Today’s News 19th February 2022

• Is The Confrontation Over Ukraine Joe Biden's "Wag The Dog" Moment?
  Is The Confrontation Over Ukraine Joe Biden’s “Wag The Dog” Moment?

  Authored by Andrew Bacevich via TheNation.com,

  While some wars may be necessary and unavoidable, a war pitting Russia against Ukraine—and potentially involving the United States—doesn’t make the cut. Yet, should such a war occur, some members of the American commentariat will cheer. They have yearned for a showdown with Vladimir Putin. The depth of their animus toward Putin and the hyperbole it inspires is a bit of a puzzle that deserves examination.

  

  A veteran New York Times correspondent charges that Putin “has put a gun to the head of the West.” In an op-ed recently published in the Times, a former US national security official accuses President Biden of “sending the message that the United States is afraid of confronting Russia militarily.” “In an era when fascism is on the march,” a Boston Globe columnist warns, “much more may hang in the balance” than simply the security of a single country on the far eastern fringe of Europe.

  A sense of impending doom punctuates the taunts: With unnamed fascists gathering outside the city gates and the very survival of the West at risk, the sitting president succumbs to cowardice. Whence does such overheated language come? What does it signify?

  One obvious explanation is the unvarnished Russophobia pervading the ranks of the American political elite. With roots going at least as far back as the Bolshevik Revolution, disdain for Russia only deepened across several decades of Cold War. Although the Cold War ended a generation ago, this habitual animus survives fully intact, nowhere more so than in Washington. Demonizing Russia is an easy sell.

  In international politics, most crimes, no matter how heinous, are forgivable. Even those perpetrated by the Nazi regime do not figure in day-to-day US relations with the Federal Republic of Germany. Nor, as it turns out, does the United States hold Ukraine’s collaboration with the Third Reich against it.

  On that score, Russia is an exception, with members of the American establishment disinclined either to forgive or to forget past transgressions attributed to the Soviet Union. Note how the Soviet-American partnership that was crucial to defeating Nazi Germany has all but vanished from our collective consciousness. We revere Churchill; we revile Stalin. That Putin is a former KGB officer presumably tells us all we need to know about him.

  But let me suggest that our present-day antipathy toward Russia derives from something deeper than an unwillingness to let go of old grudges. The real issue has less to do with them than with us. More specifically, it centers on a desperate need to refurbish the concept of American exceptionalism. Nowhere is that need felt more powerfully than among members of the foreign policy establishment.

  American exceptionalism is the conviction that in some mystical way God or Providence or History has charged America with the task of guiding humankind to its intended destiny. Embedded in the phrase is the essence of our collective identity.

  We Americans—not the Russians and certainly not the Chinese—are the Chosen People. We—and only we—are called upon to bring about the triumph of liberty, democracy, and humane values (as we define them), while not so incidentally laying claim to more than our fair share of earthly privileges and prerogatives.

  American exceptionalism assumes a Manichean world in which good is pitted against evil, with our side assumed to embody good. Packaged with highfalutin sentiments of the sort to which recent US presidents (except one) routinely—and perhaps even sincerely—pay tribute, American exceptionalism justifies American global primacy.

  But we Americans have a problem. Of late, the United States has not appeared especially exceptional. If anything, the reverse is true.

  Who in their right mind would identify with a nation that has in the not-so-distant past engaged in a costly and arguably illegal war in one country (Iraq), while waging a 20-year-long war in another (Afghanistan) that ended in humiliating defeat? In what sense does a nation that loses over 900,000 of its citizens to a pandemic, whose dysfunctional central government annually spends trillions more than it takes in, and that cannot even control its own borders qualify as exceptional? Can a nation in which the richest 1 percent control 16 times more wealth than the bottom 50 percent be deemed exceptional? Or one in which a major political party characterizes violent insurrection as “legitimate political discourse”? As for a nation that elects Donald Trump president and may do so again: The term “exceptional” hardly seems appropriate.

  “Reckless,” “incompetent,” “alienated,” “extravagantly wasteful,” and “deeply confused” more accurately describe our predicament.

  How to get out of the political, cultural, and economic mess in which we find ourselves—yes, how to make America great again—is the overarching question of the day.

  Those eager for a showdown with Russia over Ukraine offer one answer to that question: Putting a brutal bully in his place will go far toward restoring American exceptionalism’s lost luster. It’s “wag the dog” in modified form: militarized assertiveness in faraway places promising a shortcut to redemption.

  Don’t believe it. The people gunning for a showdown with Putin come from the ranks of those who two decades ago were gunning for a showdown with Saddam Hussein, while promising a happy outcome.

  There is an alternative approach far more likely to yield positive results. That alternative approach posits a reformulation of American exceptionalism based not on muscle flexing in faraway places but on modeling liberty, democracy, and humane values here at home. The clear imperative of the moment is to get our own house in order. Stumbling into yet another needless war won’t help.

  As for Ukraine, the crisis there poses minimal risk to the West, which possesses ample strength to defend itself against Russian aggression. Rather than flinging macho-man insults about who will stand up to Vladimir Putin, wisdom suggests that the United States should acknowledge the possibility that Russia possesses legitimate security interests of its own, those interests extending to the question of whether Ukraine has a friendly or unfriendly orientation. As for fascists, the ones deserving concerted American attention tend to be homegrown.

  Elevating Russia to the status of Enemy Number 1 is actually a diversion from matters of far greater immediate importance. It’s time for Americans to wake up to the fact that we face far more pressing concerns.

  *  *  *

  Andrew J. Bacevich is president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His new book, Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America’s Long War, co-edited with Danny Sjursen, is forthcoming.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/18/2022 – 23:40

• Japan's 'Fugaku' Still Dominates The World's Top Supercomputers
  Japan’s ‘Fugaku’ Still Dominates The World’s Top Supercomputers

  In June 2020, Japanese supercomputer Fugaku zipped past all competitors to claim the top spot in the twice-annual ranking of the world’s most powerful computational machines released by research project Top500.

  Fugaku, which was developed by Fujitsu in cooperation with the federal Riken research lab, was able to perform almost three times as many computations per second as former leader of the list, U.S.-based supercomputer Summit.

  One and a half years later, the ranking remains mostly unchanged except, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz points out, for the addition of a new U.S.-based supercomputer, Perlmutter, in rank five. The machine located at the University of California Berkeley’s NERSC energy research center carries out computation for climate models, material sciences, energy physics and others.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  At the time, Fugaku did not only top the ranking in the number of computations per second – so-called TeraFLOPS – but in all four categories that supercomputers are judged on by the project. According to the Riken lab, no other computer had achieved this feat so far. Fugaku had the most cores of all computers ranked, the highest theoretical peak performance for computations and the highest power capacity. In the meantime, the fourth-ranked supercomputer, Chinese Sunway TaihuLight, acquired more cores – 10.6 million compared with Fugaku’s 7.6 million.

  Supercomputers are used to run complicated simulations that involve a large number of variables. Common uses include economic and climate modeling, neurological research and nuclear science. In the case of Fugaku, the machine’s power is also used to research the coronavirus, more specifically to run simulations of how respiratory droplets move through the air in different settings like offices or train carriages.

  The list of the top 8 supercomputers in the world includes one Dell, one Nvidia and two IBM machines as well as two Chinese supercomputers run by the Chinese government and German supercomputer Juwels Booster Module owned by IT company Atos.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/18/2022 – 23:20

• America's Ruling Regime Doesn't Fear Disinformation… It Fears Truth
  America’s Ruling Regime Doesn’t Fear Disinformation… It Fears Truth

  Authored by Ben Weingarten,

  Casting critics as terrorists and threatening to sic the most powerful, pervasive and sophisticated security state in the history of the world on them is of course not about defending democracy or protecting the truth — it’s about intimidating democratic opposition into silence and submission to an official narrative.

  

  In Joe Biden’s America, attempting to cancel Joe Rogan is just counter-terror policy.

  This is because our ruling class — in the name of “defending democracy” — classifies those who question the regime on any matter of consequence as a threat to the homeland, and pledges to pursue them accordingly.

  Our ruling elites have engaged in an overt war on wrongthink masquerading as a domestic counter-terror mission since at least Jan. 6, 2021.

  As part of this effort, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently issued a speech-chilling National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin.

  It claims the U.S. is in a “heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information.”

  Here’s concerning new language in Department of Homeland Security bulletin about domestic terrorism that could have potential ramifications for anyone questioning government institutions.https://t.co/JcJrfgUbn2

  — Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) February 11, 2022

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

  Among the greatest contributors to the current “threat environment,” according to the bulletin, is the “widespread online proliferation of false or misleading narratives regarding … COVD-19.”

  It would appear the Biden administration considers the ivermectin-hocking, tequila-swigging, Bernie Sanders-supporting Rogan to be public enemy number one on this issue.

  Shortly after hosting dissenters from COVID orthodoxy including Drs. Peter McCullough and the then-recently deplatformed Robert Malone on his podcast, Rogan found himself the subject of a cancel campaign contrived by washed-up musicians, non-medical doctors and corporate media whose ratings he has crushed.

  But it wasn’t just these parties out for blood.

  No less than the president of the U.S, his press secretary and surgeon general contributed to the anti-Rogan jihad, calling for war on COVID “misinformation and disinformation.”

  This effort was, to put it mildly, disingenuous. We know how seriously to take the administration’s views on COVID “misinformation and disinformation” because by its own standards the White House, and its media mouthpieces, have been the most powerful and prolific purveyors of “misinformation.”

  The administration has flip-flopped on virtually every aspect of the coronavirus to positions that its social media adjuncts used to ban people over. It did so not because “the science” has changed, but because the politics have changed.

  Biden’s White House says its critics are dangerous — not to the public, but to its rule, as if that rule is equivalent to America or democracy itself, as Dr. Anthony Fauci is to science.

  As the DHS bulletin notes, the first key driver of the “heightened threat environment” is the “proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.”

  Never mind what those government institutions themselves have done to sow discord or undermine public trust, like, say, calling for Twitter and Facebook to censor people.

  It’s the critics, the dissenters — those with no monopoly on force or multi-trillion-dollar budgets — who are the real scourge.

  The bulletin lists as another potential threat “false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud” — perpetuating the narrative of “insurrection” so central to the effort to persecute wrongthinkers, while eliding that Democrats‘ own election integrity-eroding measures destroyed confidence in the system.

