Today’s News 19th June 2021

• "We Got Caught Off Guard": Winchester President Discusses Ammo Shortage And What's To Come
  “We Got Caught Off Guard”: Winchester President Discusses Ammo Shortage And What’s To Come

  Authored by Emily Miller via Emily Post News,

  This is part two in a series of interviews with ammunition manufacturing executives. Read my interview with Jason Hornaday here.

  

  More than twice as many Americans have guns and do shooting sports than have golf clubs and putt on a green.

  You wouldn’t know that if you are the coastal elite. But the president of Winchester Ammunition, Brett Flaugher, who lives and works in Illinois, says these recreational  shooters are driving the historic ammo shortage in America.

  “I’ve never taken anyone shooting for the first time who didn’t enjoy it,” Flaugher told me in an interview.  “I see it every day out there – the increase in recreational shooting. A lot of people were introduced to shooting sports during the pandemic. It started with wanting to go outside, and now it’s sheer numbers from the positive experience.” Winchester, which is owned by the Olin Corporation, has manufacturing plants in Illinois, Missouri and Mississippi.

  Demand for ammunition rose with the pandemic for people who wanted a safe, outdoor activity, but then stayed at record levels. Flaugher said there are a whopping 52 million people in the U.S. who participate in shooting sports. Flaugher said demand for ammo has more than doubled in the past year and a half. In particular, gun club recreational shooting is “off the charts right now.”

  

  For those of you not familiar with ammunition, I learned about it when I visited Winchester in 2012 with other female journalists. This is what in my book, Emily Gets Her Gun (page 67) about the three types of ammo:

  Rimfire, the oldest style, has a one-piece casing of metal that goes around the whole shell, encasing the bullet, gunpowder, and primer.

  The second style is a shotgun shell—a shell case, which is a complex mix of plastic and metal, plus either a slug or a lot of small pellets.

  The third type of ammunition is the modern kind called centerfire. It is the highest-powered and most commonly used for personal defense. The brass or steel casing of the cartridge holds the gunpowder. At the base of the case is the primer that, when struck by the gun’s firing pin, ignites the powder charge. The bullet, the projectile that leaves the gun and hits the target, which is normally made of lead, is surrounded by a jacket of copper or copper plate.

  The supply chain

  The reason for the ammo shortage is that all the inventory was depleted in the first three months of the pandemic, Flaugher explained.  The stock of ammo in the warehouses, wholesalers and retail shelves sold fast. The manufacturers can’t build it back up because people are buying whatever they can find. 

  “I’m highly disappointed we can’t offer every consumer a good experience in buying ammunition. It’s not fun for us to have a situation where a customer wants to go out and hunt or shoot or buy ammunition for personal protection but can’t. It’s frustrating for us as well,” he said.

  “What they need to really understand is that Winchester and every other ammunition manufacturer are doing everything we can to get more to that consumer. Just like they got caught off guard with this level of demand, we got caught off guard too. It just takes a lot of time to be able to get to the level of production based upon the level of demand today. So, hey, we’re frustrated as much as they are. We do not like disappointing our customers.”

  Flaugher points to three factors that led to the dramatic increase in those early months that depleted the back stock of ammunition. The first thing that caused the supply chain to dry up was the increased level of concern that people have for their personal security because of the pandemic and civil unrest. 

  The second factor was the increase in people doing shooting sports, hunting and outdoor activities. The third issue is the public’s heightened concern about new gun-control laws and actions by the Biden administration and a Democratic-controlled Congress that would limit their ability to buy what they want. 

  The ammo demand matches gun sales. The NSSF adjusted NICS checks show that 21 million firearms were sold in 2020, of which about 9 million were sold to first time gun buyers.  “Every time someone buys a gun, what do they buy with it? Ammo,” said Flaugher. “It was all in just a short period of time — that so many new gun owners went into the market.” 

  Like their competitors, Winchester is trying to do things to increase output. They’ve added equipment to their factories. They have hired and trained hundreds of more people.

  

  Women and guns

  I asked Flaugher about the NSSF reports that female gun ownership has increased substantially in the last year. 

  “We’ve been talking about this at Winchester —  we’ve seen women entering gun ownership because of personal defense, that’s nothing new. But it’s continuing and at a higher rate because of the personal security concerns last year, because of pandemic, riots and defunding the police. People think they have to take responsibility for defending themselves and women are doing that as well.”

  He said there are two main reasons that people take up shooting sports, training for personal defense  and spending recreational time with friends and family. And women just want to be a part of the fun at the ranges. 

  Questions from readers

  After I interviewed Jason Hornady about the ammo shortages, I got a lot of “Emily Posts” subscribers asking me more questions. I replied in the comments that I was interviewing another unnamed ammunition manufacturer executive to get more answers. The questions below are from readers and the answers from Flaugher. 

  Q: Why can’t Winchester make enough shotgun shells for the market?

  Flaugher: “People are outdoors shooting traps, skeet, sporting clays — all that recreational activity is driving a huge amount of demand for us that we just can’t keep up at this point,” Flaugher explained. “Then you have high school shooting teams on top of that for shotgun shells.”

  Q: What percentage of ammunition goes to governmental agencies?

  Flaugher: “On the conspiracy theories, there is not one theory that I’ve heard that has an ounce of truth to it. Winchester is the primary supplier to the U.S. government’s military. And if anybody would know if the government was buying historically more than they have in previous years, we would know. They’re not.”

  Q:  Which calibers are in the greatest demand?

  Flaugher: “Well they are all in a very very high level demand. But the calibers I would tell you are in the highest demand are 9mm pistol and 5.56 – those two more than any other.”

  Q: What about supply and costs of raw materials and components?

  Flaugher: “Winchester manufactures all of its own components- the bullet, brass and primer. We get our propellent from a third party.”

  “Our key raw materials are lead and brass and resin. We are not being affected by supply of key raw materials, but — there’s a big but there — but supply has been tight, and we continue to manage that, but it has not affected our ability to produce.”

  Why are primers out of stock? 

  Flaugher: “Primers are at high demand for the same reasons that loaded ammunition is at high demand. There are more people buying them. There are more people loading them. There are more people shooting. Participation is up. It’s no different, but with one little element, the fact that we have to use more primers because we are making more ammunition. That’s a minor part of it. Most of it is just because demand is high.”

  He added that, “I think they’ll see better supply down the road.”

  The future

  So how long will it take for consumers to see the shelves stocked again? “I think you’re looking at least through 2022, a year and a half away, based upon the continuation of participation we’re seeing, based upon the level of guns being sold today,” he said.

  I asked if he wanted to address the people who are stockpiling, which frustrates my readers who just want to shoot.

  “I would encourage people not to overbuy just because they may not get it tomorrow. But it’s gonna be hard for me to convince a consumer not to buy what they want,” he said.

  “We are making more than we ever have, faster than we ever have, and we are trying to satisfy their needs as best we can right now.”

  It seems that, what started as panic buying during the pandemic, has led to a change in recreational activities for Americans, and this one doesn’t involve ugly golf clothes.

  “A lot of people were introduced to shooting sports during the pandemic. There are a lot more new gun owners out there. And I actually think people have enjoyed their experiences shooting , even though the ammunition is hard to get,” said Winchester’s president. “We offer a sport — whether for pure recreation or for personal protection — that is meaningful.”

  *  *  *
  

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  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/18/2021 – 23:40

• Honolulu Police Used Robo-dog To Patrol Homeless Camp 
  Honolulu Police Used Robo-dog To Patrol Homeless Camp 

  The Honolulu Police Department (HPD) spent $150,045 in CARES Act money to purchase a Boston Dynamics’ four-legged robo-dog called Spot to patrol a homeless quarantine encampment, according to Vice News. 

  HPD extensively used the robo-dog to conduct various tasks, such as temperature readings, disinfecting, and patrol the city’s homeless camp. 

  

  In the last year, Honolulu is one of four police departments to adopt the headless, quadrupedal robot outfitted with high-tech sensors to sniff the world around it — Massachusetts State Police, New York City Police Department, and the Dutch National Police are the other three. 

  In January, HPD officials attempted to deflect bad press around the Spot by claiming the robot will save the department money as it would reduce labor and equipment expenses.

  With the pandemic winding down, it’s unclear if the robot is needed at all and maybe repurposed. The costs of the robot infuriated Honolulu residents, while others suggested the robot could continue to be used to surveil the homeless. 

  We’ve seen this story before and may know how it will play out, especially with what was recently observed in New York City. 

  Last fall, NYPD leased the four-legged robotic dog called “Digidog” from Boston Dynamics, which came with an optical sensor on top to patrol low-income neighborhoods. 

  Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez caused such an uproar about the robo-dog’s use. She quoted an NYPost article titled “Video shows NYPD’s new robotic dog in action in the Bronx” on Twitter. She was not fond of the “robotic surveillance ground drones that are being deployed for testing on low-income communities of color with under-resourced schools.” 

  By late April, after more community uproar, the NYPD terminated its leasing contract with Boston Dynamics and had to put Digidog down. 

  Suppose NYPD’s limited use of the robot serves as history. In that case, it’s only a matter of time before community uproar in Honolulu forces officials to suspend deployment of the robot. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/18/2021 – 23:20

• "Real Geopolitical Risks": K Street Sets Sights On New Semiconductor Policy Amid Global Shortage
  “Real Geopolitical Risks”: K Street Sets Sights On New Semiconductor Policy Amid Global Shortage

  Authored by Alyce McFadden via OpenSecrets.org,

  A sweeping bill to encourage companies to manufacture semiconductors in the US passed the Senate on June 8 with bipartisan support. The tiny computer chips are used in practically all modern technology and the current global supply chain shortage of these semiconductors could spell disaster for American manufacturing. 

  Demand for semiconductors spiked 6.5% in 2020 as tech companies raced to produce products aimed at facilitating remote learning, work and healthcare during the coronavirus pandemic. Industry experts have warned that further disruptions of the global supply chain could have dramatic consequences in the U.S. such as limiting American companies’ ability to produce everything from iPhones to high-tech weaponry and even medical equipment. On Monday, NPR reported the global shortage forced an Alabama Hyundai plant to pause production.

  

  The United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021 would allocate $92 billion to subsidize domestic production of semiconductors, and $195 billion in subsidies for technological research and development. And American businesses and research groups are lobbying hard to direct that money to their organizations.  

  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is the original sponsor of the measure and seven Republican senators signed on as co-sponsors, making the bill a rare glimmer of bipartisanship in the highly-polarized Congress. The legislation combines two pre-existing bills: one aimed at bolstering scientific and technological research, and the other designed to encourage domestic semiconductor manufacturing. The bill was introduced in the House in February but hasn’t received a floor vote.

