Today’s News 16th January 2022

• For Leftists, Your Freedom Is Their Misery – Your Slavery Is Their Joy
  For Leftists, Your Freedom Is Their Misery – Your Slavery Is Their Joy

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

  There is a certain level of madness required to reach the state our country is in today. I think most of us feel this and know this but I want to dissect the situation a little so that we can see the guts of the thing and understand the mechanics of it. Insanity has a structure, believe it or not, and there are ways to analyze it and identify it. For example, there are many forms of madness that stem from an obsession with power and control.

  

  In my previous article ‘Is There A Way To Prevent Psychopaths From Getting Into Positions Of Power’, I explored the thinking patterns and predatory habits of the worst 1% of humanity and how they insinuate themselves into authority by blending in (until they have all the power and no longer need to blend it). Now I want to talk more about the OTHER unstable people, the 5%-10% of the population that psychopaths exploit as a mob or army to frighten everyone else into conformity and help them achieve their goals.

  To be clear, almost any group can become an exploitable weapon used by psychopaths. There have been times in history where the elites within the Catholic Church used zealotry among Christians to dominate society to the point of torture and terror during the inquisitions and crusades. During the George W. Bush era I remember well the lies about WMDs used to herd Republicans into pointless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, that is the past. Today the problem of zealotry is resoundingly on the side of the political left.

  That is to say, the political left is now the side that is most appealing to narcissists, sociopaths, the emotionally unstable, etc., and this attraction is forming a mob that can be easily exploited by the establishment.

  What I find interesting is that leftists actually believe that THEY are the underdogs and that they are fighting a “revolution” against the establishment. This is a bizarre disconnect from reality. Every major institution of power and influence in the US is on the side of the political left. How can you be rebelling against the establishment if all your values coincide with the establishment’s agenda?

  The mainstream media and Hollywood have gone hardline in favor of leftist propaganda from critical race theory to the trans agenda and identity politics to feminism to socialism and centralization. Nearly every commercial, TV show and movie we see today reflects a far-left viewpoint or far left imagery, even though the majority of the population has no interest in woke ideology. Clearly, leftists and their friends in media think that if they force their cultism into people’s faces non-stop 24/7 that we will eventually capitulate and embrace it.

  Big Tech and major social media platforms ALL operate according to leftist politics. All of their terms of service rules are enforced to protect leftists from criticism and to censor conservatives and any moderates that dare speak up. The evidence overwhelmingly shows a left leaning bias in Big Tech censorship with conservatives being booted off platforms for nothing more than citing facts. We saw this recently with Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia GOP representative, who was banned from Twitter and called a “far-right conspiracy theorist” for posting links to the VAERS database.

  For those unfamiliar with VAERS, it is a database run by the US government to track the adverse effects of vaccinations including covid vaccinations. While the numbers have been manipulated in the past (which the CDC claims was due to “reporting errors”), VAERS has still reported thousands upon thousands of deaths and side effects directly related to the covid vaccines, but you aren’t supposed to know about that. So, Greene gets booted from Twitter for posting the government’s own data, which is now only accessible if you go through a maze of links to get to the downloads.

  Social media is also commonly used as a weapon by leftists in order to “cancel” people that step out of line. An American Airlines pilot was attacked this week by a Twitter mob when a crazed feminist recorded images of his luggage. His crime? A small sticker on his suitcase which said “Lets Go Brandon.” The woman and her Twitter cohorts called for the pilot to be fired and American Airlines is “investigating” the issue.

  This is just one instance among thousands in the past few years that illustrate the sheer rage leftists feel when they are faced with a free thinking person. Their immediate reaction is to punish and destroy rather than accept and move on.

  But where does this mentality come from?

  I think it’s a combination of a culture of narcissism and collectivism coupled with a desperate desire for weak people to feel as though they are powerful. Leftists are very commonly people you might call the “runners-up” in life. There are a lot of malcontents and socially inept failures in their ranks that grow up feeling powerless. Instead of improving their lot by improving themselves and achieving something of merit, they instead blame others and the world for their lack of accomplishment.

  This mentality can also be seen with their academia which often exaggerates their own importance and the importance of their accolades. One can get a masters degree in social sciences or feminist studies, but how useful is that person to the world really? Being an activist alone is not a career and they produce nothing, so the only measure of their education and their life is how much they can destroy, not how much they can build and create.

  Joe Rogan’s latest move from Twitter over to GETTR is another big story that leftists are losing their minds over. They act as though they just want to be rid of conservatives and argumentative moderates from their “safe spaces,” but in reality this does not satisfy them. They don’t want us to walk away, they want us to conform. They want us trapped within their echo chambers and going along to get along, or, they want us erased.

  Leftists see people as property of the collective, and if you and millions of others walk away this reflects badly on their ideology, which is unacceptable. This is why they are CONSTANTLY attacking or trying to take down conservative social media platforms. You would think they would be happy that GETTR exists, but they are miserable. Your freedom is their misery.

  Think about that for a moment; there are millions of leftists out there that cannot abide your existence if you are free to express your discontent with their narrative.

  When Joe Rogan contracted covid the leftists were jittery with excitement hoping he would die. When he beat the virus in less than three days without being vaccinated they cried out in horror. It’s as if they don’t realize that most unvaccinated people have had the virus and have easily survived it (I had covid for a week and then I was fine – I will NEVER get vaccinated).

  Maybe they are aware that the vaccines are mostly pointless. Maybe what really bothers them is that the unvaxxed are free and do not conform to the mandates or the fear mongering? Maybe they are more concerned about the act of defiance rather than any issues of legitimate “health safety”…?

  And this brings me to the relationship between the majority of government and the political left, which are working hand in hand to push forward covid controls and vax mandates. I’ve said this before and I’ll point it out again – There is no longer any debate about who the authoritarians really are. If you want to be free from overt government intrusion and tyranny you go to a conservative red state. If you want to be a slave to bureaucracy you go to a progressive blue state. Red states value individual freedom – Blue states do not. This is undeniable.

  Leftists are not the rebels they think they are; they are not the heroes – They are the villains. They are the empire.

  I believe the vax mandate agenda in particular appeals to their innate desire for control over others. This is evident in their crazed rhetoric over the vaccination issue. The LA Times just published an Op-Ed titled ‘Mocking Anti-Vaxxers’ Covid Deaths Is Ghoulish, Yes – But May Be Necessary’ (originally titled ‘Why Shouldn’t We Dance On The Graves Of Anti-Vaxxers?), and it’s this kind of bloodthirsty propaganda that truly reveals the extend of the political left’s broken psychology.

  They want you to die for going against the mandates. They seem to think that covid is their avenging angel, but this only shows that they are too dumb to understand basic science or too malicious to think rationally.

  The Biden Administration has been a key element in fear mongering over the covid pandemic, which has an average Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of 0.26% to 0.27% according to dozens of peer reviewed studies, and now with the even less dangerous Omicron strain the death rate is plummeting further. The overwhelming majority of people have NOTHING to fear from covid, yet leftists readily rally around Biden and his medical tyranny.

  Furthermore, the bias (or ignorance) of the LA Times is made clear when we look at the actual data for Breakthrough Cases. Breakthrough cases are covid infections and deaths among fully vaccinated individuals. As a point of reference, in the state of Massachusetts alone there have been over 262,000 fully vaccinated people who still ended up infected with covid and 1054 deaths according to official numbers. That is an infection fatality rate of 0.4%, which is HIGHER than the national average IFR of 0.27%.

  The most vaccinated countries in the world are also suffering from the worst infection spikes in the world. In Ireland, for example, over 63% of recent covid deaths were fully vaccinated individuals. In Israel, nearly 60% of covid hospitalizations are fully vaccinated. Uruguay, Bahrain, Maldives and Chile all have overwhelming majority vaccination rates and all of them have seen spikes in covid deaths and and infections. According to the UK government’s own stats, people who are triple vaxxed are 4.5 times more likely to be infected with Omicron than people who are unvaxxed.

  The average vaccine is tested for 10-15 years before it is approved for use on human beings, yet covid vaccines were released within months with no long term testing to prove their safety. It makes perfect sense for people to be concerned.

  So, I would ask the hacks at the LA Times: Should we be dancing on your graves when you die from covid despite all those miraculous untested vaccines? Or maybe when you end up dead and on the VAERS list due to vaccine side effects? Autoimmune disorders can take 2-4 years to gestate and be identified by doctors; maybe in 2024 you’ll be wishing you had taken a wait-and-see approach to the untested vaccines like all the smart people are doing?

  This is called logic, reason and science. The above data is beyond the mental grasp of many leftists and even when they do get it they ignore it. They have no interest in protecting your health or the health of the public, that’s not what this is about. What they care about is control and nothing would bring them more joy than to see 100% conformity and slavery to their ideals. They live vicariously through tyranny.

  The pandemic paranoia, the lockdowns, the mandates, Big Tech, social media, cancel culture are all means to an end. Leftists pretend they are humanitarians that care about the greater good, but this is a facade. It’s just another excuse to justify a deep seated thirst to micromanage the lives of others.

  A classic tactic of narcissistic sociopaths is to victimize and terrorize people, then accuse them of being monsters when those people snap back and rebel.   They are projecting their tyranny on the rest of us and label us the bad guys.  It’s time to end the theater and call leftists what they really are – They are the dictators they claim they are trying to fight.

  *  *  *

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  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 23:30

• Visualizing The $94 Trillion World Economy In One Chart
  Visualizing The $94 Trillion World Economy In One Chart

  Just four countries – the U.S., China, Japan, and Germany – make up over half of the world’s economic output by gross domestic product (GDP) in nominal terms. In fact, as Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld notes, the GDP of the U.S. alone is greater than the combined GDP of 170 countries.

  How do the different economies of the world compare? In this visualization we look at GDP by country in 2021, using data and estimates from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

  

  An Overview of GDP

  GDP serves as a broad indicator for a country’s economic output. It measures the total market value of final goods and services produced in a country in a specific timeframe, such as a quarter or year. In addition, GDP also takes into consideration the output of services provided by the government, such as money spent on defense, healthcare, or education.

  Generally speaking, when GDP is increasing in a country, it is a sign of greater economic activity that benefits workers and businesses (while the reverse is true for a decline).

  The World Economy: Top 50 Countries

  Who are the biggest contributors to the global economy? Here is the ranking of the 50 largest countries by GDP in 2021:

  

  *2020 GDP (latest available) used where IMF estimates for 2021 were unavailable.

  At $22.9 trillion, the U.S. GDP accounts for roughly 25% of the global economy, a share that has actually changed significantly over the last 60 years. The finance, insurance, and real estate ($4.7 trillion) industries add the most to the country’s economy, followed by professional and business services ($2.7 trillion) and government ($2.6 trillion).

  China’s economy is second in nominal terms, hovering at near $17 trillion in GDP. It remains the largest manufacturer worldwide based on output with extensive production of steel, electronics, and robotics, among others.