  Previous Biden-era bulletins similarly focused on COVID-19 and election integrity, but the latest one — in a new twist — also claims that calls for violence have been tied to anger over “the evacuation and resettlement of Afghan nationals following the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan.”

  So it’s not just questioning the merits of mask and vaccine mandates, or skepticism over the security of mass mail-in elections, but doubts about the wisdom of dropping unvetted refugees from a terror-dominated backwater into the middle of your town that could get you in trouble with the security state.

  This threat bulletin, like its no less disturbing predecessors, flows naturally from the Biden administration’s first-of-its-kind National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.

  That strategy calls for confronting long-term contributors to domestic terrorism, including:

  “… enhancing faith in government and addressing the extreme polarization, fueled by a crisis of disinformation and misinformation … We will work toward finding ways to counter the influence and impact of dangerous conspiracy theories that can provide a gateway to terrorist violence.”

  Linking speech that does not comport with regime orthodoxy to terror, and using that pretext to police thought — with an armed “Ministry of Truth” operating out of our national security and law enforcement apparatus — therefore manifestly is “counter-terror” policy

  Casting critics as terrorists and threatening to sic the most powerful, pervasive and sophisticated security state in the history of the world on them is of course not about defending democracy or protecting the truth, but intimidating democratic opposition into silence and submission to an official narrative.

  The regime evidently believes it must maintain a monopoly over the American mind to maintain a monopoly on power.

  Joe Rogan threatened that power, and therefore constituted a danger. The threat was that he elicited insights from guests who challenged the regime’s credibility on all manner of issues related to COVID, and millions of people heard it.

  Trump and his allies likewise threatened that power, and therefore constituted a danger. They were — and continue to be — pursued like terrorists, as the House January 6 Committee wields the full force of the federal government to investigate them, surveil their communications and audit their dealings.

  Why? Trump and his allies called the regime a failure, stated undeniable truths that resonated with Americans to justify that view and supported policies aimed at rectifying said failures that would disempower the ruling elites.

  The most meek and unthreatening of January 6 defendants now face extreme, hyper-political prosecutions. They are being made an example of not because they ever posed a credible threat to the regime’s power, but as a signal to the millions of peaceful, patriotic Americans who might — through their collective speech, advocacy and voting.

  The same goes for the parents outraged over anti-scientific and detrimental COVID-19 policies, and overcritical race theory indoctrination in schools. The Department of Justice threatened to pursue them like jihadists — not because they are jihadists, but because parents awakened to the regime’s corrupt monopoly on the all-important institution of education could break that monopoly and end the careers of the politicians who support it. They must therefore be chilled.

  The war on wrongthink is not about left or right. It’s about who rules: a sovereign people or the elites who deign to lord over us.

  The ruling class — the “defenders of democracy” — sees citizens on the left and right opposed to its agenda and refuses to address their concerns peaceably. Instead, it calls them terror threats and pursues them using the full power of the public and like-minded private sectors.

  The ruling class does not fear misinformation and disinformation. It fears truth, particularly the truth about its own rot, corruption and incompetence, which calls into question its authority.

  This leaves us with a question: when everyone, from unorthodox presidents to curious podcasters to caring parents are deemed existential threats to the regime, how strong is the regime?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/18/2022 – 23:00

• Bill Gates Credits Natural Infection With Doing "A Better Job" Of Bolstering COVID Immunity
  Bill Gates Credits Natural Infection With Doing “A Better Job” Of Bolstering COVID Immunity

  Speaking on Friday during the Munich Security Conference, Bill Gates, Microsoft’s founder and chairman, discussed how the threat posed by the COVID pandemic had “dramatically lowered”…while making a startling admission: that natural infection and spread was more effective at bolstering human immunity than vaccines.

  

  Speaking to CNBC’s Hadley Gamble during the annual conference in Germany, Gates, the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, told the audience that a potential new pandemic would likely stem from a different pathogen than that belonging to the coronavirus family (maybe Ebola, perhaps?).

  But he added that advances in medical technology should help the world do a better job of fighting it – if investments are made now.

  “We’ll have another pandemic. It will be a different pathogen next time,” Gates said.

  Two years into the coronavirus pandemic, Gates said the worst effects have faded as huge swathes of the global population have gained some level of immunity.

  Its severity has also waned with the latest omicron variant.

  Amazingly, after years of denial, Gates seemed to acknowledge – albeit in a roundabout way – that the infectiousness of the omicron variant had played the key role in boosting human immunity to SARS-CoV-2.

  According to Gates, it’s already “too late” to reach the WHO’s  goal to vaccinate 70% of the global population by mid-2022. Currently 61.9% of the world population has received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine) but that’s okay, however, Gates said, as in many places, the virus itself, which creates a level of immunity, and has “done a better job of getting out to the world population than we have with vaccines.”

  “The chance of severe disease, which is mainly associated with being elderly and having obesity or diabetes, those risks are now dramatically reduced because of that infection exposure,” he said.

  Finally, Gates insisted that the cost of being “prepared” for the next pandemic wouldn’t be that difficult. For instance, Gates said, having a mutable mRNA vaccine platform is one way vaccine-makers might be able to prepare themselves.

  “The cost of being ready for the next pandemic is not that large. It’s not like climate change. If we’re rational, yes, the next time we’ll catch it early.”

  He added that the world should move faster in the future to develop and distribute vaccines, calling on governments to invest now.

  “Next time we should try and make it, instead of two years, we should make it more like six months,” Gates said, adding that standardized platforms, including messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, would make that possible.

  Despite becoming an object of public scorn during the pandemic, Gates and his foundation are undeterred: the billionaire is already plowing millions of dollars into a foundation helping to prepare for ‘the next’ pandemic.

  Gates, through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has partnered with the U.K.’s Wellcome Trust to donate $300 million to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which helped form the Covax program to deliver vaccines to low- and middle-income countries.

  The CEPI is aiming to raise $3.5 billion in an effort cut the time required to develop a new vaccine to just 100 days.

  The whole operation is amusing since nobody knows what the next pandemic will be.

  Or…do they?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/18/2022 – 22:40

• Cultural Shift: Nearly Two-Thirds Of Americans Oppose New Gun Control Laws
  Cultural Shift: Nearly Two-Thirds Of Americans Oppose New Gun Control Laws

  Submitted by The Machine Gun Nest (TMGN).,

  It seems the fallout from the insanity of 2020 continues to stay in the public’s mind. Even a year out from the panic buying craziness, riots, movement to defund the police, and the election of Joe Biden, Americans seem to have a new take on gun control.

  According to a new poll, 63% of Americans support enforcing current gun laws instead of passing new gun control into law.

  

  This change shouldn’t be surprising for anyone who’s lived through the past two years. With 2020 & 2021 bringing COVID, Lockdowns, panic buying, the massive BLM riots, and the movement to defund the police, it’s no surprise that Americans are starting to oppose new gun control in more significant numbers.

  A statistic that has helped shape that polling data is that millions of Americans became first-time gun owners during the pandemic. I experienced this rush of new gun buyers at The Machine Gun Nest, where we became completely inundated with first-time gun buyers. Many of those buyers had no idea that firearms required a background check (and a wait time here in Maryland). This process was a rude awakening for many of these same first-time buyers that everything they had learned about firearms being “easier to buy than books” was all just corporate media lies.

  What’s even more interesting is that the data changes come primarily from non-traditional gun owners, people who identify as political independents, and even Democrats. Recently there was a 15 point drop in support for strict gun control laws from independents, according to Gallup. Considering that 50% of all new gun owners in the past two years are women, and many more are minorities, it makes sense that attitudes are shifting.

  

  It’s a drastic change compared to pre-pandemic thinking. Just a few years ago, in 2018, after the mass shooting in Parkland, FL, support for gun control was at its highest point, with 66% of the country supporting new gun control legislation.

  We also know that activist district attorneys like those in Philadelphia and other liberal cities often refuse to charge or prosecute criminals on firearms charges, leading to higher rates of violence in those same cities. In Philadelphia, out of 1,810 firearms cases in 2021 (that’s more than 4 per day), 61.5% of cases were dismissed or withdrawn. Only 2.6% of those same cases (that’s 47 total) were found guilty at trial. We at The Machine Gun Nest can speak from experience being in Maryland. Baltimore City is an example of these failed policies. It’s no wonder with the failure even to prosecute violent criminals with gun crimes that Maryland residents are desperate to buy and carry firearms. It’s also no wonder that the people of the United States, especially in these liberal jurisdictions, want the law enforced!

  Another significant movement creating conversation and awareness that may have contributed to this new poll is the number of counties that have become 2nd Amendment Sanctuaries. The 2nd Amendment Sanctuary movement first gained attention when, in early 2020, the Governor of Virginia moved to pass an “Assault Weapons Ban,” among other gun control measures. This gun control push triggered a massive response from the citizenry of VA (one of the most armed states per capita in the country). It caused many of Virginia’s counties to become 2nd Amendment Sanctuaries, where the local government refuses to enforce gun control laws. This idea became so popular that 62.5% of counties in the United States are now 2nd Amendment Sanctuaries.

  

  So why does all this matter? Well, the country’s mood has shifted when it comes to firearms. This cultural change is reflected in government, where Democrats don’t want to pursue gun control legislation whatsoever! A few days ago, Joe Biden marked the fourth anniversary of the mass shooting in Parkland, FL, by calling on Congress to pass new gun control legislation.

  But Democrats don’t seem to be interested, as reported by The Hill – Democrats don’t seem to feel that there’s enough support for new gun control to push the legislation!

  Gun owners can take solace in the fact that, at least in Congress, the gun control agenda has stalled. This stalemate is, of course, why the Biden administration has been pushing gun control via executive fiat, using the ATF to circumvent the legislative process altogether. With hotly contested midterms and Presidential approval ratings plummeting, the Biden Administration will be looking for any scapegoat to rally their base back to vote. We’ve seen it recently with Biden trying to “rally around the flag” with the situation in Ukraine, and we know that gun control is food for the base so to speak. I’d expect Biden to announce that he’s “solved the ghost gun issue” this spring when the ATF releases their new unconstitutional rules on frames and receivers. 

