- Fifth Of Countries Worldwide At-Risk Of "Environmental Shocks" Collapsing Ecosystem
Fifth Of Countries Worldwide At-Risk Of “Environmental Shocks” Collapsing Ecosystem
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/15/2020 – 02:45A new report via insurance firm Swiss Re warns that one-fifth of countries worldwide are at risk of their ecosystems collapsing because of a decline in biodiversity.
The reinsurer said more than half of global GDP, equal to about $41.7 trillion, is highly dependent on “high-functioning biodiversity and ecosystem services” and warns 20% of countries are nearing tipping points.
Swiss Re Institute’s new Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Index (BES), built on ten critical ecosystem services (water security, timber provision, food provision, habitat intactness, pollination, soil fertility, water quality, regulation of air quality and local climate, erosion control and coastal protection), offers government officials and business leaders with a more enhanced view into their local ecosystems that are so critical to their economies. Reinsurers can use BES to develop insurance solutions that protect communities at risk from biodiversity loss.
Among G20 economies, South Africa, India, Turkey, Mexico, and Italy had the highest shares of fragile ecosystems within the BES index. Meanwhile, countries, including Germany, Canada, Indonesia, Brazil, and the United Kingdom, had very low percentages of their ecosystems in a fragile state.
Global BES Index Map
BES Index Ranking G20 Countries
Christian Mumenthaler, Swiss Re’s Group Chief Executive Officer, said: “This important piece of work provides a data-driven foundation for understanding the economic risks of deteriorating biodiversity and ecosystems. In turn, we can inform governmental decision-making to help improve ecosystem restoration and preservation.”
“We can also support corporations and investors as they fortify themselves against environmental shocks. Armed with this information, we can also ensure the provision of stronger sustainable insurance services,” Mumenthaler said.
One example Swiss Re said is that certain developing and developed countries were at risk for water scarcity issues, which could damage manufacturing sectors, properties, and supply chains. The domino effect of biodiversity loss could have on economies is catastrophic if nothing is done.
The report discusses “simple preservation actions” that could be enough to address BES challenges.
“For example, ecosystem restoration along the coast of Louisiana could reduce expected flood costs by USD 5.3 billion annually2. Steps to ensure functioning coral reefs globally could lower estimated flood damages for 100-year storm events that would otherwise increase by 91% across the globe 3,” the report said.
It also highlights the impact of BES on economic sectors:
“Using Swiss Re Institute’s BES Index as a basis for decision-making in underwriting and asset management will make businesses and investments more resilient,” said Jeffrey Bohn, Swiss Re’s Chief Research Officer.
“This index also underlines the important need for relevant nature-based insurance solutions and will create a new business segment for insurance, thereby strengthening resilience of affected regions and communities,” Bohn said.
Alexander Pfaff, a professor of public policy, economics and environment at Duke University in the US, who was quoted by The Guardian, said:
“Societies, from local to global, can do much better when we not only acknowledge the importance of contributions from nature – as this index is doing – but also take that into account in our actions, private and public.”
Pfaff said it was important to note that the economic impacts of the degradation of nature began well before ecosystem collapse, adding: “Naming a problem may well be half the solution, [but] the other half is taking action.”
The report’s release comes as presidential candidate Joe Biden warms up to the Green New Deal, a proposed package that aims to address climate change and economic inequality.
- Azerbaijan Strikes Ballistic Missile Sites In Armenia Amid Hadrat Standoff
Azerbaijan Strikes Ballistic Missile Sites In Armenia Amid Hadrat Standoff
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/15/2020 – 02:00Submitted by South Front,
On October 14, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry announced that its forces had conducted strikes on Armenian operational-tactical ballistic missile systems in the Armenian border area, near the Kalbajar District of the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The Azerbaijani military claimed that the destroyed missiles “were targeted at Ganja, Mingachevir and other cities of Azerbaijan to inflict casualties among the peaceful population and to destroy civilian infrastructure.”
The Armenian Defense Ministry confirmed the strikes denying any casualties and threatening Azerbaijan with retaliatory strikes on military targets inside the country. “From now on, the Armed Forces of Armenia reserve the right to attack any military object or military movement in Azerbaijan. The military-political leadership of Azerbaijan bears full responsibility for the process of changing the logic of the combat actions,” the defense ministry spokesperson said.
Also, Armenia claimed that it had shot down an Azerbaijani Su-25 warplane. This was the second warplane of this type claimed to have been shot down by Armenia in recent days. In both cases, no evidence to confirm the claims was provided.
According to both Armenian and Azerbaijani sources intense clashes and artillery duels have been ongoing in the northern and southern parts of Karabakh.
On October 13, the Azerbaijani military released their own video from the surroundings of the town of Hadrut in the Nagorno-Karabakh region claiming control over the town.
Earlier, Armenian sources and journalists working on the Armenian side released several videos from the same area claiming that the town is in the hands of Armenian forces. This situation goes contrary to the official stance of the Azerbaijani leadership. According to the official version, the town was captured by Azerbaijan several days ago.
Nonetheless, the issue with the new Azerbaijani proof from Hadrut is that the video was in fact filmed in the village of Tagaser, which is located west of the town. Thus, in the best case for Azerbaijani forces the town of Hadrut is now contested, and in the worst case it is in the hands of Armenian forces. This is a major blow to the official Azerbaijani propaganda that keeps claiming at the highest level that the town has been ‘liberated from Armenian occupiers’.
On the other hand, the potential military success of Azerbaijan on this part of the frontline could easily lead to the collapse of the Armenian defense near the town of Fizuli and its subsequent loss to Azerbaijani forces. This is a desired outcome for Azerbaijan. Thus, its military will continue its advance in the area despite public claims about its supposed commitment to the October 10 ceasefire regime with only retaliatory actions to Armenian violations.
In fact, the fate of the entire ceasefire is now being determined in the Haradut area. If Azerbaijan fully captures the town, it will likely try to develop momentum thus publicly resuming full-scale offensive operations. If the Azerbaijani side fails to do so, the Armenian-Azerbaijani confrontation will likely continue in a form of a positional standoff with intense use of artillery, air power (mostly by Azerbaijan) and sporadic firefights on the frontline. Meanwhile, Ankara and Baku will evaluate their position and consider their chances in the event of further attacks in the current format.
- Hollywood Is Dying, And The Elites Don't Care…
Hollywood Is Dying, And The Elites Don’t Care…
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/15/2020 – 00:05Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,
I don’t write much about the entertainment industry because, frankly, I see it as mostly irrelevant to the bigger picture. Geopolitics and economics are the great driving force in our society, and the elitist groups that influence these elements should be our primary focus. That said, I have to admit that pop culture is a pervasive element of American public psychology, or at least it was until recently, and for decades the masters of pop culture all reside in Hollywood.
I have been a film buff for at least 20 years and I understand the business; I was even a screenwriter at one point and obtained an agent, but after dealing with the slimy behavior of some of the Hollywood ilk I was immediately disenchanted and decided to walk away. What I realized at the time was that the entertainment world is designed for a very specific purpose: To steal the energies of talented people and exploit those energies to achieve the most meaningless or manipulative endeavors.
The people that manage and own production and distribution companies are for the most part talent-less; like most narcopaths they have no capacity to be creative. So, they must feed on the intelligence and imagination of normal people in order to fuel their business. If it stopped there, then maybe the system would actually work and there could be some symbiosis. Many artistic people don’t handle business very well, so someone has to.
But, production creatures want more than money, they also want to micromanage the message of every film, TV show, video game and product that is released. They want to inject their own ideologies into every release. They do this because, as narcopaths, they desperately want to feel creative power even if it means hijacking the projects of others. They also do it because they have an agenda to influence society to accept or reject certain ideas; they want to mold the politics and values of the public.
Hollywood is ultimately about narrative control, not free expression. If you have a unique message or an interesting story to tell, they are going to twist it into something else, something that feels a lot like every other story that gets produced. Writers and directors with vision are either filtered out of the system or they are forced to conform to the propaganda model in order to get work. In the end, the people who get the most work and make it to the top are the people with no principles or morals; the people that will do anything to succeed.
Success and artistry are not necessarily mutually exclusive concepts. On the other hand, free expression and artistry are mutually inclusive – You cannot have one without the other.
If you have been noticing a severe decline in the quality of American entertainment over the course of the past decade, you are not the only one. 70% of Americans say they would rather stay home and watch movies, rather than paying to go to theaters, even if theaters reopen. Industry spin doctors will claim that the drop in interest is due solely to the coronavirus, but this is a lie. Domestic movie attendance hit a 25 year low in 2017, and this is part of a long term slide which was building for years beforehand.
It’s important to note that when I talk about “Hollywood” I’m including the internet streaming services, which are completely intertwined with the Hollywood machine. While streaming services have been growing (to a point) because of the pandemic lockdowns, the subscription jump is an anomaly compared to the past few years. Netflix in particular was on a severe slide in subscriptions before the pandemic hit, and with the “Cuties” child pornography debacle it will be interesting to see how many subscribers jumped ship in the final quarter of 2020.
Another interesting development among streaming services is that the most popular content is in most cases OLD content. Shows and movies from 10 to 20 years ago draw the most views by far. New content consistently fails, and this is happening among all demographics from Gen Z to Baby Boomers. This says a lot about modern Hollywood’s decline.
The point is, Hollywood was crashing well before the pandemic and the reason is clearly related to the change in priorities from making money and making consumers happy to making value statements regardless of logic or practicality. There is a massive evolution going on, and the public is growing tired of the controlled pop culture paradigm as well as the intrusive zealotry of new hyper-political messaging.
Most people are not stupid; maybe slow to catch on to certain things, but not stupid. They recognize when they are being bombarded with propaganda, and they don’t like it when the balance of storytelling and entertainment shifts too far in either direction, left or right.
Imagine if all movies, television, music, comics, etc. went full-bore evangelical Christian or Sharia Muslim and nothing else was allowed to be made? Well, that is what is happening with the leftist cult religion of social justice right now; they have attempted to suffocate all other points of view and it is alienating millions of people that prefer to see multiple points of view represented, as well as people that just want to be entertained rather than preached to.
Telling a story is actually easy as long as you follow certain rules.
Rule #1: Don’t talk down to your audience.
Rule #2: Don’t tell your audience how they should think or feel.
Rule #3: Tap into archetypes that people relate to.
Rule #4: Write characters that audiences can feel sympathy for.
Rule # 5: Audiences will not feel sympathy for narcopathic characters.
Rule #6: Your characters MUST have a story arch, even if they end up right back where they started.
Rule #7: Most stories have a message, but not all messages matter to most audiences.
Rule #8: People do not need to see themselves in a story in order to relate to a story.
Rule #9: Stories made by committee will usually fail, or they are quickly forgotten.