  Top lobbying groups like the US Chamber of Commerce, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation and the National Association of Manufacturers support the legislation. Earlier this year, these groups released statements urging Congress to provide economic incentives for increased domestic production of semiconductors.

  Only 12% of the world’s semiconductors are produced in the US. That’s a decrease of approximately 25% from the U.S.’s share of global production in 1990, according to a 2020 report by the Semiconductor Industry Association, the sector’s largest trade group. 

  During a Wednesday webinar on semiconductor policy, SIA President John Neuffer said potential supply chain issues could cause “real geopolitical risks” for the US if the government doesn’t create economic incentives for domestic manufacturers. “We have some blind spots that need to be addressed. The great thing is the U.S. government is focused like a laser on helping facilitate good outcomes,” Neuffer said. 

  Neuffer added that the biggest barrier to U.S. manufacturing is a lack of federal investment. “By far the biggest barriers to manufacturing in the U.S. are incentives offered overseas. What happened is that competing countries took the decision to incentivize manufacturing in their countries, massive incentives,” Neuffer said. “We absolutely need to have our government step in and offer similar incentives.”

  The semiconductor shortage that has dominated headlines can be traced to a massive increase in demand across areas from consumer electronics to cloud computing. Most notably, the automotive industry completely missed the boat on predicting how quickly demand would rebound. 📈🚙 pic.twitter.com/ecupujeNTp

  — Atlantic Council GeoEconomics Center (@ACGeoEcon) June 17, 2021

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

  There are 21 lobbyists registered for the SIA in 2021, and the trade association spent $300,000 on lobbying expenses in the first financial quarter. In 2020, the group spent a total of $1.2 million to lobby the federal government. 

  While disclosures for the second financial quarter aren’t available yet, lobbyists working on behalf of 64 separate clients reported lobbying activity related to the Endless Frontier Act, a 2020 bill to boost scientific research and development of technology like semiconductors. Defense contractors, software companies, hospitals, trade associations and research universities were among the diverse group of clients who lobbied on the bill. 

  Lobbyists for Microsoft filed six individual lobbying reports that mentioned the Endless Frontier Act by name. Booz Allen Hamilton, an information consulting company that works closely with the US military, reported $210,000 in lobbying expenses on the the Endless Frontier Act in one lobbying report alone.  

  “Washington is increasingly focused on issues impacting the semiconductor sector, so our industry has bulked up its presence to ensure policymakers understand that US leadership in semiconductors is essential to America’s global technology leadership, national security, economic strength and job creation,” Neuffer told The Hill last summer. 

  According to CNBC, Taiwanese factories that produce semiconductors — called foundries — made up 63% of the global revenue from sales of semiconductors. In 2020, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council spent $1.8 million to lobby the US government. 

  Although the Senate-passed bill aims to boost domestic production, foreign-owned manufacturers could benefit from federal subsidies if they elect to build foundries in the US. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2020 that the leading Taiwanese production company planned to spend $12 billion over nearly a decade to build a new foundry in Arizona.

  Some experts warn a Chinese initiative to dramatically increase the country’s semiconductor manufacturing capacity could threaten U.S. national security interests. In 2014, Chinese hackers breached computer hardware company Intel Corp.’s internal network by hacking into one microchip producer’s software, according to a Bloomberg investigation. One former FBI official told Bloomberg the hack demonstrated “an example of the worst-case scenario if you don’t have complete supervision over where your devices are manufactured.”

  Chinese manufacturers controlled about 6% of the market share of semiconductor production in 2020. 

  “There’s a big part of the performance of the actual chip that is tied to the manufacturing process,” Favre said. “The fact that these latest generations of technologies are 100% off shore, that does create a vulnerability.” During his first two months in office, President Joe Biden issued an executive order directing the Department of Commerce to identify “risks in the semiconductor manufacturing and advanced packaging supply chains and policy recommendations to address these risks.”  

  Biden reiterated his commitment to bolstering domestic manufacturing in a news conference at the G7 summit Sunday, emphasizing the importance of keeping pace with China’s technological output. 
  “We’re in a contest, not with China per se,” Biden said, but “with autocrats, autocratic governments around the world, as to whether or not democracies can compete with them in a rapidly changing 21st century.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/18/2021 – 23:00

• Philadelphia Man Charged With Fraud After Using PPP Loan To Buy Real Estate, Motorcycle, Diamond Jewelry
  Philadelphia Man Charged With Fraud After Using PPP Loan To Buy Real Estate, Motorcycle, Diamond Jewelry

  There’s no doubt that the PPP program was one of the worst allocations of taxpayer capital (read: inflation) by the U.S. government in history. While many were helped during Covid by the program, the “free money” of PPP loans attracted all types of fraud and abuse, only a small sliver of which will be investigated. 

  But occasionally, the government does turn over a rock and get their man, which was the bad news for 50 year old Devron Brown of Philadelphia, who had decided to play the odds on the fraudulent PPP loan roulette wheel – and lost. Brown was charged with stealing nearly $1 million in PPP funds during the pandemic and, instead of using the funds for business needs, turning around and using them to buy a house in Florida, cars and jewelry, according to The Philly Voice. 

  Brown fraudulently obtained roughly $937,500 in PPP funds and was charged with two counts of bank fraud and nine counts of money laundering. the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said this week. 

  

  The complaint against Brown alleges “a PPP loan application that contained false representations regarding his alleged construction business, Just Us Construction Inc.” It alleges he misrepresented “the number of employees, the wages paid to them, the payroll taxes paid on those wages, and the intended use of the PPP loan proceeds.”

  He used the loan for a new residential property in Florida, a motorcycle, an all-terrain vehicle, a luxury automobile, and diamond jewelry, the complaint says. 

  Acting United States Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams said: “Paycheck Protection Program funds are intended to help American small-businesses continue paying their employees, even if revenues have dropped dramatically due to the pandemic. Thieves who attempt to take these funds are taking advantage of others’ misfortune – ripping them off while also ripping off all taxpayers who fund the program. As alleged, Brown fraudulently obtained nearly $1 million in funds that could have helped struggling businesses and individuals.”

  Michael J. Driscoll, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia Division concluded: “The Paycheck Protection Program was created to provide emergency financial assistance to businesses and employees battered by the pandemic. Unfortunately, criminal opportunists with dollar signs in their eyes promptly got to work trying to defraud the federal government by seeking a cut of the funds. The FBI will continue to aggressively pursue those using the money from the PPP to bankroll their own lavish lifestyles at taxpayers’ expense.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/18/2021 – 22:40

• Reading, Writing, And Ratting Each Other Out
  Reading, Writing, And Ratting Each Other Out

  Authored by Nicole Neily via RealClearEducation.com,

  Much ink has been spilled over the illiberal education that college students receive these days, and how ivory tower-incubated ideas are now finding their ways into society at large. But less well-known is how some of the more devious – and unconstitutional – policies employed by America’s colleges and universities have begun to migrate down to the K-12 level as well.

  

  One such program is the bias response team, which encourages students and staff to file reports about perceived “bias incidents” through portals on the school’s website – anonymously if individuals so choose. Reports are sent to a school’s “team,” which is often composed of assorted university officials such as campus police, deans of students, Title IX administrators, and diversity employees. A 2017 report from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education identified 231 bias response teams operating in higher education institutions across the country, a number which has undoubtedly risen since then.

  As Jeffrey Aaron Snyder and Amna Khalid wrote in the New Republic in 2016, “They degrade education by encouraging silence instead of dialogue, the fragmentation of campuses into groups of like-minded people, and the deliberate avoidance of many of the most important—and controversial—topics across all academic disciplines.”

  It should surprise nobody that these programs have become weaponized in recent years. Students frequently reported for discussing political and religious topics – which are constitutionally protected on public university campuses, much to the chagrin of these bureaucratic star chambers. Once made aware of these programs’ existence, most rational students simply refrain from discussing potentially controversial topics altogether out of an abundance of caution; as a result, whole lines of discussion and arguments that might be found on a nightly news show quietly and conveniently disappear from college campuses.

  But to a growing number of K-12 administrators, that chilling isn’t a bug – it’s a feature. And it’s why they’re spreading.

  In California, the Acalanes Union High School District maintains an online portal “for students to report incidents of harm – acts of racism, bias, sexism, microaggressions, etc.”

  In Massachusetts, Wellesley Public Schools (WPS) maintains a policy on “Responding to Bias-based Incidents,” which lists “telling rude jokes” and “using a slur or insult toward a student or their family” as examples of bias-based behavior; slides of a mandatory teacher training provide examples of microaggressions in the classroom, such as “mispronouncing the names of students” and “scheduling tests and project due dates on religious or cultural holidays.” Microaggressions in the workplace include saying, “you’re so articulate,” and “my principal is crazy!”

  In Maryland, the Montgomery County Public Schools plan to launch an online portal where students and parents can report “bias-related” or “hate” incidents.

  In Massachusetts, Newton Public Schools are in the process of building out a new discrimination and bias response portal, which will be distinct from their existing bullying prevention & intervention website.

  This month, a bias response program in Virginia became the target of a federal lawsuit; the Liberty Justice Center is challenging Loudoun County Public Schools’ “Share, Speak Up, Speak Out” program, administered by the district’s “Student Equity Ambassadors,” among other programs.

  Bias response programs have come under significant criticism by federal appellate courts, and with good reason. In an October 2019 decision, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals found that students at the University of Michigan faced “an objective chill based on the functions of the Response Team.” In October 2020, a decision from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals noted that the University of Texas’ Campus Climate Response Team “represents the clenched fist in the velvet glove of student speech regulation.”

  Students absorb more in school than simply lesson plans; they’re also learning how to interact with individuals who come from different backgrounds and viewpoints. Bias response teams send a clear message not only that certain opinions are wrong but that the correct coping method, when confronted with such a situation, is to “go tell the grownups.” 

  Creating the expectation that authority figures can – or should – adjudicate all interpersonal disputes isn’t just denying children the opportunity to develop better interpersonal skills. It’s also a slippery slope to big government, which by necessity must expand to fulfill this new role.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/18/2021 – 22:20

• Fears Of Missing Out (On Promotions) Is Pushing More Young Workers Back To The Office
  Fears Of Missing Out (On Promotions) Is Pushing More Young Workers Back To The Office

  If you ask most American white-collar workers about the last 16 months or so, most will probably confirm that working from home was one of the few silver linings of a once-in-a-century pandemic. But as bankers from JPM, Goldman and others return to the office, other white collar employees might see last repercussions for their careers if they continue to work 100% remote.

  

  In fact, a recent study seemed to confirm exactly that: workers who linger home too long might miss out on an important path to promotions and higher income.

  Before we blame younger workers for malingering, let’s remember it was young white-collar workers like the overworked Goldman analysts who saw the brunt of the negatives of remote work. Many reported feeling pressured to stay at their desks all day and night. Remember those junior Goldman analysts who went public with their claims?