  The flip side of the gun control agenda stalling at the Federal level is that States will then take the issue into their own hands. We currently see some of the most egregious local gun control pushes yet, with San Jose, CA, requiring that gun owners purchase liability insurance for their firearms and pay a fee, which will be donated to an anti-gun group! Meanwhile, in Boulder, Colorado, local legislators have entirely thrown out State Preemption to pass a city-level assault weapons ban, literally balkanizing the State of Colorado legally in the process.

  With the verdict for NYSRPA v Bruen on the horizon and many more legal battles ahead, 2022 will be a very interesting year for gun rights.

  Video: A breakdown of how the country’s mood towards firearms has shifted in just two years. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/18/2022 – 22:20

• The Number Of EV Models Will Double By 2024
  The Number Of EV Models Will Double By 2024

  Buyers in the market for an EV will have plenty of options to choose from over the next few years.

  As Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu details below, it’s expected that there will be 134 models on sale in the U.S. by 2024—more than double of what’s available today.

  

  This wave of new electric models is being primarily driven by legacy automakers, many of whom are entering the EV market for the first time. For industry leader Tesla, it means that there is greater competition on the way.

  This greater variety of vehicles comes at a time when interest in owning an electric vehicle is rising. In a recent survey from Morning Consult, the majority of American adults (51%) now report being very or somewhat likely to purchase a fully electric vehicle over the next decade.

  Millennials are the most likely to be considering an EV as their next vehicle (70%).

  The Latest EV Push: Trucks

  Truck buyers have been waiting for their turn to experience electric power, and legacy brands like Ford, Chevrolet, and GM are ready to deliver.

  Models include the recently announced Chevrolet Silverado EV, which should arrive shortly after the F-150 Lightning and Rivian R1T electric pickups. GM is also teasing its upcoming Hummer EV, which promises a whopping 1,000 horsepower.

  Pickups and SUVs typically generate higher margins for automakers, so this next wave of EV models is an opportunity they won’t want to miss.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/18/2022 – 22:00

• At Least 10 States Pondering Over 40 Bills Tightening Voter ID Requirements
  At Least 10 States Pondering Over 40 Bills Tightening Voter ID Requirements

  Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  In 10 state legislatures across the nation, more than 40 bills proposing new or more stringent voter identification requirements for registration or in-person voting had been introduced as of Feb. 11, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).

  

  Missouri and Virginia account for 24 of the 40 bills.

  Missouri lawmakers are pondering 13 voter ID bills as part of a package spearheaded by Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, who has called for a bill requiring a state or federal photo ID to vote in person.

  The 11 bills in Virginia are in response to the 2021 adoption of the Voting Rights Act of Virginia before Republicans won the governorship and retook control of the House of Delegates last November.

  The Voting Rights Act of Virginia “effectively eliminated ID requirements when Democrats had control. The ID requirement is still on the books but the photo ID part is not enforced,” Honest Elections Project Executive Director Jason Snead said.

  “The effort being made in Virginia is to just enforce the state’s photo ID law,” said Snead, whose group works with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in crafting elections integrity bills carried by state lawmakers nationwide.

  The measures in Virginia, Missouri, and beyond are part of a broader national trend of reforming election practices. Of the 45 state legislatures currently in session across the nation, at least 40 are debating elections-related bills, according to NCSL.

  The left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice at New York University said on Feb. 7 that, as of Jan. 14, at least 18 bills in five states impose new identification requirements for absentee ballot applications. The requirements include either a Social Security number, a driver’s license number, or voter record number.

  Bills in Mississippi and South Carolina shorten time periods for submitting absentee ballot applications. Eight bills in Illinois, Maryland, and New Jersey would establish in-person voter ID requirements for the first time.

  The Indiana House has passed a measure pushed by Secretary of State Holli Sullivan, requiring voters to submit their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their social security number when requesting an absentee ballot digitally.

  Two New Hampshire bills would eliminate options for voters to cast regular ballots by signing an affidavit. New Hampshire Rep. Mark Alliegro (R) said the bill, sponsored by Sen. Bob Guida (R), addresses longstanding concerns with the state’s same-day registration and voting system.

  Under state law, those not registered can show at polls, present “evidence of their identity,” age, and U.S. citizenship with a state-issued driver’s license or ID card, birth certificate, passport, or naturalization papers. If a voter does not have documents, they sign a “qualified voter affidavit,” swear they are who they are, and promise to provide verification within 90 days.

  “You could come here from another state, another country—you could land here from Mars—and vote in New Hampshire elections that same day,” said Alliegro, who is sponsoring a bill requiring all ballots be hand-counted.

  “You sign an affidavit and are supposed to provide that proof within 90 days. Then the (vote) tally is made, the elections are certified and 90 days later, you haven’t” received verification, he said.

  “This happens thousands of times in this state every election,” Alliegro said.

  Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman (R), said with the state’s Supreme Court’s January ruling nixing a 2019 election law, he’ll file a bill boosting voter ID requirements that the law precluded.

  “Look, most people believe in requiring voter ID. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a state-issued driver’s license or ID; in Colorado, people can use their electricity bills,” said Corman, among Republican candidates seeking the GOP nod to challenge Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf in November’s gubernatorial election.

  “There will be some sort of ID requirement,” he said. “We could land (during the session) on what that is supposed to look like.”

  A bill filed in Arizona by state Sen. Wendy Rogers (R) requires the secretary of state to seek an exemption from the federal law—upheld in court rulings—that bars proof of citizenship to vote. It’s one of several Arizona bills related to voter ID.

  Arizona Sen. Kelly Townsend (R), who has filed bills related to election audits, election equipment, and contractors, said stricter voter ID requirements are needed to “stop making fraud easy.”

  “Something we are hearing is people saying they’re never going to vote again if these problems aren’t fixed,” she said. “We want to restore confidence in our elections. Right now, the confidence isn’t there.”

  Arizona voters may also weigh in on the proposed constitutional amendment tightening voter ID requirements in November if lawmakers adopt a resolution to place a ballot measure before voters.

  Michigan voters also may be presented with a voter ID ballot measure after Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoed a 2021 bill imposing new requirements. Secure MI Vote proponents need 340,047 voter signatures by March to get it on November’s ballot.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/18/2022 – 21:40

• Putin To Personally Oversee Massive Nuclear Drill On Saturday With Tensions On Knife-Edge 
  Putin To Personally Oversee Massive Nuclear Drill On Saturday With Tensions On Knife-Edge 

  The Russian military confirmed on Friday that it will move up nuclear weapons exercises which had been previously scheduled to take place later the year, as a warning to the West as the Ukraine crisis grows hotter. Typically the drills take place in the fall, but will now be part of the current climate of ‘muscle flexing’ as the region remains on the brink.

  The massive drills of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces will take place Saturday, and President Putin will directly oversee it, according to the defense ministry. There were signs earlier in February that the drills would be moved up in time, as the FT wrote: “Russia generally holds its annual nuclear exercises — which involve testing intercontinental ballistic missiles from land, sea and air — in the fall. But the US believes Putin has decided to hold them earlier this year as a show of strength.“

  Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov notified allies as well as Western countries about the Saturday drills in a Friday statement, saying it should be no cause for concern. Likely the maneuvers will center on the Black Sea Fleet out of the Crimean Peninsula, which will be taken by Ukraine and NATO to be highly provocative. A senior Biden administration official responded to the announcement that it was definitely “escalatory”. 

  

  “Practice launches of ballistic missiles are part of regular training,” Peskov said. “They are preceded by a series of notices to other nations via different channels.”

  Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has issued an open invitation for Russia to host deployable nukes on Belarusian soil amid the Ukraine standoff, has been personally invited to watch the nuclear drills with Putin. 

  According to Congressional testimony from last week by Joint Chiefs chairman General Mark Milley and director of national intelligence Avril Haines, the Pentagon believes the exercises are a “show of force” aimed at both Ukraine and its Western backers in NATO.

  Analyst Rebeccah Heinrichs with the hawkish D.C. think tank Hudson Institute described that given Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, “It would be an extremely provocative and harbinger of messages if they did it concurrently with an invasion.”

  For the past few weeks as Russia-Ukraine-NATO tensions ratcheted up dramatically, and now with the White House unusually talking about ‘Russia false flag’ scenarios, tensions have been on a knife edge. At the same time, Western media has been filled with shrill headlines warning of a WWIII coming due to “Russian aggression”. The US is now giving estimates that up to 190,000 Russian troops have surrounded Ukraine from Russia’s south and in Belarus.

  The drumbeat of warnings that a larger conflict could start at any moment continued Friday after President Biden warned that Washington saw no signs of a promised Russian withdrawal of troops around Ukraine but, rather, more being moved in.https://t.co/6ngYOWYhlw

  — Los Angeles Times (@latimes) February 18, 2022

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

  This despite Ukraine’s leaders themselves attempting to calm the rhetoric, stating their belief that the Russian side has yet to reach necessary troop level capability for a real large-scale invasion. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/18/2022 – 21:20

• Will Xi Jinping's "End Of Days" Plunge China & The World Into War?
  Will Xi Jinping’s “End Of Days” Plunge China & The World Into War?

  Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,

  • Xi Jinping, China’s mighty-looking leader, has an “enormous array of domestic enemies.” — Gregory Copley, president of the International Strategic Studies Association and editor-in-chief of Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, to Gatestone Institute, February 2022.

  • Xi created that opposition. After becoming China’s ruler at the end of 2012, he grabbed power from everyone else and then jailed tens of thousands of opponents in purges, which he styled as “anti-corruption” campaigns.

  • Beijing is panicking, adding nearly a trillion dollars in total new credit last month, a record increase…. When the so-called “hidden debt” is included, total debt in the country amounts to somewhere in the vicinity of 350% of gross domestic product.

  • Not surprisingly, Chinese companies are now defaulting. The debt crisis is so serious it can bring down China’s economy—and the country’s financial and political systems with it.

  • In the most recent hint of distress, “Fang Zhou and China”… wrote a 42,000-character essay titled “An Objective Evaluation of Xi Jinping.” The anti-Xi screed, posted on January 19 on the China-sponsored 6park site, appears to be the work of several members of the Communist Party’s Shanghai Gang faction, headed by former leader Jiang Zemin. Jiang’s faction has been continually sniping at Xi and now is leading the charge against him.

  • Xi’s problems, unfortunately, can become our problems. He has, for various internal political reasons, a low threshold of risk and many reasons to pick on some other country to deflect elite criticism and popular discontent.

