May 19

Today’s News 19th May 2021

  • "Tough On Russia" Biden Blinks – Waives Sanctions On Company Overseeing Nord Stream 2 Pipeline
    “Tough On Russia” Biden Blinks – Waives Sanctions On Company Overseeing Nord Stream 2 Pipeline

    In his continuing drive to show that he’s getting “tough” on Russia, Biden has blinked. Axios’ Jonathan Swan reports a major development Tuesday related to Washington’s push to prevent the Russia-Germany natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 from being completed: the US administration has moved to waive previously imposed sanctions on the company overseeing construction of the NS2, as well as its CEO. So much for the big “threat” to Europe’s “energy security” – as the refrain has been endlessly for years…

    Swan writes, “The decision indicates the Biden administration is not willing to compromise its relationship with Germany over this pipeline, and underscores the difficulties President Biden faces in matching actions to rhetoric on a tougher approach to Russia.”

    Image: Ria Novosti/EPA

    While the State Department still considers the corporate entity – Nord Stream 2 AG and CEO Matthias Warnig (who is said to be close to Putin) – to be engaged in “sanctionable activity”, it now plans to waive the implementation of the sanctions, Axios’ sources say.

    Currently the “controversial” pipeline which reaching back into the Trump administration saw US officials accuse the Kremlin of attempting to “punish” Ukraine by denying it vital gas transit fees is estimated to be at 95% completion.

    Aggressive Trump-era sanctions did little to actually thwart construction even after major Swiss and other European companies bowed out under the pressure, given Russian energy giant Gazprom vowed to push through with the final construction by outfitting additional of its vessels as pipelaying ships. 

    “This planned move also sets up a bizarre situation in which the Biden administration will be sanctioning ships involved in the building of Nord Stream 2 but refusing to sanction the actual company in charge of the project,” Axios continues.

    And again this clearly contradicts the longtime US and Biden administration position that NS2 constitutes a “threat” to Europe’s energy security – this despite leading EU member Germany certainly not seeing it that way. The driving fear has remained that those nefarious Russians! are always looking for major leverage over Europe and the West, and the joint pipeline will give them plenty of that.

    * * * 

    It didn’t take long at all for the Russia hawks to get raging angry.

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    And imagine if guess who had gone this “soft” on Russia…

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 02:45

  • EU Has A New Crisis… A Frenchman Named Barnier Who Has Held It Hostage
    EU Has A New Crisis… A Frenchman Named Barnier Who Has Held It Hostage

    Authored by Martin Jay via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Curiously, it might well be Michel Bernier who emerges as a veiled presidential anti-EU runner in France’s presidential elections in 2022 as his latest whacky idea could be the demise of the entire project.

    Hardly a day passes since Brexit, when the EU doesn’t appear to be in some kind of political tailspin. The constant petulant attacks on the UK by both France and Brussels, which only make the EU look like a really sour loser, are trumped by the relentless comical calamity of a vaccine crisis.

    Trade wars with the EU is probably what the hardline Brexiteers in the cabinet of Boris Johnson were expecting all along. A whole new crisis of confidence, which EU folk think will push non-Eurozone countries in the EU towards their own exit strategies, while even threatening the giants themselves like France, is happening. And at quite some speed.

    Consequently the highest echelons of the EU itself are panicking and are desperate for a solution.

    On the 8th of May, the EU launched a grandiose new talkshop which aims to find a roadmap for the EU itself. Given that the EU needs to find a new identity it is perhaps worrying enough, but we shouldn’t forget the last time it did this, exactly twenty years ago, when it was called The European Convention, and it failed. Under the auspices of Valerie Giscard d’Estaing, the only French President refused membership of the freemasons due to him faking his own aristocratic credentials, it imploded under a cloud of graft allegations about the former French president and his dodgy expenses while in the Belgian capital.

    What finally did emerge was a new European Constitution but which in the end didn’t make it over the line after French and Dutch referendums.

    Take more power

    And now Brussels is at it again. Few could argue with its argument that it has a new pile of problems which need to be tackled head on. But the hardcore federalist mentality in the Belgian capital will always argue that the way out of the EU’s problems is always to take more power. This time around, this jaded mindset though met with considerable opposition from a dozen EU member states who wanted the whole conference to be played down and made distinctly low key. In the end, they couldn’t even agree on a former president to run the whole circus. Macron would have been an obvious choice but curiously he was not the man of the moment

    Perhaps some in the EU believe that Macron’s inept anti Brexit stunts and blinded dogma that the EU with more power (in particular around the world) is more part of the problem rather than the solution.

    The EU has massive problems which stem from its own diabolical management and growing discontent from smaller member states who previously used Britain’s power to do its bidding. Sure, climate change is a huge subject it needs to grapple. But way more importantly are the economies and immigration policies of its own vanguard member, France.

    Immigration both in Germany and France has come with huge political consequences on the elite and how they govern. While Germany can weather the storm on the impact of almost 1 million Syrian refugees, Macron is showing signs that he is prepared to get tougher on all immigrants simply to stop Marine Le Pen from taking what everyone expects will be huge gains in the first round of the next presidential elections.

    But he stops short of calling the EU’s Schengen policy to be scrapped.

    The 1985 accord, which on paper looks like a great solution to Europeans who want free access to move around Europe but in reality is a nightmare for controlling huge swathes of migrants looking for the best asylum deal they can find.

    Which is why EU darling Michel Barnier, who is planning to stand as a candidate in France’s presidential elections in 2022, has dropped a bombshell both on the EU and France by his latest declaration: he wants a five-year freeze on immigration in France.

    While hacks may argue over whether there is any strong argument that this would help the French economy – some taking the view that it would at least prevent a Le Pen win – others might say that it could help France, but at the EU’s expense. If France can renegotiate its place in the EU immigration deal, then others will follow and the overall implications will be an even bigger crisis for the EU. Critics will say: “If Schengen isn’t working and we can opt out of it, what else should we opt out of?”. It will make the EU look incredibly weak and ineffective. The well worn cliché of the EU being an arbiter of the “free movement of goods, services and people” will have to be downgraded to just goods and services – which many Eurosceptics have argued for years is its best option for long term survival. A trade block. Nothing more, nothing less.

    And then there is even the bigger problem of the widening gap between southern EU member states and Brussels itself. A reworked Schengen – or a scrapped one – will mean that EU member states like Italy will be obliged to contain all of their refugees themselves, rather than allow them to cross the border into other countries in their search for a better deal. That alone, could be the spark which ignites a full-on Eurosceptic momentum in Italy which calls for an exit altogether from the European Union.

    Jobs for the boys

    Combined, the Barnier stunt represents a new nadir for the European Union and its apparatchiks in Brussels. With a radical emergence of far-right parties already threatening to take a majority stake in the next EU elections, lowest ever confidence in the EU in key member states like Italy and Spain and a very real worry that at least one EU heavyweight will follow Britain (watch Denmark, Sweden or the Netherlands), the EU will fall on its knees with a shattered Schengen.

    The end of Schengen could mark the end of the EU as we know it. And all for the political ambitions of Michel Barnier who wants to have his cake and eat it in Brussels. Like any good Europhile, Brussels has its own distinct role to play in giving jobs to the boys and this final act of getting the ultimate job at the EU’s expense is certainly going to set a new precedent; usually the EU gets its main officials from member states as politicians lose their seats and look to their own political party to give them a cosy retirement present in the Belgian capital. But Barnier is doing the opposite. The EU actually propelled him into the media limelight via the Brexit so-called “negotiations” and he’s milking it for all he can get. The huge question in the coming weeks will be how the French press treat him and how Brussels will react to this new storm on the horizon. Now the European Union has a new migraine to add to the headache of Brexit. Its demise is guaranteed if more of the big thinking is to keep on pushing for a bigger power grab. A new European constitution is not the answer if the aggregate of this delusional pontificating is that the EU somehow gets bigger. And there simply isn’t time. Something’s got to be done about Barnier.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 02:00

  • Alliance Of Democracies Summit: The Glass House Where The Power Elite Gather To Throw Stones
    Alliance Of Democracies Summit: The Glass House Where The Power Elite Gather To Throw Stones

    Authored by Alan Macleod via MintPressNews.com,

    The lineup of presidents, generals and CEOs makes it clear that what was stated is effectively the collective view of the world’s elite and a window into their thinking and the debates they are having. What they decide will affect all of us, whether we realize it or not.

    The United States is the nation that most threatens democracy worldwide, far more than Russia or even China. That is the headline finding from a new worldwide poll of 53 countries commissioned by the Alliance of Democracies (AoD). The poll also found that the global public considers rising inequality and the increased power of the super rich to be the greatest threat to liberty and democracy.

    This was likely not the response the Alliance of Democracies wished to hear as it opened its third annual Democracy Summit in Copenhagen this week — precisely because the organization represents the U.S. government and the wealthy elite more generally. Featuring an all-star panel of American officials, Western heads of state and military leaders, this year’s summit was somber in tone and focused on the “urgent need” for Western nations to unite and come up with a “transatlantic response” to counter both Russia and China. To that end, there was talk of building an “Asian NATO” and of further controlling what can be said online, all in the service of defending and upholding democracy from these foes.

    The Alliance of Democracies was founded in 2017 by former Prime Minister of Denmark Anders Fogh Rasmussen. As Secretary General of NATO between 2009 and 2014, he also oversaw the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations, as well as the attack and regime-change operation in Libya, which saw ISIS-affiliated jihadists take control of the country. Together with future President Joe Biden and former Director of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, Rasmussen also founded the Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity (TECI), an AoD body at the forefront of accusing Russia of election meddling in the U.S. Biden was one of the inaugural speakers at the first Democracy Summit in 2018.

    The great and the good — including presidents, journalists and business magnates — gathered both in person and virtually to discuss the supposed threats to the democratic order, with Rasmussen in particular pushing for a more formal military, political and economic alliance among the world’s “democracies” against Russia and China. The well-dressed and soft-spoken Dane also introduced lineups of speakers who argued for regime change in states the alliance does not feel are democratic enough for their liking.

    The AoD’s 2021 conference featured a who’s who of the world’s elite representing the public and private sectors and the media

    The Alliance of Democracies is indirectly funded by the United States government through both the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, as well as by the European Endowment for Democracy, Europe’s version of the National Endowment for Democracy. It also takes money from the Atlantic Council, a NATO cutout organization, as well as a host of big tech companies like Microsoft and Facebook. Other key sources of funding include the Taiwanese government, the George W. Bush Institute, and the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, named after the anti-Putin Ukrainian oligarch.