  The largest economy in Europe is Germany, which exports roughly 20% of the world’s motor vehicles. In 2019, overall trade equaled nearly 90% of the country’s GDP.

  The World Economy: 50 Smallest Countries

  On the other end of the spectrum are the world’s smallest economies by GDP, primarily developing and island nations.

  With a GDP of $70 million, Tuvalu is the smallest economy in the world. Situated between Hawaii and Australia, the largest industry of this volcanic archipelago relies on territorial fishing rights.

  In addition, the country earns significant revenue from its “.tv” web domain. Between 2011 and 2019, it earned $5 million annually from companies—including Amazon-owned Twitch to license the Twitch.tv domain name—equivalent to roughly 7% of the country’s GDP.

  

  *2019 GDP (latest available) used where IMF estimates for 2021 were unavailable.

  Like Tuvalu, many of the world’s smallest economies are in Oceania, including Nauru, Palau, and Kiribati. Additionally, several countries above rely on the tourism industry for over one-third of their employment.

  The Fastest Growing Economies in the World in 2021

  With 123% projected GDP growth, Libya’s economy is estimated to have the sharpest rise.

  Oil is propelling its growth, with 1.2 million barrels being pumped in the country daily. Along with this, exports and a depressed currency are among the primary factors behind its recovery.

  

  Ireland’s economy, with a projected 13% real GDP growth, is being supported by the largest multinational corporations in the world. Facebook, TikTok, Google, Apple, and Pfizer all have their European headquarters in the country, which has a 12.5% corporate tax rate—or about half the global average. But these rates are set to change soon, as Ireland joined the OECD 15% minimum corporate tax rate agreement which was finalized in October 2021.

  Macao’s economy bounced back after COVID-19 restrictions began to lift, but more storm clouds are on the horizon for the Chinese district. The CCP’s anti-corruption campaign and recent arrests could signal a more strained relationship between Mainland China and the world’s largest gambling hub.

  Looking Ahead at the World’s GDP

  The global GDP figure of $94 trillion may seem massive to us today, but such a total might seem much more modest in the future.

  In 1970, the world economy was only about $3 trillion in GDP—or 30 times smaller than it is today. Over the next thirty years, the global economy is expected to more or less double again. By 2050, global GDP could total close to $180 trillion.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 23:00

• The Lab Leak: The Plots & Schemes Of Jeremy Farrar, Anthony Fauci, And Francis Collins
  The Lab Leak: The Plots & Schemes Of Jeremy Farrar, Anthony Fauci, And Francis Collins

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

  Jeremy Farrar is a former professor at Oxford University and the head of the Wellcome Trust, an extremely influential non-government funder of medical research in the UK and a big investor in vaccine companies. 

  Some people regard Farrar as the UK’s Anthony Fauci. He had much to do with the pandemic response, including the lockdowns and mandates in the UK. For the entire pandemic ordeal, he has been in touch with his colleagues around the world. He has written a book (it appeared July 2021 but was probably written in the Spring) on his experience with the pandemic. 

  I reviewed already. 

  In general, the book is chaotic, strongly backing lockdowns without ever presenting a clear rationale for why, much less a road map for how to get out of lockdowns. I swear you could read this book carefully front to back and not know anything more about pandemics and their course than you had at the beginning. In this sense, the book is an abysmal failure, which probably explains why it is so little talked about. 

  That said, the book is revealing in other ways, some of which I did not cover in my review. He carefully presents the scene at the beginning of the pandemic, including the great fear that he, Fauci, and others had that the virus was not of natural origin. It might have been created in a lab and leaked, accidentally or deliberately. This awesome prospect is behind some of the strangest sentences in the book, which I quote here:

  By the second week of January, I was beginning to realise the scale of what was happening. I was also getting the uncomfortable feeling that some of the information needed by scientists all around the world to detect and fight this new disease was not being disclosed as fast as it could be. I did not know it then, but a fraught few weeks lay ahead.

  In those weeks, I became exhausted and scared. I felt as if I was living a different person’s life. During that period, I would do things I had never done before: acquire a burner phone, hold clandestine meetings, keep difficult secrets. I would have surreal conversations with my wife, Christiane, who persuaded me we should let the people closest to us know what was going on. I phoned my brother and best friend to give them my temporary number. In hushed conversations, I sketched out the possibility of a looming global health crisis that had the potential to be read as bioterrorism.

  ‘If anything happens to me in the next few weeks,’ I told them nervously, ‘this is what you need to know.’

  Sounds like a thriller movie! A burner phone? Clandestine meetings? What the heck is going on here? If there really was a virus on the loose and a looming crisis of public health, why would your first impulse be, as a famous guy and so on, to write about it, tell the public everything you know, inform every public health official, open up and prepare people, and get to work finding therapeutics that can save lives? Why would you not immediately investigate the demographics of risk and inform people and institutions of the best-possible response?

  What the heck is all this cloak-and-dagger about? Seems like a bad start for a responsible public policy. 

  The next chapter reveals some of the background to all this high dudgeon:

  In the last week of January 2020, I saw email chatter from scientists in the US suggesting the virus looked almost engineered to infect human cells. These were credible scientists proposing an incredible, and terrifying, possibility of either an accidental leak from a laboratory or a deliberate release….

  It seemed a huge coincidence for a coronavirus to crop up in Wuhan, a city with a superlab. Could the novel corona-virus be anything to do with ‘gain of function’ (GOF) studies? These are studies in which viruses are deliberately genetically engineered to become more contagious and then used to infect mammals like ferrets, to track how the modified virus spreads. They are carried out in top-grade containment labs like the one in Wuhan. Viruses that infect ferrets can also infect humans, precisely the reason ferrets are a good model for studying human infection in the first place. But GOF studies always carry a tiny risk of something going wrong: the virus leaking out of the lab, or a virus infecting a lab researcher who then goes home and spreads it….

  The novel coronavirus might not even be that novel at all. It might have been engineered years ago, put in a freezer, and then taken out more recently by someone who decided to work on it again. And then, maybe, there was … an accident? Labs can function for decades and often store samples for just as long. In 2014, six old vials of freeze-dried variola virus, which causes smallpox, were uncovered in a lab in Maryland, US; though the samples dated back to the 1950s, they still tested positive for variola DNA. Some viruses and microbes are disturbingly resilient. It sounded crazy but once you get into a mindset it becomes easy to connect things that are unrelated. You begin to see a pattern that is only there because of your own starting bias. And my starting bias was that it was odd for a spillover event, from animals to humans, to take off in people so immediately and spectacularly – in a city with a biolab. One standout molecular feature of the virus was a region in the genome sequence called a furin cleavage site, which enhances infectivity. This novel virus, spreading like wildfire, seemed almost designed to infect human cells….

  The idea that an unnatural, highly contagious pathogen could have been unleashed, either by accident or design, catapulted me into a world that I had barely navigated before. This issue needed urgent attention from scientists – but it was also the territory of the security and intelligence services….

  When I told Eliza about the suspicions over the origins of the new coronavirus, she advised that everyone involved in the delicate conversations should raise our guard, security-wise. We should use different phones; avoid putting things in emails; and ditch our normal email addresses and phone contacts.

  Keep in mind, we are talking here about the last week of January. The top experts in the world were living in fear that this was actually a lab leak and perhaps a deliberate one. This consumed them completely, knowing full well that if this were true, we could see something close to a world war developing. And then the question comes up concerning responsibility. 

  

  Let’s move to the next chapter:

  The next day, I contacted Tony Fauci about the rumours over the origins of the virus and asked him to speak with Kristian Andersen at Scripps. We agreed that a bunch of specialists needed to urgently look into it. We needed to know if this virus came from nature or was a product of deliberate nurture, followed by either accidental or intentional release from the BSL-4 lab based at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

  Depending on what the experts thought, Tony added, the FBI and MI5 would need to be told. I remember becoming a little nervous about my own personal safety around this time. I don’t really know what I was scared of. But extreme stress is not conducive to thinking rationally or behaving logically. I was exhausted from living in two parallel universes – my day-to-day life at Wellcome in London, and then going back home to Oxford and having these clandestine conversations at night with people on opposite sides of the world. 

  Eddie in Sydney would be working when Kristian in California was asleep, and vice versa. I didn’t just feel as if I was working a 24-hour day – I really was. On top of that, we were getting phonecalls through the night from all over the world. Christiane was loosely keeping a diary and recorded 17 calls in one night. It’s hard to come off nocturnal calls about the possibility of a lab leak and go back to bed. 

  I’d never had trouble sleeping before, something that comes from spending a career working as a doctor in critical care and medicine. But the situation with this new virus and the dark question marks over its origins felt emotionally overwhelming. None of us knew what was going to happen but things had already escalated into an international emergency. On top of that, just a few of us – Eddie, Kristian, Tony and I – were now privy to sensitive information that, if proved to be true, might set off a whole series of events that would be far bigger than any of us. It felt as if a storm was gathering, of forces beyond anything I had experienced and over which none of us had any control.

  Well, there we go. Was there ever a doubt that Fauci and so on were consumed by fear that this was a lab leak from their own colleagues and friends in Wuhan? Has he denied this? I’m not sure but this account from Farrar is pretty extraordinary proof that discovering the virus’s origins was the major concern from these official and influential scientists for the last part of January through February. Rather than thinking about things such as “How can we help doctors deal with patients?” and “Who is vulnerable to this virus and what should we say about that?”, they were consumed by discovering the origin of the virus and hiding from the public what they were doing. 

  Again, I am not interpreting things here. I’m only quoting what Farrar says in his own book. He reports that the experts he consulted were 80% sure it had come from a lab. They all scheduled an online meeting for February 1, 2020. 

  Patrick Vallance informed the intelligence agencies of the suspicions; Eddie did the same in Australia. Tony Fauci copied in Francis Collins, who heads the US National Institutes of Health (the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, which Tony heads, is part of the NIH). Tony and Francis understood the extreme sensitivity of what was being suggested,…

  The next day I gathered everyone’s thoughts, including people like Michael Farzan, and emailed Tony and Francis: “On a spectrum if 0 is nature and 100 is release – I am honestly at 50! My guess is that this will remain grey, unless there is access to the Wuhan lab – and I suspect that is unlikely!”

  These discussions and investigations continue for the whole month of February. This explains so much about why health officials in so many countries were entering into panic mode rather than calmly addressing an emerging problem in public health. They spent all their energies on discerning the origin of the virus. Were they worried that they would be implicated due to financial ties? I don’t really know and Farrar doesn’t go into that. 

  Regardless, it took them a full month before this small group finally came out with what appeared to be a definitive paper appearing in Nature: The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2. The date it appeared was March 17, 2020. That was the day following the announcement of lockdowns in the US. We now know that the paper was written as early as February 4, and went through many drafts over the coming weeks, including edits by Anthony Fauci himself. That paper has since been debated very extensively. It was hardly the last word. 

