Jan 01

Today’s News 1st January 2021

  • 2020's Bio-Economic World War: Communist China Lied; Millions Of Humans Died
    2020’s Bio-Economic World War: Communist China Lied; Millions Of Humans Died

    Authored by Austin Bay via The Epoch Times,

    The Chinese Communist Party’s COVID-19/Wuhan virus disinformation campaign (cover-up) rates as 2020’s biggest Big Lie. By any measure, especially body count, the CCP committed 2020’s most consequential and deadliest falsehood.

    The following analysis summarizes decisions and actions by China’s communist rulers from December 2019’s final days through the end of January 2020, when U.S. President Donald Trump shut down air travel between mainland China and America.

    (1) China’s rulers – or their frightened commissar and police apparatchiks – brutalized and jailed the doctors and researchers who identified the disease as a threat to life and sought to warn other Chinese and medical authorities worldwide.

    (2) As these brave MDs went to jail for doing a doctor’s duty, the dictatorship initiated narrative warfare. Lower-level government mouths and controlled media denied the epidemic’s outbreak.

    (3) While spinning up The Big Lie, totalitarian China, which employs The Great Firewall of China to block internet access, allowed Chinese travelers (especially Chinese New Year vacationers) to spread the disease to exotic and non-exotic – but always human biotic – international locales.

    Were these decisions and actions genocidal calculation or the usual dictatorial ineptitude? That isn’t the critical killer question. Note to readers: I originally wrote “strategic issue” instead of “killer question” and then realized that “strategic issue” was a beltway euphemism.

    The killer: Bio-economic attacks target everyone’s life first and wallet second. So you survive the disease. Your country suffers a costly hit to food and health.

    In early January, the CCP dictatorship confronted this strategic issue: a domestic epidemic that would damage the Chinese economy.

    Fact: China’s brutal dictatorship relies on economic success to pacify disgruntled citizens who know how to evade the Great Firewall and thus know the CCP ordered the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, which killed over 2,000 Chinese citizens. Economic success? Translation: material bribes like small electric cars and cellphones.

    What did the dictatorship do? It decided to export the contagion.

    The dictatorship’s cruel analysis: The Wuhan virus pandemic imperiled the CCP’s strategic plan to dominate the globe. Ipso facto, the CCP could not let China’s economy alone suffer the Wuhan virus. Exporting the epidemic would slow the economies of China’s free market and ideological competitors. Bonus: It might sow social discontent, particularly in the United States, where freedom of movement is regarded as a right.

    China’s dictatorship concealed its callous decision to infect planet Earth. It quickly deployed a propaganda and narrative warfare campaign utilizing its worldwide political, economic, academic, and intelligence agency assets.

    China’s communist dictatorship decided to wage a new form of bio-economic war on human beings worldwide.

    Pay careful attention (for bribed critics and ChiCom trolls will not). I’m not arguing the virus was a bio-weapon in the military and medical definition of a biological attack on animals or plants. I am arguing the CCP leadership allowed the virus to spread beyond China so every other nation would suffer the disease’s medical, economic, and social consequences.

    That decision amounts to waging bio-economic warfare on non-People’s Republic of China human beings and their economies, from wealthy nations to wretchedly poor nations.

    At the moment, the Wuhan virus savages sub-Saharan African nations. Over the last four weeks, U.N. agencies have issued warnings of starvation conditions in South Sudan. The epidemic inhibits food distribution in South Sudan. Thus, Chinese communist bio-economic warfare kills the poorest of the poor. Superficial media miss this story and miss the Wuhan virus-starvation connection.

    Perhaps the miss isn’t unintentional. Chinese-influenced organizations, particularly in academia and media, contributed to 2020’s Big Lie. U.S Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) is clearly a CCP-corrupted politician.

    As 2021 begins, the CCP cover-up will continue. A CCP court just sentenced citizen-journalist Zhang Zhan to prison for questioning the CCP’s early 2020 falsehoods.

    Zhan will spend four years in jail for telling the truth about communist China’s Big Lie.

    *  *  *

    Austin Bay is a colonel (ret.) in the U.S. Army Reserve, author, syndicated columnist, and teacher of strategy and strategic theory at the University of Texas–Austin. His latest book is “Cocktails from Hell: Five Wars Shaping the 21st Century.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 23:30

  • America's Top New Year's Resolutions For 2021
    America’s Top New Year’s Resolutions For 2021

    For many, 2020 has been ‘a year’, which makes getting a fresh start in 2021 feel very appealing.

    The turn of the calendar brings both the opportunity to reflect on the last 12 months and, as Statista’s Claire Jenik notes below, the chance to begin planning for the next dozen.

    For 2021, many Americans are making the resolution to adopt healthy habits – concerning their bodies, minds and finances.

    Infographic: America's Top New Year's Resolutions for 2021 | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    As the Holiday Season Report from our Statista Global Consumer Survey shows, out of all US participants who said they were making one or several new year’s resolutions, 44 percent wanted to exercise more, while 42% planned to eat healthier in 2021. More popular resolutions for the upcoming year also circled around improving one’s health, with weight loss and quit smoking being among the favorite answers.

    After almost a year of social distancing, often also from close family members and loved ones, 34 percent said that they wanted to spend more time with family and friends.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 23:05

  • These Are The 10 Worst Mayors In The Nation In 2020
    These Are The 10 Worst Mayors In The Nation In 2020

    Authored by Jennifer Oliver O’Connell via RedState.com,

    As one of our RedState diarists Dana Pico mused,

    “There are times that I wonder if today’s Democrats see George Orwell’s 1984 not as a warning but a model of good government.”

    In celebration of a 2020 that desperately needs to come to an end, here is a list of the Top 10 Worst Mayors in the nation. These mayors most definitely use Orwell’s 1984 as their policies and procedures manual, if not their Bible.

    It comes as no surprise that all 10 of the mayors on the list are Democrat (something about that political party), and that five of the 10 are mayors of West Coast cities (something about the Pacific Ocean).

    Several of the mayors have overseen a mass exodus of people from their cities, and even their state in a 10-month period. But most of all, every one of these mayors stand out as abject failures of governance, with constituents that literally despise them.

    Without further adieu, here is the Top 10 Worst Mayor’s list for 2020:

    10. Michael Hancock (Denver)

    Denver Mayor Michael Hancock could have stayed under the radar and never made it to the Top 10 on this list. But thanks to his Holiday Hypocrisy, he landed firmly in the final spot.

    My colleague, Scott Hounsell wrote:

    “According to the news report, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock was spotted leaving the state to go spend Thanksgiving with his daughter in Mississippi.  The Mayor’s office said that the Mayor had canceled his big holiday dinner this year, but “traveled alone” (aside from the whole public transportation and flying from a crowded airport thing).

    “His flight allegedly also took off 30 minutes after he posted this little gem to his Twitter account:”

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    Local investigative reporter Nicole Vap dropped the hammer, exposing Mayor Hancock’s hypocrisy of not only telling others to stay at home, but hopping a flight from Colorado to Mississippi without so much as an eyelash blink.

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    Hancock was “deeply regretful” about his decision, saying he led with his heart and not his head.

    When do they ever lead, let alone actually use their head to do so? Asking for a friend.

    9. Sam Liccardo (San Jose)

    Our first Coastie Mayor enters the fray. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, like Hancock of Denver, probably could have avoided this list too; but, when you dictate to people that they are required to follow certain behavior, you better make sure you’re dictating to yourself.

    Liccardo decided the City of San Jose needed to be scolded and reminded…

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    Another plug for local journalism, as I reported:

    “San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo (Democrat-Duh), ignored his own protocols and had Thanksgiving with family members outside of his own household.

    “ ‘The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit has learned Liccardo celebrated with his elderly parents at their Saratoga home with an unknown number of other guests. While the mayor’s staff did confirm the dinner took place, they have not disclosed how many other people attended, how many different households were present, and whether any of those in attendance wore masks while not eating.’ ”

    So much for Liccardo avoiding the big gatherings and keeping people safe. The San Jose Mayor assumed because he wasn’t Governor Gavin Newsom, that no one would be watching. Dude, we’re all stuck at home—you know we’re watching.

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    8. Steve Adler (Austin)

    Austin Mayor Steve Adler has been a zealot for COVID rules and mask compliance. His Twitter profile shows he is the perfect poster child for mask adherents:

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    Between criticisms of Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Adler makes sure to post statistics from the County Department of Health and information on how YOU can stop the spread. While he was gaslighting his constituents pretending to be “all in it together”, Adler was posting his crumbs of wisdom from a vacation home in… wait for it… Cabo San Lucas.

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    Kira Davis unveiled this stunning hypocrisy:

    “Adler agreed, and just ahead of Thanksgiving he posted a video to his Facebook page once again encouraging Austinites to stay home, avoid travel and forgo Thanksgiving with family in the name of safety. He suggested that Austin may have to close again if people did not comply.

    “What he did not disclose is that he sent the message from his family timeshare in Cabo San Lucas.

    “In case you’re not a big geography fan…that’s in Mexico.

    “In an exclusive report, The Statesman reveals that recently Adler hosted an outdoor wedding for his daughter with at least 20 guests.

    Even after being exposed, Adler had the unmitigated gall to post this to his Twitter account:

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    Maybe if he paid more attention to the home fires, he wouldn’t get called out by the Governor of Texas for the city’s crime problem.

    7. London Breed (San Francisco)

    Our second Coastie in the running for the Top 10 sweepstakes. Besides the most pretentious name this side of Stockton, the San Francisco mayor’s woke governance has seen an exponential increase in homelessness, drug use and public nudity on the streets, not to mention dodging fecal matter on all the major thoroughfares.

    Breed has also overseen the exodus of several Silicon Valley heavyweights, including Palantir’s Alex Karp, and Oracle’s Larry Ellison. Yet, like Governor Gavin Newsom, and another mayoral entry, Breed targets churches as vectors of COVID spread, and complains that Newsom’s replacement of Senator Kamala Harris with someone who isn’t a Black female is a slap in the face.

    Mayor Breed slapped her own constituents in the face when, on the heels of Newsom’s infamous visit, Breed also dined at the pricey French Laundry. As Jen Van Laar reported, Breed

    “attended the 60th birthday party of socialite Goretti Lo Lui at the exclusive restaurant – in the very same private dining room Newsom’s party occupied.

    “Breed’s spokesperson, Jeff Cretan, described the party as ‘a small family birthday dinner,’ comprised of eight people, but there’s no word on who the other attendees were and how many households were represented.”

    San Francisco is full of champagne elitists, but even they are getting fed up. These elected officials are constantly saying “we” must sacrifice our time with family and friends in order to stop the spread, without that sacrifice extending in their direction. Breed was still playing this game at the Christmas holidays:

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    And like many in the rest of the state, very few are playing along.

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    6. Jacob Frey (Minneapolis)

    Now to the frozen tundra of the Upper Midwest. Had it not been for the death of George Floyd, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey could have fallen into woke obscurity as another pajama boy running a major city into the ground.

    Thanks to Black Lives Matter’s and Antifa’s violent “protests” over the death of George Floyd, Frey is doing a horrible job of rebuilding from the ruins, especially with no federal funds to assist that. You broke it, you pay for it.

    Frey and the Minneapolis City Council led the rallying cry to defund the police after the Floyd-inspired violence, where Frey allowed rioters to burn down the police headquarters.

    Frey and the Council got their wish, cutting 8 million from the police budget. But that “Monkey’s Paw” grant came with a huge surge in violent crime.

    If Frey stays on track, he’ll move up the list come next year.

    5. Jenny Durkan (Seattle)

    Not only does our third Coastie entry, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, win the mid-slot prize, but she is fighting with Frey and our No. 4 entry for the award of Stupidest Mayor on the Planet.

    Seattle has tolerated Antifa violence for years, thinking as long as it was isolated to certain areas, that it was all good in the hood.

    When Black Lives Matter decided to up the ante and create an autonomous zone called CHOP, then CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) in the middle of downtown Seattle, Durkan had nothing but high praise for this expression of

    “first amendment rights, demanding we do better as a society and provide true equity for communities of color is not terrorism – it is patriotism.”

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    Durkan used it as a platform to condemn President Trump and praise Seattle, who was on the forefront of “true, meaningful change.”

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    Only after the radicals decided to protest at her house did she decide the protests and CHAZ needed to cease. Things had been going south fairly quickly, with rapes and murders piling up in the autonomous zone, but up to that point, to Durkan it was just one big “block party.”

    So what did the good Mayor Durkan do? She laid the blame for the fallout at the feet of her police chief Carmen Best, who happened to be the first woman of color to hold the position. After the Seattle City Council voted to slash Chief Best’s salary in half, Best chose to resign.

    My colleague Sister Toldjah wrote,

    “The irony here cannot be overstated. In an effort to appease radical “Black Lives Matter” activists, the City Council chose to show their support for diverse black voices by punishing one for expressing her disagreement.”

    So much for true equity.

    4. Ted Wheeler (Portland)

    Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Jenny Durkan are almost neck and neck, but the idiot Wheeler gets a higher ranking for being the worse form of a cuck. And that’s saying a lot when you have Minneapolis Mayor Jason Frey and the winner of the No. 1 slot in this mix.

    Wheeler decided to march in solidarity with violent protestors back in July, and tolerated his own version of a CHAZ. When President Trump offered to send in the National Guard to help quell the unrest, Wheeler doubled and triple-downed on his hatred for Trump and refused help. Instead he sat back and watched as his citizens’ businesses and the city were destroyed.

    Wheeler has had BLM and Antifa mount perpetual protests at his condo building, where rioters actually entered the lobby of the building and occupied it.

    It took over 100 days of violence and destruction of property for Wheeler to finally condemn it. Too little, too late.

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    3. Lori Lightfoot (Chicago)

    Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was one of the first passengers on the COVID Hypocrisy train. While she tweeted about “Stay Home, Save Lives” and threatened people if they broke the lockdowns and quarantine, she decided she needed a haircut.

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    My colleague Nick Arama documented her excuse:

    “ ‘I’m on national media and I’m out in the public eye,’ she stated.

    “ ‘I’m a person who, I take my personal hygiene very seriously. As I said, I felt like I needed to have a haircut,’ Lightfoot said. ‘I’m not able to do that myself, so I got a haircut. You want to talk more about that?’ “

    It’s not her fault she needs her roots done. How dare you question her authority!

    Like Durkan, Mayor Lightfoot praised the Summer’s peaceful destructive protestors—until they showed up at her house. Then she banned them, but only from her block.

    “To quote Doc Holliday — or at least the Val Kilmer version of him — Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s “hypocrisy knows no bounds”.

    According to the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Police Department is under orders from the Mayor’s Office that no protesters are allowed in the area of Logan’s Square where the Mayor lives.”

    Lightfoot continues to be a regular passenger on the Hypocrisy Express, leading a celebration rally after Joe Biden declared his victorious win in the presidential election.

    While she also continues to ignore weekend murders in Black neighborhoods, and blames them on… COVID.

    But Lightfoot is part of the intersectional Left (Black, Lesbian), so in Chicago, at least, she’ll always get a pass.

    2. Bill DeBlasio (New York)

    This was another almost neck-and-neck call, but Mayor de Bolshevik aka Marxist Mayor Marfan is still forced to take second string.

    At the beginning of the “15 days to stop the spread”, Mayor Marfan decided there needed to be a tip line to report New Yorkers who were not observing social distancing.

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    It went over as well could be expected, as my colleague Sister Toldjah reported:

    “Here we are just a few days later, and the New York Post is reporting that the text line has been “flooded” with obscene photos, comparisons of de Blasio to Hitler, and links/photos to the reports of him going to the gym as other New York residents were told to hunker down.”

    De Bolshevik made a big show of painting a Black Lives Matter street mural in the wake of the George Floyd Summer of unrest, and he spearheaded the successful defunding of the police, while watching crime rates spike out of control as a result.

    Marxist Mayor Marfan is a despised man, even by the state’s governor, who is no peach himself. Democrat Max Rose called him the worst Mayor in the history of the country:

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    Apparently Mayor Marfan continues to double down on that title with pride, pretending to care by beclowning himself with videos about mask usage. While making plans to stiff the Orthodox Jewish community on getting vaccinations, even though he has personally blamed them for the COVID spread in the city.