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    Both Rasmussen and then-Vice President Biden were key players in the Western-backed Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in 2014, with Biden himself traveling to the country, successfully uniting the opposition. Meanwhile, Rasmussen, as head of NATO, developed a “Readiness Action Plan” for the nation, drastically ramping up tensions, as well as the likelihood of a hot war. Soon after, Rasmussen was appointed as a formal advisor to the new anti-Moscow president, Petro Poroshenko. Together, Biden and Rasmussen set up TECI’s Ukraine task force, dedicated, in their own words, “to exposing foreign [i.e., Russian] meddling in Ukraine’s Presidential and Parliamentary Elections.” Needless to say, they did not see their own actions as outside interference.

    Yellow peril

    While Russia remains a target, the Alliance of Democracy’s attention this year was chiefly devoted to China and ways to counter the Asian powerhouse’s rise. Virtually every panel mentioned Beijing, and many were directed towards it entirely.

    In a panel entitled “Protecting Democracy from Authoritarianism: Views from the Asia Pacific,” longtime speechwriter for the British Crown and European Commision turned Politico Senior Editor Ryan Heath described the current era as a global “battle between democracy and [Chinese] authoritarianism.” Former Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani was of a similar opinion, calling for an all-out economic war against Beijing, suggesting Japan and other countries could help Australia cut itself off from China economically by assisting in the import substitution of Chinese goods.

    Later, Heath asked Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Donald Trump’s national security advisor, what he saw was the number one threat to the world and to democracy. McMaster responded, “It is certainly the Chinese Communist Party, I would put that at the very top.” “The whole world’s problem is China’s promotion of its authoritarian mercantilist model, its stifling of human freedom,” he added, accusing China of creating a “technologically enabled Orwellian police state.”

    McMaster, who represented a government that spies on its citizens and even such allies as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, painted China as trying to control the internet and called for a more aggressive strategy of democracy promotion worldwide as a counter to it. “It’s not just an exercise in altruism, it is actually the best way to compete with this very dangerous authoritarian model that China is promoting,” he said.

    If viewers were expecting Heath to push back on the idea that the U.S. had a long history of altruistic interventions, they were disappointed. In fact, Heath went further, floating the idea of creating “an Asian NATO” against China and even suggesting that if China “bullies” other nations economically, democratic nations should band together to counter it — invoking the creation of a sort of economic charter akin to NATO’s Article 5, which states that if one NATO member is attacked, it is deemed an attack on all of them.

    China has been the top concern among war planners and policymakers in Washington for some time now. In 2012, President Barack Obama signaled the beginning of this with his “Pivot to Asia” strategy, which entailed winding down U.S. forces in the Middle East in order to redeploy them to the Pacific. Today, there are over 400 American bases encircling China. The military has taken a number of provocative steps in recent months, including conducting war games in the South China Sea with Beijing’s adversaries. In July, the U.S.S. Peralta sailed to within 41 nautical miles of the coastal megacity of Shanghai, while in December the Navy flew nuclear bombers over Chinese ships near Hainan Island.

    In February the Atlantic Council, the NATO think tank that sponsors the Alliance of Democracies, released an anonymous, 26,000-word study advising President Biden to draw a number of red lines around China that, if broken, should result in a military response. These included cyber attacks or attempts to further its control of Taiwan. Others have suggested conducting an extensive psychological war against China, including publishing “Taiwanese Tom Clancy” novels designed to paint China as an aggressor and demoralize its citizens with tales of defeat. A recent Director of National Intelligence report notes that China and its supposed “push for global power” represent an “unparalleled priority,” for the U.S., something that is invoking the “very real possibility” of a hot war, according to Admiral Charles A. Richard, the head of Strategic Command.

    The resentment of China in Washington is being consciously stoked by the independence-minded government of Taiwan. A recent MintPress study found that the Taiwanese embassy is spending millions of dollars yearly in donations to influential think tanks, such as the Atlantic Council, the Brookings Institute, the Hudson Institute and the Center for American Progress, all of which have pushed a particularly hawkish line against Beijing. Taiwanese agents have also made 143 contributions to U.S. politicians and had contact with almost 90% of the members of the House of Representatives.

    The Taipei-backed Taiwan Foundation for Democracy also gave an undisclosed sum to the Alliance of Democracies. Considering that its name appears in a more prominent position on the Alliance’s list of backers than even Google, BMW, and the European Endowment for Democracy, one could infer that the sum was considerable.

    Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen was a prominent speaker at the conference, and was given an entire event to herself, in which she called for the democracies of the world to come together to defend Taiwan from foreign threats, stating:

    Taiwan’s commitment to freedom and democracy has made us a target of disinformation campaigns, economic coercion, and even military intimidation. Many in the international community are concerned about the potential for conflict caused by these anti-democratic tactics, particularly in the Indo-Pacific. Our government is fully aware of the threats to regional security and is actively enhancing our national defense capabilities to protect our democracy.”

    Throughout the talk, Ing-wen was very careful never to utter the word “China,” although it was clear to all listening that this was exactly who the threat was. Indeed, the Alliance of Democracies’ moderator, former CNN and ABC correspondent Jeanne Meserve, gave the game away, introducing her by stating:

    China is taking an increasingly aggressive stand towards Taiwan, both rhetorically and military, raising concerns that it could move some time soon to try and take control of the island. Here to address the need to strengthen democracy and the alliance of democracies is Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen.”

    Ing-wen also called for a European Union-Taiwan free-trade deal and for Western nations and organizations to recognize the island’s independence, something that none currently do. She concluded: “We are determined never to surrender these freedoms. With liberty and democracy once again under threat, we in the international community must come together to address the challenges of a new era.”

    After Ing-wen, Hong Kong protest leader Nathan Law spoke, and described the “complete crackdown on the democratic system” in the city by the “Communist Party dictatorship.” “Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, China became much more authoritarian, exporting authoritarianism through its global initiative,” he said, accusing Western nations of being “complacent” and calling for worldwide sanctions on China.

    Twisted democracy promotion

    The anti-China rhetoric was broken up by a talk from the self-declared President of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, entitled “Fighting for Freedom and Democracy: Reports from the Frontlines.” Guaidó claimed that his country was filled with terrorists and drug traffickers and asked for a worldwide boycott of Venezuelan goods and an economic blockade of his nation. “We must not allow the world banking system to accept blood-stained money,” he explained. Guaidó then asked the International Criminal Court to charge President Nicolas Maduro with crimes against humanity. He also presented himself as the leader of a democratic majority in Venezuela, stating:

    We Venezuelans are fighting. We have built a majority. We have organized and mobilized… The situation is critical because we have lost our democracy. I have an essential message for countries around the world: democracy is always at stake. It is only through the strengthening of institutions, the promotion of human rights, the empowerment and strengthening of society, of citizens and of youth that we can defend our democracy, but also make it last.”

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    While the elite audience appeared impressed by his words, it is less clear whether Guaidó’s countryfolk, already living under crippling sanctions that have killed more than 100,000 people,  would be so enthused. His approval ratings inside Venezuela are often in the single digits and, for all the talk of democracy and building a majority, he has attempted six coup attempts since January 2019, the last of which included his employing American mercenaries to conduct an amphibious invasion of his country, shoot their way to the presidential palace, and install him as dictator. Guaidó’s contract for the job was leaked, and showed he had agreed to pay the ex-Green Berets over a quarter-billion dollars — presumably from public funds — and that the mercenaries would become a private death squad that answered only to him, crushing any and all dissent to his rule once he was in power. The attempt ended in a fiasco, as the elite force of commandos was immediately overpowered by local fishermen carrying box cutters and old revolvers.

    Controlling the internet

    Day two of the conference focused more on the coronavirus and the threat to democracies posed by fake news and disinformation online. In one panel titled “Regulating Social Media and Protecting the Public From Harm,” participants discussed how the U.S. and Europe could come together to formulate a united approach to controlling digital communications. The discussion was particularly notable because panelists included Michael Chertoff, co-author of the PATRIOT Act, which stripped Americans citizens of a wide range of rights under the guise of national security and fighting terrorism. Also on the panel were two British conservative members of parliament, an advisor to the executive vice president of digital affairs for the European Commission, and a member of Facebook’s oversight board, the body that regulates what the platform’s 2.6 billion people see in their news feeds. These individuals are so influential that their opinions and decisions could well affect virtually the entire world.

    Together, they agreed that more cooperation between big tech and big government was necessary in order to reduce the amount of false information and harmful content online. This in itself is little new: in 2018 Facebook announced that it had partnered with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Lab to help regulate and curate its newsfeeds, effectively giving up partial control to the NATO-aligned organization. It also hired a former NATO press officer as its intelligence chief earlier this year.

    The AoD conference pushed an agenda encouraging even more cooperation between tech and media

    Other big social media companies like Reddit have similar ties to the military alliance. When organizations like the Atlantic Council, whose board features no fewer than seven former CIA directors, control what the world sees and reads online, it becomes difficult to see where the fourth estate ends and the deep state begins. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that the entire conference was sponsored by Facebook and Google, there was little talk of breaking up or nationalizing these online behemoths.

    While very few people actually watched any of these events (the livestream rarely had more than 30 viewers at any time), that does not mean it was not important. The lineup of presidents, generals and CEOs makes it clear that what was stated is effectively the collective view of the world’s elite and a window into their thinking and the debates they are having. What they decide will affect all of us, whether we realize it or not.

    A threat to democracy, not its champion

    The entire premise of the conference —  that China is a threat to global democracy and that Western business and political leaders must rally together to save it —  was heavily undermined by its own study, published just days before the event.

    The poll showed that only around 53% of people worldwide think they actually live in a democracy, including fewer than half of Americans. Fewer than 50% of respondents in other key Alliance of Democracy countries such as Italy and Belgium felt their countries were democratic. Embarrassingly for the AoD, Chinese people were among the most confident in the world that their country is democratic — far more so than most of the countries the Alliance of Democracies would like to represent. Almost three-quarters of Chinese people polled claimed to live in a democracy, more than in Germany, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Israel, and even famously “democratic” Sweden. Indeed, the only states of the 53 scoring significantly higher on the democracy scale with their citizens than China were Norway, Switzerland and Denmark. Vietnam, another country ruled by a Communist Party and also labeled a dictatorship by Western NGOs, scored as highly as China did. Acknowledging this enormous contradiction with its own position, the Alliance of Democracies report explained that, “people don’t think their countries are very democratic — even in democracies,” a statement equal parts Orwellian and patronizing at the same time.