  What strikes me most in retrospect concerning the idea of the lab leak is the following. During the most critical weeks leading up to the obvious spread of the virus all over the Northeast of the U.S., leading to incredible carnage in nursing homes due to egregious policies that failed to protect the vulnerable and even deliberately infected them, public health officials in the US and UK were consumed not with a proper health response but with fear of dealing with the probability that this virus was man-made in China. 

  They deliberated in secret. They used burner phones. They spoke only to their trusted colleagues.

  This went on for more than a month from late January 2020 to early March. Whether this virus originated as a lab leak or not in this case is not so much the issue; there is no question that Farrar, Collins, Fauci, and company all believed that it was likely and even probable, and they spent their time and energies plotting the spin.

  This fear consumed them entirely at the very moment when their job was to be thinking of the best public-health response. 

  Maybe their time should have been about telling the truth as they knew it? Explaining how to deal rationally with the coming virus? Helping people who are vulnerable protect themselves while explaining to everyone else that there is no point in panicking? 

  Instead, in the midst of the panic they both felt and then projected to the public, they urged and got lockdowns of the world’s economy, a policy response never before attempted on this scale in response to a virus.

  The virus did what the virus does, and all we are left with are the breathtaking results of the pandemic response: economic carnage, cultural destruction, large amounts of unnecessary death, and an incredible paper trail of incompetence, fear, secrecy, plotting, and neglect of genuine health concerns. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 22:30

• FedEx Wants To Arm Cargo Planes With Anti-Missile Lasers
  FedEx Wants To Arm Cargo Planes With Anti-Missile Lasers

  International logistics giant FedEx seeks permission to mount a laser weapon system on the exterior of cargo planes as a countermeasure against heat-seeking missiles, according to an unpublished Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposal in the Federal Register. 

  

  The unpublished document, titled “FedEx Express, Airbus Model A321-200 Airplanes; Installation of an Infrared Laser Countermeasure System,” is set to be released by the FAA on Jan. 18, explains how the logistics company wants to install the laser weapon on at least one Airbus A321-200 freighter that would be used to direct laser energy toward heat-seeking missiles as a countermeasure. 

  This action proposes special conditions for the Airbus Model A321-200 airplane. This airplane, as modified by FedEx Express (FedEx), will have a novel or unusual design feature when compared to the state of technology envisioned in the airworthiness standards for transport category airplanes. This design feature is a system that emits infrared laser energy outside the aircraft as a countermeasure against heat-seeking missiles. The applicable airworthiness regulations do not contain adequate or appropriate safety standards for this design feature. These proposed special conditions contain the additional safety standards that the Administrator considers necessary to establish a level of safety equivalent to that established by the existing airworthiness standards.

  “In recent years, in several incidents abroad, civilian aircraft were fired upon by man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS),” the unpublished document said. In 2020, Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was shot down by a military-grade surface-to-air missile near Tehran, Iran. 

  “This has led several companies to design and adapt systems like a laser-based missile-defense system for installation on civilian aircraft, to protect those aircraft against heat-seeking missiles. The FedEx missile-defense system directs infrared laser energy toward an incoming missile, in an effort to interrupt the missile’s tracking of the aircraft’s heat,” it continued. 

  The move to equip planes with laser countermeasures could allow them to fly in highly contested air space that would usually be off-limits, a move that could save FedEx time and money. 

  

  As the world becomes a more dangerous place by the day, it’s only a matter of time before civilian airlines adopt such technology. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 22:00

• China's True COVID-19 Death Toll 366 Times Higher Than Official Figure, Analyst Says
  China’s True COVID-19 Death Toll 366 Times Higher Than Official Figure, Analyst Says

  Authored by Eva Fu and David Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The Chinese regime has likely understated the COVID-19 death rate by as much as 17,000 percent in a systematic data suppression campaign to sustain its political image, according to a U.S. analyst.

  

  That would put the number of COVID-19 deaths in China at around 1.7 million rather than 4,636, the two-year cumulative death figure that the Chinese authorities have maintained on the books. That’s 366 times the official figure.

  Those findings made by George Calhoun, director of the quantitative finance program at Stevens Institute of Technology, were based on data as of January generated by a model developed by The Economist.

  A vast majority of China’s officially recorded deaths came from Wuhan during the first three months of the pandemic, with only hundreds more reported in the rest of the country.

  The Chinese regime only reported two additional deaths since April 1, 2020, ranking China as having the world’s lowest COVID-19 death rate, which Zhong Nanshan, the Chinese epidemiologist overseeing China’s outbreak response, boasted about just last week.

  But that jaw-dropping data point—hundreds of times lower than that of America, gave Calhoun pause.

  “That’s impossible. It’s medically impossible, it’s statistically impossible,” Calhoun told NTD, an affiliate of The Epoch Times.

  

  “Remember, in 2020, there was no vaccine, there was no treatment,” he said. “So you had an unprotected population that has shown zero COVID deaths, even though they’ve had tens of thousands of cases.”

  Curating public records and previous research reports, and analyzing the regime’s pattern of hushing up scandals in the past, Calhoun arrived at a conclusion that to him seems obvious: China has made its “zero-COVID” policy a political objective, and is systematically falsifying data to prop up the claim.

  “Somebody put a message out at the end of the first quarter and 2020 and said, ‘Okay, we want to see zero-COVID. That’s our policy.’ And it became zero-COVID,” he said.

  Anomalies

  The first “smoking gun” is a sudden drop of COVID-19 deaths since April 2020 from mainland China after a “raging” rate of infection, Calhoun said.

  From April 1, 2020, to Jan. 8, 2022, over 22,102 cases have been reported in mainland China, according to data from Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Only two deaths were recorded over the same period.

  By comparison, Hong Kong, which counted about half as many COVID-19 infections over the period, reported 213 deaths.

  The case fatality rate (the proportion of those infected who died) in Wuhan during the first three months of the pandemic averaged around 7.7 percent, more than five times that of the United States and four times the world average.

  

  Two scenarios are possible: either the virus was “far more deadly in early 2020 in Wuhan than anywhere else, at any other time,” or alternatively, the official infection numbers from China were too small by a factor of three or four, Calhoun said.

  Over the following 20 months, there has been a consistent lack of COVID-19 data from China. As of September, China has become the world’s only country that has not provided complete data on excess mortality—unexplained deaths beyond normal trends that can offer a crude estimate of uncounted COVID deaths, a survey from the University of Washington shows.

  The Economist model seeks to make up for that data gap. Based on the model, Calhoun said China’s excess mortality was off by about 17,000 percent. This discrepancy, he added, surpasses those even by countries mired in large-scale civil unrest, such as Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Venezuela, which has undercounted the COVID-19 mortality rate by up to 1,100 percent.

  

  Undercounting virus deaths is widespread across countries. Based on The Economist’s model, the United States’ official tally is short by about 30 percent. But China’s case is extreme.

  “They are through the roof,” Calhoun said of the discrepancy between China’s official figures and the estimated true death toll.

  “Something’s driving that,” Calhoun said.

  While the virus might not be all to blame for the jump, tight-lipped Chinese authorities have offered few clues as to what might have happened otherwise.

  Calhoun’s estimate coincides with anecdotal evidence from local residents, troves of internal documents leaked to The Epoch Times, and research studies into the impact of the virus in China, all of which indicate that the official figures have been grossly understated.

  During the early months when the pandemic first broke out in China’s Wuhan, some of the city’s funeral home workers told The Epoch Times they were working nonstop to cremate bodies. In March, thousands of ash urns were delivered to one of the crematoriums, when the official death number was over 2,000. The authorities raised the fatality figure by 50 percent a month later, attributing the gap to administrative inefficiencies.

  

  A study published in The Lancet last March said as many as 968,800 people in Wuhan had antibodies by April 2020, which would mean they developed immunity to the virus after being infected.

  The data inconsistencies are not limited to Wuhan alone. During a two-week period in February 2020, an internal document from Shandong health authorities showed that close to 2,000 people had tested positive for the virus, but only 755 infections were publicly recorded.

  Leaked documents suggest that the regime has continued to deem virus control as a political task.

  In files recently obtained by The Epoch Times, a top Chinese official of Shaanxi Province, where the virus-hit Xi’an is the capital, ordered the “toughest measures” to be put in place to block the virus’ further spread from Xi’an. With the Beijing Winter Olympics coming up, a spillover would create “systemic risk” and “smear the national image,” the document read.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 21:30

• So You Want A Career In Finance?
  So You Want A Career In Finance?

  Corporate finance is a key pillar on which modern markets and economies have been built. And, as Visual Capitalist’s Aran Ali details below, this complex ecosystem consists of a number of important sectors, which can lead to lucrative career avenues.

  From lending to investment banking, and private equity to hedge funds, the graphic above by Wall Street Prep breaks down the key finance careers and paths that people can take.

  

  Let’s take a further look at the unique pieces of this finance ecosystem.

  The Lending Business

  Lending groups provide much needed capital to corporations, often in the form of term loans or revolvers. These can be part of short and long-term operations or for events less anticipated like the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in companies shoring up $222 billion in revolving lines of credit within the first month.

  Investment Banking

  Next, is investment banking, which can split into three main areas:

  1. Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A): There’s a lot of preparation and paperwork involved whenever corporations merge or make acquisitions. For that reason, this is a crucial service that investment banks provide, and its importance is reflected in the enormous fees recognized. The top five U.S. investment banks collect $10.2 billion in M&A advisory fees, representing 40% of the $25 billion in global M&A fees per year.

  2. Loan Syndications: Some $16 billion in loan syndication fees are collected annually by investment banks. Loan syndications are when multiple lenders fund one borrower, which can occur when the loan amount is too large or risky for one party to take on. The loan syndication agent is the financial institution involved that acts as the third party to oversee the transaction.

  3. Capital Markets: Capital markets are financial markets that bring buyers and sellers together to engage in transactions on assets. They split into debt capital markets (DCM) like bonds or fixed income securities and equity capital markets (ECM) (i.e. stocks). Some $41 billion is collected globally for the services associated with structuring and distributing stock and bond offerings.

  The top investment banks generally all come from the U.S. and Western Europe, and includes the likes of Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse.

  Sell Side vs Buy Side

  Thousands of analysts in corporate finance represent both the buy and sell-sides of the business, but what are the differences between them?

  One important difference is in the groups they represent. Buy-side analysts usually work for institutions that buy securities directly, like hedge funds, while sell-side analysts represent institutions that make their money by selling or issuing securities, like investment banks.

  According to Wall Street Prep, here’s how the assets of buy-side institutions compare:

  

   

  Also, buy-side jobs appear to be more sought after across financial career forums.

  Breaking Down The Buy Side

  Mutual funds, ETFs, and hedge funds all generally invest in public markets.

  But between them, there are still some differentiating factors. For starters, mutual funds are the largest entity, and have been around since 1924. Hedge funds didn’t come to life until around 1950 and for ETFs, this stretched to the 1990s.