    You look up “Horrible Human” in the dictionary, and de Bolshevik’s photo is more than likely next to it.

    You look up “Useless Tool”, and you’ll find a picture of this West Coast treasure who took the No. 1 spot.

    1. Eric Garcetti (Los Angeles)

    Diarist Katlyn Batts said it best:

    “The situation isn’t any better on the west coast either, where Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s approach to the COVID-19 epidemic has only worsened many of the most pressing issues facing the city.

    “Homelessness, for example, has long been a major problem facing Los Angeles. Mayor Garcetti has promised to address the issue, but he has come up short time and again in finding a true solution. The city pledged to house 15,000 of its homeless residents during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has continuously failed to meet that goal.

    While Garcetti referred to the homeless population as “horseshit” and has ignored the overflow of human detritus and waste that has filled every street and freeway underpass from Atwater Village to Woodland Hills, he has fixated on ensuring that every COVID-19 diktat spewed by Governor Hair Gel Newsom is enforced, even declaring that “snitches get rewards” to anyone who would report their neighbor for violating the Governor’s “safer at home” orders.

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    While cutting off water and power from homes and businesses who refused to adhere to the orders.

    However, Mayor Uselessness did show his concern for Angelenos by giving them a discount on parking violations. What a stand up guy!

    Unless it comes to any male who was sexually harassed by his Deputy Mayor and advisor Rick Jacobs, that is. Then he doesn’t know anything about it.

    What Garcetti never failed to do was miss a moment to be in front of the cameras as the West Coast surrogate for the Biden-Harris ticket. He even had his hopes of riding the ticket’s coattails to D.C., where his illusions of grandeur could be fully realized.

    BLM-LA helped to burst that bubble. They labeled him a white supremacist, and protested in front of his house in order to tank any chance that Biden would consider him for a cabinet position.

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    The good news is that BLM-LA succeeded, so the rest of the nation has been spared Garcetti’s abject incompetence.

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    The bad news is Los Angeles is still stuck with him.

    What a way to be No. 1.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 22:40

  • Fake Pastors Swindle Churchgoers In $28 Million FX/Crypto Ponzi Scheme 
    Fake Pastors Swindle Churchgoers In $28 Million FX/Crypto Ponzi Scheme 

    The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed charges against two Maryland companies and their principals allegedly defrauding more than 1,000 investors in a $28 million Ponzi scheme. 

    The SEC first filed the complaint against 1st Million LLC and Smart Partners LLC, and their principals, Dennis Jali, John Frimpong, and Arley Johnson, in August, for defrauding 1,200 investors, many of which were “African immigrants.” 

    The complaint said the trio “exploited common ancestry and/or religious affiliations to earn investors’ trust. Many of the investors were health care workers and/or members of churches attended by Jali, Frimpong, and/or Johnson.” 

    1st Million LLC Seminar 

    Investors were promised by Jali, Frimpong, and Johnson that they were “skilled and licensed traders that would invest in foreign currency exchange and cryptocurrency, “and guaranteed substantial monthly or quarterly returns while simultaneously protecting their principal from market forces,” the complaint read. 

    As always, like in any other classic Ponzi scheme, the complaint read:

    “Rather than invest money received from these targeted communities and others as promised, Defendants misappropriated investor funds for the personal use of Jali, Frimpong, and Johnson, and to temporarily keep the scheme afloat by making Ponzi payments to earlier investors.” 

    According to CBS Baltimore, officials from the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland are trying to identify victims who may have lost money. 

    CBS Baltimore added more color into the trio’s scheme, indicating they posed as “pastors and attended church events to get investments from churchgoers.” 

    Here’s one of the many seminars the fake pastors lured unsuspecting victims from various churches. 

    The scheme went on for nearly two years, from August 2017 to May 2019.

    A couple of months ago, a Baltimore man was sentenced to 22-years in jail for the largest-ever Ponzi scheme in the state’s history.  

    Just imagine if these fools actually invested millions of dollars in Bitcoin back in 2017-19… 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 22:15

  • Military And Political Trends Of 2020 That Will Shape 2021
    Military And Political Trends Of 2020 That Will Shape 2021

    Via South Front,

    2020 was a year full of surprises. It marked the advent of a new reality which may, with an equal probability, lead humanity to a new dark age or to a global digital dystopia. In this context, there is little room for a positive scenario of sustainable development that would benefit people in general, as opposed to just a group of select individuals and special interest groups. The heft of shifts in 2020 is comparable to what European citizens felt on the eve of another change of the socio-economic formation in the early 17th and 20th centuries.

    The past year began with the assassination of the Iranian military genius General Qasem Soleimani by the United States, and it ended with the murder of the prominent scholar Mohsen Fakhrizadeh by the Israelis. In early January, Iran, expecting another aggressive action from the West, accidently shot down a Ukrainian civil aircraft that had inexplicably altered its course over Tehran without request nor authorization. Around the same time, Turkey confirmed the deployment of its military in Libya, beginning a new phase of confrontation in the region, and Egypt responding with airstrikes and additional shows of force. The situation in Yemen developed rapidly: taking advantage of the Sunni coalition’s moral weakness, Ansar Allah achieved significant progress in forcing the Saudis out of the country in many regions. The state of warfare in northwestern Syria has significantly changed, transforming into the formal delineation of zones of influence of Turkey and the Russian-Iranian-Syrian coalition. This happened amid, and largely due to the weakening of U.S. influence in the region. Ankara is steadily increasing its military presence in the areas under its responsibility and along the contact line. It has taken measures to deter groups linked to Al-Qaeda and other radicals. As a result, the situation in the region is stabilizing, which has allowed Turkey to increasingly exert control over most of Greater Idlib.

    ISIS cells remain active in the eastern and southern Syrian regions. Particular processes are taking place in Quneitra and Daraa provinces, where Russian peace initiatives were inconclusive by virtue of the direct destructive influence of Israel in these areas of Syria. In turn, the assassination of Qasem Soleimaniin resulted in a sharp increase in the targeting of American personnel, military and civil infrastructure in Iraq. The U.S. Army was forced to regroup its forces, effectively abandoning a number of its military installations and concentrating available forces at key bases. At the same time, Washington flatly rejected demands from Baghdad for a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops and promised to respond with full-fledged sanctions if Iraq continued to raise this issue. Afghanistan remains stable in its instability. Disturbing news comes from Latin America. Confrontation between China and India flared this year, resulting in sporadic border clashes. This situation seems far from over, as both countries have reinforced their military posture along the disputed border. The aggressive actions of the Trump administration against China deepen global crises, which has become obvious not only to specialists but also to the general public. The relationship between the collective West and the Russian Federation was re-enshrined in “the Cold War state”, which seems to have been resurrected once again.

    The turbulence of the first quarter of 2020 was overshadowed by a new socio-political process – the corona-crisis, the framework of which integrates various phenomena from the Sars-Cov2 epidemic itself and the subsequent exacerbation of the global economic crisis. The disclosure of substantial social differences that have accumulated in modern capitalist society, lead to a series of incessant protests across the globe. The year 2020 was accompanied by fierce clashes between protesters professing various causes and law enforcement forces in numerous countries. Although on the surface these societal clashes with the state appear disassociated, many share related root causes. A growing, immense wealth inequality, corruption of government at all levels, a lack of any meaningful input into political decision making, and the unmasking of massive censorship via big tech corporations and the main stream media all played a part in igniting societal unrest.

    In late 2019 and early 2020 there was little reason for optimistic projections for the near future. However, hardly anyone could anticipate the number of crisis events and developments that had taken place during this year. These phenomena affected every region of the world to some extent.

    Nevertheless, Middle East has remained the main source of instability, due to being an arena where global and regional power interests intertwine and clash. The most important line of confrontation is between US and Israel-led forces on the one hand, and Iran and its so called Axis of Resistance. The opposing sides have been locked in an endless spiral of mutual accusations, sanctions, military incidents, and proxy wars, and recently even crossed the threshold into a limited exchange of strikes due to the worsening state of regional confrontation. Russia and Turkey, the latter of which has been distancing itself from Washington due to growing disagreements with “NATO partners” and changes in global trends, also play an important role in the region without directly entering into the confrontation between pro-Israel forces and Iran.

    As in the recent years, Syria and Iraq remain the greatest hot-spots. The destruction of ISIS as a terrorist state and the apparent killing of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi did not end its existence as a terror group. Many ISIS cells and supporting elements actively use regional instability as a chance to preserve the Khalifate’s legacy. They remain active mainly along the Syria-Iraq border, and along the eastern bank of the Euphrates in Syria. Camps for the temporary displaced and for the families and relatives of ISIS militants on the territory controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in north-eastern Syria are also breeding grounds for terrorist ideology. Remarkably, these regions are also where there is direct presence of US forces, or, as in the case of SDF camps, presence of forces supported by the US.

    The fertile soil for radicalism also consists of the inability to reach a comprehensive diplomatic solution that would end the Syrian conflict in a way acceptable to all parties. Washington is not interesting in stabilizing Syria because even should Assad leave, it would strengthen the Damascus government that would naturally be allied to Russia and Iran. Opposing Iran and supporting Israel became the cornerstone of US policy during the Trump administration. Consequently, Washington is supporting separatist sentiments of the Kurdish SDF leadership and even allowed it to participate in the plunder of Syrian oil wells in US coalition zone of control in which US firms linked to the Pentagon and US intelligence services are participating. US intelligence also aids Israel in its information and psychological warfare operations, as well as military strikes aimed at undermining Syria and Iranian forces located in the country. In spite of propaganda victories, in practice Israeli efforts had limited success in 2020 as Iran continued to strengthen its positions and military capabilities on its ally’s territory. Iran’s success in establishing and supporting a land corridor linking Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iraq, plays an important role. Constant expansion of Iran’s military presence and infrastructure near the town of al-Bukamal, on the border of Iraq and Syria, demonstrates the importance of the project to Tehran. Tel-Aviv claims that Iran is using that corridor to equip pro-Iranian forces in southern Syria and Lebanon with modern weapons.

    The Palestinian question is also an important one for Israel’s leadership and its lobby in Washington. The highly touted “deal of the century” turned out to be no more than an offer for the Palestinians to abandon their struggle for statehood. As expected, this initiative did not lead to a breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian relations. Rather the opposite, it gave an additional stimulus to Palestinian resistance to the demands that were being imposed. At the same time, Trump administration scored a diplomatic success by forcing the UAE and Bahrain to normalize their relations with Israel, and Saudi Arabia to make its collaboration with Israel public. That was a historic victory for US-Israel policy in the Middle East. Public rapprochement of Arab monarchies and Israel strengthened the positions of Iran as the only country which not only declares itself as Palestine’s and Islamic world’s defender, but actually puts words into practice. Saudi Arabia’s leadership will particularly suffer in terms of loss of popularity among its own population, already damaged by the failed war in Yemen and intensifying confrontation with UAE, both of which are already using their neighbor’s weakness to lay a claim to leadership on the Arabian Peninsula.

    The list of actors strengthening their positions in the Red Sea includes Russia. In late 2020 it became known that Russia reached an agreement with Sudan on establishing a naval support facility which has every possibility to become a full-blown naval base. This foothold will enable the Russian Navy to increase its presence on key maritime energy supply routes on the Red Sea itself and in the area between Aden and Oman straits. For Russia, which has not had naval infrastructure in that region since USSR’s break-up, it is a significant diplomatic breakthrough. For its part. Sudan’s leadership apparently views Russia’s military presence as a security factor allowing it to balance potential harmful measures by the West.

    During all of 2020, Moscow and Beijing continued collaboration on projects in Africa, gradually pushing out traditional post-colonial powers in several key areas. The presence of Russian military specialists in the Central African Republic where they assist the central government in strengthening its forces, escalation of local conflicts, and ensuring the security of Russian economic sectors, is now a universally known fact. Russian diplomacy and specialists are also active in Libya, where UAE and Egypt which support Field Marshal Khaftar, and Turkey which supports the Tripoli government, are clashing. Under the cover of declarations calling for peace and stability, foreign actors are busily carving up Libya’s energy resources. For Egypt there’s also the crucial matter of fighting terrorism and the presence of groups affiliated with Muslim Brotherhood which Cairo sees as a direct threat to national security.

    The Sahel and the vicinity of Lake Chad remain areas where terror groups with links to al-Qaeda and ISIS remain highly active. France’s limited military mission in the Sahara-Sahel region has been failure and could not ensure sufficient support for regional forces in order to stabilize the situation. ISIS and Boko-Haram continue to spread chaos in the border areas between Niger, Nigeria, Cameroun, and Chad. In spite of all the efforts by the region’s governments, terrorists continue to control sizable territories and represent a significant threat to regional security. The renewed conflict in Ethiopia is a separate problem, in which the federal government was drawn into a civil war against the National Front for the Liberation of Tigray controlling that province. The ethno-feudal conflict between federal and regional elites threatens to destabilize the entire country if it continues.

    The explosive situation in Africa shows that post-colonial European powers and the “Global Policeman” which dominated that continent for decades were not interested in addressing the continent’s actual problem. Foreign actors were mainly focused on extracting resources and ensuring the interests of a narrow group of politicians and entities affiliated with foreign capitals. Now they are forced to compete with the informal China-Russia bloc which will use a different approach that may be a described as follows: Strengthening of regional stability to protect investments in economic projects. Thus it is no surprise that influential actors are gradually losing to new but more constructive forces.

    Tensions within European countries have been on the rise during the past several years, due to both the crisis of the contemporary economic paradigm and to specific regional problems such as the migration crises and the failure of multiculturalism policies, with subsequent radicalization of society.

    Unpleasant surprises included several countries’ health care and social protection networks’ inability to cope with the large number of COVID-19 patients. Entire systems of governance in a number of European countries proved incapable of coping with rapidly developing crises. This is true particularly for countries of southern Europe, such as Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece. Among eastern European countries, Hungary’s and Romania’s economies were particularly badly affected. At the same time, Poland’s state institutions and economy showed considerable resilience in the face of crisis. While the Federal Republic of Germany suffered considerable economic damage in the second quarter of 2020, Merkel’s government used the situation to inject huge sums of liquidity into the economy, enhanced Germany’s position within Europe, and moreover Germany’s health care and social protection institutions proved capable and sufficiently resilient.

    Coronavirus and subsequent social developments led to the emergence of the so-called “Macron Doctrine” which amounts to an argument that EU must obtain strategic sovereignty. This is consistent with the aims of a significant portion of German national elites. Nevertheless, Berlin officially criticized Macron’s statements and has shown willingness to enter into a strategic partnership with Biden Administration’s United States as a junior partner. However, even FRG’s current leadership understands the dangers of lack of strategic sovereignty in an era of America’s decline as the world policeman. Against the backdrop of a global economic crisis, US-EU relations are ineluctably drifting from a state of partnership to one of competition or even rivalry. In general, the first half of 2020 demonstrated the vital necessity of further development of European institutions.

    The second half of 2020 was marked by fierce mass protests in Germany, France, Great Britain, and other European countries. The level of violence employed by both the protesters and law enforcement was unprecedented and is not comparable to the level of violence seen during protests in Russia, Belarus, and even Kirgizstan. Mainstream media did their best to depreciate and conceal the scale of what was happening. If the situation continues to develop in the same vein, there is every chance that in the future, a reality that can be described as a digital concentration camp may form in Europe.

    World media, for its part, paid particular attention to the situation in Belarus, where protests have entered their fourth month following the August 9, 2020 presidential elections. Belarusian protests have been characterized by their direction from outside the country and choreographed nature. The command center of protest activities is officially located in Poland. This fact is in and of itself unprecedented in Europe’s contemporary history. Even during Ukraine’s Euromaidan, external forces formally refused to act as puppetmasters.

    Belarus’ genuinely existing socio-economic problems have led to a rift within society that is now divided into two irreconcilable camps: proponents of reforms vs. adherents of the current government. Law enforcement forces which are recruited from among President Lukashenko’s supporters, have acted forcefully and occasionally harshly. Still, the number of casualties is far lower than, for example, in protests in France or United States.

    Ukraine itself, where Western-backed “democratic forces” have already won, remains the main point of instability in Eastern Europe. The Zelenskiy administration came to power under slogans about the need to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine and rebuild the country. In practice, the new government continued to pursue the policy aimed at maintaining military tension in the region in the interests of its external sponsors and personal enrichment.