    Another, even more embarrassing finding for the study, which polled more than 53,000 people in countries representing more than three-quarters of the world’s population, was that despite global media concern over China’s aggressive actions, the international public still considers the United States to be a considerably greater threat to their democracy than China, with 44% of the planet identifying the U.S. as such.

    Across East Asia, in countries openly hostile to China (such as Japan, the Philippines and South Korea), populations still see the U.S. as the chief danger. Therefore, the AoD summit’s calls for an Asian NATO to protect the continent from a rampaging China are likely to alarm Asians rather than assuage their fears. And although more Taiwanese see China as a threat, still 58% of the population considers the U.S. a serious danger to their democracy. So when President Ing-wen asks for more Western intervention in the South China Sea, it is far from clear that the Taiwanese population is behind her.

    Even among the U.S.’ closest allies — such as Canada, Israel, the United Kingdom and Ireland — Washington is seen as a far greater threat than Beijing by their populations. The study also showed that fear of the U.S. is rising year-on-year.

    Also undermining Nathan Law and the U.S.’ argument on Hong Kong is the finding that only slightly more than one third of Hong Kongers say their nation is not democratic enough. There has also been a notable decline in Hong Kongers stating they want to see more “democracy” on the island.

    However, by quite some way the biggest threat to democracy, according to the world’s population, is economic inequality and the power and influence of the super wealthy. The malign influence of Russia and China were the least threatening, with the U.S. higher and inequality higher still — with 64% of respondents identifying it as a chief problem. This is another embarrassing finding for the AoD, which is funded by giant corporations belonging to Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and many of the other richest and most powerful people on the planet and featured a number of extremely wealthy and well-connected speakers.

    Upside down world

    We live in an upside down world, where those responsible for destroying the Middle East can present themselves as defenders of liberty everywhere, proudly proclaiming their intentions to bring their visions of democracy worldwide. As Secretary General of NATO, Rasmussen said he was “proud” of his achievement in bringing freedom and democracy to Libya in 2011 — that liberty apparently including open-air slave markets and the complete destruction of society.

    Rasmussen’s Orwellian conference brought together the people and organizations his own polling data shows the planet thinks are the chief threats to democracy and freedom, so they could wax lyrical about upholding and enforcing their twisted view of democracy over the entire planet. The world does not want this version of “democracy” that these tech billionaires, senior politicians and military generals are offering. But, considering their overwhelming power and the lack of an organized opposition to it, we might just get it anyway.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/19/2021 – 00:05

  • China Resisting US Attempts At Nuclear Talks, Says UN Envoy
    China Resisting US Attempts At Nuclear Talks, Says UN Envoy

    In recent years the Trump administration had attempted to bring China into so-called trilateral arms control negotiations, which Beijing consistently balked at. Trump had considered landmark 20th century arms treaties with Russia to be “weak” due to not accounting for China’s rapidly advancing defense technology and arsenal. 

    For example, in summer of 2019 the US announced its formal withdrawal from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia, citing that a “new, better” agreement was needed which will bring in China. Also of note is that the INF had prevented the US from deploying ground-based intermediate-range missiles in Asia. The New START nuclear arms control agreement had also reportedly been on the chopping block by the tail end of the Trump administration, but among Biden’s first major actions in office was to extend it by five years. 

    But it now appears that Biden agrees with Trump’s fundamental principal of the urgency to bring China to the nuclear negotiating table. Trump’s central rationale was articulated in one July 2020 statement as follows: “The president believes that it shouldn’t just be the U.S. and Russia… The days of unilateral American disarmament are over.”

    Via US Navy

    On Tuesday US disarmament Ambassador Robert Wood indicated in new statements that China is still “resisting” nuclear talks:

    “Despite the PRC’s dramatic build-up of its nuclear arsenal, unfortunately it continues to resist discussing nuclear risk reduction bilaterally with the United States,” Woods told a United Nations conference.

    “To date Beijing has not been willing to engage meaningfully or establish expert discussions similar to those we have with Russia,” Woods said. “We sincerely hope that will change.”

    At the same conference focused on the “Prevention of Nuclear War” which was held by 65-member UN Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, China’s envoy appeared to reject the US accusation, saying the Beijing is indeed “ready” for “positive” dialogue. 

    “We stand ready to carry out positive dialog and exchange with all parties to jointly explore effective measures to reduce nuclear risk and to contribute to global strategic security,” Chinese envoy to the conference Ji Zhaoyu said.

    The exchange comes after last month the head of US Strategic Command, Adm. Charles Richard, briefed Congress on the faster than expected modernization rate of both China and Russia’s nuclear arsenals. “It is easier to describe what they are not modernizing — nothing — than what they are, which is pretty much everything,” he had described. 

    Most Western estimates put China’s arsenal at about 320 warheads at the high estimate range, while the US and Russia each have over 1,500 deployed; however, the US is believed behind in terms of modernizing and updating its nuclear weapons systems, including ICBM capabilities. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 23:45

  • Will 2020 Prove To Be The Beginning Of The End Of Modernity?
    Will 2020 Prove To Be The Beginning Of The End Of Modernity?

    Authored by Daniel Boudreaux via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    Daniel Hannan – Lord Hannan of Kingsclere – is today among Britain’s wisest and most articulate champions of classical liberalism.

    He’s also today very pessimistic about the future of liberalism. This pessimism is on full display in this recent video.

    Hannan predicts that the post-Covid-19 world “will be poorer, colder, grayer, more pitched, more authoritarian.”

    I ardently wish that I found his stated reasons for pessimism to be unpersuasive, but this wish is not granted.

    Hannan’s pessimism, to me, seems warranted.

    I urge you to watch the entire video. At under seven minutes, it’s short.

    But I believe that my summary here of Hannan’s point is accurate:

    We humans are evolved to put our trust in hierarchy, for hierarchical methods of decision-making were quite effective at protecting the small tribe, as it roamed the countryside, from predators and privation. And our deep past was in fact fraught with dangers that, when not quickly avoided, killed us. In that long-ago era, anyone refusing to follow the leader’s commands was indeed a threat to the survival of the tribe. As a result, fellow tribe members turned on renegades. ‘Renegadeness’ was thus largely drained from the gene pool and replaced with the instinct to conform, especially whenever there was a perception of danger, which there was quite often.

    Confidence in hierarchy, hair-trigger alarm, and fear of strangers (who back then usually were sources of real danger) helped our ancestors to survive. And survive they did for 300,000 years, nearly all of which time was spent hunting and gathering in small tribes. But these genetically encoded instincts that are so useful to members of the always-imperiled tribe do not support a liberal, open society of the sort that arose in the West over the past few centuries.

    We humans have been around for at least 300,000 years. Nearly all – 97 percent – of this time was spent as hunters-gatherers in a perilous world. Yet only in the past two or three centuries have we stumbled upon a set of beliefs and institutions that suppressed many of our primitive instincts in a way that encouraged the emergence of modernity. By historical standards, the world that we know today is freakishly abnormal.

    And while the material blessings of modernity – the likes of indoor plumbing, endless supplies and varieties of food, dwellings with solid floors and roofs, artificial lighting, faster-than-galloping-horses transportation, and miracle medicines – are easily noticed, all of these blessings as we know them today require a deep and globe-spanning division of labor. This division of labor is more unlikely and (hence) more of a marvel than are any of its most stupendous fruits, such as antibiotics, airplanes, and astronauts.

    Modernity is not normal; it has been around for a paltry 0.1 percent of humans’ time on earth. And the reason modernity is not normal is that liberalism – the source of the division of labor and, thus, of modernity – is not normal. We humans are not genetically encoded to be liberal. Therefore, Hannan argues, there is every reason to expect that we humans will revert to our historical norm – the norm that is in our genes.

    The reaction to Covid-19 is powerful evidence that our primitive instincts remain alive and ready to reestablish their dominance over the happy accident that is the culture, and resulting institutions, of liberalism.

    The hysterical fear that Covid stirred in so many people – including in many who are highly educated, of a scientific mindset, and, until Covid, of a liberal bent – and the sheepishness with which people followed the “leaders” who promised protection from Covid prompts Dan Hannan to worry that 2020-2021 is the beginning of the end of modernity.

    Chances are high that he’s correct. And if he is, civilization as we know it will end.

    Modernity Is Not Natural

    My Hannan-like pessimism on this front is only furthered by reading Notre Dame philosopher James Otteson’s remarkable new book, Seven Deadly Economic Sins. This must-read work is not about Covid; nor is Otteson himself especially pessimistic. But in his luminous explanation of some of the foundational features of modern society, Otteson identifies the thinness of the reed upon which modernity rests. His Chapter 4 (“Progress Is Not Inevitable”) is worth quoting at length:

    What has changed over humanity’s recent history is not biology, psychology, physiology, ecology, or geography. What has changed, instead, is their attitudes. As economic historian Deirdre McCloskey has demonstrated in her magisterial three-volume investigation under the general title The Bourgeois Era, the most salient factor distinguishing the post-1800 era from anything that went before is the attitudes people held toward others. Before that period, the standard background assumption people had was that some people are superior to others – more specifically, one’s own people are superior to those other people – and hence people believed they were under no obligation, moral or otherwise, to treat all human beings as their moral equals. What began as an inkling in the sixteenth century, gained some traction in the seventeenth century, and then began to spread in the eighteenth century was the idea that cooperation was not only allowable, but morally appropriate; and not only with some people, but with ever more people and ever more groups of people. As that idea spread, more and more cooperative behavior was engaged in, leading to mutually beneficial exchanges and partnerships, which launched world prosperity on the precipitate upward slope we have seen since.

    If people are to engage in voluntary transactions and partnerships with one another, however, they also need to trust one another….

    [C]ulture is critically important for growing prosperity, but culture can change – and quickly. The culture that enabled the growth in worldwide prosperity we have experienced over the last two centuries is not only recent but rare. And it is fragile…..