  • The Communist Party of China has always believed its struggle with the United States is existential—in May 2019 the official People’s Daily declared a “people’s war” on America—but the hostility has become far more evident in the past year.

  • Virulent anti-Americanism suggests Xi Jinping is establishing a justification to strike America. The Chinese regime often uses its media to first warn and then signal its actions.

  • America has now been warned.

  Xi Jinping, China’s mighty-looking leader, created his opposition. After becoming ruler at the end of 2012, he grabbed power from everyone else and then jailed tens of thousands of opponents in purges, which he styled as “anti-corruption” campaigns. Xi’s problems, unfortunately, can become our problems. Virulent anti-Americanism suggests Xi is establishing a justification to strike America.

  

  Pictured: Xi at the Great Hall of the People on May 28, 2020 in Beijing. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

  When truckers took over Canada’s capital, Ottawa, and shut down border entry points to America, some called it a “nationwide insurrection.” Mass demonstrations have occurred across the democratic world. People have had enough of two years of mandates and other disease-control measures.

  Not so in the world’s most populous state, which maintains the world’s strictest COVID-19 controls. There are no known popular protests in the People’s Republic of China against anti-coronavirus efforts.

  Yet China is not stable, and Xi Jinping is facing his “End of Days,” as a recent essay by opposition figures (see below) puts it.

  The revolt is not in society at large but at the top of the Communist Party.

  As Gregory Copley, president of the International Strategic Studies Association, told Gatestone, Xi Jinping, China’s mighty-looking leader, has an “enormous array of domestic enemies.”

  Xi created that opposition. After becoming China’s ruler at the end of 2012, he grabbed power from everyone else and then jailed tens of thousands of opponents in purges, which he styled as “anti-corruption” campaigns.

  Xi also used the disease to great advantage. As Copley, also the editor-in-chief of Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, points out, “Xi’s ‘zero COVID’ policy is, indeed, less about stopping the spread of COVID and more about suppressing his internal enemies, both in the public and in the Party.”

  The “enormous array” is now starting to strike back. Xi is most vulnerable on his handling of the country’s stagnating economy. For one thing, the draconian campaign against COVID—massive testing, meticulous contact-tracing, strict lockdowns—have of course undermined consumption, which Beijing has touted as the core of the economy.

  Beijing is panicking, adding nearly a trillion dollars in total new credit last month, a record increase. Chinese technocrats have also become sneaky, embarking on what the widely followed Andrew Collier of Global Source Partners terms “shadow stimulus”—stimulus provided by local governments and their entities in order to allow the central government to avoid reporting spending.

  China needs a vibrant economy to service enormous debts, largely run up as Beijing overstimulated the economy, especially beginning in 2008. When the so-called “hidden debt” is included, total debt in the country amounts to somewhere in the vicinity of 350% of gross domestic product.

  Not surprisingly, Chinese companies are now defaulting. The debt crisis is so serious it can bring down China’s economy—and the country’s financial and political systems with it.

  For three decades, a Chinese leader was essentially immune to criticism because all decisions of consequence were shared by top figures in the Communist Party. Xi Jinping, however, as he took power also ended up with accountability—in other words, with no one else to blame. With things not going China’s way in recent years, Xi, often called the “Chairman of Everything,” is taking heat.

  There are signs of intensifying discord among senior leaders. In the most recent hint of distress, “Fang Zhou and China”— “Fang Zhou” is a pseudonym meaning “ark”—wrote a 42,000-character essay titled “An Objective Evaluation of Xi Jinping.” The anti-Xi screed, posted on January 19 on the China-sponsored 6park site, appears to be the work of several members of the Communist Party’s Shanghai Gang faction, headed by former leader Jiang Zemin. Jiang’s faction has been continually sniping at Xi and now is leading the charge against him.

  Fang’s piece incorporates previously voiced criticisms but does so in a comprehensive fashion. Fang blames Xi for, among other things, ruining the economy.

  “Xi will be the architect of his own defeat,” writes Fang at the end of the rant, in a section titled “Xi Jinping’s Denouement” or “End of Days.” “His style of governance is simply unsustainable; it will generate even newer and greater policy missteps.”

  Fang notes that Xi was able to take advantage of a feeble opposition but has not been able to accomplish much. “Xi’s policies have been retrogressive and derivative, his successes minor and his blunders numerous,” writes the Asia Society’s Geremie Barme, who translated the essay, summarizing Fang’s thoughts. Fang believes Xi “deserves a score of less than zero.”

  Xi is not one to let a decade of zero scores get in the way of his continued rule. Communist Party norms require him to step down at the 20th National Congress, to be held sometime this fall if tradition holds. He obviously wants a precedent-breaking third term as general secretary so that he can become, as outsiders say, “Dictator for Life.” Most observers expect he will get that new term.

  Maybe. Fang Zhou’s essay shows Communist Party leaders are risking stability by airing disagreements in public. Xi Jinping therefore, now realizes he is in the fight of his life.

  Xi’s problems, unfortunately, can become our problems. He has, for various internal political reasons, a low threshold of risk and many reasons to pick on some other country to deflect elite criticism and popular discontent.

  In 1966, Mao Zedong, Communist China’s first ruler, started the decade-long Cultural Revolution to vanquish political enemies in Beijing. Xi is doing much the same thing now, especially with his “common prosperity” program, which could return China to the 1950s.

  Unlike Mao, however, Xi has the power to plunge the world into war, and he has reason to lash out soon.

  Xi is targeting the United States. On August 29 of last year, People’s Daily, China’s most authoritative publication, accused America of launching “barbaric” attacks on the Chinese nation. On the 21st of that month, Global Times, a tabloid controlled by People’s Daily, insinuated the U.S. was working with China’s “enemies.”

  The Communist Party of China has always believed its struggle with the United States is existential—in May 2019 the official People’s Daily declared a “people’s war” on America—but the hostility has become far more evident in the past year.

  Virulent anti-Americanism suggests Xi Jinping is establishing a justification to strike America. The Chinese regime often uses its media to first warn and then signal its actions.

  America has now been warned.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/18/2022 – 21:00

• Real Estate Investors Are Buying A Record Share Of US Homes, Sending Prices Soaring
  Real Estate Investors Are Buying A Record Share Of US Homes, Sending Prices Soaring

  Earlier this week, we reported that Blackrock, America’s largest commercial and residential landlord, just got even bigger with the purchase of 12,000 apartments in the sunbelt (among other assets) when it acquired Preferred Apartment Communities for $5.8 billion. But Blackrock has not been alone in quietly swooping up US residential real estate.

  According to the latest data from real-estate consultancy Redfin, real estate investors – i.e., those who purchase real estate not with the intention of living in it but in expectations of reselling and/or renting it out – bought a record 18.4% of the homes that were sold in the U.S. during the fourth quarter of 2021, up from 12.6% a year earlier and a revised rate of 17.4% in the third quarter.

  

  Investors bought 80,293 homes in the fourth quarter, up 43.9% from a year earlier (although investor market share hit a record in the fourth quarter, the number of homes bought by investors declined by 8000, or 9.1%, from the third-quarter peak; but it’s up significantly from pre-pandemic levels). The housing-supply crunch constrained home sales for all homebuyers, including investors. The drop from the third quarter is also due partly to seasonality, as real estate activity tends to slow at the end of the year. In 2019, for example, the number of homes investors purchased dropped 4% from the third to fourth quarters. 

  

  The number of homes bought by investors jumped throughout 2021 as home prices rose rapidly–they were up 15% year over year in December–alongside a shortage of homes for sale. Investors are taking advantage of intense demand for rentals and increasing prices, with the average monthly rental payment for a new lease up 14% in December.  

  Just over three-quarters (75.3%) of investor home purchases were paid for with all cash in the fourth quarter. 

  Here is a summary of Redfin’s findings:

  • Investors bought 18.4% of the U.S. homes that were purchased in the fourth quarter, a record high.
  • Investor demand is stronger than ever as home prices increase, allowing investors to charge higher rents and sell flipped homes for higher prices.
  • Real estate investors bought roughly 80,000 U.S. homes worth a total of $50 billion in the fourth quarter, up significantly from a year earlier.
  • Mid-priced homes are becoming more popular with investors, making up 32% of investor purchases in the fourth quarter, a record high. Low-priced homes are still most popular with investors, making up 37% of purchases.
  • Investors had the highest market shares in Atlanta, Charlotte and Jacksonville.

  “While record-high home prices are problematic for individual homebuyers, they’re one reason why investor demand is stronger than ever,” said Redfin economist Sheharyar Bokhari. “Investors are chasing rising prices because rental payments are also skyrocketing, incentivizing investors who plan to rent out the homes they buy. The supply shortage is also an advantage for landlords, as many people who can’t find a home to buy are forced to rent instead. Plus, investors who ‘flip’ homes see potential to turn a big profit as home prices soar.”

  “Investors buying up a record share of for-sale homes is one factor making this market difficult for regular homebuyers,” Bokhari continued. “It’s tough to compete with all-cash offers, and rising mortgage rates have a smaller impact on investors because they often don’t use mortgages at all. If home-price growth slows in the coming year, investor demand may cool down because rental price growth will slow, too.”

  In dollar terms, investors bought $49.9 billion worth of homes in the fourth quarter, up from $35 billion a year earlier. The typical home investors purchased sold for $432,971, up nearly 10% from a year earlier. The price increase comes amid surging prices in the overall housing market.

  Mid-priced homes are gaining popularity with investors, representing 32.3% of their purchases in the fourth quarter, a record high (essentially tied with 32.4% in the third quarter) and up from 24.1% a year earlier. 

  Low-priced homes are still more popular than more expensive options for investors, but not by much. Low-priced homes made up 37% of investor purchases in the fourth quarter, a record low and down from 44.5% a year earlier. 

  Meanwhile, high-priced homes represented 30.7% of investor purchases, up slightly from 30% in the third quarter but down slightly from 31.4% a year earlier. 

  

  “Lower price points are still popular with investors, and I don’t expect that to change. One of their main goals is still to buy low and sell high,” Bokhari said. “But investors are also increasingly interested in higher-priced properties, partly because there’s a lack of low-priced inventory and partly because they’re betting on rising demand for high-end rentals.”

