shell of the Soviet Union formerly disappeared from the face of the earth, bringing to a close the 75-Years War that incepted with the “guns of August” in 1914.

    At that point, America needed a Secretary of Defense who could see that the waters of war had parted, and that the Warfare State which had barnacled American governance for most of the years since the Great War could now be dismantled. Destiny had, in fact, bestowed upon Washington a golden opportunity to lead the world to disarmament and a restoration of the status quo ante of 1913—a world at peace and enjoying a flowering of global commerce, prosperity and freedom like never before.

    What America got, instead, was a brash advocate of Washington hegemony in a now so-called “unipolar” world and an arrogant champion of applying military power or the threat of it against weak states like Iraq, Iran and North Korea which did not bend to Washington’s edicts, even if they presented no national security threat to the American homeland (they clearly didn’t).

    Indeed, Dick Cheney emerged during those years as the foremost advocate of the American Imperium, and not unsurprisingly so. We had known him as a colleague in the US House as a moderate conservative on the issues, but also as a man in a hurry to accumulate power. That he did by rising to the rank of House GOP Conference Chairman after 1985, the same position that Liz Cheney holds today.

    So when Bush the Elder called upon him to become defense secretary in 1989, Cheney was by then a 50-year old who had spent his entire career suckling from the public teat. That started in the Wisconsin statehouse in 1966 and thereafter he was quickly off to Washington as a Congressional intern in 1969. There he soon hitched his star to Don Rumsfeld in the Nixon White House, eventually working his way up the slippery slope to Chief of Staff to President Ford. And that was followed by election to Congress from Wyoming in 1978 and embrace of the neocon national security ideology during his years in the US House in the 1980s.

    The man’s sins as Secretary of Defense were history changing. He fully supported Bush the Elder’s rash drawing of a line in the sand during Saddam’s petty quarrel with the Emir of Kuwait over OPEC quotas; the latter’s alleged theft of oil from Iraq via directional drilling along their artificial border that had been affixed by the Arab League as recently as 1960; and the war debts to Kuwait that had stemmed from Saddam’s Gulf States supported invasion of Iran during the 1980s.

    The fact is, America had no dog in that hunt and should have never intervened military, but essentially did so because it could for the first time since WW II owing to the Soviet Union’s disappearance.

    What added insult to injury, however, was Dick Cheney’s personal diplomacy in convincing Saudi Arabia to permit several hundred thousand American troops to be deployed on the sacred lands of the two holy places, the catalyst which turned America’s anti-Soviet mercenary army in Afghanistan, Osama bin-Laden and his al-Qaeda jihadists, into implacable enemies. The war on terrorism which inexorably followed thereupon was essentially the spawn of Cheney’s foolish brinkmanship in a middle eastern world he did not remotely understand and which presented no threat to the safety and security of America anyway.

    Likewise, it was Cheney and his neocon pals in the administration of Bush the Elder who launched the unwarranted demonization of Iran, which became another bloody thread in the neocon hegemony. The phony “leading state sponsor of terrorism” charge, in fact, has justified Washington’s destructive meddling in the region ever since.

    Ironically, after Washington helped Saddam Hussein make war on the Iranians during the 1980s, Cheney ultimately put him to the gallows during the regency of Bush the Younger, paving the way for his fortunately aborted plan to take out Iran’s embryonic uranium enrichment facilities with nuclear bombs. The single most important development attendant upon the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, of course, was the opportunity for NATO to declare victory, fold its tent and dissolve.

    Alas, that was not to be, either, because it was Dick Cheney and his neocon henchman who got the NATO allies into the first Gulf War and conceived of the perversely misguided strategy of bringing the former eastern European satellites of the Soviet Union into NATO. So doing, they laid the foundation for today’s utterly pointless and dangerous confrontation with Russia owing to NATO’s hostile presence on its very doorstep.

    Needless to say, the Cheneys are a case of the rotten apple falling directly and completely from the poisoned tree. To our knowledge, Liz Cheney has never strayed an inch from the neocon line on any of the Forever Wars, Washington’s foolishly provocative pressure on Russia or the current insane $800 billion national security budget.