    People have gone from a default of regarding people different from them with suspicion and as likely enemies to a default of viewing them at least neutrally and even as opportunities. They have gone from viewing trade, commerce, and mutually voluntary and mutually beneficial exchange as unworthy of virtuous human beings, to viewing it neutrally, to, finally, viewing it as at least possibly worthy of dedicating one’s life to. They have gone from viewing human beings as fungible atoms in undifferentiated masses to seeing them as unique and precious individuals possessing moral dignity and deserving both liberty and respect. They have gone from viewing violence and torture as acceptable, even natural, ways to treat and engage with others to believing that violence should be a regrettable last resort – and that torture is inhumane and should be minimized, if not abandoned altogether. And they have gone from automatically distrusting everyone they meet but do not know to increasingly being willing to extend to others, even strangers, the benefit of the doubt.

    Modernity is impossible without widespread peaceful engagement with strangers. And such engagement is impossible without mutual trust. Yet abruptly starting 16 months ago, we were told to abandon our modern, liberal sensibilities.

    Abruptly starting 16 months ago we were warned not to trust strangers and not to engage with them commercially or socially. Abruptly starting 16 months ago, we were instructed to see strangers – indeed, to see even members of our extended families – as being chiefly carriers of death. Abruptly starting 16 months ago, we were initiated into the cult of pathogen avoidance; we were urged to behave as if avoiding a headline-grabbing virus is not only the main responsibility of each individual, but a responsibility that should be pursued at all costs.

    Abruptly starting 16 months ago, modern men and women were not only given license to revert to atavistic dread of strangers, but positively encouraged to harbor such dread and to act on it. Such atavistic attitudes and actions came all too naturally.

    Abruptly starting 16 months ago, humanity was encouraged to hold in contempt – even to censor – the relative few persons who refused to abandon liberal sensibilities.

    Abruptly starting 16 months ago, we prostrated our panicked selves before our “leaders,” begging that they use their god-like knowledge and powers (called “the Science”) to safeguard us from one particular source of illness, believed to be demonic.

    Abruptly starting 16 months ago, there quite possibly began the end of liberal civilization.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 23:25

  • Which Jobs Are Seeing The Fastest Wage Growth
    Which Jobs Are Seeing The Fastest Wage Growth

    While it is a well-known fact that most prices are surging, serving as the basis for the “transitory” inflation argument, it has been far more difficult to pinpoint what is really going on with wages as a result of the rapidly transforming fabric of the labor market where the lowest paid workers are dropping out fast thanks to Biden’s generous unemployment benefits, in the process distorting conventional wage metrics such as average hourly wages (as a reminder, prices have to feed through to wages to make inflation permanent).

    Which is why a key question for the US labor market as the economy emerges from the pandemic is the outlook on wage growth. To isolate signal from the noise, BofA has introduced a novel dataset on job postings and salaries from Revelio Labs to glean insight. The biggest advantage of this dataset compared to publicly available JOLTS data is that it provides salary information for job openings.

    At the aggregate, the data reveals that annual salary of job openings on online job boards fell meaningfully during the pandemic but in the latest few readings salaries are starting to trend higher, with BofA’s industry-weighted annual salary measures stands at $50,150 as of April 2021 compared to a low of around $47,400 during the pandemic.

    While the aggregate salary measure is still below pre-Covid levels, data broken out by industry and occupation show significant variation in salary. In industries where persistent chronic labor shortages have been reported during the reopening phase (e.g. construction, real estate, rental & leasing, accommodation & food services and other services), salaries have been quicker to recover on new job postings compared to other industries.

    Similarly, wage growth has been the strongest in occupations where there has been the greatest demand during the pandemic. Occupations related to transportation (e.g. drivers) and housing (e.g. realtors, home loan officers, agents) have seen both a surge in new job postings and higher annual salaries compared to pre-pandemic levels.

    Drilling down into the average salary of job postings by 2-digit industry North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes reveals wide dispersion of wage trends. While almost all sectors saw a drop in average salary on job postings, some sectors have recovered faster than others. In particular, housing-related (e.g. construction, real estate, rental & leasing) and manufacturing sectors, where demand was robust throughout the pandemic, saw less of a dip in salaries during the pandemic and have recovered almost back to prepandemic levels.

    Service related industries (e.g. educations services, healthcare &  social assistance, and accommodation & food services) have seen stronger wage gains of late as demand has recovered amid the reopening process. Meanwhile, retail trade and professional & business services sectors continue to lag behind.

    By occupation, a similar story plays out where we see the greatest wage increase in roles that experienced the highest demand throughout the pandemic. For example, job postings for “drivers”, “agents”, “realtors”, and “mortgage loan officers” surged during the pandemic relative to prepandemic levels and saw the strongest boost in salary in job postings.

    Looking ahead, BofA sees good reason for wages to rise further in coming months as the economy reopens. The latest JOLTS data show the job openings rate at an all-time high since the series began in 2000 while labor supply lags behind demand, which will take time to clear. Moreover, wage growth tends to move contemporaneously with a rise in job openings.

    These dynamics suggest we should see even stronger wage growth in coming months, solidifying the case that the surge in inflation is anything but transitory.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 23:05

  • Organ Donation Worker Exposes China’s Money-Driven Transplant Industry
    Organ Donation Worker Exposes China’s Money-Driven Transplant Industry

    By Frank Fang of Epoch Times

    In China, state-run media have been promoting a job called “organ donation coordinators,” trumpeting how people in this line of work are making a difference in society. Their role is to convince families of dying patients to agree to donate their loved one’s organs—needed to supply China’s booming transplant industry. The families that agree, in return, are paid for their consent.

    Doctors carry fresh organs for transplant at a hospital in Henan province, China, on Aug. 16, 2012

    Due to deeply-rooted cultural beliefs that hold that the human body must be kept intact even after death, Chinese people are generally reluctant to donate their organs. The creation of this role appears to be an attempt to lessen such a barrier to the country’s organ donation program.

    But the job is less noble than it is depicted by the Chinese regime, according to an account by Liang Xin (a pseudonym), a former organ donation coordinator from northeast China. The work was more akin to being a salesperson, Liang told The Epoch Times, and much of it involves using money to manipulate the poor into agreeing to donate their dying relatives’ organs.

    The coordinators’ methods are unethical and violate internationally recognized principles on transplantation that forbid the payment of money for an organ donor’s consent, according to an organ transplant expert.

    Liang’s revelations further shine a light on abuses in China’s organ transplant system—which already attracts heavy scrutiny over the communist regime’s practice of forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience. The former coordinator said he decided to speak out about his job in the hopes that more people will know the truth behind it.

    Targeting the Poor

    Organ donation coordinators mainly targeted poor families, in particular those of rural migrant workers, Liang said. These people often did not have enough money to pay for the expensive medical bills, and were therefore more susceptible to the coordinators’ monetary offers.

    Liang recounted one case involving a very poor family. Their dying family member could still have been saved with proper medical treatment. But the family decided not to proceed with this. Instead, they chose to starve him—and cash out.

    “After the person was deprived of food for a week, he was in the right condition for organ donation,” Liang said.

    This case, according to Liang, was among many where patients were declared brain dead—a precondition to organ extraction—but did not strictly meet the criteria for it.

    Liang and his colleagues were good salespeople. To the relatives, they sold organ donation as an act of “all-encompassing love” and “devotion to a greater cause.” But in reality, the coordinators thought of the donor’s organs as nothing more than “merchandise,” he said.

    The coordinators, Liang said, had one specific strategy in their playbook that was particularly effective: They would target the most “greedy” family member. After these soft targets were converted to the cause, they could then be relied on to convince the other immediate family members who may have been less open to the idea of organ donation.

    China’s official organ donation program requires the consent of the donor, or that of their immediate kin if the donor is already dead. While the Chinese regime claims all organs used for transplant are sourced from this donation system, mounting research and an independent people’s tribunal have found that Beijing has been killing prisoners of conscience for their organs on a “significant scale,” with detained Falun Gong practitioners being the main source of organs.

    The Job

    Liang didn’t have a medical background before taking up the role; the same as many of his colleagues. He got the job through his mother, who was already working at the hospital where Liang was hired. It is a major transplant hospital in a city in northeastern China’s Liaoning province.

    Whenever a dying patient in the region was determined to be suitable for organ donation, Liang’s team would be contacted. They would then send Liang or another team member to the hospital to talk to the patient’s immediate family. If they managed to successfully convince the family to agree to the donation, then the doctor overseeing the patient would also be paid a small commission.

    According to China’s state-run media, there were about 2,800 organ donation coordinators in the country as of the end of 2020. Like Liang, some of these worked for hospitals, while others worked for China’s Red Cross, which unlike its international counterparts is funded and operated by the Chinese regime.

    China has in place a so-called humanitarian aid policy to support impoverished families of organ donors. According to China’s state-run media, the provincial Red Cross in central China’s Hubei province implemented a payment plan of between 50,000 yuan to 90,000 yuan ($7,720 to $13,880) per family in 2015.

    In January 2020, Hubei’s Red Cross announced that it paid a total of 9.77 million yuan ($1.5 million) to 128 families in 2019.

    Liang, who worked in the job for six months before quitting, likened his role to a sales representative—he earned about 2,000 to 3,000 yuan ($310 to $460) every time he was able to get a family to sign up to organ donation.

    What the hospital paid Liang and what the families received accounted for only a tiny fraction of what hospitals charged for transplant surgeries. According to Liang, hospitals in China charged about 550,000 yuan ($84,870) for a liver transplant surgery, and 450,000 yuan ($69,440) for a kidney transplant surgery.

    Therefore, a donor who gave up both of their kidneys and liver would generate an income of about 1.45 million yuan ($223,760) for a hospital. That amount, after accounting for the hospital’s medical expenses to procure the organs and carry out the surgeries, would leave the hospital with the tidy sum of 700,000 yuan ($108,010), according to Liang.

    A small portion of this money would be used to pay the donor’s family, while the rest would go to the chief surgeon carrying out the transplants, Liang said.

    The surgeon would also use some of this money to pay the local police. In return, the police would turn over the patient’s personal information, including their financial situation. The doctors would then pass this information on to the organ donation coordinators. The family’s financial details helped the coordinators find out if certain families were more susceptible to pressure.

    China’s transplant industry is also rife with bribery. Liang said he knew that chief doctors at hospitals’ transplant centers would accept bribes to move people up the waiting list.

    The Money

    Liang recalled a specific incident in October 2020 involving a 28-year-old single man who had a brain hemorrhage. The man was admitted to the intensive care unit of a local hospital and was later declared brain dead.

    The man’s organs were identified as very valuable, given his young age and his O blood type, according to Liang. People with O type blood can donate to every other group.