  Many younger workers are voluntarily returning to the office, according to Bloomberg.

  Why? Because while they value the quality of life they have working from home, they’re also worried about the long-term damage to their careers. And as more firms call workers back to the office, younger workers are generally among the first and the most eager.

  This is all reflected in a new survey from Sharp Corp, which shows that nearly 60% of respondents said working in a modern, collegiate office environment has become more important to them over the past year. Even though a majority of respondents under 30 say remote work made them more productive, more than half of the survey’s respondents across Europe (ranging in age from 18 to 45) say they feel anxious about a lack of training and career opportunities when thinking long-term about the future of work.

  According to the survey, more than half of workers aged 21-30 stressed the importance of being able to collaboratively work with colleagues in person.

  Nearly 60% of respondents said that working in a “modern, collegiate office environment” is more important to them now thanks to the pandemic.

  

  What’s more, some 60% of workers between the ages of 18 and 40 would prefer hybrid work model.

  Sophia McCully, a 28-year-old working in public policy research, has worked from home ever since starting her current role. She believes the enforced isolation has had a significant impact on her professional development.

  “I think the ability to make those connections and network has been more difficult,” McCully said. Starting a new job in a virtual setting also made it “harder to get yourself across,” at least at first.

  Still, while young workers may crave in-person connections and relief from pressures on their health and wellbeing, they remain skeptical of returning to the status quo before Covid-19. Instead they are looking for value and purpose in office-based activities while retaining the right to work remotely. McCully said working from home allowed her to spend time with her young child while remaining professionally productive, and wants that to remain an option.

  Unfortunately for the many workers who prefer working from home, those who don’t ever report to the office miss out on developing important ‘soft’ skills. Which is why some consultants are pushing their clients to require new hires to report to the office, at least for the first few months.

  Helen Jamieson, managing director of human resources consultancy Jaluch, who has focused on hybrid solutions for over a decade, says young workers who may still wish to work mostly at home “don’t understand what they may be missing” in terms of long-term career development.

  Jamieson advocates dedicated “collaboration days,” and suggests that new hires and young staff could work mostly from offices during their first six months, before opening up work-from-home options.

  The calculus, Jamieson says, is to set aside personal preferences and focus on balancing business needs with a strategy for staff engagement and retention. “Because quite frankly if companies don’t look after young people, they’ll lose them.”

  In other words, young workers who continue to work 100% remote might see their careers suffer for it.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/18/2021 – 22:00

• Macleod: There's Just Too Much 'Darn' Liquidity
  Macleod: There’s Just Too Much ‘Darn’ Liquidity

  Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

  Yesterday, the FOMC released its June statement which only served to remind us that its members are powerless in the face of inflationary conditions. They refuse to accept the price consequences of monetary inflation, still clinging on to an increasingly untenable hope that price rises are “transitory”.

  The fact of the matter is that the world is now awash with excess money, the two greatest inflationists being the Fed and the Bank of England. In the US, the Fed’s $120bn monthly QE continues to goose financial asset values, while the US Government has spent a further trillion into circulation from its general account at the Fed. This tidal wave of money threatened money market funds totalling over $4 trillion with negative rates, thereby “breaking the buck”, which is why the Fed has increased its outstanding reverse repos to $721bn.

  Interest rates will have to increase far earlier than the Fed admits to stop foreigners dumping dollars, not just for commodities which have nearly doubled since March 2020, but for other currencies as well.

  

  Welcome to the everything bubble, whipped up by American and British neo-Keynesian policy makers who are now increasingly cornered by their own monetary fallacies.

  Introduction

  Courtesy of the central banks, the world is enmeshed in an everything bubble. We used to be most aware of the Bank of Japan’s extraordinary money printing to corner the Japanese ETF market —but that is no longer a topic of conversation. The Bank of Japan now owns about ¥48 trillion invested in ETFs ($447bn), the most aggressive money-printing stock ramp in the style of John Law and his Mississippi bubble relative to the size of the market in modern times. But today’s monetary planners have dismissed empirical evidence of any dangers as pre-Keynesian, and therefore irrelevant.

  The worst inflation is not down to the Japanese but to the Anglo-Saxons, as Figure 1 illustrates, which dates from before the central banks’ first introduction of extraordinary measures following the Lehman crisis.

  

  Anyone who hoped that the inflationary response to the financial crisis of 2008/09 was to be just a one-off event will have been sadly disillusioned. And anyone who thought that China, or Japan with their money were the most irresponsible nations —a common perception not long ago, would have got that wrong as well. Even the ECB looks relatively moderate, compared with the British and Americans.

  Of course, as well as the expansion of central bank balance sheets there are other factors in monetary policy which we can with justification label as inflationary. But it is interesting that the Bank of England’s chief economist has chosen this summer to leave the Bank, deciding at the same time to no longer toe the official line about rising prices. While some of his colleagues on the Monetary Policy Committee have only recently been rooting for negative interest rates and from the Governor down are now claiming that increasing prices are only temporary, Andrew Haldane appears to be ducking out. And one wonders why sterling is not weakening with the dollar, given the Bank of England’s solidarity with the Fed in terms of common monetary policies. The message from Figure 1 is that sterling, which rallied from $1.15 on the back of dollar weakness to 1.41 currently, should not have rallied much at all —particularly as the perceived value of the Brexit dividend is being superseded by the economic effects of Covid and its extended lockdowns.

  Evidenced by the launch of a €1 trillion Covid stimulus package this week, the destruction being wrought by the ECB is economic as well as monetary. The effect is to keep Eurozone bond yields suppressed (read this as mispriced), with even bankrupt Italy sporting a sub-1% ten-year government bond yield. We all know, or should know, the true purpose of this stimulus, and that is to fund and further facilitate the future funding of profligate Eurozone governments. Don’t be surprised if productive businesses get none of it. And presumably, without the Bundesbank’s monetary conservativism the ECB would beissuing even more euros.

  China comes out of this comparison relatively well. The expansion of the PBOC’s balance sheet has been the smallest in percentage terms by a long way, its government debt to GDP ratio is the lowest by degrees of magnitude, and the PBOC’s policy planners have been putting the brakes on credit expansion for the best part of a year. This suggests that the yuan is significantly under-priced against dollars, with the future potential to attract inward capital flows, seeking to escape from the declining currencies of the more profligate nations.

  We should bear China’s different approach in mind, because the geopolitical consequences of a stronger yen becoming attractive for international capital flows will lead to an obvious contrast between the US impoverishing its population through currency debasement, while the Chinese enjoy an improving standard of living. Furthermore, unless Americans suddenly decide to decrease their spending and increase their savings, China’s trade surplus with the US will continue to increase. Despite the slowing monetary growth reflected in GDP numbers, the Chinese appear to be in a far stronger position than their Western counterparts, both economically and monetarily.

  The consequences of monetary expansion everywhere are bound to lead to rising prices, reflecting the loss of purchasing power for diluting national currencies. So far, use of tightly controlled consumer price indices to hide the evidence has concealed the true extent of rising prices, providing goal-sought answers of approximately two per cent all round. But so formidable has the monetary dilution since Covid lockdowns become that the reality of rising prices for essentials such as food and energy is becoming all to obvious, and prices are beginning to explode upwards.

  In Figure 1 above, leading the charge is the US dollar, which should worry us all, because it is everyone else’s reserve currency. And while similar statements emanate from the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, it is those of the Fed’s FOMC, which met this week, that always have global significance.

  The FOMC’s problem

  The Fed’s money-printing has continued apace, so much so that severe market distortions are reflecting it, even for those with badly impaired economic vision. As the US economy is re-opening following the easing of covid restrictions, policy planners expected there to be increased demand for money, reflecting the ramping up of consumer goods production to meet demand and therefore of the necessary working capital. But looking at bank credit to non-financials (loans and leases in the Fed’s H.8 table) there is no evidence this is happening. So far, the banks do not appear to be keen to lend or perhaps their customers to borrow, as shown in the St Louis Fred’s chart below.

  

  Loans and leases saw an increase ahead of lockdown, when banks recognised that they must bridge their customers’ cash flow, or risk driving them into non-performing territory. Unsold inventory was stacking up, which over the last year has gradually been cleared, leaving little or no product on the shelves while reducing the need for working capital.

  But in an economy hooked on money and credit expansion, the Fed had to keep the plates spinning, which it did and still does by goosing financial markets with $120bn of QE every month. For the Fed it is vital that market confidence remains intact, and an unprecedented monthly QE injection had this objective in mind. With bond markets underwritten by the Fed’s bond buying through QE, the US Treasury was able to raise large quantities of money through bond sales in anticipation of an unprecedented level of unfunded spending.

  Between them policy planners at the Fed and the US Treasury made an important error. The Keynesians, who show little sympathy with supply-side economics, believed that consumer spending at the end of lockdowns would automatically lead to increased production. Instead, after decades of perfecting just-in-time production methods, businesses have been faced with a lethal combination of continuing supply chain disruptions, higher commodity and raw material prices, and a labour force that appears reluctant to return to work. The assumption that stimulation of consumption would trigger an automatic rebound in supply of products and services turns out to be wide of the mark.

  If the banks have been cautious in their lending it was with good reason, and it is hardly surprising that loans and leases in bank credit have failed to increase. Whether it is the banks worried about risk, or in these conditions, businesses seeing no reason to demand more working capital without the production capacity to deploy it is a moot point. But it is wholly consistent with a catastrophic supply-side failure.

  For consumers it is rather like getting dressed to the nines to attend a ball only to find there’s no one to dance with.

  The liquidity problem was foreseeable

  Without the expansion of production, there is an excess of liquidity in the American financial system, which explains why in recent weeks bond yields have fallen and a feeling of deflationary conditions has emerged. It explains a mystery unfathomed by some commentators who only look at the collateral side of reverse repos. The reason outstanding reverse repos have hit a record of $721bn is not due to insufficient collateral in the banking system, but having overcooked it, the Fed sees that there is too much unused liquidity. And making the situation worse, instead of raising money through bond sales, the US Treasury has been drawing down on its balance at the General Account with the Fed —technically putting money into circulation which was not there before.

  Since last October, about a trillion dollars have appeared in the money supply in this way. And at the same time, the Fed has issued nearly a further trillion through QE. All this excess liquidity with a banking system constrained by lack of balance sheet capacity threatens that market interest rates would turn negative.

  If market rates went negative, money market funds would almost certainly “break the buck” leading to a crisis at the heart of the financial system for this $4.5 trillion market, whose investors have been led to understand that their funds are safe. The Fed responded to these concerns by fixing the reverse repo rate at 0.05% in yesterday’s FOMC statement.

