Today’s News 17th February 2022

• The Mind Control Police: The Government's War On Thought-Crimes & Truth-Tellers
  The Mind Control Police: The Government’s War On Thought-Crimes & Truth-Tellers

  Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

  – George Orwell  

  The U.S. government, which speaks in a language of force, is afraid of its citizenry.

  

  What we are dealing with is a government so power-hungry, paranoid and afraid of losing its stranglehold on power that it is conspiring to wage war on anyone who dares to challenge its authority.

  All of us are in danger.

  In recent years, the government has used the phrase “domestic terrorist” interchangeably with “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” to describe anyone who might fall somewhere on a very broad spectrum of viewpoints that could be considered “dangerous.” The ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association.

  In the government’s latest assault on those who criticize the government—whether that criticism manifests itself in word, deed or thought—the Biden Administration has likened those who share “false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information” to terrorists.

  The next part is the kicker.

  According to the Department of Homeland Security’s latest terrorism bulletin, “These threat actors seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence.”

  You see, the government doesn’t care if what you’re sharing is fact or fiction or something in between. What it cares about is whether what you’re sharing has the potential to make people think for themselves and, in the process, question the government’s propaganda.

  Get ready for the next phase of the government’s war on thought crimes and truth-tellers.

  For years now, the government has used all of the weapons in its vast arsenal—surveillance, threat assessments, fusion centers, pre-crime programs, hate crime laws, militarized police, lockdowns, martial law, etc.—to target potential enemies of the state based on their ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that might be deemed suspicious or dangerous.

  For instance, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

  Moreover, as a New York Times editorial warns, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the police if you are afraid that the government is plotting to confiscate your firearms, if you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law, or if you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car.

  According to one FBI latest report, you might also be classified as a domestic terrorism threat if you espouse conspiracy theories, especially if you “attempt to explain events or circumstances as the result of a group of actors working in secret to benefit themselves at the expense of others” and are “usually at odds with official or prevailing explanations of events.”

  In other words, if you dare to subscribe to any views that are contrary to the government’s, you may well be suspected of being a domestic terrorist and treated accordingly.

  This latest government salvo against consumers and spreaders of “mis- dis- and mal-information” widens the net to potentially include anyone who is exposed to ideas that run counter to the official government narrative.

  You don’t have to be a Joe Rogan questioning COVID-19 to get called out, cancelled and classified as an extremist.

  There’s a whole spectrum of behaviors ranging from thought crimes and hate speech to whistleblowing that qualifies for persecution (and prosecution) by the Deep State.

  Simply liking or sharing this article on Facebook, retweeting it on Twitter, or merely reading it or any other articles related to government wrongdoing, surveillance, police misconduct or civil liberties might be enough to get you categorized as a particular kind of person with particular kinds of interests that reflect a particular kind of mindset that might just lead you to engage in a particular kinds of activities and, therefore, puts you in the crosshairs of a government investigation as a potential troublemaker a.k.a. domestic extremist.

  Chances are, as the Washington Post reports, you have already been assigned a color-coded threat score—green, yellow or red—so police are forewarned about your potential inclination to be a troublemaker depending on whether you’ve had a career in the military, posted a comment perceived as threatening on Facebook, suffer from a particular medical condition, or know someone who knows someone who might have committed a crime.

  In other words, you might already be flagged as potentially anti-government in a government database somewhere—Main Core, for example—that identifies and tracks individuals who aren’t inclined to march in lockstep to the police state’s dictates.

  As The Intercept reported, the FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies have increasingly invested in corporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to identify potential extremists and predict who might engage in future acts of anti-government behavior.

  Where many Americans go wrong is in naively assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or harmful in order to be flagged and targeted for some form of intervention or detention.

  In fact, all you need to do these days to end up on a government watch list or be subjected to heightened scrutiny is use certain trigger words (like cloud, pork and pirates), surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, limp or stutter, drive a car, stay at a hotel, attend a political rally, express yourself on social media, appear mentally ill, serve in the military, disagree with a law enforcement official, call in sick to work, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, appear confused or nervous, fidget or whistle or smell bad, be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun (such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane), stare at a police officer, question government authority, or appear to be pro-gun or pro-freedom.

  And then at the other end of the spectrum there are those such as Julian Assange, for example, who blow the whistle on government misconduct that is within the public’s right to know.

  Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks—a website that published secret information, news leaks, and classified media from anonymous sources—was arrested on April 11, 2019, on charges of helping U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning access and leak more than 700,000 classified military documents that portray the U.S. government and its military as reckless, irresponsible and responsible for thousands of civilian deaths.

  Included among the leaked Manning material were the Collateral Murder video (April 2010), the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010), a quarter of a million diplomatic cables (November 2010), and the Guantánamo files (April 2011).

  The Collateral Murder leak included gunsight video footage from two U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopters engaged in a series of air-to-ground attacks while air crew laughed at some of the casualties. Among the casualties were two Reuters correspondents who were gunned down after their cameras were mistaken for weapons and a driver who stopped to help one of the journalists. The driver’s two children, who happened to be in the van at the time it was fired upon by U.S. forces, suffered serious injuries.

  In true Orwellian fashion, the government would have us believe that it is Assange and Manning who are the real criminals for daring to expose the war machine’s seedy underbelly.

  Since his April 2019 arrest, Assange has been locked up in a maximum-security British prison—in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day—pending extradition to the U.S., where if convicted, he could be sentenced to 175 years in prison.

  This is how the police state deals with those who challenge its chokehold on power.

  This is why the government fears a citizenry that thinks for itself. Because a citizenry that thinks for itself is a citizenry that is informed, engaged and prepared to hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law, which translates to government transparency and accountability.

  After all, we’re citizens, not subjects. For those who don’t fully understand the distinction between the two and why transparency is so vital to a healthy constitutional government, Manning explains it well:

  When freedom of information and transparency are stifled, then bad decisions are often made and heartbreaking tragedies occur – too often on a breathtaking scale that can leave societies wondering: how did this happen? … I believe that when the public lacks even the most fundamental access to what its governments and militaries are doing in their names, then they cease to be involved in the act of citizenship. There is a bright distinction between citizens, who have rights and privileges protected by the state, and subjects, who are under the complete control and authority of the state.

  This is why the First Amendment is so critical. It gives the citizenry the right to speak freely, protest peacefully, expose government wrongdoing, and criticize the government without fear of arrest, isolation or any of the other punishments that have been meted out to whistleblowers such as Edwards Snowden, Assange and Manning.

  The challenge is holding the government accountable to obeying the law.

  A little over 50 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in United States v. Washington Post Co. to block the Nixon Administration’s attempts to use claims of national security to prevent The Washington Post and The New York Times from publishing secret Pentagon papers on how America went to war in Vietnam.

  As Justice William O. Douglas remarked on the ruling, “The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”

  Fast forward to the present day, and we’re witnessing yet another showdown, this time between Assange and the Deep State, which pits the people’s right to know about government misconduct against the might of the military industrial complex.

  Yet this isn’t merely about whether whistleblowers and journalists are part of a protected class under the Constitution. It’s a debate over how long “we the people” will remain a protected class under the Constitution.

  Following the current trajectory, it won’t be long before anyone who believes in holding the government accountable is labeled an “extremist,” relegated to an underclass that doesn’t fit in, watched all the time, and rounded up when the government deems it necessary.

  We’re almost at that point now.

  Eventually, we will all be potential suspects, terrorists and lawbreakers in the eyes of the government.

  Partisan politics have no place in this debate: Americans of all stripes would do well to remember that those who question the motives of government provide a necessary counterpoint to those who would blindly follow where politicians choose to lead.

  We don’t have to agree with every criticism of the government, but we must defend the rights of all individuals to speak freely without fear of punishment or threat of banishment.

  Never forget: what the architects of the police state want are submissive, compliant, cooperative, obedient, meek citizens who don’t talk back, don’t challenge government authority, don’t speak out against government misconduct, and don’t step out of line.

  What the First Amendment protects—and a healthy constitutional republic requires—are citizens who routinely exercise their right to speak truth to power.

  The right to speak out against government wrongdoing is the quintessential freedom.

  As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, once again, we find ourselves reliving George Orwell’s 1984, which portrayed in chilling detail how totalitarian governments employ the power of language to manipulate the masses.

  In Orwell’s dystopian vision of the future, Big Brother does away with all undesirable and unnecessary words and meanings, even going so far as to routinely rewrite history and punish “thoughtcrimes.”

  Much like today’s social media censors and pre-crime police departments, Orwell’s Thought Police serve as the eyes and ears of Big Brother, while the other government agencies peddle in economic affairs (rationing and starvation), law and order (torture and brainwashing), and news, entertainment, education and art (propaganda).

  Orwell’s Big Brother relies on Newspeak to eliminate undesirable words, strip such words as remained of unorthodox meanings and make independent, non-government-approved thought altogether unnecessary.

  Where we stand now is at the juncture of OldSpeak (where words have meanings, and ideas can be dangerous) and Newspeak (where only that which is “safe” and “accepted” by the majority is permitted). The power elite has made their intentions clear: they will pursue and prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that challenge their authority.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/16/2022 – 23:40

• Chinese Fast Food Restaurants Rely On Robots To Fuel Expansion
  Chinese Fast Food Restaurants Rely On Robots To Fuel Expansion

  Last year was a record-breaking year for robots joining the American workforce. But in China, the advent of robotic workers was equally – if not more – intense.

  According to a report from Nikkei, Yum China’s network of KFC and Pizza Hut outlets has seen significant growth over the past year, even as the size of China’s workforce has remained steady.

  “We increased our stores, but without increasing the total number of staff,” said Joey Watt on a call with analysts and investors on Feb.9, highlighting Yum China’s investments in artificial intelligence and digital technologies to support operations and training.

  Most stores now feature touch screens where customers place orders, a feature that has become familiar to American consumers over the past decade. KFC robots make soft-serve ice cream cones for customers, while take-out orders can be picked up by customers from digital lockers without forcing them to have any contact with staff.

  

  As for human workers, Watt noted that the company now has about 420K full- and part-time staff, about the same number it had in 2016 when it was spun off by its American parent, Yum! Brands.

  Over the same period, the number of outlets increased by 56%, reaching 11,788 as of December following the addition of a net 1,282 outlets in 2021. Between 2016 and 2021, annual net profits nearly doubled to $990MM (though that number also included proceeds from a one-off gain).

  

  Source: FT

  But despite its growing use of robots, Yum’s labor costs have continued to climb, due in part to higher insurance-related costs.