Rule #10: A superior storyteller is able to meet audience expectations while at the same time surprising them. “Subverting expectations” is a method for weak minded and lazy storytellers.
The current crop of people in Hollywood and the entertainment industry in general are completely incapable of following any of the rules above. Why? Because they don’t care anymore about telling good stories that inspire or entertain the public. They don’t even really care about the public and their money. In fact, they often show disdain and hatred for the public. The only thing they care about is force feeding their ideology to the public whether the public likes it or not.
Hollywood is no longer a business. They are no longer concerned with making a profit. They do not care if the public is repelled by their content. Everything is changing. Hollywood is becoming what I suspect it was always meant to be: An Orwellian bullhorn blaring in the ears of the people 24/7.
When I look at Hollywood and the media today, I am consistently reminded of the loudspeakers in the cities and towns of communist North Korea, which fill the streets with propaganda songs and messages until it becomes an insidious background hum in the minds of every citizen. There are even some places in NK where propaganda radios are installed by the government in every home, and people cannot shut them off.
Some critics argue that Hollywood is attempting to influence the public to think just like they do (to join the social justice cult), and this is partially true, but the reality is that this is about narrative saturation rather than pure thought control. They know that many people will not be influenced by them, and they don’t care. They are removing all alternative viewpoints from people’s daily lives because they want to torture anyone who disagrees with them. They seem to take joy in this.
Many North Korean citizens HATE the street speakers and the constant propaganda, but the job of propaganda is not always to convince everyone or control their thoughts, it is sometimes meant to send a message: “You will get nothing else; we are here to make you miserable and there is nothing you can do about it. The only way to stop the misery is to give in and submit.”
To summarize, If they can’t brainwash you, they are perfectly content to remove all happiness from your life by ensuring you never see anything inspiring ever again. The message is absolute, and like a black hole it absorbs and destroys everything else around it. Think of it like the Spanish Inquisition of the Dark Ages, but with a technological edge.
Obviously, this is leading to people abandoning all new entertainment in droves. Propaganda films with blockbuster budgets are crashing and sales are dismal. Classic franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek, Ghostbusters, etc are being abandoned by audiences. Disney’s Mulan remake, filled with social justice and Chinese communist agitprop, was a complete and utter disaster. Numerous studios are now facing huge profit shortfalls and layoffs, and Covid is only partly to blame.
Netflix’s “Cuties”, a love letter to pedophilia posing as a “commentary” on the sexualization of children, is now under investigation and indictment and Netflix lost vast numbers of subscribers in protest. And for good reason, the film features 11 year old girls acting out overtly sexual scenes including nudity and feigned masturbation all with creepy hovering camerawork (Note to Netflix: Child porn is NOT a 1st Amendment right).
Basically every production that carries a hard leftist message is failing. The saying “Get Woke, Go Broke” is popular for a reason. The hills that Hollywood and their streaming partners are choosing to die on might seem bizarre to most people.
But again, the Hollywood elites don’t care anymore. You want to know why they are doubling and tripling down on a garbage fire like “Cuties”? As mentioned, it’s about saturating the environment until there is nothing else while also sending a message that “there’s nothing you can do about it”. I think this says something about our immediate future.
Why is Hollywood now scorning any profit incentive? Are the elites that run Hollywood privy to some kind of information that makes them confident in their decision to undermine and alienate the majority of their consumers? I mean, eventually these companies are going to go bankrupt if they continue on this path. Is it possible they understand that the system in general is on the verge of collapse anyway and they have decided to go out in a blaze of glory, like a suicide bomber?
It’s hard to say, but I question the state of storytelling in our culture for the foreseeable future. Alternative production and distribution is easily accomplished in the digital age. Hollywood is completely unnecessary and Americans are starting to realize this. However, I wonder if alternatives will be allowed to exist, or will they be attacked and shut down in the name of the “new normal”?
If we are following a traditional communist model, then the goal will be to continue to eradicate choice until the only options left are those that are granted to us by centralized committee. My suspicion is that economic crisis along with corporate monopoly will be used to this end. Our only option at that point will be to avoid consuming anything they are selling. But of course it’s also possible that one day you will have a TV installed in your home that you can never shut off, playing movies like Cuties nonstop until it becomes an ingrained background noise in your brain.
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- Fears Of "Explosions In Orbit" As Space Junk Crisis Worsens
Fears Of “Explosions In Orbit” As Space Junk Crisis Worsens
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 23:45Ever since the start of the space age in 1957, with the launch of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial Earth satellite, thousands of new satellites and dangerous space debris have been jamming up Earth’s orbit, warns the European Space Agency (ESA).
The ESA, which monitors space debris, recently published its annual report on the current state of space junk, describes how accumulating rocket boosters, defunct satellites, and spaceborne shrapnel poses a significant risk to spacecraft.
“The biggest contributor to the current space debris problem is explosions in orbit, caused by left-over energy—fuel and batteries—onboard spacecraft and rockets. Despite measures being in place for years to prevent this, we see no decline in the number of such events. Trends towards end-of-mission disposal are improving, but at a slow pace,” Holger Krag, head of ESA’s Space Debris Office at ESOC in Darmstadt, Germany, who was quoted by RT News.
Earlier in the year, two older satellites almost collided, meanwhile three separate incidents resulted in near space junk crashes with the International Space Station (ISS). In at least one incident, ISS had to use emergency thrusters to move the station out of the path of space debris.
At the moment, there are an estimated 160 million objects in orbit, and the ESA predicts that collisions between debris and working satellites are high risk.
“In view of the constant increase in space-traffic, we need to develop and provide technologies to make debris prevention measures fail-safe, and ESA is doing just that through its Space Safety Programme. In parallel, regulators need to monitor the status of space systems as well as global adherence to debris mitigation under their jurisdiction more closely,” Krag said.
The number of “fragmentation events” has soared over the last three decades.
Planned for 2025, the ESA recently awarded the Swiss startup company Clearpace, a $117 million contract, to remove space debris from orbit.
If readers are curious to just how much space junk is floating above, the ESA’s animation shows an incredible view of all the debris:
The more debris in orbit, the more dangerous space travel becomes – this is happening when the booming private space industry is gearing up to start mining the moon later in the decade. ESA suggested it could be up to the private space industry to deal with all the junk.
- The Civil Rights Legend Who Opposed Critical Race Theory
The Civil Rights Legend Who Opposed Critical Race Theory
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 23:25By Steve Klinsky of RealClearPolitics, chairman of the American Investment Council, and founder and CEO of New Mountain Capital; he worked with Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker in the education reform movement, and knew him as a co-author and friend,
Critical race theory, or CRT, is in the news these days but many people still may not know what it really means. They think CRT is part of the Rev. Martin Luther King’s civil rights efforts. In truth, it is directly opposed to the central concept and vision he most stood for. One of the last and greatest civil rights leaders of our time — and one of King’s closest friends and advisers — did understand CRT, and explicitly rejected it.
Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker (pictured, at right) was a legend in the American civil rights movement. Executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the critical years of 1960-1964, he was a co-founder of CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality), chief of staff to King, and King’s “field general” in the organized resistance against notorious Birmingham safety commissioner “Bull” Connor. Walker compiled and named King’s “The Letter From Birmingham Jail.” He was with King for the march on Washington that produced the “I have a dream” speech, and in Oslo for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Afterward, Dr. Walker came north to New York City to serve as minister of the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem. He was one of the nation’s most respected ministers until his death in 2018. In his book “David and Goliath,” Malcolm Gladwell dedicated a chapter to Dr. Walker and his work in Birmingham. The cover of Ebony magazine called Walker “The Man Behind Martin Luther King.” In short, no one may have known King’s thoughts better or been closer to them than Dr. Walker.
Even as he aged, Dr. Walker never backed down from the passionate pursuit of civil rights for all. Later in his life, he was chairman of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and a supporter of reparations for African Americans. I got to know him soon after Amadou Diallo had been horribly gunned down in New York City in 1999. We joined together to form New York’s first and longest-surviving charter school, now named the Sisulu-Walker Charter School of Harlem. We stayed friends from that time until he died.
In 2015, Dr. Walker and I co-authored an essay about education reform and race relations, where we wrote:
“Today, too many ‘remedies’ — such as Critical Race Theory, the increasingly fashionable post-Marxist/postmodernist approach that analyzes society as institutional group power structures rather than on a spiritual or one-to-one human level — are taking us in the wrong direction: separating even elementary school children into explicit racial groups, and emphasizing differences instead of similarities.
“The answer is to go deeper than race, deeper than wealth, deeper than ethnic identity, deeper than gender. To teach ourselves to comprehend each person, not as a symbol of a group, but as a unique and special individual within a common context of shared humanity. To go to that fundamental place where we are all simply mortal creatures, seeking to create order, beauty, family, and connection to the world that — on its own — seems to bend too often towards randomness and entropy.”
Before publishing this essay, I questioned Dr. Walker to make sure he really wanted to be on record with this opposition to CRT. I was worried this might put him in a bad way with other civil rights leaders. But he had never backed down in his life, and he reiterated that this was his position.
In hindsight, I believe that Dr. Walker was not so much against anything, as for something. He was for what Dr. King was for, and for what so many well intended people are for who may misunderstand the difference between CRT and traditional (i.e., King-style) civil rights.
Dr. Walker was for a fundamental respect for all people, without regard to their ethnic group or religion or the color of their skin. Dr. Walker’s civil rights views tie back to religious values, to humanism, to rationalism, to the Enlightenment. The roots of CRT are planted in entirely different intellectual soil. It begins with “blocs” (with each person assigned to an identity or economic bloc, as in Marxism). Human-to-human interactions are replaced with bloc-to-bloc interactions.
As Dr. Walker tried to make clear, thinking in terms of blocs of people, rather than of people as individuals, leads to a whole set of insidious results. How can two people bind together in friendship if they are members of power blocs that are presumed to be inherently opposed? How can a person prove his innocence if he is branded as inevitably a part of a guilty group? Why should an individual strive to succeed by individual merit if group dynamics are presumed to be overwhelming and inescapable? How can we ever find peace among the races and religions if we won’t look to each other, person by person, based on actual facts and actual intentions?
The saddest thing is to see well-intentioned people, trying to achieve Martin Luther King’s dream by employing CRT methods that are the opposite of King’s dream. King asked for everyone to be judged by the content of their own individual character, not by their inescapable genetic links to post-Marxist style analytical power groups. Supporters of civil rights should follow the example of Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker, and not allow the two incompatible definitions of civil rights — King’s and CRT’s — to be confused with one another.
- Air Force Receives Next-Generation Ballistic Helmets Amid Monderization Overhaul
Air Force Receives Next-Generation Ballistic Helmets Amid Monderization Overhaul
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 23:05The Air Force on Thursday received the first order of next-generation ballistic helmets for security forces as part of a modernization effort, the service said in a press release.