    For the United States, 2020 turned out to be a watershed year for both domestic and foreign policy. Events of this year were a reflection of Trump Administration’s protectionist foreign policy and a national-oriented approach in domestic and economic policy, which ensured an intense clash with the majority of Washington Establishment acting in the interests of global capital.

    In addition to the unresolved traditional problems, America’s problems were made worse by two crises, COVID-19 spread and BLM movement protests. They ensured America’s problems reached a state of critical mass.

    One can and should have a critical attitude toward President Trump’s actions, but one should not doubt the sincerity of his efforts to turn the slogan Make America Great Again into reality. One should likewise not doubt that his successor will adhere to other values. Whether it’s Black Lives Matter or Make Global Moneymen Even Stronger, or Russia Must Be Destroyed, or something even more exotic, it will not change the fact America we’ve known in the last half century died in 2020. A telling sign of its death throes is the use of “orange revolution” technologies developed against inconvenient political regimes. This demonstrated that currently the United States is ruled not by national elites but by global investors to whom the interests of ordinary Americans are alien.

    This puts the terrifying consequences of COVID-19 in a new light. The disease has struck the most vulnerable layers of US society. According to official statistics, United States has had about 20 million cases and over 330,000 deaths. The vast majority are low-income inhabitants of mega-cities. At the same time, the wealthiest Americans have greatly increased their wealth by exploiting the unfolding crisis for their own personal benefit. The level of polarization of US society has assumed frightening proportions. Conservatives against liberals, blacks against whites, LGBT against traditionalists, everything that used to be within the realm of public debate and peaceful protest has devolved into direct, often violent, clashes. One can observe unprecedented levels of aggression and violence from all sides.

    In foreign policy, United States continued to undermine the international security system based on international treaties. There are now signs that one of the last legal bastions of international security, the New START treaty, is under attack. US international behavior has prompted criticism from NATO allies. There are growing differences of opinion on political matters with France and economic ones with Germany. The dialogue with Eastern Mediterranean’s most powerful military actor Turkey periodically showed a sharp clash of interests.

    Against that backdrop, United States spent 2020 continuously increasing its military presence in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea basin. Additional US forces and assets were deployed in direct proximity to Russia’s borders. The number of offensive military exercises under US leadership or with US participation has considerably increased.

    In the Arctic, the United States is acting as a spoiler, unhappy with the current state of affairs. It aims to extend its control over natural resources in the region, establish permanent presence in other countries’ exclusive economic zones (EEZ) through the use of the so-called “freedom of navigation operations” (FONOPs), and continue to encircle Russia with ballistic missile defense (BMD) sites and platforms.

    In view of the urgent and evident US preparations to be able to fight and prevail in a war against a nuclear adversary, by defeating the adversary’s nuclear arsenal through the combination of precision non-nuclear strikes, Arctic becomes a key region in this military planning. The 2020 sortie by a force of US Navy BMD-capable AEGIS destroyers into the Barents Sea, the first such mission since the end of the Cold War over two decades ago, shows the interest United States has in projecting BMD capabilities into regions north of Russia’s coastline, where they might be able to effect boost-phase interceptions of Russian ballistic missiles that would be launched in retaliatory strikes against the United States. US operational planning for the Arctic in all likelihood resembles that for South China Sea, with only a few corrections for climate.

    In Latin America, the year of 2020 was marked by the intensification Washington efforts aimed at undermining the political regimes that it considered to be in the opposition to the existing world order.

    Venezuela remained one of the main points of the US foreign policy agenda. During the entire year, the government of Nicolas Maduro was experiencing an increasing sanction, political and clandestine pressure. In May, Venezuelan security forces even neutralized a group of US mercenaries that sneaked into the country to stage the coup in the interests of the Washington-controlled opposition and its public leader Juan Guaido. However, despite the recognition of Guaido as the president of Venezuela by the US and its allies, regime-change attempts, and the deep economic crisis, the Maduro government survived.

    This case demonstrated that the decisive leadership together having the support of a notable part of the population and working links with alternative global centers of power could allow any country to resist to globalists’ attacks. The US leadership itself claims that instead of surrendering, Venezuela turned itself into a foothold of its geopolitical opponents: China, Russia, Iran and even Hezbollah. While this evaluation of the current situation in Venezuela is at least partly a propaganda exaggeration to demonize the ‘anti-democratic regime’ of Maduro, it highlights parts of the really existing situation.

    The turbulence in Bolivia ended in a similar manner, when the right wing government that gained power as a result of the coup in 2019 demonstrated its inability to rule the country and lost power in 2020. The expelled president, Evo Morales, returned to the country and the Movement for Socialism secured their dominant position in Bolivia thanks to the wide-scale support from the indigenous population. Nonetheless, it is unlikely that these developments in Venezuela and Bolivia would allow to reverse the general trend towards the destabilization in South America.

    The regional economic and social turbulence is strengthened by the high level of organized crime and the developing global crisis that sharpened the existing contradictions among key global and regional players. This creates conditions for the intensification of existing conflicts. For example, the peace process between the FARC and the federal government is on the brink of the collapse in Colombia. Local sources and media accuse the government and affiliated militias of detentions and killings of leaders of local communities and former FARC members in violation of the existing peace agreement. This violence undermine the fragile peace process and sets conditions for the resumption of the armed struggle by FARC and its supporters. Mexico remains the hub for illegal migration, drug and weapon trafficking just on the border with the United States. Large parts of the country are in the state of chaos and are in fact controlled by violent drug cartels and their mercenaries. Brazil is in the permanent state of political and economic crisis amid the rise of street crime.

    These negative tendencies affect almost all states of the region. The deepening global economic crisis and the coronavirus panic add oil to the flame of instability.

    Countries of South America are not the only one suffering from the crisis. It also shapes relations between global powers. Outcomes of the ongoing coronavirus outbreak and the global economic crisis contributed to the hardening of the standoff between the United States and China.

    Washington and Beijing have insoluble contradictions. The main of them is that China has been slowly but steadily winning the race for the economic and technological dominance simultaneously boosting own military capabilities to defend the victory in the case of a military escalation. The sanction, tariff and diplomatic pressure campaign launched by the White House on China since the very start of the Trump Presidency is a result of the understanding of these contradictions by the Trump administration and its efforts to guarantee the leading US position in the face of the global economic recession. The US posture towards the South China Sea issues, the political situation in Hong Kong, human rights issues in Xinjiang, the unprecedented weapon sales to Taiwan, the support of the militarization of Japan and many other questions is a part of the ongoing standoff. Summing up, Washington has been seeking to isolate China through a network of local military alliances and contain its economic expansion through sanction, propaganda and clandestine operations.

    The contradictions between Beijing and Washington regarding North Korea and its nuclear and ballistic missile programs are a part of the same chain of events. Despite the public rhetoric, the United States is not interested in the full settlement of the Korea conflict. Such a scenario that may include the reunion of the North and South will remove the formal justification of the US military buildup. This is why the White House opted to not fulfill its part of the deal with the North once again assuring the North Korean leadership that its decision to develop its nuclear and missile programs and further.

    Statements of Chinese diplomats and top official demonstrate that Beijing fully understands the position of Washington. At the same time, China has proven that it is not going to abandon its policies aimed at gaining the position of the main leading power in the post-unipolar world. Therefore, the conflict between the sides will continue escalating in the coming years regardless the administration in the White House and the composition of the Senate and Congress. Joe Biden and forces behind his rigged victory in the presidential election will likely turn back from Trump’s national-oriented economic policy and ‘normalize’ relations with China once again reconsidering Russia as Enemy #1. This will not help to remove the insoluble contradictions with China and reverse the trend towards the confrontation. However, the Biden administration with help from mainstream media will likely succeed in hiding this fact from the public by fueling the time-honored anti-Russian hysteria.

    As to Russia itself, it ended the year of 2020 in its ordinary manner for the recent years: successful and relatively successful foreign policy actions amid the complicated economic, social and political situation inside the country. The sanction pressure, coronavirus-related restrictions and the global economic crisis slowed down the Russian economy and contributed to the dissatisfaction of the population with internal economic and social policies of the government. The crisis was also used by external actors that carried out a series of provocations and propaganda campaigns aimed at undermining the stability in the country ahead of the legislative election scheduled for September 2021. The trend on the increase of sanction pressure, including tapering large infrastructure projects like the Nord Stream 2, and expansion of public and clandestine destabilization efforts inside Russia was visible during the entire year and will likely increase in 2021. In the event of success, these efforts will not only reverse Russian foreign policy achievements of the previous years, but could also put in danger the existence of the Russian statehood in the current format.

    Among the important foreign policy developments of 2020 underreported by mainstream media is the agreement on the creation of a Russian naval facility on the coast of the Red Sea in Sudan. If this project is fully implemented, this will contribute to the rapid growth of Russian influence in Africa. Russian naval forces will also be able to increase their presence in the Red Sea and in the area between the Gulf of Aden and the Gulf of Oman. Both of these areas are the core of the current maritime energy supply routes. The new base will also serve as a foothold of Russia in the case of a standoff with naval forces of NATO member states that actively use their military infrastructure in Djibouti to project power in the region. It is expected that the United States (regardless of the administration in the White House) will try to prevent the Russian expansion in the region at any cost. For an active foreign policy of Russia, the creation of the naval facility in Sudan surpasses all public and clandestine actions in Libya in recent years. From the point of view of protecting Russian national interests in the Global Oceans, this step is even more important than the creation of the permanent air and naval bases in Syria.

    As well as its counterparts in Washington and Beijing, Moscow contributes notable efforts to the modernization of its military capabilities, with special attention to the strategic nuclear forces and hypersonic weapons. The Russians see their ability to inflict unacceptable damage on a potential enemy among the key factors preventing a full-scale military aggression against them from NATO. The United Sates, China and Russia are in fact now involved in the hypersonic weapon race that also includes the development of means and measures to counter a potential strike with hypersonic weapons.

    The new war in Nagorno-Karabakh became an important factor shaping the balance of power in the South Caucasus. The Turkish-Azerbaijani bloc achieved a sweeping victory over Armenian forces and only the involvement of the Russian diplomacy the further deployment of the peacekeepers allowed to put an end to the violence and rescue the vestiges of the self-proclaimed Armenian Republic of Artsakh. Russia successfully played a role of mediator and officially established a military presence on the sovereign territory of Azerbaijan for the next 5 years. The new Karabakh war also gave an additional impulse in the Turkish-Azerbaijani economic and military cooperation, while the pro-Western regime in Armenia that expectedly led the Armenian nation to the tragedy is balancing on the brink of collapse.

    The Central Asia traditionally remained one of the areas of instability around the world with the permanent threat of militancy and humanitarian crisis. Nonetheless, despite forecasts of some analysis, the year of 2020 did not become the year of the creation of ISIS’ Caliphate 2.0 in the region. An important role in preventing this was played by the Taliban that additionally to securing its military victories over the US-led coalition and the US-backed Kabul government, was fiercely fighting ISIS cells appearing in Afghanistan. The Taliban, which controls a large part of Afghanistan, was also legalized on the international scene by direct talks with the United States. The role of the Taliban will grow and further with the reduction of the US military presence.

    While some media already branded the year of 2020 as one of the worst in the modern history, there are no indications that the year of 2021 will be any brighter or the global crises and regional instability will magically disappear by themselves. Instead, most likely 2020 was just a prelude for the upcoming global shocks and the acute standoff for markets and resources in the environment of censorship, legalized total surveillance, violations of human rights under ‘democratic’ and ‘social’ slogans’ and proxy wars.

    The instability in Europe will likely be fueled by the increasing cultural-civilizational conflict and the new wave of newcomers that have acute ideological and cultural differences with the European civilization. The influx of newcomers is expected due to demographic factors and the complicated security, social situation in the Middle East and Africa. Europe will likely try to deal with the influx of newcomers by introducing new movement and border restrictions under the brand of fighting coronavirus. Nonetheless, the expected growth of the migration pressure will likely contribute to the negative tendencies that could blow up Europe from inside.

    The collapse of the international security system, including key treaties limiting the development and deployment of strategic weapons, indicates that the new detente on the global scene will remain an improbable scenario. Instead, the world will likely move further towards the escalation scenario as at least a part of the current global leadership considers a large war a useful tool to overcome the economic crisis and capture new markets. Russia, with its large territories, rich resources, a relatively low population, seems to be a worthwhile target. At the same time, China will likely exploit the escalating conflict between Moscow and the US-led bloc to even further increase its global positions. In these conditions, many will depend on the new global order and main alliances within it that are appearing from the collapsing unipolar system. The United States has already lost its unconditional dominant role on the international scene, but the so-called multipolar world order has not appeared yet. The format of this new multipolar world will likely have a critical impact on the further developments around the globe and positions of key players involved in the never-ending Big Game.

    *  *  *

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 21:50

  • The Wokest News Stories Of 2020: Taibbi
    The Wokest News Stories Of 2020: Taibbi

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

    The year 2020 will be remembered in the real world for a terrifying pandemic, mass unemployment, a nationwide protest movement, and a historically uninspiring presidential race. The year in media, meanwhile, was marked by grotesque factual scandals, journalist-cheered censorship, and an accelerating newsroom mania for political groupthink that was equal parts frightening and ridiculous.

    The tiniest violations of perceived orthodoxies cost jobs. Reporters and editors were whacked en masse in uprisings at the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Wall Street Journal, Vox, the Miami Herald, and countless other places.

    Some of the purges were themselves amazing news stories. Reporter Sue Schafer was fired after her paper, the Washington Post, published a 3,000-word expose about a two-year-old incident in which she attended a Halloween party dressed as Megyn Kelly, who herself had been fired from NBC for defending blackface costumes. Schafer, in other words, was fired for dressing in blackface as a satire of blackface costumes, in an incident no one heard of until her own editors decided to make an issue of it. This was one example of what the New Yorker recently exulted as the “expensive and laborious” process of investigative journalism, as practiced in 2020.

    …

    If in looking at the following list it strikes you to wonder, “Where were the editors?”, it turns out an atmosphere in which even senior New York Times bosses have to be afraid of staff is almost like having no editors at all! Given their importance in preventing the scourge of what the New Yorker called “journalistic individualism,” i.e. reporters allowed to operate outside the “collective interest,” this was really too bad. In honor, then, of that sacred covenant between writers and editors — well, the ones not purged, reassigned, or forced out this year — here’s a shortlist of the most remarkable (and presumably edited) articles of 2020, the year of the woke headline…

    Continue reading here.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 21:25

  • Goldman's Top Charts Of 2020
    Goldman’s Top Charts Of 2020

    In the year’s final report published by Goldman’s economists the bank has summarized key global themes that stood out this year and are likely to shape 2021 in a series of charts.

    First, here are some of Goldman’s key observations on the global economy:

    • The global economy came to a sudden pandemic stop with a peak hit to global GDP in mid-April of 20% that varied significantly in magnitude across economies.
    • Unprecedented policy easing and adaptation drove the rapid but partial global recovery in the second half of 2020.  Fiscal easing led to relatively stable real disposable income in most DMs and an actual surge in the US despite a historic collapse in GDP.  Monetary easing stabilized financial markets and brought the most accommodative financial conditions on record.  Targeted policies such as mask wearing mandates and other consumer and business adaptations including surges in e-commerce and work from home lowered the relative impact on economic activity from successive virus waves.
    • Relatively low bankruptcies, increased business formations, limited increases in unemployment in Europe and Japan, and sharp declines in unemployment in North America all point to surprisingly limited long-term damage to the supply side of the economy.
    • We expect the virus situation to improve sharply in 2021, driven by warmer weather in the Northern hemisphere, rising immunity from natural infections and—most importantly—a successful global vaccination campaign.  Vaccine supply is well below demand at present, but it should become plentiful in DMs in the next several months and in EMs later in the year.  The remaining issues are mostly logistical, but the speed of the rollout in Israel in recent weeks suggests that they are surmountable.
    • Slowing virus spread should boost activity in virus-sensitive sectors that account for the bulk of the output gap and the 2020 decline in inflation and drive our 2021 above-consensus global growth forecast of +6.4%

    And here are the charts, starting with the Global Sudden Stop, with China becoming the first country to lock down followed promptly by other countries in March…

    … leading to a 20% collapse of global GDP in April…

    … yet the decline wasn’t uniform and varied in both speed and magnitude across economies.