  Despite the cap on staffing, Yum China’s labor costs have continued to rise, reaching $2.25 billion last year, up 31% from 2020. Payroll and benefits have also made up a growing proportion of total store operational expenses, hitting 29.2 per cent last year, up from 25.5 per cent in 2016. Part of this is due to higher insurance expenses. The company last year raised medical coverage for some store managers to Rmb1mn ($157,182) while extending critical illness and other coverage for 100,000 front-line staff and family members.

  The company expects to roll out more robots in restaurants it plans to open next year.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/16/2022 – 23:20

• How Much Will Biden's Ukraine Policy Cost Americans?
  How Much Will Biden’s Ukraine Policy Cost Americans?

  Authored by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute, 

  The Ukraine crisis has provided the perfect opportunity for weapon makers to cash in. The collapse of the Afghan Army was a blow to the military-industrial complex that made billions during the two-decade nation-building project. Now, it appears the foreign policy establishment sees Ukraine as a potential Afghanistan replacement.

  The State Department has approved the transfer of five helicopters that belonged to the Afghan Army to Ukraine. The helicopters are just a small part of the billions in weapons the US and its allies have given to Kyiv. Additionally, Biden has sent thousands of soldiers to Eastern Europe on costly deployments.

  

  Like in Afghanistan, no one realistically expects success. The US believes that in any conflict with Russia the Ukrainian military will suffer heavy casualties and fold within days.

  In the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, arms may be just a small part of the price Americans will pay for Biden’s policy. NATO has promised sanctions that it says will devastate the Russian economy. However, Biden admitted yesterday that those sanctions would also plague the American energy sector.

  The Biden Administration has also utilized the renewed fear of ‘Russian Aggression’ to levy loyalty questions at journalists. Notably, State Department Spokesperson Ned Price accused AP journalist Matt Lee of pushing a pro-Russian narrative for asking the State Department to provide evidence for their claims that Moscow was planning a false flag.

  The intelligence community has made a similar charge against Zero Hedge, with the AP reporting yesterday, “U.S. intelligence officials on Tuesday accused a conservative financial news website with a significant American readership of amplifying Kremlin propaganda.”

  US leaders: *lie about Russia & Ukraine*
  Kremlin: “US leaders are lying about Russia & Ukraine.”
  Zero Hedge: “US leaders are lying about Russia & Ukraine.”
  US leaders: “Zero Hedge is amplifying Kremlin propaganda.” https://t.co/4cmGQwKo5l

  — Martyr Made (@martyrmade) February 15, 2022

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  The new White House effort for narrative control is eerily similar to George W. Bush dictating, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

  If rhetoric is any indication, the fear of a Russian invasion will cost Americans a lot more than just tax dollars.

  * * *

  But on that note, the Biden White House is weighing yet another $1 billion loan for Ukraine, and this despite admitting the country is still rife with corruption…

  Nov 13, 2015 “Ukraine to Receive 3rd Billion-Dollar Loan Guarantee From US Treasury”. Unclear if US took losses on previous loan guarantees to Ukraine but apparently gearing up for another loan. https://t.co/sSDnT6MMGv https://t.co/ngIdxH6POt

  — Cate Long (@cate_long) February 14, 2022

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  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/16/2022 – 23:00

• Russia: The Gold Standard In Olympic Doping
  Russia: The Gold Standard In Olympic Doping

  Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva has officially qualified for tomorrow’s free skate medal event amidst an ongoing doping controversy. Even though she tested positive for the banned drug trimetazidine in December, the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) ruled that Valieva is still allowed to take part in further events. Meanwhile, the medal ceremony for the team skate competition, which saw Valieva and her fellow team members scoring gold, will be postponed until she’s cleared of any accusations.

  

  And, as Statista’s Florian Zandt details below, if Valieva were to be denied her team gold medal, Russia would have been stripped of its 52nd Olympic medal due to doping as Zandt shows in the chart below…

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  According to data from World Atlas, the Russian Federation holds the record for having to forfeit the most Olympic medals in history. The Russian Olympic Committee has long been suspected of systematically supplying their athletes with performance-enhancing drugs. Numerous investigations and reports resulted in a four-year ban on the participation of the country’s athletes in global sporting events put into effect by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in 2019. One year later, the length of the ban was reduced to two years by the CAS, which enabled Russia to officially take part in this year’s Winter Olympic Games.

  Sharing second place are Ukraine and Belarus with 11 medals stripped, while Kazakhstan ranks third with nine medals. Overall, Eastern European and former Eastern Bloc nations make up the majority of the top 8 countries having to forfeit their Olympic medals.

  While these numbers, especially for Russia, seem high, positive doping tests at the Olympic games have actually gone down in the last couple of years. After a record of 91 and 132 positive tests in the Summer Games of 2008 and 2012, respectively, the 2020 Summer Olympics saw only nine athletes testing positive for potential performance-enhancing drugs according to data from ProCon.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/16/2022 – 22:40

• China Denounces US As "Bandits" For Seizing $7 Billion As Afghans Starve
  China Denounces US As “Bandits” For Seizing $7 Billion As Afghans Starve

  Authored by Kenny Stancil via Common Dreams, 

  Following the Biden administration’s unilateral decision last week to seize $7 billion worth of assets from Afghanistan amid a mounting humanitarian crisis that threatens to kill more civilians than two decades of war, foreign leaders and critics worldwide continue to express disgust, with China on Tuesday condemning the U.S. for dispossessing Afghans of their own money.

  “Without the consent of the Afghan people, the U.S. willfully disposes of assets that belong to the Afghan people, even keeping them as its own. This is no different from the conduct of bandits,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Tuesday during a press conference in Beijing.

  

  China’s response came after U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday signed an executive order to confiscate more than $7 billion that the Afghan Central Bank has on deposit in the Federal Reserve. Biden froze those funds last August when the Taliban regained control of Kabul as U.S. military and NATO forces withdrew, and now he plans to divide them between the families of victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks and humanitarian aid for Afghanistan.

  According to Wang, “This latest example has once again laid bare that the rules-based order the U.S. claims to champion is not the kind of rules and order to defend the weak and uphold justice, but to maintain its own hegemony.” He added that the U.S. “should unfreeze [Afghan] assets, lift unilateral sanctions on Afghanistan as soon as possible, and assume its due responsibility to ease the humanitarian crisis in the country.”

  Amid U.S. sanctions and worsening winter conditions, suffering in Afghanistan has reached catastrophic levels. According to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), 97% of Afghans are projected to fall into poverty by the second half of 2022. Moreover, nearly 23 million Afghans—over half of the country’s population of roughly 40 million—are facing acute food insecurity, with one million children at risk of the most severe form of malnutrition.

  If the Biden administration refuses to change course, more Afghans could starve to death in the coming months than were killed during two decades of U.S.-led war, prompting critics to describe the White House’s decision to snatch the war-torn and poverty-stricken country’s assets as “tantamount to mass murder” and reflective of a brutal willingness to facilitate “mass civilian death.” In a Tuesday interview with France24, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai urged Biden to reverse his decision to allocate $3.5 billion to families of victims of the 9/11 attacks, stressing that all $7 billion belongs to Afghanistan and that it is “wrong” for the U.S. to expropriate another country’s money for its own purposes.

  “The people of Afghanistan share the pain of the American people, share the pain of the families and loved ones of those who died, who lost their lives in the tragedy of September 11,” Karzai said earlier this week. “We commiserate with them [but] Afghan people are as much victims as those families who lost their lives. Withholding money or seizing money from the people of Afghanistan in their name is unjust and unfair and an atrocity against Afghan people,” he added, asking U.S. courts to return the funds.

  Phyllis Rodriguez, the mother of a victim of the 9/11 attacks, denounced Biden’s “outrageous” move to take billions of dollars from Kabul to compensate Americans while millions of Afghans are on the brink of starvation due to economic sanctions the U.S. imposed at the conclusion of its 20-year war.

  “The suffering of the Afghan people at the hands of the United States and its allies is reprehensible,” she said. “This is adding insult to injury.”

  Phyllis Rodriguez, mother of a 9/11 victim, blasts Biden’s order to split billions in frozen Afghan assets in part to compensate the families of 9/11 victims.

  “The suffering of the Afghan people at the hands of the United States and its allies is reprehensible,” says Rodriguez. pic.twitter.com/XwciQ9XdBx

  — Democracy Now! (@democracynow) February 15, 2022

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  In an opinion piece published earlier this week, Bloomberg columnist Ruth Pollard wrote that in the wake of Biden’s executive order, “many in Afghanistan and its diaspora pointed out the obvious: This appears to be a backwards attempt to punish Afghanistan for its role in the 2001 attacks on the U.S.“

  “If so,” wrote Pollard, “the aim was off-target. Of the origins of the 9/11 hijackers, 15 came from Saudi Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates and one each from Lebanon and Egypt. Not one was Afghan. The Taliban, who ruled most of the country, had provided refuge to Osama bin Laden; but, given the median age of Afghans today is 18, those attacks took place before many were even born.” As for the $3.5 billion that the White House has proposed using for humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan, peace activist Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink, urged global aid groups to reject those funds and called on “other countries and institutions not to cooperate in the implementation of [Biden’s] unjust order.”

  Experts have noted that the sovereign wealth captured by Biden undergirds Afghanistan’s currency and is not meant for aid. According to Pollard:

  While the United Nations and other humanitarian groups work to convince the U.S. and the World Bank to ease what amounts to an economic blockade on Afghanistan, Biden’s actions are blatantly counterproductive.

  …U.N. chief Antonio Guterres in January called on the World Bank to immediately release $1.2 billion in reconstruction funds to ease the humanitarian crisis and inject liquidity to prevent an economic collapse. It had already transferred $280 million to the U.N. Children’s Fund and the World Food Programme a month earlier.

  As IRC president David Miliband told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism during a hearing last week, “The proximate cause of this starvation crisis is the international economic policy, which has been adopted since August and which has cut off financial flows not just to the public sector, but in the private sector in Afghanistan as well.”

  “Bank branches lack cash, and sanctions, which are meant to be on the Taliban, end up freezing private sector activity,” said Miliband. “Aid cannot make up for an economy deprived of oxygen.” Graeme Smith of the International Crisis Group concurred, saying during the hearing that “you can send bags of food, but more than that, you need to address the reason why people are hungry, which is the collapse of the economy mostly due to Western economic restrictions.”

  Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and long-time critic of sanctions, said this week in a statement that “a country without central bank reserves is on a road to economic collapse. By confiscating these reserves, the U.S. government is guaranteeing this collapse, and the resulting widespread death and mass migration.”