  Furthermore, hedge funds are strict in the clients they take on, with a preference for high net worth investors, and they often engage in sophisticated investment strategies like short selling. In contrast, ETFs, and mutual funds are widely available to the public and the vast bulk of them only deploy long strategies, which are those that expect the asset to rise in value.

  Private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) are groups that invest in private companies. Venture capital is technically a form of PE but tends to invest in new startup companies while private equity goes for more stable and mature companies with predictable cash flow patterns.

  Who funds the buy side? The source of capital roughly breaks down as follows:

  

   

  Endowment funds are foundations that invest the assets of nonprofit institutions like hospitals or universities. The assets are typically accumulated through donations, and withdrawals are made frequently to fund various parts of operations, including critical ones like research.

  The largest university endowment belongs to Harvard with some $74 billion in assets under management. However, the largest endowment fund overall belongs to Ensign Peak Advisors. They represent The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), with some $124 billion in assets.

  Primary Market vs Secondary Market

  One of the primary motivations for a company to enter the public markets is to raise capital, where a slice of the company’s ownership is sold via an allotment of shares to new investors. The actual capital itself is raised in the primary market, which represents the first and initial transaction.

  The secondary market represents transactions after the first. These are considered stocks that are already issued, and shares now fluctuate based on market forces.

  Tying It All Together

  As the infographic above shows, corporate finance branches out far and wide, handles trillions of dollars, and plays a key part in making modern markets and economies possible.

  For those exploring a career in finance, the possibilities and avenues one can take are practically endless.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 21:00

• Hospital System Drops Race-Based COVID Treatment Policy After Lawsuit Threats
  Hospital System Drops Race-Based COVID Treatment Policy After Lawsuit Threats

  Authored by Rick Moran via PJMedia.com,

  One of the largest hospital systems in the country is dropping its policy that counted race as a more important factor in determining COVID-19 treatment options than diabetes, obesity, asthma, and hypertension combined.

  

  This silliness was allowed at SSM Health, a nominally Catholic health system that operates 23 hospitals across Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin. All hospital patients are “scored” as a means of triage in order to give those most in need priority treatment. SSM Health ignored the severity of a patient’s conditions in order to make race a weightier determining factor.

  Washington Free Beacon:

  SSM Health, a Catholic health system that operates 23 hospitals across Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin, began using the scoring system last year to allocate scarce doses of Regeneron, the antibody cocktail that President Donald Trump credited for his recovery from COVID-19. A patient must score at least 20 points to qualify for the drug. The rubric gives three points to patients with diabetes, one for obesity, one for asthma, and one for hypertension, for a total of six points. Identifying as “Non-White or Hispanic” race, on the other hand, nets a patient seven points, regardless of age or underlying conditions.

  As an ignorant layman, I would ask why in God’s name this isn’t considered radically unethical. But apparently, unequal outcomes between races trumps ethics and common sense when treating illness.

  SSM Health gave a statement to the Free Beacon that denied using the race-based scoring system (they stopped using it last year). But they defended the practice anyway, stating that “early versions of risk calculators across the nation appropriately included race and gender criteria based on initial outcomes.”

  The way the scoring system was used in practice was astonishingly stupid.

  According to an internal memo obtained by the Free Beacon, the SSM scoring system was “based off the Utah Hospital Association and Utah Health Risk Stratification criteria,” which automatically gave two extra points to minority patients—the same amount as diabetes and obesity. The now-defunct rubric is much more radical, prioritizing healthy minorities over white patients with many of the largest risk factors for COVID-19. A 49-year-old white woman with hypertension, obesity, diabetes, and asthma would only get 19 points under the rubric, just shy of the 20 point threshold for antibody therapy. But a 50-year-old black woman with no underlying health conditions would receive 22 points, making her eligible.

  Was this really necessary? The radical left talking point is that people of color are dying of COVID-19 more often than white people (“racism,” of course), and unequal outcomes must be addressed in the name of “social justice.”

  Phooey.

  And while blacks, Hispanics, and Asians are more likely than whites to be hospitalized for COVID, they are less likely to die of it, according to a recent analysis of 4.3 million patients.

  Other studies have found that racial disparities in COVID outcomes disappear when researchers control for comorbidities and income.

  “Black race was not associated with higher in-hospital mortality than white race,” an analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded, “after adjustment for differences in sociodemographic and clinical characteristics on admission.” A study of Maryland and District of Columbia hospitals likewise found no relationship between race and severe disease “after adjustment for clinical factors.”

  Dan Lennington, a lawyer for the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, says, “It’s amazing that we even need to say it, but doctors should treat the individual patient, not the skin color.”

  Amen to that.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 20:30

• Virginia's New AG Fires Civil Rights Division, Will Start Prosecuting Cases Dropped By 'Social Justice' DAs
  Virginia’s New AG Fires Civil Rights Division, Will Start Prosecuting Cases Dropped By ‘Social Justice’ DAs

  Within hours of taking office, Virginia’s newly sworn-in Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) cleaned house – firing dozens of lawyers, including those in the Civil Rights division – and announcing investigations into the Virginia Parole Board and Loudon County Public Schools.

  

  “I’ve been told incoming AG @JasonMiyaresVA just FIRED the entire civil rights division in the Attorney General’s office,” tweeted VA State Senator Louise Lucas.

  I’ve been told incoming AG @JasonMiyaresVA just FIRED the entire civil rights division in the Attorney General’s office. My bill helped create and expand the authority that this division uses.

  — L. Louise Lucas (@SenLouiseLucas) January 14, 2022

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  According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Miyares notified around 30 staff members they’re being let go – including 17 attorneys and 13 staff members. The attorneys include the solicitor general, Herring’s deputies, and reportedly Helen Hardiman – an assistant AG who worked on housing discrimination.

  Miyares, who will take over Democratic AG Mark Herring, campaigned on a promise to pursue legislation that would enable state AGs to circumvent “social justice” attorneys who refuse to vigorously prosecute crimes. As Fox News noted in November, “Under current law, the AG’s office can prosecute a case on behalf of a commonwealth’s attorney – Virginia’s version of a district attorney (DA) – so long as the DA requests it.”

  “George Soros-backed commonwealth’s attorneys are not doing their jobs,” said Miyares in May 2021 comments to the Arlington County Republican Committee.

  Liberal billionaire George Soros has repeatedly poured thousands into prosecutor’s races in Virginia. In 2019, Soros provided a significant cash infusion to three winning progressive candidates, Parisa Dehghani-Tafti in Arlington County (nearly $1 million from Soros); Buta Biberaj in Loudon County ($850,000 from Soros); and Steve Descano in Fairfax County ($600,000 from Soros). Soros spent about $200,000 in a prosecutor’s race in Norfolk this year. His candidate went on to win the race. -Fox News

  When reached for comment, Miyares spokesperson Victoria LaCivita said: “During the campaign, it was made clear that now Attorney General-elect Miyares and Attorney General Herring have very different visions for the office,” adding “We are restructuring the office, as every incoming AG has done in the past.”

  In a Saturday statement just houtrs after Miyares and GOP Gov. Glenn Younkin were sworn in, he explained why he launched the investigations into the parole board and the school district.

  “One of the reasons Virginians get so fed up with government is the lack of transparency – and that’s a big issue here,” he wrote. “The Virginia Parole Board broke the law when they let out murders, rapists, and cop killers early on their sentences without notifying the victims. Loudoun Country Public Schools covered up a sexual assault on school grounds for political gain, leading to an additional assault of a young girl.”

  Loudoun County became a focal point in Youngkin’s gubernatorial race against former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe following the arrest of a 14-year-old male high school student, who identifies as nonbinary, who has been found guilty of raping a female student in a school bathroom. That student was transferred to another school where he allegedly raped another student and the district has been accused of covering up the crime which resulted in one of the alleged victim’s parents being arrested at a school board meeting. The offending student has been placed on the sex offenders registry for life as part of his sentence. –Fox News

  Meanwhile, within hours of his inauguration, Governor Glenn Youngkin signed 11 executive actions – including lifting the mask mandate in Virginia schools, and “ending divisive concepts, including critical race theory, in public education.”

  As Terri Wu via the Epoch Times reports:

  He also signed an executive directive rescinding the vaccine mandate for all state employees.

  The 55-year-old former business executive, in his inauguration speech at Richmond, emphasized a “common path forward” with “our deep and abiding respect for individual freedom.” Youngkin vowed to strengthen and renew the “spirit of Virginia” associated with the history of the state as the home of American democracy. He credited Virginians with the spirit of tenacity, grit, and resilience.

  Youngkin said he was “ready to lead and serve, starting on day one,” and it would start in the classroom to get Virginia’s children “career and college ready.” The crowd of an estimated size of 6,000 burst into a loud cheer upon hearing from Youngkin that he would “remove politics from the classroom.”

  “Virginia is open for business,” Youngkin promised to create 400,000 new jobs and 10,000 new startups in the four years of his administration by reducing regulations and increasing job-related training.

  According to him, residents of the commonwealth will see the “largest tax rebate in Virginia’s history.” In addition, he promised to “fully fund” and “return respect to” law enforcement.

  ‘Hope’ and ‘Optimism’

  Voters echoed the sentiment of “hope” and “optimism” highlighted in Youngkin’s speech.

  “I’m excited because we have somebody in here who’s willing to fight like we do, just on a higher level,” said Shirley Green, a public relations specialist, while waiting to join the inauguration ceremony. Improving the school system was the first step she wanted the new administration to take. And she was “optimistic” that the Youngkin administration would deliver their campaign promise because of their “humility” and “passion for Virginians.”

  Green grew up as a Democrat in the District of Columbia metropolitan area but became a conservative 13 years ago. She said she had found the Democratic Party having a different vision than “working for the people.”

  

  “I feel great. It’s a great day for Virginia,” said Joe. He and his wife attended the inauguration ceremony in “Youngkin vests,” the same style of fleece vests Youngkin often wore on his campaign trail. The couple owns a local safety business and prefers not to disclose their names. The previous Virginia administration “didn’t always take in consideration of the people” in its decision-making, said the wife.

  “Education is the number one concern,” she said, adding that parents among their employees and employees at their client organizations—Republicans, independents, and Democrats—voted for Youngkin “because of their concerns for their families.”

  Aiden Sheahan and Alyson Bucker with the University of Virginia were among a group of five college students and graduates who also attended the ceremony. They made phone calls and door-to-door visits for the Youngkin campaign. Sheahan said he saw “a lot of optimism” during the campaign; people had hopes that many things, including jobs, the standard of living, and policies, would change with the new governor.

  The group described the new Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears, a black American who immigrated from Jamaica, as “confident” and “powerful.”

  “She doesn’t use her skin color, her circumstances, or her identity to promote herself. She used her accomplishments, rather than something she cannot control, to promote herself,” added Matthew Carpenter, a recent college graduate from Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia.

  Challenges from Day One

  The former executive who campaigned as a political outsider will face challenges working with a state legislature with divided party control, and some priorities facing deadlocks.