The new helmets replace the Advanced Combat Helmet that Airmen have been wearing since the mid-2000s.
Master Sgt. Markus Nelson, an Air Force Security Forces Center (AFSFC) equipment manager, said the new helmet is “lighter, cooler, has better padding and comes with a built-in railing to fit accessories, such as night-vision goggles and tactical communication equipment.”
Airmen of the 71st Security Forces Squadron (SFS) at Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma, were recently the first in the service to strap on the new helmets.
“It is actually really quick to put on and easily adjustable, allowing me more time to check my Airmen and make sure everyone’s gear is on straight,” said Senior Airman Craig Smith, a 71st SFS Airman. “The biggest improvement I noticed is it’s lightweight and if I take a hard turn in a Humvee, I know I’m not going to break my neck.”
Master Sgt. Darryl Wright, 71st SFS logistics and readiness superintendent, said the new helmet is the most agile kevlar he’s strapped on his head in nearly two decades.
“I just got back from a deployment and this helmet is made for hot areas like that; and even where it’s not as hot, the mobility and light weight of the helmet makes a significant difference in what you can do,” Wright said.
“Even back here at home when we do readiness exercises, we bring all our fighting gear, including the helmet. Exercises get you prepared for the fight and having next-generation gear like this helmet improves Vance (AFB’s) security readiness.”
Inside The Air Force: Next-Generation Ballistic Helmet
Along with next-generation helmets, the AFSFC initiative to modernize forces includes high-tech body armor and protective gear, new weapons, and upgraded communication systems.
“We’re identifying salient characteristics of the best individual equipment industry has to offer at the best value to achieve standardization across the force,” said Lt. Col. Barry Nichols, AFSFC director of Logistics. “This effort is instrumental in keeping Defenders throughout the security forces enterprise-ready and lethal with the procurement of the most cutting-edge and innovative equipment available to accomplish missions safely and effectively.”
Who is making all of this possible?
Well, President Trump, of course – plowing more than $2.5 trillion of taxpayers funds into the military on one of the biggest spending sprees in history.
“We’ve spent $2.5 trillion over the term in office, my term,” Trump recently said. “That’s over three and a half years — think of that $2.5 trillion. I took over a depleted military, old equipment, broken equipment.”
Meanwhile, Russia and China continue their military modernization efforts as a looming global conflict could be on the horizon.
- Are Early Voting Numbers A Harbinger Of What's To Come On Election Day?
Are Early Voting Numbers A Harbinger Of What’s To Come On Election Day?
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 22:45Via PredictIt.org (emphasis ours)
With less than three weeks until Election Day, many states are already seeing historic levels of early voting.
According to figures from 35 states and the District of Columbia, compiled by the Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal, 8.8 million people have voted by mail in the general election and 962,000 have headed to polling places early to cast ballots. For comparison, more than 58 million early ballots were cast in 2016.
Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Virginia have already received more early ballots than they did in the 2016 presidential election. Several other states have topped 2016 numbers for mail-in ballots returned, even as in-person early voting is opening up in much of the country.
Counting the Votes: The unprecedented influx of early balloting, in person and especially by mail, is presenting a logistical challenge for local election officials. How they handle it is likely to figure in whether voters will see a protracted wait for results beyond Election Day in the presidential race, especially from closely fought battleground states.
Election officials are already talking about “Election Week” rather than “Election Day.” They are also urging voters to view lengthy counts in close contests as normal.
States have raced to ramp up, buying extra machines to tabulate votes, adding extra staff to count ballots, and in some cases, extending deadlines. Those rule changes are setting off partisan court battles in key states that will determine which votes count and are adding uncertainty as voters cast ballots in droves.
Hinging on the Swing States: The pace of early voting is poised to increase in the weeks leading up to Nov. 3, as deadlines begin to approach.
In Florida, where polling shows a tight race between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, about 1.7 million mail-in ballots have been cast, more than 60 percent of those received in 2016. Floridians can request absentee ballots until Oct. 24. North Carolina, another presidential battleground and host to a competitive Senate race, received more mail-in votes by September than it saw for all of the 2016 general election. Advance polling sites in the state are open from Oct. 15 to 31.
In both North Carolina and Florida, registered Democrats have cast more ballots than registered Republicans so far. In North Carolina, independent voters have also cast more early ballots than registered Republicans.
Mail-In Impact: Several battleground states are also seeing large numbers of requests for mail-in ballots. This could make for a long election night (hence, “Election Week”) in states that prohibit the counting or processing of ballots before Nov. 3.
For example, Michigan doesn’t begin tabulating mail-in ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day. With a projected count of 3 million of the 5-5.5 million votes cast before Nov. 3, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has said that her office could announce results as late as the following Friday.
Similar is true in Wisconsin, which also starts counting on Election Day and where election officials have received 683,000 of the 1.3 million ballots requested. In 2016, 826,000 people voted early either through the mail or in-person, in total. Polling places for early voting open Oct. 20 in Wisconsin.
So far, at least 11 states have already reached or exceeded 50 percent of their total early vote in 2016. Four have surpassed those levels.
Wisdom of the Crowd: While ballots pour in, court battles are determining issues of how people vote and whether certain ballots are disqualified. How those cases turn could impact who wins and loses in 2020.
Despite the whiff of uncertainty in the political air, traders expect Florida, Pennsylvania and the overall election outcome to all be called on Election Day, albeit with varying degrees of certainty.
In Florida, an outcome on Nov. 3 is trading at 63¢ and Nov. 4 at just 18¢. Pennsylvania, much like the presidential election outcome, has traders zeroed in on Nov. 3 at 33¢ and Nov. 4 at 24¢, but an outcome after Dec. 14 is third at 10¢. The overall race is trading at 38¢ to 32¢ for a Nov. 3 outcome over a Nov. 4 call and after Dec. 14 is trading at 12¢.
Biden’s strong lead in the polls and the markets (i.e. he still holds a 27¢ lead over Trump in the 2020 US presidential winner market) could be contributing to traders expecting a media call on or the day after Election Day.
Will that sentiment hold as we grow closer to Nov. 3?
- IRS Slaps Baltimore City's Top Prosecutor With Lien For Years Of Unpaid Taxes
IRS Slaps Baltimore City’s Top Prosecutor With Lien For Years Of Unpaid Taxes
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 22:25According to The Baltimore Sun, the IRS has filed a lien against Baltimore City’s top prosecutor for years of unpaid taxes.
Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby and husband Nick Mosby – Democratic nominee for City Council president – were slapped with a $45,000 lien via the IRS for three years of unpaid taxes. The lien showed the Mosbys owe $23,000 for 2014, more than $19,000 for 2015, and about $3,000 for 2016.
Marilyn Mosby (Left); Nick Mosby (Right) The Mosbys released a statement to members of the press from their respective offices that read:
“I have been in ongoing conversations with the IRS for five years about the tax consequences of an early withdrawal from my retirement savings plan, which I did to support unplanned expenses after a series of family tragedies,” the statement said. “I expect to have the issue resolved in the coming days.”
Fox 45 News points out, as per Maryland State Constitution, there is a possibility Marilyn Mosby could be removed from office:
” There shall be an Attorney for the State in each county and the City of Baltimore, to be styled “The State’s Attorney,” who shall be elected by the voters thereof, respectively, and shall hold his office for four years from the first Monday in January next ensuing his election, and until his successor shall be elected and qualified; and shall be re-eligible thereto, and be subject to removal therefrom, for incompetency, willful neglect of duty, or misdemeanor in office, on conviction in a Court of Law, or by a vote of two-thirds of the Senate, on the recommendation of the Attorney-General (amended by Chapter 99, Acts of 1956, ratified Nov. 6, 1956; Chapter 681, Acts of 1977, ratified Nov. 7, 1978),” part of the constitution reads.
Unpaid taxes are not the only probe swirling above the Mosbys; Marilyn is under investigation for having accepted luxury travel trips, free of charge. In the last two years, she’s traveled to Germany, Portugal, Africa, and Scotland.
“When Operation Crime and Justice first reported on State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s extensive travel and side business, FOX 45 News filed several public information requests for pertinent documents,” FOX 45 reported in September.
“Those requests were not fulfilled,” Fox 45 said. “Instead, the State’s Attorney’s Office asked for thousands of dollars in exchange for certain public records, including $6,480 for specific email records and $156,000 for copies of Mosby’s work calendar.
Marilyn has served half of her four-year term as the city’s top prosecutor as she is now being investigated for potential ethics violations.
Readers may recall Marilyn mishandled the Freedie Gray case, where a young Black male died in police custody on April 2015. Uproar in the community of the death of Gray resulted in weeks of riots around the metro area.
And if the mounting potential ethics violations for Mosby wasn’t enough for the liberal-run city, the former mayor, Catherine Pugh, is serving a three-year prison sentence for her book fraud scheme.
- China Had COVID-Like Patients Months Before Official Timeline
China Had COVID-Like Patients Months Before Official Timeline
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 22:05Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times,
Internal CCP documents show patients in Wuhan had symptoms as early as September 2019, but authorities didn’t disclose to the world…
A series of leaked documents shows that patients in China with symptoms similar to COVID-19 were hospitalized months before the regime’s official timeline, throwing into question when exactly the CCP virus began spreading in Wuhan, China’s epidemic ground zero.
At least one patient started experiencing COVID-19-like symptoms in September 2019, according to hospital data obtained by The Epoch Times from a trusted source who has access to government documents. Dozens more were hospitalized over the following month.
Wuhan hospitals also reported several deaths in October 2019 due to severe pneumonia, lung infections, and other symptoms similar to COVID-19 patients.
The city’s health commission only publicly announced an outbreak of a novel form of pneumonia on Dec. 31, 2019—after social media posts by whistleblower doctors had gone viral.
In a letter dated Feb. 19 obtained by The Epoch Times, a national investigation team set up by the central government stated that it wished to trace early cases of the disease. It asked local authorities for data from all Wuhan medical institutions over the period between Oct. 1 to Dec. 10, 2019, including information on patients who visited fever clinics in the vicinity of the Huanan Seafood Market, a wet market that the officials initially identified as the outbreak origin; details of the earliest 10 suspected cases at each medical agency rated tier two or above (three is the highest); and pneumonia deaths with COVID-19-like symptoms.
The letter stated that nine hospitals, which received the most COVID-19 patients in the city, were key to the investigation.
The Epoch Times had access to part of the records in response to the inquiry, those from 11 hospitals.
Despite the collected data, the Wuhan outbreak control task force told media on Feb. 26 that the earliest documented patient was a person surnamed Chen who fell ill on Dec. 8, 2019.
It’s unclear whether authorities conducted any inquiries into early cases prior to February.