  Single-family homes made up about three-quarters (74.8%) of investor purchases in the fourth quarter. That’s near the highest level on record, essentially tied with the third quarter (75%), and up from 72.2% a year before.

  Condos and coops made up 15.4% of investor purchases, down from 17.8% a year earlier and 16.1% in the third quarter. Townhouses represented 6% of investor purchases, up from 5.3% a year earlier, and multifamily properties made up 3.8%, down from 4.7% a year earlier.

  

  Single-family homes surged in popularity at the beginning of the pandemic, with many homebuyers searching for space for remote work and online schooling. Investors are likely buying up single-family homes because they still make attractive rentals for those reasons.

  Investors had the biggest market share in relatively affordable Sun Belt metros. In Atlanta, 32.7% of homes that sold in the fourth quarter were bought by investors, the biggest share of the 40 U.S. metros in this analysis, and in Charlotte it was 32.1%. They’re followed by Jacksonville, FL (29.8%), Las Vegas (29.2%) and Phoenix (28.4%). 

  The top three metros for investors—Atlanta, Charlotte and Jacksonville—all had median home-sale prices under the national median of $383,000 in December, making them attractive to investors. 

  Home prices have risen significantly over the last year in Las Vegas and Phoenix, up 24.8% year over year to $399,400 and up 28% to $435,200, respectively. They’re also two of the most popular migration destinations in the U.S., attracting tens of thousands of new residents in 2021. Atlanta and Charlotte are also among the most popular destinations for Americans moving from one metro area to another, making all four of those areas good bets for investors hoping to rent out properties. 

  Investor purchases more than doubled from last year in Jacksonville, with a 157% year-over-year increase, the biggest jump of the metros in this analysis. It’s followed by Las Vegas (105.5% year-over-year increase), Charlotte (92.8%), Baltimore (83%), and Atlanta (74.4%). Investor purchases increased from the year before in all but four of the metros in this analysis (Seattle, Nassau County, NY, Newark, NJ and Warren, MI). 

  Just over 6% of Providence, RI homes that sold in the third quarter were bought by investors, the smallest share of the metros in this analysis. It’s followed by Washington, D.C. (7.8%), Warren, MI (8.2%), Virginia Beach (8.6%) and Montgomery County, PA (8.6%).

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/18/2022 – 20:40

• The Fed Is Mistaken: It's The Removal Of Inflation That Is Destabilizing, Not 'Late' Policy Moves
  The Fed Is Mistaken: It’s The Removal Of Inflation That Is Destabilizing, Not ‘Late’ Policy Moves

  By Joseph Carson, former chief economist at Alliance Bernstein

  The Fed is mistaken. The removal of inflation has the most significant destabilizing effect on the economy, not the abrupt change in monetary policy that comes late to dampen or reverse the price cycle and imbalances. Inflation cycles create liquidity, income, and wealth, and its reversal triggers a sharp loss in all of them.

  Over the past 50 years, inflation cycles have been broad and narrow, rotating from general consumer and producer inflation to financial and tangible assets. Each has unique features, but each has a common lousy outcome (recession).

  The challenge for the Fed nowadays is that inflation is everywhere and in everything (“The Everything Inflation Cycle” Blog of November 26, 2021). Several years ago, I developed a proprietary broad price index consisting of consumer and producer prices and real estate and equity prices. Based on data through January 2022, the broad price index shows a record double-digit increase over the past year, consisting of CPI and PPI gains equal to that of the 1970s and asset inflation that is roughly equal to the dot.com and housing bubbles combined.

  In a recent interview Ms. Mary Daly, President of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, stated, “history tells us with Fed policy, that abrupt and aggressive action can actually have a destabilizing effect on the very growth and price stability we’re trying to achieve.” That is true if the Fed waits until actual inflation worsens before taking countermeasures. The Fed is still easing policy.

  The question now does the Fed engineer a Greenspan-type soft landing (1995) or a Volcker hard-landing? Odds favor a Volcker ending.

  Look at the evidence.

  • The 1970s: Supply shocks triggered a sharp rise in consumer and producer prices that fed into wages and expectations. Consumer price inflation averaged nearly 7% per year during the decade, the highest of any decade in the postwar period. Still, policymakers feared the negative trade-off between fighting inflation and increasing joblessness, so policy remained loose. It took a dramatic rise in official rates to kill the cycle, led by Fed Chair Volcker. The result was three years of recession from 1980-to 82.

  • The 1980s: A sharp rise in cyclical inflation surfaced in the late 1980s following the sharp depreciation of the US dollar and the abrupt easing of monetary policy after the stock market crash of 1987. Consumer price inflation jumped to 6% by the late 1980s. Policymakers lifted official rates to near 10% to break the price cycle. An economic recession and a banking crisis (linked to the collapse in commercial real estate) occurred in the early 1990s.

  • The 1990s: Against a backdrop of modest consumer price inflation, a surge in asset prices occurred from the mid-1990s to 2000. During that period, the S&P 500 rose roughly 25% per year for five consecutive years, while the Nasdaq posted annual gains of nearly 60%. The surge in equities prices lifted share prices far beyond the company’s earnings, creating a unbalance or a bubble. Equity prices fell hard once the Fed reversed its easy money policy. A mild recession occurred in 2001, and equity markets corrected for the next three years.

  • The 2000s: As the Fed maintained an easy money policy to cushion the economy from the plunge in equity prices, a new inflation cycle started in real estate. According to the S&P/Cass Shiller National House Price Index, housing inflation ran roughly 10% per year from 2001 to 2006, or four to five times the rise in general inflation. The housing bubble ended when once monetary policy and credit conditions tightened. The collapse in house prices triggered the most severe economic and financial downturn in the post-war period.

  • 2021 and ?. The current inflation cycle is unlike anything seen before. The 1970s and 1980s inflation cycles centered on consumer and producer prices, while assets prices (equities and real estate) powered the 1990s and 2000s inflation cycles. Today’s inflation cycle has all of the above. And based on the broad price index, the current inflation cycle is as big as the 1970s and the dot.com and the housing bubble combined. (Note: CPI less shelter has risen 9.1%in the last year, the biggest increase since 1981. Including a market-price shelter, the component lifts CPI to double-digits. The old producer prices for finished goods are up 12.5, while core intermediate and crude prices have increased by 23% and 13.5%, respectively. The CPI and PPI account for 85% of the broad price index,)

  Policymakers have misread the full scope of the inflation cycle and need to play catch-up. Monetary policy is a blunt instrument, and so trying to attack one or two segments of the inflation cycle will hit them all, but not equally.

  History says the odds of achieving a soft landing in the economy is low. Mr. Greenspan successfully landed the economy in 1995, but he raised official rates 300 basis points over twelve months and raised the real federal funds rate from zero to 3%. The current generation of policymakers needs to do as much or more soon or risk doing much more later. Even if policymakers act soon and big, the scale and breadth of the inflation cycle still favor a Volcker-type ending.

  One key takeaway from all this is that the analytical framework used to assess the appropriate monetary policy stance has been too narrow and inflexible. A broad price index would be a helpful addition to the Fed’s toolbox as it helps distinguish between relative and absolute price movements and provide a signaling effect of significant and persistent increases.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/18/2022 – 20:20

• The Future Of Global Coal Production (2021-2024F)
  The Future Of Global Coal Production (2021-2024F)

  Coal is the world’s most affordable energy fuel, and as such, the world’s biggest commodity market for electricity generation.

  Unfortunately, as Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte notes, that low-cost energy comes at a high cost for the environment, with coal being the largest source of energy-related CO2 emissions.

  Despite its large footprint, coal was in high demand in 2021. As economies reopened following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries struggled to meet resurgent energy needs. As a readily available low-cost energy source, coal filled the supply gap, with global coal consumption increasing by 450 million tonnes or around +6% in 2021.

  This graphic looks at the IEA’s coal production forecasts for 2024, and the specific countries projected to reduce or increase their production over the next few years.

  

  Which Countries Are Increasing (or Reducing) Coal Production?

  Global coal production was a topic of scrutiny at the COP26 conference held in November of 2021, where 40 countries pledged to stop issuing permits and direct government support for new coal-fired power plants.

  However, many of the top coal-producing countries did not commit to the pledge. China, the U.S., India, Russia, and Australia abstained, and of those five, only the U.S. is forecasted to reduce coal production in the next two years.

  

  Source: IEA

  With 15 EU countries signing the pledge, the European Union is forecasted to see the greatest drop in coal production at 82 million tonnes, along with the greatest forecasted reduction in coal consumption (101 million tonnes, a 23% reduction).

  Reducing Coal-Fired Power Generation in the U.S.

  The U.S. and Indonesia are the other two major producers forecasted to reduce their reliance on coal. The U.S. is projected to cut coal production by 7.5% or 44 million tonnes, while Indonesia’s reduction is forecasted at 6 million tonnes, or just a 1% cut of its 2021 production.

  Despite not joining the COP26 pledge, the U.S. is still noticeably pursuing short and long-term initiatives to reduce coal-fired power generation.

  In fact, 85% of U.S. electric generating capacity retirements in 2022 are forecast to be coal-fired generators, and there are further plans to retire 28% (59 GW) of currently operational coal-fired capacity by 2035.

  Coal Makes Energy Ends Meet in China and India

  Modern consumption and production are instead focused in Asia.

  China and India produce almost 60% of the world’s coal, and are expected to increase their production by more than 200 million tonnes per year, collectively. All this coal goes towards meeting the insatiable energy demands of both nations.

  While China has pledged to start cutting down coal consumption in 2026, the country also announced the construction of 43 new coal-fired power plants to meet energy demand until then. Part of the additional production is driven by a need to reduce the country’s dependence on coal imports, which are expected to drop by 51 million tonnes or 16% from 2021–2024.

  By 2024, China’s coal consumption is forecasted to rise by 3.3% and India’s by 12.2%, which would make the two countries responsible for two-thirds of the world’s coal consumption.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/18/2022 – 20:00

• Bitcoin's Political Breakthrough Raises Questions About Its Regulatory Future
  Bitcoin’s Political Breakthrough Raises Questions About Its Regulatory Future

  By Mike Hobart of Bitcoin Magazine

  Is it actually possible for individual U.S. states to establish bitcoin as legal tender currency?

  Arizona State Senator Wndry Rogers seems to think so, based on the submission (SB 1341) she crafted and introduced late last month, aiming to establish bitcoin as legal tender in the State of Arizona. Meanwhile Texas Governor Candidate Don Huffines has promised to recognize bitcoin as legal tender if elected.