  The General Assembly session began on Jan. 12, with a newly empowered Republican majority (52–48) in the State House, and a Senate where Democrats still hold a 21–19 majority.

  In the next 60 days, lawmakers will review and adopt a two-year state budget proposed by former Governor Ralph Northam on Dec. 16. Youngkin has already said “the recognition of the need for tax cuts is understated” in Northam’s plan.

  The new Speaker of the House Todd Gilbert announced education, inflation, and public safety as Virginia House GOP’s agenda for 2022. By comparison, House Democrats’ “top priority is to protect the advances they made against Republican efforts to roll them back,” in three key areas: supporting public schools, keeping families healthy, and ensuring economic security for all.

  With a Democrat-controlled House and Senate in the past two years, former Democratic Governor Northam signed into law in 2020 a series of liberal measures, including increased gun control, lifting abortion restrictions, and relaxed voter requirements.

  “I think we have a Governor-elect who is going to come in and do something about some of our school problems, introduce our freedoms, and be more protective of law enforcement. And I think that gives us a lot of hope,” veteran Republican State Senator Steve Newman told ABC13 a day before the inauguration.

  An inaugural parade followed the ceremony. On Sunday, the three-day events will close with an open house at the governor’s mansion. Along with Youngkin, Winsome Sears was sworn in on Saturday as the Lieutenant Governor and Jason Miyares as the Attorney General. Sears will hold the tie-breaking vote in the State Senate.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 20:00

• RSV More Prevalent Than COVID-19 In Colorado Children: Chief Medical Officer
  RSV More Prevalent Than COVID-19 In Colorado Children: Chief Medical Officer

  Authored by Meiling Lee via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is affecting children in Colorado more than COVID-19, according to a chief medical officer of Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children.

  “RSV is very contagious and very prevalent in the school system as well as throughout daycare centers and in homes,” Dr. Reginald Washington told FOX31 KDVR-TV on Jan. 12, adding that “COVID is increasing in its prevalence” and impacting children the second most, with the adenovirus being third.

  

  RSV is a common respiratory virus that causes cold-like symptoms in people of all ages. Doctors say that the virus is so common that many children will have been infected with it before they are two years old.

  RSV is mild in most children and goes away in a week or two but for some—who are immunocompromised or have a lung or heart disease—it can be quite severe.

  RSV outbreaks usually occur from the fall through the spring, but an increase in RSV cases across the Southern parts of the United States prompted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to issue a health advisory in June 2021.

  Other countries also experienced a spike in RSV out of season. Public Health England, responsible for improving and protecting the country’s health and wellbeing, issued a notice encouraging parents “to look out for symptoms of severe infection in at-risk children” in July 2021. The agency says the increase was a result of the “various restrictions in place [during the winter of 2020] to reduce the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19), there were far fewer infections in younger people” that “many will not have developed immunity.”

  Doctors in Queensland, Australia saw a significant rise in RSV cases in children between January and April of last year. Summer in Australia began Dec. 1, 2020, and ended on Feb. 28, 2021. The northeastern state recorded a total of 378 RSV cases in 2021 compared to 88 cases for all of 2019 and 70 cases in 2020.

  Dr. Damian Roland, honorary professor of pediatric emergency medicine at Leicester University said that regardless of the disease, the focus should be on the signs and symptoms of the child, and not making parents afraid of the illness.

  “From [the] parent point of view [it] doesn’t matter if [the] child has RSV, #COVID19 or [an]other virus. Decision making should be on their wellness not the disease,” Roland said on Twitter on Jan. 12.

  He added, “My comment is we are creating fear in parents of particular diseases rather than how their child is. If your child has fever but is well & drinking the cause of that fever is irrelevant (but please get a COVID test as per national policy).”

  Dr. Lynora Saxinger, infectious diseases expert and associate professor at the University of Alberta listed the symptoms that parents should be aware of and when to bring their child to the doctor or call Emergency Medical Services.

  “Listen. Red flag symptoms for KIDS with virus infection: (Both RSV which is generally tough at this time of year, and has come back after a year off, and COVID19): my colleagues are seeing BOTH viruses causing ‘croup’—even in older kids,” Saxinger wrote on Twitter on Jan. 12.

  Listen
  🚩 red flag symptoms for KIDS with virus infection:
  (Both RSV which is generally tough at this time of year, and has come back after a year off, and COVID19):
  my colleagues are seeing BOTH viruses causing “croup”- even in older kids. Respiratory viruses usually
  1/ pic.twitter.com/XTc31Jmaph

  — Dr. Lynora Saxinger 🇨🇦 *answers DM not mentions (@AntibioticDoc) January 12, 2022

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  RSV causes “an estimated 33.1 million acute lower respiratory tract infections worldwide and 3.2 million hospitalizations in children under 5 years,” according to The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.

  The CDC says that there is currently no specific treatment for infection with RSV, but the World Health Organization (WHO) says that a vaccine may be “available in the near future.”

  “Fortunately, several vaccine candidates are now in the human testing phase targeting young children, older adults, and pregnant women, and an effective safe vaccine is likely to be available in the near future,” the WHO said.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 19:30

• How Goldman Is Convincing Its Clients Not To Freak Out About Fed Rate Hikes
  How Goldman Is Convincing Its Clients Not To Freak Out About Fed Rate Hikes

  Rate hikes are now just right around the corner and traders are freaking out, but not so fast according to Goldman.

  Following the FOMC meeting in mid-December, and especially last week’s FOMC minutes and the subsequent jawboning by various Fed officials,, it has become clear that the Fed will not only double the pace of tapering but also signaled three hikes in 2022. As a result, virtually all sell-side economists – even stern holdouts such as Morgan Stanley and Bank of America – have raised their forecast from three hikes in 2022 to four – with the first hike now expected to occur in March. Their forecast reflects the greater sense of urgency on behalf of FOMC participants towards quelling inflation, which rose to a four-decade high of 7% as measured by the latest year/year CPI. Why this urgency? Because as one can imagine, Biden was very clear in what Powell’s mandate was when he was renominated: “crush inflation as it is crushing my approval ratings”, because as BofA’s Michael Hartnett noted on Friday, “US inflation is up from 1.4% to 7.0%, while Biden’s approval rating is down from 56% to 42% past 12 months.”

  

  But why is the Fed rushing to hike when a growing chorus of economists now agrees with us that the Fed is hiking right into a recession (or alternatively, hiking to create a recession) an observation that was validated by Friday’s dismal retail sales data… and even without validation, the endgame is clear: as David Rosenberg noted recently, every time the US has had 5%+ inflation, it ended in recession.

  Inflation is 7% and the last time this happened, we had a double-dip recession. Prior to the pandemic, 5%+ inflation presaged all seven recessions over the past sixty years. Les jeux sont faits. #Economy #Inflation #DavidRosenberg #RosenbergResearch #RRMacro pic.twitter.com/ZXXjCARL9D

  — David Rosenberg (@EconguyRosie) January 13, 2022

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  Well, according to Goldman’s David Kostin, the unprecedented strength of the labor market has made the Fed more sensitive to high inflation and less sensitive to slowing growth. Alongside rising inflation, the Fed has also cited strong employment data as a catalyst for earlier liftoff and balance sheet reduction. The unemployment rate now stands at 3.9%, falling slightly below the FOMC’s 4.0% median estimate of its long-term level (although looking ahead, Kostin notes that surveys of workers and businesses indicate wage growth is expected to slow to about 4% this year).

  To be sure, the market already reflects this and real and nominal rates have both jumped in anticipation of the upcoming tightening cycle. Since the December FOMC meeting, the 10-year US Treasury yield has surged by 26 bp to 1.77%. Consistent with historical experience, equities have struggled amid this rapid rise in yields, and the fastest-growing and longest-duration pockets of the market – i.e., the biggest bubbles such as profiless tech names, the ARKK ETFs, SPACs and so on – have de-rated most.

  As a quick aside, perhaps the main reason for the equity puke in the past two weeks is not so much the jump in absolute yield in the past month, but the speed of the move. As Goldman showed in a separate report earlier this week (also available to professional subs), regardless of the level of interest rates, equities react poorly to sharp changes in the interest rate environment, and the past week has been no exception: “Historically, equity prices have declined when interest rates rose by two standard deviations or more. This is true for both nominal and real interest rates across both weekly and monthly periods. The two standard deviation threshold was exceeded on both horizons last week, and the accompanying equity weakness followed the usual historical pattern.”

  

  But while that may explain short-term moves, surely higher rates will lead to longer-term weakness no matter what. And while the answer is yes, the next table shows the sensitivity of the S&P 500 forward P/E multiple to various interest rate and ERP scenarios. Goldman’s interest rate strategists forecast a continued rise in real interest rates that will lift the nominal 10-year Treasury yield to 2% by year-end 2022 (more below), however they also expect the ERP to compress modestly from current levels as the pandemic recovery continues and economic policy uncertainty surrounding potential reconciliation legislation passes. In this base case scenario, the S&P 500 P/E multiple would remain roughly flat this year, allowing earnings growth to lift the index price level. But, if the ERP were to rise to its 10-year median and the Treasury yield rises to 2.25%, the P/E multiple would compress by roughly 15% to 17x, and not even Goldman can spin that as positive.

  

  In any case, as Kostin writes in his latest Weekly Kickstart, market pricing and client conversations indicate investors are braced for a string of hikes in 2022, and as a result, questions from Goldman clients during the past two weeks “have focused on the relationship between equities and interest rates, indicating that the hawkish FOMC pivot is being actively assessed by equity investors.” Moreover, the overnight index swap (OIS) market is currently pricing 3.6 rate hikes in 2022 and 2.6 in 2023, just below the 4 and 3 hikes, respectively, that Goldman forecasts (spoiler alert: the total number of rate hikes will be far less once stocks crash).

  

  And this is where Goldman enters the bullish spin cycle, because the bank makes much more money when its clients buy (only to sell in the future), than selling now. So to ease client concerns that the bottom is about to fall off the market, Kostin writes that “historically” (because clearly we have had many “historical examples” when the Fed’s balance sheet was 45% of US GDP), the S&P 500 index has been resilient around the start of Fed hiking cycles, noting that “although the index has returned -6% on average during the three months following the first hike of recent cycles, the weakness has been short-lived as returns average +5% during the six months following the first hike.” Moreover, as Goldman shows in exhibit 3, the S&P 500 P/E is typically flat during the 12 months around the first hike.

  

  Drilling down into segments, Goldman notes that cyclical sectors and Value stocks outperform around the first Fed hike. The reason: the start of Fed hiking cycles (usually) tends to coincide with a strong economy, which can help to lift cyclical sectors (Materials, Industrials, Energy). However, this time around it is starting as the economy is rapidly slowing yet inflation remains stubborn due to supply-chain blockages, and as such anything Goldman suggests you should do, please ignore it.