To some critics, the investigation appeared rather narrow and came too late.
“For such a massive respiratory disease to break out in the area, how come they didn’t track down all other hospitals?” Sean Lin, former lab director of the viral disease branch at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, told The Epoch Times.
“This should have been done a long time ago,” he said, calling the delayed inquiry “ridiculous.”
A screenshot of a leaked document showing details about patients who died of COVID-like symptoms at Wuhan Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, on Feb. 21, 2020. Part of the information is redacted by The Epoch Times to protect the patients’ privacy. (Provided to The Epoch Times)
Suspected Virus Patients
The obtained records showed nine deaths due to COVID-19-like conditions at three hospitals.
Five were severe pneumonia patients who died between November and December 2019 at the Wuhan No. 6 Hospital, one of the hospitals named in the inquiry letter. The Wuhan Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, a tertiary hospital, had three deaths in October. Wuhan No. 8 Hospital recorded one death.
Screenshot of a leaked document showing details of patients with COVID-like symptoms at Wuhan Puren Jiangan Hospital, on Feb. 21, 2020. Part of the information is redacted by The Epoch Times to protect the patients’ privacy. (Provided to The Epoch Times)
Patients died within a period of several days to about four weeks after their first symptoms appeared.
Xu Zhenqian, for example, was hospitalized at Wuhan No. 6 hospital. The 82-year-old started exhibiting symptoms on Oct. 1, 2019, including coughing fits without an apparent cause and coughed up white phlegm, a sign of respiratory infection, according to the hospital’s clinical description. The patient was transferred from another facility shortly before his death on Nov. 3.
Three other patients at the same hospital also had difficulty breathing before they died. Their CT scans showed blurred markings in their lungs—patterns that match the lesions on some COVID-19 patients.
The files also identified at least 40 other suspected COVID-19 patients across eight hospitals, the earliest one being 67-year-old Xiao Niangui, who began exhibiting symptoms on Sept. 25, 2019, and was hospitalized at the Wuhan Puren Jiang’an Hospital.
Screenshot of a leaked document showing details of a patient with COVID-like symptoms at Wuhan No. 6 Hospital, on Feb. 21, 2020. Part of the information is redacted by The Epoch Times to protect the patients’ privacy. (Provided to The Epoch Times)
Wuhan has 205 health facilities at the community and township level and 66 designated hospitals for treating COVID-19 patients, city officials said in March.
China’s lack of transparency has been heavily criticized by government officials. It consistently refused to allow in experts from the United States and the World Health Organization (WHO) to study the outbreak in the country. On Feb. 12, an official from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the agency was still unable to access “direct data” about the outbreak and “continue to be hopeful that we’ll be invited to do that.”
In a media interview released on May 1, a WHO representative in China also said China has excluded the organization’s experts from the country’s virus probe.
- 2 Artists Dominating American Music Charts Both Died Before Their Albums Dropped
2 Artists Dominating American Music Charts Both Died Before Their Albums Dropped
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 21:45NYC rapper Pop Smoke’s debut album, “Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon”, has dominated the Billboard charts since its July debut. This past month, it sold the second-most albums of any artist.
Oddly, the artist who came in first was another rapper, Juice WRLD, whose album “Legends Never Die” is the No. 1 album in the country.
As Bloomberg reported Wednesday, the two artists are topping its ranking of the most influential figures in music for 2020.
It’s an appropriately morbid trend for 2020, a year that has been marked by images of the sick and suffering, even more so than – well – many of the years that preceded it since the beginning of the 21st century.
But it also highlights an alarming trend in rap music, a genre that has taken over the popular music industry as the best-selling (and most profitable) form of musical entertainment, second only to massive arena tours featuring aging rockers like the Police and Guns N’ Roses – or pop stars like Taylor Swift.
Source: Bloomberg
Many top-selling rap artists have been implicated or convicted of violent crimes, including murder, manslaughter, attempted murder and armed robbery.
It’s a trend that has dovetailed with the surge of gun violence in America’s cities, including Chicago, NYC, LA and even smaller cities like Baltimore and Detroit.
During the gang wars that rocked the south side of Chicago earlier this year, another up-and-coming rapper was shot and killed.
Pop Smoke was shot and killed during a home invasion back in February. Five suspects have been arrested and are awaiting trial on murder charges.
The circumstances behind Juice WRLD’s death were decidedly less violent; he overdosed on drugs he reportedly swallowed for fear they would be discovered by police. He’s far from the only rapper in recent years to die from drug overdoses; two other chart-topping rap artists, Mac Miller and Lil Peep, have also died of overdoses over the past few years.
Then again, violence has been part of rap virtually since its birth in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Tupac and Biggie, among the biggest rappers of the 90s, were famously killed in unsolved drive-by shootings. And 50 Cent, the executive producer of Pop Smoke’s album, was shot 9 times, but survived. The man suspected of organizing the attack was later shot and killed, though no charges have been filed.
- Trump Vs Deep State: Will Trump Upend Neocolonial World Order?
Trump Vs Deep State: Will Trump Upend Neocolonial World Order?
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 21:25Submitted by Nauman Sadiq,
Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released an extraordinary statement on Tuesday, decrying a political scene he said “has moved away from spirited debate to a vile, vituperative, hate-filled morass, that is unbecoming of any free nation.” “The world is watching America with abject horror,” he added.
Romney tweeted his statement under the title “My thoughts on the current state of our politics.” “I have stayed quiet,” he said, “with the approach of the election.” “But I’m troubled by our politics,” the sole Republican to vote to impeach Trump added in his statement.
“The president calls the Democratic vice-presidential candidate ‘a monster’. He repeatedly labels the Speaker of the House ‘crazy.’ He calls for the justice department to put the prior president in jail. He attacks the governor of Michigan on the very day a plot is discovered to kidnap her. Democrats launch blistering attacks of their own, though their presidential nominee refuses to stoop as low as others,” Romney, a Utah senator who was the 2012 Republican nominee for president, complained in the statement.
Though superficially trying to appear “fair and balanced” in the didactic sermon patronizingly delivered by the only adult in the room full of political upstarts, Romney’s perceptible bias in the polemical diatribe was hard not to be noticed.
It defies explanation if he didn’t watch the presidential debate or consciously elided over the sordid episode where the Democratic presidential nominee contemptuously sneered at his political rival with derogatory epithets such as “a clown, a racist and Putin’s puppy.”
I’m not sure if Biden was high on meth during the debate, as Trump had repeatedly been insinuating, or he lacks basic etiquette to act like a dignified statesman, but only amphetamines could make a person take leave of his senses and insolently yell at the president of the US, “Will you shut up, man,” while ironically complaining, “This is so unpresidential.”
Though a longtime Republican senator, Mitt Romney’s loyalty to the GOP was compromised due to a personal spat with Trump. In the Republican primaries of the 2016 US presidential elections, Romney severely castigated Trump, calling him “a phony and a fraud.”
After Trump was elected president, he dangled the carrot of the secretary of state appointment to Romney, invited him to a dinner in a swanky New York restaurant, made him eat his words and fawn all over Trump like a servile toady. But later, he gave one of the most coveted appointments in the US bureaucratic hierarchy to oil executive Rex Tillerson.
Romney felt humiliated to the extent that in Trump’s vulnerable moment, after impeachment proceedings were initiated against him in the Senate in February, Romney became the only US senator in the American political history who voted against his own Republican Party president.
Though lacking intellect and often ridiculed for frequent spelling errors on his Twitter timeline, such as “unpresidented” and “covfefe,” implying he gets his news feed from television talk shows and rarely reads book and articles, Donald Trump is street smart and his anti-globalization agenda and down-to-earth attitude appeal to the American working classes.
Nevertheless, it’s quite easy for the neuroscientists on the payroll of the national security establishment to manipulate the minds of such impressionable politicians and lead them by the nose to toe the line of the deep state, particularly on foreign policy matters. No wonder national security shills disparagingly sneer at the president as the “toddler-in-chief.”
In 2017, a couple of caricatures went viral on social media. In one of those caricatures, Donald Trump was depicted as a child sitting on a chair and Vladimir Putin was shown whispering something into Trump’s ears from behind. In the other, Trump was portrayed sitting in Steve Bannon’s lap and the latter was shown mumbling into Trump’s ears, “Who is the big boy now?” And Trump was shown replying, “I am the big boy.”
The meaning conveyed by those cunningly crafted caricatures was to illustrate that Trump lacks the intelligence to think for himself and that he was being manipulated and played around by Putin and Bannon. Those caricatures must have affronted the vanity of Donald Trump to an extent that after the publication of those caricatures, he became ill-disposed toward Putin and sacked Bannon from his job as the White House Chief Strategist in August 2017, only seven months into the first year of the Trump presidency.
Bannon was the principal ideologue of the American alt-right movement. Though the alt-right agenda of the Trump presidency has been scuttled by the deep state, Trump’s views regarding global politics and economics are starkly different from the establishment Democrats and Republicans pursuing neocolonial world order masqueraded as globalization and free trade.
Besides the Trump supporters in the United States, the far-right populist leaders in Europe are also exploiting popular resentment against free trade and globalization. The Brexiteers in the United Kingdom, the Yellow Vest protesters in France and the far-right movements in Germany and across Europe are a manifestation of a paradigm shift in the global economic order in which nationalist and protectionist slogans have replaced the free trade and globalization mantra of the nineties.
Donald Trump withdrawing the United States from multilateral treaties, restructuring trade agreements and initiating a trade war against China are meant to redress, at least cosmetically, the legitimate grievances of the American working classes against the wealth disparity created by laissez-faire capitalism and market fundamentalism.
Michael Crowley reported for the New York Times last month that American allies and former US Officials fear Trump could seek NATO exit in a second term. According to the report, “This summer, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser John R. Bolton published a book that described the president as repeatedly saying he wanted to quit the NATO alliance. Last month, Mr. Bolton speculated to a Spanish newspaper that Mr. Trump might even spring an ‘October surprise’ shortly before the election by declaring his intention to leave the alliance in a second term.”
The report notes, “In a book published this week, Michael S. Schmidt, a New York Times reporter, wrote that Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff John F. Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, told others that ‘one of the most difficult tasks he faced with Trump was trying to stop him from pulling out of NATO.’ One person who has heard Mr. Kelly speak in private settings confirmed that he had made such remarks.”
Crowley adds, “Donald Trump now relies on ‘a team of inexperienced bureaucrats’ and has grown more confident and assertive, as he has already sacked seasoned national security advisers, including John F. Kelly; Jim Mattis, another retired four-star Marine general and Trump’s first defense secretary; and H.R. McMaster, a retired three-star Army general and Trump’s former national security adviser.”
In fact, the Trump administration announced plans in July to withdraw 12,000 American troops from Germany and sought to cut funding for the Pentagon’s European Deterrence Initiative. About half of the troops withdrawn from Germany were re-deployed in Europe, mainly in Italy and Poland, and the rest returned to the US.