    Undoubtedly, the Donald’s rejection of the neocon imperium, poorly and inconsistently executed as it was, is what turned the Cheneys into enemies. And for that, at least, he deserves some credit. Moreover, if his misguided followers in the ranks of House Republicans can now get rid of the Cheney Clan, he deserves even more.

    At least that would be a start toward the restoration of a conservative party free from the toxic influence of Washington’s neocon cabal, and therefore capable of re-engaging with its real mission in American democracy—that of bringing Leviathan to heel on both sides of the Potomac.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/13/2021 – 20:45

  • Chamath Palihapitiya Is 'Doing Just Fine' As SPAC Implosion Leaves Retail Traders Holding The Bag
    Chamath Palihapitiya Is ‘Doing Just Fine’ As SPAC Implosion Leaves Retail Traders Holding The Bag

    Not that long ago, Bloomberg lauded Chamath Palihapitiya as the “King of SPACs” and the trendiest investor in America. Now, the financial news organization’s tone has changed, portraying him more like the pied piper who led an army of retail traders to their doom. Take for example Arnav Naik, a teenaged Michigan residents who parlayed $5K into $35K day trading within 6 months during the pandemic.

    After seeing Palihapitiya’s tweets about Clover, he decided to take that sum and plunk it down on Clover call options.

    While longtime money managers wince at these antics, Palihapitiya’s fan base has been eating it all up. Arnav Naik, a 17-year-old from Troy, Mich., says he got into SPACs after his high school went remote and his swim season was canceled. He started reading the Reddit day-trading forum WallStreetBets and trading stock options, parlaying about $5,000 in savings into $35,000 within six months by betting on an electric-truck SPAC and GameStop.

    After seeing Palihapitiya tweet about Clover, Naik doubled down. In January he put almost all his money into Clover call options—an all-or-nothing bet that the shares would go up. If they climbed to, say, $35 he could turn his savings into $130,000. “When you slap a name like ‘Chamath’ on there, it has a lot of potential to rocket up, like how Tesla did with Elon,” he says. “He’s going to join the WallStreetBets meme god pantheon.”

    Clover, like many other SPAC stocks, has tumbled this year as investors have come to doubt whether its business model is actually viable. Chamath’s Social Capital fund, has, of course, posted enviable returns over the past decade, investing in bitcoin, Tesla, Slack and others. Coming from humble origins (his Sri Lankan parents arrived in Ottawa as refugees), Palihapitiya made his way to work in venture capital, before convincing a 23-year-old Mark Zuckerberg to appoint him head of growth at Facebook.

    Despite these successes, Chamath has, since at least 2007, been honing a pitch where he casts himself as the consummate insider who can’t wait to break into the capitalist rulers club and upset the existing order. In that time, he has slammed everyone from VCs to consultants – basically everybody he works with.

    His targets over the years include Facebook Inc.: “Ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.” Venture capitalists: “A bunch of soulless cowards” who pump money into “useless, idiotic companies.” Charitable giving: It’s done for “branding” and “validation.” Politicians: “They’re all f—ing puppets.” The startup economy: “An enormous multivariate kind of Ponzi scheme.” The traditional IPO process: “Negative value.” Hedge funds: “Those suck.” Big banks: “No smart person goes and works at Goldman.” Government: “Just a large validation of one’s personal ego.” Consultants: “Useless.”

    One early boss told Bloomberg that Palihapitiya had more “chutzpah” than tech know-how.

    He went into banking after studying electrical engineering at the University of Waterloo, but quit when he received no bonus, he said on a podcast in December. He dreamed of making the Forbes billionaires list, and at his first tech job, at AOL, according to Josh Felser, who hired him, he’d say he expected to hit that number before he turned 30. “He knew little about tech, yet he had chutzpah and was an in-your-face negotiator, which we needed,” Felser says. He adds that Palihapitiya regularly stole his parking spot.

    This chutzpah helped him sell SPACs like Virgin Galactic and Clover, one of the sector’s biggest disasters, which has drawn short sellers including Hindenburg Research, which originally disclosed a federal investigation into the company. As BBG points out, while retail investors like the teenage Naik will likely lose everything, Chamath and the big hedge funds that invested early will walk away with profits.