  Which is probably also true for factors. According to Kostin, at the factor level, Value stocks tend to outperform in the months before and after the first hike: “High quality factors (e.g., high margins, strong balance sheets) underperform in the strong economic environment preceding hikes and outperform in the months following the initial rate increase. Growth is the worst performing factor in the 6 months around the first hike.” Here too, we would flip this 180 degrees because the Fed is now hiking to effectively start a recession (or as the US is already en route to one), so what one should be selling is value while buying growth ahead of the next rate cuts/QE which are now just a matter of time.

  

  Next, Kostin brings out the heavy artillery and urges his skittish clients to consider that “surprisingly” equities have historically performed well alongside rising expectations for Fed hikes. Here, the bank examines the six-month periods since 2004 when OIS pricing of the 5-year-ahead fed funds rate increased by 25 bps, excluding episodes when the Fed was cutting rates.

  During these episodes, nominal 10Y yields typically rose by 52 bps with roughly even contributions from real yields and breakevens. Despite this, the S&P 500 returned 9% (vs. its unconditional 6-month average of 5%). Higher earnings expectations drove these rallies as increases in fed funds pricing usually coincided with improving expectations for economic growth. However, as we have repeatedly warned and as even Kostin concedes, “the current inflation-led hiking cycle may prove more challenging for equities.” We are not sure this will boost the confidence level of Goldman clients who are on the fence to just BTFD…

  After the initial stage, when markets price more eventual rate hikes, cyclical sectors typically outperform while bond proxies lagged according to Goldman. Industrials, Consumer Discretionary, and Materials outperform the S&P 500 on average during these episodes, with financials especially sensitive to the long-term interest rate outlook and also outperforming. Meanwhile, bond proxy sectors such as Utilities and Consumer Staples underperformed sharply.

  

  As noted above, value has typically outperformed alongside rising market expectations for Fed hiking, but only in cases when the the hiking cycle was led by growth expectations, not to crush inflation, so this time one can argue that everything will be flipped. And while traditionally, small-caps also outperformed, as “quality” factors underperformed, the recent weakness in small-caps confirms that this is anything but an ordinary rate hike cycle.

  Curiously, even in his bullish pitch to clients, Kostin – perhaps hoping to preserve some credibility- admits that this is not a typical rate hike cycle, and the recent hawkish pivot has been driven not by “improving growth expectations but by inflation risks” yet even so Goldman’s economists expect growth to remain above-trend in 2022 because, of course, what else can they do: start sounding like Zero Hedge and admit that the Fed is hiking into a recession.

  And indeed, Kostin admits that “fading expectations for fiscal stimulus and the hit from Omicron have led our economists to downgrade their growth outlook in recent weeks” however – perhaps unwilling to piss off Biden too much – they still forecast 3.4% GDP growth this year, a stepdown from the 5-6% pace in 2021 but still above their 1.75% estimate of trend growth. Translation: the US will be in a recession by the midterms, courtesy of the Fed.

  So after all that, if Goldman clients aren’t running for the hills, maybe the will BTFD after all, and for them, Kostin writes that investors “should balance their exposures to Growth and Value” as Goldman’s rates strategists expect yields will continue to rise, a dynamic that should support Value over Growth, unless of course we enter stagflation at which point all is lost (incidentally, as noted last week, Goldman expects nominal 10-year yield to hit 2.0% by year-end 2022 (with real rates rising to -0.70% almost where they are now) and 2.3% by the end of 2023).

  

  From a growth perspective, Goldman economists expect the waning of the Omicron wave to lift GDP growth from 2% in 1Q to 3% in 2Q, supporting Value stocks. But they expect growth will slow to a 2% pace by 4Q 2022, the type of environment that generally supports Growth stocks. Translation: yes, growth stocks are getting crushed now, but as soon as the current whisper of a recession/stagflation becomes a chorus, watch as “growth stocks” (i.e., the bubble/bitcoin baskets) explode higher and surpass their previous all-time highs.

  In short, Goldman’s current recommended sector overweights reflect a barbell of Growth and Value:

  • Info Tech remains the bank’s long-standing overweight due to its secular growth and strong profit margins.
  • Financials should benefit from rising interest rates
  • Health Care combines secular growth qualities with a deep relative valuation discount.

  Finally, from a thematic perspective, Goldman continues to recommend investors own highly profitable growth stocks relative to growth stocks with low or no profitability. To this, all we can add is that with low growth stocks having been absolutely nuked by now, the highest convexity when the recessionary turn comes, will be precisely in the no profitability growth sector, which will double in no time once the coming recession/easing cycle becomes the dominant narrative.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 19:00

• Politicizing COVID-19 From The Start
  Politicizing COVID-19 From The Start

  Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

  From the moment COVID-19 appeared, the pandemic became inseparable from politics.

  

  Political frenzy was inevitable since the SARS-CoV-2 virus may have escaped from a level-4 security virology lab in Wuhan, China.

  The rapid-fire spread soon threatened to indict the Chinese communist government for nearly destroying the world economy and killing millions.

  Western elites, in response, feared that their own lucrative investments in China would be jeopardized by such disclosures – and so acted accordingly in defending Beijing.

  Nonetheless, one scenario that remains intriguing is that the escaped virus was birthed by gain-of-function research scientists, overseen by elements of the Chinese communist military. Worse, the lab was given subsidies by U.S. health authorities, routed through third parties. Hiding all of that damaging information warped government policy and media coverage.

  Belatedly, a panicked China shut down all domestic travel in and out of Wuhan – but not flights abroad to Western Europe and the United States.

  The rest is history.

  From the outset, the World Health Organization simply spread false talking points about the outbreak from the Chinese government, delaying a robust global response.

  Former President Donald Trump’s political opponents initially told Americans to shop and travel as usual – only to pivot as cases mounted and they blamed the president.

  The U.S. 2020 ban on travel from China was met with charges of racism and xenophobia from presidential candidates. Ironically, many were simply channeling racist and xenophobic China’s propaganda.

  Many doctors kept hammering the need for therapeutics, including taboo off-label use of cheap generic drugs. The use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin was widely ridiculed, despite continuing studies from abroad attesting to their usefulness.

  Trump’s Operation Warp Speed project to develop vaccinations was also pilloried. Candidates Kamala Harris and Joe Biden did their best to talk down the safety of the impending inoculations. But once in power, they projected their own prior harmful rhetoric onto so-called “anti-vaxxers.”

  Then they claimed credit for the initial success of the Trump vaccinations.

  The Pfizer corporation had promised a major pre-election announcement about its likely rollout of a vaccine in October, just days before the 2020 election.

  Then, mysteriously, Pfizer claimed the vaccine, in fact, would not be ready before November 3. A few days after the election of Joe Biden, the company reversed course and announced the vaccinations would soon be available.

  Then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo obstructed most all federal help with Trump’s fingerprints on it. That way Cuomo became a media, Emmy-winning darling – before resigning in disgrace.

  Cuomo’s policies of steering infected patients into long-term-care facilities doomed over 10,000 of the elderly. New York is now illegally using race to grant preferences in the allotments of tests and new drugs.

  The rhetoric of the media-progressive nexus that mandatory, massive lockdowns were necessary all but destroyed a booming Trump economy and denied critical medical care to millions. Emphasizing therapeutics, natural herd immunity, and the resilience of the youth to the disease were all pronounced “anti-science” by the demagogues on the Left.

  Various celebrities and politicos – such as California Governor Gavin Newsom and failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton – boasted the pandemic lockdown offered the perfect crisis that must not go to waste politically. Actress Jane Fonda even crowed that COVID-19 was a “gift from God to the Left” in helping to end Donald Trump.

  In the waning days of the 2020 campaign, Biden went so far as to blame Trump personally for all the deaths from the virus.

  Once the vaccinations had seemed to work in early 2021, an upbeat Joe Biden boasted that he would end the virus by summer 2021, by following “the science.” He went so far as to claim that no one had been vaccinated prior to his inauguration even though 17 million, including Biden himself, had been.

  Then Nemesis answered such hubris.

  The unforeseen delta and omicron variants hit. A new phrase, “breakthrough case,” revealed that the vaccinations often could only prevent serious illness, but not infection or infectiousness.

  Suddenly the best and brightest people with three shots, who had blasted the red-state rubes as the ignorant un-vaxxed – got sick. More have now died from the virus on Biden’s than on Trump’s watch.

  A warped economy amid renewed COVID-19 outbreaks helped to further destroy Biden’s waning popularity.

  In reaction, the Left now calls for realism, emphasis on treatments, and acknowledgment of the value of natural immunities. It is even newly curious about the origins of the virus, and the need to “get back to normal.”

  We are suddenly told that thousands had died “with” rather than “because” of COVID – the exact opposite of what we heard in the Trump era.

  A skeptic might suggest terror over the impending midterms finally made the Left face reality.

  Politicizing the pandemic is a euphemism. In truth, thousands of Americans have died needlessly because of weaponized disinformation about China’s culpability, vaccines, useful drugs, lockdowns, racial preferences, and long-care facilities.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 18:30

• Which Nation Has The Most 'Powerful' Passport?
  Which Nation Has The Most ‘Powerful’ Passport?

  Some passports afford their bearers more freedom than others.

  

  In 2022, Japan and Singapore have been named the countries with the world’s most powerful passports by the Henley Passport Index.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Holders of these passports have the unbeatable luxury of being able to enter 192 countries without applying for and receiving a visa beforehand.

  South Korea (not pictured) and Germany follow with visa-free travel to 190 jurisdictions.

  Even though the United States is further down the ranking, the American passport still yields considerable power. U.S. passport holders can travel to 186 countries without major restrictions. That’s a level of freedom also enjoyed by citizens in New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Belgium and the United Kingdom. At the other end of the scale though, the situation is very different. For passport holders in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria for example, the world is very much not their proverbial oyster.

  The Afghanistan passport wields the least power in the ranking, with just 26 destinations possible visa-free. As this infographic shows, the situation is similar for Iraq (28) and Syria (29).

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 18:00

• A Former SAC PM's Advice To Traders: "Sit Tight, Be Right"
  A Former SAC PM’s Advice To Traders: “Sit Tight, Be Right”

  By Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research

  Today’s story is about patience. Whether you are trading or investing, 2022 will require more calm thoughtfulness than any year in recent memory. History shows that as crises fade into the rearview mirror, market volatility (and the opportunities it brings) declines. Also, there is a real tug of war now between fundamentals and Fed policy. Lastly, the best places to make money in stocks (cyclicals, in our view) are volatile and rarely well-structured industries or companies. Bottom line: 2022 is a “measure twice, cut one” sort of year.

  * * *

  Strange as it may sound, I learned most of what I know today on this topic while working for Steve Cohen at the old SAC Capital. Yes, it was a (very) fast money trading shop. And yes, Steve’s trading process demanded absolute adherence to a specific set of rules and mindset. Price action, not opinion or emotion, defined right and wrong.