    Liang’s coworker then got to work. The man’s older sister was identified as the soft target—she needed money as she had been footing her brother’s medical bill. The coworker was successful. In effect, they were able to convince the sister to “sell her younger brother for money to pay off her debt,” Liang said.

    The sister then went on a mission, telling her parents that they should agree to donate their son’s organs since it was for the “greater good.” Despite their initial rejections, the parents eventually relented and agreed to donate their son’s two kidneys and liver.

    In the end, the son’s heart was also donated, to the dismay of his mother who hadn’t agreed to it.

    Sometimes organ donation coordinators and donors’ immediate families would haggle over the amount of the payment. In another incident around October 2020, Liang said that he and his colleague jointly worked on a case involving a prisoner from southwestern China’s Sichuan province. The prisoner was a member of China’s Yi ethnic minority.

    Liang and his coworker located the prisoner at a hospital in Shenyang, the capital of northeast China’s Liaoning province. Liang had no idea how the prisoner ended up in hospital and where he was imprisoned, but suspected that the man was beaten while in detention.

    The initial negotiation resulted in the coordinators agreeing to pay the prisoner’s family 50,000 yuan ($7,720) for their consent to donate the prisoner’s organs. However, the family then demanded more money, eventually being paid an additional 50,000 yuan.

    While the negotiations were pending, doctors at the Shenyang hospital used medication to keep the prisoner alive for about five days. Eventually, his liver and two kidneys were retrieved and donated.

    ‘Ruthless’

    Dr. Torsten Trey, executive director of Washington-based medical ethics advocacy group Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, said China’s organ donation system has for years relied on using monetary incentives to induce donations. Liang’s account, according to Trey, shows that the Chinese regime continues to fail to abide by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) transplantation principles.

    “In five out of the 11 guiding principles there is explicit mention that NO PAYMENTS should be made in exchange for organs,” Trey said in an email to The Epoch Times.

    “The examples show that China pays for organs,” he added. “Even more so, they approach families in their greatest moments of sorrow, when a relative is about to die, that they offer money for his organs. That is unethical and ruthless.”

    Trey also criticized the global health body for not holding the Chinese regime to account for these breaches .

    “The WHO betrays its own ethical guidelines by failing to call out China for its breaking of WHO ethical guidelines,” Trey said. “The WHO would not hesitate to scold other countries if they would systematically pay money for organs.”

    He urged the international community, and particularly the global transplant community, to demand the regime end the practice.

    “We need to uphold ethical standards in medicine,” Trey said.

    The lack of ethics in China’s transplant system extends far beyond using financial incentives to induce organ donations, Trey added, citing the regime’s state-sanctioned practice of harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience, in particular Falun Gong adherents. Liang said he was never personally involved in any organ donation cases involving Falun Gong. However, he suspected that their organs continue to be a source for transplants since he’s seen Falun Gong mentioned in doctors’ reports.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 22:45

  • India Reports 50 Doctors Dead In A Single Day As COVID Mortality Peaks
    India Reports 50 Doctors Dead In A Single Day As COVID Mortality Peaks

    As the number of confirmed cases in India has pulled back in recent days, but that didn’t stop India from reporting a record jump in daily deaths attributed to the virus on Tuesday as the total number of confirmed cases in the country finally topped 25 million.

    Some 260K new cases were registered, along with the record 4,329 deaths. In a promising sign, the number of active cases also declined. Still, over the past month, the number of daily cases has tripled, while the number of daily deaths has risen 6x.

    Earlier today, media reports claimed that India’s Serum Institute, one of the world’s largest vaccine producers, will be so preoccupied producing jabs for the Indian citizenry that it won’t be able to continue with exports until the end of the year, extending an earlier freeze.

    “We continue to scale up manufacturing and prioritise India,” said Serum CEO Adar Poonawalla on Tuesday. “We also hope to start delivering to Covax and other countries by the end of this year,” he added, a reference to the WHO’s woefully under-funded program to distribute vaccines to the developing world.

    Now, an Indian TV station is reporting that a record 50 doctors died across India in the span of a single day this week.

    According to the Indian Medical Association, 244 doctors have lost their lives due to COVID in the second wave. Of these, some 50 deaths were recorded on Sunday alone. The highest number of fatalities have been reported from Bihar (69) followed by Uttar Pradesh (34) and Delhi (27). Only 3% of the deceased were fully vaccinated, which stems from the shortage in vaccine supplies. Five months into India’s vaccination drive, only 66% of the country’s healthcare workers have been fully vaccinated. The IMA said it is making all possible efforts to encourage doctors to take the jab.

    Dr. Jayesh Lele, the General Secretary of IMA, told NDTV: “It is very unfortunate that we lost 50 doctors yesterday across India and 244 in the second wave since the first week of April.” The IMA, he said, has found that many doctors have not taken the vaccine and the organisation will do everything it can to ensure that all doctors who are on the frontline take the jab.

    “Secondly we want to highlight that doctors are understaffed and overworked. They sometimes work for 48 hours at a stretch without any rest. This adds to the viral load and they ultimately succumb to the infection. The government needs to take measures to boost the healthcare workforce,” he added.

    One young doctor who died in New Delhi was only 26 – a junior resident at Delhi’s Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital. The doctor, Anas Mujahid, is the youngest of the 244 doctors who have died since the start of the year. Mujahid had minor symptoms like sore throat and tested positive in an antigen test at the hospital. But in a rare case of sudden progression, he collapsed soon after and died due to an outbreak of intracranial bleeding. He had no comorbidities.

    Since last spring, the IMA has counted at least 1,000 deaths of physicians due to the virus, though NDTV warned the actual number is likely higher, as many deaths haven’t been accurately recorded.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 22:25

  • Think Gas Shortages Are Bad? Buckle Up
    Think Gas Shortages Are Bad? Buckle Up

    Authored by Jason Isaac, op-ed via The Epoch Times,

    If the gas shortages plaguing the Southeast left you high and dry last week, buckle up. This is just a taste of our future under President Joe Biden’s energy policies.

    Though these shortages were largely driven by panic buying, rather than by actual supply constraints due to the Colonial Pipeline hack, they demonstrate just how much energy—something the average American likely doesn’t think much about during their normal daily routine—defines our lives.

    If the Green New Deal becomes a real deal, whether through Congress or by executive fiat (which is apparently Biden’s preferred strategy), gas shortages and skyrocketing prices at the pump are just the beginning.

    If Biden succeeds, we can kiss energy independence goodbye. In 2019, the United States finally achieved the mission that founded the U.S. Department of Energy in the 1960s—freedom from dependence on foreign oil—when we became a net energy exporter. Just over 100 days into the Biden administration, our claim to that title is already fading.

    Problems with just one pipeline led to a significant increase in oil imports; imagine how the global balance of power would shift if the federal government tried to recklessly shut down all U.S. fossil fuel production. We would once again become dependent on Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other unstable nations for our energy needs—ceding negotiation power, weakening our national security, and enabling irresponsible overseas producers with shoddy environmental and labor standards.

    We could also expect the cost of living to rise dramatically. Consumer goods prices are already rising at the highest rate since the 2008 Great Recession, with inflation over 4 percent. An energy shortage would make inflation even worse—and affect the poorest Americans the most.

    Low-income households—which represent nearly 44 percent of the American population—already spend nearly three times the percentage of their income on energy bills than non-low-income citizens. In some communities, energy burdens are as high as 30 percent of household income. Families struggling to make ends meet have less room in their budget to afford higher energy prices—or the resulting higher prices for everything we do.

    Every product we use, from our smartphones to the food in our fridge to the clothes we wear, depends on energy. We don’t just need electricity to power manufacturing facilities and fuel for delivery trucks, planes, and farm equipment; the chemicals derived from oil and gas are also critical to our everyday lives. Petrochemicals including plastics, rubber, synthetic fabrics, inks and dyes, and more are the building blocks for nearly everything in the room around you right now—not to mention our health care facilities, technology and communication infrastructure, public safety and military systems, and more.

    Ironically, if Biden’s so-called green energy agenda succeeds, we can also expect our environment to get worse, not better. While the media trumpets that the planet is dirty and getting dirtier—and that we’re to blame—America is leading the world in environmental protection. We have the cleanest air on record, with air pollution down 77 percent in the last 50 years (far safer to breathe than most other highly populated nations), and rank number one in the world for clean drinking water.

    Wind turbines, solar panels, and electric cars might sound environmentally conscious, but these power sources are anything but. They rely heavily on mining (not for bitcoin, but for rare minerals) to produce parts that can rarely be recycled, instead piling up in landfills and leaching toxic chemicals all the while. And renewables produce a tiny fraction of energy per unit of land compared to fossil fuels. This low energy density means going 100 percent renewable would require clearing vast swaths of land, destroying private property and wildlife habitat. So much for “green.”

    Wind and solar have proven decade after decade they are incapable of providing more than a tiny fraction of our energy, even after receiving tens of billions in subsidies funded by our tax dollars.

    The gas shortages following the Colonial Pipeline hack should be a stark wake-up call to the Biden administration, whose ignorance of the numerous flaws of the Green New Deal agenda is a real threat to our economy, national security, and way of life.

    *  *  *

    The Honorable Jason Isaac is director of Life:Powered, a national initiative of the Texas Public Policy Foundation to raise America’s energy IQ. He previously served four terms in the Texas House of Representatives.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 22:05

  • Pelosi Joins Call To Boycott 2022 Winter Games Over China's Human Rights Abuses
    Pelosi Joins Call To Boycott 2022 Winter Games Over China’s Human Rights Abuses

    With the Tokyo Summer Olympics expected to be the most underwhelming event in the history of the modern games (that is, if safety officials from the IOC ultimately allow it to continue), pressure for an international boycott of the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing is growing. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just became the first senior American official to call for a boycott of the China games over Beijing’s treatment of Uygher Muslims in the far-flung northwestern province of Xinjiang.

    Heads of state who go to China for the Olympics in light of genocide would not have moral authority to speak out about human rights, Pelosi insisted according to a newswire report.

    She also called out the corporate sponsors of the game for “looking the other way” at China’s human rights abuses.

    “How sad it is to see the Olympic corporate sponsors look the other way on China’s abuses out of concern for their bottom line.”

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    Beijing has responded to accusations that it’s carrying out a genocide of the Uyghers have turned accusations back around on the US, citing instances of police brutality, and America’s history of slavery, as signs of hypocrisy.