    The collapse reversed rapidly if partially in the second half, thanks to a panicked policy response and behavioral adaptation…

    Meanwhile, the historic $20 trillion QE unleashed by global central banks…

    … helped push stocks to all time highs while pushing financial conditions to the easiest on record.

    Looking ahead, Goldman sees limited supply side damage and improved virus control which drive the bank’s above-consensus 2021 global GDP forecast of +6.4%…

    … boosted by a strong business sector which “experienced surprisingly few bankruptcies and elevated business formations”

    Adding to its optimistic outlook, Goldman sees the virus spread slowing once the weather warms up in the Northern hemisphere…

    … and as natural immunity from infections builds…

    … while distribution of plentiful vaccines will further cut down on virus spread…

    … benefiting DM countries most and helping drive successful vaccination campaigns…

    … with the assumption that logistic issues get resolved, something which Goldman is optimistic about referring to Israel’s “rapid rollout”:

    The gradual elimination of covid should boost activity in virus-sensitive and restricted sectors that account for the bulk of the output gap according to Goldman…

    … which concludes by putting all of the above together, and predicting a jump in inflation in the coming years.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 21:00

  • ISIS Kills 28 Syrian Troops Near Palmyra In Most Devastating Ambush In Years
    ISIS Kills 28 Syrian Troops Near Palmyra In Most Devastating Ambush In Years

    Via AlMasdarNews.com,

    This week ISIS terrorists carried out a devastating attack on a passenger bus that was carrying dozens of Syrian Arab Army (SAA) soldiers and civilians in the eastern region of the country.

    On Thursday the Islamic State announced responsibility for the attack that claimed the lives of at least 20 Syrian Army soldiers and eight civilians between the cities of Palmyra (Tadmur) and Deir Ezzor.

    The attack, which was carried out on December 30th at 4 P.M. (Damascus Time), was the deadliest single ambush of the year by the Islamic State and one of the few attacks they have carried out in the eastern region of the country recently.

    Al Jazeera detailed that a bus “carried soldiers and pro-government fighters who had finished their leave and were on their way back to their base in the desolate, sparsely populated area.”

    “Another source said at least 30 soldiers were killed, mostly from the Syrian army’s elite Fourth Brigade, which has a strong presence in the rich oil-producing province since the ISIL, also known as ISIS group fighters were pushed out at the end of 2017,” Al Jazeera added.

    In response to the devastating attack by the Islamic State, the Russian Aerospace Forces unleashed a massive barrage of airstrikes over the central and eastern regions of Syria, hitting several terrorist sites in the Badiya Al-Sham region.

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

    According to a field source in the Homs Provinice, the Russian Aerospace Forces launched dozens of strikes on the terrorist positions, inflicting heavy losses within the ISIS ranks.

    Furthermore, the Syrian Arab Army also carried out a number of artillery strikes and air raids over the terrorist positions, hitting the ISIS positions in the Homs, Deir Ezzor and Sweida governorates.

    The Islamic State has increased their attacks against the Syrian Arab Army in 2020, moving between different governorates to wreak havoc in the Arab Republic.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 20:35

  • YouTube's Top-Earner In 2020… Is 9 Years Old
    YouTube’s Top-Earner In 2020… Is 9 Years Old

    YouTube stars are regularly bombarded with the question “how much do you earn doing this?”.

    Statista’s Martin Armstrong provides this infographic to shed some light on the most lucrative end of the YouTube money list.

    Infographic: YouTube's Top-Earners 2020 | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Ryan Kaji earned $29.5 million from June 1, 2019 to June 1, 2020, keeping him in the number 1 spot on the Forbes ranking. The special thing about the Texan? He is just nine years old.

    Kaji has become famous with videos in which he presents new toys and rates them.

    Even younger is Russia-born Anastasia Radzinskaya (known as Nastya and 6 years old), whose videos have generated revenues of $18.5 million.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 20:10

  • The Year In Review: 2020 In 20 Visualizations
    The Year In Review: 2020 In 20 Visualizations

    Authored by Nick Routley via VisualCapitalist.com,

    Can you remember a year more life-changing than 2020?

    Over a million lives were lost in the pandemic, oil prices turned negative, and protests swept the streets. At the same time, 10 years of technology advancements seemed to happen in mere months—and now vaccinations are rolling out at a record speed.

    Below, we round up some of the year’s biggest news events with charts and visualizations.

    The Year in Review: 2020 in 20 Visualizations

    Graphic #1   ⟩⟩   January 2020 – Australian Bushfires

    For some in the Southern Hemisphere who ushered in the new year first, it started on fire.

    Reuters assessed the scale of the damage caused by bushfires across Australia. In fact, total burned areas reached 18.6 million hectares (186,000km²) by March, bigger than the total land mass of entire countries like Cuba.

    Here’s the damage done in the state of New South Wales alone, compared to previous years:

    While bushfires are common in Australia, this year, dry conditions fueled the flames. The fires raged for nearly 80 days, displacing or killing nearly 3 billion animals—a devastating biodiversity loss for the country.

    Graphic #2   ⟩⟩   January 2020 – Rising Iran–U.S. Tensions

    In early January, a U.S. air strike incinerated the car of General Qassim Suleimani, a security mastermind and one of Iran’s most powerful military strategists. U.S. officials claimed that Iran was planning an “imminent” attack.

    In retaliation, Iran fired two rockets at U.S. military bases located in Iraq. No one was killed. As tensions escalated, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to try and restrict President Trump’s use of military power against Iran without approval.

    Later, in mid-January, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard admitted that it mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet, responsible for the death of 176 people.

    Graphic #3   ⟩⟩   March 2020 – The Spread of the “Novel Coronavirus”

    You’ve heard of Patient Zero, but what about Patient 31?

    Before February, cases of the still unnamed virus were largely contained within China, with the rest of the world cautiously observing the country’s containment efforts. Slowly, but surely, the virus began to spread beyond China’s borders.

    South Korea’s 31st confirmed COVID-19 case—which was behind the rapid spread of the virus to potentially up to 1,160 contacts in the country—served as a warning to the rest of the world of how fast the virus could spread.

    » See the full graphic by Reuters

    Reuters’ unique graphic explainer uncovers how just one typical day of multiple “normal” interactions had significant super-spreader effects.

    Graphic #4   ⟩⟩   March 2020 – The Coronavirus Crash

    The S&P 500 erased over a third of its value in under a month—the fastest 30% decline ever recorded on the benchmark index.

    As a result, the global tourism industry suffered dramatic losses, with countless cruise ships docked and passenger flights traveling at half-capacity.

    This graphic shows the BEACH stocks—booking, entertainment & live events, airlines, cruises & casinos, hotels & resorts—that were most impacted by worldwide travel bans.

    While some of these stocks have since recovered, the ongoing impact of COVID-19 is still most widely being felt among companies in these types of industries.

    Graphic #5 & 6   ⟩⟩   March 2020 – Lockdown Life Begins

    From toilet paper hoarding to limits on gatherings, the pandemic’s immediate effects on our surrounding environment became clear as early as March. As daily life came to a standstill, commuter activity in major cities plummeted throughout the month.

    One unintended positive consequence of these shutdowns? Air pollution, such as nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) emissions also steeply dropped alongside these restrictions on movement.

    Possibly the most well-known diagram of the pandemic is the one that introduced the world to the phrase “flatten the curve”, showing why it was important to prevent and delay the spread of the virus so that large portions of the population aren’t sick at the same time.

    Graphic #7   ⟩⟩   April 2020 – Historic U.S. Job Losses

    After the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, unemployment figures soon hit historic proportions.

    Within a month, 22 million in the U.S. had filed jobless claims.

    To put this in perspective, U.S. unemployment levels in 2020 were roughly 10 times higher than previous peak unemployment levels in absolute terms. Or, to look at it another way, this is equivalent to the entire population of Chile or Taiwan.

    Graphic #8   ⟩⟩   April 2020 – Stimulus Announced in the U.S.

    On March 27, the $2 trillion CARES Act came into law after facing minimal resistance from the House and Senate. We broke down the historic relief package in the Sankey diagram below.

    The relief package included $1,200 direct deposits to individuals, over $350 billion in relief for small businesses, and an excess of $100 billion for the U.S. health system.

    Graphic #9   ⟩⟩   April 2020 – Oil Prices Go Negative

    In another historic event, oil prices went negative for the first time in history. Futures contracts for WTI oil fell to a stunning -$37.63 on April 20th, with producers actually paying traders to take oil off their hands.

    Oil has since recovered from this shock, cruising back to more typical price levels.

    Graphic #10   ⟩⟩   May 2020 – Black Lives Matter Protests

    “I can’t breathe.” These few words sparked the ongoing flames of a significant movement this summer: Black Lives Matter (BLM).

    After the killing of George Floyd on May 25, by police, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) recorded over 7,750 BLM-linked demonstrations over a three month span.

    The nationwide pattern of civil unrest is well-documented, but there’s been no time like the present to demand change. Though images of burning cars and police clashes dominated the headlines, in the end, 93% of the protests were peaceful.

    There’s also been a ripple effect, with thousands of similar rallies reported in countries around the world.

    Graphic #11 & 12  ⟩⟩   May 2020 – The World Works from Home

    The dramatic shift to staying at home has resulted in a much higher reliance on technology for many people. Nowhere were these trends exemplified more than the rise of video conferencing software Zoom—the platform was used for work, education, and socializing alike.

    As monthly users swelled, those who typically take to the skies also declined in a steep fashion. In this graphic from May, we noted that Zoom’s market capitalization had skyrocketed to eclipse the top seven airlines by revenue, combined.

    As remote work became the new normal for significant shares of the workforce, unique benefits of this adjusted lifestyle arose, but it didn’t come without its challenges.

    Perhaps the most significant lasting change from the COVID-19 pandemic might be the adoption of flexible work, even by firms that resisted the trend in the past.

    If many employees continue to work remotely, even part of the time, then that will have a big impact on everything from the commercial office market to the bottom line of SaaS companies that help facilitate remote collaboration among teams.

    Graphic #13   ⟩⟩   July 2020 – Tesla becomes World’s Most Valuable Automaker

    2020 was a hallmark year for Tesla. In June, it became the most valuable automaker in the world—surpassing the likes of Toyota, Volkswagen, and Honda.

    Tesla’s market valuation climbed over 375% since June 2019. While these soaring figures are one factor behind its rise, others include record Model 3 sales, which prompted market euphoria.

    But Tesla’s story is far from over.

    The company is now worth more than the largest nine automakers combined, and is set to enter the S&P 500 officially on December 21, 2020. Tesla will be the most valuable company to ever enter the index, ranking as the eighth-largest overall.

    Graphic #14   ⟩⟩   July 2020 – Big Tech’s Dominance

    In many ways, COVID-19 only accentuated differences in market share, earnings, and wealth.

    For one, Big Tech’s market cap share of the S&P 500 soared. In the seven years preceding July, the market cap of the six stocks—Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Alphabet, and Microsoft—grew over 500%. By contrast, the S&P 500 rose just 110%.

    At the same time, Big Tech’s concentration reached record levels, with the five largest companies accounting for over 20% of the index’s total value.

    Graphic #15   ⟩⟩   August 2020 – Beirut Explosion

    While the world grappled with numerous biological and natural disasters, human-error led to a deadly explosion that rocked Beirut’s port. The blast was broadcast around the world in real time as people filmed the fire on their devices.

    Using satellite data, NASA and NYT mapped the extent of the damage, which claimed 135 lives and affected 305,000 more.

    » See the full interactive explainer by NYT

    This explosion was the biggest accident of its kind in modern history, triggered by the exposure of combustible ammonium nitrate—a key ingredient in fertilizers—to an open flame due to poor storage. Beyond the human toll, the financial cost of this explosion is estimated at above $15 billion.

    Graphic #16   ⟩⟩   August 2020 – Shortest Bear Market in History Ends

    In a stunning reversal, the bear market of 2020 ended on August 18 when the S&P 500 exceeded previous February highs. As trillions of dollars in stimulus response got injected into global economies, markets recovered in record time.

    Just two weeks before the shortest bear market in history ended, we published a graphic comparing previous stock crashes—from 1987’s Black Monday to the Nixon Shock of 1973—exposing the duration and intensity of market downturns since 1929.

    Graphic #17   ⟩⟩   August 2020 – U.S. Wildfire Season

    Reddish-orange skies might seem otherworldly, but this fall, they were a common sight across the West Coast of North America, where air quality reached the “hazardous” category for long stretches of time.

    2020 was the most active year on record for wildfires yet, with California and Oregon being particularly hard-hit. While some wildfires are caused by natural occurrences like lightning strikes, an overwhelming majority (85-90%) happen because of human causes such as discarded cigarettes and campfire debris.

    This is an unprecedented event. We now have the largest wildfire in [California’s] history, as well as the third largest and the fourth largest and five of the Top 10.

    – Noah Diffenbaugh, professor and senior fellow at Stanford University

    Graphic #18   ⟩⟩   November 2020 – The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

    In 2020, U.S. election spending hit over $13 billion, more than twice the amount spent on the entire 2016 election.

    Of this total, congressional spending topped $7 billion, with Democrats spending 64% more than Republican candidates for the House and Senate.

    President Biden was the first candidate ever to raise $1 billion, while Trump raised $596 million.

    Graphic #19   ⟩⟩   December 2020

    COVID-19’s Third Wave

    Like history tells us, pandemics come in waves. The third wave of COVID-19 escalated in November, when cases began to surge.

    On November 8, the seven-day average of new daily cases hit 100,000 in America. By the end of November, global cases soared to 60 million. Since then, cases have trended upward, leading local governments worldwide to enforce social distancing requirements for the winter holiday season.

    The below graphic from Reddit helps show the latest surge in cases in the U.S.:

    Graphic #20   ⟩⟩   December 2020 – Global Vaccination Effort Kicks Off

    In more recent news, Pfizer made waves when it announced it was rolling out a 95% effective COVID-19 vaccine. Then followed Moderna, at 94.5% in mid-November. As the global vaccination race intensifies, Bloomberg tracks the progress of nine vaccines and 80 publicly disclosed distribution deals representing 7.95 billion vaccination doses.

    However, even with viable vaccines, challenges still exist. All around the world, perceptions of vaccine safety have dropped significantly, which may complicate an economic recovery.

    On to the Next One

    After the wild ride that was 2020, many people are wondering what 2021 will have in store.

    In the first half of the year, vaccine distribution will surely take center stage. As well, economic recovery will be in focus as physical businesses resume more typical activity and regions slowly open up travel and tourism again.

    Much like the financial crisis of 2008 was an inflection point for the economy, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the course of human history. Chaos can breed opportunity, and even though unemployment spiked to record highs in the U.S., new business applications did as well.

    Will things return to “normal”? As the many twists and turns of the past year have demonstrated, our complex, interconnected world is far from static. The next black swan is always just around the corner.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 19:45

  • More Than Half Of Chinese Adults Overweight As Obesity Becomes Latest Health Crisis 
    More Than Half Of Chinese Adults Overweight As Obesity Becomes Latest Health Crisis 

    The prevalence of obesity has become a worldwide phenomenon, and in China, the world’s most populous country, adults are becoming increasingly overweight. 

    It seems that over the last few decades, China has “absorbed” the best the “West” has had to offer, which includes fast-food restaurants, credit cards, smartphones, apps, and also all the stolen intellectual property, but at the same time imported the worst. 

    We outlined in 2013 that American influence (“lazy lifestyles”) was quickly spreading across China, creating a massive and unspoken diabetes crisis.  

    Fast forward seven years later, shocking new statistics show the percentage of overweight Chinese adults has skyrocketed since the early 2000s, according to BBC News. 

    China’s National Health Commission wrote in a new report that in 2002, 29% of adults were overweight. As of 2020, the figure is now 50% of adults are classified as overweight, of whom 16.4% are obese. 

    Over the last couple of decades, China’s economic miracle has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and into the middle class. This ultimately changed their lifestyles to those that closely resembled ones in America: one that is exceptionally lazy. 

    The report outlines how Chinese citizens infrequently exercise, specifying stating that less than 25% of adults workout at least once per week. It was also noted that meat consumption has soared while healthy food intake has dropped. 