  But while there is growing interest in state leaders adoption bitcoin in this way, there might be some obstacles. Namely, the first clause in article one in section 10 of the U.S. Constitution:

  “No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.”

  As of right now, it seems that individual states do not have the capability, nor the power, to establish a newly acceptable form of legal tender within the Union of the U.S. So, that’s a bit of a buzzkill. But it’s clear that we are making significant progress in the mainstream acceptance of Bitcoin, sparking interest by American politicians and legislators and spreading like wildfire.

  “The key piece here is not whether it will pass or what impact it will have in Arizona,” explained Dennis Porter, a podcaster focused on the intersection of Bitcoin and politics. “The true impact of this bill is the fire that it has ignited. Other states and legislators are now looking at this as a potential option for their state as a way to protect themselves from a runaway federal government.”

  Game Theory Playing Out

  It also means that Bitcoiners as individuals need to become careful, and much more critical of what our politicians claim and promise. The game theory that we have been discussing within our circles for years is playing out, almost precisely as was expected: politicians and other public figures are realizing the power behind garnering support from the Bitcoin community. Not just because of the excitement around price action, but also due to the sheer numbers of the voter base within the borders of the United States. This voter base reaches across all party lines, anyone is capable of garnering support, from all angles.

  “States need to begin adopting Bitcoin today so they can begin the process of protecting themselves from the federal government unplugging them from the overly-powerful national financial system,” Porter said. “It’s a win-win plan for any state to adopt Bitcoin. It gives them more autonomy over their future.”

  Changing Perception In D.C.

  Another recent development at the intersection of Bitcoin and politics can be found in a bill introduced to the U.S. Congress by Representatives Suzan DelBene of Washington and David Schweikert of Arizona on February 3, 2022.

  This particular bill is aimed at introducing a “workable structure for taxing purchases made with virtual currency,” such as bitcoin. One of the greatest hindrances to bitcoin adoption by the general public is its infeasibility as a currency for routine purchases, as it is more closely treated as a stock or other long-term investment from a tax perspective in the U.S.

  DelBene and Schweikert aimed to alleviate this bottleneck by providing an exemption from taxes in the use of bitcoin as a currency where capital gains amounted to less than $200.

  “It’s a great way to normalize the whole ‘track your buys under $600 thing,’” said Ant, the pseudonymous author of Bitcoin blockchain data dashboard Timechain Stats. “Accounting is a nightmare, and hardly anyone knows their cost basis.”

  However, as national politicians attempt to normalize and increasingly regulate the use of bitcoin, even if that regulation is meant to increase adoption, they will inevitably challenge the project’s status as something parallel to and outside of the national system.

  “Most important: Bills like this will end up doxxing a lot of bitcoiners, both directly and indirectly,” Ant warned.

  While a bill like DelBene and Schweikert’s may be viewed as a boon to some individuals who take portions of their salary in bitcoin, it also provides a stepping stone for potential abuse of financial surveillance powers, not just immediately, but into the future as well. Which is a very important worry amongst many in the Bitcoin space.

  Bitcoiners should be cautious around how quickly we are seeing these social and powerful figures flock to this revolutionary asset. It would behoove all of us to take pause, catch our breath and reflect before two potential scenarios play out:

  One, we rush to regulate an asset that is wildly misunderstood and provide roadblocks to those we aim to protect. And two, we rush to support and uplift politicians who hoist the Bitcoin standard in the desire to reach regulation of the asset before the regulatory windfalls are well gauged or we have established understanding, so as to avoid inviting weakness within the system itself.

  Our world moves fast, but we don’t have to break things. When it comes to state adoption, being a slow mover can be a blessing, not a curse.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/18/2022 – 19:40

• Ontario Government Employee Fired Over $100 Contribution To Freedom Convoy
  Ontario Government Employee Fired Over $100 Contribution To Freedom Convoy

  The communications director for the Ontario ministry responsible for enforcing the law was fired this week after her $100 donation to the Freedom Conovoy was revealed in the hack of donors to a GiveSendGo campaign, according to CTV News.

  

  Marion Isabeau-Ringuette was one of several government staffers whose donations drew the eye of Sauron after the list of some 100,000 donors was leaked.

  “For the communications director to be financially supporting an unlawful, illegal occupation is definitely concerning,” said NDP MPP Catherine Fife. “Who was donating, why were they donating, and did this contribute to the non-action that happened on the ground in Ottawa?”

  According to Ontario Premier Doug Ford spokeswoman Ivana Yelich, “Ms. Isabeau-Ringuette no longer works for the Ontario government.”

  Isabeau-Ringuette worked as a political staffer as recently as Sunday for Ontario’s Solicitor-General, the position that oversees police and other law enforcement in Ontario.

  The $100 donation was listed as anonymous on GiveSendGo, but in a pair of leaked documents totalling nearly 100,000 donations, one line reads “M.R.” with an email address that contains Isabeau-Ringuette’s name. -CTV

  Another employee under scrutiny works for the federal correctional service, while a pollster with ties to the governing Progressive Conservative party was also accused in an NDP news release of donating to the protesters, who oppose government vaccine mandates and other restrictions.

  According to Toronto lawyer Nainesh Kotak, even small donors to the fund – should the continue donating – run the risk of frozen bank accounts since the government invoked the Emergencies Act.

  “Under this enactment I would suggest the government could freeze bank accounts if they chose to do so,” he said, adding “That’s concerning. The targets should be the bigger players.”

  George Washington University postdoc fellow Yunkang Yan says conservative US politicians are using the Freedom Convoy to energize their base.

  ““A lot of influential right-wing media have been promoting narratives about that for a long time. They have very big audiences. People from all walks of life on the political right might be a viewer of their content on a regular basis,” which includes those on both sides of the border. “That might be why they are really sucked into this.”

  Who is funding the #FreedomConvoy?

  Part II: Adopt-A-Trucker edition.

  If the newer leak from @GiveSendGo via #DDOS is accurate…

  Canada slightly edges out US donors at about 47 per cent in terms of the number of donors.

  Interactive: https://t.co/NFJTAOrjeR pic.twitter.com/jB9lcH1rgC

  — Jon Woodward (@ctv_jon) February 16, 2022

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

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/18/2022 – 19:20

• Colas: No Arbitrage In New York City
  Colas: No Arbitrage In New York City

  By Nick Colas of DataTrek Research

  This week’s Story Time is about New York City 2 years on from the onset of the pandemic. The first confirmed case was on March 1st, 2020, which means 24 months ago – perhaps to the day – is when the virus first started to circulate here. I (Nick) live in midtown Manhattan and did not spend a night out of the city until Thanksgiving 2021. Being a native New Yorker and aside from college and grad school never living anywhere else as an adult, I thought it was important to stay and support the city that has given me, well, everything.

  My long history in this town has taught me one thing: there is no arbitrage in New York. Every form of capital (intellectual, physical, financial, whatever) is properly priced at any given moment. And, like the efficient market theory for stocks, even if there are mispricings there is no way to systematically find them. A few examples of what I mean by “no arbs in Gotham”:

  • If an apartment for sale is priced cheap to the comps, it is always because there is a problem with the location.
  • If you see a 20-something in a Ferrari, it’s most likely because they’ve made a killing in virtual currencies or at a hedge fund. Maybe they were lucky, and maybe they are brilliant. No way to tell, but you do know it’s new money. Old money keeps their nice cars in Palm Beach.
  • If a gaggle of attractive, lively young women ask you to go to a club with them, it’s not because they think you are handsome. It’s because you are driving a bright yellow Porsche 911 (true story, if a short and rather dull one because I waved my wedding band and drove on).

  This “no arbitrage in NYC” rule makes the city an ideal vantage point from which to consider the current state of a post-pandemic world. New York marks everything to market, efficiently and quickly. Again, this doesn’t mean all “prices” (what’s visible today) are right over the long term. It just means they reflect today’s realities accurately.

  Five vignettes that show what this “no-arb” market is saying just now:

  #1: My friend “J”, 28 years old, is an up-and-coming recruiter specializing in management consulting. Hiring in this area has been white hot for over a year. Any consultant with a decent resume and 3-5 years of name-brand experience is in huge demand and routinely offered $300 – $500,000 to switch jobs. One of “J’s” clients, a well-known firm, recently offered him $4 million to work exclusively with them for the next year. He turned it down. “It’s nowhere near enough to make up for all the business I would lose”, he told me.

  #2: I recently had a conversation with someone best described as an archetypal “tech bro” in his early 30s. He runs an online business that helps independent contractors handle billing and other paperwork. This “bro” just leased some lovely new office space for $10,000/month in downtown Manhattan, just for show. His VCs wanted to see some office space, and a few large operational partners did as well. “I don’t know…” he told me, “none of my guys want to work in an office… but whatever. I’m going to Dubai for a break next week … I can afford the rent. It’s fine.”

  #3: “M”, a senior banker in leveraged finance working at a very large non-US financial institution, has repeatedly told me of his plan to leave the city once his kids are in college. “No one in my office cares where I live. My market works like a light switch – it’s either on or off. When it’s on, I’m on the road and visiting clients. When it’s off, there’s nothing to do in the office anyway.”

  #4: “P”, my favorite waiter at my favorite French restaurant, got omicron while working the Christmas Eve 2021 dinner shift. “I was wearing 2 masks, but the place was packed and I knew I was going to get it. Sure enough, I did. I was sick for a week. My son got it too – he was fine in a day.” He went on to say, “We’re sold out every night, often lunch as well. Good spenders, too… This summer will be crazy if the tourists start coming back.”

  #5: Mixing in a little data with these anecdotes, here are the latest MTA mass transit ridership numbers (workweek averages though this past Tuesday):

  • Average subway ridership: 55.5 percent of the pre-pandemic (2019) comparable week
  • Average bus ridership: 62.0 pct of comparable 2019 week
  • Long Island Railroad: 48.8 pct of comparable 2019 week
  • Metro-North Railroad: 43.8 pct of comparable 2019 week
  • Bridges and tunnels into/out of 5 boroughs: 99.5 pct of comparable 2019 week

  The bottom line to those numbers is that, two years after the start of the pandemic’s spread, mass transit usage is still only about half of 2019 levels and when people do come into the city it’s more often in their cars. New York may never be a driving city like Los Angeles, but it is closer to that reality than any point in my +50 years living here.