    Pelosi’s decision follows an even more forceful call from a group representing other other minorities who have been oppressed by Beijing. The group explicitly accuses those who support the Games of giving tacit approval of genocide representing the people of Hong Kong, Uyghur Muslims and Tibetans, released a statement calling for the boycott on Monday. It also accused the IOC of deciding “to put profit before human lives and turn a blind eye to genocide,” according to the Daily Caller and Associated Press.

    Support for a boycott is bipartisan, with high-profile Republicans like former UN Ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikke Haley responding to calls from the group mentioned above by endorsing their call and saying it would be “unthinkable” for the world to ignore what Beijing has done to the Uyghers.

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    The statement said that the time for negotiations with Beijing over its abuses has passed, and that a full-on boycott is the only moral option available. “The time for talking with the IOC is over,” Lhadon Tethong of the Tibet Action Institute said in an exclusive interview with the AP. “This cannot be games as usual or business as usual; not for the IOC and not for the international community.”

    Human Rights groups have met several times in the past year with the IOC, asking that the games be removed from China. A key member in those talks was Zumretay Arkin of the World Uyghur Congress.

    And just last week, human rights groups and Western nations led by the US, the UK, and Germany accused China of massive crimes against the Uyghur minority and demanded unimpeded access for UN experts. At the meeting, Britain’s UN Ambassador, Barbara Woodward, called the situation in Xinjiang “one of the worst human rights crises of our time.”

    “The evidence points to a program of repression of specific ethnic groups,” Woodward said. “Expressions of religion have been criminalized and Uyghur language and culture are discriminated against systematically and at scale.”

    While President Joe Biden is probably a little too cozy with China to openly call for a boycott of the Winter Games, we wouldn’t be surprised to see President Trump, or other senior GOP, to highlight the president’s hypocrisy when it comes to China by joining with their own calls to back the boycott.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 21:45

  • The $392,000 Lifeguard: "Baywatch" As Union Shop
    The $392,000 Lifeguard: “Baywatch” As Union Shop

    Submitted by Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of OpenTheBooks.com,

    Being a lifeguard isn’t easy, but in Los Angeles it can be lucrative. Auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found 82 county lifeguards earning at least $200,000 including benefits and seven making between $300,000 and $392,000. Thirty-one lifeguards made between $50,000 and $131,000 in overtime alone.

    A lifeguard keeps watch in Huntington Beach, Calif., June 29, 2020.

    After 30 years of service, they can retire as young as 55 on 79% of their pay. The Los Angeles County Lifeguard Association makes all this possible. Since 1995 the union has bargained for better wages, hours, benefits and working conditions.

    Over the past five years, lifeguard captain Daniel Douglas brought home $630,000 in overtime alone. His total employment costs in 2019 were $368,668—$140,706 base bay, $131,493 in overtime, $21,760 in “other pay” and $74,709 in benefits.

    In 2009 the city of Santa Monica signed a 10-year, $25 million contract with the county for lifeguard services. In 2019 the city extended the contract for five years and $17 million. There were no identified competitors and the contract wasn’t put out for bid.

    To be sure, being a lifeguard isn’t all fun in the sun: Some are EMTs and paramedics, and some are part of an underwater recovery team and participate in diving operations. Some are marine firefighters with specialized training for fireboat operations. Some are on duty for 24 hours at a time—though they’re allotted eight hours for sleep, and if they have a call that interrupts their slumber after five hours or less, “the entire 24-hour period shall be counted as hours worked,” the contract states.

    Still, they’re handsomely paid beyond what virtually all other EMTs receive. By comparison, the top-paid public lifeguard in Florida made $118,000, including benefits—though the pay goes further in the Sunshine State, which has no income tax. Even in New York City, the top-paid lifeguard made only $168,000.

    Think of the Los Angeles Country Lifeguard Association as the teachers union of “Baywatch.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 21:25

  • Two Months After Biden Blasted "Neanderthal Thinking", Texas Reports Zero COVID Deaths
    Two Months After Biden Blasted “Neanderthal Thinking”, Texas Reports Zero COVID Deaths

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott elicited criticism from Dr. Fauci and a host of Democrats when he decided to drop all COVID-19-linked restrictions in the Lone Star State back in March. Now, as states across the country are falling in line with President Biden’s aggressive new mask guidance (clearly intended to encourage more holdouts to accept the vaccine) Texas is reporting a milestone that many of these critics once believed unthinkable: On Sunday, the state’s Department of State Health Services reported its first day without a single COVID-19 deaths since March 21, 2020.

    Confronted in an interview last month, Dr. Fauci finally acknowledged that he couldn’t explain Texas’ success. And President Biden memorably slammed Republicans in Texas (and in other southern states like Mississippi that followed Texas’ lead) as “Neaderthal-thinking” Republicans.

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    That good news was quickly overshadowed when state officials reported 23 new deaths on Monday, the highest daily count in two months.

    Still, as the Houston Chronicle admits, it’s clear Texas has “turned a corner” and that the takeaway from the zero-death day is that the state has done remarkably well in combating COVID.

    And in a social media post, Gov. Abbott recently rattled off a host of stats illustrating just how successful the state has been.

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    Adding to this, the state reported a record low seven-day positivity rate of 3.9% last week, and cases and hospitalizations have fallen to their lowest marks since last summer.

    Funeral homes in the area rejoiced at finally seeing business return to a more normal pace.

    Bradshaw-Carter Funeral Home owner Tripp Carter said they haven’t had a COVID-related service since early March, which she credited in part to Houstonians abiding by precautionary measures.

    “We are right in the heart of the city, and so it’s just great that we haven’t seen any more cases,” Carter said. “Houstonians, or at least certainly in the inner loop, were very conscious about following CDC guidelines.”

    Texas counted only 624 new confirmed infections on Wednesday according to state data, with a seven-day average of 2,072 new cases per day.

    Source: State of Texas

    To put this all in context, Texas was reporting nearly 30,000 new cases per day and upward of 400 deaths a day earlier this year. It once was home to the worst outbreak in the country, and last summer became the first state to top 1 million confirmed cases.

    Deaths finally began to slow in March, as vaccine eligibility was gradually expanded. To date, 41% of Texans have received at least one vaccine dose, and nearly one in three are fully vaccinated against coronavirus, which lags the rate in many other states.

    Now, the state can focus its attention on the new crisis of 2021: the fester crisis at the southern border caused by a surge in migrants responding to Biden’s pledge to welcome immigrants.

    At least now, with the COVID numbers down, maybe Biden will deem it safe enough to hold more photo-ops at the border where he lectures the GOP on immigration policy.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 20:55

  • 'Sickcare' Is The Knife In The Heart Of Employment… And The Economy
    ‘Sickcare’ Is The Knife In The Heart Of Employment… And The Economy

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    We need to change the incentives of the entire system, not just healthcare, but if we don’t start with healthcare, that financial cancer will drag us into national insolvency all by itself.

    American Healthcare is a growth industry in the same way cancer is a growth industry: both keep growing until they kill the host, which in the case of healthcare is the U.S. economy.

    While a great many individuals in the system care about improving the health of their patients, the healthcare system itself only cares about one thing: maximizing profits by any means available, including sending many patients to an early grave via medications which corporations declared “safe” and rigged the political-regulatory-research systems to comply.

    I call this maximizing profits by any means available system sickcare, for obvious reasons: this system profits by managing sickness, i.e. chronic diseases, rather than addressing the causes, which in most chronic disorders trace back to lifestyle: SAD (standard American diet), poor fitness and a generally unhealthy lifestyle of convenience (i.e. sedentary), heavy work/financial stress and addictions to meds, drugs, social media, etc.

    Sickcare’s single-minded profiteering would be bad enough if we could afford its spiraling ever higher cost, but we cannot: as I noted way back in 2011, Sickcare Will Bankrupt the Nation all by itself. three years ago I noted that U.S. Healthcare Isn’t Broken–It’s Fixed (5/26/18), as generic meds that cost $22.60 for a month’s supply are pushed by Big Pharma as branded meds for $1,120 per month. Such a deal!

    I’ve been discussing employment recently, and one of my patrons pointed out the enormously negative impact sickcare costs have on employment. I covered the incredibly negative impact of soaring sickcare insurance costs on small business back in 2011: Here’s Why Small Business Isn’t Hiring, and Won’t be Hiring (7/11/11), but the same soaring-costs dynamic makes Corporate America reluctant to hire anyone in America, too.

    You’d have to be insane to pick America as your global base, given the grossly asymmetrical cost of healthcare in the U.S. compared to our developed-world competitors in Europe and East Asia (Japan and South Korea). Sadly, the treatment for your insanity will be so costly in America that your psychiatric problems will soon be exacerbated by financial ruin.

    Those with heavily subsidized healthcare insurance may not realize that insurance for a family can cost more than a wage earner’s entire monthly net income. This generates a perverse incentive (from the perspective of a healthy economy, as opposed to a corrupt, rigged economy run for the exclusive benefit of profiteers, fraudsters, speculators and political fixers) for one spouse to quit their jobs or cut their hours to reduce the household income to the point that federal subsidies (ObamaCare) kick in and pay much or most of the insanely overpriced sickcare insurance tab.

    The subsidies are of course ultimately paid by the taxpayers; sickcare profiteers thank you.

    Needless to say, employers facing monthly healthcare insurance costs of $1,500 for an employee earning $2,500 will be looking for automation or overseas alternatives. How can the employer afford to keep paying healthcare insurance costs that spiral far above the Consumer Price Index (CPI)? Ultimately these higher costs come out of the employee’s paycheck, as employers could have given raises but instead had to fork over all the dough to the sickcare profiteers.

    One driver of wages’ ever-declining share of the national income is trillions of dollars have been siphoned off by sickcare. As the comparison chart below shows, the U.S. pays roughly $5,000 more per capita (per person) per year for healthcare than other equally developed nations: the U.S. pays $10,966 per person per year and the average paid by other developed nations pay roughly half: $5,697 per person per year.

    330 million Americans X $5,000 is $1.65 trillion a year. No wonder wages have gone nowhere for decades and corporations couldn’t wait to offshore jobs in America. (Not that the Corporate America needed much more of an incentive to offshore U.S. jobs, but let’s recognize that sickcare costs put American companies at a huge global disadvantage.)

    Please examine the chart below of healthcare expenses per capita (per person) in the U.S. from 2000 to 2018 (the last year available on the St. Louis Federal Reserve database). I’ve marked up the chart to indicate where healthcare costs per capita would be if healthcare had tracked the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the past two decades.

    Strikingly, the cost had U.S. healthcare risen by the same percentage as everything else–$5,852 per capita per year–is very close to the average costs in comparable developed nations: $5,697 per capita per year. Instead, U.S. healthcare costs per person were $9,000 per year as of 2018.

    The third chart shows that the results of this asymmetric expenditure on health hasn’t done much in terms of life expectancy or other broad measures of national health and well-being. America is Number One in costs but far down the list of life expectancy and other measures of well-being.

    The human and financial costs of this sick system are pervasive. Those trying to provide care within the sickcare system’s perverse incentives are burning out (see last chart), and businesses are crushed by ever-higher costs for everything related to healthcare. The “solution” for employers is to push more of the insane cost increases onto employees, who are already staggering under the weight of stagnant wages and skyrocketing inflation in sectors other than healthcare.

    Small business entrepreneurs end up not hiring any workers because they can’t afford to provide the mandated healthcare. Having to do all the work needed to keep the business afloat burns out the owners and they close the business, to the detriment of their community and the local government, which loses the tax revenues generated by the enterprise.

    Here’s a real-world example of how healthcare has become unaffordable for employers: in the mid-1980s I could buy comprehensive healthcare insurance for my single employees (mostly young) for 6 hours’ pay for the average employee and 4 hours of my pay. (My partner and I paid all the healthcare insurance costs, the employees paid zero, I’m just using the hours and pay as a means of measuring the cost of healthcare in terms of the purchasing power of wages.)

    Can an employer buy equivalent comprehensive healthcare insurance today for 6 hours’ of the employees’ pay? No, not even close. (Note that I’m talking about real insurance, not bogus simulacra of insurance, i.e. catastrophic coverage.)

    Sickcare is a win for the sickcare profiteers and a loss for employers, employees, communities, government and the nation. Like cancer, sickcare will keep growing until it kills the host. We’re getting close.

    Sickcare is the knife in the heart of employment. Sickcare puts the nation at a tremendous competitive disadvantage, crushes small businesses and generates perverse incentives to automate and offshore jobs just to get out from underneath the dead weight of ever-higher sickcare costs.

    We need a whole new approach to healthcare that includes every aspect of American culture, society, education, economics and governance. We need to ditch SAD (standard American diet) and our unhealthy lifestyle, and incentivize improving health from the ground up rather than generating chronic lifestyle diseases such as metabolic disorders and then managing these disorders as a means of maximizing profits. The national goal should not be profiting from an over-medicated populace, it should be eliminating the need for medications. (A healthy person has no need for handfuls of medications.) Rather than profit from 74% of the populace being overweight and 40% being obese, the national goal should be to eliminate lifestyle diseases entirely by changing behaviors and incentives, not costly procedures and medications. That would free healthcare to serve those suffering from non-lifestyle diseases.

    As Charlie Munger famously noted, “Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.” That’s how humans operate: we respond to the incentives presented, even if they diminish the health of the populace and bankrupt the nation. We need to change the incentives of the entire system, not just healthcare, but if we don’t start with healthcare, that financial cancer will drag us into national insolvency all by itself.

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 20:45

  • Silicon Chip Shortage Leads To Potato Chip Shortage: Farmers Halt Equipment Shipments To Dealers
    Silicon Chip Shortage Leads To Potato Chip Shortage: Farmers Halt Equipment Shipments To Dealers

    Readers have been briefed on the ongoing semiconductor shortage that may last a “couple of years.” The auto industry has grabbed the spotlight as the hardest-hit industry, with some of the world’s biggest manufacturers restricting production. 

    According to a new report, the worldwide chip shortage is impacting the agriculture industry that may last for a couple of years and has already impacted the price of potato chips.

    Hoosier Ag Today reports, “The biggest factor impacting the ability of US farmers to produce the food we need has nothing to do with the weather, the markets, trade, regulations, or disease. The worldwide shortage of computer chips will impact all aspects of agriculture for the next two years and beyond… farm equipment manufacturers have halted shipments to dealers because they don’t have the chips to put in the equipment… not only have combine, planter, tillage, and tractor sales been impacted, but even ATV supplies are limited. Parts, even non-electric parts, are also in short supply because the manufacturers of those parts use the chips in the manufacturing process. As farmers integrate technology into all aspects of the farming process, these highly sophisticated semiconductors have become the backbone of almost every farming operation.” 

    Rabobank’s Global Economics & Markets desk commented on the Hoosier Ag Today report and cautioned on the “technological wonders of a global economy based on just-in-time supplies of a few key inputs from only a few locations; and then demand surged due a virus that ran rampant through said global economy; and supply chains got snarled for that, and other reasons; and now a lack of silicon chips even impacts on the price of potato chips (in the US) and chips (in the UK).” 

    The shortage has caused Reynolds Farm Equipment, one of Indiana’s largest John Deere dealers, to inform customers that order times are unknown at the moment because production for specific equipment has been disrupted because of the lack of chips. 

    Bane Welker Equipment, which carries Case farm equipment and several other notable brands with dealerships in Indiana and Ohio, urged customers to plan ahead. The dealership warned customers that combine harvesters, planters, tillages, and tractor supplies have been limited because of the chip shortage. They even said ATV supplies are limited. All of this has severely dented sales for the dealership. 

    Farmers have been rapidly integrating technology into the farming process for the last decade. Agricultural technology has enabled farmers to produce higher crop yields, decrease water, fertilizer, and pesticides, which keeps food prices down and saves the environment. Though as Rabobank described earlier when chips go missing the technological wonders of a global economy come crashing down. 

    “In the U.S., we love our quick-fix solutions, which usually involve federal government bailouts. This time, however, that solution will not work to solve the shortage,” said Hoosier Ag Today. 

    Intel’s CEO Pat Gelsinger has been the latest in a chorus of voices to warn about the ongoing semiconductor shortage that will last for a “couple of years.”

    Gelsinger said U.S. dominance in the chip industry had dropped so much that only 12% of the world’s semiconductor manufacturing is made in the U.S., down from 37% about 25 years ago.

    “And anybody who looks at supply chain says, ‘That’s a problem.’ This is a big, critical industry and we want more of it on American soil: the jobs that we want in America, the control of our long-term technology future,” he said.

    Chip giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is also warning that the shortage will continue throughout this year and maybe extended into 2022. 

    The worsening shortage is not just crushing the auto industry. It’s also spilling over into farming, where some farmers are unable to source new equipment. What this means is used farm equipment prices are about to skyrocket in price. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 20:25

  • BLM Founder Who Went On Property-Buying-Spree Complains About "White Supremacy" In Housing Market
    BLM Founder Who Went On Property-Buying-Spree Complains About “White Supremacy” In Housing Market

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    After going on a personal home buying spree, including one property located in one of the whitest areas of California, BLM co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors is now complaining about “white supremacy” in the housing market.

    Cullors recently spent a total of $3.2 million on four homes, including a $1.4 million property in L.A.’s rustic and semi-remote Topanga Canyon, which has a black population of just 1.6 per cent.

    Another of the homes, a “custom ranch” located in Georgia, is surrounded by “3.2 rural acres” and features a “private airplane hangar with a studio apartment above it” in addition to an indoor swimming pool.

    Over the weekend, Cullors highlighted a story by NPR on the low rate of black home ownership in areas like Compton, which is 33% black.

    “Thank you @npr for highlighting the history of racism inside of the housing market and why Black homeownership has always been a way to disrupt white supremacy,” wrote Cullors.

    //www.instagram.com/embed.js

    “Over the last 15 years, Black homeownership has declined more dramatically than for any other racial or ethnic group in the United States,” the NPR report states, adding that black homeownership in 2019 was as low as it was in the 60s.

    However, for Cullors, who has generated significant wealth for herself grifting off of race baiting and divisive Black Lives Matter agitating, she has no such worries.

    After her spending spree was revealed, the establishment went into full panic mode, with Facebook blocking links to a New York Post report about the issue and a black conservative activist being suspended by Twitter for highlighting the matter.

    After an African-American BLM activist demanded an investigation into how the money was being spent, the national BLM organization threatened legal action before Cullors went on to claim that questions over her property buying spree were a “false and dangerous story” being pushed by “right wing forces” and “white supremacists.”

    Cullors is a self-described “Marxist” who apparently thinks she’s the only one exempt when it comes to the sharing of private property.

    BLM as a whole raked in a staggering $90 million dollars in donations last year alone, with the national organization being accused by local chapters of hiding “untold millions of dollars” while keeping the cash away from grassroots activists.

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 20:05

  • Predatory Lenders Charging Up To 589% Interest Posted Record Profits In 2020 Thanks To "Stimulus"
    Predatory Lenders Charging Up To 589% Interest Posted Record Profits In 2020 Thanks To “Stimulus”

    “I can’t even think about how much money I just paid in interest,” 44 year old Jamie Johnson said, thinking back to a payday loan he took out in April 2020.

    His $5,000 loan – which eventually accrued interest at a clip of up to 589% annualized – was the topic of a new Bloomberg article on payday and predatory lending.

    “It was just a big mess,” Johnson said, telling Bloomberg he used pandemic-relief unemployment insurance checks of $965 each week to hurriedly help pay back the debt for fear of being trapped in a neverending cycle of compounding interest and fees.

    It’s stories like his that are the driving force behind payday and other high interest loan companies “emerging from the pandemic stronger than perhaps ever before”. The lenders raked in record earnings while Americans suffered during the pandemic. 

    Lauren Saunders, associate director at the National Consumer Law Center, a non-profit that advocates for low-income borrowers, said: “Debt collectors had a big year, and so did predatory lenders. The idea that any company could keep charging 100% or 200% interest or more during this time of crisis is really outrageous.”

    Additionally, studies have shown these types of loans are disproportionately targeted to black and Latino communities. In Michigan, where Johnson is from, “areas that are more than a quarter Black and Latino have 7.6 payday stores for every 100,000 people, or about 50% more than elsewhere,” the report notes.

    The irony is that it was the trillions in government stimulus that allowed these predatory companies to prosper. As we noted throughout 2020, many consumers used their stimulus to save and pay down debt. The New York Fed estimates about 33% of all cash received from stimulus checks was used to pay down debt. This equates directly to a boon for companies like Enova International Inc. and Elevate Credit Inc., who engage in these types of loans.