    Wang Dan, a nutritionist in the country, was quoted by AFP as saying that an abundance of Chinese adults “exercise too little, are under too much pressure, and have an unhealthy work schedule.”

    The report’s release came when China’s leaders recently unveiled plans to suppress the obesity crisis.  

    It was noted in August that Beijing requested citizens to reduce food waste and asked them to decrease food intake. 

    Shanghai officials asked residents to snitch on people who overate. The government asked diners to order one fewer dish than usual to conserve food. There was even a restaurant in southern Hunan province that weighed patrons before they ate to adjust their meal size. 

    The topic of obesity comes into focus as the pandemic has shown overweight or obese people suffer more severe complications or death from COVID-19. 

    Perhaps in Karl Marx’s eyes, he would see this as just another symptom as the Chinese have betrayed their socialist ideals and instead placed cheap consumerism on a pedal stool. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 19:20

  • Iran Says US B-52 Flyover Part Of Trump's "Plot To Fabricate Pretext For War"
    Iran Says US B-52 Flyover Part Of Trump’s “Plot To Fabricate Pretext For War”

    Authored by Jake Johnson via CommonDreams.org,

    Hours after the U.S. flew two nuclear-capable B-52 bombers over the Persian Gulf for the second time this month, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif claimed Thursday that he is aware of intelligence suggesting that President Donald Trump’s administration is engaged in a “plot to fabricate a pretext for war”during its final days in power.

    “Instead of fighting Covid in the U.S., Donald Trump and cohorts waste billions to fly B-52s and send armadas to our region,” Zarif tweeted, referring to a Wednesday maneuver by the U.S. that American officials predictably characterized as defensive. The flight came just over a week after the U.S. sailed a nuclear submarine through the Persian Gulf and touted the vessel’s “ability to carry up to 154 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles.”

    Foreign Minister of Iran, Javad Zarif, Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

    “Intelligence from Iraq indicates a plot to fabricate a pretext for war,” Zarif said Thursday. “Iran doesn’t seek war but will openly and directly defend its people, security, and vital interests.”

    The warning from Iran’s top diplomat, a key negotiator of the nuclear agreement that Trump violated in 2018, came after U.S. officials blamed Iran for a recent missile attack on the American embassy in Baghdad and claimed without evidence that Tehran is preparing a “possibly imminent attack” on U.S. forces in the Middle East.

    “Our embassy in Baghdad got hit Sunday by several rockets. Three rockets failed to launch,” Trump tweeted last week. “Guess where they were from: IRAN. Now we hear chatter of additional attacks against Americans in Iraq.”

    Iran denied responsibility for the embassy attack—which injured one Iraqi and damaged two buildings—and accused the Trump administration of “seeking to increase tensions” in the region with baseless allegations.

    One unnamed senior U.S. defense official expressed concern to CNN Wednesday that “some within the government are painting the situation with Iran as more dire than it actually is and are preoccupied with the potential for retaliatory attacks by Iran to mark the anniversary of [Gen. Qasem] Soleimani’s assassination,” which Trump ordered nearly a year ago. Denounced as a violation of international law, the killing nearly provoked an all-out war between the U.S. and Iran.

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

    “When you need a show of force to deter attacks around the anniversary of an assassination that you originally justified as ‘reestablishing deterrence,’ you haven’t reestablished deterrence,” tweeted Matt Duss, foreign policy adviser for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), in response to the B-52 flight Wednesday. “And yes, obviously the whole ‘reestablishing deterrence’ claim was dishonest nonsense from the beginning, but it’s worth pointing out that it’s been disproven even according to its own dishonest, nonsensical terms.”

    The latest B-52 maneuver took place amid simmering fears that Trump and the warhawks in his administration could be angling to attack Iran in a last-ditch effort to undermine President-elect Joe Biden’s push to reestablish diplomatic relations with Tehran and return the U.S. to compliance with the nuclear accord. Just last month, Trump reportedly asked his advisers for a strike on Iran’s primary nuclear energy site.

    In an op-ed for Responsible Statecraft over the weekend, former CIA analyst Paul Pillar wrote that the “the objective of sabotaging the next administration points to one of the most likely and dangerous things that the unhinged lame duck president might do in his final days in office, which is to initiate a military clash with Iran.”

    Sina Toossi, senior research analyst with the National Iranian American Council, echoed Pillar’s warning in a tweet on Wednesday. “War with Iran,” wrote Toossi, “could be Trump’s final punishment on the American people for rejecting him and a massive act of sabotage against Biden for defeating him.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 18:55

  • Pfizer, GSK & Others Quietly Hike Prices On 100s Of Drugs
    Pfizer, GSK & Others Quietly Hike Prices On 100s Of Drugs

    With just hours to go until the new year, Reuters reports that a group of the world’s largest drug companies is preparing to hike drug prices, defying President Trump to issue a last-minute rebuke, as he has done in the past.

    Drugmakers including Pfizer Inc, Sanofi SA, and GlaxoSmithKline Plc plan to raise U.S. prices on more than 300 drugs in the United States on Jan. 1, according to drugmakers and data analyzed by healthcare research firm 3 Axis Advisors.

    The hikes come as drugmakers are reeling from effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has reduced doctor visits and demand for some drugs. They are also fighting new drug price cutting rules from the Trump administration, which would reduce the industry’s profitability.

    The companies kept their price increases at 10% or below, and the largest drug companies to raise prices so far, Pfizer and Sanofi, kept nearly all of their increases 5% or less, 3 Axis said. 3 Axis is a consulting firm that works with pharmacists groups, health plans and foundation on drug pricing and supply chain issues.

    During the early days of the Trump presidency, reports of price hikes elicited angry tweets from the president. This dynamic was credited with staving off a hike or two, but that doesn’t change the fact that drug companies tend to raise prices on their inventory at least once, usually twice, per year. Still, even Reuters pointed out that the pace of drug price increases has “slowed substantially” since 2015, per Reuters.

    And the Trump Administration is pushing legislation that would constrain drugmakers’ ability to raise prices.

    Nevertheless, with drugmakers’ dedicating themselves to defeating COVID-19 (of course, the state has doled out billions of dollars in subsidies, which sort of diminishes the selflessness narrative), the industry is insisting that profits must be made up elsewhere. So prices on some 300 drugs will rise, with more formal announcements expected on Friday, and over the weekend.

    GSK did raise prices on two vaccines – shingles vaccine Shingrix and diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine Pediarix – by 7% and 8.6%, respectively, 3 Axis said.

    Teva Pharmaceuticals Inc hiked prices on 15 drugs, including Austedo, which treats rare neurological disorders, and asthma steroid Qvar, which together grossed more than $650 million in sales in 2019 and saw price hikes of between 5% and 6%. Teva hiked prices for some drugs, including muscle relaxant Amrix and narcolepsy treatment Nuvigil, as much as 9.4%. More price hikes are expected to be announced on Friday and in early January.

    […]

    In 2020, drugmakers raised prices on more than 860 drugs by around 5 percent, on average, according to 3 Axis. Drug price increases have slowed substantially since 2015, both in terms of the size of the hikes and the number of drugs affected.

    Pfizer, which threw money at its “partner”, BioNTech, to help develop and distribute a vaccine using the latter’s revolutionary mRNA technology, is one of the biggest offenders, hiking prices on cancer drugs, and the ubiquitous rheumatoid arthritis treatment Xeljanz, famous for commercials that have spawned satirical takes on social media.

    Pfizer plans to raise prices on more than 60 drugs by between 0.5 % and 5%. Those include roughly 5% increases on some of its top sellers like rheumatoid arthritis treatment Xeljanz and cancer drugs Ibrance and Inlyta.

    Pfizer said it had adjusted the list prices of its drugs by around 1.3% across all products in its portfolio, in line with inflation.

    “This modest increase is necessary to support investments that allow us to continue to discover new medicines and deliver those breakthroughs to the patients who need them,” spokeswoman Amy Rose said in a statement, pointing in particular to the COVID-19 vaccine the company developed with Germany’s BioNTech SE.

    It said that its net prices, which back out rebates to pharmacy benefit managers and other discounts, have actually fallen for the last 3 years.

    By contrast, China is cracking heads to ensure that drugmakers are responding to the public’s need with massive price cuts. According to state-run media, some drugmakers are cutting prices by as much as 51%. Chinese patients can now get reimbursement for 2.8K medicines, including 1.4K Western drugs and 1,374 traditional Chinese medicines.

    With holiday parties about to start, we wonder, will President Trump take another stand on twitter?

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    Though, at this point, even if he does, it would only serve to further complicate the relationship with these companies as ‘Operation Warp Speed’ lags further behind its target.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 18:30

  • 2020: The Year Things Started Going Badly Wrong
    2020: The Year Things Started Going Badly Wrong

    Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,

    How today’s energy problem is different from peak oil

    Many people believe that the economy will start going badly wrong when we “run out of oil.” The problem we have today is indeed an energy problem, but it is a different energy problem. Let me explain it with an escalator analogy.

    Figure 1. Holborn Tube Station Escalator. Photo by renaissancechambara, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

    The economy is like a down escalator that citizens of the world are trying to walk upward on. At first the downward motion of the escalator is almost imperceptible, but gradually it gets to be greater and greater. Eventually the downward motion becomes almost unbearable. Many citizens long to sit down and take a rest.

    In fact, a break, like the pandemic, almost comes as a relief. There is suddenly a chance to take it easy; not drive to work; not visit relatives; not keep up appearances before friends. Government officials may not be unhappy either. There may have been demonstrations by groups asking for higher wages. Telling people to stay at home provides a convenient way to end these demonstrations and restore order.

    But then, restarting doesn’t work. There are too many broken pieces of the economy. Too many bankrupt companies; too many unemployed people; too much debt that cannot be repaid. And, a virus that really doesn’t quite go away, leaving people worried and unwilling to attempt to resume normal activities.

    Some might describe the energy story as a “diminishing returns” story, but it’s really broader than this. It’s a story of services that we expect to continue, but which cannot continue without much more energy investment. It is also a story of the loss of “economies of scale” that at one time helped propel the economy forward.

    In this post, I will explain some of the issues I see affecting the economy today. They tend to push the economy down, like a down escalator. They also make economic growth more difficult.

    [1] Many resources take an increasing amount of effort to obtain or extract, because we use the easiest to obtain first. Many people would call this a diminishing returns problem.

    Let’s look at a few examples:

    (a) Water. When there were just a relatively few humans on the earth, drinking water from a nearby stream was a reasonable approach. This is the approach used by animals; humans could use it as well. As the number of humans rose, we found we needed additional approaches to gather enough potable water: First shallow wells were dug. Then we found that we needed to dig deeper wells. We found that lake water could be used, but we needed to filter it and treat it first. In some places, now, we find that desalination is needed. In fact, after desalination, we need to put the correct minerals back into it and pump it to the destination where it is required.

    All of these approaches can indeed be employed. In theory, we would never run out of water. The problem is that as we move up the chain of treatments, an increasing amount of energy of some kind needs to be used. At first, humans could use some of their spare time (and energy) to dig wells. As more advanced approaches were chosen, the need for supplemental energy besides human energy became greater. Each of us individually cannot produce the water we need; instead, we must directly, or indirectly, pay for this water. The fact that we have to pay for this water with part of our wages reduces the portion of our wages available for other goods.

    (b) Metals. Whenever some group decides to mine a metal ore, the ore that is taken first tends to be easy to access ore of high quality, close to where it needs to be used. As the best mines get depleted, producers use lower-grade ores, transported over longer distances. The shift toward less optimal mines requires more energy. Some of this additional energy could be human energy, but some of the energy would be supplied by fossil fuels, operating machinery in order to supplement human labor. Supplemental energy needs become greater and greater as mines become increasingly depleted. As technology advances, energy needs become greater, because some of the high-tech devices require materials that can only be formed at very high temperatures.

    (c) Wild Animals Including Fish. When pre-humans moved out of Africa, they killed off the largest game animals on every continent that they moved to. It was still possible to hunt wild game in these areas, but the animals were smaller. The return on the human labor invested was smaller. Now, most of the meat we eat is produced on farms. The same pattern exists in fishing. Most of the fish the world eats today is produced on fish farms. We now need entire industries to provide food that early humans could obtain themselves. These farms directly and indirectly consume fossil fuel energy. In fact, more energy is used as more animals/fish are produced.

    (d) Fossil Fuels. We keep hearing about the possibility of “running out” of oil, but this is not really the issue with oil. In fact, it is not the issue with coal or natural gas, either. The issue is one of diminishing returns. There is (and always will be) what looks like plenty left. The problem is that the process of extraction consumes increasing amounts of resources as deeper, more complex oil or gas wells need to be drilled and as coal mines farther away from users of the coal are developed. Many people have jumped to the conclusion that this means that the price that buyers of fossil fuel will pay will rise. This isn’t really true. It means that the cost of production will rise, leading to lower profitability. The lower profitability is likely to be spread in many ways: lower taxes paid, cutbacks in wages and pension plans, and perhaps a sale to a new owner, at a lower price. Eventually, low energy prices will lead to production stopping. Without adequate fossil fuels, the whole economic system will be disrupted, and the result will be severe recession or depression. There are also likely to be many job losses.

    In (a) through (d) above, we are seeing an increasing share of the output of the economy being used in inefficient ways: in creating deeper water wells and desalination plants; in drilling oil wells in more difficult locations; in extracting metal ores that are mostly waste products. The extent of this inefficiency tends to increase over time. This is what leads to the effect of an escalator descending faster and faster, just as we humans are trying to walk up it.

    Humans work for wages, but they find that when they buy a box of corn flakes, very little of the price actually goes to the farmer growing the corn. Instead, all of the intermediate parts of the system are becoming overly large. The buyer cannot afford the end products, and the producer feels cheated by the low wholesale prices he is being paid. The system as a whole is pushed toward collapse.

    [2] Increasing complexity can help maintain economic growth, but it too reaches diminishing returns.

    Complexity takes many forms, including more hierarchical organization, more specialization, longer supply chains, and development of new technology. Complexity can indeed help maintain economic growth. For example, if water supply is intermittent, a country may choose to build a dam to control the flow of water and produce electricity. Complexity tends to reach diminishing returns, as noted by Joseph Tainter in The Collapse of Complex Societies. For example, economies build dams in the best locations first, and only later build them at less advantageous sites. These are a few other examples:

    (a) Education. Teaching everyone to read and write has significant benefits because it allows the use of books and other written materials to disseminate information and knowledge. Teaching a few people advanced subjects has significant benefits as well. But after a certain point, the need for additional people to study a subject such as art history is low. A few people can teach the subject but doing more research on the subject probably won’t increase world GDP very much.

    When we look at data from about 1970, we find that people with advanced education earned much higher incomes than those without advanced degrees. But as we add an increasing large share of people with these advanced degrees, jobs that really need these degrees are not as plentiful as the new graduates. Quite a few people with advanced degrees end up with low-paying jobs. The “return on investment” for higher education drops increasingly lower. Some students are not able to repay the debt that they took out in order to pay for their education.

    (b) Medicines and vaccines. Over the years, medicines and vaccines have been developed to treat many common illnesses and diseases. After a while, the easy-to-find medicines for the common unwanted conditions (such as diabetes, high blood pressure and inflammation) have already been found. There are medicines for rare diseases that haven’t been found, but these will never have very large total sales, discouraging investment. There are also conditions that are common in very poor countries. While expensive drugs could be developed for these conditions, it is likely that few people could afford these drugs, so this, too, becomes less attractive.

    If research is to continue, it is important to keep expanding work on expensive new drugs, even if it means completely ignoring old inexpensive drugs that might work equally well. A cynical person might think that this is the reason why vitamin D and ivermectin are generally being ignored in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. Without an expanding group of high-priced new drugs, it is hard to attract capital and young workers to the field.

    (c) Automobile efficiency. In the US, the big fuel efficiency change that took place was that which took place between 1975 and 1983, when a changeover was made to smaller, lighter vehicles, similar to ones that were already in use in Japan and Europe.

    Figure 2. Estimated Real-World Fuel Economy, Horsepower, and Weight Since Model Year 1975, in a chart produced by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Source.