Similarly, although full withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan was originally scheduled for April next year, according to terms of peace deal reached with the Taliban on February 29, President Trump hastened the withdrawal process by making an electoral pledge this week that all troops should be “home by Christmas.” “We should have the small remaining number of our BRAVE Men and Women serving in Afghanistan home by Christmas,” he tweeted last week.
Even the arch-foes of the US in Afghanistan effusively praised President Trump’s peace overtures. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told CBS News in a phone interview last week, “We hope he will win the election and wind up US military presence in Afghanistan.”
The militant group also expressed concern about President Trump’s bout with the coronavirus. “When we heard about Trump being COVID-19 positive, we got worried for his health, but it seems he is getting better,” another Taliban senior leader confided to reporter Sami Yousafzai.
Moreover, Iran-backed militias recently announced “conditional” cease-fire against the US forces in Iraq on the condition that Washington present a timetable for the withdrawal of its troops. The US-led coalition has already departed from smaller bases across Iraq and promised to reduce its troop presence from 5,200 to 3,000 in the next couple of months, though Iraq’s parliament passed a resolution urging the full withdrawal of US troops in January.
There is no denying the fact that the four years of the Trump presidency have been unusually tumultuous in the American political history, but if one takes a cursory look at the list of all the Trump aides who resigned or were otherwise sacked, almost all of them were national security officials.
In fact, scores of former Republican national security officials recently made their preference public that they would vote in the upcoming US presidential elections for Democrat Joe Biden instead of Republican Donald Trump against party lines.
What does that imply? It is an incontrovertible proof that the latent conflict between the deep state and the elected representatives of the American people has come to a head during the Trump presidency.
Although far from being a vocal critic of the deep state himself, the working-class constituency that Trump represents has had enough with the global domination agenda of the national security establishment. The American electorate wants the US troops returned home, and wants to focus on national economy and redress wealth disparity instead of acting as global police waging “endless wars” thousands of miles away from the US territorial borders.
Addressing a convention of conservatives last year, Trump publicly castigated his own generals, much to the dismay of neoliberal chauvinists upholding American exceptionalism and militarism, by revealing: “I learn more sometimes from soldiers what’s going on, than I do from generals. I do. I hate to say it. I tell the generals all the time.”
At another occasion, he ruffled more feathers by telling the reporters: “I’m not saying the military’s in love with me. The soldiers are. The top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t because they want to do nothing but fight wars so all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy.”
- US Army Wants To Make COVID Social Distancing 'Permanent' Even After Pandemic Ends
US Army Wants To Make COVID Social Distancing ‘Permanent’ Even After Pandemic Ends
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 21:05For the majority of Americans wondering when this socially distanced dystopian nightmare of ‘6 feet apart’ and ‘wear a mask!’ and ‘mandatory hand sanitizer’ will finally be over, the Pentagon has just given serious cause for concern. When will it all end?
Perhaps leading the way as an example of where we all might be headed as a country, the United States Army has strongly hinted that it’s looking to make its coronavirus protective measures permanent.
This according to alarming statements reported by the military site Defense News:
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the defense industry began adjusting its facilities to avoid major outbreaks that could shut down production lines for days or weeks at a time. And now that those changes are in place, the U.S. Army’s top acquisition official thinks they should remain so for good.
Speaking to reporters during the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference, Bruce Jette, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, said he sees long-term benefits from maintaining the kind of social distancing protective measures put in place across industry.
US Army combat medics maintaining social distancing, via U.S. Army Medical Center of Excellence The DoD has observed a significant drop in cases of the common cold, viral infections, and the flu – and expects this will last so long as troops practice a distancing regimen.
Jette’s comments and predictions of what might come sound downright dystopian and inhuman in terms of the holistic well-being of American troops.
“I don’t know that I would ever say it’s totally back to normal,” Jette was quoted as saying. “I don’t see us backing off of using these same techniques on a contouring basis, even as the vaccine continues to mature.”
This senior Army official is essentially saying that even if an effective vaccine is developed there’s no returning to normal.
Image via U.S. Navy “I would say we don’t back off of the COVID-19 standards because it will also reduce the impact of flu and other illnesses,” he added. “We think continuing to apply these same techniques would be further beneficial to the people and to the Army overall.”
Consider this: should the Army and eventually the entire DoD implement “permanent” social distancing measures, which would at the very least mean for years to come, that would put the entirety of American society a mere stone’s throw away from being forced to do the same.
In a sense, US armed forces might be the ‘canary in the coal mine’ in this case, revealing where we’re all headed and what might be forced on the already weary American people, who overwhelmingly are ready to truly return to normal.
- Tesla-Beating Carmarker Shows Xi’s Vision for 2025
Tesla-Beating Carmarker Shows Xi’s Vision for 2025
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 21:03By Bloomberg macro commentator Ye Xie
It was another wait-and-see session. The “blue wave” trades — higher stocks and yield-curve steepening — have faded this week.
Mixed bank earnings, dwindling hopes for pre-election stimulus and skittishness about the virus and vaccine left investors with fewer reasons to bid up risky assets. Even with Joe Biden’s current lead, the skepticism toward polling data is understandable given memories of 2016. That said, if President Trump does overcome his deficit in recent polls, it would be the biggest underdog victory since World War II, according to Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid.
Across the Pacific Ocean, President’s Xi’s highly anticipated speech in Shenzhen didn’t break any new ground. But his vision for a clean, efficient and innovative China in a five-year development plan was reflected in markets in the U.S. and Hong Kong Wednesday.
Consider these movements:
A. Electric carmakers, including NIO, Li Auto and BYD, surged. NIO jumped 23% after JPMorgan and Citigroup upgraded their ratings on the stock, extending its gain to 559% this year to outpace a 451% advance in Tesla. JPMorgan analyst Nick Lai expects the market share of new-energy vehicles in China to rise to 20% by 2025, from less than 5% in 2019.
B. Solar energy company JinkoSolar rallied another 9% in the U.S., tripping its price this year, while China’s biggest wind-turbine maker, Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology, surged 22% in Hong Kong. The gains accelerated since Xi made an ambitious pledge this month to go “carbon neutral” by 2060. China tops the global league for emissions, at 28% of the total in 2019. The plan would call for renewables to account for 43% of China’s primary energy mix, from 15% now, according to Citigroup.
C. The yuan outperformed after a PBOC official played down the currency’s recent appreciation, saying the rally has been mild and reflects improvement in the Chinese economy. Sun Guofeng, monetary policy department head, also said China’s liquidity is reasonable and ample across the board, suggesting limited room for policy easing. Keeping a normalized monetary policy has been part of China’s strategy to attract foreign investors to support innovation and the development of its capital markets.
The old saying is that one has to listen to the Party to make money. There may be some truth to that.
- Fed Vice Chair Makes "Shocking" Admission: Fed May Never Be Able To Stop Manipulating The Market
Fed Vice Chair Makes “Shocking” Admission: Fed May Never Be Able To Stop Manipulating The Market
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 20:45Yesterday, San Fran Fed president Mary Daly made a stunning admission: just in case there was any confusion, the Fed knows that it has – and continues to blow – an asset bubble making “a few” who own stocks uber-rich, but the economy is now so reliant on the Fed liquidity firehose that the moment the Fed threatened to pop this bubble, which some have estimated to be around $90 trillion in liquidity, would result in economic devastation and leave millions without a job.
“I am not willing to trade millions of jobs for people who need a ladder rung up in order to keep the stock market from going up for a few who have those holdings,” Daly said while answering questions following a speech on – what else – racial inequality at a virtual event Tuesday hosted by the University of California, Irvine.
Well, it appears that the Fed makes dramatic revelations in two, because just one day after Daly admitted that the Fed is trapped, the Fed’s Vice Chair for Supervision Randal Quarles, made an even more shocking – or rather “shocking” as we have said for the past decade that this is the case – admission, when he said that the Treasury market is now so large that the U.S. central bank may have to continue to be involved to keep it functioning properly.
That’s right: following its decade-long attempt to “stimulate inflation” by cutting rates, something which we showed is deflationary, and which the Fed did by manipulating bond yields through ZIRP and QE, the Fed only now realizes that if the central bank steps away, everything will crash and yields will explode higher, similar to what happened to repo rates last September when clearing rates briefly hit 10% in a market that was seen as Fed-less.
In short, there is no longer a market, there are only centrally-planned transactions which can only happen with the explicit blessing of the Fed… which can pull its backstops on a whim and crash trillions in assets in a nanosecond.
Speaking at a virtual panel conversation on the future of central banking hosted by the Hoover Institute, Quarles said that “it may be that there is a simple macro fact that the Treasury market being so much larger than it was even a few years ago, much larger than it was a decade ago and now really much larger than it was even a few years ago, that the sheer volume there may have outpaced the ability of the private market infrastructure to support stress of any sort there.”
Quarles then said that raises a question of whether the private sector can ever grow fast enough to cope, “or will there be some indefinite need for the Fed to provide — not as a way of supporting the issuance of Treasuries, but as a way of supporting a functioning market in Treasuries — to participate as a purchaser for some period of time.” Actually, he can keep the “supporting the issuance of Treasuries” in there too, because by now everyone knows that the Fed is monetizing every single dollar in debt the Treasury sells to prevent the entire house of cards from collapsing.
Translation: the Fed can never again step away and stop manipulating the bond market, which by extension and through the risk premium, is the market which defines every other market, including stocks, commodities, FX and so on.
In other words, the Fed is now an irreplaceable anchor of what was once known as the market, in perpetuity.
Realizing the chaos his comments would lead to if they were not phrased as an open-question, the vice chair quickly caveated his statement saying that “I haven’t concluded that that’s the case, the institution certainly hasn’t concluded that that’s the case, but I do think it’s an open question” but the mere fact that the Fed is even mentioning this as a possibility tells us all we need to know, and is also why stocks and bonds will never again crash until fiat money and central banking as we know it, are finally expunged, most likely under very violent circumstances.
- Twitter CEO Dorsey Responds To Biden Block-Gate: Unacceptable
Twitter CEO Dorsey Responds To Biden Block-Gate: Unacceptable
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 20:25Update (2000ET): Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock all day, you’ll know that Twitter and Facebook have been escalating their censorship of a shocking New York Post story showing emails (to and from Hunter Biden) that clearly contradict Joe Biden’s claims that he never discussed business with his son.
The authenticity of the contents of the emails was not denied by the Biden campaign and furthermore, the possibility of an off-the-books meeting between the VP and the Ukrainian executive was not denied:
Several GOP lawmakers got officially ‘involved’, including Rep Jim Jordan, who issued his own letter to Facebook demanding an explanation for why it decided to censor the Hunter Biden story.