  “This is fatally wrong and immoral, and it cannot continue,” said Weisbrot. “The only question is how many people will die before the U.S. government changes its policy.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/16/2022 – 22:20

• New York AG Issues "Consumer Alert" On Apple AirTag Tracking
  New York AG Issues “Consumer Alert” On Apple AirTag Tracking

  There have been several instances of bad actors using Apple AirTags to track people and or luxury sportscars. The latest was Sports Illustrated model Brooks Nader, 26, who went viral after telling her story of an AirTag incident on social media of a stalker who slipped the device into her coat jacket while at a bar in New York City in early January. She said the stalker tracked her for hours, adding if it wasn’t for her iPhone’s notification that read an “unknown accessory detected,” she would’ve never known. About a month and a half since the story went viral, it appears the government has issued a consumer alert on the tracking threat. 

  

  New York Attorney General Letitia James issued a consumer alert on Wednesday about “bad actors using Apple AirTags to track individuals’ locations and their belongings for harmful purposes.” 

  “Individuals have reported finding unknown AirTags attached to their cars, and in their purses, coat pockets, and other personal property. Others have reportedly received alerts on their phones that their location information is being shared, even when the targets do not find an AirTag or another connected accessory,” the release said. 

  James said, “AirTags are being misused to track people and their belongings to cause harm.” She said criminals who use these devices to track people and their belongings without consent “is a serious felony and will not be tolerated by my office.” 

  She requested all New Yorkers be on alert for these tracking devices as criminals could target them. 

  Besides the Sports Illustrated model, a report from Canada in early December noted car thieves placed AirTags in out-of-sight areas on luxury vehicles, tracked them, and eventually stole them. 

  Apple recently responded to the incidents of criminals using AirTags for nefarious purposes and said: 

  “We also have seen reports of bad actors attempting to misuse AirTag for malicious or criminal purposes.” 

  Apple said they’ve been working closely with law enforcement agencies to resolve the matter. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/16/2022 – 22:00

• Charlie Munger Says Fiat Currency Going To Zero "Over 100 Years"
  Charlie Munger Says Fiat Currency Going To Zero “Over 100 Years”

  With weeks to go until the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, Warren Buffett’s No. 2 man Charlie Munger held his ‘Daily Journal Annual Meeting’ this afternoon with the range of topics as varied as one could possibly imagine.

  The meeting gave people the opportunity to pick Munger’s admittedly aging brain about everything and anything.

  

  The big headline-makers were Munger’s dystopian view of the future of fiat currency, his usual – and escalating – hatred of crypto, and his seeming adoration of China.

  On the inflationary endgame:

  Munger says “inflation is a very serious subject. You can argue that it’s the way democracies die… If you overdo it, you can ruin your civilization, so it’s a long-range danger.”

  “The safe assumption for investors is that over the next 100 years, the [fiat] currency is going to zero… that’s my working hypothesis.”

  “Inflation is a very serious subject,” Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman & Daily Journal Chairman Charlie Munger says. “You can argue it’s the way democracies die.” More: pic.twitter.com/mZsNhmSmIC

  — Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) February 16, 2022

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  On Crypto

  “I’m proud of the fact I’ve avoided it,” he said, referring to cryptocurrencies. “It’s like some venereal disease … I just regard it as beneath contempt.”

  Cryptocurrencies are popular because they can be used for kidnapping, extortion and tax evasion, Munger said. He expressed support for China’s move to outlaw private digital currencies.

  “China is taking a very mature stance on cryptocurrencies,” Munger said. He said that he wants to “make money by selling people something that will help them get ahead in life, not selling things that are bad for them. People who invest in cryptocurrencies think only about themselves. Don’t think about the customers. I don’t want any of them to marry any of my relatives.”

  Munger rejected the idea that he “missed out on something” by not investing in cryptocurrencies.

  On central bank digital currencies.

  The Fed “can have a currency if they want one,” Munger said. “We’ve got a digital currency already, it’s called a bank account.”

  On investing in China

  Munger said that “China is a big modern nation. It’s got this huge population and this huge modernity that’s come in the last 30 years, and we invested some money in China because we could get more value in terms of the strength of the enterprise and the price of the security than we could get in the United States.”

  On political pressure in China

  China and the U.S. have been “massively stupid” to allow the existing tensions to arise, he says.

  “Nothing is crazier than people that foment resentments on either side of that one.”

  As a reminder, here he is last year praising the ‘offing’ of Jack Ma…“The Chinese communists did the right thing they just called him up and said ‘you aren’t going to do it, sonny'”.

  JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.
  pic.twitter.com/39kvjeZucl

  — INVESTMENT HULK (@INVESTMENTSHULK) July 4, 2021

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  On market excesses

  “Certainly the great short squeeze in GameStop was wretched excess, certainly the Bitcoin thing is wretched excess,” Munger said. “I would argue that venture capital is throwing too much money too fast, and there’s a considerable wretched excess in venture capital and other forms of private equity.”

  He added that the stock market doesn’t need to be as liquid as it is.

  “It’s like a bunch of people getting drunk at a party,” Munger said, adding that it’s like a bunch of people getting drunk at a party and everyone is having so much fun that they don’t think about the consequences. You can argue the wretched excess of the ‘20s gave us the Great Depression and the Great Depression gave us Hitler, the 92-year-old mumbled, so “it’s serious stuff.”

  Munger says they’d just need to find a way that makes the stock market less liquid.

  He says if he were the dictator of the world he would have some kind of a tax on short-term gains that make the stock market less liquid and drive out this marriage of gambling parlor and legitimate capital development of the country.

  “It’s not a good marriage and I think we need a divorce,” he says.

  On passive investing

  Munger said, “we have a new bunch of emperors.”

  He said there’s been an enormous amount of transfer of voting power to passive firms and that’s going to change the world.

  “I don’t know what the consequences are going to be, but I predict it will not be good,” he said. “I think the world of Larry Fink; I’m not sure I want him to be my emperor.”

  On the inflationary environment being like the ’70s

  “I certainly hope we’re not going there again,” Munger said of the Volcker rate hikes and ensuing recession.

  “I would not predict that our modern politicians will be as willing to permit a new Volcker to get that tough with the economy and bring on that kind of a recession.”

  He added that “you may wish you had a Volcker-style recession. I don’t know what you’re going to get.”

  On The Fed’s policies

  We do know that we’re flirting with serious trouble, Munger says

  Munger says he thinks that Larry Summers is quite possibly right that we overshot a little with some of the stimulus.

  On fiscal policy and handouts

  Munger says that the only effective economies that we’ve had that brought us modernity have imposed a lot of hardship on young people who didn’t want to work.

  If you take away all the hardship and say you can stay home and get more than if you come to work, it’s quite disruptive to an economic system like ours, he says.

  So next time, he says we shouldn’t be so liberal about the stimulus.

  On the US deficit:

  “You’re flirting with danger somewhere unless there’s some discipline in the process,” Munger said.

  Japan has done a bunch of this and gotten by, but he doesn’t think the U.S. will be as good at handling its problems, he said.

  On global warming

  Munger says that he’ll be surprised if it’s as bad as people think it’ll be.

  What worries Munger most about the economy and stock market, and what makes him most optimistic?

  It’s amazing how much achievement there’s been in civilization in the last 200 years, but the trouble with that is the basic needs are pretty well-filled, he said.

  “The world is not driven by greed, it’s driven by envy,” he said, adding that he (a billionaire) has conquered envy in his own life.

  *  *  *

  So to summarize:

  • Fiat’s going to zero, but don’t buy bitcoin to hedge “the ruin of civilization.”

  • The current market excess is a problem… and led to Hitler in the past.

  • Paying people not to work is a disaster for economic productivity and running big deficits is “flirting with danger.”

  • US and China should stop rattling sabers.

  • Global warming fearmongering is overblown.

  But apart from that, everything for the 92-year-old is awesome!

  *  *  *

  Watch the full interview below:

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/16/2022 – 21:40

• Senator Urges FTC To Monitor Threats To Children In Metaverse
  Senator Urges FTC To Monitor Threats To Children In Metaverse

  A group of lawmakers on Capitol Hill sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) urging the agency responsible for consumer protection to monitor the metaverse for threats against children. 

  Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Representatives Kathy Castor (FL-14) and Lori Trahan (MA-03) asked the FTC to use its full authority under the Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act and Section 5 of the FTC Act to ensure children are protected in the new online universe. 

  “Children’s increasing use of VR warrants serious concerns about new threats to young users’ wellbeing. Many VR platforms and headsets currently do not have basic parental controls, and reports point to harms such as harassment and unsafe content in the metaverse,” the lawmakers wrote. 

  The letter comes as millions of parents bought their children Meta’s (formerly known as Facebook) Oculus Quest 2 goggles for Christmas. We previously noted the dark side of the metaverse and documented instances of possible child grooming within one of the virtual reality headset’s most popular chatroom services VRChat.

  A clip shared by YouTuber “The Dark Maze“ uncovered several instances of a serious problem in VRChat: child exploitation and sexualization. The Dark Maze said VRChat is “not a place for children.”

  Following our reporting last month, Oculus recently released a statement indicating the addition of a “personal boundary” (think of a personal bubble) that will protect users from being virtually assaulted by others.

  

  We ask the question: “Why didn’t Oculus enforce these boundaries from the beginning?” 

  The Dark Maze, a metaverse developer who has spent thousands of hours in the virtual world, also documented instances of “adults in the metaverse fantasizing sex with toddlers.” The developer said:

  “ZeroHedge was the first major news publication to document our story of a VR Developer’s experience in the metaverse and expose the dark side of it. Corporate media has stayed silent on the horrible accounts of child grooming in and VRChat, perhaps because their corporate sponsors are plowing billions of dollars into metaverse investments.”

  The developer could be right about corporate media failing to report child threats in the metaverse because, as Goldman Sachs equity strategist Eric Sheridan explains, mega-corporations are plowing sizeable investments into Web 3.0 (a fully decentralized online ecosystem that includes the potential for a metaverse, an immersive world that acts in parallel to the physical world). He believes the metaverse will present a total addressable market of about $2.6 trillion (most bearish case) to $12.5 trillion (most bullish case) within the next 10-15 years. If mega-corporations need people to join the metaverse – there can’t be bad press about it. 

  It was only after our reporting last month that more people are becoming serious about protecting children in this new digital world.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/16/2022 – 21:20

• US Trending Toward China's Social Credit System, Enabled By Big Tech: Former Facebook Analyst
  US Trending Toward China’s Social Credit System, Enabled By Big Tech: Former Facebook Analyst

  By Mimi Nguyen Ly and Jan Jekielek of The Epoch Times

  Big tech companies are doing the bidding of the U.S. government in actions that mirror China’s social credit system, and Americans must recognize what’s happening and take action, according to Kara Frederick, a former Facebook intel analyst and a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

  

  Frederick recently authored a Heritage Foundation report titled, “Combating Big Tech’s Totalitarianism: A Road Map,” which details how Big Tech has wielded its power to censor Americans. The report proposes a range of actions Americans can take to counter the situation.