    Moshe Orenbuch, an analyst at Credit Suisse Group AG, said: “Earnings were definitely higher than we would have expected because they benefited from an improvement in the credit environment. Consumers tended to pay back debt with funds they were given by the government.”

    Kimberly Richardson found herself in an equally ugly scenario: she fell into a debt trap that caused her to go from borrowing $1,500 to bankruptcy. Interest on her $1,500 loan was accumulating at a rate of 276% and she was prompted by her loan provider to take additional borrowings under her credit line. She paid CashNetUSA more than $10,000 on the $1,500 loan and then filed for bankruptcy.

    Elevate told Bloomberg “it is committed to serving those with non-prime credit scores who are locked out of traditional financial products.” Enova told Bloomberg “its policy is to provide customers with flexibility and to help them be successful with their loan.”

    The kicker is that the National Consumer Law Center had urged Congress to cap these types of rates after Covid-19 was declared a pandemic. But just the opposite happened: in July 2020, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau “repealed substantial portions of a 2017 rule that would have required lenders to determine consumers’ ability to repay loans.”

    This rule could have wiped out as much as 68% of the industry’s revenue from payday loans.

    Now, more than 12 states have caps limiting payday loans to 36% or less. Michigan and Tennessee remain excluded from this list, however.

    And while there are some indications that the Biden administration may try to reverse course and regulate these loans further, the reality is that companies like Enova are once again licking their chops at a post-Covid boom.

    Enova Chief Executive Officer David Fisher said on an April conference call: “As the economy opens back up, we believe that consumers will raise their spending potentially to elevated levels due to increased activity and pent-up demand. We saw the same dynamic following the financial crisis, which led to strong origination growth in 2010 and 2011.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 19:45

  • Lumber, Labor, & Gas Markets Tell SAD Stories
    Lumber, Labor, & Gas Markets Tell SAD Stories

    Authored by Art Carden via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    The hits just keep coming. First, lumber prices exploded. Second, there was a terrible jobs report. Third, there was a gas shortage. These are all SAD stories–Supply And Demand. They are also, of course, stories about adaptation, adjustment, resilience, and unintended consequences.

    First, consider the lumber market. As my AIER colleague Peter C. Earle points out, lumber prices at the beginning of May 2021 were about six-and-a-half times what they were at the beginning of April 2020. On the supply side of the lumber market, lockdowns have limited production. In August, the Financial Post reported that “A plague of tiny mountain pine beetles…has already destroyed 15 years of log supplies in British Columbia, enough trees to build 9 million single-family homes.” Good, old-fashioned protectionism is at play, as well, but the Wall Street Journal reports that tariffs and trade restrictions on Canadian lumber don’t play that large a role.

    On the demand side, the US is in the middle of another housing and construction boom. Zillow is calling it “The Great Reshuffling” and reports that about 11% of Americans “have already moved during the pandemic.” My family is among them: we moved this past fall in search of more space, home office space in particular. Not long after moving, we added stairs to our back deck in no small part because we expect to be spending more of our time with friends outdoors. Moving, new building, and remodeling is being driven at least in part by low interest rates–we knocked our rate down from 3.75% to 2.49% when we moved–and, I suspect, aggressive Fed purchases of mortgage-backed securities during the pandemic. The Fed has added about $800 billion in mortgage-backed securities to their holdings since March 11, 2020:

    It will be a while before people have done the empirical work that will untangle and measure the contributions of these different causes, but at a fundamental level, it’s a Supply And Demand story. The massive increase in lumber prices, of course, has some people worried, but as Thomas Sowell constantly reminds people, “There are no solutions. Only trade-offs.” People adjust to the new reality by making incremental substitutions that might not be terribly revolutionary or that might not be especially easy to see but that still reflect exactly how people respond to the signals they are getting from rising prices. High lumber prices say “Are you sure you need to do that project right now?” Sometimes, the answer is yes and other times the answer is no. We considered buying lumber and building a doghouse, but at current prices, we’re going to delay that project for a while.

    Second, there is the labor market. The rhetorical battle is between people outraged by the laziness and moral failings of people who “don’t want to work anymore” and people outraged by the rapacity and callousness of people who expect others to go back to work for low wages. Maybe it is a sudden explosion of laziness. Maybe it is a sudden development of class consciousness that finally has us on the brink of Solidarity Forever.

    Or maybe it’s a change in people’s incentives–specifically, the extension of high unemployment benefits. As David R. Henderson points out, “Paying people an extra $400 a week as long as they’re unemployed is a bad idea.” In a post for EconLog, Henderson notes that he got this wrong–”it’s ‘only’ $300,” but with these extra benefits, it shouldn’t be surprising that people aren’t jumping at employment opportunities. In his article on unemployment in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, Lawrence Summers explains:

    “…government assistance programs contribute to long-term unemployment…by providing an incentive, and the means, not to work. Each unemployed person has a ‘reservation wage’–the minimum wage he or she insists on getting before accepting a job. Unemployment insurance and other social assistance programs increase that reservation wage, causing an unemployed person to remain unemployed longer.” 

    Why? A sign at a local fast food place advertises starting wages of $11 per hour. That doesn’t sound like much, but two people each working 35 hours per week at that rate would have a household income of $40,040. That’s about 80% of the Alabama median household income of about $50,000 and well above the federal poverty guideline of $26,500 for a family of 4.

    According to this unofficial unemployment benefits calculator, someone in Alabama who earned $20,020 by working in fast food would, upon becoming unemployed, be eligible for $193 per week in unemployment benefits for 20 weeks. If you add to that the additional $300 per week in the new stimulus bill, you get $493 per week. Is it any surprise that fewer people want to work 40 hours a week at $11 an hour when they could take home about $50 a week more than that by remaining unemployed?

    Scott Sumner offers an interesting hypothesis: “Because millions of unemployed workers in low pay service sector jobs earn more on unemployment than they did on their previous jobs, and because most of those jobs are unpleasant, employment will likely remain quite depressed all summer, before bouncing back in the fall.” Alabama is ending the payments on June 19, but that’s still more than a month from this writing of reservation wages propped up by high unemployment benefits.

    Third, a cyberattack shut down an oil pipeline. This led to panic buying at gas stations, a tweet from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission saying, “Do not fill plastic bags with gasoline,” the usual social media hand-wringing about people panic-buying gasoline and storing it stupidly, and, of course, the usual sabre-rattling about “price gouging,” which I’ve previously called “knowledge embargoes.”

    Once again, supply and demand does the explanatory work–and if we had left the mechanism alone and let prices rise after the pipeline shutdown, we wouldn’t have had the mess we were in (or, it must be admitted, the entertaining memes). People who don’t pay attention to current events would get the message that they need to conserve gas pretty quickly, and we wouldn’t be dealing with shortages. It’s a minor inconvenience, but when your gas light comes on (as mine did the other day), it’s cold comfort to pull into a gas station and discover that there is no gas at $2.89 a gallon rather than some gas at $5 a gallon. A station across the street had gas, fortunately–but they had run out of premium (which I don’t need for my Toyota Corolla) and customers were limited to $20 purchases. As economists emphasize whenever price gouging rules kick in, ignoring what supply and demand analysis has to teach us usually means making the problem worse rather than better.

    An apparently apocryphal curse says “May you live in interesting times.” Alas, we do. We needn’t be confused, however. I tell my students that I love economics because it gives me a simple set of tools that makes a lot of sense out of seemingly-disparate situations. Are we wondering what is going on with lumber? It’s a SAD story. Labor? Also a SAD story. Gas? Another SAD story made genuinely sad by politicians ignoring the story’s lesson. While I wish I could say “They’ll know better next time,” it saddens me to say “They won’t.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 19:25

  • China Furious As Japan Refuses To Address Its Radioactive Fukushima Water Dumping Concerns
    China Furious As Japan Refuses To Address Its Radioactive Fukushima Water Dumping Concerns

    Angry that Japan has yet to respond directly to the concerns of the international community, China again urged Japan on Monday to face up to its responsibility and refrain from “wantonly” disposing the radioactive, polluted Fukushima water before reaching consensus with all stakeholders and international agencies through consultations.

    China Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian made the remarks at a daily news briefing when asked to comment on Seoul’s request to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) calling for exploring ways to cooperate with the UN nuclear watchdog to ensure safety in Japan’s planned release of Fukushima nuclear polluted water.

    Tanks storing treated radioactive water on the premises of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant

    Zhao expressed China’s understanding and support for the South Korean side’s actions, saying the international community as well as within Japan have expressed deep concern and opposition over the past month after Japan announced its decision.

    And in the most harshly worded indication that China will not stand idly by as Tokyo releases 1 million tons of radioactive Fukushima water into the Pacific, Zhao said that “Regrettably, the Japanese government has turned a deaf ear to the protests from many governments, international organizations, environmental groups and people in various countries and has to date refused to respond directly to the concerns of the international community.”

    He reiterated that Japan’s decision to dump the nuclear polluted water into the sea will endanger the global marine environment and international public health and safety.

    The spokesperson stressed that Japan’s move lacks transparency and is irresponsible, adding that its attempts would only serve its own selfish gains while leaving the international community and future generations with endless problems.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 19:05

  • PBS Journalist Implies That Ending Mask Mandates Is Racist
    PBS Journalist Implies That Ending Mask Mandates Is Racist

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    During a White House press briefing, a PBS journalist suggested that ending mask mandates was racist.

    Yes, really.

    Last week, the CDC disappointed face diaper extremists by lifting restrictions on mask wearing in numerous settings.

    This prompted a massive backlash from those who have adopted the face covering as a kind of cult symbol, with a PBS journalist attempting to argue that not masking up will lead to the deaths of more black people.

    “The CDC guidelines on masks is putting front line workers and especially people of color at risk and they’re calling for the CDC to reverse that, what’s the White House’s stance on…people of color (being) at risk,” said the journalist.

    Leftists continue to be infuriated that mask mandates are ending because for the past year, they’ve been able to use them as a justification to ostracize and publicly shame conservatives, while the entire time claiming masks “aren’t political.”

    Despite the CDC’s advice, authorities throughout liberal states are refusing to fully lift the mandates while zealots like AOC are insisting they will continue to mask up.

    Meanwhile, two months after lifting its mask mandate, Texas recorded zero COVID deaths, the first time that has happened since data began to be collected.

    Even after the pandemic ends, those who have cemented mask wearing as a signal of virtue, compliance and political obedience will fight tooth and nail to keep the mandates in place under any flimsy justification.

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 05/18/2021 – 18:45

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