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) October 14, 2020
Facebook reiterated its warning that that the U.S.’s foreign adversaries, including Russia, might seek to trick journalists into amplifying hacked or inaccurate content they want to spread ahead of an election.
Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy, issued this warning again Wednesday on Twitter, “given this morning’s news cycle.” He did not directly say whether this was why Facebook took action on the New York Post content.
Then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey offered his comment, rapidly backpedaling on the actions his firm had taken:
Our communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great. And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable. https://t.co/v55vDVVlgt
— jack (@jack) October 14, 2020
Which sounded somewhat genuine, until the company attempted to provide “much needed clarity” about its decision.
The company then tried to cover its action by laying out a step-by-step explanation of how the story violated its terms of service. Notably, many of the examples it offered are routinely exhibited in news stories of all kinds.
The main offense that it’s leaning on: publishing personal photos without the explicit permission of the subject.
News media have long respected the privacy of private individuals, but when it comes to public figures, all bets are off. At least that’s what many reporters are taught in journalism school.
“We want to provide much needed clarity around the actions we’ve taken with respect to two NY Post articles that were first Tweeted this morning.”
The images contained in the articles include personal and private information — like email addresses and phone numbers — which violate our rules.https://t.co/plPa5SZ3we
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) October 14, 2020
As noted this morning, we also currently view materials included in the articles as violations of our Hacked Materials Policy.https://t.co/gCY4BnBHHa
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) October 14, 2020
Commentary on or discussion about hacked materials, such as articles that cover them but do not include or link to the materials themselves, aren’t a violation of this policy. Our policy only covers links to or images of hacked material themselves.
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) October 14, 2020
The policy, established in 2018, prohibits the use of our service to distribute content obtained without authorization. We don’t want to incentivize hacking by allowing Twitter to be used as distribution for possibly illegally obtained materials.https://t.co/qx9rlzWH4O
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) October 14, 2020
We know we have more work to do to provide clarity in our product when we enforce our rules in this manner. We should provide additional clarity and context when preventing the Tweeting or DMing of URLs that violate our policies.
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) October 14, 2020
We recognize that Twitter is just one of many places where people can find information online, and the Twitter Rules are intended to protect the conversation on our service, and to add context to people’s experience where we can.
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) October 14, 2020
Did President Trump give NBC News permission to publish that recording of him talking to Billy Bush?
Oh and one more thing…
“obtained without authorization”
Trump’s tax records were given to The New York Times “without authorization” and Twitter made sure that it was the top trending story for days https://t.co/9pJIfzvwSh
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) October 15, 2020
Of course, conservatives immediately pointed out that it’s not Twitter’s communication skills that are the issue.
Your “communication” is not the problem. The problem is your totalitarian censorship, your election interference, and the fact that you allow genocidal terrorists to threaten Jews while banning elected U.S. officials from sharing American journalism. https://t.co/F0CrgP6GP7
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) October 15, 2020
And another user pointed out the irony of journalists backing Twitter’s explanation.
Journalists carrying water for a digital platform suppressing certain types of journalism is a creepy phenomenon that will not end well for anyone, least of all journalists. https://t.co/J4JlnQQGqg
— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) October 14, 2020
We have one warning for Mr.Dorsey, stay out of the way of (soon to be Congresswoman Laura Loomer):
Now, as we wait to learn more about Facebook’s thought process, will Zuckerberg personally weigh in?
When will this be stopped? As Tucker Carlson said tonight: “Soon we’re going to do a show where we just read the names of all the Republicans…who refused to lift a finger to save you from what you correctly described as this grave moment in American history.”
Tucker Carlson & @esaagar Discuss The Future Of Big Tech Censorship
Tucker: “Soon we’re going to do a show where we just read the names of all the Republicans…who refused to lift a finger to save you from what you correctly described as this grave moment in American history.” pic.twitter.com/wOzDeFEDWH
— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) October 15, 2020
* * *
Update (1645ET): As the uproar over Twitter & Facebook’s efforts to suppress Wednesday’s New York Post exposè intensifies, Twitter has (begrudgingly, we imagine) made mention of the scandal in its trending topics.
Ironically, Streisand Effect is trending nationally – that’s a subtle reference to the principle of how trying to suppress information often accidentally causes it to spread.
Several slots below that is #HunterBiden.
Quietly backtracking suggests Twitter is beginning to regret its decision to censor the story.
Meanwhile, as the mainstream media desperately tries to change the subject…
Billboard outside Des Moines airport where Trump holds Iowa rally tonight. pic.twitter.com/XHix45wzlw
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) October 14, 2020
…Ted Cruz, coming in hot off his performance during the ACB hearings this week, tweeted a copy of a letter he recently sent to the CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey,
Facebook official spox (who describes himself as an alum of the DCCC & former Dem Sen. Barbara Boxer) explains Facebook’s active censorship of @nypost story alleging corruption by Biden.
Who could doubt their impartiality? https://t.co/GITjkeEJP4
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) October 14, 2020
My letter to @jack regarding @Twitter’s censorship of the @nypost. pic.twitter.com/o3Ebkbqait
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) October 14, 2020
As Cruz argues in the letter, like myriad other newspaper reports published during the Trump era (too many to even begin to name here), the NYPost story was based on “leaked email correspondence”. He adds that the decision to suppress the story was “hypocritical”, given the company has allowed plenty of other less definitively sourced reporting to spread unchecked.
Twitter well-knows its incredible ability to influence public dialogue by promoting some stories while suppressing others, and it has plainly decided that the American people should not be seeing or discussing this particular story, which could significantly influence voters’ views of candidate Biden.
Cruz concluded that “this can only be seen as an obvious and transparent attempt by Twitter to influence the upcoming Presidential election,” and demanded that the social media company turn over important details to the Subcommittee on the Constitution.
The most important of the four question (the first three mostly cover the whos, wheres, whens, and hows) is the last one, which asks Twitter to cite a “neutral principle” which would explain why the reporting on the Steele dossier was allowed to go unquestioned, but this story, reported in the country’s 4th-highest circulation newspaper, must be censored because it’s “dangerous”.
Eric Weinstein seized the opportunity to make a great point.
I am deliberately posing here with actual “potentially harmful” objects found in my home. I still have minor in the house.
Please @jack, let me know if I‘m violating Twitter’s Terms of Service as understood by your trusted Partners.
I am so disappointed in you. This is *wrong*. pic.twitter.com/jqIXQtuNvC
— Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) October 14, 2020
An editor at the Post accused Twitter of waging a “digital civil war” against conservatives, citing this as the latest evidence.
This is a Big Tech information coup. This is digital civil war.
I, an editor at The New York Post, one of the nation’s largest papers by circulation, can’t post one of our own stories that details corruption by a major-party presidential candidate, Biden. pic.twitter.com/BKNQmAG19H
— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) October 14, 2020
By censoring the NYPost story, Twitter and Facebook have effectively allowed what many would have written off as “just another crazy Hunter story” to take on a life of its own. Ironically, they’ve accomplished what they were purportedly trying to prevent: they’ve given the story even more oxygen.
* * *
Update (1455ET): If you thought Twitter’s censorship of the NYPost Hunter Biden exposé couldn’t get anymore Orwellian, well, you were wrong.
As if preventing users from sharing the link wasn’t enough, the platform has now deleted the NYP’s initial tweet.
Twitter deleted @nypost’s tweet about the Hunter Biden bombshell. This is election interference. We’ve entered the age where we have a “ministry of truth” run by Democrats and only they decide what’s true. They demand that you no longer believe your lying eyes & ears.
Chilling. pic.twitter.com/rl6oPZMv5V
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) October 14, 2020
We imagine it did so after a flood of hysterical leftists smashed that “report tweet” button.
Meanwhile, after the Biden campaign neglected to comment on the veracity of the emails shared in the NYPost expose, the White House pool reporter reported that the Biden campaign had called a “lid” – that is, an end to all in-person campaign-related events – before 10am, ensuring the former VP wouldn’t have any prolonged in person contact with reporters on the same day the expose dropped.
As we’ve explained in the past, a “lid” is essentially permission for the doting reporters covering Biden’s campaign to head home for the day. His campaign’s frequent use of the practice has drawn more unwanted attention to the cozy relationship between the Biden campaign and the Washington Press corp.
* * *
Update (1430ET): Twitter is now apparently flagging this morning’s NY Post report as “unsafe” and refusing to allow its users to share it.
This is what happens when I try to post our story exposing Biden family graft. pic.twitter.com/7pwxUoNgTX
— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) October 14, 2020
Also pic.twitter.com/hyES7QWwCn
— 🍂 joe 🍂 (@BarnasJoe) October 14, 2020
This is an escalation from earlier, when Twitter was merely prompting users to reconsider before sharing.
* * *
Update (1405ET): While left-wing conspiracy theorists try to denounce the emails published by the NYP as fake, the Trump Campaign has just pointed out something very interesting in its latest comment on the issue.
🚨📩 INBOX —> @TeamTrump statement on Biden response to NY Post Bombshell:
“The Biden campaign does not dispute the authenticity of the emails published by the New York Post, which serves to confirm that they are real,” says @TimMurtaugh pic.twitter.com/2UScI1pQ45
— Abigail Marone 🇺🇸 (@abigailmarone) October 14, 2020
This medium post purporting to show that the emails were “photoshopped” has been making the rounds – unimpeded – on social media.
* * *
Update (1310ET): In the social media contest to see which platforms can successfully suppress Wednesday’s NYP Hunter Biden scoop, it looks like Twitter has taken the lead. In addition to scrubbing Hunter’s name from its trending topics, Twitter is hitting users trying to retweet the story with one of their “are you sure?” prompts.
Twitter now too pic.twitter.com/TGTve2mXuC
— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) October 14, 2020
* * *
Update (1255ET): Hours after the Trump Campaign earlier blasted the Biden Campaign’s “blatant selling of access”, team Biden has finally responded by asserting that the meeting between VP Biden and a top Burisma executive described in one of the leaked emails detailed below never took place.
“We have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place,” said campaign spokesman Andrew Bates in a statement.
New: Biden campaign responds to NY Post story. “The New York Post never asked the Biden campaign about the critical elements of this story…moreover, we have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.” pic.twitter.com/yB2N5mvsXb
— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) October 14, 2020
The team also claimed that they were never approached by the reporters who published the story.
To be sure, just because it wasn’t on Biden’s “official” schedule, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
The Biden campaign’s response to the NY Post story is that Biden’s meeting with the corrupt official of a corrupt Ukrainian gas company isn’t on Biden’s official schedule. No one was expecting it to be on his official schedule. https://t.co/Pog0xqtsF5
— Arthur Schwartz (@ArthurSchwartz) October 14, 2020
The Biden camp also claimed the NY Post did nothing to try and corroborate the “unverified” emails.