  Taken as a whole, these anecdotes tell a story of dramatic societal change powered by two drivers. The first is an overheated US economy, which is always on maximum display in New York when we hit such points in a cycle. The second, which is unique to right now, is that the last 2 years of hybrid/at home work have fundamentally changed how people think about employment. Simply put, they want more freedom and choice about where they live, how they live, and in many cases what they do.

  Perhaps I’ve seen too many cycles and have become jaded as a result, but I can’t help but wonder if the next recession will push things back closer to pre-pandemic norms of work. Living in Montana but keeping your job and pay structure as a NYC investment banker only works if every other banker who could replace you also wants the same flexibility and, crucially, that your employer needs someone to execute deals. When deal flow dries up and companies cut back, the NYC job market becomes like a game of musical chairs just after the music stops. The same, I think, is true for many jobs here. And there is no “arb” to keep the current high-flying, work from anywhere ethos in place once the national economy slows.

  I’ll close with one last story, courtesy of a friend who has made a very good living working at high-end Manhattan watch boutiques since the 1990s. “Nick …”, he once told me in his lilting Russian accent, “I want to be like a clam. Clams don’t swim around looking for food. They park themselves in the current and pump away. The food comes to them.” That’s what New York and cities in general do – sit in one place and wait for sustenance. Perhaps the current shifts for a while, but as long as it returns the city continues to survive and prosper.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/18/2022 – 19:00

• California High School Caves After Students Stage Walkout Over Mask Mandate
  California High School Caves After Students Stage Walkout Over Mask Mandate

  Administrators at the Oak Ridge High School in El Dorado Hills, California quickly dropped a mask mandate after hundreds of students walked out on Tuesday. The walkout was staged in solidarity with students whose parents sent them to school without masks, who were subsequently dismissed from class.

  

  As the Washington Examiner reported,

  Several parents of students at the school sent the teenagers to school without a mask, according to Jennifer Yoder, a parent at Oak Ridge. The high schoolers who showed up without a mask were dismissed from class.

  More student protests breaking out around California.
  We are taking our lives back, Gavin Newsom. pic.twitter.com/4eie2eOnCd

  — Kevin Dalton (@NextLAMayor) February 15, 2022

  “This was a homegrown thing between the parents and then the kids working together to get everyone on board,” said Oak Ridge parent, Jennifer Yoder. “It just kept growing and growing. And then they eventually just got up and left those classrooms and ran outside and started their protest.” 

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

  Incredible image of protesting students at Oak Ridge HS! pic.twitter.com/RRSoB8P2Rm

  — Reopen California Schools (@ReopenCASchools) February 15, 2022

  Later that day, the school bent the knee – telling parents in a Tuesday afternoon letter from the school board that while the mask mandate was still in effect, the school would no longer punish students who refused to comply.

  “The enforcement of masking will be done by educating students and asking them to mask but no further actions of exclusion from class will be taken,” reads the letter. “Moving forward students will not be physically removed from the classroom or receive a discipline consequence to prevent further exclusionary learning loss.“

  The staged walkout protested the delay in lifting mask mandates at schools statewide. California Gov. Gavin Newsom was expected to lift the mandate Monday, but California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said there would be a two-week delay, marking Feb. 28 as the next day to reassess the school changes.

  The delay and subsequent walkout came after Newsom announced most indoor services and shops could remove the mask mandate, though stores could keep it in place if they chose. The end of the mandate is for vaccinated citizens only, with unvaccinated residents still expected to wear masks. -Washington Examiner

   

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

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/18/2022 – 18:40

• 1 In 5 'Gen Z' Adults Now Say They Are LGBTQ
  1 In 5 ‘Gen Z’ Adults Now Say They Are LGBTQ

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  One in five Gen Z adults now identify as LGBTQ, while the number of total Americans doing the same has doubled in a decade, according to a new Gallup poll.

  

  However, the rise is almost entirely accounted for by far greater numbers of people identifying as bisexual or transgender, not gay or lesbian.

  “Gallup estimates from these results that within the entire U.S. adult population, 4.0 percent of Americans identify as bisexual, 1.5 percent as gay, 1 percent as lesbian and 0.7 percent as transgender,” reports the Daily Mail.

  “The Gallup poll found nearly 21 percent of Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ, which is nearly double the number of millennials who do, which is 10.5 percent. Nearly one in six Gen Z LGBTQ adults identify as bisexual.”

  Americans identifying as LGBTQ represent 7.1 per cent of the population, compared to 5.6 per cent a year ago. In 2012, 3.5 per cent of Americans identified as LGBTQ.

  The numbers are fascinating given that a significantly greater percentage of Americans obviously aren’t being ‘born gay’.

  Indeed, the increase is largely explained by far more people identifying not as gay or lesbian, who still comprise a total of just 2.5 per cent, but by those identifying as bisexual or trans, a total of 4.7 per cent.

  This exemplifies how the huge rise in people identifying as LGBTQ (or more specifically bisexual and trans) is overwhelmingly caused by social engineering.

  When Glenn Greenwald (who is gay) made this same point last year, he was smeared as “transphobic.”

  Greenwald pointed out on Twitter that “almost all of the increase comes from those identifying as bi or trans, not gay or lesbian.”

  Of Americans now claiming “bi” identity, the vast majority of them in long-term relationships are in opposite-sex relationships (33%) rather than same-sex ones (3.7%).

  So 10 times more people who identify as “bi” live in hetero-appearing relationships than gay/lesbian ones: pic.twitter.com/iOIM0tv2ON

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 24, 2021

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

  He went on to highlight how, “Of Americans now claiming “bi” identity, the vast majority of them in long-term relationships are in opposite-sex relationships (33%) rather than same-sex ones (3.7%). So 10 times more people who identify as “bi” live in hetero-appearing relationships than gay/lesbian ones.”

  The writer said one explanation for this was that “masculine girls are now encouraged to identify as trans, causing a decrease in the lesbian population.”

  He then cited an article which explored “whether the disappearance of lesbian culture is due to the encouragement which masculine girls receive — from the society, therapists, health care workers, etc. — to identify as trans, not as lesbian women.”

  Here’s Katie’s article exploring whether the disappearance of lesbian culture is due to the encouragement which masculine girls receive — from the society, therapists, health care workers, etc. — to identify as trans, not as lesbian women:https://t.co/NNyilExBCV

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 24, 2021

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

  The results of the poll underscore how mainstream culture’s increasing obsession with identity politics is manipulating young people into identifying as LGBTQ because they think it’s cool, edgy or makes them unique.

  However, given that such brainwashing is being imposed via top down social engineering, it’s not edgy or unique at all.

  *  *  *

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

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

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/18/2022 – 18:20

• US Cites Ukraine Crisis To Approve $6 Billion Tank Deal For Poland
  US Cites Ukraine Crisis To Approve $6 Billion Tank Deal For Poland

  With tensions and fighting heating up along the front line of contact in the separatist Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine, and now as the US has issued fresh estimates saying it believes Russia has up to 190,000 troops mustered across the border, US allies in Eastern Europe and American defense contractors are naturally busy milking the situation – with new contracts and weapons flying out the proverbial door.

  The latest is a fresh $6 billion tank deal: “US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced on Friday the planned sale of 250 Abrams tanks to Poland, as Washington moves to strengthen the defenses of a key eastern European ally amid a mounting threat of war between neighboring Ukraine and Russia,” Reuters reports. 

  

  And of course, this whopping price tag (which the US taxpayer will be on the hook for, ultimately) was deemed justified based on the current ‘Russian invasion’ threat. 

  Apparently, it’s no longer just Ukraine that’s being eyed as an object of aggression by Russia, according to Secretary Austin’s words: “Some of those forces (are) within 200 miles (321 km) of the Polish border,” he said in the Friday statement. 

  “If Russia further invades Ukraine, Poland could see tens of thousands of displaced Ukrainians and others flowing across its border, trying to save themselves and their families from the scourge of war.” 

  He made the announcement during a trip to Warsaw to shore up joint security initiatives with Poland’s military, which has been part of NATO since 1999. “What Mr. Putin did not want was a stronger NATO on his flank, and that’s exactly what he has today,” Austin said at the press conference.

  “It will also strengthen our interoperability with the Polish armed forces, boosting the credibility of our combined deterrence efforts and those of our other NATO Allies.”

  

  At the same time, according to The Hill: 

  The U.S. has sent a total of 4,700 troops stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C., to Poland to help assure the alliance. 

  Austin said Friday that the troops are prepared to respond to a “range of contingencies,” adding that they would work with the Polish government “should there be any need to help American citizens leave Ukraine.”

  Thus one of the real drivers of Washington’s greatly hyping the ‘Russian invasion’ threat over much of the last two months has been made clear: it’s time for NATO’s ‘eastern flank’ to go shopping, in the form of acquiring billions of dollars in new US weaponry. Major American defense contractors and their allies in the deep state must be salivating over the prospect of further escalation.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/18/2022 – 18:00

• Modern Monetary Theory, And The "Economists" Advocating For It, Will Destroy The United States
  Modern Monetary Theory, And The “Economists” Advocating For It, Will Destroy The United States

  Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

  An economist used to mean someone who applied and analyzed the incontrovertible and irrefutable natural laws of economics as they functioned and played out in a free market. 

  Now, an economist is someone tasked with attempting to engineer enough academic sounding bullshit to convince a growingly skeptical populace that these very same irrefutable natural laws of economics are somehow no longer relevant – that the laws themselves somehow caught a glimpse of the brilliance of academia and, after thousands of years of dictating how free markets work globally, had no choice but to lay down their arms at the majestic aura of Paul Krugman.

  

  This smoke screen is a necessity, of course, for central planners and vote-hungry politicians to feign as though they have “control” over the global economy and can safely promise “free stuff” – college tuition, social benefits, general wealth and prosperity – without ever having to generate the pesky productivity in order to pay for it. 

  While this is obviously farcical, the truly frightening thing about modern monetary theorists is that, despite being bludgeoned in the face with the negative consequences of their flawed thinking in the form of blistering inflation, it seems like they still won’t admit defeat.

  This would be one thing if the year was 2019 and we were still riding out a period of “mysterious” inflation that we apparently, thanks to our magical CPI, couldn’t punch above 2% even when we wanted to.