    The increase in fuel efficiency between 2008 and 2019 (an 11 year period) was only 22%, compared to the 60% increase in fuel efficiency between 1975 and 1983 (an 8 year period). This is another example of diminishing returns to investment in complexity.

    [3] Today’s citizens have never been told that many of the services we take for granted today, such as suppression of forest fires, are really services provided by fossil fuels.

    In fact, the amount of energy required to provide these services rises each year. We expect these services to continue indefinitely, but we should be aware that they cannot continue very long, unless the energy available to the economy as a whole is rising very rapidly.

    (a) Suppression of Forest Fires. Forest fires are part of nature. Many trees require fire for their seeds to germinate. Human neighbors of forests don’t like forest fires; they often encourage local authorities to put out any forest fire that starts. Such suppression allows an increasing amount of dry bush to build up. As a result, future fires spread more easily and grow larger.

    At the same time, humans increasingly build homes in forested areas because of the pleasant scenery. As population expands and as fires spread more easily, forest fire suppression takes an increasing amount of resources, including fossil fuels to power helicopters used in the battles. If fossil fuels are not available, this type of service would need to stop. Trying to keep forest fires suppressed, assuming fossil fuels are available for this purpose, will take higher taxes, year after year. This is part of what makes it seem like we are trying to move our economy upward on a down escalator.

    (b) Suppression of Illnesses. Illnesses are part of the cycle of nature; they disproportionately take out the old and the weak. Of course, we humans don’t really like this; the old and weak are our relatives and close friends. In fact, some of us may be old and weak.

    In the last 100 years, researchers (using fossil fuels) have developed a large number of antibiotics, antivirals and vaccines to try to suppress illnesses. We find that microbes quickly mutate in new ways, defeating our attempts at suppression of illnesses. Thus, we have ever-more antibiotic resistant bacteria. The cost of today’s US healthcare system is very high, exceeding what many poor people can afford to pay. Introducing new vaccines results in an additional cost.

    Closing down the system to try to stop a virus adds a huge new cost, which is disproportionately borne by the poor people of the world. If we throw more money/fossil fuels at the medical system, perhaps it can be made to work a little longer. No one tells us that disease suppression is a service of fossil fuels; if we have an increasing quantity of fossil fuels per capita, perhaps we can increase disease suppression services.

    (c) Suppression of Weeds and Unwanted Insects. Researchers keep developing new chemical treatments (based on fossil fuels) to suppress weeds and unwanted insects. Unfortunately, the weeds and unwanted insects keep mutating in a way that makes the chemicals less effective. The easy solutions were found first; finding solutions that really work and don’t harm humans seems to be elusive. The early solutions were relatively cheap, but later ones have become increasingly expensive. This problem acts, in many ways, like diminishing returns.

    (d) Recycling (and Indirectly, Return Transport of Empty Shipping Containers from Around the World). When oil prices are high, recycling of used items for their content makes sense, economically. When oil prices are low, recycling often requires a subsidy. This subsidy indirectly goes to pay for fossil fuels used to facilitate the recycling. Often this goes to pay for shipment to a country that will do the recycling.

    When oil prices were high (prior to 2014), part of the revenue from recycling could be used to transport mixed waste products to China and India for recycling. With low oil prices, China and India have stopped accepting most recycling. Instead, it is necessary to find actual “goods” for the return voyage of a shipping container or, alternatively, pay to have the container sent back empty. Europe now seems to have a difficult time filling shipping containers for the return voyage to Asia. Because of this, the cost of obtaining shipping containers to ship goods to Europe seems to be escalating. This higher cost acts much like diminishing returns with respect to the transport of goods to Europe from Asia. This is yet another part of what is acting like a down escalator for the world economy.

    [4] Another, ever higher cost is pollution control. This higher cost also exerts a downward effect on the world economy, because it acts like another intermediate cost.

    As we burn increasing amounts of fossil fuels, increasing amounts of particulate matter need to be captured and disposed of. Capturing this material is only part of the problem; some of the waste material may be radioactive or may include mercury. Once the material is captured, it needs to be “locked up” in some way, so it doesn’t pollute the water and air. Whatever approach is used requires energy products of various kinds. In fact, the more fossil fuels that are burned, the bigger the waste disposal problem tends to be.

    Burning more fossil fuels also leads to more CO2. Unfortunately, we don’t have suitable alternatives. Nuclear is probably as good as any, and it has serious safety issues. In my opinion, the view that intermittent wind and solar are a suitable replacement for fossil fuels represents wishful thinking. Wind and solar, because of their intermittency, can only partially replace the coal or natural gas burned to generate electricity. They cannot be relied upon for 24/7/365 generation. The unsubsidized cost of producing intermittent wind and solar energy needs to be compared to the price of coal and natural gas, not to wholesale electricity prices. There are a lot of apples to oranges comparisons being made.

    [5] Among other things, the growth of the economy depends on “economies of scale” as the number of participants in the economy gradually grows. The response to COVID-19 has been extremely detrimental to economies of scale.

    The economies of many countries changed dramatically, with the initial spread of COVID-19. Unfortunately, we cannot expect these changes to be completely reversed anytime soon. Part of the reason is the new virus mutation from the UK that is now of concern. Another reason is that, even with the vaccine, no one really knows how long immunity will last. Until the virus is clearly gone, vestiges of the cutbacks are likely to remain in place.

    In general, businesses do well financially, as the number of buyers of the goods and services they provide rises. This happens because overhead costs, such as mortgage payments, can be spread over more buyers. The expertise of the business owners can also be used more widely.

    One huge problem is the recent cutback in tourism, affecting almost every country in the world. This cutback affects both businesses directly related to tourism and businesses indirectly related to tourism, such as restaurants and hotels.

    Another huge problem is social distancing rules that lead to office buildings and restaurants being used less intensively. Businesses find that they tend to have fewer customers, rather than more. Related businesses, such as taxis and dry cleaners, find that they also have fewer customers. Nursing homes and other care homes for the aged are seeing lower occupancy rates because no one wants to be locked up for months on end without being able to see other members of their family.

    [6] With all of the difficulties listed in Items [1] though [5], debt based financing tends to work less and less well. Huge debt defaults can be expected to adversely affect banks, insurance companies and pension plans.

    Many businesses are already near default on debt. These businesses cannot make a profit with a much reduced number of customers. If no change is possible, somehow this will need to flow through the system. Defaulting debt is likely to lead to failing banks and pension plans. In fact, governments that depend on taxes may also fail.

    The shutdowns taken by economies earlier this year were very detrimental, both to businesses and to workers. A major solution to date has been to add more governmental debt to try to bail out citizens and businesses. This additional debt makes it even more difficult to maintain promised debt payments. This is yet another force making it difficult for economies to move up the growth escalator.

    [7] The situation we are headed for looks much like the collapses of early civilizations.

    With diminishing returns everywhere, and inadequate sources of very inexpensive energy to keep the system going, major parts of the world economic system appear headed for collapse. There doesn’t seem to be any way to keep the world economy growing rapidly enough to offset the down escalator effect.

    Citizens have not been aware of how “close to the edge” we have been. Low energy prices have been deceptive, but this is what we should expect with collapse. (See, for example, Revelation 18: 11-13, telling about the lack of demand for goods of all kinds when ancient Babylon collapsed.) Low prices tend to keep fossil fuels in the ground. They also tend to discourage high-priced alternatives. Unfortunately, all the wishful thinking of the World Economic Forum and others advocating a Green New Deal does not change the reality of the situation.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 18:10

  • Eastern Caribbean Issues Rare Volcano Alert 
    Eastern Caribbean Issues Rare Volcano Alert 

    Rarely do we hear about volcanoes in the eastern Caribbean, but this week, rumblings from down under prompted officials to issue volcanic alerts in Martinique and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. 

    On Tuesday, warnings were issued for La Soufriere volcano in St Vincent and the Grenadines after tremors, powerful gas emissions and a new volcanic dome were observed. 

    The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) said that scientists observed an “effusive eruption within the crater, with visible gas and steam.”

    CDEMA issued an “Orange” alert for the surrounding area around the La Soufriere volcano due to the threat of increased volcanic activity. 

    “Monitoring systems, satellite imagery and visual observations have confirmed increased seismic and fumarolic activity, strong gas emissions, emergence of a satellite dome on the SE of the existing volcanic dome and changes to the crater lake.

    “An effusive eruption within the crater, with visible gas and steam, was also observed on 29th December 2020,” CDEMA wrote in an update. 

    Full CDEMA Update: 

    A team of scientists from the Seismic Research Centre (SRC) of the University of the West Indies (UWI) will arrive in the region by the end of the week to assess the situation. 

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    An Orange Level alert means “eruptions may occur with less than 24 hours notice.” 

    CDEMA said monitoring systems are closely watching the volcano for any sudden changes. 

    UWI tweeted an image of a black mound of magma protruding from the surface of the existing dome in the crater at La Soufriere.

    La Soufriere’s Eruption History 

    While no evacuation orders have been issued for residents in the surrounding communities, the threat of volcanic activity and a virus-related downturn in travel and tourism could result in more devastating impacts for the economy of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 17:50

  • The Lesson Of 2020: What's The Point Of Pointing Out The Hypocrisy?
    The Lesson Of 2020: What’s The Point Of Pointing Out The Hypocrisy?

    Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

    I’ve been on vacation in Mexico for the past two weeks. But that isn’t the reason content from me has been scarcer than normal. Yes, vacations are supposed to be for recharging and taking a break from your routine.

    But as I sat down to write this morning the overwhelming sense of futility washed over me. And nothing saps your will to work more than reading through the headlines and noting the complete lack of conscience on display by the media, our political leadership or frankly anyone with half a brain.

    We live in a world today where the legislature of one of the most important states in the Union, Pennsylvania, released a report where more than 200,000 votes were counted than were actually cast. And no one in our media seems to think this is news.

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    Worse, most people in America can’t even be bothered to care about such things. And if you were to confront them with the evidence there must be some good reason why that ‘just can’t be true.’

    The FBI, which couldn’t find any issues with Hunter Biden’s laptop for months nor ever do anything substantial with Anthony Weiner’s laptop in FOUR YEARS somehow solved the case of the Nashville bomber in less than 48 hours conclusively.

    And that conclusion was the same as every other major terrorist event in this country’s recent history – a lone crackpot blew himself up to make a half-formed political statement. At least this time they had the good sense to vaguely tie the patsy to the political left versus turn him into a mouth-breathing MAGAtard with a Q-complex.

    And somehow no one seems to care. Nor does anyone care about the lack of conclusion about the shooting in Las Vegas a few years back.

    Notice the trend? Major stories that are supposed to matter are dropped the moment they get anything close to uncomfortable for those in power who are chosen to remain in power.

    I’ve always thought Donald Trump’s biggest flaw was that he was an incurious man, but compared to the so-called journalists of our corporate media Trump is the second coming of Sherlock Holmes for pity’s sake.

    There are voter irregularities of a type and kind which demand real coverage, even if it turns out to be easy to cast doubt on them. And yet, after haranguing Americans TO CARE about voter fraud in places like Belarus, Crimea, Venezuela, Iran, Serbia, Georgia we’re supposed to swallow the lie this was the ‘most secure election in this country’s history’ without even a bottle of ketchup?

    No matter where you are on the political spectrum, nor who your Twitter spirit guide is, all of these things should disturb you.

    And yet, it doesn’t seem to. It is not CNN’s nor Fox’s decision to not report on them because they don’t want to engage in searching out the truth.

    The hearings in the Georgia State Senate going on as I write this are hair-raising, painting a picture of corruption so detailed you’d think it was a Mandelbrot set.

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    Every rabbit hole you go down forks into a deeper one, revealing even more information about how truly corrupt and inhuman our political systems are and yet our media stands there like a thousand monkeys banging away on their iPhone keyboards trying to convince us what they are producing is Shakespeare and not auto-corrected Engrish.

    If we’ve reached this level of whitewashing of the news and the truth to this point, I’m having to wonder why it is North Korea is so hated? I’m at a loss to come up with anything more accurate than competitive envy at fiction writing.

    Hundreds of millions of people’s lives are being actively destroyed by overzealous governors and heads of state issuing draconian lockdown orders over a virus with multiple vaccines that are less effective than our own immune systems. A compromised WHO and CDC issue conflicting recommendations weekly and Dr. Mengele Fauci openly admits to lying to us.

    They all do this without any sense of shame, shedding crocodile tears so unconvincing they could be runner-ups at a Miss America pageant. But we’re supposed to think we’re saved because Congress decided to give us a $600 advance to pay our 2020 income taxes with?

    And I haven’t even scratched the surface here. We know why they are doing this — to support to open hostile takeover of what’s left of private capital markets and property in support of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset.

    Yet here I sit watching otherwise reasonable and naturally skeptical people still live within their normalcy bias to refuse the obvious propaganda and blame the victims.

    It can’t be this bad right?

    No conspiracy can be this big?

    There was fraud but it’s trivial.

    Y’all are just sore losers and Trump really did lose his base because of his horrific foreign policy. I swear I’ve never been sadder to call myself a libertarian than I am right now.

    That is nothing but rationalization to evade the reality of what has happened and what will happen. Because the sad truth is that no matter who you are when confronted with monstrous evil most people’s first reaction is to reject it.

    And they do this not because they don’t believe people are capable of it.

    No, we reject evil of this magnitude because in order for us to maintain our sense of self-image as rational, caring people admitting its reality implies a responsibility to do something about it.

    And stopping evil takes away from “me time.”

    The same operation has been done with COVID-19, any and all data associated with it, the death statistics, the miraculous immunity to influenza Americans now seem to have, etc.

    And if we are going to just sit back, mask up, accept the $600, put our heads down and “believe all talking heads” then what’s the point in pointing out the hypocrisy of it all?

    The new Super-COVID is here and it’s time to believe it all again.

    Isn’t that the real lesson of 2020? Don’t fight the crazy just cling to the delusion that a mask isn’t a muzzle, guns can’t protect you and we still live in a society with something approximating rules.

    Isn’t that what all of this irreality is for, to desensitize us to their outrageousness? To normalize their grotesquerie? I mean, really, does anyone honestly believe any single word that comes out of Nancy Pelosi’s mouth?

    I didn’t think they made masks big enough to contain the Pinocchio nose she has to have at this point. Maybe she’s had to have so much plastic surgery to contain it that it collapsed like Michael Jackson’s and it’s actually now just negative space.

    I don’t know anymore.

    It would almost be okay going along with all of this nonsense if they were in any way artful about it. If I could, at the very least, appreciate the craft, you know, as a writer and an artist then it would make the double whiskies go down a little easier.

    I could almost stomach it if they even put in the least little effort to convince me through something approximating a good performance. I gave up on them trying to convince me with argument ages ago. But a little sincerity to go with the virtue signaling would make the game worth playing.

    But they can’t even give us that anymore. That’s how much contempt they have for us.

    And it’s easy for them to have that contempt because, frankly, that’s how much contempt we must have for ourselves to go along this perfunctorily towards their dystopia.

    Unless 2021 is the year everything changes. Unless 2021 is the year we finally show the barest minimum of self-respect, take off the masks, turn off the screens and get prepared to fight harder than we ever have.

    I’ll be here even though, at times, it feels futile. Because it is just that, a feeling. And feelings are as ephemeral and temporary as Anderson Cooper’s dalliances with the truth.

    Which, I guess, is as good a lesson to absorb from 2020 as anything else.

    *  *  *

    Join My Patreon if you you too feel there is something horribly wrong with this world.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 17:30

  • 2020 Greatest Hits: The Most Popular Articles Of The Past Year And A Look Ahead
    2020 Greatest Hits: The Most Popular Articles Of The Past Year And A Look Ahead

    One year ago, when looking at the 20 most popular stories of 2019, we pointed to a certain undertone of artificial stability permeating capital markets and society, with the economy firing on all cylinders (thanks to the massive dual deficits and debt that had exploded under the current administration), with the market surging 30% last year and at all time highs (despite flat earnings and entirely thanks to the Fed’s resumption of “NOT QE” last September in order to bail out JPMorgan and a handful of hedge funds’ treasury basis trades), and with Trump cruising to re-election victory in what we thought one year ago would be the most important even of 2020: the US presidential election. It’s also why we said that “with the Fed fully behind Trump and helping the S&P return nearly 30% in 2019, 4 more years of Trump is now virtually assured (barring some unexpected calamity in 2020).”

    Oh how prudent that disclaimer proved to be, as well as this next caveat we casually mentioned in our last year review, warning that “with the 2020 elections looming, it is certainly true that anything can still happen, only as with all true “black swans”, it won’t be what anyone had expected.”

    It certainly wasn’t because around the time we were penning our year-end wrap post exactly one year ago, a highly contagious coronavirus strain had escaped the Wuhan Institute of Virology (China’s first and only biosafety 4 lab) whether purposefully or intentionally, and was set to spread around the globe, unleashing the biggest global black swan in the past 100 years, triggering personal and economic hell for hundreds of millions around the world who lost their jobs or loved ones as a result of the China virus, markets nirvana for millions of 16-year-old Robinhood and hedge funds traders who benefited from the greatest stock market rally in history, and ultimately helped Joe Biden emerge from complete obscurity and with virtually no chances of defeating Trump, to eventually winning the Nov 3 presidential election, Trump’s ongoing challenges to the outcome notwithstanding.

    The arrival of the virus that would eventually be called Covid-19 by the global scientific community (to remove any links to China) – and which would lead to a historic pandemic the likes of which nobody expected one year ago – shook the world, and would lead to a slew of historic events taking place in just a few months, including a staggering lockdown of the global economy, the official arrival of global Helicopter Money, tens of trillions in fiscal and monetary stimulus, an overhaul of the global economy punctuated by an unprecedented explosion in world debt, an Orwellian crackdown on civil liberties by governments everywhere, and ultimately set the scene for what even the World Economic Forum called simply “The Great Reset.”

    Needless to say, it would be impossible to describe everything that happened in 2020, or all the black swans that the pandemic and its associated lockdowns let loose upon the world, in one article: those looking for a detailed breakdown of all the major events this year are urged to read the latest magnum opus “Year in Review” by David Collum (part 1 here and part 2 here), but a quick recap of some of the most prominent and bizarre events that shook the world in the past 365 days, what Mark Orsley called “the year of years“, is as follows:

    • WW3 fears run rampant on social media as the US strikes Iranian army general Soleimani
    • Black swan health event that leads to a historic equity market crash, and funding strains
    • Fed takes US policy rates to near 0% and institutes QE at a magnitude that puts the post GFC period to shame
    • Treasury institutes trillions of dollars of fiscal stimulus
    • Unprecedented lockdowns lead to Tiger King craze
    • The world learns how to school and work remotely, changing the office space landscape forever
    • WTI front month contract trades with a negative price
    • Subsequent epic equity bull market recovery rally that pierces March highs
    • Australia burns
    • Kobe Bryant tragically dies
    • We begin to watch sports with no fans
    • Pentagon releases UFO footage
    • Quantas offers flight to nowhere
    • California wildfires burn uncontrollably and wipe out parts of Napa
    • US social unrest turns violent
    • Murder hornets
    • Ruth Bader Ginsberg dies
    • Overhyped US election event that leads to a volatility collapse, year-end rally
    • A middle-aged skateboarder, drinking Cranberry juice to a 70s rock hit brings calm to the world

    That list could have gone on forever. The point is, there could not have been more regime shifts, volatility moments, and memes than 2020 (we hope).

    Yet for all the chaos and panic unleashed by covid, a certain undertone of pre-determination and almost tangible order was felt just below the surface: after all, the virus, crash, lockdown and recession provoked an unprecedented monetary and fiscal policy panic which sparked a record $22 trillion of stimulus in just the past 9 months around the world. As a result, central banks spent over $1 trillion a month on financial assets via QE, crushing yields, volatility, and spreads, and pushing stocks to all time highs at the end of 2020 even as earnings continue to slide.

    It’s almost as if the world’s richest asset owners requested the covid pandemic. It wasn’t just them however: politicians the world over would benefit from the transition from QE to outright helicopter money and MMT which made the over monetization of deficits widely accepted in the blink of an eye. And in the span of just a few months, $14 trillion in fiscal stimulus was announced, with central banks monetizing most of it, and pushing the quantity of global debt to a record $277 trillion, a number which the Institute For International Finance expects to hit a record $360 trillion by 2030…

    … while thanks to central bank intervention, the price of world debt dropped to a record 5,000 year low, with global negative yielding debt now at an all time high $18tn.

    The common theme here was simple: no matter what happens, capital markets can never again be allowed to drop, regardless of the cost or how much more debt has to be incurred. Indeed, as we look back at the news barrage over the past year, and past decade for that matter, the one thing that becomes especially clear amid the constant din of markets, of politics, of social upheaval and geopolitical strife – and now pandemics –  in fact a world that is so flooded with constant conflicting newsflow and changing storylines that some say it has become virtually impossible to even try to predict the future, is that despite the people’s desire for change, for something original and untried, the world’s established forces will not allow it and will fight to preserve the broken status quo at any price – even global coordinated shutdowns – which is perhaps why it always boils down to one thing – capital markets, that bedrock of Western capitalism and the “modern way of life”, where control, even if it means central planning the likes of which have not been seen since the days of the USSR, and an upward trajectory must be preserved at all costs, as the alternative is a global, socio-economic collapse.

    And since it is the daily gyrations of stocks that sway popular moods – and why none other than the US president was tweeting almost daily ahead of the November election at what level the S&P closed on any given day to boost his approval rating and bolster his credibility – the interplay between capital markets and politics has never been more profound or more consequential. Indeed, in a historic moment when the president was impeached by the House (if not the Senate), Trump’s natural response was to point to the record high hit that very day in the S&P500.

    The more powerful message here is the implicit realization and admission by politicians, not just Trump but also his peers and challengers, that the stock market is now seen as the consummate barometer of one’s political achievements and approval. Which is also why capital markets are now, more than ever, a political tool whose purpose is no longer to distribute capital efficiently and discount the future, but to manipulate voter sentiments far more efficiently than any Russian election interference attempt ever could.

    Which brings us back to 2020 and the past decade, which was best summarized by a recent Bill Blain article who said that “the last 10-years has been a story of massive central banking distortion to address the 2008 crisis. Now central banks face the consequences and are trapped. The distortion can’t go uncorrected indefinitely.“

    He is right: the distortion will eventually collapse, but so far the establishment and the “top 1%” have been successful – perhaps the correct word is lucky – in preserving the value of risk assets: on the back of the Fed’s firehose of liquidity the S&P500 returned an impressive 15.5% following the 28.50% return in 2019. It did so by staging the greatest rally off all time from the March lows, surpassing all of the 4 greatest rallies off the lows of the past century (1929,1938, 1974, and 2009).

    Yet this continued can-kicking by the establishment – all of which was made possible by the covid pandemic and lockdowns which served as an all too convenient scapegoat for the unprecedented response that served to propel risk assets (and fiat alternatives such as gold and bitcoin) to all time highs – has come with a price… and an increasingly higher price in fact. As even Bank of America CIO Michael Hartnett admits, Fed’s response to the the pandemic “worsened inequality in 2020” as the value of financial assets – Wall Street –  relative to economy – Main Street – hit all-time high of 6.3x.

    And as we said previously, with the system now caught in a vice operated by a handful of people, there is no longer any chance that the status quo will change without a revolution, a revolution which is increasingly unlikely in a world where “generous” governments hand out $600 “stimulus checks” to a population that has no other means of providing for itself besides relying on the same government that is pillaging and plundering the middle class.

    In other words, going back to what we said above, 2020 helped further crystalize the realization that politics is now markets, and markets have become political weapons, and why the past decade was, as Bill Blain put it, “a story of massive central banking distortion to address the 2008 crisis.” The problem is that this distortion has only made the mess even greater, and the only hope central banks have – in their own words – is if government fiscal stimulus takes over where monetary stimulus ends, and this is where covid came in: almost overnight it ushered in MMT – the fusion of fiscal and monetary policy, the fusion of the Fed and the Treasury. In other words, 12 years after we predicted it would come, helicopter money finally arrived. 

    Only there is just one problem, or rather 277 trillion problems as shown above, because whereas one could argue that fiscal stimulus is a credible option if the world’s wasn’t drowning in debt, when global debt to GDP is 330%, it is tantamount to saying that only more debt can fix a debt crisis. Which is effectively what the world’s smartest people are saying.

    Meanwhile, the trends observed in recent years will continue: coming years will be marked by even bigger government (because only more government can “fix” problems created by government), higher stock prices and dollar debasement (because only more Fed intervention can “fix” the problems created by the Fed), and a policy flip from monetary and QE to fiscal & MMT, all of which will attempt to spark an unprecedented inflationary wave. As Hartnett writes, “if 2020 was year of COVID-19 pandemic; it will, according to Hartnett, “also be remembered as the secular low point for both inflation & interest rates.”

    He is, of course, right because once all other conventional methods to spark reflation fail, central banks will activate Plan B which is also the core pillar of the coming Great Reset: the roll out of digital currencies which can be deposited by central banks directly into digital wallets, bypassing the entire commercial banking fractional banking infrastructure, in a last ditch effort to spark the inflation that will be needed to inflate away the $300+ trillion in debt suffocating world growth. For those wondering when this will happen, tentative schedules show this historic transfer to an all digital payments infrastructure taking place as early as the second half of 2021…

    … so it is very likely that while 2020 was an insane year, it may prove to be just an appetizer to the shockwaves that will be unleashed in 2021 when we see the first stage of the most historic overhaul of the fiat payment system in history.

    Here we should note one thing: in a world undergoing historic transformations, any free press must be throttled and controlled, and over the past year we have seen unprecedented efforts by legacy media and its corporate owners, as well as the new “social media” overlords do everything in their power to stifle independent thought. For us it was especially “personal” on not one but two occasions. In January, Twitter suspended our account because we dared to challenge the conventional narrative about the source of the Wuhan virus. It was only six months later that Twitter apologized, and set us free, admitting it had made a mistake.

    Yet barely had twitter readmitted us, when something even more unprecedented happened: for the first time ever (to our knowledge) Google – the world’s largest online ad provider and monopoly – demonetized our website not because of any complaints about our writing but because of the contents of our comment section. It then held us hostage until we agreed to implement some prerequisite screening and moderation of the comments section. This was a stark lesson in how quickly an ad-funded business can disintegrate in this world which resembles the dystopia of 1984 more and more each day, and we have since taken measures. In December for the first time in our 12 year history, we launched a paid version of our website, which is entirely ad and moderation free, and offers readers a variety of premium content. It wasn’t our intention to make this transformation but unfortunately we know which way the wind is blowing and it is only a matter of time before the gatekeepers of online ad spending block us again. As such, if we are to have any hope in continuing it will come directly from you, our readers. We will keep the free website running for as long as possible, but we are certain that it is only a matter of time before the hammer falls as the censorship bandwagon rolls out much more aggressively in the coming year.

    That said, whether the story of 2021, and the next decade for that matter, is one of helicopter or digital money, of (hyper)inflation or deflation: what is key, and what we learned in the past decade, is that the status quo will throw anything at the problem to kick the can, it will certainly not let any crisis go to waste… even the deadliest pandemic in over a century. And while many already knew that, the events of 2020 made it clear to a fault that not even a modest market correction can be tolerated going forward. That in turn may explain why the last quarters of 2020 were a mirror image of events from the first quarter when stocks tanked. After all, if central banks aim to punish all selling, then the logical outcome is to buy everything, and investors, traders and speculators did just that armed with the clearest backstop guarantee from the Fed, which in March crossed the Rubicon when it formally nationalized the bond market as it started buying both investment grade bonds and junk bond ETFs in the open market. As such it is no longer even a debatable issue if the Fed will buy stocks after the next crash – the only question is when.

    Meanwhile, for all those lamenting the relentless coverage of politics in a financial blog, why finance appears to have taken a secondary role, and why the political “narrative” has taken a dominant role for financial analysts, the past year showed vividly why that is the case.

    As for predictions about the future, as 2020 so vividly showed when it comes to true surprises and all true “black swans”, it won’t be what anyone had expected. And so while many themes, both in the political and financial realm, did get some accelerated closure courtesy of China’s covid pandemic, dramatic changes in 2020 persisted, and will continue to manifest themselves in often violent and unexpected ways – from the ongoing record polarization in the US political arena, to “populist” upheavals around the developed world, to the gradual transition to a global Universal Basic (i.e., socialized) Income regime, to China’s ongoing fight with preserving stability in its gargantuan financial system which is now more than double the size of the US.

    As always, we thank all of our readers for making this website – which has never seen one dollar of outside funding (and despite amusing recurring allegations, has certainly never seen a ruble from the KGB either, although now that the entire Russian hysteria episode is over, those allegations have finally quieted down), and has never spent one dollar on marketing – a small (or not so small) part of your daily routine.

    Which also brings us to another critical topic: that of fake news, and something we – and others who do not comply with the established narrative – have been accused of. While we find the narrative of fake news laughable, after all every single article in this website is backed by facts and links to outside sources, we find it a dangerous development, and a very slippery slope that the entire developed world – is pushing for what is, when stripped of fancy jargon, internet censorship under the guise of protecting the average person from “dangerous, fake information.” It’s also why we are preparing for the next onslaught against independent thought and why we had no choice but to roll out a premium version of this website.

    In addition to the other themes noted above, we expect the crackdown on free speech to accelerate in the coming year, especially as the following list of Top 20 articles for 2020 reveals, many of the most popular articles in the past year were precisely those which the conventional media would not touch out of fear of repercussions, which in turn allowed the alternative media to continue to flourish in an orchestrated information vacuum and take significant market share from the established outlets by covering topics which the public relations arm of established media outlets refused to do, in the process earning itself the derogatory “fake news” condemnation.

    We are grateful that our readers – who hit a new record high in 2020 – have realized it is incumbent upon them to decide what is, and isn’t “fake news.”

    *  *  *

    And so, before we get into the details of what has now become an annual tradition for the last day of the year, those who wish to jog down memory lane, can refresh our most popular articles for every year during our no longer that brief, almost 11-year existence, starting with 2009 and continuing with 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.

    So without further ado, here are the articles that you, our readers, found to be the most engaging, interesting and popular based on the number of hits, during the past year.