Notably, the NY Post has shared one of the emails in full in a PDF document.
480001185 Email From Vadim Pozharskyi to Devon Archer and Hunter Biden by Zerohedge on Scribd
Critics are calling for the Post to release metadata from the emails, or some other clue to verify the messages.
Meanwhile, Trump Campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh makes a good point.
“The real question is, as of course this has been seized by the FBI since then, why has the FBI been sitting on this?” Murtaugh said, adding, “I would also further point out that no one seemed to care when someone committed an obvious federal crime by leaking the president’s tax documents to the New York Times.”
* * *
Update (1150ET): More high-profile conservatives have lashed out at Facebook for censoring the story about Hunter Biden.
This is straight-up election interference by @Facebook, being announced by their comms person who touts in his bio numerous past jobs with Dems. Big Tech is openly trying to rig this election for Biden & should be held accountable immediately. @FCC @senjudiciary @SenateCommerce https://t.co/NO2eG6D6K0
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) October 14, 2020
Holy bleeping bleep. Facebook explicitly admitting it is protecting Biden — and interfering in the presidential election — by censoring media outlets and limiting discussion of today’s breaking news about Biden’s engagement with Burisma. https://t.co/nF07qqyc5J
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) October 14, 2020
Facebook is openly admitting its interference in a U.S. presidential election by blatantly censoring media outlets that print negative facts about their preferred presidential candidate, Joe Biden. Terrifying. https://t.co/nF07qqyc5J
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) October 14, 2020
The most Pravda-like thing is that the immediate pushback by Biden’s many allies in Big Media and Big Tech serve as confirmation of the story and how damaging it is to the Biden campaign. If it weren’t true, they’d just say that, rather than censor its distribution.
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) October 14, 2020
Of course, Facebook isn’t alone: Twitter is also keeping the story out of its trending topics menu.
Twitter clearly also part of Big Tech’s presidential election interference and their censorship of the negative facts surrounding Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. https://t.co/2bGKIEv5K5
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) October 14, 2020
We’re also seeing an avalanche of memes.
I had to… pic.twitter.com/lueR5wIm9X
— M3thods (@M2Madness) October 14, 2020
While the hard drive has been turned over to the FBI, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee confirmed it’s working with the computer repairman who initially discovered the hard drive to “verify” the documents. The repairman initially contacted the committee back in September, one day after it released the report on conflicts related to Hunter, per the NY Post.
Some other revelations have been publicized from the email cache: In a follow-up piece, the NY Post revealed that Blue Star Strategies, identified by the NY Post as a “Democratic” PR firm, leaked the minutes of an administration conference call to Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi along with Hunter Biden and his former business partner Devon Archer.
* * *
Update (1145ET): Rumor has it that one of the lewd videos mentioned earlier features Hunter Biden smoking crack and having sexual relations with an unidentified woman.
11. Allegedly, the laptop Hunter “forgot” to pick up also contains a 12 minute video of him smoking crack and having sex with an unidentified woman.
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) October 14, 2020
Truly legendary.
* * *
Update (1115ET): In a surprising move to censor a mainstream media outlet known for leaning conservative, Facebook’s platform managers have decided to actively suppress distribution of the latest Hunter Biden expose.
While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook’s third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) October 14, 2020
The Trump Campaign accused Stone and the company of actively interfering in the election.
This is a Facebook employee.
Facebook is actively interfering in the election.
Facebook is rigging the election for Joe Biden. https://t.co/mXGi2ay8J7 pic.twitter.com/PjtZaVPQ16
— Trump War Room – Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) October 14, 2020
Republicans and conservatives across Twitter and elsewhere also expressed their dismay at the decision.
While CEO Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged that Facebook has some obligation to censor or root out “misinformation”, this story isn’t what that is. Keep in mind, Facebook censored ZERO stories about the Russia investigation and its origins, even as some key elements of the NYT’s early reporting were found to be false.
Facebook, as a matter of policy, is now censoring stories detailing documented corruption by Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.
At no point did Facebook ever seek to throttle the reach of any Russian-disinformation-fueled stories falsely alleging collusion. https://t.co/N8ktaqCn2J
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) October 14, 2020
Twitter is censoring the president and shadow-banning conservatives, Facebook is blocking negative stories about Joe Biden and his crackhead son, and Google is kow-towing to communist China, in case you were wondering whether Big Tech is conspiring to steal the 2020 election.
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) October 14, 2020
To be sure, mainstream media are abiding with a near-blackout, just as we had anticipated.
Any time legacy media drops a supposed “bombshell” on Trump, it immediately hits the front pages.
Still waiting on NYT, WaPo, and CNN however to write anything on the @nypost‘s actual bombshell on Joe Biden lying about what he knew of his son’s overseas business interests. pic.twitter.com/amcilH0cv0
— Tristan Justice (@JusticeTristan) October 14, 2020
It’s like veteran political journalist Matt Taibbi (hardly a conservative) has argued: best-case, enforcing “misinformation” is a laborious game of whack-a-mole. But right now, it’s just simply opening the companies to accusations of bias because that’s what they are showing.
* * *
Update (1006ET): Due to the gravity of its claims, the NY Post’s Hunter Biden scoop has overshadowed the third day of ACB’s confirmation hearings to become the major political story of the day.
So far, the MSM’s most cogent objection is: ‘if all of this is real, then why wasn’t it in the Senate report? And how long has Giuliani had a copy of the hard drive?’
Things that are sketchy in NYP story on Hunter Biden – why wasn’t this in Ron Johnson report if it’s been in possession for awhile? When did Giuliani acquire it? Giuliani has been everywhere on the but this has been kicking around since late last year and unreleased till now?
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) October 14, 2020
One respondent joked.
And while the NY Post published numerous photos from the hard-drive ranging from the banal to the bizarre, photos of Hunter Biden with a crack/meth pipe in his mouth have gone viral on social media.
What a legend pic.twitter.com/rlZcb2qZiz
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) October 14, 2020
* * *
Update (0900ET): The White House is celebrating the Wednesday morning NY Post bombshell…
🚨🚨 BOMBSHELL 🚨 🚨
Hunter introduced Joe Biden to a top executive at the Ukrainian energy firm he received $50K/month from!
BIDEN: “I have never discussed with my son or my brother or anyone else anything having to do with their businesses. Period.”@JoeBiden LIED. PERIOD‼️ pic.twitter.com/zDy75fxauq
— Kayleigh McEnany (@kayleighmcenany) October 14, 2020
…while the MSM is trying to make it all go away.
The ‘smoking gun’ email in the NY Post story — even if it is authentic, given the massive red flags — doesn’t actually say what the story says it does.
Also, recall: https://t.co/qPVwoX4g1f
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) October 14, 2020
That’s hardly a surprise.
* * *
MSM organizations may have largely ignored findings from a Senate Intel Committee report, released last month, which claimed that some of Hunter Biden’s activities in Ukraine raised “counterintelligence and extortion” concerns. On the day that report dropped, Rep Adam Schiff brushed it aside, accusing his GOP colleagues in the Senate of “promoting the same Russian disinformation”, per the New York Post.
Well, we’d be interested to hear what Schiff & Company have to say about this.
In a shocking report based on documents collected by the FBI – but which haven’t been previously disclosed in the press – the New York Post reveals that Hunter Biden introduced his father – then the Vice President of the United States – to a top executive at Burisma, the shady Ukrainian energy firm where Biden once served as a board member.
Emails contained in the report shed new light on Biden’s claims that he successfully forced former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire a public prosecutor named Viktor Shokin. Biden bragged about leveraging $1 billion in US aid to force Poroshenko to fire Shokin, who was opposed by both the US and the EU. However, Shokin was reportedly working on an investigation into the management and executive board of Burisma, a group that included Hunter Biden, and his former business partner Devon Archer, whose conviction on securities fraud charges in the US was recently reinstated.
The emails offer evidence that Hunter Biden did in fact introduce his father to a top executive at Burisma less than a year before the vice president moved to oust Shokin, thereby quashing an investigation into the firm. The meeting is referenced in emails between Vadym Pozharskyi, an advisor to the board of Burisma, who sent Biden an email on April 17, 2015 thanking him for the introduction.
Another email also shows Pozharskyi, believed to be the No. 3 exec at Burisma, asking Biden about how the political scion could “use your influence” to help Burisma.
All of this would seem to undermine Biden’s claim that he has “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings”, which also included extensive dealings in China.
Another email dated on May 12, 2014, shortly after Hunter joined the board, shows Pozharskyi attempting to pressure Biden to use his “political leverage” to help the company. The message included the subject line “urgent issue” and also references an attempted “shakedown” by Ukrainian prosecutors under Poroshenko. According to Pozharskyi, prosecutors in the country had approached a man referred to as “NZ”, who was identified by the Post as Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky, who went by the Americanized name “Nicholas”.
When “NZ” rebuffed their threats, they proceeded with “concrete actions” including “one or more pretrial proceedings,” Pozharskyi wrote.
“We urgently need your advice on how you could use your influence to convey a message / signal, etc .to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions,” he added.
The timing of the email is also notable: It was sent just as Burisma was announcing Biden’s decision to join the executive board.
It’s merely the latest piece of evidence suggesting that the company brought Biden on to manage its “legal affairs” because it likely believed his pull with the US would protect Burisma from these types of prosecutorial “shakedowns”.
In addition to the emails, the drive contained photos, some of which were shared with the Post. They spanned from family snaps of Hunter with his father and his kids, to selfies of Biden smoking cigarettes in a variety of unusual poses.
According to the Post, the images and correspondence were taken from the hard drive of a laptop that was dropped off at a repair shop in Delaware, and never retrieved. After seeing what was on the hard drive, the owner of the shop copied it, and turned it over to a lawyer connected with former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani reportedly turned it over to the NY Post over the weekend.
We imagine the MSM will cover up this report, as is standard practice for any concerning information involving Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.
- How 'Democratization' Of The Bond Market Killed Liquidity & Forced The Fed To Save The World
How ‘Democratization’ Of The Bond Market Killed Liquidity & Forced The Fed To Save The World
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 20:25Enabling the great unwashed masses of the world’s modestly wealthy to partake in the global bond market has been heralded as an epochal movement toward the ‘democratization‘ of an arcane asset-class by the creators of Exchange-Traded Funds (and Notes).
Yes, it sparked a massive increase in passive investment-based cash into a relatively illiquid market – hoorah – but, as recent academic report by the Swiss Finance Institute (SFI) found, there are some rather notable ‘unintended consequences’ to this sudden technical shift.