    Naik, Palihapitiya’s teenage fan, has lost almost all his money and won’t get it back unless Clover’s stock rebounds. But he doesn’t blame Palihapitiya. “He’s doing the best he can,” Naik says. “It’ll keep growing. I really think I’ll get a huge return.” Regardless of the outcome, he plans to become an investment banker.

    Unlike Naik, the hedge funds that invested in the SPAC that merged with Clover made money—filings show most sold and pocketed a quick gain around the time the deal was announced. Palihapitiya and his partners did even better. Because they gave themselves 20.7 million shares for putting the deal together, their $171 million investment has almost doubled to $320 million. A week after the Hindenburg report, Palihapitiya said he controlled a $10 billion to $15 billion fortune, triple what he’d told another interviewer 10 months earlier, and compared himself to Warren Buffett.

    With his fortune swelling to as much as $15 billion even as an index of SPACs has fallen 17% from the highs earlier in the year, Palihapitiya is already reportedly chasing his next deal with Equinox, the fancy gym chain.

    And if anybody knows the gym business, it’s Chamath.

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/13/2021 – 20:25

  • Mall Traffic Hits Post-Pandemic High as Retail Recovery Continues
    Mall Traffic Hits Post-Pandemic High as Retail Recovery Continues

    Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

    American shoppers continued to flock to the nation’s malls in greater numbers in April, with the foot traffic gap nearly halving in just two months, reinforcing the view of a retail recovery gaining traction.

    Foot traffic at a sample of 50 malls in April showed that, compared to the pre-pandemic April 2019 level, it was down 18.7 percent, a marked improvement from recent months, according to a report provided to The Epoch Times by mobile-device location data analytics firm Placer.ai.

    “In this metric, there was a strong forward momentum with the visit gap shrinking from 23.7 percent down in March to just 18.7 percent down in April,” the company said in the report.

    “This is the strongest mark the index has seen since the pandemic began, and another sign that the retail recovery is already in progress,” the report noted, adding that the data “further deepens the optimism around top tier malls and their ability to anchor key retail expansions moving forward.”

    Placer’s report also featured a striking statistic, namely that mall foot traffic surged by a staggering 3991.7 percent in April compared to April 2020, although the report noted that “this number is essentially meaningless as the comparison is to a fully shut down month the year prior.” An earlier mall traffic comparison between March 2021 and March 2020 showed a sharp 86 percent rise, although with much the same caveat that the baseline was low due to pandemic-related closures in March last year.

    The fate of the retail recovery was clouded by earlier economic data showing U.S. consumer spending falling by the most in 10 months in February as a cold snap gripped many parts of the country and the boost from a second round of stimulus checks faded. But the most recent release from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) dispelled much of that gloom, showing personal consumption expenditures in March saw a sharp 4.2 percent boost. Consumption is a key driver of the U.S. economy, accounting for around two-thirds of gross domestic product.

    The consumer spending data came on the heels of a Moody’s report that upgraded its outlook for the U.S. retail and apparel sector from stable to positive.

    “As pandemic pressures ease and the cadence of vaccinations accelerates, we expect the retail sector to experience broad-based improvement. Operating profit will grow a robust 10-12 percent in 2021, and hard-hit sectors such as apparel, department stores, and off-price will see the most pronounced operating profit growth over the next 12 to 18 months,” said Mickey Chadha, Moody’s vice president and senior credit officer, in a statement.

    U.S. economic growth accelerated sharply at a 6.4 percent annualized rate in the first quarter, fueled by the rush of consumer spending, according to a separate BEA release on U.S. gross domestic product.

    But the accelerating growth has revived concerns about the economy overheating and putting upward pressure on prices.

    A Labor Department report Wednesday showed that inflation has soared above economists’ predictions and by the most in over a decade, as fiscal stimulus and booming demand pushed against supply constraints.

    The year-over-year consumer price index (CPI), a measure of inflation, jumped by 4.2 percent in April after rising 2.6 percent in March. This is the largest 12-month increase since September 2008, when the index rose by 4.9 percent.

    On a monthly basis, the CPI inflation measure jumped 0.8 percent in April after rising 0.6 percent in March, while the so-called core CPI, which excludes the volatile food and energy components, soared by 0.9 percent. The surge in the core CPI is the largest monthly increase since April 1982.