  But that’s not the case: we’ve doled out the largest tranche of quantitative easing in modern monetary history over the last two years, the gap between our country‘s revenue and spending ambitions has never been wider and we’re currently in the midst of an inflationary (and civility) crisis so bad in this country that they’re putting fucking alarm nets on the $20 slabs of meat at Wal-Mart.

  

  And you thought I was being facetious when I wrote, last year, that the U.S. was turning into a third world country. Are you paying attention yet?

  ---

  Today’s blog post has been published without a paywall because I believe the content to be far too important. However, if you have the means and would like to support my work by subscribing, I’d be happy to offer you 22% off to become a subscriber in 2022: Get 22% off forever

  ---

  Days ago, I happened to notice that the New York Times published a profile of Stephanie Kelton, one of the more well-known advocates for modern monetary theory (MMT).

  Kelton is a professor at Stony Brook University and a Senior Fellow at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School for Social Research (whatever that means).

  Her “Greatest Hits” of economic nonsense includes this 2019 interview with The Globe Post where she claimed that the U.S. “can never run out of money and can never be forced to default on [its] debt”. Riveting.

  

  In that interview, Kelton also argued points that critics of MMT often use as fodder for hyperbole, like asking why we even pay taxes when the government can just print as much money as it wants:

  “So what that means is that a country like the U.S. doesn’t need to tax or borrow in order to get the currency in order to spend. So it’s never about whether you can afford a program in financial terms. You always can. It’s about whether spending to fund your program will cause an inflation problem.”

  And, since 2019, Kelton hasn’t stopped with her Time Life-style greatest hits compilation.

  Now, at what is arguably one of the most crucial junctures in American history to critically examine Kelton’s dangerously ignorant economic assertions, the New York Times wrote that Kelton:

  “…posits that if a government controls its own currency and needs money — to make sure its citizens have food and places to live when, say, a global pandemic pushes many out of work — it can just print it, as long as its economy has the ability to churn out the needed goods and services.”

  Nevermind the fact that the idea of “just printing it” is a fallacy in and of itself, perhaps Kelton hasn’t seen the country’s worsening trade deficits over the last decade. In other words, our economy doesn’t have the ability to “churn out” anything, especially needed goods and services.

  

  But these deficits weren’t alarming to Kelton in June 2020, after they had almost nearly doubled from the year prior.

  Kelton instead took a victory lap in 2020, publishing a book that “shot onto best seller lists” called “The Deficit Myth”. The Times wrote that, at the time of publishing “…inflation had been weak for decades and had dropped below 1 percent as consumers retrenched in the pandemic.”

  Ah, the sweet smell of success, right Ms. Kelton?

  By 2021, when Kelton took a second victory lap on a Bloomberg podcast episode called “How M.M.T. Won the Fiscal Policy Debate,” inflation was already back to 2%.

  And just months later, inflation now sits at an out of control 7.5% while our national debt has eclipsed $30 trillion – about triple what it was less than 15 years ago.

  The Times named their profile of Kelton: “Is This What Winning Looks Like?”

  

  ---

  Not unlike Cathie Wood when her ARK Innovation Fund (ARKK) started plunging 6 months ago, Kelton and her ilk seem sufficiently motivated to try and control the narrative with inflation running out of hand.

  For example, only now do we get the admission from Kelton in the Times writeup that MMT “wasn’t assessed carefully for its inflationary effects as it was being drawn up, because it was crisis policy.”

  In the words of Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer:

  “Once again, things that could have been brought to my attention yesterday!”

  

  Based on her recent profile, Kelton is holding onto her assumptions and beliefs, lock, stock and barrel, despite the fact that the Fed appears to be in a catch 22 of catastrophic proportions.

  Hilariously, Kelton even pushed back on the Times using the same anecdote that former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes used when responding to the Wall Street Journal’s criticisms, while talking to Jim Cramer in 2015.

  Modern monetary theorist Stephanie Kelton, 2022:

  When she gave presentations on her ideas, Ms. Kelton would occasionally display a quote often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you. Then you win.”

  Elizabeth Holmes to Jim Cramer, 2015:

  “This is what happens when you work to change things,” Holmes said. “First they think you’re crazy, then they fight you, then you change the world.”

  

  Even worse, Kelton appears to be clinging to her logical fallacy of an ideology with a resolve that only a self-assured academic could have. The Times wrote that during their interview with Kelton “she never broke her cool when questioned about the inflationary moment and what it says about her theory”, but rather “laid out her response methodically”, placing blame on supply chain constraints and “decades of corporate consolidation”.

  About a month before the profile was published, Kelton also wrote a Substack post called: “How Do You Solve A Problem Like Inflation?”

  It’s a post that, in a blindingly arrogant way, failed to offer up an apology for how brutal and out of control inflation has gotten in the country, especially for the middle and lower class. Instead, it offered even more reassurance that modern monetary theory is doing its job:

  There was, however, a big move up in inflation following the passage of the March 2021 fiscal package. And this has led some people to ask whether the emergence of high inflation means that the MMT experiment has failed. The answer is an unequivocal no.

  ---

  Today’s blog post has been published without a paywall because I believe the content to be far too important. However, if you have the means and would like to support my work by subscribing, I’d be happy to offer you 22% off to become a subscriber in 2022: Get 22% off forever

  ---

  Far be it for me to praise current Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Most of my readers and followers know I have been a strident critic of his for years, but even he understands the obvious fallacy of MMT.

  The Times article pointed out that Powell even spoke out against MMT in 2019, stating:

  “I have heard pretty extreme claims attributed to that framework and I don’t know whether that’s fair or not. The idea that deficits don’t matter for countries that can borrow in their own currency is just wrong.”

  And in my opinion, a large problem with people that want to embrace modern monetary theory is that they have no humility.

  The idea that we’re going to be able to print as much money as we would like without suffering any consequences, because we have somehow found a loophole in the basic laws of a free market economic system that we’re gonna be able to exploit in perpetuity, is an arrogant way of thinking.

  Realizing that the natural and very basic, elementary laws of economics will eventually have their say in a market, even if only 1% of our micromanaged (interest rates, price controls, regulations) market remains free, is a humble way to look at things.

  But modern monetary theorists don’t know anything about being humble. Commensurate with their monetary ideology, for them it’s about gaming the system and pulling together whatever half-assed monetary “tools” we can, combined with a word salad of financial jargon, to, very simply, worry only about the making the present as comfortable as possible – no matter what the cost to the future.

  A couple weeks ago I wrote an article talking about how every move the Fed makes is going to be scrutinized because of the inescapable quagmire that our central bankers have gotten themselves into. They must decide right now: crash the markets or stop inflation.

  But, after the Fed, second on the pecking order of people whose actions we should be carefully watching should be people like Stephanie Kelton, advocating for theories that are far to the left of what our current Fed Chair believes. Her ideas – and the notion of only focusing on comfort in the present – will prove to be dangerously costly. Yet, they’re seductive in a way: we won’t realize we’ve overstepped our boundaries in applying them until the destruction is already in the rearview mirror.

  

  It also probably wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye on “deep thinkers” like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose economic aspirations appear to be include printing and spending as many trillions of dollars as an Excel cell will physically allow us to manufacture.

  While that’s a bit of hyperbole, the importance of keeping an eye on this developing niche in economics can’t be understated.

  Years ago, when I was still introducing myself to economics in the early 2000s – and back when I was a bone fide Democrat – I would have never fathomed that an idea as idiotic as a trillion dollar coin or the Green New Deal would come close to becoming reality. I’ve been horrified over the last couple of years on how these ideas have even been put up for discussion, let alone written into law.

  When I was younger, I used to think only the smartest people in the world were members of Congress. Now that I know the truth – that Congress is replete with lobotomized automatons pushing legislation with the sole motivation of trying to appease lobbyists and constituents with “free shit” – I’m far more worried.

  In the words of the late, great former Senator Mike Gravel:

  “It’s like going into the Senate. You know, the first time you get there, you’re all excited: ‘My god, how did I ever get here?’. Then about six months later you say: ‘How the hell did the rest of them get here?’ Some of these people frighten me.”

  ---

  On a serious note, in the balance hangs the world reserve currency: the U.S. dollar.

  The U.S. dollar is literally all we have to cling to in our country. We don’t have production, we don’t have trade surpluses, and we sure aren’t a creditor nation.

  The dollar is the only thing that has allowed us to run our backwards monetary policy in this country and get away with it. While I’m not sure that the dollar is going to last as reserve currency for much longer anyways, implementing and clinging to modern monetary theory – while countries like Russia and China are stockpiling gold – is a surefire way to accelerate our country’s economic demise and put us in potentially our most precarious position in recent history.

  The best part is: you don’t even need to be an economist – you don’t even need to know where the hole is in modern monetary theory to know that it doesn’t work.

  It can be simply boiled down to: something about it just doesn’t feel right. Or, in other words, it doesn’t pass the smell test.

  When people investigating financial malfeasance look for the hallmark clues of Ponzi schemes and other types of fraud, one of the red flags they always hone in on are promises that sound “too good to be true”.

  In the case of Stephanie Kelton, not unlike many postmodernists, we have a woman who has amplified and magnified otherwise simple, steadfast economic rules into a confusing and complex web of jargon that fails to render the rules ineffective, but instead delays their consequences into the future and creates so much confusion that the layperson is tricked into assuming that she knows what she’s talking about.

  Kelton thinks she has found some type of hidden esoteric code – the Game Genie for the economy – that’s going to allow us to cheat and re-write very clear, time-tested economic laws that have been in place for thousands of years.

  Anyone seeing any red flags yet?

  ---

  Now read:

  1. Inflation Is The Kryptonite That Will End Our Decades-Long Monetary Policy Ponzi Scheme

  2. Cancel Culture Is Now Officially A Snake Eating Its Own Tail

  3. It’s Still Starting To Feel Like Time For A “Limit Down” Morning

  4. One Unloved Retail Stock That Could Be Perfect For Both The Short And Long Term

  5. When The Global Monetary Reset Happens, Don’t You Dare Forget Why

  6. The Fed Is Fucked And So Are The Lobotomized “Genius” Fund Managers It Has Created

  7. Rogan 2024

  This post is public so feel free to share it: Share

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/18/2022 – 17:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest