- The Maskparade Charade
The Maskparade Charade
Authored by Sylvia Shawcross via Off-Guardian.org,
In the ridiculous world of the New Abnormal where we apparently find ourselves it is critically important to add your opinion to the cacophony of why we are who we are, where we are on the path to seeming totalitarianism and… why people are still wearing masks.
Here in Canada apparently 7 out of 10 members of the public would want mask mandates back while most of the rest of the world has abandoned the concept to the rearview mirror.
Perhaps understandable if you have a medical condition but now study after study. Peer-reviewed. Well-researched. Top quality medical journals. Top-of-the-line researchers. All saying these masks do very little good.**
Even Fauci himself said so once…before he changed his mind as he tends to do when the landscape changes with the weather.
And in response, of course, drug companies and governments sponsored researchers in duelling studies to prove the opposite because that’s the game being played. It’s all about who you believe. It’s not about “the science”. Quite the game really.
In fact, most now know that masks are harmful in many cases, with children paying the biggest price by far on many different levels.
We know now masks don’t work for covid but perhaps they work for RSV or the flu? Maybe that’s why the push is on again. Because here in Canada it certainly is. Maybe that’s why we have the new narrative and being good abnormal citizens we must comply. Do you think?
Don’t be silly. We know why. We just don’t want to say.
So the Media and their polls have told us that 7 out of 10 people want to keep the masks. And why might that be?
They can hide their crooked teeth. Or their unbrushed teeth. Or their morning-after-the-night-before breath. They don’t have to wear make-up. Or shave. Or wash their faces or their children’s faces.
They can stick their tongue out at people without being caught. They can whisper without lip readers. They can smile and smirk and bite their lips. They can hide their cosmetic surgery in progress.They can hide their chin hairs and warts and zits and leftover food in their moustaches.
They can rob a bank or say whatever they want to strangers because no one knows who they are and even the cameras don’t know.
God only knows what’s going on behind those masks!
But! Those mask-wearing people are free in a weird weird way. Advocates of the new abnormal have found a form of freedom from social norms behind a mask.
How is that possible? Is it possible that masks are freedom? No wonder we’re all mixed up. We don’t even know what freedom is anymore.
Or is it because we lost the freedom to have crooked teeth, no makeup and snarky opinions in the real world due to ever evolving relentless social norms and now have to hide for any sort of freedom…Hmmm…
Seems to be true for a lot of things now doesn’t it?
(Except for anything sexual. You can pretty much proclaim or do anything publicly now. Except child molestation. You can apparently sniff but not anything else. But I’m doing that digression thing again…)
So, let’s get this straight— when we see someone in a mask are they to be feared as nasty snaggle-toothed leprous sneaky sociopaths with sharp tongues and nefarious intentions?
Or are they just victims grasping for what little freedom they can garner in a socially punishing world? Hmmm… It could well be either one… How would we know?
Nevertheless, this is all terribly alarming. WHAT is going on? 7 out of 10 of us!!!
Well, I have a theory. Beyond the usual theories of enforced enslavement, virtue signalling, forced shame, neurosis, herd-like conditioning, continued fear porn, dehumanization/objectification/subjugation/alienation, circumvention of facial-recognition systems, gateway moves to social credit scores, anti-feminist one-step-to-the-forced-wearing-of-shuttlecock-burkas assault and the ultimate theory that this poll is nonsense propaganda from our captured media.
All of these theories are as good as the next as long as science seems to have little to do with mask mandates. I mean, real science by independent researchers.
Beyond these theories is the “we’re in the Dark Ages during the plague years of 1346 or so again” theory of mine which I thought I might as well throw into the mix now that we’re all mixed up about freedom and stuff.
Not that there is a plague or anything really at the moment but because people’s reactions don’t change. Not through all these centuries. We’ve changed NOT at all.
Here’s my theory: People wearing masks are the flagellants of the dark ages during the plague years who would run around whipping themselves publicly for God’s forgiveness and atonement or something.
Now during the plague years we would have asked a priest about all this guilt and fear stuff that drive flagellants to be flagellants but today we ask the psychologists.
This is because many if not all of the first world countries have become atheistic and have abandoned religion. But human nature needs what human nature needs—hence the psychologists for priests e.g. or Fauci as Pope and Schwaub as God and Greta as Mother Mary Marx.
Some people believe either technology, money, or medicine has replaced religion but it is clearly evident that it is the Green movement. If we can accept that religion is something that people participate in every day in a meaningful way, then clearly the Green movement has it all. It has priests, codes of behaviours, dictates and forbidden things.
It has a hell (the world as it is going now) and it has a heaven (sustainable development in utopia) It has worshippers. It has the holy and the damned. It has flagellants. And the people now wearing masks are them.
After thirty or so years of being told humans are responsible for killing the planet and being driven to weeping guilt over spending and frivolity and recycling and plastic and gas and beef-pork pies, humans are despicable.
They know it.
They’re guilty as hell. They want to be punished. They believe they deserve it and they are doing this as an appeal to their new Gods of the Environment.
Masks appear not to be about the virus, but about supporting the true religion of the Environmental Zealotry in all its glory and condemnation no matter whatever absurd, illogical or terribly hurtful thing that might bring in whatever sphere of influence.
For many masks might even be called the uniform of the uninformed.
No wonder they read the riot act to the truckers protest of Canada over things like mask mandates. Those heretics!
Well… that’s my theory. It’s as good as any of those other ones, isn’t it? Or maybe not. What do I know… As far as wearing masks is concerned, I appreciate that people are afraid and don’t wish to make too much light of it. Fear isn’t fun. It’s just important to know what to fear and why. Mostly I’m all for following the law of the land as long as the law isn’t an ass. That’s the hard part to figure out.
Here’s an earworm:
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/18/2022 – 23:40 - Watch: Real-Life 'Darkstar' Hypersonic Engine Fires Into Ramjet Mode
Watch: Real-Life 'Darkstar' Hypersonic Engine Fires Into Ramjet Mode
Remember the scene in the movie Top Gun: Maverick, Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell is piloting the SR-72 “Darkstar” hypersonic plane and slams the thrust lever for the engines all the way forward. The engines ignite in a fiery blast that propels Maverick to Mach 10.
The propulsion system centered around the SR-72 Darkstar (a plane that is only a concept) is a turbine-based combined cycle, which merges a turbine engine with a ramjet.
While there is no aircraft in the production stage with this insane propulsion system, ground-testing testing is underway.
Hypersonic airplane developer Hermeus Corporation tweeted a video on Thursday of one of these engines transitioning from “turbojet” mode to “ramjet” insane mode.
We just completed a major hypersonic milestone – turbojet to ramjet mode transition! pic.twitter.com/1jF7qAZavy
— Hermeus (@hermeuscorp) November 17, 2022
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Hermeus believes the engine will propel an aircraft in turbojet mode to March 3. They said the transition to ramjet would push the aircraft to March 5.
“This is one of the most important technological feats to making operational hypersonic flight a reality. Most hypersonic platforms use rockets – our approach allows us to use existing infrastructure at traditional airports,” the company said.
This is one of the most important technological feats to making operational hypersonic flight a reality.
Most hypersonic platforms use rockets – our approach allows us to use existing infrastructure at traditional airports. pic.twitter.com/FTq6DZmXxI
— Hermeus (@hermeuscorp) November 17, 2022
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Here’s more of how the engine transitions:
At low speeds Chimera is in turbojet mode – just like any jet aircraft. But as the temperature and the speed of the incoming air increase, turbojets hit their performance limit. This happens at around Mach 2.
Chimera has a pre-cooler that reduces the temperature of the air coming into the turbojet. This allows Hermeus to squeeze out a bit more performance from the turbojet before transitioning to ramjet.
The company said they “will begin flight testing in late 2023.”
While Darkstar speeds are not yet attainable, supersonic passenger aircraft will be available at the end of this decade, and hypersonic travel could be a mid/late 2030 story.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/18/2022 – 23:20 - Lawsuit Claims Massachusetts Installed COVID-19 'Spyware' On 1 Million Devices
Lawsuit Claims Massachusetts Installed COVID-19 'Spyware' On 1 Million Devices
Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The Google Pixel 7 Pro phone is displayed at its launch in New York on Oct. 6, 2022. (Thomas Urbain/AFP via Getty Images) The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) is facing a class action lawsuit for allegedly working with Google to install “spyware” onto the Android devices of a million state residents without their knowledge during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Plaintiffs Robert Wright and Johnny Kula were among 1 million Massachusetts residents who had the state’s “COVID Exposure Settings: US-MA” app auto-installed without their consent, according to the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), the nonpartisan civil rights group that filed the lawsuit (pdf) on Tuesday.
The app, once automatically installed, didn’t appear on the device’s home screen as newly-installed apps typically do. Instead, it was invisible and could only be found by opening “settings” and using the “view all apps” feature, according to NCLA.
This meant that many device users were unaware of its presence. Many have decried this as an invasion of privacy.
The NCLA declared the action a “brazen disregard” of civil liberties, saying in a statement the app was installed “without obtaining any search warrants, in violation of the device owners’ constitutional and common-law rights to privacy and property.”
“This ‘android attack,’ deliberately designed to override the constitutional and legal rights of citizens to be free from government intrusions upon their privacy without their consent, reads like dystopian science fiction—and must be swiftly invalidated by the court,” said NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel Peggy Little in a statement.
Screenshot of the COVID Exposure Settings: US-MA app on the Google Play Store, on Nov. 18, 2022. (Screenshot via The Epoch Times) ‘Government May Not Secretly Install Surveillance’ on Devices
Other states and foreign countries mostly tried to persuade their citizens to voluntarily install contact tracing apps, even if it meant fewer people took it up, according to Sheng Li, litigation counsel for NCLA.
“The government may not secretly install surveillance devices on your personal property without a warrant—even for a laudable purpose,” Li said. “For the same reason, it may not install surveillance software on your smartphone without your awareness and permission.”
The NCLA has asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts to block the continued installation of the app on private devices “without the knowledge or permission of device owners.”
The lawsuit also asks the judge to make Massachusetts DPH work with Google to uninstall the app from “private Android mobile devices where the device owner did not give permission for such installation.”
The plaintiffs also want the state to declare that its actions violated Fourth Amendment rights and Article 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights.
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/18/2022 – 23:00 - The (Political) World Cup Map
The (Political) World Cup Map
A total of 18 different countries have hosted a men’s World Cup 23 times since 1930.
Brazil, Germany, France, Italy and Mexico have hosted soccer’s most illustrious tournament twice. In most cases, the tournament took place in countries with a democratic system.
But not always, as a look Statista’s infographic below shows.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Fascism ruled Italy during the 1934 World Cup (though not the second time round when it hosted the competition in 1990), and when Argentina hosted the tournament in 1978, a military junta was in power.
In the recent past, however, the world governing body FIFA awarded the World Cup twice in a row to countries ruled autocratically.
Putin’s Russia, which hosted the 2018 tournament, is ‘not free’, according to Freedom House, and the same is true of the 2022 host, Qatar.
Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani governs the country as absolute ruler; democratic elections or political parties do not exist. Freedom House goes on to say, “While Qatari citizens are among the wealthiest in the world, most of the population is made up of non-citizens with no political rights, few civil liberties, and limited access to economic opportunities.“
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/18/2022 – 22:40 - Democrats Never Admit Defeat
Democrats Never Admit Defeat
Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClear Wire,
The only thing as wrong as the pre-election predictions of a red wave is the post-midterm analysis declaring a rousing victory by the Democrats.
Midterm election results boost Biden 2024 hopes, Reuters reports. Democrats can’t rest on their midterm success, declares a column published in the Hill. Perhaps the most predictable, if irrelevant, spin came from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who tweeted that House Democrats “defied expectations with an excellent performance: running their races with courage, optimism and determination.”
The more germane point is that Democrats lost the House and Pelosi will have to hand the gavel over to Kevin McCarthy next year. This monumental development should stop the Democrats’ legislative agenda in its tracks. President Biden’s hopes of becoming another FDR is now a pipe dream.
Yes, the Democrats exceeded expectations, performing better than history or pre-election polls suggested, as they won many close races in the House and hung on to their narrow margin in the Senate. But if we take a step back, the magnitude of things comes into focus.
Just two years ago, Democrats enjoyed a resounding victory, keeping the House, taking effective control of the Senate, and installing Joe Biden in the White House. Despite their narrow majorities they operated as if they had won by a landslide. The party that continually claims to be on “the right side of history,” and insists that the American people overwhelmingly support its policies, made every effort to give the country a full dose of its vision.
Biden’s first two years were a Golden Age for Democrats. They rammed through trillions of dollars of new spending while advancing the goals of diversity, inclusion, and equity across the government.
Meanwhile, they and their allies in the media worked to delegitimize their Republican opponents, casting them as racist, fascist “election deniers” who posed an existential threat to the “soul of democracy.” During the summer, liberals were handed an unexpected gift when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the poorly reasoned (but now-popular) 1973 case that legalized abortion across the land.
Given all that, one might have expected them to consolidate their power during the midterms. Instead, they lost some of it. Democrats may be raising relieved cheers, but they cannot spin away the fact that 55% of Americans disapprove of the president’s performance and 67% say the country is on the wrong track.
The election was a repudiation of the Democrats’ vision – even as voters sent a strong signal that they like Donald Trump’s toxic politics even less. It is very possible that Trump will rescue Democrats again in 2024 if Republican primary voters make him their party’s nominee once again.
Yes, all elections are a choice and Democrats can hope that the GOP keeps giving voters even more unpalatable candidates.
But that dynamic does not diminish the message voters sent to Democrats in the midterms. “We’re not as bad as the other guys” cannot be translated into an endorsement of one’s agenda.
The most telling comment following the midterms was Biden’s declaration that he will do “nothing” different in response to the results. Of course, he won’t. The Democrats are no longer a political party in the old American tradition – an ever-evolving group of people who have a general philosophy which they can quickly adapt to the changing will of the people. They are ideologues committed to a specific unbending set of ideas about the role of the welfare state and their concept of social justice.
They cannot change course because they are no longer running a slate of candidates but a set-in-stone philosophy whose correctness can never be questioned. They cannot admit defeat, because it’s hard for them to accept that the people do not embrace their “truths” (they just need more time). Election setbacks are just bumps in the road for them to ignore on their march to the promised land.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/18/2022 – 22:20 - Stratolaunch Announces USAF Contract To Launch Hypersonic Vehicle From World's Largest Plane
Stratolaunch Announces USAF Contract To Launch Hypersonic Vehicle From World's Largest Plane
The aerospace venture established by late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen announced a contract with the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to conduct a flight test of the company’s hypersonic test vehicle early next year.
Stratolaunch and AFRL will use the company’s twin-fuselage “Roc” airplane to air-launch the company’s first Talon-A hypersonic test vehicle.
“Launched from the Roc aircraft, Talon-A is a rocket-powered, autonomous testbed with the ability to fly a variety of hypersonic flight profiles while carrying customized payload experiments on board,” Stratolaunch said, adding the next generation of Talon-A vehicles will be capable of reusable hypersonic flight.
“We’re pleased that AFRL has chosen to support the flight of our first hypersonic vehicle, and we have enjoyed working with the esteemed team.
“We look forward to providing flight test services to AFRL and other customers in the near future,” Dr. Zachary Krevor, Chief Executive Officer for Stratolaunch, wrote in a statement.
Last month, we noted the Roc was being prepared for an upcoming test flight that was reported to include the separation drop-test of an unmanned Talon-A hypersonic mock-up that is being referred to as “Talon-0.”
Here’s the latest footage of the hypersonic test vehicle mounted in the center of the twin-fuselage plane.
Stratolaunch was initially envisioned as a satellite midair launcher. But the massive plane has had a new mission in the last several years: become a leader in sending hypersonic vehicles aloft. It seems like the first big test will occur in the first quarter of 2023.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/18/2022 – 22:00 - Group Calls On Authorities To Investigate CDC Over Misinformation About Child COVID Deaths
Group Calls On Authorities To Investigate CDC Over Misinformation About Child COVID Deaths
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials who spread misinformation about child COVID-19 deaths should be investigated for violations of the agency’s scientific integrity policies, a watchdog group says.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Ga., on April 23, 2020. (Tami Chappell/AFP via Getty Images) Drs. Katherine Fleming-Dutra and Sara Oliver both claimed that COVID-19 deaths among children were higher than they actually were, and refused to correct the misinformation after they were told the correct figures, the complaint says, citing reporting from The Epoch Times.
The CDC’s scientific integrity guidelines say that the agency holds accountability and integrity as core values, stating in part that “all information products authored, published, and released by CDC for public use are of the highest quality and are scientifically sound, technically accurate, and useful to the intended audience.”
Protect the Public’s Trust, the watchdog that filed the complaint, urged the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) inspector general to investigate the apparent violations. The CDC is part of the HHS.
“Ideally, they would investigate the incident and what happened and determine whether or not certain officials within the CDC violated the agency’s scientific integrity policies. We believe that that they have,” Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the Public’s Trust, told The Epoch Times.
The inspector general’s office said it received the complaint and declined to comment further. The CDC and the HHS did not respond to requests for comment. Fleming-Dutra and Oliver have not returned repeated inquiries.
Misleading Claims
Fleming-Dutra and Oliver both said that COVID-19 was a leading cause of death among children while presenting data to the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel before the panel voted to recommend the CDC allow all children in the United States between 6 months and 5 years of age receive a Moderna or Pfizer vaccine.
Slides from their presentations cited a non-peer reviewed paper from British scientists, who analyzed death certificate data from the CDC.
The scientists later corrected the study after admitting they didn’t fully understand how the certificate data was reported.
Within days of the presentations, both officials were alerted to having spread misinformation, emails obtained by The Epoch Times show. But the officials brushed off the concerns, and never issued a correction.
“The general sentiment [is] that ‘even 1 death from COVID that’s preventable is too many, regardless of how you count them,’” Oliver wrote in one of the missives.
No evidence exists showing that vaccines protect against death among small children.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, later referred to the study, and the website of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the vaccine advisory panel, still cites it. Neither has acknowledged the update.
It remains unclear why the CDC officials did not perform their own analysis of the certificate data.
“I don’t understand why they don’t seem to know how to use their own resources,” Kelley Krohnert, a citizen researcher who alerted the study’s authors to the errors, told The Epoch Times. “It’s very strange.”
Public Trust
Apparent violations of the scientific integrity policy include relying on a non-peer reviewed study and not discovering the massive overestimate of child COVID-19 deaths, the complaint from Protect the Public’s Trust says.
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/18/2022 – 21:40 - The US Accounts For Nearly Half Of Global Diabetes Drug Sales
The US Accounts For Nearly Half Of Global Diabetes Drug Sales
Eli Lilly, the world’s second-largest maker of anti-diabetes drugs, has become one of several companies to fall victim to fake-but-verified Twitter accounts spreading false information last week.
On November 10, a “verified” account using the handle @EliLillyandCo tweeted: “We are excited to announce insulin is free now” in the company’s name, quickly gathering thousands of likes and retweets.
By the time the tweet was eventually flagged and deleted, the damage had already been done: Eli Lilly’s stock price dropped by more than 4 percent the next day, wiping out billions in market capitalization. And just like that, the issue of insulin prices was back on the agenda.
But, as Statista’s Felix Richter reports, the fact of the matter is that insulin is neither free nor cheap, especially in the United States, where 1.3 million with diabetes were forced to skip, delay or reduce their insulin intake to save money at some point in 2021.
That’s according to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, which found that insulin rationing was most prevalent among Black Americans, at 23 percent, compared to 16 percent among white and Hispanic Americans. While the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Biden in August, will partly address the problem by capping the monthly cost of insulin at $35 for senior on Medicare from January 1, millions of Americans who are uninsured or have private health insurance will continue to grapple with sky-high insulin prices.
As the following chart based on estimates from Statista’s Health Market Outlook shows, the U.S. is by far the largest market for diabetes drugs, accounting for nearly half the global revenue from sales of insulin and other anti-diabetes medication.
You will find more infographics at Statista
That is mostly due to the fact that insulin prices in America are many times higher than anywhere else in the world, as a study published by the RAND Corporation in 2020 found out.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/18/2022 – 21:20 - World Oil Demand Topped Pre-COVID Levels In September
World Oil Demand Topped Pre-COVID Levels In September
Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,
Oil demand worldwide rose in September to exceed the September 2019 pre-Covid levels by nearly 1 million barrels per day (bpd), new data from the Joint Organizations Data Initiative (JODI) showed on Thursday.
Global oil demand rose seasonally in September to the second-highest level of this year, according to the JODI data shared by the Riyadh-based International Energy Forum (IEF).
In September, global oil demand was at 101 percent of pre-Covid levels, while crude production was at 99 percent of those levels, the data showed.
Oil demand in September continued its growth from August when consumption rebounded from July.
After a counter-seasonal drop in July, global oil demand rebounded in August by 2 million bpd to reach 99 percent of pre-Covid levels, JODI data showed earlier this year.
The rise in September demand was driven by diesel consumption in China and gasoline demand in the United States, said the IEF, the world’s largest international organization of energy ministers.
While markets tightened in September compared to August, global inventories of crude and refined products climbed counter seasonally by 3.7 million barrels. Yet, global inventories remain 442 million barrels below the five-year average, the IEF said.
Other noteworthy findings for September included a rise in Saudi crude oil exports, which went up by 120,000 bpd to reach a 29-month high of 7.72 million bpd.
In the United States, total product demand jumped by 570,000 bpd in September and was up 1.03 million bpd from year-ago levels. U.S. crude oil production was 1.13 million bpd higher than year-ago levels.
Oil demand in China, the world’s top oil importer, rose by 459,000 bpd in September, but it was still 453,000 bpd below year-ago levels. Chinese crude oil imports increased by 290,000 bpd to 9.82 million bpd. Yet, they were still down by 197,000 bpd in September compared to the same month of last year, according to the JODI data.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/18/2022 – 21:00 - Fragile Fertility
Fragile Fertility
There has been an alarming decrease in the average sperm count of men worldwide over the last few decades.
As Statista’s Martin Armstrong shows in the infographic below, research has revealed a 51 percent fall between 1973 and 2018 – from 101 million sperm per milliliter of sperm to just 49 million.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Commenting on the decline, lead author of the study, Hagai Levine, said “I think this is another signal that something is wrong with the globe and that we need to do something about it” adding:
“I think it’s a crisis, that we better tackle now, before it may reach a tipping point which may not be reversible”.
Fertility research has in the past been criticized for not taking into account the potentially biased sampling methods of earlier studies, citing also the variable of changing laboratory methods. The researchers in this case though say that such issues have been taken into account – only considering samples where the same count method was used, were of an acceptable size and did not include men known to have fertility problems.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/18/2022 – 20:40 - FBI Director Wray Defends Using Bureau Jet To Go On Vacation
FBI Director Wray Defends Using Bureau Jet To Go On Vacation
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
FBI Director Christopher Wray on Nov. 17 defended leaving a congressional hearing abruptly and using an official bureau jet to go on vacation after telling a senator he was attending to business.
FBI Director Christopher Wray speaks during a congressional hearing in a Nov. 15, 2022, file image. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Wray, a Trump appointee, confirmed under questioning by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) that he flew to Saranac Lake in New York from an Aug. 4 Senate hearing.
“You were going on vacation?” Hawley asked.
Wray said, “I was, yes.”
Hawley asked, “So, you left a statutorily required oversight hearing in order to go on a personal vacation to the Adirondacks?”
Wray said, “I took a flight to go visit my family, as had been previously arranged in conjunction with leadership of the committee.”
Hawley then cited Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who had asked Wray to remain for longer during the August hearing so members could ask more questions.
At one point, Grassley said, “I assume you’ve got other business,” to which Wray answered affirmatively.
“And you said you had a plane to catch. You had somewhere to go. And now we find out it was for vacation?” Hawley said.
Wray said, “The reference to other business was not a reference that day, it was a reference to the following week when Sen. Grassley and I were going to see each other in Iowa, when I had other business in Iowa. And I did, in fact, see him then.”
Grassley’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“So you had to leave the hearing early because you’re gonna see him later in Iowa? You had a week,” Hawley said.
Wray said, “No, I had to leave when I said I was going to have to leave as had been previously organized with the leadership.”
A bureau spokesperson previously told The Epoch Times that Wray followed federal guidelines on using government aircraft. Wray said he’s required to use an FBI plane when he travels, regardless of the reason, and that he pays for each trip. Wray said on Nov. 17 that the bureau would comply with requests for receipts.
Hawley noted that a number of FBI whistleblowers have come forward in recent months, alleging that the bureau is violating federal guidelines in its treatment of Jan. 6 defendants and employees.
“Frankly, I think you should have been gone a long time ago, and given your behavior recently, it only makes it more clear,” Hawley said.
During the hearing, Wray said the FBI wouldn’t retaliate against the whistleblowers, although some have offered differing accounts.
Wray declined to talk about matters related to what the whistleblowers have reported.
“We have, as we speak, a number of personnel matters that are underway,” he told Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). “For reasons I’m sure you can appreciate, we can’t discuss that.”
Johnson said, “That’s always your excuse. I understand how you remain above the law by using that excuse repeatedly.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/18/2022 – 20:20 - Visualizing America's Changing Demographics Over The Past 100 Years
Visualizing America's Changing Demographics Over The Past 100 Years
The United States has famously been called a melting pot, due its demographic makeup of various cultures, races, religions, and languages. But what shape does that mixture take? And how has it changed over time?
Beginning over 100 years ago, this video from Kaj Tallungs assesses how America’s demographics have changed from 1901 to 2020. It uses data from multiple sources including the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Center for Health Statistics, and the Human Mortality Database.
A Look at the Total Population
As Visual Capitalist’s Avery Koop notes, the most obvious takeaway from this animation is that America’s population has soared over the last century. America’s population grew from 77 million in 1901 to over 330 million in 2020—or total growth of 330% over the 119 years.
And the U.S. has continued to add to its population totals. Here’s a brief look at at the population in 2021 by regional breakdowns:
And here’s a glance at how some of the population shakes out, across the top 10 most populous states in the country:
Demographic Breakdowns
Diving a little deeper, the country’s demographic breakdowns have also changed significantly over the last 100+ years. While the share of men and women is an obvious near-even split, age and race distributions have changed drastically.
For starters, though birth rates have remained fairly strong in the U.S., they have been slowing over time. This is similar to many other Western countries, and can eventually result in a larger share of elderly people as well as an increased financial cost of subsidizing their care. Additionally, fewer births results in a depleting workforce as the young population shrinks.
The shares of Black, Asian, Hispanic, and people of two or more races have also been growing. In fact, between 2010–2020 the population of people identifying as two races or more increased by a whopping 276%.
Here’s a glance at some of the other demographic growth rates over the 2010-2020 period:
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Black or African American alone population: +5.6%
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Asian alone population: +35.5%
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Hispanic or Latino alone population: +23%
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White population: -9%
Looking Ahead
Like many countries, a “graying” of the population will become a concern in the United States.
By 2060, it is expected that 95 million Americans will be over 65. But the share of those 18 and under will also continue to grow (albeit at a much slower pace) from 74 million people in 2020 to 80 million in 2060.
Another interesting insight from the Census Bureau is that from 2016–2060, the American-born population is expected to grow by only 20%, whereas the foreign-born population—the share of population who will immigrate to the U.S.—is expected to rise 58%.
True to the melting pot moniker, America’s demographics will continue to change dramatically over the coming decades.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/18/2022 – 20:00 -
- The COVID/Crypto Connection: The Grim Saga Of FTX & Sam Bankman-Fried
The COVID/Crypto Connection: The Grim Saga Of FTX & Sam Bankman-Fried
Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,
A series of revealing texts and tweets by Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced CEO of FTX, the once high-flying but now belly-up crypto exchange, had the following to say about his image as a do-gooder: it is a “dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us.”
Very interesting. He had the whole game going: a vegan worried about climate change, supports every manner of justice (racial, social, environmental) except that which is coming for him, and shells out millions to worthy charities associated with the left. He also bought plenty of access and protection in D.C., enough to make his shady company the toast of the town.
As part of the mix, there is this thing called pandemic planning. We should know what that is by now: it means you can’t be in charge of your life because there are bad viruses out there. As bizarre as it seems, and for reasons that are still not entirely clear, favoring lockdowns, masks, and vaccine passports became part of the woke ideological stew.
This is particularly strange because covid restrictions have been proven, over and over, to harm all the groups about whom woke ideology claims to care so deeply. That includes even animal rights: who can forget the Danish mink slaughter of 2020?
Regardless, it’s just true. Masking became a symbol of being a good person, same as vaccinating, veganism, and flying into fits at the drop of a hat over climate change. None of this has much if anything to do with science or reality. It’s all tribal symbolism in the name of group political solidarity. And FTX was pretty good at it, throwing around hundreds of millions to prove the company’s loyalty to all the right causes.
Among them included the pandemic-planning racket. That’s right: there were deep connections between FTX and Covid that have been cultivated for two years. Let’s have a look.
Earlier this year, the New York Times trumpeted a study that showed no benefit at all to the use of Ivermectin. It was supposed to be definitive. The study was funded by FTX. Why? Why was a crypto exchange so interested in the debunking of repurposed drugs in order to drive governments and people into the use of patented pharmaceuticals, even those like Ramdesivir that didn’t actually work? Inquiring minds would like to know.
Regardless, the study and especially the conclusions turned out to be bogus. David Henderson and Charles Hooper further point out an interesting fact:
“Some of the researchers involved in the TOGETHER trial had performed paid services for Pfizer, Merck, Regeneron, and AstraZeneca, all companies involved in developing COVID-19 therapeutics and vaccines that nominally compete with ivermectin.”
For some reason, SBF just knew that he was supposed to oppose repurposed drugs, though he knew nothing about the subject at all. He was glad to fund a poor study to make it true and the New York Times played its assigned role in the whole performance.
It was just the start. A soft-peddling Washington Post investigation found that Sam and his brother Gabe, who ran a hastily founded Covid nonprofit, “have spent at least $70 million since October 2021 on research projects, campaign donations and other initiatives intended to improve biosecurity and prevent the next pandemic.”
I can do no better than to quote the Washington Post:
The shock waves from FTX’s free fall have rippled across the public health world, where numerous leaders in pandemic-preparedness had received funds from FTX funders or were seeking donations.
In other words, the “public health world” wanted more chances to say: “Give me money so I can keep advocating to lock more people down!” Alas, the collapse of the exchange, which reportedly holds a mere 0.001% of the assets it once claimed to have, makes that impossible.
Among the organizations most affected is Guarding Against Pandemics, the advocacy group headed by Gabe that took out millions in ads to back the Biden administration’s push for $30 billion in funding. As Influence Watch notes: “Guarding Against Pandemics is a left-leaning advocacy group created in 2020 to support legislation that increases government investment in pandemic prevention plans.”
Truly it gets worse:
FTX-backed projects ranged from $12 million to champion a California ballot initiative to strengthen public health programs and detect emerging virus threats (amid lackluster support, the measure was punted to 2024), to investing more than $11 million on the unsuccessful congressional primary campaign of an Oregon biosecurity expert, and even a $150,000 grant to help Moncef Slaoui, scientific adviser for the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed” vaccine accelerator, write his memoir.
Leaders of the FTX Future Fund, a spinoff foundation that committed more than $25 million to preventing bio-risks, resigned in an open letter last Thursday, acknowledging that some donations from the organization are on hold.
And worse:
The FTX Future Fund’s commitments included $10 million to HelixNano, a biotech start-up seeking to develop a next-generation coronavirus vaccine; $250,000 to a University of Ottawa scientist researching how to eradicate viruses from plastic surfaces; and $175,000 to support a recent law school graduate’s job at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “Overall, the Future Fund was a force for good,” said Tom Inglesby, who leads the Johns Hopkins center, lamenting the fund’s collapse. “The work they were doing was really trying to get people to think long-term … to build pandemic preparedness, to diminish the risks of biological threats.”
More:
Guarding Against Pandemics spent more than $1 million on lobbying Capitol Hill and the White House over the past year, hired at least 26 lobbyists to advocate for a still-pending bipartisan pandemic plan in Congress and other issues, and ran advertisements backing legislation that included pandemic-preparedness funding. Protect Our Future, a political action committee backed by the Bankman-Fried brothers, spent about $28 million this congressional cycle on Democratic candidates “who will be champions for pandemic prevention,” according to the group’s webpage.
I think you get the idea. This is all a racket. FTX, founded in 2019 following Biden’s announcement of his bid for the presidency, by the son of the co-founder of a major Democrat Party political action committee called Mind the Gap, was nothing but a magic-bean Ponzi scheme. It seized on the lockdowns for political, media, and academic cover. Its economic rationale was as nonexistent as its books. The first auditor to have a look has written:
“Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here. From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented.”
It was the worst example of a phony perpetual-motion machine: a token to back a company that itself was backed by the token, which in turn was backed by nothing but political fashion and woke ideology that roped in Larry David, Tom Brady, Katy Perry, Tony Blair, and Bill Clinton to provide a cloak of legitimacy.
Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, and Sam Bankman-Fried in the Bahamas April 2022
And you can’t make this stuff up anymore: FTX had a close relationship with the World Economic Forum and was the favored crypto exchange of the Ukrainian government. It looks for all the world like the money-laundering operation of the Democratic National Committee and the entire lockdown lobby.
I will tell you what infuriates me about these billions in fake money and deep corruptions of politics and science. For years now, my anti-lockdown friends have been hounded for being funded by supposed dark money that simply doesn’t exist. Many brave scientists, journalists, attorneys, and others gave up great careers to stand for principle, exposing the damage caused by the lockdowns, and this is how they have been treated: smeared and displaced.
Brownstone has adopted as many in this diaspora as possible for fellowships as far as the resources (real ones, contributed by caring individuals) can go. But we cannot come anywhere near what is necessary for justice, much less complete with the 8-digit funding regime of the other side.
The Great Barrington Declaration was signed at the offices of the American Institute for Economic Research, which, apparently, six years prior had received a long-spent $60,000 grant from the Koch Foundation, and thus became a “Koch-funded libertarian think tank” which supposedly discredited the GBD, even though none of the authors received a dime.
This gibberish and slander has gone on for years – at the urging of government officials! – and Brownstone itself faces much of the same nonsense, with every manner of fantasy about our supposed power, money, and influence swarming the darker realms of the social-media dudgeons. In fact, the actual Koch Foundation (probably unbeknownst to its founder) was funding the pro-lockdown work of Neil Ferguson, whose ridiculous modeling terrified the world into denying human rights to billions of people the world over.
All this time – while every type of vicious propaganda was unleashed on the world – the pro-lockdown and pro-mandate lobby, including fake scientists and fake studies, were benefiting from millions and billions thrown around by operators of a Ponzi scheme based on cheating, fraud, and $15 billion in leveraged funds that didn’t exist while its principle actors were languishing in a drug-infested $40 million villa in the Bahamas even as they preened about the virtues of “effective altruism” and their pandemic-planning machinery that has now fallen apart.
Then the New York Times, instead of decrying this criminal conspiracy for what it is, writes puff pieces on the founder and how he let his quick-growing company grow too far, too fast, and now needs mainly rest, bless his heart.
The rest of us are left with the bill for this obvious scam that implausibly links crypto and Covid. But just as the money was based on nothing but puffed air, the damage they have wrought on the world is all too real: a lost generation of kids, declined lifespans, millions missing from the workforce, a calamitous fall in public health, millions of kids in poverty due to supply-chain breakages, 19 straight months of falling real incomes, historically high increases in debt, and a dramatic fall in human morale the world over.
So yes, we should all be furious and demand full accountability at the very least. Whatever the final truth, it is likely to be far worse than even the egregious facts listed above. It’s bad enough that lockdowns wrecked life and liberty. To discover that vast support for them was funded by fraud and fakery is a deeper level of corruption that not even the most cynical among us could have imagined.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/18/2022 – 19:40 - Which Populations Feel Their Country Is On The Wrong Track?
Which Populations Feel Their Country Is On The Wrong Track?
Plato once used the allegory of a Ship of Fools to push for his vision of a wise philosopher-king as the ideal pilot for a ship of state.
Looking at the most recent numbers from Morning Consult Political Intelligence’s Projections of Country Trajectories, you would be forgiven for thinking that a great many people believe that their ship of state is piloted by fools.
As Visual Capitalist’s Chris Dickert and Nick Routley detail below, with the impact of the pandemic, rising inflation, and growing geopolitical instability, it’s probably not surprising that most respondents feel their countries are on the wrong track; India and Switzerland were notable exceptions.
Below are some of the stand-out stories that we found digging through the data.
United States
Midterm elections have rarely been kind to the incumbent party in U.S. politics and the cost of living crisis, an unpopular president, and the aftermath of the global pandemic pointed towards an electoral bloodbath. This year’s election was also expected to set a new spending record, with over $9 billion raised.
Even so, despite 72% of respondents thinking that the country is on the wrong track, the governing Democrats have defied expectations and posted a historic performance during the November 8, 2022, midterm elections. To put this into context, in a president’s first term, there have been three previous instances (since 1922) of the incumbent’s party gaining (or not losing) Senate seats and losing fewer than 10 seats in the House.
Also worth noting is the large spike in negative sentiment in January 2021, following the U.S. Capitol attack, followed by the convergence of negative and positive sentiments as the peaceful transition of power became more assured.
Brazil
Horace, in Odes 1.14, describes a ship of state that is flailing at sea that eventually rights itself, claiming towards the end of the poem that “it’s my longing and no light love you carry.”
Something like that may be happening in Brazil following the loss of the often turbulent, COVID-19-denying President Jair Bolsonaro to political rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in an Oct. 20, 2022, election runoff.
However, with respondents evenly split on where the country is going and the presidential election results being so close (50.9% vs. 49.1%), Lula will have his hands full governing a divided country.
India
While sentiment was overwhelmingly negative in almost every country tracked in this survey, India stood out as an outlier. India has consistently maintained a positive sentiment of between 60% and 80%, which is something only Switzerland comes close to.
The only blip was a brief period during the spring of 2021. This coincided with a deadly second wave of COVID-19 infections in the country, on top of country-wide protests against the Narendra Modi government’s deeply unpopular farm bill.
United Kingdom
The data here covers the three most recent UK Prime Ministers: Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and now Rishi Sunak, the first South Asian to hold the post.
In January 2020, Johnson had just won a Tory majority and succeeded in “Getting Brexit Done.” Political scandals and the government’s pandemic response pushed the trendline down. It only recovered briefly in the spring of 2021, following Russia’s invasion of the Donbas region of Ukraine, which Johnson was widely seen as handling well. A personal visit to Kyiv on April 9, 2022, helped cement this.
Then followed Prime Minister Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-budget of Sept. 23, 2022, which saw the pound fall to the lowest-ever level against the dollar and the Bank of England intervene in the bond markets. The ascension of Rishi Sunak to No. 10 Downing Street has only just begun to turn around the low of 89% negative sentiment reported on Oct 23-25, 2022.
To quote the BBC comedy series, Yes, Minister, in another context, “the ship of state is the only ship that leaks from the top.”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/18/2022 – 19:20 - "Election Denial" for Me, But Not for Thee: YouTube Censors TK-Produced Videos, Again, Despite Factual Accuracy
"Election Denial" for Me, But Not for Thee: YouTube Censors TK-Produced Videos, Again, Despite Factual Accuracy
Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,
In late September videographer Matt Orfalea made a pair of videos for TK.
One, Memory Holed: “The Election Was Hacked,” seen above, was a simple montage of Democratic politicians, media officials, and enforcement officials saying the 2016 election was, among other things, “illegitimate,” “rigged,” “hacked,” and a “cyber 9/11.”
The second, Memory Holed, Part II: The “Rigged” Election, was a similar exercise, with one exception: it compared the post-2020 statements of Donald Trump to the post-2016 statements of Democratic partisans. When Trump tells Chris Wallace, “I have to see,” when asked if he’d concede an election, Orfalea shows Hillary Clinton saying, “No, I would not,” when asked in 2017 — after her loss — if she’d contest the results. He shows Trump later saying he’ll of course respect the results, “if I win,” and Hillary Clinton saying Joe Biden should not concede “under any circumstances,” essentially exact analogs.
BREAKING: I made a vid showing election fraud claims from both Dems & Repubs. In no way did I advance or endorse any of the claims. For documenting this history, YouTube just deleted it, blocked me, & gave me a strike—a step toward deleting my entire channel. @TeamYouTube 🧵/1 pic.twitter.com/MLWxlFZKOX
— Matt Orfalea (@0rf) November 18, 2022
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
YouTube initially tried to demonetize both videos. After a fuss they reversed the decision about the first. Now they’ve taken a more drastic step, not only deleting the second video but two earlier rough-cut versions that were never even shown to the public but lived on his site. (This is another mad feature of the content moderation era: you can be censored and punished for pre-publication thinking). They also gave Orfalea a strike, leaving him two away from being removed from the site, which would essentially put him out of business.
YouTube’s decision claims the second video “contains claims that past US presidential elections were rigged or stolen, and our election integrity policy prohibits content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in US presidential elections.” Moreover, “countervailing views, which we refer to as EDSA context, on those remarks are not provided in the video, audio, title, or description.”
YouTube’s letter complaining about lack of “EDSA” We’ll go through this outrageous explanation point-by-point, but first: these videos are factual. There are no statements taken out of context. No editing games were played to make it appear someone is saying something he or she did not. This was the point of the exercise, to show what was actually said, when, and by whom.
As to YouTube’s letter, if indeed their “election integrity policy” prohibits content that advances false claims that “past US presidential elections were rigged or stolen,” then YouTube really should be taking down the first video as well:
This video after all is packed with clips of people like Karine Jean-Pierre saying the 2016 election was “stolen,” Joe Biden saying “I absolutely agree” Trump is an “illegitimate president,” Kamala Harris saying “you’re absolutely right” Trump didn’t really win in 2016, and even Jimmy Carter saying “Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016.” Old pal Keith Olbermann proclaimed the public wouldn’t stand for this “bloodless coup” called voting, Chris Hayes said Trump “cheated,” and a conga line of officials from Adam Schiff to Elizabeth Warren insisted foreigners had “hacked our elections.”
These videos made what we believe to be a powerful and legitimate point about the framing of the last two presidential elections. The first is that despite Hillary Clinton’s reluctant capitulation on Election Night in 2016, the Democratic Party as a whole as well as key officials in the government never recognized Donald Trump as a legitimate president. Clinton in fact spent four years leading a public relations campaign insisting that a) she actually won in 2016 b) Trump only won because of fraud and actual vote tampering and c) Democrats going forward should not recognize his victory should he win a second time.
Our view is that whether it’s Stop the Steal or Russiagate, denying a president’s legitimacy because you believe a conspiracy theory is the same behavior, and should be treated the same way. YouTube by administering a strike to Orfalea is sending a message that you may leave videos of Hillary Clinton saying “we know that they were into voting rolls” (they being the Russians), or Olbermann warning “It will not be a peaceful change of power!” or the current president and vice-president agreeing their predecessor “didn’t really win,” all without YouTube’s required Surgeon General-type warning called “EDSA” (YouTube’s clunky acronym for “Educational, Documentary, Scientific, or Artistic” context). In other words, you may leave up such statements without pointing out they’re unproven, incorrect, or irresponsible.
This is a de facto endorsement of such behavior when committed by certain people. When others do exactly the same thing, it’s conspiracy theory, incitement, even insurrection.
Donald Trump of course is running for president again. His behavior after the 2020 vote will become exhibit A in the case against his re-election, perhaps even rightly so. But YouTube is signaling early on that it will not permit press outlets to compare his behavior and his statements to those of his political opponents.
This isn’t just about statements from individual has-beens like Hillary Clinton, but official bodies like the DHS and the FBI. Just like Trump, those official organizations have repeatedly engaged in a form of “election denial,” warning that upcoming elections will be packed full of efforts by foreign countries to “amplify doubts about the integrity of U.S. elections” and to “hinder candidates perceived to be particularly adversarial” to countries like China and Russia, by “spreading disinformation.”
These official statements are more or less exactly what Donald Trump is up to when he announces before an election that it’s “rigged.” It’s what he was doing weeks before the vote in 2016, when he said “Of course there’s large-scale voting fraud happening on and before election day,” and it’s what he was doing on Election Day, when he said “The machines, you put down a Republican and it registers as a Democrat, and they’ve had a lot of complaints about that today,” before things turned his way. The idea is to prepare audiences to refuse to accept results of a vote should they go the wrong way.
If you win, it’s “the cleanest election in history.” If you lose, the electorate is already primed to throw a fit. It’s dirty, unpatriotic behavior and it’s now a routine element of all elections, coming from the Trump side and from officialdom.
Worse, it’s the dirtiest kind of pool to have agencies like the FBI or DHS repeatedly leak that “Russia” or “China” prefers Bernie Sanders or Trump, and is either trying to sabotage or already succeeded in sabotaging elections on their behalf. Ask yourself what purpose public leaks of such “assessments” serve. These have a patina of legitimacy because of the organizations involved, but they’re as bereft of evidence as Trump’s Stop the Steal claims and perhaps more corrupt, because they’re so flagrant a misuse of tax dollars.
The press has to be allowed to make these points. If it isn’t, Silicon Valley is encouraging one form of unethical behavior while condemning another. Moreover, it’s punishing the media for factually accurate reporting. There is no explicit or implicit message in Orfalea’s videos that either the 2020 or 2016 vote was compromised. His videos are the opposite of election denial. He’s clearly making the point that no matter who does it, denying election results is irresponsible. If YouTube punishes him for that message, it just sends a message that all of these bad actors are right, and the system really is rigged. We’ve asked politely for a reversal of their decision. YouTube must do the right thing here.
Subscribe to TK News by Matt Taibbi
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/18/2022 – 19:00 - Today's Energy Crisis Is Very Different From The Energy Crisis Of 2005
Today's Energy Crisis Is Very Different From The Energy Crisis Of 2005
Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,
Back in 2005, the world economy was “humming along.” World growth in energy consumption per capita was rising at 2.3% per year in the 2001 to 2005 period. China had been added to the World Trade Organization in December 2001, ramping up its demand for all kinds of fossil fuels. There was also a bubble in the US housing market, brought on by low interest rates and loose underwriting standards.
Figure 1. World primary energy consumption per capita based on BP’s 2022 Statistical Review of World Energy.
The problem in 2005, as now, was inflation in energy costs that was feeding through to inflation in general. Inflation in food prices was especially a problem. The Federal Reserve chose to fix the problem by raising the Federal Funds interest rate from 1.00% to 5.25% between June 30, 2004 and June 30, 2006.
Now, the world is facing a very different problem. High energy prices are again feeding over to food prices and to inflation in general. But the underlying trend in energy consumption is very different. The growth rate in world energy consumption per capita was 2.3% per year in the 2001 to 2005 period, but energy consumption per capita for the period 2017 to 2021 seems to be slightly shrinking at minus 0.4% per year. The world seems to already be on the edge of recession.
The Federal Reserve seems to be using a similar interest rate approach now, in very different circumstances. In this post, I will try to explain why I don’t think that this approach will produce the desired outcome.
[1] The 2004 to 2006 interest rate hikes didn’t lead to lower oil prices until after July 2008.
It is easiest to see the impact (or lack thereof) of rising interest rates by looking at average monthly world oil prices.
Figure 2. Average monthly Brent spot oil prices based on data of the US Energy Information Administration. Latest month shown is July 2022.
The US Federal Reserve began raising target interest rates in June 2004 when the average Brent oil price was only $38.22 per barrel. These interest rates stopped rising at the end of June 2006, when oil prices averaged $68.56 per barrel. Oil prices on this basis eventually reached $132.72 per barrel in July 2008. (All of these amounts are in dollars of the day, rather than being adjusted for inflation.) Thus, the highest price was over three times the price in June 2004, when the US Federal Reserve made the decision to start raising target interest rates.
Based on Figure 2 (including my notes regarding the timing of the interest rate rise), I would conclude that raising interest rates didn’t work very well at bringing down the price of oil when it was tried in the 2004 to 2006 period. Of course, the economy was growing rapidly, then. The rapid growth of the economy likely led to the very high oil price shown in mid-2008.
I expect that the result of the US Federal Reserve raising interest rates now, in a low-growth world economy, might be quite different. The world’s debt bubble might pop, leading to a worse situation than the financial crisis of 2008. Indirectly, both assets prices and commodity prices, including oil prices, would tend to fall very low.
Analysts looking at the situation from strictly an energy perspective tend to miss the interconnected nature of the economy. Factors which energy analysts overlook (particularly debt becoming impossible to repay, as interest rates rise) may lead to an outcome that is pretty much the opposite result of the standard belief. The typical belief of energy analysts is that low oil supply will lead to very high prices and more oil production. In the current situation, I expect that the result might be closer to the opposite: Oil prices will fall because of financial problems brought on by the higher interest rates, and these lower oil prices will lead to even lower oil production.
[2] The purpose of the US Federal reserve raising target interest rates was to flatten the growth rate of the world economy. Looking back at Figure 1, the growth in energy consumption per capita was much lower after the Great Recession. I doubt that now in 2022, we want even lower growth (really, more shrinkage) in energy consumption per capita for future years.*
Looking at Figure 1, growth in energy consumption per capita has been very slow since the Great Recession. A person wonders: What is the point of governments and their central banks pushing the world economy down, now in 2022, when the world economy is already barely able to maintain international supply lines and provide enough diesel for all of the world’s trucks and agricultural equipment?
If the world economy is pushed downward now, what would the result be? Would some countries find themselves unable to afford fossil fuel energy products in the future? This might lead to problems both in growing and transporting food, at least for these countries. Would the whole world suffer a major crisis of some sort, such as a financial crisis? The world economy is a self-organizing system. It is difficult to forecast precisely how the situation would work out.
[3] While the growth rate in energy consumption per capita was much lower after 2008, the price of crude oil quickly bounced back to over $120 per barrel in inflation-adjusted prices.
Figure 3 shows that oil prices immediately bounced back up after the Great Recession of 2008-2009. Quantitative Easing (QE), which the US Federal Reserve began in late 2008, helped energy prices to shoot back up again. QE helped keep the cost of borrowing by governments low, allowing governments to run larger deficits than might otherwise have been possible without interest rates rising. These higher deficits added to the demand for commodities of all types, including oil, thus raising prices.
Figure 3. Average annual oil prices inflation-adjusted oil prices based on data from BP’s 2022 Statistical Review of World Energy. Amounts shown are Brent equivalent spot prices.
The chart above shows average annual Brent oil prices through 2021. The above chart does not show 2022 prices. The current Brent oil price is about $91 per barrel. So, oil prices today are a little higher than they have been recently, but they are nowhere nearly as high as they were in the 2011 to 2013 period or in the late 1970s. The extreme reaction we are seeing is very strange. The problem seems to be much more than oil prices, by themselves.
[4] High prices in the 2006 to 2013 period allowed the rise of unconventional oil production. These high oil prices also helped keep conventional oil production from falling after 2005.
It is difficult to find detail on the precise amount of unconventional oil, but some countries are known for their unconventional oil production. For example, the US has become a leader in the extraction of tight oil from shale formations. Canada also produces a little tight oil, but it also produces quite a bit of very heavy oil from the oil sands. Venezuela produces a different type of very heavy oil. Brazil produces crude oil from under the salt layer of the ocean, sometimes called pre-salt crude oil. These unconventional types of extraction tend to be expensive.
Figure 4 shows world oil production for various combinations of countries. The top line is total world crude oil production. The bottom gray line approximates world total conventional oil production. Unconventional oil production has been rising since, say, 2010, so this approximation is better for years 2010 and subsequent years on the chart, than it is for earlier years.
Figure 4. Crude and condensate oil production based on international data of the US Energy Information Administration. The lower lines subtract the full amount of crude and condensate production for the countries listed. These countries have substantial amounts of unconventional oil production, but they may also have some conventional production.
From this chart, it appears that world conventional oil production leveled off after 2005. Some people (often referred to as “Peak Oilers”) were concerned that conventional oil production would reach a peak and begin to decline, starting shortly after 2005.
The thing that seems to have kept production from falling after 2005 is the steep rise in oil prices in the 2004 to 2008 period. Figure 3 shows that oil prices were quite low between 1986 and 2003. Once oil prices began to rise in 2004 and 2005, oil companies found that they had enough revenue that they could start adopting more intensive (and expensive) extraction techniques. This allowed more oil to be extracted from existing conventional oil fields. Of course, diminishing returns still set in, even with these more intensive techniques.
These diminishing returns are probably a major reason that conventional oil production started to fall in 2019. Indirectly, diminishing returns likely contributed to the decline in 2020, and the failure of the oil supply to bounce back up to its 2018 (or 2019) level in 2021.
[5] A better way of looking at world crude oil production is on per capita basis because the world’s crude oil needs depend on world population.
Everyone in the world needs the benefit of crude oil, since crude oil is used in farming and in transporting goods of all kinds. Thus, the need for crude oil rises with population growth. I prefer analyzing crude oil production on a per capita basis.
Figure 5. Per capita crude oil production based on international data by country from the US Energy Information Administration.
Figure 5 shows that on a per capita basis, conventional crude oil production (gray bottom line) started declining after 2005. It was only with the addition of unconventional oil that crude oil production per capita could remain fairly level between 2005 and 2018 or 2019.
[6] Unconventional oil, if analyzed by itself, seems to be quite price sensitive. If politicians everywhere want to hold oil prices down, the world cannot count on extracting very much of the huge amount of unconventional oil resources that seem to be available.
Figure 6. Crude oil production based on international data for the US Energy Information Administration for each of the countries shown.
On Figure 6, crude oil production dips in 2016 and 2017 and also in 2020 and 2021. Both the 2016 the 2020 dips are related to low price. The continued low prices in 2017 and 2021 may reflect start-up problems after a low price, or they may reflect skepticism that prices can stay high enough to make continued extraction profitable. Canada seems to show similar dips in its oil production.
Venezuela shows a fairly different pattern. Information from the US Energy Information Administration mentions that the country started having major problems once the world oil price started falling in 2014. I am aware that the US has had sanctions against Venezuela in recent years, but it seems to me that these sanctions are closely related to Venezuela’s oil price problems. If Venezuela’s very heavy oil could really be extracted profitably, and the producers of this oil could be taxed to provide services for the people of Venezuela, the country would not have the many problems that it has today. The country likely needs a price between $200 and $300 per barrel to allow sufficient funds for extraction plus adequate tax revenue.
Brazil’s oil production seems to be relatively more stable, but its growth has been slow. It has taken many years to get its production up to 2.9 million barrels per day. There is also some pre-salt oil production just now getting started in Angola and other countries of West Africa. This type of oil requires a high level of technical expertise and imported resources from around the world. If world trade falters, this type of oil production is likely to falter, as well.
A large share of the world’s oil reserves are unconventional oil reserves, of one type or another. The fact that rising oil prices are a real problem for citizens means that these unconventional reserves are unlikely to be tapped. Instead, we may be dealing with seriously short supplies of products we need for operating our economy, including diesel oil and jet fuel.
[7] Figure 1 at the beginning of this post indicated falling primary energy consumption per capita. This problem extends to more than oil. On a per capita basis, both coal and nuclear energy consumption are falling.
Practically no one pays any attention to coal consumption, but this is the fuel that allowed the Industrial Revolution to start. It is reasonable to expect that since the world economy started using coal first, it might be the first to deplete. Figure 7 shows that world coal consumption per capita hit a peak in 2011 and has declined since then.
Figure 7. World coal consumption per capita, based on data from BP’s 2022 Statistical Review of World Energy.
Many of us have heard about Aesop’s Fable, The Fox and the Grapes. According to Wikipedia, “The story concerns a fox that tries to eat grapes from a vine but cannot reach them. Rather than admit defeat, he states they are undesirable. The expression ‘sour grapes’ originated from this fable.”
In the case of coal, we are told that coal is undesirable because it is very polluting and raises CO2 levels. While these things are true, coal has historically been very inexpensive, and this is important for people buying coal. Coal is also easy to transport. It could be used for fuel instead of cutting down trees, thus helping local ecosystems. The negative things that we are being told about coal are true, but it is hard to find an adequate inexpensive substitute.
Figure 8 shows that world nuclear energy per capita is also falling. To some extent, its fall has stabilized since 2012 because China and a few other “developing nations” have been adding nuclear capacity, while developed nations in Europe have tended to remove their existing nuclear power plants.
Figure 8. World nuclear electricity consumption per capita, based on data from BP’s 2022 Statistical Review of World Energy. Amounts are based on the amount of fossil fuels that this electricity would theoretically replace.
Nuclear energy is confusing because experts seem to disagree on how dangerous nuclear power plants are, over the long term. One concern relates to proper disposal of spent fuel after its use.
[8] The world seems to be at a difficult time now because we don’t have any good options for fixing our falling energy consumption per capita problem, without greatly reducing world population. The two choices that seem to be available both seem to be far higher-priced than is feasible.
There are two choices that seem to be available:
[A] Encourage large amounts of fossil fuel production by encouraging very high fossil fuel prices. With such high prices, say $300 per barrel for oil, unconventional crude oil in many parts of the world would be available. Unconventional coal, such as that under the North Sea, would also be available. With sufficiently high prices, natural gas production could be raised. This natural gas could be shipped as liquefied natural gas (LNG) around the world at great cost. Additionally, many processing plants could be built, both for supercooling the natural gas to allow it to be shipped around the world and for re-gasification, when it arrives at its destination.
With this approach, food costs would be very high. Much of the world’s population would need to work in the food industry and in fossil fuel production and shipping. With these priorities, citizens would not have time or money for most things we buy today. They likely could not afford a vehicle or a nice home. Governments would need to shrivel in size, with the usual outcome being government by a local dictator. Governments wouldn’t have sufficient funds for roads or schools. CO2 emissions would be very high, but this likely would not be our biggest problem.
[B] Try to electrify everything, including agriculture. Greatly ramp up wind and solar. Wind and solar are very intermittent, and their intermittency does not match up well with human needs. In particular, the world’s big need is for heat in winter, while solar energy comes in summer. It cannot be saved until winter with today’s technology. Spend enormous amounts and resources on electricity transmission lines and batteries to try to somewhat work around these problems. Try to find substitutes for the many things that fossil fuels provide today, including paved roads and chemicals used in agriculture and in medicine.
Hydroelectricity is also a renewable form of electricity generation. It cannot be expected to ramp up much because it has mostly been built out already.
Figure 9. World consumption of hydroelectricity per capita, based on data from BP’s 2022 Statistical Review of World Energy.
Even if greatly ramped up, wind and solar electricity production would likely be grossly inadequate by themselves to try to operate any kind of economy. At a minimum, natural gas, at very high cost, shipped as LNG around the world, would likely be needed in addition. A huge quantity of batteries would be needed, leading to a short supply of materials. Huge quantities of steel would be needed to make new electrical machines to try to replace current oil-power machines. A minimum 50-year transition would likely be needed.
I am doubtful that this second approach would be feasible in any reasonable timeframe.
[9] Conclusion. Figure 1 seems to imply that the world economy is headed for a troubled times ahead.
The world economy is a self-organizing system, so we cannot know precisely what form changes in the next few years will take. The economy can be expected to shrink back in an uneven pattern, with some parts of the world and some classes of citizens, such as workers versus the elderly, doing better than others.
Leaders will never tell us that the world has an energy shortage. Instead, leaders will tell us how awful fossil fuels are, so that we will be happy that the economy is losing their usage. They will never tell us how worthless intermittent wind and solar are for solving today’s energy problems. Instead, they will lead us to believe that a transition to vehicles powered by electricity and batteries is just around the corner. They will tell us that the world’s worst problem is climate change, and that by working together, we can move away from fossil fuels.
The whole situation reminds me of Aesop’s Fables. The system puts a “good spin” on whatever frightening changes are happening. This way, leaders can convince their citizens that everything is fine when, in fact, it is not.
NOTE
*If the US Federal Reserve raises its target interest rate, central banks of other countries around the world are forced to take a similar action if they do not want their currencies to fall relative to the US dollar. Countries that do not raise their target interest rates tend to be penalized by the market: With a falling currency, the local prices of oil and other commodities tend to rise because commodities are priced in US dollars. As a result, citizens of these countries tend to face a worse inflation problem than they would otherwise face.
The country with the greatest increase in its target interest rate can, in theory, win, in what is more or less a competition to move inflation elsewhere. This competition cannot go on indefinitely, however, because every country depends, to some extent, on imports from other countries. If countries with the weaker economies (i. e. those that cannot afford to raise interest rates) stop producing essential goods for world trade, it will tend to bring the world economy down.
Raising interest rates also raises the likelihood of debt defaults, and these debt defaults can be a huge problem, especially for banks and other financial institutions. With higher interest rates, pension funding becomes less adequate. Businesses of all kinds find new investment more expensive. Many businesses are likely to shrink or fail completely. These indirect impacts are yet another way for the world economy to fail.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/18/2022 – 18:20 - Bankman-Fried's Alameda Research Took $370k In PPP Loans At A Time When FTX Was Valued Near $1 Billion
Bankman-Fried's Alameda Research Took $370k In PPP Loans At A Time When FTX Was Valued Near $1 Billion
As if throwing around billions of dollars in client money as though it was their own wasn’t enough for Sam Bankman-Fried and Alameda Research, LLC, the latter also took out a Federal Paycheck Protection Program loan, according to multiple reports and SBA.gov.
The SBA.gov sourced list at ProPublica lists Alameda Research LLC as having received $370,518 on April 27, 2020.
However, the Federal Government will not likely be appearing on the list of creditors in FTX bankruptcy documents, as the loan was reportedly paid back, Bloomberg wrote. And it’s hard to think that the company actually needed the money. At the time, FTX had about a $1.2 billion valuation and had attracted an investment from Binance.
FTX was founded in 2019 and in July 2021 did a $900 million funding round that valued the company at $18 billion. Later that year, it did another capital raise at a valuation of $25 billion. Investors included Tiger Global and Temasek, per Reuters.