  “It’s that integration of the government and big tech companies to police speech that I think is troubling and very evocative of the coming totalitarianism,” Frederick said on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program. She calls it a “symbiosis between the government and tech companies.”

  She cited a few examples, including in earlier February, when White House press secretary Jen Psaki, at a press conference, urged Spotify and other major tech platforms to take further action to stamp out what the Biden administration deemed as “COVID-19 misinformation.”

  It’s not the first time Psaki told big tech companies what to do, Frederick noted. In July 2021, Psaki and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy at a press conference urged social media companies to combat what the Biden administration called “health misinformation.” At the time, Psaki singled out 12 people whom she said were “producing 65 percent of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms.”

  “All of [the 12 people] remain active on Facebook, despite some even being banned on other platforms, including Facebook—ones that Facebook owns,” Psaki said at the time. A day later, Psaki said, “You shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others … for providing misinformation out there.”

  Frederick noted that within a month, all of the users and accounts were booted off the Facebook platform.

  In January, President Joe Biden said he was making a “special appeal” to social media companies and media to “deal with misinformation and disinformation,” and in early February, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas had issued a terrorism advisory not just against so-called misinformation about COVID-19, but also in the context of election integrity and election security, Frederick also noted.

  “This is becoming pervasive and big tech companies are the willing agents for the government to have really a heavy hand on the American people,” Frederick said.

  “So absolutely, this is a coming totalitarianism, these practices are, frankly, mirroring that of what China does in the social credit system,” she continued. “You have to remember that [it] started with private companies as well and specific provinces in the financial sector.

  “So I think it’s extremely important for Americans to get their guards up and recognize what’s happening as it’s happening today.”

  Quashing Dissenting Views

  In the interview, Frederick explores how tech companies have repurposed certain tools that were originally meant to be used to combat national security threats, to now quash dissenting viewpoints, or anything the U.S. government calls “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “mal-information.”

  “I believe that there are genuine problems on these platforms, right? Human trafficking, advertisements for drug cartels … child sexual abuse, material, child exploitation and pornography, and real foreign Islamic terrorist content. Those are real issues, not to mention state-linked influence operations, where you have bots that are farmed out to patriotic citizens by the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, to spew bile all over the internet or cheerlead for the CCP. … So it’s very important that we do have people within these companies working on that.”

  Frederick previously helped create and lead Facebook’s Global Security Counterterrorism Analysis Program. In the beginning of her career, she had spent six years as a counterterrorism analyst at the Department of Defense.

  She observed that on the social media platforms, there appears to be a “very troubling trend” whereby more resources are being allocated toward regulating right-leaning content and dissenting content.

  “We have failed to agree on a definition of misinformation and disinformation, and what actual, organic sort of influence operations are, versus state-linked influence operations from nefarious actors,” she said. “Right now, disinformation—it seems to be a catch-all for views that the left doesn’t like that the Biden regime doesn’t like.

  “No more demonstrative examples exist other than the Hunter Biden laptop story [and] the lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology—these two things were considered misinformation at the time and you would be censored, suspended or banned from Facebook and Twitter and other social media.”

  What’s furthermore troubling is an apparent effort to link disinformation with terrorism, such as with the recent Department of Homeland Security (DHS) advisory or the Justice Department’s establishment of a new unit to combat domestic terrorism, Frederick said.

  “These institutions have definitions for a reason,” she said. “They call things terrorism for a reason. Because you can, once you label something terrorism, you can then mobilize the robustness of the entire U.S. national security apparatus developed in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

  “And you can mobilize them against anyone that you’re accusing of terrorism. And when you link disinformation, mal-information, [and] misinformation with terrorism, that gives them license to do a variety of things under a variety of specialized authorities and visit them against the purveyor of this disinformation or misinformation.”

  Frederick advises Americans to explore platforms created by new entrants. “I won’t name them specifically. But I think we’re starting to see these competitors come up as they recognize the challenge as they try to take on [the] monopolistic practices of these big tech companies,” she said.

  “Make sure that your privacy is first and foremost as well—so using companies that are actually devoted to privacy,” she added.

  The wanton censorship is not limited to social media companies, Frederick said.

  “it’s important for people to understand that it’s not just social media companies or your right to be on Twitter, your right to be on Facebook,” she said. “It’s everything: email delivery services, online fundraising platforms, your ability to get a creative project going, the regular person’s ability to have a business on Instagram, your ability to sell merchandise that you create on Shopify, your ability to bank online.”

  “We know that 17 digital platforms mobilized within two weeks in early January to suspend or ban President Trump from their platforms. It can happen to the everyday user as well,” she said. “So I think it’s critical that we realize it’s not just social media companies, but it’s every aspect of your digital life, which is life into perpetuity.”

  Deny CCP Links, Recover Sense of Duty to America

  Americans, including members of Congress, need to understand that big tech companies are infringing on Americans’ constitutional rights, such as freedom of speech, “especially when [Big Tech is] working with the government.”

  “Instead of saying ‘they’re private companies, they can do whatever they want,’ recognize that that’s a problem,” she said.

  Also, big tech platforms need to truly embrace American values again and recover a sense of duty to the country, and U.S. lawmakers can kickstart the process by “being brave, calling out [Big Tech], recognizing that this is a problem and taking measures to rectify it,” she said.

  Frederick said she was “struck” by how big tech platforms such as Facebook showed a “lack of both gratitude and cognition” of how they thrived and flourished under an American system.

  “Because of America, [these big tech platforms] were able to amass all of this largess, and innovate and build all these really interesting things for the people of the world,” she noted. “I recognize that they’re global companies, but when it comes to the reason why they’ve been so successful, it’s because of America and our unique system. I think companies need to recover a sense of being American again. … Recovering that sense of a duty to America, and a gratitude for what it’s been able to do and create for these executives and the people who work under them.”

  She said that Big Tech’s ties to the CCP pose a major hurdle to this effort, and believes Congress needs to pull the companies in line.

  “You hear an argument these days that big tech companies are, ‘the bulwark against Chinese aggression, they’re gonna help us win the race against China,’—not if [Amazon founder] Jeff Bezos is working with a CCP propaganda arm, not if [Apple CEO] Tim Cook is paying China with $275 billion to contribute to their development; not if Zoom is acquiescing to the directives from the CCP to get a human rights activist off of one of their calls. The list goes on and on and on.”

  Frederick said Congress needs to “be brave and say absolutely not” to stop companies from working against American interests.

  “Companies need to recover what it means to be American companies again,” Frederick continued. “Congress can help them do it. Civil society can help them do it. State legislators and attorney generals can help them do it. … We all have responsibilities here, but it really starts in here with all of us.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/16/2022 – 21:00

• NatGas Futures Jump As East Coast Set To Freeze
  NatGas Futures Jump As East Coast Set To Freeze

  U.S. natural gas futures have been on a rollercoaster over the last six months, from gas shortages in Europe to cold weather in the U.S. to the latest geopolitical tensions in Ukraine. Futures for March are up for the third day as commodity traders assess new weather models forecasting colder temperatures on the East Coast will increase heating demand. 

  Futures for March delivery are up nearly 8% to $4.64/MMBtu on Nymex. A blend of geopolitical tensions and the prospect for cold weather on the East Coast has sent March contracts up over 20% since last Friday. 

  

  The latest warmth on the East Coast will dissipate by the weekend as average temperatures from Washington, D.C., to New York City will dive below a 30-year trend line. Average temperatures are expected to rebound next week but begin another plunge next Wednesday into March. 

  Washington, D.C.’s average temperatures will dive this weekend then rebound next week to only dive once more. 

  

  The same trend is in play for New York City. 

  

  For the Lower 48 as a whole, colder temperatures appear to be ahead through the first week of March. 

  

  There’s also a winter storm developing that could track across central and eastern U.S. later today into Thursday. 

  “This looks to be a rather dynamic storm with the potential for major impacts of several kinds, including heavy snow, significant ice accretion, flooding, severe weather and even a rather broad zone of strong winds,” said AccuWeather Meteorologist La Troy Thornton, adding that the eastern half of the country will be in play for at least one of these threats.

  

  Besides weather models, the U.S. has relied on a Punxsutawney Phil, Pennsylvania’s most famous groundhog, for a guestimate on the seasonal shift from cold to warm. On Feb. 2, the giant rodent made his annual weather prediction as he saw his “shadow,” which means six more weeks of winter. 

  America might be the only country that relies on a rodent for weather predictions.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/16/2022 – 20:40

• The New Anti-Economics
  The New Anti-Economics

  Authored by Heff Deist via The Mises Institute,

  Economics is about human action and choice within the context of scarcity. The problem facing economists is how to understand and explain human betterment, which is another way of saying production. The critical question, posed correctly by economist Per Bylund, starts with scarcity as the default point for understanding purposive human behavior.

  

  Antieconomics, by contrast, starts with abundance and works backward. It emphasizes redistribution, not production, as its central focus. At the heart of any antieconomics is a positivist worldview, the assumption that individuals and economies can be commanded by legislative fiat. Markets, which happen without centralized organization, give way to planning in the same way common law gives way to statutory law. This view is especially prevalent among left intellectuals, who view economics not as a science at all, but rather a pseudointellectual exercise to justify capital and wealthy business interests.

  Antieconomics is not new; even alchemy might be considered a medieval version of the endless quest to achieve something for nothing. It holds enduring appeal in modern politics and academia, where communism, chartalism, Keynesianism, and monetarism all represent twentieth-century variations on the central theme of commanding economic activity.

  But today’s most visible version of antieconomics takes the form of modern monetary theory. MMT featured heavily in a recent flattering profile of Professor Stephanie Kelton in the New York Times titled “Is This What Winning Looks Like?” “Winning” in this context refers to MMT’s growing popular appeal, with Kelton as the public face following her 2020 book The Deficit Myth.

  

  Kelton’s MMT is a political and fiscal program, not a macroeconomic theory. It argues deficits don’t matter because money issued by a sovereign government is never constrained (unlike resources, as Kelton admits). Thus governments don’t “pay” for things the way individuals or businesses do, and furthermore, public debt is actually a private benefit to someone. The problem is not paying for government programs, but rather identifying them—robust public works, job guarantees, universal basic income, food and housing, Green New Deal programs, Medicare for All, etc.—and, more importantly, creating the public will to support them politically.

  In Kelton’s words, MMT “teaches us to ask not ‘How will you pay for it?’ but ‘How will you resource it?’ It shows us that if we have the technological know-how and the available resources—to put a man on the moon or embark on a Green New Deal to tackle climate change, then funding to carry out those missions can always be made available. Coming up with the money is the easy part.” The Deficit Myth, in sum, is what one commenter called “a plea to use permanent wartime mobilization for civilian ends.” Endless stimulation, not better and cheaper production, is the goal of fiscal (or monetary) policy.