  But SAC is also where I learned the old trader’s saying, “Sit tight, be right”. If your process is sound, from idea generation to risk management and exit discipline, then patience determines profitability. Simply put, big trades often take time to work.

  Everyone at SAC had their own approach to cultivating patience, which in the context of the firm’s trading bent often meant simply distracting themselves rather than staring at their daily P&L. Steve might invite his family to lunch and actually take an hour off the desk with them if he was worried about being shaken out of a large position intraday. Other traders occupied their time by planning where to go for lunch or dinner (traders think about food a lot). As for me, I would spend hours on a forward calendar of catalysts that might offer new trading ideas (analysts think about data a lot).

  Many years after leaving SAC, a hedge fund performance analytics firm showed me some research that put the importance of patience into even starker relief. Hedge funds, as a whole, are good at finding winning ideas. Their performance would often be better, however, if they held those ideas longer. Academic work on institutional investor (long only and hedge funds) behavior shows that the problem is structural. So much of money management marketing is pitching new ideas to gather assets that “old ideas” (those currently in the portfolio) get crowded out too early in order to take stakes in new names.

  I bring all this up because 2022 feels very much like a year where patience will be the defining factor when it comes to outperformance. Whether you are bullish or bearish on a market, sector, investment theme or individual idea, it will take longer to get paid for your point of view than the last several years.

  Three reasons I think that’s true:

  1: US equity market volatility historically declines in the years after a shock. The chart below shows the CBOE VIX Index back to 1990. As highlighted, there have been 4 notable VIX spikes since then. In each case volatility declined for several (3-9) years thereafter. In March 2022 we will be 2 full years into the post-pandemic market recovery. Volatility has already been declining. The VIX today is only 20, for example, even with the selloff and January’s choppy action.

  

  2: There are times when fundamentals (i.e., corporate earnings) matter and then there are times when changes in macro conditions matter more.

  • At the bottom in March 2020, macro mattered; fiscal and monetary policy supported the US economy during the Pandemic Crisis.
  • From Q2 2020 to Q4 2021, US corporate earnings took over the market narrative. The S&P 500 earned 23 percent more in 2021 than it had pre-pandemic. Wall Street analysts were slow to acknowledge that fact, which allowed for a long series of earnings beats.
  • We are now entering a period where the Federal Reserve will engage in a never-before-seen experiment: raising interest rates off zero and reducing the size of its balance sheet in the same year.

  All this sets up 2022 as a tug of war between the relative certainty of strong corporate earnings and the absolute unknown effect of novel Fed policy. As we outlined earlier this week, the setup here reminds us a lot of 1994. Back then, the Fed embarked on a surprise series of aggressive rate hikes and investors simply had no idea what that would do to the US economy. Now, Fed communication may be better – they have telegraphed liftoff and runoff quite clearly – but the market is still left wondering what results will come from their decisions.

  3: The sectors that have been working – and we still like – are not what one would call easy stories to love. Large cap Financials (+6 pct YTD) are cheap but face structural challenges from venture capital funded FinTech disruptors. Large cap Energy (+14 pct YTD) is an ESG nightmare, and you have to believe (as we do) that traditional carbon-based energy has several years of new demand highs ahead of it. Airlines (+7 pct YTD), which Jessica just highlighted earlier this week, are no one’s idea of a stable or well-structured industry.

  As much as we like cyclical sectors, we know there will be sudden and violent rotations out of them through 2022. They have a tailwind but owning them in 2022 is not the same as holding Big Tech in 2020 – 2021. If nothing else, their competitive positions are not as strong. In trading parlance, you are “renting” these names rather than buying a forever home for capital.

  Summing up: 2022 is set to bring us lower average US equity volatility, a see-saw dynamic between fundamentals and Fed policy, and rotation into cyclical (and often volatile) sectors with little to offer besides earnings leverage. It will be a year for patience and, just importantly, discipline. Sit tight, be right.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 17:30

• Leaked Fauci Financials Expose How Millionaire Doctor Profited From Pandemic
  Leaked Fauci Financials Expose How Millionaire Doctor Profited From Pandemic

  Finally, after a handful of organizations tried suing Dr. Anthony Fauci in order to have them released, the good doctor’s financials – along with those of his wife, who is the NIH’s top bioethicist – have been disclosed in detail. And they were leaked by the same Senator who Fauci called a “moron” last week during a hot-mic moment.

  

  We already knew that Dr. Fauci is the highest-paid federal government employee, earning an annual salary of more than $400K. His wife, Christine Grady, earns $176K as Chief of the Department of Bioethics at the NIH.

  The records, published by Republican Roger Marshall, himself a doctor and also the junior US senator from Kansas, showed that the Faucis’ have a combined net worth of more than $10MM.

  🚨🚨 BREAKING! I obtained Dr. Fauci’s previously unpublished financial disclosures. Dr. Fauci was completely dishonest about his disclosures being readily accessible to the public which is why I am releasing them now.

  Dr. Fauci’s Financial Disclosures ⬇️https://t.co/KdRbedRTX5

  — Dr. Roger Marshall (@RogerMarshallMD) January 15, 2022

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

  As the Daily Mail explains, Fauci, 80, has led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984 and, if he continues until the end of Biden’s term in 2024, will have made roughly $2.5MM as the president’s chief medical advisor. When he retires, Fauci’s pension will be the largest in US history, exceeding $350,000 per year.

  As a reminder, Dr. Fauci lied to Congress yet again by insisting that his financials were public, when they very much weren’t (before being leaked by the Senator from Kansas, that is).

  While the doctor has insisted he hasn’t profited from the pandemic, his paperwork showed that he and his wife were paid $14,000 to “virtually” attend a series of galas directly related to his position as the nation’s de facto COVID czar.

  

  Perhaps the most entertaining disclosure from Dr. Fauci’s financials is the revelation that the couple owns a restaurant in tony San Francisco. It’s called Jackson Fillmore Trattoria. Unfortunately for them, the restaurant didn’t make any money last year.

  Sen. Marshall clashed with the 80-year-old doctor on Tuesday when Marshall wanted to see Fauci’s financial information. Fauci replied that the documents were public, and appeared to take umbrage at even being asked. “Yes or no, would you be willing to submit to Congress and the public a financial disclosure that includes your past and current investments?” Marshall asked. “Our office cannot find them.” Fauci replied: “I don’t understand why you’re asking me that question…my financial disclosure is public knowledge and has been so for the last 37 years or so.”

  According to the Center for Public Integrity, Fauci’s financial statements were indeed publicly available, however, obtaining them was a lengthy procedure: they requested the document in May 2020 didn’t receive it until three months later.

  All told, Dr. Fauci has three accounts with Charles Schwab that have a total of $8,337,940.90. He has a contributory IRA with $638,519.70 in it, and a brokerage trust account with $2,403,522.28. Finally, the most valuable of the three disclosed was a Schwab One Trust containing $5,295,898.92.

  

  

  

  Most of Dr. Fauci’s wealth comes from his government salary, but he has also made a substantial portion from books and appearances. Sen. Marshall is pushing for a new law called the “FAUCI Act” that would require unelected bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci to produce more thorough financial disclosures so that they can be appropriately scrutinized by the American public.

  Readers can find more disclosures on Sen. Marshall’s website, which features a more comprehensive breakdown of the doctor’s financials, along with copies of all the associated paperwork.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 17:00

• Democrats Moving Away From Lockdown Restrictions Over Fears Of Being Crushed Politically
  Democrats Moving Away From Lockdown Restrictions Over Fears Of Being Crushed Politically

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  In response to plummeting approval ratings, Democrats are now moving away from lockdown policies they previously vehemently advocated over fears about being wiped out politically.

  

  That’s according to a new report by Politico, which notes how, “Omicron is surging — and Democrats aren’t shutting things down this time.”

  “From New York to California, Democratic mayors and governors are fighting to keep schools and businesses open with an urgency they haven’t flexed before in the pandemic,” writes Lisa Kashinsky.

  That sea change likely has a lot to do with Republicans securing a November clean sweep of the House, as well as the offices of governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general in Virginia.

  Republican Glenn Youngkin appealed to parents who were angry over school closures and other issues such as mask mandates, while New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy came closer to defeat than expected over frustrations relating to COVID restrictions.

  Big events such as the Super Bowl in L.A. will now go ahead, while the likes of Fauci and Biden refrained from telling Americans to cancel holiday plans despite record case numbers caused by Omicron.

  “Democrats went further than most Republicans in shutting down businesses, enforcing social distancing and requiring masks to tame the spread of the virus — and were initially rewarded politically for their caution,” states the report.

  R.I.P. Lockdown America 🇺🇸
  As we say in Boston: It’s Ova!
  As we say in Miami: Bienvenido!https://t.co/FsRvz4Pfse #Dems #politics #trends #pandemic #elections #lockdownskill #addiction #suicide #chronicdisease #obesity #alcoholism #omicron #vaccinemandates #vax #COVID19 #society pic.twitter.com/nQpcTOEBs6

  — Diane Mantouvalos (@AndoniaPR) January 10, 2022

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

  “But as the nation trudges into a third pandemic year in the grips of another variant-fueled wave, blue state leaders faced with exhausted and frustrated voters have lost the stomach for strict shutdowns.”

  According to Bob Blendon, a polling and political strategy expert at the Harvard T.H. Chan School, Democrats “see an upcoming election, they see backlashes.”

  “They can’t close things down, and there is no public tolerance for serious disruptions in people’s lives. People have run out of patience,” said Blendon.

  Polling has also been dreadful for Democrats, with Biden’s approval rating sinking to a new low as just 15.5% of Americans say they trust the president when it comes to information about COVID-19.

  “Everything our government tried to contain this virus has failed and now, thanks to Omicron, everyone is getting infected with a “live covid vaccine” that’s relatively mild and actually works,” comments Chris Menahan.

  “With the combination of Omicron infecting millions and Democrats getting wiped out politically there’s a decent chance we may actually be able to move on from this hysteria and get on with life.”

  *  *  *

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

  In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Get early access, exclusive content and behinds the scenes stuff by following me on Locals.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 16:30

• Supermarkets Slash Hours As Workers Call Out Sick; Store Shelves Remain Bare
  Supermarkets Slash Hours As Workers Call Out Sick; Store Shelves Remain Bare

  Labor shortages at supermarkets across the country have increased in recent weeks as the COVID-19 omicron variant continues to spread. Workers are calling sick, and there are not enough cashiers, baggers, and stockers, forcing some supermarket chains to slash hours of operations. Compounding labor woes, supply chains are still severely snarled as food shortages are being reported nationwide. 

  WSJ reports supermarkets are having difficulty staying open as workers call out sick because of infection. Some grocers are frantically hiring new employees, using temporary employment agencies, and overworking current staff to keep stores from shuttering. 

  

  The seven-store supermarket chain Stew Leonard’s in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey had 200 employees in quarantine or isolation as of last Thursday despite a 90% employee-vaccination rate. This represents about 7% of all employees. 