  It is little wonder that the Fed has had to claw some of this liquidity back, for fear of driving interest rates into negative territory. This situation was foreshadowed in a Goldmoney article last February, when I pointed out that there was a risk these events would lead to market-imposed negative interest rates, particularly if the Fed did not extend the temporary suspension of the supplementary leverage ratio and increase the counterparty limit of $30bn on its reverse repo facility. It did increase the RRP limit to $80bn but did not extend the SLR suspension.

  Back in February and in the following month at the quarter-end, we were able to see these conditions evolving. The difference, for the Fed at least, was their blindness to supply-side issues, and that price inflation would rapidly accelerate beyond the bounds of statistical control. And with independent analysts, such as John Williams at Shadowstats.com estimating that price inflation is now over 11% annually, the distortion in financial markets awash with excess liquidity at zero interest rates is increasingly destabilising.

  The question for the Fed now is that with all their policy levers having failed, how should they proceed? If they taper, the stock market will almost certainly crash, undermining the Fed’s cherished policy of using the stock market to keep everyone optimistic. If they take the lead in raising interest rates, that goes against Keynesian religion and is simply beyond contemplation. That is why policy default in yesterday’s FOMC statement was to give the briefest of nods to the inflation threat and reaffirm the conviction that left alone the problem will go away.

  Interest rates should be rising

  The signal being received by the policy planners from the apparent lack of demand for money is that deflation has the upper hand, an argument they are likely to milk for all its worth: the idea that there is too much money in the system rarely occurs to them. But with M1 money supply standing at $19 trillion in a $20 trillion economy…

  Admittedly, the statisticians bolstered M1 last February by shifting most of M2 into it, but the point remains that there is far too much money in the economy relative to genuine economic activity. There is a latency in its absorption, which means that the liquidity bulge is only temporary before markets adjust for it. The adjustment is emerging through rising prices because in the absence of an increase in savings it is the purchasing power of the currency that inevitably compensates for excess monetary supply over the true demand for it.

  There seems to be confusion in the minds of macroeconomists on this issue. At a time when the purchasing power of the dollar is set to fall, establishment thinking in the markets appear to be signalling a decline in economic activity consistent with deflationary conditions. That being the case, neo-Keynesians argue that declining demand leads to falling prices; or put another way a rise in the dollar’s purchasing power. The issue, as often is the case, is defining deflation. If it exists —and that is open to question — it implies a contraction in the total quantity of money and credit, and the consequences that follow, which is not the condition that is faced. And we can reasonably assume that any further tendency for bank credit to non-financial borrowers to contract will be more than countered by increases in fiscal deficits financed by monetary expansion.

  For the state to become the motor driving the economy when free markets are deemed to fail is basic Keynesian philosophy. Meanwhile, as if to drive the deflation argument home, recently we have seen a steadying in the dollar’s trade weighted index of over 2% above recent lows (yesterday the TWI rose 0.75%) and a recent fall in bond yields. Figure 2 charts the 10-year US Treasury bond yield and figure 3 shows the dollar’s TWI.

  

  

  No doubt, the Fed and Fed watchers are closely following these charts. For them, it is probably comforting that the markets do not appear to take an inflation threat as seriously as the few independent commentators who have warned that interest rates will be forced to rise later this year —and not later in 2022 as the Trimmers in the FOMC have now suggested. But the dispassionate view is that the inflation threat is not only real, but when markets wake up to it there is nothing the Fed or the US Treasury can do to prevent the consequences.

  The underlying reality is that without interest rates being maintained at a rate which discourages foreign holders from selling the dollar either for other currencies or for “real assets” such as the commodities and raw materials used in the course of production, the purchasing power of the dollar has the potential to fall dramatically. This phenomenon is already visible in commodity prices, as Figure 4 clearly illustrates.

  

  Since the Fed reduced interest rates to the zero bound in March 2020 and began QE of $120bn every month, the near doubling of this index tells us that the purchasing power of the dollar in terms of commodities has nearly halved. The fact that the dollar has only declined by about 13.7% against the euro (the largest component of its TWI) indicates that the euro has also lost purchasing power, though not to the same extent as the dollar. For the Fed to claim that inflation is merely transitory is either being disingenuous or ignorant of the theories of exchange —it matters not which.

  The Fed is already judged guilty in the court of commodity markets. It is hard to see how it will not similarly be judged by other forms of evidence, being the broader consequences of inflationary monetary policies. With foreign ownership of dollar denominated financial assets and cash deposits at $30 trillion, the dollar is more exposed than any other significant currency to the judgement of the foreign exchanges. Consequently, as it becomes clear to foreigners that the overweighting of dollars is no longer safe, the downside of the Triffin dilemma will become manifest.

  Triffin described the situation where the issuer of a reserve currency has to deploy ultimately destructive inflationary policies to supply the world’s demand for it, until a currency crisis inevitably leads to its ultimate rejection. The last such crisis was also ahead of a period of escalating dollar inflation, commencing with the failure of the London gold pool in the late 1960s, followed by the abandonment of the Bretton Woods agreement in August 1971 and the roaring price inflation of the 1970s decade.

  Today, unprecedented market distortions coupled with the accumulation of dishonest statistics and Keynesian cluelessness is considerably more dangerous than the failure of the London gold pool and the ending of Bretton Woods. Therefore, when Triffin’s downside for the dollar materialises this time, we can expect the deterioration to be sudden and very public. That appears to describe the cliff-edge upon which we now sit.

  Monetarists who understand, as Milton Friedman put it, that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, have just half the story. Their understanding is that the relationship between money and subsequent prices is essentially mechanistic. It is not, as the following well documented example attests. Between April 1919 and March 1923, the German government’s cumulative increase in debt, i.e., the difference between revenues and spending financed by a mixture of savings and monetary inflation, measured in gold marks was an increase of 203%. Yet the unbacked paper marks in circulation increased 207 times over the same timescale, and its purchasing power declined from three paper marks to one gold mark, to 5,047 to one. So, an increase in the cumulative, mostly inflation-financed government spending of 203% had a disproportionately destabilising effect on the currency.

  Only then did the final collapse in the paper mark begin, taking it to one trillion paper marks to one gold mark in about six months. This was what the Austrian economist von Mises termed the crack-up boom; the phenomenon whereby the general public, finally realising that the state’s paper currency was never going to stabilise, finally dumped it for anything, needed or not.

  The lesson from this and many other sorry tales involving state-issued currencies, backed by nothing more than a dwindling faith in the issuer, is that the collapse of a currency is always unexpected by its users, and when it happens can be swift. Today, a market awakening will have to accommodate a stock market crisis, a bond market crisis and the realisation that all financial assets are badly mispriced. If John Williams at Shadowstats is right, and undoubtedly, he is, then a fall in the dollar’s purchasing power currently annualised at over 11% will require a suitable interest rate to compensate foreign holders. But even a move of less than half that will take out over-indebted corporations and force the US Government to accept cuts in spending that it is simply not prepared to make.

  Its advisers are Keynesian to a man (or woman). They long ago dismissed classical economic theory, and offer no solutions, only more bad advice. The advice is likely to be to chuck more money at the problem, in order to stabilise stock markets, fund the government’s ballooning debt and to subsidise industrial production. They are even likely to opine that a lower dollar stimulates economic activity and perhaps that price controls should be introduced.

  Along with dollar-denominated assets being sold by foreigners, the currency is set to continue its collapse. As we might have seen with the resignation of the Bank of England’s chief economist, unpalatable truths will continue to be rejected. And as the purchasing power of the currency declines, public demand for it will increase, not because it is wanted per se, but because its purchasing power is declining faster than it is being pushed into circulation and more is required to cover even diminishing real levels of spending.

  This is what kept the printing pressings working 24/7 in Germany in 1923. With electronic money, there is no physical restraint, and the expansion of money supply will take on a life of its own, potentially speeding up the process. What took place between May and November 1923 when the paper mark finally hit the wall could easily be compressed into a matter of just a few weeks.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/18/2021 – 21:40

• 'Take Your Rubbers Home': Social Distancing To Squash Horny Olympians Sex Drive At Games 
  ‘Take Your Rubbers Home’: Social Distancing To Squash Horny Olympians Sex Drive At Games 

  Tokyo Olympic organizers are handing out 150,000 condoms at next month’s Games to athletes staying in the Olympic village. But there’s a twist. According to Reuters, the Olympic village has strict social distancing rules and COVID-19 measures that organizers are requesting athletes not to have sex with one another but rather save the condoms. 

  Being in good physical shape indeed gives a person more sexual fitness. So imagine super-athletes at the Olympic village. Their sex drive must be off the charts. For years, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has distributed condoms to the Olympic village. Rubbers have been given out at the Games since the 1988 Seoul Olympics to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS.

  

  But this year is different. Olympic athletes will be given condoms but told to keep their distance and take them home. Social distancing at the Games means fewer opportunities for athletes to mingle with each other. 

  “The distribution of condoms is not for use at the athlete’s village, but to have athletes take them back to their home countries to raise awareness” of HIV and AIDS issues, said Tokyo 2020 in an emailed response to questions by Reuters.

  While Olympians are advised to take their condoms home, foreign fans have been barred from entering all sporting events. Those who are eligible to enter stadiums will need a negative COVID-19 test or vaccination history. Once inside, spectators might be forbidden from eating, drinking, and cheering. 

  The Games are likely to become a financial disaster for Japan who went well over budget to stage it.

  But the good news is that President Joe Biden and the other G-7 leaders gave the nod to Japan that the Games must go on despite the Japanese public vastly opposing the Games, which were moved from last summer due to the outbreak of COVID-19. However, support is starting to climb as athletes begin to arrive and the vaccine rollout program in the country progresses.

  Suffice to say, these Olympians should probably hold onto these condoms because of a shortage that has materialized since the virus pandemic disrupted global supply chains. But again, super horny athletes piled into the Olympic village may otherwise suggest that mingling will still happen. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/18/2021 – 21:20

• "This Has To End": California Landlords Call For End To Eviction Moratorium
  “This Has To End”: California Landlords Call For End To Eviction Moratorium

  Authored by Vanessa Serna via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Some California landlords are pleading with state and local governments to end the eviction moratorium on rental properties as planned June 30, rather than extending it.

  

  Dan Faller, founder and chairman of the Apartment Owners Association of California, said some residents have been taking advantage of the moratorium.

  “They’re stealing from apartment owners, and it’s legal,” Faller told The Epoch Times.

  Faller said he was frustrated with tenants using the moratorium as an excuse to avoid paying rent and save money. He gave an example of a young man who told his landlord he was saving money for a house and wouldn’t be paying rent.

  Even with knowledge of tenants taking advantage of the moratorium, landlords are unable to evict them, Faller said.

  “They can’t do anything about it,” he said. “He’ll move out when we have the opportunity to evict him.

  “The big owners have the big buildings; they have enough units that spread it out, and they can stay in business. But it’s the older couple who owns a duplex or a triplex. … They save their money to buy it, and they were counting on it being their retirement, and now the tenants don’t pay.”

  Gov. Gavin Newsom on May 10 announced a plan to repay property owners 100 percent of rent owed from tenants that qualify for rental assistance due to COVID-19. However, more than a month later, Faller said the money hasn’t arrived.

  In a letter addressed to Newsom on June 17, the Apartment Owners Association advocated for the rights of landlords, urging the state to move past rent control regulations.

  “Why are our lifesavings being redistributed to others?” Faller said in the letter. “We cannot afford to cover another family’s living expense. We’ll eventually lose all of our life’s savings. We have already lost a large amount that we will never recover.”

  The letter was also sent to 25 mayors of the state’s largest cities.

  While it’s unclear whether Orange County cities will vote on an emergency eviction moratorium ordinance, the city of Costa Mesa voted to suspend the moratorium in April.

  The Costa Mesa City Council voted in favor of revoking the moratorium on April 6, after City Manager Lori Ann Farrell Harrison said she’s heard from property owners, business owners, and landlords to end the moratorium.

  Harrison said the city was seeing economic improvements at the time, and in removing the moratorium, businesses could receive payments and continue moving forward.

  The ordinance was passed and gave tenants a 120-day period to allow them to pay past-due rent.

  California’s eviction moratorium for renters is set to expire June 30, but some cities and counties are passing emergency ordinances to extend it.

  The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on June 7 extended the city and county’s moratorium on evictions until September. Its ordinance seeks to extend renter protection from evictions, non-payment of rent, and late fees.

  The San Diego County Board of Supervisors on May 4 voted in favor of rent control regulations and the prohibition of evictions for all rental units beginning June 3 and lasting for 60 days.

  Meanwhile, the California Apartment Association (CAA) is leading a grassroots effort to urge lawmakers to reject an eviction moratorium extension.

  “I beg you to please end this … moratorium this June 30,” a housing provider wrote to lawmakers in a statement. “I have three separate tenants that are working and obviously not affected by the COVID situation but decided to take advantage and decided not to pay their rents. This has to end.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/18/2021 – 21:00

• Russian Spy Ship Now Loitering Off North Oahu
  Russian Spy Ship Now Loitering Off North Oahu

  Tensions between the U.S. and Russia are heating up over the Pacific in the last month. 

  To recap, we first noted a Russian Navy surveillance ship parked in international waters off Kauai, an island in the Central Pacific, part of the Hawaiian archipelago, last month. Fast forward to last weekend, and three armed Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptors were scrambled as the Russian Navy conducted a massive war exercise 300 to 500 miles west of the Aloha State. Now, the same Russian spy ship is causing another stir – this time north of Oahu. 

  U.S. Naval Institute News, which was the first to report the ship’s presence last month, loitering in international waters off Kauai, delayed a Missile Defense Agency missile test. According to Honolulu Star-Advertiser, the vessel is a Russian Navy Vishnya-class auxiliary general intelligence ship Kareliya (SSV-535), which was detected this week just north of Oahu. 

  

  “U.S. Indo-Pacific Command is monitoring the Russian vessels operating in international waters in the Western Pacific,” Navy Capt. Mike Kafka, a spokesman for the Oahu-based command, said. “As part of our normal daily operations, we closely track all vessels in the Indo-Pacific area of operations through maritime patrol aircraft, surface ships and joint capabilities.”

  He added that “We operate in accordance with international law of the sea and in the air to ensure that all nations can do the same without fear or contest and in order to secure a free and open Indo-Pacific. As Russia operates within the region, it is expected to do so in accordance with international law.”

  Much of the attention this week has been centered around Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Joe Biden’s meeting in Geneva while the events playing out around Hawaii and in the Pacific, as Russia flexes its naval muscles, go unnoticed by the mainstream media. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/18/2021 – 20:40

• Investigative Issues: An Interview With Donald Trump, Unbowed
  Investigative Issues: An Interview With Donald Trump, Unbowed

  Authored by Ben Weingarten via RealClearInvestigations (emphasis ours),

  In a wide-ranging interview from the corner office atop his eponymous New York City tower last week, an unfiltered Donald Trump showed he has lost none of his edge as he attacked President Biden’s ethics, demanded reparations from China for COVID-19, and advanced his claim that the 2020 election was stolen.

  

  Here are some of the highlights, as the former president held forth on a range of issues in his inimitable style.

  Chinese Influence Over the Bidens, and America

  Trump – whose administration was hobbled by false charges that he was beholden to Russian President Vladimir Putin — asserted that China has American politicians, “especially Biden and the son [Hunter Biden] … wrapped around their finger. They know so much about Biden that’s so illegal … [that the president] can no longer be a person that takes on China because they can blackmail him like nobody’s ever been blackmailed before.”

  “China has tremendous power over the Biden administration because of Biden himself,” Trump added. “There was tremendous money paid to the Biden family – not only China; there were numerous other countries too, and it’s not allowed to be spoken about.”

  Trump did not provide evidence for these claims, although a U.S. Senate committee report on the Biden family’s business dealings raised questions about its involvement with Chinese, Russian, and Ukrainian nationals and entities. Information found on a laptop once owned by Hunter Biden – who is facing a federal investigation into his taxes – has also raised questions about the President Biden’s ties to his son’s questionable affairs.

  “We were doing great with China. I was going to be doing things that would’ve put us on a course that would’ve been forever great, and now we have people – they almost can’t be tough on China because China knows too much about them,” Trump said. “It’s a very sad thing.”

  With respect to the political class more broadly, Trump asserted that “China’s got the strongest lobbying machine you’ve ever seen. … You go to Washington and try and hire somebody to oppose China? Can’t do it. They’ve got everybody.” 

  The 2020 election 

  Trump remains adamant that the results were illegitimate. “You’ve heard the expression that the person who counts the votes is far more important than the candidate, right? I never thought much about it; turned out to be right. It’s a corrupt election and you’ll never hear me say anything else. And they’re vicious. … They go after you for saying it.”

  Although it is widely disputed that any alleged improprieties influenced enough votes to swing the election to him, Trump remains fixated on the mail-in votes that were counted late in the evening on Election Day in many states, eroding a larger-than-expected Election Day turnout by Trump supporters. He presented several charts showing the changes in the presidential vote counts — including those in swing states such as Pennsylvania — as election night wore on into the wee hours of the morning.

  “Our elections are rigged” he said. “People say, ‘Oh, just focus on the future.’ You can’t focus on the future when this happens.”

  Later, the former president asserted: “I don’t believe that a message of defund the police, open borders, sanctuary cities, no freedom of speech … gets 50% of the vote. I think you get 50% because [Democrats] cheat like hell in the elections … and that’s what they want to do to the whole country.”

  Possible Wuhan Lab Leak

  Denounced by Democrats and the media as a racist for blaming China for COVID-19, Trump feels vindicated as evidence emerges suggesting that the virus might have leaked from a Chinese virology lab in Wuhan. But he believes it was unintentional, likely a product of “gross incompetence.” What was intentional, in Trump’s mind, was the decision by Chinese leaders to allow its citizens to travel globally, which spread the pandemic. Trump has called for countries to cancel their debts to China as part of a down payment on a future reparations plan that he suggests ought to total some $10 trillion.

  Trump said COVID-19 has exacted prices and affected history in ways that may be hard to measure. Before the pandemic, he said, he “had a great relationship with” with Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping. But the “China virus killed all of that. … [It] killed a lot of people, it also killed my relationship [with Xi].”

  Boycotting the 2022 China Olympics

  Trump said he would not pull America out of the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing and neighboring Hebei province because it would be “unfair to the athletes.”

  Describing the Olympics as “peanuts,” Trump also suggested that  a boycott would be seen around the world as “sour grapes.”

  “I see it both ways,” he added, “but I would not do that. … You go. You compete. You win.”

  The Border and Central America Policy

  Trump said the Biden administration has “totally lost control” of the U.S.-Mexico border. He also questions the wisdom of the  administration’s plan to provide several billion dollars in aid to the Central American countries from which immigrants are flowing. “I refused to give them money, and their signs [say], ‘We love Trump, Trump won.’ They’re booing [Vice President Kamala Harris].” Meanwhile, “instead of saying we’re not going to pay you, [the Biden administration is] giving them $4 billion.

  “I treated them so tough, and they liked me,” he said, adding that the Biden administration “treats them weakly.”

  The Durham Probe

  Trump asked, rhetorically, about the status of the federal probe into the origins of Russiagate led by Special Counsel John Durham: “Where the hell is Durham? Is that an embarrassment, or what? I wonder if Durham’s ever even going to come out with a report.

  “They have him scared,” Trump continued. “Probably come out with a bad report. When I heard that he was going to come out with a report sometime during the Biden administration, I said, ‘You gotta be kidding.’ It’s a disgrace. In the meantime, we don’t hear anything about him.”

  During the interview, President Trump focused on the success of the candidates he endorsed, and his continued endorsements — while describing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as a “stupid bastard.” Trump also touted his efforts to facilitate vaccine development through Operation Warp Speed and roll it out in short order as perhaps his greatest achievement. He also emphasized his toughness in deal-making with friends and enemies alike.

  Over the course of the more than hourlong session, Trump gave the distinct impression that he is itching to get into the presidential race in 2024. 

  Ben Weingarten is Deputy Editor of RealClearInvestigations. This interview was conducted as part of a book project on U.S.-China policy under the auspices of the Fund for American Studies’ Robert Novak Journalism Fellowships.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/18/2021 – 20:20

• Iran Election Frontrunner Is Under US Sanctions & 3 Of 4 Presidential Candidates Are Hardliners
  Iran Election Frontrunner Is Under US Sanctions & 3 Of 4 Presidential Candidates Are Hardliners

  Iranians are voting nationwide Friday as longtime president Hassan Rouhani – the well-known moderate who negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) – is on his way out after having served his limit of two terms. His time in office will expire on August 3rd. 

  There are widespread reports of much lower than expected turnout even after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei pleaded for people to go to the polls as he cast his vote Friday morning in Tehran. “Each vote counts… come and vote and choose your president,” he said. “This is important for the future of your country.”

  As we detailed earlier current head of the judiciary ultraconservative Ebrahim Raisi – also seen as a close ally of Khamenei – is favored to win. Low turnout is expected to help him, particularly after years of sanctions have resulted in widespread voter apathy, extreme economic hardship, and continued pandemic fears – seen also as factors keeping people at home. 

  

  “I urge everyone with any political view to vote,” Raisi declared Friday after casting his ballot. “Our people’s grievances over shortcomings are real, but if it is the reason for not participating, then it is wrong.” Ironically Raisi, who will likely be the next leader of the Islamic Republic, is currently under US sanctions.

  A BBC profile of the current remaining four candidates for the Iranian presidency- after three dropped out on Thursday – also helps add context to current accusations coming from the West that this election is “rigged” in favor of hardliners:

  “Whether I vote or not, someone has already been elected,” a Tehran shopkeeper was quoted by AFP news agency as saying. “They organize the elections for the media.”

  Another, named as Vahid, a woodcraft teacher in the city, told Reuters he would vote “because my leader [Ayatollah Khamenei] wants me to”.

  The elections coincide with the latest round of talks in Vienna aimed at reviving the accord, which saw Iran agree to limit its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.

  Almost 600 hopefuls, including 40 women, registered for the election.

  But in the end only seven men were approved last month by the 12 jurists and theologians on the hardline Guardian Council, an unelected body that has the ultimate decision with regard to candidates’ qualifications.

  Given that the final candidates were filtered through the Islamic conservative Guardian Council, the only candidate remaining that’s widely seen as “moderate” is 64-year old Abdolnaser Hemmati, who has been governor of the Central Bank of Iran since 2018.

  Ebrahim Raisi, a senior cleric and the current chief justice of Iran, is predicted to win the presidency after the country’s Guardian Council barred most reformist candidates from running in the electionhttps://t.co/INvBfPjb5x

  — Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) June 18, 2021

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

  The other two candidates which are seen as having much less name recognition, Mohsen Rezai and Amirhossein Qazizadeh Hashemi, are both hardliners.

  Importantly, a Raisi victory (now looking very likely) could bring the restored JCPOA nuclear deal into further doubt. The Ayatollah previously warned that Iran would not tolerate negotiations “dragging on” – however a mitigating factor is likely to be the US showing signs that it’s ready to drop or relax sanctions. 

  Iran elections:

  59 million Iranians are entitled to vote
  The ultraconservative party already pegged to “win”
  “Polling and analysts” put hard-line judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi as the dominant front-runner https://t.co/01utVLavqJ

  — Tracy (𝕮𝖍𝖎) (@chigrl) June 18, 2021

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  The IAEA this week stated that “Everyone knows that, at this point, it will be necessary to wait for the new Iranian government” before a deal can be finalized in Vienna.

  

  Meanwhile the White House reportedly wants to see a Vienna deal reached prior to the next Iranian president taking office, according to Axios. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/18/2021 – 20:00

• Is There A Silver Lining In The PC Woke Snowflake Cancel Culture?
  Is There A Silver Lining In The PC Woke Snowflake Cancel Culture?

  Authored by Walter Block via InternationalMan.com,

  Optimists are always looking for silver linings in dark clouds. Can any such thing be discerned in our present cultural revolution of politically correct virtue signaling wokeism?

  

  First, let us consider, well, briefly mention, the clouds.

  • California is reducing mathematics studies because this discipline has a disparate impact on subcategories of its student population.

  • Women are now welcomed in the U.S. military even though they cannot pass the previously established tests of physical ability. Due to disparate results, these exams have been modified; that is, weakened.

  • Asian Americans must deal with a strict upper limit in admissions to such prestigious universities as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, no matter that their abilities predict great success than other ethnic groups.

  • No longer is admission to prestigious centers of learning such as the Bronx High School of Science based on examinations. Disparate impact once again raises its ugly head.

  Where can any silver lining be perceived in this cultural morass, of which the above instances are the merest tip of the proverbial iceberg? Do not these phenomena not weaken our country in all sorts of ways, physically, psychologically, emotionally, intellectually? Do they not set up all sorts of divisiveness, where a certain gender and several ethnic groups feel they are being victimized in a myriad of ways?

  Yes, that is precisely the point. When looked at from one perspective, these indeed look like dire consequences. But when seen from a different viewpoint, they can appear to be benevolent.

  Do you know those optical illusions where from one perspective, a drawing looks like one thing, from another, something entirely different? Something of the same sort is occurring in this case.

  Pray tell, then, from what viewpoint could the weakening of our country possibly look like a good idea?

  It is from the point of view of foreign policy that is from where. Now, to be sure, in the perspective of many people, warmongers, and such, U.S. intervention in national affairs has been an unmitigated success. But in the viewpoint of others, American adventurism, all around the third rock from the Sun, has been a disaster.

  Consider the following:

  • The U.S. lost the war in Viet Nam, an area where it had no business occupying in the first place. Vast numbers of innocents perished as a result.

  • The U.S. has spent almost 20 years in Afghanistan and will now suffer an ignominious departure; again, another loss, with great loss of life.

  • The U.S. has some 800 military bases in roughly 130 countries (there are only a few more than 200 in the entire world, so this comprises a majority). Thus, whenever any difficulties arise anywhere globally, the U.S. is involved, willy-nilly.

  • The U.S. has supported military dictatorships the world over, worsening conditions for millions of innocent people; examples are too numerous to mention

  • The U.S. has intervened in the internal affairs of numerous nations, again too many to mention, much to the deterioration of these client states.

  If you think that the U.S. has been a force for good, then there is no silver lining in its weakening, intellectually, militarily, economically. However, if it is your opinion that this experience has been a disaster for this country and numerous other nations, then its waning abilities in these areas, due to our own cultural revolution, indeed constitutes a silver lining.

  *  *  *

  The wave of political correctness and liberal group-think has taken the US by storm. The effort to silence opposing viewpoints and free speech will continue to accelerate. That’s why Doug Casey has prepared a timely video on surviving this modern American trend. In it Doug exposes the lies and mainstream bias that’s poisoning America… Click here to watch it now.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/18/2021 – 19:40

• Biden Orders Major Reversal Of Trump's Missile Battery Build-Up In Gulf
  Biden Orders Major Reversal Of Trump’s Missile Battery Build-Up In Gulf

  A major “realignment” of US defense priorities is resulting in a new extended drawdown of troops, aircraft, and anti-aircraft missiles from the Middle East, The Wall Street journal says in a new report, especially a prior missile battery build-up under Trump in Saudi Arabia.

  “The Pentagon is pulling approximately eight Patriot antimissile batteries from countries including Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, according to officials,” the report details. “Another antimissile system known as a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or Thaad system, is being withdrawn from Saudi Arabia, and jet fighter squadrons assigned to the region are being reduced, those officials said.”

  

  Early this month the Saudi crown prince was informed of the reduction of equipment and personnel on Saudi soil in a phone call by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin – where most of the military hardware is being pulled from. The prior Trump administration had begun sending tons of additional hardware there following the September 2019 drone and missile attack on the Saudi Aramco oil processing facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais in eastern Saudi Arabia.

  Simultaneously the ongoing drawdown from Afghanistan is said to be well over half complete, also as more troops are expected to depart Iraq.  

  US officials told WSJ that the move reflects a Biden administration belief that Iran is no longer the dominating major threat to US security interests in the region:

  A senior defense official said the equipment withdrawals amount to a return to a more traditional level of defense for the region. Under former President Donald Trump, the U.S. actively deployed defensive systems as well as troops, jet fighter squadrons and naval warships to support its maximum pressure campaign against Iran.

  The hardware hasn’t deterred Iran or its proxies from destabilizing actions, officials said. Saudi Arabia also has improved its defensive capabilities, intercepting most rocket attacks on its own, they said.

  For Biden’s Pentagon, China and Russia have become the top priority with Iran taking a far backseat.  This is spelled out in the report as follows: “The Biden administration is sharply reducing the number of U.S. antimissile systems in the Middle East in a major realignment of its military footprint there as it focuses the armed services on challenges from China and Russia, administration officials said.”

  Hawks have long argued, however, that a broader US retreat from the Middle East would cede influence to Russia and its allies, also as proliferation of Russian anti-air systems increases – with the example of Turkey and its receiving S-400s remaining a hot, contentious issue in US-Turkey relations at the moment.

  

  Late this week Axios revealed that the White House is hoping to push through a restored Iranian nuclear deal in Vienna, now amid the 6th round of talks, before the next Iranian president takes office by August 3rd. A restored JCPOA deal would no doubt put the Islamic Republic further down the list of ‘threat priorities’ for the US should it go through. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/18/2021 – 19:20

• Gen. Milley Says China Has "Ways To Go" Before It Can Take Taiwan
  Gen. Milley Says China Has “Ways To Go” Before It Can Take Taiwan

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com, 

  Despite the constant hype around a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley believes China has a “ways to go” when it comes to developing the capability to take the island.

  “My assessment, in terms of capability, I think China has a ways to go to develop the actual, no-kidding capability to conduct military operations to seize through military means the entire island of Taiwan, if they wanted to do that,” Milley told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday.

  

  Milley said he doesn’t believe China will try to take Taiwan anytime soon. “I think there’s little intent right now or motivation to do it militarily. There’s no reason to do it militarily, and they know that. So, I think the probability is probably low, in the immediate, near-term future,” he said.

  Also on Thursday, a State Department official touted the US and Taiwan’s “porcupine” strategy. The idea of the “porcupine” approach is to continue arming Taiwan, so the cost for China to take the island by force becomes greater and greater. This strategy bodes well for the US arms industry.

  Taiwan recently signed contracts worth $1.75 billion for Lockheed Martin-made rocket system and a Boeing-made missile system. The weapons sale was approved by the Trump administration last October.

  The government of Taiwan and US weapons makers fund many of the same think tanks in Washington. For example, the hawkish Center for a New American Security (CNAS) think tank gets funding from most of the US’s major arms makers as well as the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, Taiwan’s de facto embassy in Washington.

  The Pentagon recently finished a 100-day task force review of its China policy that was led by Ely Ratner, a former CNAS employee who was appointed as a special advisor to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, the former Raytheon employee. While most of the task force’s recommendations were kept classified, it’s safe to assume that it called to continue the tradition of arming Taiwan.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/18/2021 – 19:00

• Biden Wants Nuke Deal Done Before Iran's New President Takes Office
  Biden Wants Nuke Deal Done Before Iran’s New President Takes Office

  Now after six rounds of talks in Vienna, hopes for a restored nuclear deal are looking dimmer given the crucial “wild card” issue of Iran’s ongoing presidential election, also as the Ayatollah warned a full month ago that he wouldn’t wouldn’t let the talks “drag on” toward no definite rapid end goal.

  Iranians took to the polls Friday in the nationwide vote; however, turnout was widely reported as much lower than expected as seven candidates on Thursday had been whittled down to four – with three out of the four being considered Islamic hardliners. The increasing likelihood of an Ebrahim Raisi victory has Washington very worried. The 60-year old head of Iran’s judiciary is considered the most hardline candidate, and also a close political ally of Ayatollah Khamenei. 

  According to new reporting in Axios on Friday, the Biden White House is pushing to finalize a deal before a new president takes office. Current President Hassan Rouhani’s term ends August 3rd, giving negotiators in Vienna just a matter of weeks.

  

  Should a new – especially hardline – president take office if talks are sill to be dragging on later into summer, it becomes much more likely that a new leader in Tehran would abandon the talks. Citing a US administration official, Axios writes:

  The official said it would be “concerning” if talks dragged on into early August, when Iran’s transition is due to take place. “If we don’t have a deal before a new government is formed, I think that would raise serious questions about how achievable it’s going to be,” the official said.

  Of note is that “Analysts and some diplomats involved in the negotiations have long said it would be easier to reach a deal with the outgoing administration than with a newly inaugurated government, particularly one led by Raisi,” according to Axios. 

  Here’s more of what the unnamed US official had to say, per the report:

  • “We don’t have infinite time to get this done. So I think we’ll know — I don’t want to give a timeline — but we’ll know it when time has run up and we’ve concluded that it can’t reached within a reasonable time,” the official said.
  • “I’m not predicting that,” the official added, noting that Iran was “engaged seriously” and a deal could be reached within a few weeks. But the U.S. does not intend to continue negotiations for months and months, “and I think the Iranians would say the same.”
  • “Our whole view of this, informed by what we’re being told by the Iranians, is that the elections are not a factor, that the decision-making will continue before and after the elections and so things will not be interrupted as a result of the election,” the official said.

  Snr. EU official today : We are now almost finishing the 6th round… Today is presidential elections in #Iran. I think it is important to mention that we are negotiating today normally just like any other day. #IranElection2021 #JCPOA https://t.co/5oDfoD5Fe6

  — Hannahkaviani هانا کاویانی (@Hannahkaviani) June 18, 2021

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

  Interestingly the IAEA is pushing for the opposite, with IAEA chief Rafael Grossi saying in an interview days ago with an Italian daily paper that “Everyone knows that, at this point, it will be necessary to wait for the new Iranian government.”

  A month ago, it was the Iranian side issuing overly-optimistic reports that a deal would be reached prior to the new Iranian president being sworn into office. Crucially Rouhani is considered a moderate, also given he was the original Iranian leader who helped broker the 2015 JCPOA. The hardline faction in Iranian politics long viewed any attempts to negotiate a deal with the West with deep suspicions, which were renewed after in May 2018 Trump dropped US participation in the deal and began slapping on sanctions. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/18/2021 – 18:40

• IRS Denies Tax-Exemption To Texas Religious Group Because Prayer, Bible Reading Boost the Republican Party
  IRS Denies Tax-Exemption To Texas Religious Group Because Prayer, Bible Reading Boost the Republican Party

  Authored by Mark Tapscott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  An IRS official denied tax-exempt status to a Texas group that encourages church members to pray for state and national leaders regardless of their party affiliation because it benefits “the private interests of the [Republican] Party.”

  “You do not qualify as an organization described in IRS Section 501(c)(3). You engage in prohibited political campaign intervention,” wrote Stephen A. Martin, Director of the IRS Office of Exempt Organizations Rulings and Agreements in a May 18 letter (pdf) to Christians Engaged, the Garland, Texas-based prayer group recognized by Texas officials as tax-exempt.

  “You are also not operated exclusively for one or more exempt purposes within the meaning of Section 50l (c)(3), because you operate for a substantial non-exempt private purpose and for the private interests of the D party,” Martin said.

  

  The “D party” is a reference to the Republican Party, according to a novel “Legend” Martin provided at the top of his letter to the Texas Group.

  Martin’s letter was made public Wednesday by the First Liberty Institute, a Plano, Texas-based public interest law firm that specializes in religious freedom litigation.

  Martin also noted that the group’s activities “educate believers on national issues that are central to their belief in the Bible as the inerrant Word of God,” Martin explained.

  “Specifically, you educate Christians on what the Bible says in areas where they can be instrumental, including the areas of sanctity of life, the definition of marriage, biblical justice, freedom of speech, defense, and borders and immigration, U.S. and Israel relations,” he said.

  “The Bible teachings are typically affiliated with the D party and candidates. This disqualifies you from exemption under lRS Section 50I(c)(3),” he said.

  Christians Engaged President Bunni Pounds said in a statement issued by the First Liberty Institute that “we just want to encourage more people to vote and participate in the political process.  How can anyone be against that?”

  First Liberty Institute is appealing Martin’s decision on behalf of Christians Engaged.

  “The IRS states in an official letter that Biblical values are exclusively Republican. That might be news to President Joe Biden, who is often described as basing his political ideology on his religious beliefs,” said First Liberty Institute Counsel Lea Patterson in the statement.

  “Only a politicized IRS could see Americans who pray for their nation, vote in every election, and work to engage others in the political process as a threat. The IRS violated its own regulations in denying tax exempt status because Christians Engaged teaches biblical values.”

  In the appeal letter, First Liberty said, “By finding that Christians Engaged does not meet the operational test, Director Martin errs in three ways 1) he invents a nonexistent requirement that exempt organizations be neutral on public policy issues; 2) he incorrectly concludes that Christians Engaged primarily serves private, nonexempt purposes rather than public, exempt purposes because he thinks its beliefs overlap with the Republican Party’s policy positions; and 3) he violates the First Amendment’s Free Speech, and Free Exercise, and Establishment clauses by engaging in both viewpoint discrimination and religious discrimination.”

  Martin’s letter and decision are certain to ignite a new firestorm of protests among congressional Republicans, conservative and religious freedom advocacy groups, and civil liberties defenders, as happened during President Barack Obama’s Oval Office tenure.

  The IRS under Obama singled out hundreds of conservative, Tea Party, and evangelical tax-exemption applicants for special treatment that included long delays and multiple requests for detailed information about the beliefs and activities of officials associated with the groups.

  Multiple lawsuits were filed against the IRS by such groups and the Department of Justice (DOJ) agreed in two separate settlements to compensate them for undisclosed amounts.

  The DOJ also acknowledged that the IRS had targeted the groups on the basis of their political and religious activities and beliefs for “heightened scrutiny and inordinate delays.”

  “The act of praying for our country and our leaders is about the most non-partisan and patriotic thing that Americans can do. Millions of citizens do it every day,” Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) told The Epoch Times Wednesday.

  “The IRS was wrong to deny tax exempt status based on the false belief that the Bible somehow only belongs to one political party. The IRS still has a long way to go to ensure religious liberty for all,” Budd added.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/18/2021 – 18:20

• Family Of Top Biden Officials Find Jobs Across Administration Despite 'No Nepotism' Pledge
  Family Of Top Biden Officials Find Jobs Across Administration Despite ‘No Nepotism’ Pledge

  During his tenure in office, President Trump faced incessant criticism from the media for hiring family members – including his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner – and placing friends in positions of authority within his administration.

  But just as President Joe Biden has ripped off many aspects of Trump’s “America First” foreign policy and rhetoric, top officials in his administration have shown little compunction about hiring family members, despite Biden’s promise that nepotism wouldn’t be a feature of his administration.

  

  Steve Ricchetti

  According to a Washington Post report from Friday, during the first few months of Biden’s presidency, at least five children of his top aides have secured coveted jobs in the new administration. They include two sons and a daughter of a White House counselor, the daughter of a deputy White House chief of staff, and the daughter of Biden’s director of presidential personnel. The pattern continued this week when the Treasury Department announced that it had hired JJ Ricchetti, son of Biden counselor Steve Ricchetti.

  A handful of ethics experts told WaPo that it was “disappointing” to see the Biden Administration embrace cronyism, just like most of his predecessors.

  “While it may not be as bad as appointing your son or daughter to a top government post as Trump did with Jared and Ivanka, it is still bad,” said Walter Shaub, who served as director of the Office of Government Ethics from 2013-2017. “‘Not as bad as Trump’ cannot be the new standard.”

  Other relatives of top Biden aides also have secured high-level administration jobs or nominations, including the wife of White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain and the sister of White House press secretary Jen Psaki.

  Federal law generally prohibits government officials from directly hiring, or encouraging the hiring, of close relatives, however there is no evidence that any of the Biden administration officials named above have directly intervened in the process, according to WaPo. The White House maintains that everyone in the administration has been well-qualified for their positions.

  “The president has instituted the highest ethical standards of anyone to ever hold this office,” deputy White House press secretary Andrew Bates said. “And he’s proud to have staffed the most diverse administration in American history with well-qualified public servants who reflect his values.”

  But the hiring of senior aides’ children remains alarming to ethics experts, because it suggests that people with ties to high-ranking public servants might be getting an advantage over similarly qualified people.

  “In a country that had just come through a pandemic, how can these children of political appointees be the only people who are qualified for employment?” Shaub said.

  Elsewhere in the federal bureaucracy, some of the “more experienced” relatives of top officials hold other higher-level jobs.

  Steve Ricchetti’s son Daniel Ricchetti is a senior adviser in the office of the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. He previously worked for seven years on the staff of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, most recently as a policy analyst.

  Cathy Russell, the director of presidential personnel in the White House, has a daughter, Sarah Donilon, who graduated college in 2019 and works in the White House National Security Council. Sarah Donilon’s uncle, Mike Donilon, is a senior adviser to Biden in the White House. Russell’s office does not oversee hiring at the White House or NSC, according to a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

  The official said those hired were well-qualified applicants and cited examples of how their experience levels were commensurate with some of their predecessors.

  Sarah Donilon, for example, worked as a McCain Institute Fellow with Kurt Campbell, the National Security Council coordinator for the Indo Pacific, with whom she now works in the White House, the White House official said. The official also said the Biden administration places a priority on hiring former campaign volunteers and that J.J. Ricchetti is a former volunteer. Julia Reed earned praise from Biden aides for her work on the advance staff of his presidential campaign.

  Biden signed an executive order on his first day in office implementing ethics rules that went further than the Obama administration’s policies. But nothing in the regulations bars the administration from hiring people who are related to White House officials. As WaPo adds, for Biden, family has been central to his decades-long political ascent. His sister, Valerie Biden Owens, has been perhaps his most influential aide, managing his campaigns for local, state and national office over the years. Additionally, the tragic deaths of his wife and infant daughter in a 1972 car crash, and his son Beau, who succumbed to brain cancer in 2015, have become core pieces of his political identity.

  But just because Hunter Biden doesn’t have an office in the West Wing doesn’t mean Biden didn’t mislead the public about the role family members of senior officials would play in his administration.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/18/2021 – 18:00

• Questions About the FBI's Role In 1/6 Are Mocked Because The FBI Shapes Liberal Corporate Media
  Questions About the FBI’s Role In 1/6 Are Mocked Because The FBI Shapes Liberal Corporate Media

  Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com,

  The axis of liberal media outlets and their allied activist groups — CNN, NBC News, The Washington Post, Media Matters — are in an angry uproar over a recent report questioning the foreknowledge and involvement of the FBI in the January 6 Capitol riot. As soon as that new report was published on Monday, a consensus instantly emerged in these liberal media precincts that this is an unhinged, ignorant and insane conspiracy theory that deserves no consideration.

  

  The original report, published by Revolver News and then amplified by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, documented ample evidence of FBI infiltration of the three key groups at the center of the 1/6 investigation — the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and the Three Percenters — and noted how many alleged riot leaders from these groups have not yet been indicted. While low-level protesters have been aggressively charged with major felonies and held without bail, many of the alleged plot leaders have thus far been shielded from charges.

  The implications of these facts are obvious. It seems extremely likely that the FBI had numerous ways to know of any organized plots regarding the January 6 riot (just as the U.S. intelligence community, by its own admission, had ample advanced clues of the 9/11 attack but, according to their excuse, tragically failed to “connect the dots”). There is no doubt that the FBI has infiltrated at least some if not all of these groups — which it has been warning for years pose a grave national security threat — with informants and/or undercover spies. It is known that Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio has served as an FBI informant in the past, and the disrupted 2020 plot by Three Percenters members to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) was shaped and driven by what The Wall Street Journal reported were the FBI’s “undercover agents and confidential informants.”

  

  What would be shocking and strange is not if the FBI had embedded informants and other infiltrators in the groups planning the January 6 Capitol riot. What would be shocking and strange — bizarre and inexplicable — is if the FBI did not have those groups under tight control. And yet the suggestion that FBI informants may have played some role in the planning of the January 6 riot was instantly depicted as something akin to, say, 9/11 truth theories or questions about the CIA’s role in JFK’s assassination or, until a few weeks ago, the COVID lab-leak theory: as something that, from the perspective of Respectable Serious Circles, only a barely-sane, tin-foil-hat-wearing lunatic would even entertain.

  This reaction is particularly confounding given how often the FBI did exactly this during the first War on Terror, and how commonplace discussions of this tactic were in mainstream liberal circles. Over the last decade, I reported on countless cases for The Guardian and The Intercept where the FBI targeted some young American Muslims they viewed as easily manipulated — due to financial distress, emotional problems, or both — and then deployed informants and undercover agents to dupe them into agreeing to join terrorist plots that had been created, designed and funded by the FBI itself, only to then congratulate themselves for breaking up the plot which they themselves initiated. As I asked in one headline about a particularly egregious entrapment case: “Why Does the FBI Have to Manufacture its Own Plots if Terrorism and ISIS Are Such Grave Threats?”

  In 2011, Mother Jones published an outstanding, lengthy investigation by reporter Trevor Aaronson, entitled “The Informations,” which asked: “The FBI has built a massive network of spies to prevent another domestic attack. But are they busting terrorist plots—or leading them?” Aaronson covered numerous similar cases for The Intercept where the FBI designed, directed and even funded the terror plots and other criminal rings they then boasted of disrupting. A widely praised TEDTalk by Aaronson, which, in the words of organizers, “reveals a disturbing FBI practice that breeds terrorist plots by exploiting Muslim-Americans with mental health problems,” featured this central claim: “There’s an organization responsible for more terrorism plots in the United States than al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab and ISIS combined: The FBI.”

  

  So far from being some warped conspiracy theory, that the FBI purposely targets vulnerable people and infiltrates groups in order to create attacks and direct targets to engage in them is indisputably true, well established, and a commonly reported fact in mainstream liberal media. Exactly that has been happening for decades.

  ---

  Yet the DNC-loyal sector of the corporate media reacted to the Revolver News article and Carlson’s segment which raised these questions as though they were positing something that no sentient being could possibly regard as viable. CNN — which spent years leading its viewers to believe that the Kremlin controlled the U.S. Government through sexual and financial blackmail — published what they labeled a “fact-check” that denounced this as a “haywire theory” that “is nothing more than a conspiratorial web of unproven claims, half-truths and inaccurate drivel about perceived bombshells in court filings.”

  As it usually does, The Washington Post — which told Americans that Russians had invaded the U.S. electricity grid and that a huge army of Kremlin-loyal American writers was shaping our discourse — echoed the instant CNN/liberal consensus by mocking it as “Tucker Carlson’s wild, baseless theory,” claiming that “it’s the kind of suggestion journalists in other organizations would quite possibly be fired for if they sought to push it nearly as hard.” The standard liberal blob of HuffPost/ DailyBeast/ BusinessInsider all recited from the herd script. “A laughable conspiracy theory,” chortled The Huffington Post, who has done more to help the FBI find citizens allegedly at the Capitol riot than any local law enforcement agency.

  

  What accounts for this furious liberal #Resistance to questioning the FBI’s role in the January 6 riot and asking whether there are vital facts that are being concealed? There was one minor analytical flaw in both the Revolver News article and Carlson segment that they seized on by pretending that it was central to the question rather than what it was: a completely ancillary distraction. It is true that it is highly unlikely, probably close to impossible, that the FBI would refer to someone they were directing or collaborating with as an “unindicted co-conspirator” because, by definition, someone working at the behest of the FBI would not be a “conspirator” in a plot since they would lack the necessary intent to forward that plot (their intent, instead, is to tell the FBI what is being plotted). CNN hauled out some career federal prosecutor and current corporate lawyer, their “Senior Legal Analyst” Elie Honig, to spend five minutes pretending that this single-handedly destroys the case.

  But rather than some devastating theory-destroying point, this is ultimately irrelevant to the evidence marshaled by Revolver News. While it is true that “unindicted co-conspirator” almost certainly does not refer to FBI informants or operatives, the numerous references to Person-1, Person-2, etc. very well could [indeed, in the case of the FBI-directed plot to kidnap Gov. Whitmer, CHS-1, CHS-2, etc. (confidential human source) is how the FBI informants driving that plot were referenced]. These are common tactics that the FBI uses to reference the acts of their own unindicted informants without revealing their identity. And while some of the unnamed-but-referenced people in the charging documents are known (one is the spouse one of those charged), several are not.

  The questions raised by the Revolver News reporting, which none of these smug FBI defenders and guardians of the liberal consensus can answer, remain:

  • How is it remotely credible that the FBI did not have informants in these three groups that they have been identifying as major threats for years, especially given the reporting that the leader of the Proud Boys — conveniently arrested the day before January 6 — was an FBI informant in the past, along with the confirmed reporting that the FBI had multiple informants in the Michigan Three Percenters case?

  • Why are low-level protesters being charged with major crimes while the alleged organizers of this riot and the leaders of these groups have not been?

  • Why are enormous amounts of video surveillance footage from January 6 still being concealed?

  • What happened to the alleged planting of pipe bombs near the Capitol?

  • Why did the FBI not take more aggressive action given the once-denied but now-confirmed fact that the social media platform Parler sent the FBI advanced warnings of specific plots to use violence at the Capitol?

  A big deal:@RepMaloney: “Committee has obtained docs showing that … Parler sent the FBI evidence of planned violence in DC on January 6. Parlor referred this content to FBI for investigation OVER 50 TIMES” including “specific threats of violence being planned at the Capitol.” pic.twitter.com/67ZsMxyPJn

  — Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) June 15, 2021

   

  If the FBI had advanced knowledge of what was being plotted yet did nothing to stop the attack, it raises numerous possibilities about why that is. It could be that they just had yet another “intelligence failure” of the kind that they claimed caused them to miss the 9/11 attack and therefore need massive new surveillance authorities, budget increases, and new Patriot-Act-type laws to fix it. It could be that they allowed the riot to happen because they did not take it seriously enough or because some of them supported the cause behind it, or because they realized that there would be benefits to the security state if it happened. Or it could be that they were using those operatives under their control to plot with, direct, and drive the attack — as they have done so many times in the past — and allowed it to happen out of either negligence or intent.

  Nobody is claiming to know the answers to those questions, including Revolver News, Carlson, or anyone else. Instead, they are doing the work of actual journalists — pointing out the gaping holes in the public record about what we do and do not know about an event that is being exploited to launch a new domestic War on Terror, prompt massive new police and security state spending, and empower and justify new domestic surveillance and censorship authorities. Anyone not asking these questions or, worse, trying to delegitmize them, is a propagandist and has no business calling themselves a journalist.

  ---

  But why does this description apply to so many in the undifferentiated liberal corporate media blob, the employees who work for media corporations and barely pretend any longer to conceal their DNC-supporting posture? One answer is that, as a result of the Trump years, they now revere security state institutions like the FBI and CIA, and are thus reflexively angered by suggestion that these agencies may be less than truthful in their statements and less than honorable in their conduct:

  

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsBut the primary reason is that their newsrooms are filled with former FBI operatives, CIA agents, and other former employees of the security state. CNN has more FBI agents and federal prosecutors working for it than anyone outside of the J. Edgar Hoover FBI headquarters in Washington. When they go to analyze any matters involving the FBI, they rely on career FBI agents and officials to tell them what to think. And you’ll never guess what these FBI operatives tell them: trust the FBI; only malicious conspiracists wonder if the FBI is lying and has been engaged in treachery; those who malign the FBI are liars. Here is just one of CNN’s countless FBI operatives doing her job:

  

  

  In virtually every segment that they have done since the Revolver News article was published, CNN, in order to angrily mock questions about the FBI, brings on FBI officials like former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe — who got caught lying to the FBI and barely escaped prosecution for it — to insist that the honorable agency would never do any such thing:

  CHRIS CUOMO: Let’s talk about what is true, and not true, in this scenario. Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe.

  “Person one, person two, unindicted co-conspirator, those are you guys. Those are – those are Feds, undercover.” What’s the reality?

  ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST, FORMER DEPUTY DIRECTOR, FBI: The reality, Chris, is that we’re going to – we’re going to go into, very briefly, a little law lesson here, because I am convinced that your viewers are smarter than Tucker Carlson.

  Just think about a purported news outlet saying this: Let’s talk about what is true, and not true, in this scenario. Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe.

  While MSNBC prefers ex-CIA officials like John Brennan, CNN is practically overrun with former FBI officials, agents and operatives. But NBC News is also the home to FBI caricatures like this:

  

  Look at these FBI cartoons these media corporations employ. Then they haul them out to tell everyone that only malignant conspiracists and insane losers would ponder the possibility that the FBI was engaged in deceit or other forms of manipulation regarding an event that has taken on central importance in their quest for more power and money. And their liberal viewers and the liberal journalists who watch these networks nod in agreement because they think they are hearing from the real, honest experts: the security state agents they have been trained to revere.

  But all the mockery in the world does not make these questions disappear. Of course the FBI was infiltrating the groups they claim were behind these attacks. There may be good reasons why that did not enable the FBI to stop this riot or why they have not yet indicted these ringleaders. But those answers are not yet known. And gullible conspiracists are not the ones who want answers to these questions but, instead, are the ones doing everything possible to protect the FBI from having to provide them.

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  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 06/18/2021 – 17:40

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