  This is antieconomics in its fullest expression. Resources exist (from whence?); are commanded by or at least available to the state, if not outright owned by the state (taxes? seizure? forfeiture?); and then are put in service of an undefined political mandate (what “we” want). Funding is an afterthought, as the fiscal authority creates money as needed. But in fairness to Kelton, the US federal government in 2020 spent roughly $6.5 trillion, twice what it raised in taxes ($3.4 trillion). In a very narrow sense, MMT “works” in the short term for the benefit of politically favored groups. This is the seen. But proper economics, as Henry Hazlitt and Frédéric Bastiat explained, requires looking at the long-term effects of a policy on everyone. This is the unseen. For MMTers, the vast opportunity costs of government spending, even when the economy is nowhere near “full employment,” go unseen.

  Perversely, media critics defended criticisms of Kelton’s Times feature on the grounds of sexism. She is lauded, not surprisingly, as a rare standout in the male-dominated field of academic economics. The attacks on her work, we are told, come from older jealous white men (e.g., former Treasury secretary Larry Summers) who don’t appreciate the “new” economics she proposes and who envy the attention she has brought not only to herself and MMT, but to the broader push for egalitarian economic justice. Kelton, after all, served as an economic advisor to democratic socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and supported Elizabeth Warren. Old neoliberals like Summers, by contrast, still support the outdated idea of fiscal constraints.

  But beyond the absurd allegations of sexism—surely Kelton knows how merciless Twitter and other platforms are to everyone—is the more alarming suggestion that the practice of economics is too male and needs a female version. Economics is too adversarial, too concerned with being right, and in need of a more collaborative (read: female) approach. The implications of this for all social sciences, not just economics, are staggering: we would upend the search for knowledge to reflect a different logic between men and women—what Mises called “polylogism.” Would this not require an entirely new epistemology across all scientific disciplines?

  None of these diversions will allow us to escape reality. Economics starts and ends with scarcity, an inescapable feature of human reality. Any conception of freedom from material and human constraints requires a posteconomics world, either an earthly utopia or a heavenly abundance. In our world, however rich relative to the past, scarcity is the starting point of economic analysis. In our world, individual human actors make “rational” choices only within the context of constraints: time, capital, intelligence, ability, health, and location. And every choice has an opportunity cost. 

  Professional economics is in big trouble, and only an aggressive new generation of Austrian-trained praxeologists can undo the damage done by the prescriptive and political antieconomists. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/16/2022 – 20:20

• Rabobank Warns Coffee Prices May 'Soar Out Of Control' As Stockpiles Plunge
  Rabobank Warns Coffee Prices May ‘Soar Out Of Control’ As Stockpiles Plunge

  Goldman’s head commodity strategist and one of the closest-followed analysts on Wall Street told the audience of Bloomberg TV last Monday of commodity markets pricing in shortages. 

  “I’ve been doing this 30 years and I’ve never seen markets like this,” Currie told Bloomberg in an interview. “This is a molecule crisis. We’re out of everything, I don’t care if it’s oil, gas, coal, copper, aluminum, you name it we’re out of it.”

  This leaves us with one particular commodity that most Americans use daily, and it’s not crude products, such as gas and diesel, but, in fact, coffee. Over 150 million daily drinkers might be subjected to prices that may ‘soar out of control,’ according to a new report from analysts at Rabobank, led by Carlos Mera. 

  

  In agricultural markets, supply disruptions and lower exports from Central and South American producers have resulted in dwindling stockpiles of arabica beans on the ICE futures exchange. We noted not too long ago that ICE futures exchange hit their lowest level of storage of the bean in two decades. Coffee buyers are panic hoarding as some have switched from arabica to lower-grade robusta.

  Mera warned ICE-monitored inventory could plunge to “half a million bags in three months,” and the “fast pace of decertification could lead to uncontrolled prices spikes in the short-term.” 

  None of this should be surprising for ZeroHedge readers who have been well informed about the coffee troubles developing over the last year. We noted a nightmare of factors, including drought and frost, that have dramatically reduced output potential. There’s also been logistical issues and soaring transportation costs.

  Here are a few of our notes on the situation: 

  • “Nightmare” Of Factors Pushing World Into Coffee Deficit 
  • Arabica Stockpiles Experience Largest Plunge Since ’98 Amid Severe Shortage
  • “Prepare For The Worst” – Caribou Coffee Panic Hoards Arabica Beans Amid Global Deficit

  Arabica prices on the ICE futures exchanges hit a decade high of $2.59 a pound, and if Mera is correct, prices could be headed much higher. 

  

  Supply crunches are showing up on a seasonal basis. Prices have never been higher for this time of year except for 2011. 

  

  For the 150 million Americans who are addicted to coffee, read our commodity note from six months ago, “A ‘Cup Of Joe’ Is About To Get A Whole Lot More Expensive,” it was only a matter of time before prices would hyperinflate away. 

  Rounding back to Goldman’s Currie, everything is becoming a lot more expensive as the Bloomberg Spot Commodity Index powers to new all-time highs. And no wonder President Biden gave certain members of the Federal Reserve the go-ahead to release hawktard statements in the attempt to cool inflation because it’s ripping apart households and damaging the president’s polling numbers. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/16/2022 – 20:00

• There Was No Exit Plan From "Slow The Spread"
  There Was No Exit Plan From “Slow The Spread”

  Authored by Robert Blumen via The Brownstone Institute,

  Last year, cartoons began to appear depicting an endless cycle of variants and government responses.

  They call to mind the definition of insanity (misattributed to Einstein) as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Or perhaps the less well known line from a 1990s Stephen King miniseries “Hell is repetition.” 

  

  The direction of public health policy over the past two years has been difficult to understand. It may be a fool’s errand to use logic and reason for something that by design makes no sense. But coming at it as I do with no prior education in medicine or epidemiology, crude tools such as logic and common sense may still be useful: The basic principles of reality are true for all endeavors. For a plan to work, it must work within a finite time; for every on ramp, there must be an exit. 

  We started out with “Two weeks to flatten the curve.” If nothing else can be said in favor of this plan, credit must be given for how well it was explained. Pictures like this were clear enough.  With my university-level education in math and physics, I understood that the area under the curve was expected to remain equal under both alternatives: the one with and the other without “precautions” (as the label in the diagram euphemistically refers to life under communism). The peak of the curve would be lower, at the cost of the epidemic being extended in duration. 

  While the plan might or might not work, it is possible to state the premise without contradicting laws of logic or common sense. The flattening plan does accept that nearly everyone will eventually be exposed and the contagion will exhaust itself. If the plan enables some people to delay their exposure, up to a point, that could buy doctors some time to better learn how to treat them. Or perhaps a miraculous vaccine will be introduced that would create sterilizing immunity and halt the outbreak in its tracks enabling those who had delayed to avoid infection entirely. 

  And doctors did learn how to treat the disease, but treatment is actively fought by the medical establishment. The FDA – the drug regulator in the US – tweeted you should only get treated for covid if you are a horse.  Even today, you can get banned from social media for suggesting that it is possible to treat the disease. So any possible advantage in developing a treatment was wasted. 

  While the plan was clear, it was not guaranteed to work. Subtle effects could undermine the simple story told by the picture. Perhaps everyone staying at home will not help because people will get infected at home. Or perhaps too many people must leave home because essential critical infrastructure workers such as marijuana dispensaries must remain open to keep society running. 

  Some suggested then a policy that postpones population immunity would give the virus more time to mutate. Given enough time, people who were infected and have developed natural immunity to an earlier variant would face a virus sufficiently different that they might become infected again. Along these lines, biotech executive Vivek Ramaswamy and medical professor Dr Apoorva Ramaswamy MD, writing in the Wall Street Journal, question whether we should even try to slow the spread when “Speeding It May Be Safer.”  Cognitive scientist Mark Changzi suggests “slowing the spread among the healthy not-at-risk, which just raises the frail’s chances of getting infected.” “Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, who have been asserting that you can’t vaccinate your way out of a pandemic for months” believe that vaccination during an outbreak accelerates the evolution of the virus away from the version targeted by the vaccine. 

  Quite likely the “precautions” did nothing to make the curve flatter. With the benefit of hindsight we can observe that outbreaks of the virus in proximate US states (or neighboring nations that are similar in size and demographics in other regions of the world) rise and fall side by side in cyclical surges, regardless of when or if efforts to slow the spread were made. There is no impact on the variability of any public health metric based on when a “precaution” was undertaken.  

  After the hospitalizations peaked and then declined to near zero in the spring of 2020, I naively expected that we had done what we could, and it was over. Whether we had flattened the curve, or, the virus did what it would have done anyway, was at that point irrelevant. Instead of ending the precautions, there was an unstated shift from the original strategy to a new one. Unlike the original, the new policy was not clearly explained. I suspect the reason is that it could not have been explained without it becoming obvious that it did not make any sense. 

  “Flatten the curve” assumes contagions come to an end – either through immunity or viruses burn themselves out for reasons we do not fully understand. All things come to an end. Even the plague of the Black Death ran out of gas before it wiped out the entire human race. If an outbreak ends when most of us have been exposed (and either died or developed immunity), how can slowing it down be said to save lives? Is it not the best we can hope for that some people are exposed and suffer the consequences later rather than sooner?    

  Evidence of the new reality appeared to me one day when I was stuck in a traffic jam, on a trip I (and many of my neighbors) made in violation of my locality’s “shelter in place” order. As I puzzled over this new reality, I noticed overhead digital signage (paid for by my governor’s massive ad spend on Covid propaganda), stating: “Stay at home: save lives.” This was the initial wave of a propaganda tsunami imploring us to “slow the spread.” 

  A story about a superspreader who went to a party and infected multiple people who subsequently died attributed the deaths to the careless person who probably did not wear a mask. Was there some alternate version of reality in which the dead partygoers lived out the rest of their natural life never being exposed to a virus to which they were vulnerable? Should the superspreader be held responsible for their exposure, or was it only a matter of time until the virus found them, one way or another? 

  Sanctimonious lockdowners heaped scorn and ridicule on countries that did not slow the spread. A small industry of curve-fitting explanations were offered to explain the “success stories:” they locked down, they wore face masks, they tested, they quarantined, they contact-traced, they social distanced. They did as they were told. They obeyed authority. And we should do likewise. 

  According to Dr. Anthony Fauci MD, it was the time for us ornery Americans to do as we were told. In retrospect every one of the virtuous nations had its own spike or two, or three, often after getting fully vaccinated, taking a victory lap, and dislocating both of their shoulders by patting themselves on the back overly vigorously. 

  Consider testing. Some virtuous nations tested. Based on the long lines of cars to get into the popup centers, the United States tested a lot too. When former president Donald Trump suggested that – perhaps – we were overtesting, he was subjected to enormous ridicule. Yet how could testing help slow the spread of a virus? By itself testing does nothing other than identify sick people. 

  Can a test do a better job at identifying sick people than they can do on their own simply by noticing whether they have symptoms? If testing once a week does not help, does testing twice a week? And if so, then why do we care about a test result, if asymptomatic people are not contagious? In reality testing produced too many false positives to be useful. 

  Testing could in theory help if combined with contact tracing and quarantines to isolate the infected people. Contact tracing was another ritual of the success stories – yet contact tracing could not possibly work if someone could be infected by coming within six feet of a sick person or walking down the same side of the street because the second-order contacts of contacts would rapidly explode to include everyone in an entire city or region. This was another instance of Yogi Berra’s observation that “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”  

  I wondered what the goals of the new policy of “slow the spread” could be. Was it zero-covid? Zero-covid was the objective of a small cult of fanatics that never gained much traction in the US. A serious go at it would require a country to permanently ban inbound international travel. This was done in a small and tightly controlled nation where a friend of mine lives. According to my friend, they had very low levels of infection; however, the nation’s economy was tourism-based and the continued success of the policy requires that travelers not enter the country. The operation was a success, the patient died. 

  Several other countries tried and failed zero-covid. Antarctica, which should have been a slam dunk, could not pull it off. Nor could an isolated island in the Pacific. In one hilarious story from the zero-aspiring nation of Australia, the virus escaped from jail when a Covid security guard hooked up with a detained person at a quarantine facility. 

  We were not flattening the curve, nor did it look like a strategy of total eradication. We were in a strange middle ground. At best we were pushing the pain into the future but with no plan to ever deal with it. The goals and exit conditions of the plan were not clearly explained. I did at one point find a statement by Dr. Fauci that preventive measures could drive the disease down to a very low level. Was it assumed to remain low forever? If not, then from that low base, outbreaks could be somehow contained?  

  University of California Professor Dr. Vinay Prasad MD wrote about a similar message from President Biden:

  So when people heard in Summer 2020 that Biden aimed to “get covid under control,” some people imagined an optimistic state of affairs whereby, once we all got vaccinated or wore masks for just 100 days (link), covid might be suppressed to such a permanently low level that most of us could forget about it, just as we forget about polio. Such people imagined a one-time, short-term effort to “get covid under control,” like unlocking a door.

  If we are to believe that a worldwide pandemic grew from an outbreak of twelve people in Wuhan, China to infect nearly the entire world (even indigenous tribes in the Amazon jungle who are by definition quarantined) why would it not do the same when we emerged from our underground fallout shelters? What if through assiduously standing in small circles painted on the floor in grocery stores and wearing underwear on our faces, we succeeded in driving the number of Covid infections down to a very small number? To pick a number, for example, twelve people. Why would the contagion not, in the absence of broader acquired immunity, spread again from that new base of twelve, until eventually reaching all of those remaining uninfected?   

  It took me some time to give it a name. I settled on “suppression.”

  The fundamental reason that suppression is not a policy is that it has no exit. For a thing to work it must work within a limited time. If the measures to slow the spread succeeded in slowing it, then what?

  The nature of the off ramp is the answer to the question, “What happens when we stop doing it?” If the answer is, “It would go right back to what it was doing before,” then there is no exit.  

  During 2020 I had people tell me that we could not end the lockdown because the epidemic would pick up right where it left off and millions would die AND (sometimes the same people ) that if we keep up the restrictive measures for a while then we could stop because the virus would not come back.  A bit logic rules out the possibility that the virus could both come back and not come back.

  Do we then spend the rest of our lives acting out Covid theater? Dr. Fauci said that he would never shake hands again. Blue check marks fret about quarantining their children. Jenin Younes reflected on a survey in which hypochondriac epidemiologists who are afraid to open their mail explain that they now consider a normal life to be dangerously reckless. Substack author Eugyppius writes about a medical journal editor who “can’t work out what we’re even doing here, but he wants us to keep doing it.”  

  Dr Prasad explained the difference between finite and infinite strategies:

  Even if most of Biden’s voters agreed with his campaign promise to “get covid under control” in the abstract, this slogan does not specify whether the state of being “under control” involves a one-time effort, or a sustained effort over time. If you unlock a door, you do it once and you can forget it; if you lift an overhead hatch, maybe you have to keep holding it up so that it doesn’t fall back down again.

  Slowing the spread – if such a thing is even possible – means we get to the same place later rather than sooner. Flat or not, it is over when you reach the right tail of the curve. The strange middle ground of slowing the spread with no exit condition, would, if tried, ruin our lives forever. Are you willing to live under covid restrictions for the rest of your life? And your children for the rest of their lives and all subsequent generations? For some measures that slow the spread of disease, such as indoor plumbing, garbage removal and better diet, the answer is yes.  But had our forebears during the plague of the Black Death had adopted a covid-like attempt at suppression, no one would have gone outdoors since the 15th century. 

  During this time of insanity, some of us went about our lives as best we could and ignored the restrictions. The rest of the world is now coming to terms with the understanding that the “precautions” don’t do much.

  At best what is going to happen anyway, happens.

  If there is no off ramp then the change is either permanent or it will go on until failure is evident and people stop caring. Then they will go back to normal one by one.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/16/2022 – 19:40

• 'Housing Affordability Is Getting Crushed': Costlier Loans Push 'American Dream' Out of Reach For First-Time Buyers
  ‘Housing Affordability Is Getting Crushed’: Costlier Loans Push ‘American Dream’ Out of Reach For First-Time Buyers

  As consumer-goods inflation has continued to surprise economists and shoppers alike with its ferocity, increasingly costly mortgages are putting first-time home buyers at a worsening disadvantage, and placing the ‘American Dream’ of owning one’s home even further out of reach.

  

  Bidding have already driven home prices to unprecedented highs, but growing demand for loans has sent mortgage rates to levels unseen in years. The cost for a 30-year loan has just hit a two-year high, having risen 20% since Christmas, Bloomberg reports.

  While those who already own homes have the advantage of benefiting from rising prices in their previous home, allowing them to more easily trade up, first-time buyers must make do with rising prices and rising mortgage rates.

  Costs for 30-year loans hit a more than two-year high of 3.69% last week, rising about 20% just since Christmas. Further increases are expected as the Federal Reserve, trying to curb inflation, hikes its benchmark rate. That’s a daunting prospect for entry-level buyers when affordability is already at its worst since 2018.

  And as we reported earlier this month, first-time buyers are already seeing their finances stretched thin as those who have managed to buy have seen the percentage of their incomes spent on mortgage payments jump to about 25.6%, according to the NAR. That’s the highest in three years.

  

  As Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics and a widely quoted voice on Wall Street, put it: “Housing affordability is set to get crushed.”

  “Housing affordability is set to get crushed,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, who expects 30-year rates to climb above 4% this year.

  “Many potential first-time homebuyers will get locked out of homeownership, at least until house prices come back to earth or mortgage rates turn back down,” he said. “Neither seems likely, at least not soon, and certainly not in time for the critical spring homebuying season.”

  Anecdotes about the housing market quoted by Bloomberg, WSJ and the rest of the financial press continue to depict a market where homes are snapped up within days or even hours with offers far above the asking price. As one New Jersey woman told Bloomberg: “I’m screwed…I’ll be renting for the rest of my life.”

  Cassie Homan, a single Philadelphia renter in her 40s, scours listings websites every day, searching for a modest place in the New Jersey suburbs to be closer to family. She’s on a month-to-month lease to stay flexible. But in her budget of under $200,000, homes go fast unless there’s something seriously wrong.

  She recently inquired about a remodeled two-bedroom house built in 1855 with an asking price of $140,000. But it was gone before she could see it, attracting three cash offers within two days. She considered another house only to discover that the seller was passing off the attic as a bedroom. A third property — listed without any photos — was off-limits to tours because a tenant was living there.

  Homan said she hopes rising rates cause a downturn in prices, opening up more inventory. Short of that, “I’m screwed — I have no chance in hell,” she said. “I’ll have to rent for the rest of my life.”

  Rising mortgage rates are also a problem because they make sellers less willing to part with their current lower-rate mortgages.

  While the current state of the housing market heading into the Spring – typically the hottest season for sales – is less than ideal for families and single people looking for a home, corporate landlords and larger investors have an advantage.

  Sherry Bailey, an agent in Atlanta, said her buyers are constantly losing out to big landlords paying cash.

  Bailey is working with a young woman with a government job and a budget of under $200,000 who has been forced to look in North Georgia mountain towns, an hour and a half outside Atlanta. Still, in the time it takes the client to discuss possibilities with her mom, competitors swoop down, Bailey said.

  “The spring market hasn’t even started,” she said, “and buyers are already discouraged.”

  

   

  Keep in mind, Atlanta has seen one of the largest increases in the share of homes bought by investors.

  

  Of course, home buyers aren’t the only ones being squeezed by rising costs: renters are also feeling the pressure: new data from CoreLogic show that rental prices rents for single-family homes soared to an all-time high at the end of 2021. Like Bloomberg said, renting a home is even costlier than buying one.

  

  No matter which corner of the market one looks in, it seems there is no respite from rising housing costs.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/16/2022 – 19:20

• JPMorgan Warns The Ghost Of 2018 Will Steamroll Goldman's Bullish Narrative
  JPMorgan Warns The Ghost Of 2018 Will Steamroll Goldman’s Bullish Narrative

  Despite the wild rollercoaster ride in markets which refuses to slow down due to the record low liquidity in the emini S&P which is whipsawing risk assets on a daily basis, and despite Goldman’s chief equity strategist David Kostin cutting his year-end S&P estimate from 5,100 to 4,900 last Friday as the bank scrambles to catch down to far more downbeat realistic strategists such as Michael Wilson and Michael Hartnett, Goldman flow trader Scott Rubner pointed to one of the most remarkable, and perhaps perplexing, features of the market in 2022 – despite the sharp drop in stock prices, the YTD period has been marked by a relentless tidal wave of inflows as burst after BTFD burst enters – which Rubner cited as a reason why it is unlikely that we will see a capitulatory flush lower in stocks.

  As a reminder, on Sunday we noted that according to EPFR data, cumulative equity flows YTD in 2021 have hit a record $153bn, exceeding the pace of early-2021 (when the year started with $151bn in inflows, ahead of a record year of more than $1tn inflows), despite what appears to be widespread revulsion toward risk assets.

  Picking up on this peculiar flow dynamic, Rubner wrote that “with money flowing into global equities “at extreme levels”, this would need to change before a larger correction can take place: I would turn bearish if the money slows or reverses” he said, adding that “portfolio rebalances of this size typically last for the full quarter (Q1 2022).”

  But if Rubner’s trigger to turn bearish is the slowing or reversal of record inflows, then JPMorgan quant Nick Panigirtzoglou who publishes the popular weekly Flows and Liquidity newsletter, has some bad news: the record tsunami of inflows is coming to an end.

  Speaking to Bloomberg, Panigirtzoglou echoes what we first said last Friday in “Despite Turmoil, Stocks Seeing Largest Ever Inflows In 2022“, and points to the record $152 billion in equity fundflows sunk by investors YTD (or $5.7 billion on average for each of the 27 trading days this year, which annualizes to $1.322 Trillion), after a gangbusters 2021 for both stock returns and flows, which defies the worst January for the S&P 500 since 2009…

  

  … even as bond funds have already seen the first outflows in two years.

  

  But unlike his Goldman peer, Panigirtzoglou believes that stock managers are set to join their outflow-lashed peers in the bond world as upcoming rate hikes spur greater volatility just like in 2018. Back then, FOMOed investors funneled capital into equity funds in the first quarter, only to divest en masse as monetary policy tightened further.

  “There is a good chance that 2022, in terms of equity fund flows, will look like 2018,” Panigirtzoglou told Bloomberg in an interview. “It started very strong in continuation of the previous year, but at some point that flow picture will be wilting.”

  With bond funds having already seen $20 billion in outflows YTD, this quarter is shaping up to the biggest win for stock allocations since 2013. The diverging flows – which as we discussed previously have been sparked by a Pavlovin BTFD reaction among both retail and institutional investors and follow a retail trading boom born out of the depths of the pandemic boredom – are noteworthy because individual investors largely dumped stocks in favor of bonds during the 10-year bull market that started in March 2009, only to see this trend reverse dramatically in 2021.

  

  Of course, calls for a “great rotation” are nothing new and virtually every single year since 2009 we have heard one or more sellside analysts predict that a massive rotation out of bonds and into stocks is imminent, yet one never arrived (the massive equity inflows in 2021 were coupled with sizable inflows into bonds as well as trillions in newly created money were allocated across all risk assets). Meanwhile, thanks to faster price appreciation, equity allocation from U.S. households has already stood at a record high.

  Curiously 2022 may be the closest we have come to a pure “great rotation”, as U.S. large-cap stock funds attracted $34.1 billion alone in the week to Feb. 9, the most ever, even after the new year bleeding in technology companies. The inflows were funded from withdrawals from fixed-income and money-market funds.

  Others, such as Rich Weiss, CIO at American Century Investments, agree: he notes that the current taste for equity funds reflects the fact that the S&P 500 has posted three straight years of double-digit returns. As rates rise at a time when profit growth is estimated to slow, he doesn’t view the backdrop as constructive for equities either.

  “The flows follow the returns, not the other way around,” Weiss said. “By moving out of bonds and going into stocks because you’re afraid of rising interest rates, you’re likely jumping out of the frying pan into the fire in many cases.”

  While the past is hardly prologue, consider the events of 2018 highlighted by Panigirtzoglou when real rates were also on the rise. Investors initially funneled almost $220 billion into equities in the first quarter, extending a robust streak of inflows from 2017. But after the S&P 500 suffered a 10% decline from its peak in that February, money dwindled to $60 billion a quarter for the rest of 2018. Flows then turned outright negative at the start of 2019 after the benchmark plunged to the brink of a bear market.

  

  Not everyone agrees with this unexpectedly gloomy outlook from the JPM quant, one which flies in the face of everything that Panigirtzoglou’s co-worker (and boss) Marko Kolanovic has been preaching in his weekly “BTFD” permabull sermons. And indeed, the bull case for equities will be familiar to many: while soaring inflation threatens to crush profit magins, and erode the value of future bond returns and devalues future “growth” company cash flows, companies have ridden the wave of price pressures to record profits. With income from S&P 500 firms expected to expand in each of the next two years (not if Morgan Stanley’s Michael Wilson has anything to say about it) many view stocks as being better positioned than fixed income. That’s especially true with Treasuries down almost 4% in 2022 already and could well close out the year in the red at this rate, in what would be the first back-to-back annual losses in history.

  Indeed, one can argue – as we have – that while stocks are poised to drop, bonds will suffer even greater losses as the Fed proceeds to hike rates and drain trillions in liquidity, as such flows out of the greater of two evils and into stocks is certainly conceivable: after all, there will come a moment when the Fed will capitulate and ease, a moment which will send risk assets explosively higher.

  Meanwhile, as we discussed yesterday corporate bonds – whose liquidity is suddenly collapsing – have slipped 5.9% since January, on course for the worst quarter since the 2008 financial crisis.

  “Bonds typically are where you can put money in and just wait out any volatility, but right now I think the volatility is centered in the bond market and will continue to be centered in the bond market,” said Chris Gaffney, president of world markets at TIAA Bank. “You’re almost guaranteed to see those assets lose value in the coming year. And therefore it pushes investors to move out of bonds into equities.”

  The worst possible scenario, if 2018 is any guide, is that both bond and stock fund managers may face an uphill battle attracting money from investors. And with traders pricing seven rate hikes this year, the appeal of cash-like instruments is poised to rise at long last, according to Panigirtzoglou who agrees with Goldman’s tactical call from this weekend to go into cash..

  “As the Fed raises rates and other central banks are following the Fed, the risk is that at some point equity fund flows dissipate, or even turn negative,” he said. “I would not be surprised if we could have some sort of a repeat of 2018.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/16/2022 – 19:00

• Kremlin Teases 'Alternatives' To SWIFT If Sanctioned, Including Crypto, In "Fortress Russia" Strategy
  Kremlin Teases ‘Alternatives’ To SWIFT If Sanctioned, Including Crypto, In “Fortress Russia” Strategy

  NATO is now talking about Russia’s failure to withdraw troops from near Ukraine even though on Tuesday the Kremlin had announced the start of a draw down of some military units in the south. “Russia’s failure to withdraw can be confirmed through commercial satellite imagery,” NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday. 

  His statement comes less than 24 hours after President Biden addressed the Ukraine situation in a televised speech wherein he alleged that a Russian attack on Ukraine is “still very much a possibility” and that the troop reduction is “not verified yet”. Biden took the opportunity to again warn of “overwhelming international condemnation” and unprecedented sanctions, including “export controls…methods we did not pursue when Russia took Crimea in 2014.”

  As part of the “decisive response” the administration has said it has in its arsenal as a maximalist ‘nuclear option’ which would see Russia off from the international SWIFT payment settlement system. But Moscow was quick to respond Wednesday, with Finance Minister Anton Siluanov reaffirming his country has “prepared alternatives” which ensure such US sanctions while yet “unpleasant” would remain “not fatal”. He assured in an online briefing that Russia will fulfill all settlements, and further that “Any restrictions on energy exports will be compensated by corresponding price growth.”

  

  “Thank god we have enough forex liquidity and enough forex reserves,” Siluanov told reporters in the briefing. “They say we have a financial shield in the form of gold and forex reserves, budget surplus and [budget] rule, low debt.”

  When it comes to the scenario of being cut off from SWIFT, which is being reported as possibly part of a sweeping sanctions package under preparation by US and European officials, Siluanov referenced the his country being able to withstand it, with plans being readied for a “Fortress Russia” approach: 

  “We expect the country’s financial system to continue to focus inwards as part of the “Fortress Russia” strategy and advance digital and fintech sovereignty.”

  It was reported that as of early February, Russia possesses nearly $635 billion in gold and forex reserves. On the energy question, he affirmed that Russia stands ready to re-route to other markets.

  The comment about advancing “digital and fintech sovereignty” is particularly interesting in light of President Putin’s October 2021 statements wherein he rattled American financial officials after hinting that cryptocurrencies could be ‘weaponized’ as a dollar replacement. 

  “Like banning the internet…”

  Russia’s finance minister Anton Siluanov, says placing a ban on #bitcoin is “same as banning the internet, which is impossible”. 🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/JT9KaSVvzE

  — Crypto Relevant (@crypto_relevant) February 16, 2022

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

  At the time, the Russian president discussed potential use cases of cryptocurrencies in a CNBC interview following a plenary session of the ​​Russian Energy Week forum, noting that while he considers cryptocurrency “crude and under-developed,” it could “some day” be used instead of the US dollar to trade with.

  “I believe that it has value,” Putin told CNBC, when asked whether bitcoin or cryptocurrencies can be used in place of the US dollar.

  “But I don’t believe it can be used in the oil trade.”

  Later in the interview, Putin reiterated his criticisms about how Washington’s abuse of the dollar’s dominance is tantamount to brandishing an “economic weapon”, and remains keen to ditch dollar-denominated payments.

  But as we detailed at the time, given recent legislation as well as ongoing debate in the state parliament, there’s been incredibly mixed signals out of Russia concerning crypto and its potential use as part of Russia’s “alternatives” to SWIFT, but this current crisis is only likely to serve to push Moscow toward further favorability. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/16/2022 – 18:40

• Florida Sets Tourism Record For 2021
  Florida Sets Tourism Record For 2021

  Authored by Jannis Falkenstern via The Epoch Times,

  Florida is open for business, welcoming nearly 118 million domestic visitors in 2021, and surpassing pre-pandemic visitation levels for two quarters in a row.

  

  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R.) was all smiles on Feb. 15 as he announced that the number of visitors to the Sunshine State between October and December 2021 was almost 31 million, marking the second consecutive quarter that overall visitation has surpassed 2019, pre-pandemic levels.

  “In 2021, Florida received nearly 118 million domestic visitors from all over the U.S. In the last two quarters of 2021, tourism exceeded 2019 pre-pandemic numbers by seven percent,” the governor said at a press briefing.  “So, Florida is one of the few places in the world where more people are visiting now than before the pandemic. Compared to 2019 Quarter four, domestic tourism in 2021 Quarter four was 7 percent higher.”

  Being called “the freest state in the United States” by DeSantis may well account for why Florida was chosen as a destination by so many. Some travelers were families on a fun vacation, while others were more recognizable as “lockdown politicians.”

  “You have governors that have locked down their states, imposed mandates, imposed restrictions; you have big city mayors that have imposed lockdown policies,” the governor said.

  “You have people on TV news networks that advocate for restrictions and lockdowns and almost all of them have been criticizing Florida for a year and a half–yet many of them are part of our visitation figures.”

  Among those seen in Florida over the past two years was Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who visited in April 2021, maskless, while urging her constituents to stay home and “mask up.” 

  She denied her trip was a vacation, saying that she was checking on her “ailing, elderly father” who owns property in Florida.

  CNN’s Don Lemon was also spotted poolside, also maskless, after criticizing the governor for his policies on COVID-19.

  Other noteworthy visitors were New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who got a welcome tweet from the governor, and California Congressman Eric Swalwell, seen maskless in the lobby of a Miami hotel.  Both members of Congress have urged the use of masks and vaccine mandates throughout the pandemic and have openly criticized their Republican counterparts for failing to enforce such measures.

  DeSantis said the tourist development tax revenues increased 74 percent over 2020 figures, which “may not be that surprising” as people did not want to travel as much because of initial concern over COVID-19 when not as much was known about the virus.

  

  People are seen at the beach in Jacksonville Beach, Fla., on April 17, 2020. (Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)

  The U.S. travel industry predicted in 2021 that domestic trips across the nation would finally climb out of the slump caused by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus in 2023, and finish with growth three percent above pre-pandemic levels; international tourism was not expected to recover to 2019 levels until 2025.

  While tourism in other states was practically paused, Florida aggressively marketed outside its borders for seven months and saw steady growth in visitor volume each quarter. Quarter four of 2021 was no exception with almost 31 million visitors, according to the Visit Florida website.

  After third quarter 2021 tourism numbers were announced, Danny Gaekwad, owner of MGM Hotels and chairman of the Visit Florida board of directors said the influx of visitors was a “huge win” for the state, calling Florida “an undisputed leader in the U.S. travel sector.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/16/2022 – 18:20

• Senior Morgan Stanley Banker Reportedly Key Player In "Block Trading" Probe
  Senior Morgan Stanley Banker Reportedly Key Player In “Block Trading” Probe

  When the Wall Street Journal first reported the latest leak about an SEC and DOJ investigation into an alleged “block-trading” cartel that reportedly began a few years back – either in 2018 or in 2019, depending on which report you to believe – it was only the latest leaked update about a series of seemingly related SEC probes: the investigations by turn involve hedge funds, including big-name short-sellers, and big banks (who else: Morgan Stanley and Goldman). There was talk of “short-selling cabals” and illicit “block trades” that until very recently were widely regarded by Wall Street as a acceptable part of doing business. Or at least a “grey area”.

  

  Well, Bloomberg has furnished one of the latest updates on this ongoing saga, reporting early Wednesday that at least one senior Morgan Stanley executive has become enmeshed in the government’s investigation into the block trades, and more specifically, whether the bankers may have tipped certain hedge fund clients of impending block trades before they were actually brought to market.

  Keep in mind, when government prosecutors leak a banker’s name like this, they’re usually doing it because they want him or her to cooperate. Or at least that’s how it played out with Goldman’s TIm Leissner during the1MDB probe, an investigation that just happens to have newfound relevance given the start of the trial of a more junior Goldman banker who is taking most of the criminal rap for the bank. Goldman ended up pleading guilty to criminal charges, but Leissner struck a well-publicized immunity deal early.

  Bloomberg’s sources claim that Pawan Passi, a senior banker who ran Morgan Stanley’s US equity syndicate desk while some of the (again, alleged) misbehavior was taking place. Keep in mind, according to Bloomberg’s description, these ‘alleged’ business practices (at this point, the allegations have mostly been communicated to the public in the form of anonymously sourced leaks) were only recently Wall Street “best practices” until fairly recently (presumably until right around the time the investigations started, or soon thereafter).

  But we digress. Here’s Bloomberg:

  Pawan Passi, who ran Morgan Stanley’s U.S. equity syndicate desk and led the firm’s communications with investors for equity transactions, is among individuals whose activities are facing scrutiny, the people said, asking not to be identified describing the confidential inquiry. Bloomberg reported in November that the company had put Passi on leave.

  Morgan Stanley is at the center of a sprawling investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and Justice Department, which are digging into how bankers work with hedge funds to privately carry out stock sales big enough to send market prices tumbling. The probe, which emerged in press reports earlier this week, is gathering information on the activities of a slate of money managers and at least one other competitor, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Authorities haven’t accused anyone of wrongdoing.

  To guard itself against skeptical readers, Bloomberg named three reporters in the story’s byline and a legion of others who received taglines for “reporting” related to the story. In all likelihood, given the nature of the information, this leak is likely coming from the SEC.

  The report also dropped a few other high-profile Wall Street “names” who are reportedly involved in the investigation.

  Officials have asked key Wall Street firms to preserve their communications with a roster of fund executives, including Islet Management’s Joseph Samuels, the people said. Investigators have sought similar information on a former employee at Segantii Capital Management, as well as people at other firms, some of the people said.

  Representatives for Islet founder Samuels and Segantii had no immediate comment.

  But why does the SEC care about these block trades? We’ll allow Bloomberg to explain:

  Highly secretive, market moving and potentially treacherous — block trading has been one of Wall Street’s most delicate arts since it emerged as a major business line more than a half century ago. Legendary Goldman Sachs dealmaker Gus Levy pioneered the business in the 1960s, helping position his firm to become the trading powerhouse that it is today.

  Yet Morgan Stanley, with deep ties to Silicon Valley ventures and legions of hedge fund clients eager to bet on their future, has wrested away the lead in recent years. It commanded 26% of the market for block trades involving U.S. stocks in 2021, according to data compiled by Dealogic — ranking No. 1 ahead of Goldman for a second straight year.

  The images of highly exclusive, after-hours trading conjured up by Bloomberg in its report brings to mind images of bankers entertaining “clients” at strip clubs, and in other illicit, male-oriented gatherings that were a distinctive feature of the Wall Street of pre-financial crisis lore. That’s exactly the type of behavior that the SEC has long justified its existence by reining in, so when the next financial collapse rolls around, they can at least pretend to the American public like they actually did some “regulating” of Wall Street’s excesses during their all-too-brief time in power.

  Not to be outdone, WSJ has also published another scoop of this own, which we have covered here, about the other side of this weird new tandem investigation – a probe into “spoofing” and other nefarious tactics used by some short sellers. The government in that case is insinuating that some short sellers have “conspired” to share market-moving research early.

  And additionally, hours after Wednesday’s Bloomberg story, another report hit, alleging – for the first time – that the Archegos block trades seemingly played some role in the probe, which would be quite shocking, since those block trades quite literally took Wall Street by surprise when they first landed after a hastily brokered deal between senior bankers at half a dozen megabanks gave way thanks to – yet again – Morgan Stanley (and Goldman Sachs).

  • MORGAN STANLEY’S ARCHEGOS UNWINDING SPED UP BLOCK-TRADING PROBE

  Bloomberg’s “sources” now expect us to believe that their investigation into Wall Street “block trading” culture had already been underway for a couple or years before the Archegos blowup, which facilitated some of Wall Street’s most visible block trades (trades that Zero Hedge was among the first to report on). T

  According to the “US authorities” and “regulators” cited by Bloomberg, the collapse of Bill Hwang’s massively leveraged family office – which has, according to media reports, collapsed – has intersected with “a number” of investigations.

  U.S. authorities ramped up their investigation into whether big banks and their hedge fund clients broke rules when privately negotiating large stock sales after the blowup at Archegos Capital Management, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

  Regulators had already been scrutinizing block trades for years when Archegos shined a fresh spotlight on the market: Stocks Hwang had made massive bets on started tanking last March, prompting banks to unload tens of billions of dollars of his holdings through a spree of huge sales. Morgan Stanley had amassed one of the largest exposures, and was one of the first to dump positions that eventually led to the flame-out of the family office. With a new hook, authorities soon began poring through the carnage.

  The spectacular rise and sudden collapse of Hwang’s fund has set off a number of inquiries into issues from market manipulation to collusion among banks. The downfall also helped advance a block-trading probe that started as early as 2018. Last year, investigators from the Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. Department of Justice stepped up their demands for information.

  Apparently, Twitter is more willing to collaborate with government censors as a check on its errant users, courtesy of the LIbertarian party of New Hampshire.

  Hillary Clinton belongs in prison, but apparently, it’s more important for Twitter to suspend @DefiantLs for documenting the lies and hypocrisies of the elite. pic.twitter.com/TWscNlhk3r

  — Libertarian Party NH (@LPNH) February 16, 2022

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

  For the Morgan Stanley bankers, now comes the less-fun part of working in finance: facing down federal prosecutors with your high-priced defense attorney.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/16/2022 – 18:00

• "A Recurring Fountain Of Revenue": FDA Exec Admits Biden Planning Annual Shots, Including Toddlers
  “A Recurring Fountain Of Revenue”: FDA Exec Admits Biden Planning Annual Shots, Including Toddlers

  Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Executive Officer Christopher Cole was caught on undercover camera by Project Veritas, where he revealed that his agency plans to announce that annual Covid-19 vaccinations will become official policy.

  

  As Project Veritas reports (emphasis ours):

  Cole is an Executive Officer heading up the agency’s Countermeasures Initiatives, which plays a critical role in ensuring that drugs, vaccines, and other measures to counter infectious diseases and viruses are safe. He made the revelations on a hidden camera to an undercover Project Veritas reporter.

  Cole indicates that annual COVID-19 shots isn’t probable — but certain. When pushed on how he knows an annual shot will become policy, Cole states, “Just from everything I’ve heard, they [FDA] are not going to not approve it.”

  Stop what you’re doing & watch this right now.

  “The drug companies, the food companies, they pay us millions of dollars a year”#ExposeFDA https://t.co/eyYmBlEfOj

  — Ashley St. Clair (@stclairashley) February 16, 2022

  The footage, which is part one of a two-part series on the FDA, also contains soundbites from Cole about the financial incentives pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer have to get the vaccine approved for annual usage.

  “It’ll be recurring fountain of revenue,” Cole said in the hidden camera footage. “It might not be that much initially, but it’ll recurring — if they can — if they can get every person required at an annual vaccine, that is a recurring return of money going into their company.”

  Perhaps the most explosive part of the footage is the moment where Cole brazenly talks about the impact that an Emergency Use Authorization has on overcoming the regulatory concerns of mandating vaccines on children. 

  “They’re all approved under an emergency just because it’s not as impactful as some of the other approvals,” Cole said when asked if he thought there was “really an emergency for kids.” 

  Yearly toddler shots pic.twitter.com/yuZ6aActgI

  — Truckistani Underground Poso 🚛 (@JackPosobiec) February 16, 2022

  Cole, who claims his role with the FDA is to ensure the agency uses a framework of safety, security, and effectiveness as a part of its preparedness and response protocol, specifically cited concerns over “long term effects, especially with someone younger.” 

  Watch the entire clip below:

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/16/2022 – 17:44

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