  “We sort of feel like we’ve got to buckle down for round two,” Chief Executive Stew Leonard Jr. said, adding that the loss of employees to infections has hampered operations. 

  American supermarket chain Giant Eagle Inc. which operates 470 stores, has avoided closing locations amid the omicron surge by adjusting hours of operations. The company’s chief compliance officer, Vic Vercammen, said the company had seen a spike in workers calling sick because of infection. 

  Across Alabama and Georgia, Piggly Wiggly stores are overscheduling workers and using temporary work agencies to keep store shelves stocked as staffing woes developed this year because of the omicron spread. Operations have been affected, and store hours have been reduced in some locations. 

  In the Southeast, Harris Teeter supermarkets, owned by Kroger Co., will close one hour earlier, effective Monday, so that employees can restock shelves due to the loss of stockers. 

  Staffing shortages also impacted Fresh Encounter Inc., a 100-store supermarket chain based in Ohio. The chain is now closing at 10 pm local time versus 24 hours a day. 

  Michael Needler Jr., the chain’s chief executive of Fresh Encounter, said, “the staffing situation started out very tenuous. Layering in Omicron vacancies on top of that makes it very, very stressful.” 

  On top of staffing issues, supply-chain bottlenecks are plaguing supermarkets, resulting in bare shelves across the country. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 16:00

• Liquidity's​ ​Effect​ ​On​ ​Volatility
  Liquidity’s​ ​Effect​ ​On​ ​Volatility

  By Macro Ops Substack

  The​ ​proper​ ​way​ ​to​ ​analyze​ ​potential​ ​volatility​ ​conditions​ ​looks​ ​something​ ​like​ ​the​ ​picture​ ​below: 

  

  Current​ ​events​ ​and​ ​macro​ ​news​ ​come​ ​AFTER​ ​liquidity.

  If​ ​markets​ ​have​ ​loose​ ​liquidity​ ​conditions,​ ​no​ ​amount​ ​of​ ​Trump​ ​tweets​ ​or​ ​White​ ​House shakeups​ ​will​ ​cause​ ​volatility. And​ ​if​ ​liquidity​ ​conditions​ ​are​ ​tight,​ ​no​ ​amount​ ​of​ ​good​ ​news​ ​can​ ​save​ ​markets​ ​from volatility.​ 

  This ​ makes​ ​ intuitive​ ​ sense​ ​ when​ ​ ​you ​ look​ at how ​liquidity ​ impacts market​ ​ microstructure.​ Every​ ​market,​ ​whether​ ​it​ ​be ​ FX,​ bonds,​ commodities,​ ​or stock, has​ an order book with bids and offers that​ looks​ something​ like​ ​this: 

  

  It’s​ ​just​ ​a​ ​bunch​ ​of​ ​buyers​ ​and​ ​sellers​ ​displaying​ ​how​ ​much​ ​they’re​ ​willing​ ​to​ ​transact​ ​and​ ​at what ​ price.​ When​ ​financial​ ​conditions​ ​are​ ​loose,​ ​with​ ​high​ ​liquidity,​ ​everyone​ ​has​ ​a​ ​bunch​ ​of​ ​cash​ ​and​ ​credit they​ ​need​ ​to​ ​put​ ​to​ ​work.​ ​All​ ​this​ ​demand​ ​flows​ ​into​ ​the​ ​market​ ​and​ ​stacks​ ​up​ ​the​ ​order​ ​book which compresses prices.​ A​ ​liquid​ ​order​ ​book​ ​looks​ ​something​ ​like​ ​this: 

  

  The​ ​difference​ ​between​ ​the​ ​bid​ ​and​ ​the​ ​offer ​ is​ ​ tight and there’s a​ lot​ of size at​ ​ each price level.​ Price​ ​will​ ​bounce​ ​around​ ​in​ ​a​ ​modest​ ​range​ ​because the order​ ​book​  ​can​ easily absorb any​ incoming​ ​orders. 

  A​ ​liquid​ ​market​ ​translates​ ​into​ ​lower​ ​volatility​. 

  The​ ​opposite​ ​happens​ ​when​ financial​ ​ ​conditions​ ​are​ tight​ ​​and​ ​the​ ​system​ ​is​ ​illiquid.​ ​Investors are no longer​ lined up to buy financial​ assets.​ They​ ​don’t​​ ​have​ ​the​ ​cash​ ​or​ ​credit​ ​available. 

  During​ ​illiquid​ ​times​ ​the​ ​order​ ​book​ ​looks​ ​something​ ​like​ ​this: 

  

  So​ ​not​ ​only​ ​are​ ​buyers​ ​and​ ​sellers​ ​farther​ ​apart,​ ​they​ ​have​ ​less​ ​to​ ​buy​ ​and​ ​sell.​ ​Price​ ​will oscillate​ ​wildly​ ​between​ ​all​ ​these​ ​different​ values ​because ​there’s​​ ​not​ ​much​ ​here​ ​to​ absorb​​ ​new orders coming into the market.​              

  An​ ​illiquid​ ​market​ ​translates​ ​into​ ​higher​ ​volatility​.

  This​ ​connection​ ​between​ ​liquidity​ ​and​ ​market​ ​microstructure​ ​is​ ​why​ ​we​ ​see​ ​moves​ ​in​ ​volatility follow ​liquidity​ so​ ​closely.​              

  Higher​ ​black​ ​line​ ​=​ ​tighter​ ​liquidity​ ​conditions.

  

  The​ ​last​ ​time​ ​liquidity​ ​conditions​ ​tightened​ was ​in​ ​2014 ​and​​ ​into​ ​2015.​ ​During​ ​this​ ​time​ ​the​ ​Fed was ​ winding down its​ QE​ ​​program​ ​—​ ​sucking ​​liquidity​ right​​ ​out​ ​of​ ​the​ system.​

  The​ ​stock​ ​market​ ​struggled,​ ​the​ ​dollar​ ​strengthened,​ ​commodities​ ​dropped,​ ​and​ ​as​ ​you​ ​can​ ​see in ​ the​ ​ ​chart​ ​above, the VIX popped.​ It​ ​popped​ ​primarily​ ​due​ ​to​ ​tightening​ ​liquidity conditions​. 

  Since​ ​then​ ​the​ ​market​ ​has​ ​adjusted​ ​to​ ​the​ ​absence​ ​of​ ​the​ ​Fed’s​ ​bond​ ​purchases.​ ​Liquidity conditions​ ​have​ ​improved​ ​ ​and​ ​VIX​ ​responded​ ​by​ ​embarking​ ​on​ ​a​ ​sustained​ ​downtrend throughout​ ​all​ ​of​ ​2016​ ​and​ ​now​ ​into​ ​2017.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 15:30

• Manhattan Apartments With Doorman Soar To New Record High
  Manhattan Apartments With Doorman Soar To New Record High

  What’s stunning is that median apartment rents in Manhattan are back to pre-pandemic highs. Rents for apartments with door attendants soared to a new record high while ones without door attendants are still below 2019 levels. Some argue New York City’s most expensive borough is back, but the “back-to-work” barometer tells a different story. 

  Appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate released a new report Thursday that highlighted median rent in the borough increased 16% to $3,475 in December compared to a year ago. The rents are back to levels last seen right before the pandemic crash. 

  

  The overall increase in rents was primarily due to a sizeable increase for apartment buildings with a doorman, which climbed 23% to a staggering $4,298 (a new record high). In comparison, buildings without doorkeepers rose 7.8% to $2,695 (still below 2019 levels). 

  Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, said demand for luxury buildings is a prime example of polarization in the market, with prices for apartment buildings without a doorman still lagging pre-pandemic levels. 

  Rental inventory is tight for luxury buildings as landlords slashed generous concessions. Inventory has plunged 81% from a year ago in December, and the vacancy rate is 1.7%. There was also a 39% plunge in new leases for the month. 

  Miller said, “the market is coming off of unsustainable activity levels and trending toward more sustainable patterns in the coming months. Omicron is in the mix for sure, just slowing down activity too.” 

  Meanwhile, Kastle Systems, whose electronic access systems secure thousands of office buildings across NYC, showed only 17% of workers were back at their desks in early January, compared with 37% on Dec. 2. Omicron has certainly impacted back-to-work as employers have recently sent workers home. 

  

  Still, the good news is that Morgan Stanley has called the top on Omicron, and it could peak in the next month. So maybe soaring rental demand is workers returning to the city with the hopes the virus pandemic will end this year. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 15:00

• Denial Of Natural Immunity In CMS Vaccine Mandate "Unprecedented In Modern History": Scott Atlas
  Denial Of Natural Immunity In CMS Vaccine Mandate “Unprecedented In Modern History”: Scott Atlas

  Authored by Allen Zhong and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times,

  Denying natural immunity in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service (CMS) vaccine mandates is “unprecedented in modern history,” a prominent public health expert said.

  

  Dr. Scott Atlas, a former White House COVID-19 Task Force adviser during the Trump administration, made the remarks after the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decide to uphold the CMS vaccine mandates in a Thursday ruling.

  He told The Epoch Times that the ruling is “another serious denial of scientific fact” specifically mentioning the denial of natural immunity in CMS vaccine mandates.

  “Our continued denial of superior protection in recovered individuals, with or without vaccination, compared to vaccinated individuals who’ve never had the infection,” he said.

  “The denial of that is simply unprecedented in modern history, proven fact and decades of fundamental immunology are somehow denied.”

  “If we are a society where the leaders repeatedly deny the fact, I’m very concerned about the future of such a society,” he added.

  The Epoch Times reached out to the SCOTUS, CMS, and the White House for comments.

  

  Members of the Supreme Court pose for a group photo at the Supreme Court in Washington, on April 23, 2021. (Erin Schaff/Pool/Getty Images)

  The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the Biden administration’s private business vaccine mandate imposed by the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Meanwhile, America’s highest court decided to uphold the CMS vaccine mandate covering 10.4 million health care workers at 76,000 medical facilities.

  In the 5–4 ruling in the CMS vaccine mandate, John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh joined the Democrat-nominated trio of justices, while Clarence Thomas offered a dissent that was joined by Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett.

  The majority of the court stated that the vaccine mandate “falls within the authorities that Congress has conferred upon” the Health and Human Service Secretary (HHS) Xavier Becerra.

  CMS is part of the HHS.

  The ruling also disagrees with the dozens of red states who said that CMS failed to consider the benefits of natural immunity.

  “Given the rule-making record, it cannot be maintained that the Secretary failed to ‘examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for’ his decisions to require vaccination of employees with ‘natural immunity’ from prior COVID-19 illness,” read the majority opinion (pdf).

  CMS applauded the SCOTUS ruling saying it’s “extremely pleased” for the results.

  “We look forward to working with health care providers and their workers to protect patients. We will continue our extensive outreach and assistance efforts encouraging individuals working in health care to get vaccinated,” CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said in a statement.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 01/15/2022 – 14:30

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