    The spike in inflation is likely to stoke fears of an interest rate hike by the Fed, although Federal Reserve officials have played down the concerns by predicting that price rises would be “transitory.”

    Fed officials have also repeatedly said they will not raise rates or reduce the monthly bond-buying program until inflation averages around two percent for a longer period of time.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/13/2021 – 20:05

  • The QE Endgame: A Big Problem Is Emerging For The Fed
    The QE Endgame: A Big Problem Is Emerging For The Fed

    For the second time in three weeks, the US Treasury sold $40BN in 4-week bills at a price of 100.000% representing a rate of 0.00%.

    To be sure, Bills had printed at 0.000% at auction previously, but that was largely during the reserve glut days of 2015.

    So why now? The same reason usage of the Fed’s Reverse Repo facility has soared in recent weeks from zero to over $100 billion at the end of April, hitting a whopping $235 billion today…

    …as investors choose to directly transact with the Fed – where only positive rates are allowed – rather than the open market where collateral rates have frequently been negative in recent weeks as Curvature’s Scott Skyrm explained in this note from April 26:

    Overnight rates are low. Too low by all normal standards. The fed funds rate is well below the mid-point of the fed funds target range and the Repo GC rate is at zero; often trading negative. Zero percent interest rates are forcing billions of dollars of cash into the Fed’s RRP facility.

    While this This is a delightful case of deja vu irony – the Fed is taking Treasurys out of the market through QE purchases and putting them right back in via the RRP – it is also distorting the Repo market, and although the Fed can fix this aberration by hiking the IOER or RRP rates, it has so far refused to do so. 

    But the ongoing surge in reverse repo usage masks a far bigger problem in store for the Fed, and it’s why Curvature’s Skyrm writes that “now is a pretty good time to start talking about the size of the SOMA portfolio, even if some people don’t want to talk about it.”

    Why is the surge in reverse repo linked to tapering? Skyrm explains, by posting a rhetorical question:

    “What are the next steps for tapering purchases and what will the SOMA portfolio look like when we’re done? What will the market look like?”

    The repo strategist then reminds us that even when the Fed starts tapering, the Fed balance sheet will continue to grow indefinitely, if at a slower pace, flooding the system with the same reserves that are now desperate to buy Bills at 0.000% or be parked at the Fed (for 0.000%).

    Talk of tapering feels like when you’re getting ready for a dinner out. You’re ready and it’s time to go. You check on your spouse and they haven’t even started getting ready yet! As of last week, the SOMA portfolio stood at $7.185 trillion and the Fed continues purchases at $120 billion a month. If and when tapering starts, the purchases won’t go from $120 billion to zero in one announcement. The purchases will gradually slow – going from $120 billion, to maybe $100 billion, to maybe $80 billion, to $50 billion, to $20 billion.

    Let’s look at some  rough estimates. Assuming the Fed tapers at this schedule at each FOMC meeting beginning in June, that would mean the Fed adds about another $350 billion and ends QE in November. That’s the most aggressive tapering schedule. Let’s assume the Fed doesn’t begin tapering until the end of the year. That means, roughly, another $900 billion will be added to the SOMA portfolio.

    This is a problem, and Skyrm explains why: Even today there’s barely enough collateral in the Repo market right now to cover all of the cash being invested. If volume at the RRP shot up to $235 billion today, what’s going to happen when there’s $350 billion fewer securities in the market at the end of the year?

    How about if it’s $900 billion?

    In short, we already have a collateral shortage the likes of which are on par with what we experienced in 2015-2016. What happens in the next 18 months when we get an additional $1 trillion in reserves sloshing around? 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/13/2021 – 19:45

  • Antifa Protester: "I Can't Wait Until Black People Lynch White People"
    Antifa Protester: “I Can’t Wait Until Black People Lynch White People”

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    An Antifa protester at a demonstration near Seattle was filmed proudly proclaiming, “I can’t wait until black people lynch white people.”

    Yes, really.

    The chant was heard during a far-left black bloc protest against a Billy Graham association event.

    At first a woman is heard stating, “I can’t wait until black people hang you, I can’t wait.”

    When she is asked to repeat the statement, she proudly clarifies, “I can’t wait until black people lynch white people.”

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    When asked if anyone else in the group agrees with the statement, a man puts his hand up and says “I do, I do!”

    According to journalist Andy Ngo, the leftists also chanted “death to America!” while burning U.S. flags.

    As we highlighted last month, a group of Black Lives Matter protesters in Minneapolis were caught on camera telling a white liberal ally, “You’re white! You don’t belong!” before demanding that he leave the area.

    Following the conviction of Derek Chauvin, BLM mobs also descended on diners in New York while telling white restaurant owners to “get the f**k out” of the city.”

    The ‘George Floyd Autonomous Zone’ in Minneapolis also last month issued a list of ‘rules for white people’ that they have to abide by in order to enter the area.

    So much for the tolerant left!

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/13/2021 – 19:25

  • Dogecoin Soars After Musk Tweets "Working With Doge Developers To Improve System Efficiency"
    Dogecoin Soars After Musk Tweets “Working With Doge Developers To Improve System Efficiency”

    Just when you thought things couldn’t get any more surreal after the past 24 hours, moments ago Elon Musk, who last night rejected bitcoin because its mining is “bad for the environment” as it consumes a lot of electricity (just wait until Elon discovers how all those rare earth metals that are in every electric car are mined, or what those electric cars run on), moments ago Musk poked the hornets nest again, and shortly after tweeting that ‘it’s high time there was a carbon tax’…

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    … because billionaires are so fond of giving advise on how to tax others, and an hour after saying that he “strongly believe in crypto, but it can’t drive a massive increase in fossil fuel use, especially coal”, perhaps unaware that the biggest end-market for his cars also happens to be the world’s biggest polluter…

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    … Musk decided to go back to the crime scene and sparked a sharp rally in the literal joke of a cryptocurrency, Dogecoin, saying that hs is “working with Doge devs to improve system transaction efficiency. Potentially promising.”

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    The tweet sent Dogecoin sharply higher as yet another round of hapless Tesla fanatics rushed in, making Musk – whose behavior has gotten dangerously erratic in recent weeks –  instantly richer by a few more billion.

    Alas, there was nobody to tell said fanatics that because Dogecoin is by definition- a joke – there are no developers because unlike Ethereum, it is not meant to be a platform. It’s like programming Teslas in Fortran… or better yet, Basic.

    Meanwhile, the one crypto that is – ether – tumbled on the news, sliding over $100 in minutes because some were disappointed that Musk did not name Ethereum his preferred token of choice. Here’s why he didn’t – he would have to actually have some idea what he is doing or talking about. And if it took him a $1.5 billion Bitcoin purchase to realize that bitcoin mining uses electricity, for the sake of all those long ETH, be grateful this grotesque cartoon character refuses to touch it.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/13/2021 – 19:07

  • Biden Plans Expansion Of Feds' Army Of Snitches In "Dollars For Collars" Program
    Biden Plans Expansion Of Feds’ Army Of Snitches In “Dollars For Collars” Program

    Authored by James Bovard via TheAmericanConservative.com,

    How the administration plans on expanding its already massive surveillance apparatus…

    The Biden administration may soon recruit an army of private snoops to conduct surveillance that would be illegal if done by federal agents. As part of its war on extremism, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may exploit a “legal work-around” to spy on and potentially entrap Americans who are “perpetuating the ‘narratives’ of concern,” CNN reported last week. But federal informant programs routinely degenerate into “dollars for collars” schemes that reward scoundrels for fabricating crimes that destroy the lives of innocent Americans. The DHS plan would “allow the department to circumvent [constitutional and legal] limits” on surveillance of private citizens and groups. Federal agencies are prohibited from targeting individuals solely for First Amendment-protected speech and activities. But federal hirelings would be under no such restraint. Private informants could create false identities that would be problematic if done by federal agents.

    DHS will be ramping up a war against an enemy which the feds have never clearly or competently defined. According to a March report by Biden’s office of the Director of National Intelligence, “domestic violent extremists” include individuals who “take overt steps to violently resist or facilitate the overthrow of the U.S. government in support of their belief that the U.S. government is purposely exceeding its Constitutional authority.” Perhaps like setting up a private informant scheme to evade constitutional restrictions on warrantless surveillance?

    One DHS official bewailed to CNN:

    “Domestic violent extremists are really adaptive and innovative. We see them not only moving to encrypted platforms, but obviously couching their language so they don’t trigger any kind of red flag on any platforms.”

    DHS officials have apparently decided that certain groups of people are guilty regardless of what they say (“couching their language”). The targets are likely to be simply people with a bad attitude towards Washington. That will include gun owners who distrust politicians who vow to seize guns.

    The latest fuzzball standards (“narratives of concern”?) fit the post-9/11 pattern of wildly expansive threat definitions. Shortly after its creation in 2002, DHS warned local law enforcement agencies to keep an eye on anyone who “expressed dislike of attitudes and decisions of the U.S. government” as potential terrorists. DHS-funded Fusion Centers have attached the  “extremist” tag to gun-rights activists, anti-immigration zealots, and individuals and groups “rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority”—even though many of the Founding Fathers shared the same creed. The Pentagon taught soldiers and bureaucrats that people who attend public protests are guilty of  “low-level terrorism.” An Air Force report accused women who wear hijabs of “passive terrorism.” Endless enemies lists come in handy at congressional appropriations hearings.

    Federal officials insist that those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear. FBI chief Christopher Wray perennially proclaims that the FBI never investigates Americans based solely on their ideas. But, as the Intercept reported in 2019, “Who the Justice Department decides to prosecute as a domestic terrorist has little to do with the harm they’ve inflicted or the threat they pose to human life.” But that claim is belied by the FBI’s beloved “informant loophole.” As Trevor Aaronson explained, “FBI agents must obtain supervisory approval to enter a group or gathering using an undercover agent, and to obtain that approval, the FBI must have a ‘predicate,’ or a factual basis to suspect criminal activity. But neither supervisory approval nor a predicate is required if the work is done by an informant, creating a loophole that allows the FBI to investigate Americans for virtually any reason.”

    Any new informants hired by the Biden administration will operate under the same perverse incentives that have long subverted due process. Informants tend to be rewarded based on how much assets they help government seize or how many people they help prosecutors condemn. As a 2019 report by the American Bar Association noted, “The government pays cash for incriminating information and testimony. This is troubling because the financial incentive to make cases against others may be much greater than the personal integrity of the informants.” A report by the Justice Department Office of Inspector General slammed the Drug Enforcement Agency for failing to “document the reliability of informants” who helped the DEA to confiscate billions of dollars of private property. The DEA paid informants $237 million between 2010 and 2015, including $25 million shoveled out to only nine informants. DEA’s best paid informant, Andrew Chambers, Jr., was found to have given “false testimony under oath in at least 16 criminal prosecutions nationwide before he was exposed in the late 1990s,” USA Today reported in 2013. Attorney General Janet Reno banned the DEA from using him as an informant but in 2008, DEA re-hired Chambers and used him for at least the following five years.

    Informants have become far more perilous to freedom and decency since the 1970s thanks to the Supreme Court effectively defining entrapment out of existence. Almost anything an informant or undercover government agent does to induce someone to violate the law is considered fair play. Craig Monteilh, an informant who was sent into mosques in southern California, was given permission by his FBI handlers to sleep with Muslim women he targeted and to secretly tape record their pillow talk. Other FBI informants browbeat their targets into discussing bombing government buildings, providing sufficient verbal rope to hang them. The vast majority of people charged with international terrorism offenses in the decade after 9/11 were not bona fide threats but were induced by the FBI or informants to behave in ways that prompted their arrest, according to Trevor Aaronson’s The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism.

    One purpose of relying on private informants is to assure that there are no federal fingerprints when people are coaxed or shoved into breaking the law. The FBI admits that it formally entitles its army of informants to commit more than 5,000 crimes a year; there is no estimate of how many crimes are committed directly by FBI agents, who have been formally taught that “the FBI has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedom of others.” Thanks to the FBI’s Iron Curtain of Secrecy, we have no idea what sort of atrocities its informants may now be committing. During George W. Bush’s reign, the White House formally invoked executive privilege to block disclosure of the FBI’s sweetheart deals for Whitey Bulger, a notorious FBI informant and Irish crime boss linked to 20 murders. The FBI knew of Bulger’s role in killings but lied in court to protect him, even providing false testimony to send innocent men to prison for life to safeguard Bulger. That debacle was summarized in a 2004 congressional report titled, “Everything Secret Degenerates: The FBI’s Use of Murderers as Informants.” In 2011, a federal judge aptly labeled the FBI’s behavior in the case as “uncontrolled official wickedness.”