    • In 20th spot with 690,000 readers, was an article that touched on one of the most sensitive topics of 2020 – the origins of the Covid virus. As readers are all too aware, the great debate here has been whether the virus emerged due to something as innocuous as a Chinese citizen eating a bat soup, a narrative espoused by the China-controlled media, or if it escaped from a Wuhan biolab. And as AP journalists are now discovering, all signs increasingly point to the latter, something which Luc Montagnier the man who discovered the HIV virus back in 1983 first said back in April, shocking the world with his claim that the virus was man made as we explained in “COVID-19 Is A Man-Made Virus: HIV-Discoverer Says “Could Only Have Been Created In A Lab“.” Eventually he will be proven correct, confirming once again that the biggest “fake news” is whatever the mainsteam media pushes as the narrative du jour.
    • In 19th spot of the year’s most popular articles, we received another reminder that not all is as it seems when it comes to stoking tensions within US society, as 718,000 readers clicked on a story pointing out that “More Bricks Appear In Advance Of Monday Demonstrations In Baltimore, Texas.” While a wave of protests and violent riots swept across the nation, ostensibly as a grassroot movement condemning police violence against blacks, it had dramatic consequences across the country, leading to the defunding of countless police forces across mostly liberal cities and yet many wondered about who the puppetmaster behind this wave of violence was, because as even Jeff Gundlach mused recently, “It’s Interesting How The Violent Riots Of 2020 Ended Right After The Election.” Hopefully, one day someone will get to the bottom of who and how organized the protest deadly movement of the summer of 2020.
    • In 18th spot, addressing what may be the most critical topic of the next four years, nearly 720,000 readers were presented with a “Blockbuster Report” which in impressive detail “Revealed How THE Biden Family Was Compromised By China.” As a reminder, when news reports of Hunter Biden’s relationship with China first emerged, the social networks were quick to censor any mention of the original report. However, just a few weeks later (and certainly after the election) we learned that Hunter was indeed being probed by tax evasion stemming from his shady Chinese deals which sought just one thing: to buy favor with the family of Joe Biden. Of course, it won’t be the first time foreign powers have sought such undue influence on US politicians – after all that’s what the whole point behind the existence of the Clinton foundation, which did nothing for starving African children or Haiti earthquake survivors, but sure made Bill and Hillary filthy rich.
    • Pivoting from China’s attempts to influence the White House, we once again find ourselves in the middle of the social unrest which defined much of the summer of 2020. Only this time there was a twist: 726,000 readers were fascinated how an “Antifa Attempt To Riot In California Suburb Goes Awry” when a group of Antifa ‘protesters’ were met with instant justice at the hands of angry residents in the suburban town of Yucaipa, California. Unfortunately, we expect this violent left-right split across the heart of America to only get worse in 2021 as none of the fundamental reasons for the growing anger and resentment across US society has been addressed yet, and if anything, it has become the media’s duty to stoke even more anger and hatred.
    • Confirming the scientists at best can only make(un)educated guesses about the future (especially if they have paid conflicts of interest) was an analysis from the early spring when the covid pandemic was first sweeping across the country, and which “found” that “All Hospital Beds In The US Will Be Filled With Patients ‘By About May 8th’ Due To Coronavirus.” This article, which was based on official research and was the 16th most read of 2020, with some 764,000 views, merely showcased something that never happened, and in fact the virus rapidly faded away as soon as various containment measures were rolled out. But not before it demonstrated how the media successfully instills a sense of panic amid the population, which continues to this day even as the most apocalyptic predictions postulated by “scientists” never actually came true.
    • By now a clear pattern is emerging: 2020 was without doubt the year of Covid, and it also served as the foundation of the 15th most popular article of 2020, which discussed a “Chilling Documentary Mapping Out Likely Origin Of COVID-19.” Some 767,000 readers got their first glimpse of covid not as a virus that emerged by accident in nature but one that was created in a Chinese lab; more troubling was the hint that China released the virus on purpose in hopes of overturning the socio-economic status quo. While the jury of “scientists” is still out on the real origins of covid (even if the broader public knows all too well where it came from), one thing is certain: the unprecedented transformations sparked by covid left China as one of the biggest geopolitical winners. If nothing else, this should at least prompt some more questions about who stood to benefit from the release of the virus.
    • Covid continued to dominate the most popular list, and the 14th most read article of 2020 with 820,000 views was the report that triggered the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression when on March 12, Trump finally bent under pressure and announced a ban on all travel from Europe, in the process triggering both widespread and targeted shutdowns that have lasted to this day, resulting in millions of job losses and countless small and medium business failing in response to the shotgun approach to deal with the pandemic which while crippling most of the population, made a handful of ultra rich investors and mega corporations extremely rich.
    • The 13th most popular article of 2020 touched on the year’s other biggest event, the US presidential election, and whose outcome Trump contests to this day as a result of countless allegedly fraudulent votes being cast on Nov 3. Some 830,000 readers were interested to learn how and why Trump’s then lawyer Sidney Powell intended to “Overturn Election Results In Multiple States.” So far, that has not happened, and in fact it is unlikely that it will after the Supreme Court refused to hear to Trump’s challenge last month. That said, with 3 weeks to go until the inauguration, Trump still refuses to concede although it remains unclear on what grounds he hopes to launch any upcoming legal challenges, even as Joe Biden has already hired his movers in preparation for his transition to the White House.
    • For the 12th most popular article of the past year, we once again shift back to Covid and specifically China’s massive obfuscation campaign, according to which the country which sparked the global covid pandemic has had less than 100,000 cases, even as the rest of world has arounf 500,000 new cases daily. Beijing’s facade of lies almost cracked in February when as asked whether “China’s Tencent Accidentally Leaked The True Terrifying Coronavirus Statistics.” It did, but since the truth in China has a halflife that is shorter than a virus in the wild, everyone quickly moved on and to this day the world continues to drink some bizarre Kool Aid according to which China has just a handful of new cases daily. 
    • The 11th most popular article of the year was something different: it had to do with what may well have been the most underreported story of 2020 (and 2019) – the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful, rich pedophile friends. Of course, most of Epstein’s secrets died with him when he “committed suicide” in the summer of 2019, although some hope for justice remains and it is tied to the ongoing incarceration of Epstein’s madame and girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who knew everything and everyone in Jeffrey’s circle. It’s also why 835,000 read the article laying out “The Top Highlights From Ghislaine Maxwell’s Unsealed Court Records.” Unfortunately, so far Ghislain has refused to shine a light into the true scandal surrounding Epstein and his “friends”, and we are confident that if that were to ever change then the daughter of Robert Maxwell – who died in mysterious circumstances back in 1991 – will face a similar fate.
    • With 864,000 page views, the 10th most popular story of 2020 was neither Covid, nor Trump, nor Epstein-related, but instead exposed China’s giant gold counterfeiting underworld as we explained in “83 Tons Of Fake Gold Bars: Gold Market Rocked By Massive China Counterfeiting Scandal.” Over the years there has been much speculation about just how much of the $11 trillion notional in above-ground gold is legitimate, and how much gold-plated tungsten, and the shocking news that emerged out of China in June underscored that one should always check the authenticity of one’s gold holdings, especially if there is any link to China, the country that has taken counterfeiting to an art.
    • Having entered the top 10 most popular stories of 2020, we find that covid makes another appearance in 9th spot with 915,000 reads, this time with the claim made by a top pathologist, Dr. Roger Hodkinson, who made the shocking allegation that the coronavirus Is “The Greatest Hoax Ever Perpetrated On An Unsuspecting Public” and claimed that “There is utterly unfounded public hysteria driven by the media and politicians, it’s outrageous, this is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public.” One can easily see why any reference to the story or the doctor was promptly scrubbed by the world’s social media censors who have taken it upon themselves to also be “fact-checkers” on any claim related to covid, even if as we reported previously, most of those ‘fact-checkers’ are deeply conflicted individuals who have a vested interest in perpetuating the far more lucrative, fake narrative about covid.
    • In 8th spot, with just a few hundred more page views, was our report about the scientific analysis conducted on voting patterns in the Nov 3 election. In “It Defies Logic”: Scientist Finds Telltale Signs Of Election Fraud After Analyzing Mail-In Ballot Data” we showed a statistical anslysis “which strongly suggested that fraud occurred” on election night, when several swing states inexplicably stopped reporting vote counts while President Trump maintained a healthy lead over Joe Biden. To this date, this remains a deeply polarizing issue, and even though the courts – including SCOTUS – have refused to investigate further, millions of Americans believe that there are telltale signs that Biden’s victory on Nov 3 was not proper and is why so many Americans refuse to accept Joe Biden as their president.
    • With just over 1.1 million page views and in 7th spot, was the article that got us suspended (for 6 months) from Twitter: in “Is This The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic?” we asked if Wuhan Institute of Virology scientist Peng Zhou (whose data was available publicly to anyone), was the person responsible for unleashing the pandemic. While Twitter unceremoniuosly banned our account for merely asking this question, a few months later the joke was on Jack Dorsey after we reported that “Western Spy Agencies Investigating Wuhan Scientist Highlighted By Zero Hedge In January.” Of course, since the question of China’s involvement in the creation and spread of the covid virus has tremendous political consequences, so far there has been no official finding or conclusion either way.
    • The 6th most popular article of 2020 was another notable question probing the validity of the November election, namely: “Why Does Biden Have So Many More Votes Than Democrat Senators In Swing States?” Another way of asking the same question – which 1,113,129 readers also wanted answered – was “what’s going on here? If it were “never-Trumpers” pairing Biden with their GOP Congressional picks, wouldn’t one expect fewer votes for Trump than GOP Senators?” So far we have not received an answer.
    • Questions about the credibility of the presidential election continued into the Top 5 posts as well, and with 1,245,000 was out post covering the rollercoaster event which was the Nov 3 election, which had Biden winning at first, then odds overwhelmingly shifted in Trump’s favor after he won Florida and Ohio, only to see Biden be declared winner after mail in votes in most swing states came overwhelmingly in Biden’s favor. Not surprisingly, “Trump Blasts Vote-Count Delays As “Fraud On The American Public” and yet it was precisely those same vote counts, as well as various documented reports of mystery ballot boxes emerging in the deep of the night, that ultimately handed Biden the election. Trump is still contesting the outcome.
    • The devastating consequences from the covid pandemic may have been more limited than many expected, largely thanks to an unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus, which made life especially easy for companies that had access to capital markets, however it was quite the opposite for millions of small and medium businesses for whom the PPP loans handed out at the peak of the covid crisis provided at best a brief respite. As a result, and as we reported in “Bankruptcy Tsunami Begins: Thousands Of Default Notices Are “Flying Out The Door“,”  well over 1.2 million readers were shocked to learn just how bad the economy was for all those “mom and pop” small business operators who had no choice but to fold as the lockdowns resulting from the covid pandemic crippled the service economy and led to a historic bankruptcy filing spree.
    • The 3rd most popular article of 2020, read over 1.3 million times, had to do with another topic which the mainstream media would not come within 10 feet of, namely whether or not the highly popular Black Lives Matter movement was credible, or if it was just another way of sabotaging the popular narrative in hopes of benefiting a certain social class. One person who took the other side of the argument was an Anonymous Berkeley Professor who “Shredded the BLM Injustice Narrative” only to be met with a furious rebuke from Berkeley, which ironically validated one of the letter’s core claims that dissent outside “a tightly policed, narrow discourse” is not welcome. Sadly, to this day any truly open discourse on the topic of whether BLM’s claims are valid remains taboo, and is the surest and quickest way to ending one’s career.
    • The year’s second most popular article with just over 1.5 million reads, was also an example of conventional media cracking down on anything it found disagreeable to the popular narrative. Shortly after the first reports of covid’s spread, we published our take on a research report which found that “Coronavirus Contains “HIV Insertions”, Stoking Fears Over Artificially Created Bioweapon.” This prompted an immediate panic among the “factcheckers” whose job was to perpetuate the mainstream narrative, and they promptly conceded that while HIV insertions are present, such insertions can also be found in other viruses. Unfortunately, their attempts to discredit the theory that covid was a manmade bioweapon have so far failed to be scientifically validated, while covid’s surprising ability to mutate and force the immune system to attack the host body itself, which are now widely accepted even by the so-called “scientists” have failed to ease concerns that covid is, in many ways, an airborne version of HIV.
    • Finally, in the top #1 spot, and cementing 2020’s status as the year of covid, was an article from March that tried to take on the mass hysteria spread by everyone from (conflicted) politicians to (conflicted) mainsteadm media to (conflicted) pharma companies, all of which had a vested interest in creating the biggest ever crisis possible. With 1.7 million page views, in “COVID-19 – Evidence Over Hysteria” we laid out one take why the widespread panic resulting from covid may be ultimately self-defeating especially when juxtaposed side by the side with the far greater (and far wider reaching) economic damage sparked by lockdowns. Alas, to this day, the hysteria dominates confirming the old saying to let no crisis go to waste, especially when the crisis in question is the biggest one in generations and allows the establishment to rollout socially and economically transformational changes that would never be possible without the scapegoat that is covid.

    With all that behind us, and as we wave goodbye to another bizarre, exciting, surreal year, what lies in store for 2021, and the next decade?

    We don’t know: as frequent and not so frequent readers are aware, we do not pretend to be able to predict the future and we don’t try despite endless allegations that we constantly predict the collapse of civilization: we leave the predicting to the “smartest people in the room” who year after year have been consistently wrong about everything, and never more so than in 2020, which destroyed the reputation of central banks, of economists, of conventional media and the professional “polling” and “strategist” class forever. We merely observe, try to find what is unexpected, entertaining, amusing, surprising or grotesque in an increasingly bizarre, sad, and increasingly crazy world, and then just write about it.

    We do know, however, that after a record $22 trillion in stimulus was been conjured out of thin air by the world’s central banks and politicians in just the past 9 months, as helicopter money makes a triumphal arrival in both the US and Eurozone, and as interest rates are on the cusp of breaking out, the entire world is floating on an ocean of excess money, which in 2020 once again succeeded in masking just how ugly the truth beneath the calm surface is.

    We are confident, however, that in the end it will be the very final backstoppers of the status quo regime, the central banking emperors of the New Normal, who will eventually be revealed as fully naked. When that happens and what happens after is anyone’s guess. But, as we have promised – and delivered – every year for the past 12, we will be there to document every aspect of it.

    Finally, and as always, we wish all our readers the best of luck in 2021, with much success in trading and every other avenue of life. We bid farewell to 2020 with our traditional and unwavering year-end promise: Zero Hedge will be there each and every day – usually with a cynical smile – helping readers expose, unravel and comprehend the fallacy, fiction, fraud and farce that the system is reduced to (ab)using each and every day just to keep this grand tragicomedy going for at least one more year.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 17:10

  • Georgia Judge (Sister Of Top Democrat) Reverses Order To End Voter Roll Clean-Up
    Georgia Judge (Sister Of Top Democrat) Reverses Order To End Voter Roll Clean-Up

    As we detailed previously, U.S. District Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner attracted considerable criticism when she declined to recuse herself from a challenge over voter eligibility.  Gardner is the sister of Stacey Abrams who has led the effort to register voters in the state.

    Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams speaks during a conversation about criminal justice reform at the New York Public Library in New York City on April 10, 2019. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    Many felt it was inappropriate for Gardner to rule on the case, a concern that was magnified by her quick rejection of a purging of the rolls of roughly 4000 inactive voters. 

    Now, as Jonathan Turley details below, it appears that Gardner has not recused herself but did reverse herself.  A new order has been issued, upholding the purge in the face of an appeal.

    Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger took issue with the original order as fundamentally wrong as to the applicable Georgia election laws.

    The new order is a substantial rollback on the original order and the change was praised by Raffensperger’s office.

    It will allow the requirement of provisional ballots from those voters. Gardner however directs that no challenges to their eligibility be upheld based exclusively on data in the National Change of Address Registry, which Democrats have challenged as unreliable.

    At a time of heightened tensions over election integrity, Gardner’s decision not to recuse herself fueled further uncertainty. 

    Stacey Abrams’ organization Fair Fight donated $2.5 million to Senate Majority PAC.

    That is the group which used Majority Forward as its nonprofit arm, and the donation was the largest to Senate Majority PAC since the November election.

    So Gardner is ruling on an issue closely associated with her sister and originally ruled in favor of the group which lists her sister’s organization as its largest contributor. 

    At a minimum, that creates an appearance of a conflict. 

    I can understand Judge Gardner’s view that there is no real conflict. These two very successful women continue to work in the same state. Judge Gardner may have been concerned that a recusal would encourage endless such challenges over tangential links to her sister’s work. 

    Yet, she could have recused while stressing that this is a unique time and a unique set of circumstances. A recusal could have been simply a recognition of the court that her familial tie could undermine confidence in the review.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 16:52

  • Perdue In Quarantine Days Before Critical Georgia Runoff
    Perdue In Quarantine Days Before Critical Georgia Runoff

    With just days to go until the special election vote in Georgia where he – alongside Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who is facing her own opponent – will face off against Democrat Jon Ossoff, Republican Sen. David Perdue is being forced to quarantine, alongside his family, after coming into contact with a COVID-positive individual.

    The news comes at a particularly inopportune moment for Perdue and his family. Polls show Perdue’s lead over Ossoff, a progressive Democrat from the Atlanta suburbs who has gained a degree of national prominence after putting up a good fight (but still losing) in an earlier Georgia special election, has been slipping as national anger simmers over the Senate GOP’s decision to block the $2K stimulus checks pushed by President Trump.

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    Here’s a statement from Perdue and his campaign.

    “This morning, Senator Perdue was notified that he came into close contact with someone on the campaign who tested positive for COVID-19. Both Senator Perdue and his wife tested negative today, but following his doctor’s recommendations and in accordance with CDC guidelines, they will quarantine. “The Senator and his wife have been tested regularly throughout the campaign, and the team will continue to follow CDC guidelines. Further information will be provided when available.”

    Perdue’s race has tremendous implications for Republicans nationwide, as their grip on the Senate is hanging in the balance.Republicans currently have a razor-thin majority of 50-48 in the Senate. If Democrats win both seats, then the balance of the Senate would be 50-50, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would be empowered to cast the tie-breaking vote.

    But even losing one seat would put Democrats just one Mitt Romney away from doing whatever they want.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/31/2020 – 16:40

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