Of course, you will read none of this in the mainstream, or hear these fears raised by asset-gatherers and commission-rakers since, as Upton Sinclair foretold, “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
But, as Bloomberg’s Katharine Greifeld reports, in the case of the corporate bond market, the boom in credit ETFs has sparked a surge in liquidity risk…(something we experienced in the real world in March) so much so in fact that The Federal Reserve was forced to step in (for the first time – officially – in its history) and intervene to save the world.
The impact was felt across the entire bond market with Treasury liquidity suffering a shock collapse, and huge gaps emerging between the prices of ETFs and the bonds they track.
That chaos quickly spilled over into the corporate bond market and only the Fed’s action restored calm.
Critically, SFI’s Efe Cotelioglu notes that, unlike with stocks, ETF or mutual fund ownership does not affect the liquidity in the underlying bonds
“Higher ETF ownership of investment-grade corporate bonds can reduce the ability of investors to diversify liquidity risk,” Cotelioglu, who is also a PhD candidate at the University of Lugano, wrote in a paper.
Specifically, Cotelioglu puts this divergence in liquidity down to contrasting investor bases and structural differences. For instance, as Greifeld notes, mutual funds have “discretion” in deciding how to meet redemptions, while an ETF can’t choose what assets it sells.
This research confirms the market-wide experience that very liquid funds could become a destabilizing force for their less liquid underlying securities… and, in many cases in March, forced the market for any sizable trades to be done ‘by appointment’ only.
For now, calm has been restored, thanks in large part to The Fed’s buying efforts (and promise to act)
But, as Bloomberg’s Greifeld notes, while the study used almost a decade’s worth of data through to the second quarter of 2019, the market for fixed-income ETFs has exploded in size since then.
Bond ETFs have pulled in about $170 billion in 2020, surpassing equity inflows and already beating last year’s record $154 billion haul.
So don’t be surprised if the next ‘event’ in the markets brings Jay Powell storming back in to save the corporate bond market (and keep the zombies ‘alive’ just a little longer – a bridge to the vaccine?)…
The takeaway – as The Fed’s hidden ‘yield curve control’ has managed the Treasury market in a narrow yield range for months (and its corporate bond buying program), the rising liquidity risk exposed by Cetelgio’s paper (as passive flows continue to flood into ETFs) means any market shocks (cough – the election – cough) will expose the real liquidity-premium-adjusted prices for these bonds, far below NAVs.
- Voters Blame Pelosi Over Trump For Stimulus Impasse: Poll
Voters Blame Pelosi Over Trump For Stimulus Impasse: Poll
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 20:05A new poll reveals that more Americans blame House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the stalled stimulus deal than President Trump.
According to a poll conducted Oct. 9-11 by left-leaning YouGov, 43% of those polled blamed Pelosi for failing to reach a stimulus deal, while 40% blame President Trump. 17% were unsure.
Pelosi, the target of a new bill introduced by Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) which seeks to remove her over a ‘lack of mental fitness,’ got into a testy exchange on Tuesday with CNN‘s Wolf Blitzer – biting his head off when he asked why she wouldn’t accept Trump’s $1.8 trillion stimulus deal (while citing several prominent Democrats who want her to take it).
“I don’t know why you’re always an apologist and many of your colleagues are apologists for the Republican position,” replied Pelosi.
Things got contentious at the end of the interview between Speaker Pelosi and Wolf Blitzer 😳😳😳 pic.twitter.com/vZWp08evB0
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) October 13, 2020
As the Daily Caller notes, Rep. Ro Khanna tweeted on October 11 that the $1.8 trillion “is significant & more than twice [the] Obama stimulus” (to which Pelosi scoffed).
People in need can’t wait until February. 1.8 trillion is significant & more than twice Obama stimulus. It will allow Biden to start with infrastructure. Obama won in 08 by doing the right thing on TARP instead of what was expedient. Make a deal & put the ball in McConnell court. https://t.co/qAEtd049sW
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) October 11, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
- Las Vegas' Largest Casino Cuts Hours As COVID Keeps Customers At Bay
Las Vegas’ Largest Casino Cuts Hours As COVID Keeps Customers At Bay
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 19:45Citing weak demand, Encore at Wynn Las Vegas announced Tuesday it has reduced operating hours, reported 8 News Now.
The 2,034-room resort, the biggest casino on the Strip, will be open Thursdays through Sundays only, is just more evidence that the “V-shaped” recovery narrative for the gambling hub is faltering.
Encore at Wynn Las Vegas Encore’s new operating schedule will continue indefinitely “until consumer demand for Las Vegas increases,” Wynn announced Tuesday. This means hotel guests will be able to check-in at 2 p.m. on Thursdays and check out around noon on Mondays.
As for what the new schedule means for employees, many of whom just recently returned to work, well, it appears layoffs are nearing:
“We have not yet determined the number of employees who will be furloughed as a result of the reduction in operating hours,” a Wynn Resorts representative told Las Vegas Sun in a statement.
Inside A Room At Encore at Wynn Las Vegas Vegas casinos shuttered operations from mid-March until June 4, due to the virus pandemic, when casinos reopened, public health mandates issued by the state limited indoor capacity. Besides consumer choices, mainly to avoid public areas as the virus continues to rage across the country, tourism in the Strip has been severely lagging – hotel occupancy rates in the city were down 50% in August compared with the same month in 2019, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
Casino Floor At Encore at Wynn Las Vegas Encore is not the first casino/resort to reduce operating hours because of weak demand – Palazzo’s hotel tower halted weekday reservations in July though left its casino, shops, and restaurants open during the week. Planet Hollywood Resort has limited its reservations during the weekdays.
Casino/resorts are “adapting their business to what we can get right now, and they’re smart about it,” Greg Chase, CEO of Experience Strategy Associates hospitality consulting group, told Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Chase said reducing operating hours is the first step resorts need to take to offset mounting costs and lower revenues.
While only a handful of resorts on the Strip are reducing operations on the weekdays, this trend could become more widespread as consumers stay home amid surging virus cases this fall.
If readers want any more clarity on a recovery timeline for the gambling hub, well, Las Vegas economic analyst Jeremy Aguero recently warned it could take 18 and 36 months for the recovery to play out.
- Coronavirus Counterfactual: A True Enemy Would Have Alerted Us In 2019
Coronavirus Counterfactual: A True Enemy Would Have Alerted Us In 2019
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 19:25Authored by John Tamny via RealClearMarkets.com,
With the coronavirus, the most frustrating counterfactual of all is to think about how much better off we all would have been if politicians had done nothing. Stop and think about it for a minute. The more desperate the situation, the more freedom makes sense.
The reality is that well before the needless lockdowns began, Americans had started to adjust their behavior.
This included staying at home for some. Notable about this is that it was in the U.S. states that locked down the latest that citizens adjusted the most. In a global sense, it was reported by the great Holman Jenkins that the supply of masks had run out before major action by Merkel et al in Germany. People get it. They don’t need a law. Fear of sickness or death concentrates the mind.
Remember how restaurants started to clear somewhat before the lockdowns? People were adjusting. Imagine if businesses, including restaurants, had been left free to meet the needs of customers (or not at all) free of business tips from those who brought us the DMV.
No doubt some businesses would have gone under amid fear of the virus, but they were already going under before that. Particularly retail. Remember all the hand wringing about Amazon and the internet “hollowing out” shopping malls? While the nailbiters will eventually regret the association of their names with such alarmism, the reality in a dynamic economy is that the roster of names in shopping malls and town centers is constantly changing.
The main thing is that near-term caution taken by free people would have resulted in more saving, and as a consequence a rising capital base for businesses and entrepreneurs to access on the way to recovery. Natural slowdowns paradoxically fuel the subsequent rebound. Translated, what you’ve been told about “recessions” by economists, pundits and politicians is mostly bunk. This wasn’t nor is it a recession; rather it was a forced contraction. Tragic.
Politicians foisted on us lockdowns that wrecked lives and business.
Economic growth produces the resources to fight a virus, but this time around an always obtuse political class outdid itself by choosing economic desperation as the path to a cure.
There’s a China angle to this, though perhaps not what you think.
It’s known the virus originated there, and the first documented infection dates back to November.
November raises a question about when the virus first began spreading. Presumably before that, but since over half don’t know they have it, who knows? The main thing is that the virus had been around the global block as it were well before January when Beijing officially acknowledged its existence.
So what if China had announced the virus right away. Then we would know they were the enemy. Think about it, scary as it may be. It’s frightening to contemplate because it’s possible an alarmist political class locks down even sooner. Perhaps months sooner. If so, and quoting Jenkins from his Wall Street Journal column over the weekend, “the economy wouldn’t have fallen off a cliff in March,” but maybe months sooner. It gets worse.
Contemplate what it means that the virus started spreading in November, and perhaps earlier. What it presumably means is that the virus had been traveling around the world for months before politicians began calling for lockdowns. If so, it’s not unrealistic to at least ask if broad immunity hadn’t begun to form long before the political reaction. Was “herd immunity” achieved before March?
This was a question posed by me the weekend before last in Great Barrington, MA. The American Institute for Economic Research is headquartered there, and that’s where the Great Barrington Declaration was written. In response to my question about “herd immunity” having possibly already asserted itself before the global political meltdown, Oxford professor Sunetra Gupta confirmed that she’d speculated just that in March of 2020, and right as the lockdowns began. If the virus moves around with easy rapidity, why wouldn’t it have begun spreading with abandon toward the end of 2019; thus setting the stage for broader immunity before politicians acted like politicians?
If so, China’s early quietude about the virus should be a relief. How awful if early alarm had brought on a much earlier political crack-up such that the lockdowns began in December 2019 or January of 2020. Not only would the economic suffocation have begun months earlier, but assuming lockdowns actually work in terms of slowing the spread of the virus, we’d presumably be much further away from broad immunity today. A much weaker economy combined with nail-biting politicians delaying the spread necessary to achieve immunity.
About what’s been written, it’s worth at least asking about. No medical expert here, what’s been asked doesn’t seem unreasonable in consideration of how experts say virus spread can be restrained: through isolation. Ok, but if it was spreading for months before March, weren’t the lockdowns in mid-March and beyond pointless in addition to violating freedom, wrecking the global economy, and restraining the production of information that free people produce?
Time will tell, but there’s an argument that the rhetoric about China gets dumber by the day. Considering survival rates that exceed 99%, it’s hard to ascribe something sinister. Why manufacture a virus that is so meek? As for delayed acknowledgement of it, how lucky that politicians, experts and their media enablers didn’t have a chance to lose their minds sooner. While there are many layers to the discussion of “China,” it’s hard not to be a little relieved they didn’t freak out the unreasonable sooner.
Needless to say, the high survivability rate for the virus doesn’t square with some of the anger directed at China.
The anger contradicts the survivability number, plus it excuses politicians, experts and pundits for their role in what’s easily the biggest unforced error of the 21st century; one that has hundreds of millions rushing toward starvation.
All for what?
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