    In 2016, Omar Mateen carried out the biggest terrorist attack since 9/11, killing 49 people at the Orlando Pulse Nightclub attack. Prior to his attack, Mateen boasted of his connections to terrorists and threatened to have Al Qaeda kill a co-worker’s family; his mosque warned authorities that he was a threat to public safety. But the FBI swayed the local sheriff’s department to drop its investigation of Mateen because a “confidential informant” assured FBI agents that Mateen was not a terrorist and would not “go postal or anything like that.” The federal case against the killer’s widow collapsed in 2018 after jurors belatedly learned that the killer’s father, an Afghan immigrant, had been an FBI informant since 2005 and may have used his influence to assure that his son was not arrested prior to his killing spree.

    The FBI has long relied on informants to choreograph political violence. In the 1960s, FBI informants “set up a Klan organization intended to attract membership away from the United Klans of America,” according to a 1976 Senate report. One FBI informant with the Klan, along with other Klansmen, had “beaten people severely, had boarded buses and kicked [Freedom Riders] off” and beat restaurant customers “with blackjacks, chains, pistols.” In 2006, a paid FBI informant organized and led a neo-Nazi march in a black neighborhood in Orlando, Florida. In 2017, an FBI informant masterminded a Klan rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, sharply increasing the tension and fear prior to the much larger and notorious Charlottesville Unite the Right rally the following month. There have not yet been any disclosures regarding what role, if any, that federal informants played in the January 6 clash at the Capitol.

    DHS wants to enlist more private informants at the same time federal undercover operations are already out of control. At least 40 federal agencies are now conducting undercover operations involving thousands of agents. An undercover DEA agent “created a fake Facebook page from the photos of a young woman in Watertown, N.Y. — without her knowledge — to lure drug suspects,” the New York Times reported.  IRS agents are officially permitted to “pose as an attorney, physician, clergyman or member of the news media.” The Times noted in 2014 that  “the military and its investigative agencies have almost as many undercover agents working inside the United States as does the F.B.I.,” often serving on joint federal task forces of the type that will likely be expanded for the Biden extremist crackdown. A sting operation by the Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms agency swayed mentally handicapped individuals to get tattooed to help advertise its bogus gun store, violating federal laws protecting the disabled. Oversight is often a mirage: an ATF committee created to oversee undercover operations didn’t bother meeting for more than half a decade. The Times noted that “even Justice Department officials say they are uncertain how many agents work undercover.”

    The Biden administration is considering unleashing a new surveillance program at a time when Americans have no idea how many federal agencies are already spying on them. Yahoo News disclosed last month that the Postal Inspection Service is running iCOP —the Internet Covert Operations Program—to sweep social media and other websites searching for any “inflammatory” postings on topics including protests against COVID lockdowns. Postal inspectors got access to private messages on Parler and Telegram, presumably with no search warrant. The iCOP program turns over its discoveries to other federal agencies. Rachel Levinson-Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice commented that iCop “seems a little bizarre” since the surveillance included “monitoring of social media that’s unrelated to use of the postal system.” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) denounced the program for violating the Constitution and asked: “The USPS has been losing money for many years… so where do they find money to run this surveillance program?” Unfortunately, federal agencies that trample the law and the Constitution in their surveillance efforts are usually punished with budget increases.

    Perhaps setting up a new informant scheme to work around the Constitution is not the best response to extremists who fear government is lawless. Unfortunately, Americans are unlikely to hear about crimes committed by Biden’s new snoops until long after the damage is done, if ever.

    *  *  *

    James Bovard is the author of Lost Rights, Attention Deficit Democracy, and Public Policy Hooligan. He is also a USA Today columnist. Follow him on Twitter @JimBovard.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/13/2021 – 18:50

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