In 2022, the company’s valuation went to $32 billion when SoftBank invested near the top in January, putting $400 million into the business.
We bet the company wishes it had the $370k back now…it could probably go a long way towards legal fees.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/18/2022 – 18:00 - Never Forget! Here's Some Of The Dumbest COVID Restrictions
Never Forget! Here's Some Of The Dumbest COVID Restrictions
Authored by Kevin Downey Jr via PJmedia.com,
The holidays are looming, and that means several things: meals with family, cocktail nights by a cozy fire, and the Democrat Party pushing commie control on Americans for the third year in a row.
Temperatures have just begun to drop, and President Biden is already pimping for his pharma-bros.
My Administration has made progress in getting folks their updated COVID vaccine before the winter. But everyone needs to step up.
Protect yourself and get the updated COVID vaccine. https://t.co/jlrmakxHWm.
— President Biden (@POTUS) November 17, 2022
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If you think the donkeys won’t try to enforce more of their bolshie cowplop restrictions, I suggest you invest in the new, hot cryptocurrency, “KDJ Coin.”
SMALL PRINT-O-RAMA! All capital invested in “KDJ Coin” will go to bourbon and cigars.
We survived some shockingly stupid COVID-19 flapdoodle, as did people around the world. All for a virus that more than 99% of Americans would survive.
Related: Reasons Never to Vote Democrat Again, Vol. I: COVID Tyranny Must Be Punished
FACT-O-RAMA! The globalists in the Democrat Party found out in May 2020 that 84% of COVID hospitalizations were from people who were locked down but stole our liberties anyway in the name of “science.”
A man was actually arrested for paddleboarding alone on the ocean after some lickspittle saw him and called the cops. If only we were as smart as the French.
A woman sunbathes at a beach with roped-off zones for social distancing in La Grande Motte as France eases lockdown measures.
📷 Clement Mahoudeau / AFP – Getty Images pic.twitter.com/2AjwX95DzA
— NBC News (@NBCNews) May 21, 2020
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Grinded me with science
We were subjected to mountains of stupidity disguised as “science” by people with big titles and fancy diplomas on their walls. Here are a few of the classics. May we never forget the mental vacancy these people pushed upon us and never allow it to happen again.
Battle of the grocery stores
The libs made it seem like grocery stores were an orgy of Bat Stew Flu germs predatorily resting on produce or boxes of coffee K-Cups, waiting to pounce on the unsuspecting shopper and perhaps give them the sniffles.
High-ranking jackpuddings in New York state threw together a list of science-dodging conditions that they deemed necessary to save lives at the grocery store. Today, these protocols seem as stupid as treating asthma with cigarettes, but I recall terrified Pop-Tart shoppers excoriating me for defying the one-way aisles.
Who can forget:
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Standing on stickers on the floor.
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One family member shopping at a time.
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Wash your produce you filthy, granny-killing germ mule!
FACT-O-RAMA! The Buffalo Bills’ Cole Beasley, unvaccinated and COVID-free, was forced to quarantine after coming into contact with a vaccinated coach who tested positive for the Hong Kong Fluey.
Restaurants
We were led to believe that COVID devoured maskless people walking to their tables but showed mercy on partons as they were sitting. Apparently, COVID also preferred to hunt at night as New York restaurants were forced to close at 10 p.m. Being the jackanape that I am, I was admonished on Thanksgiving 2021 when I selfishly walked 27 steps (yes, I counted) from my table to the men’s room sans a Fauci face diaper. A safely sitting, bootlicking patron and a waiter jumped down my throat for my malfeasance. I no longer spend my currency at this establishment.
Remember when COVID was cool with glory holes but didn’t like rapists? pic.twitter.com/5X9ajHWuHl
— The Kevin Downey, Jr. Show Fri. 6-7 pm! (@KDJRadioShow) November 17, 2022
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Kids and COVID
Children took a real beating during the pandemic, especially considering that so few kids actually died from China’s virus. Skate parks were filled with sand. Playgrounds were closed. Basketball rims were taken down or covered.
Kids in Portland, Ore., were introduced to some serious commie dystopian nonsense and forced to eat lunch outside, sitting on buckets, in cold weather. You know, for their own safety.
CHILD ABUSE: Kindergartners are forced to eat lunch outside in 40 degree weather at Capitol Hill Elementary School in Portland, Oregon.
They sit on buckets to social distance from their classmates. pic.twitter.com/KqFcliTFYf
— Katie Daviscourt🇺🇸 (@KatieDaviscourt) December 8, 2021
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School officials actually put their hollow heads together and came up with this:
This is a high school band practice in Wenatchee,WA pic.twitter.com/q2prCJemX0
— Ari Hoffman (@thehoffather) February 24, 2021
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By now you may be thinking, “Come on, KDJ. Our nation would never go back to that nonsense. Our elected leaders and medical heavyweights have learned from their mistakes.”
But then we remember how Dr. Fauci, America’s highest-paid ogre, started chirping about another lockdown back in March of 2022. A portion of China has just reached its 100th day of a brutal lockdown.
One Merry Andrew from the New York Post is half-jokingly hoping for another freedom-stealing lockdown but recalled how wonderful the first one was.
And to be honest, we failed to punish the globalists who robbed us of our liberties in the midterm elections. Sure, monkeypox fizzled, but the commies won’t stop. The Hill wrote about the possibility of a “climate lockdown” earlier this year. You know for the good of the planet.
These are just a few of the inane lockdown restrictions we endured. Please leave more in the comments section. Let’s start the conversation now and all agree that we don’t get fooled again.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/18/2022 – 17:40 -
- Elizabeth Holmes Sentenced To 11 Years In Prison For Theranos Fraud
Elizabeth Holmes Sentenced To 11 Years In Prison For Theranos Fraud
Update (1415ET): U.S. District Judge Edward Davila just sentenced Elizabeth Holmes, the criminal founder of Theranos convicted of fraud, to 135 months, or 11.25 years, in prison, capping the historic downfall of what the media and the Clinton Foundation unabashedly dubbed as a “one-time Silicon Valley wunderkind.”
Prosecutors had asked the judge for a 15-year sentence, while Holmes’ defense attorneys had asked for 18 months of house arrest.
Ms. Holmes has 14 days to appeal her conviction.
The judge ordered Ms. Holmes to surrender on April 27, 2023.
Judge Davila made clear that future deterrence was a big part of his rationale for the sentence.
He called the Theranos fraud “a cautionary tale” for Silicon Valley.
Additionally, the judge said the court would set a date in the future for a hearing on restitution, having said earlier in the day that he had found enough evidence to determine there were at least 10 investors in Theranos who were victims of fraud, and that the total sum they were defrauded was $121.1 million.
The lesson here is if you want to avoid jail $39 million is the bare minimum in political donations, right @SBF_FTX? https://t.co/lgKDhJ834m
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 18, 2022
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Elizabeth Holmes spoke briefly, and tearfully, to the court before the judge read her sentence.
“I am devastated by my failings. Every day for the past years I have felt deep pain for what people went through because I failed them,” said Ms. Holmes.
We wonder if her voice at trial was the same fake baritone she used to scam the ‘wisest’ of investors…
Holmes’ former boyfriend and Theranos business partner Sunny Balwani in July was found guilty of 12 counts of conspiracy and fraud against certain investors and patients. Balwani is expected to be sentenced on December 7, and his attorney was on hand Friday for Holmes’ sentencing.
* * *
While everyone is fixated on the disgraced founder of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, and his collapsed cryptocurrency exchange, another Silicon Valley fraudster, Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, will be sentenced in a federal courthouse Friday, putting an end to the years-long saga of her phony blood-testing startup.
Holmes’ sentencing will take place in a San Jose, California, courtroom where she was convicted earlier this year of three felony counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for scamming investors.
Federal prosecutors wrote in court papers ahead of the sentencing hearing that Holmes’ crimes are “among the most substantial white-collar offenses Silicon Valley, or any other district, has seen” (wait until SBF’s court case…).
AP noted US District Judge Edward Davila could sentence Holmes to federal prison for 15 years, slightly less than the federal government’s recommendation of 20 years, though her lawyers filed a request to the judge last week for leniency in the sentencing and requested 18 months of home confinement instead of prison.
The request was accompanied by letters calling for leniency from over 130 friends, family, and even Theranos investors, as well as former company employees who described Holmes as a ‘good person.’
One of those letters was penned by Sen. Cory Booker (D., NJ), who said Holmes “has within her a sincere desire to help others” by fighting climate change and world hunger.
“I knew Ms. Holmes for about six years before charges were brought,” he continued.
… and how convenient:
“Holmes, who is 38 years old, was visibly pregnant with her second child at her last court appearance. If Davila hands down a prison sentence, her pregnancy could influence when her confinement starts,” NPR pointed out.
Judge Davila has handled her case since the collapse of Theranos after reaching a valuation of $9 billion. Criminal defense lawyers recently told Bloomberg Holmes’ sentencing could send a warning shot to Silicon Valley companies that run on hopes and dreams.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/18/2022 – 17:21
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