Aug 20

Today’s News 20th August 2021

  • When Europeans 'Fly The Nest'
    When Europeans ‘Fly The Nest’

    Figures from Eurostat have revealed the average age at which young people leave their parent’s house in Europe.

    As Statista’s Martin Armstrong shows below, at the top of the list is Montenegro where the nest is generally flown at the ripe age of 33.3.

    Infographic: When Europeans fly the nest | Statista You will find more infographics at Statista

    This is also indicative of the trend that young people in the more southern nations tend to stay with their parents for longer, with Croatia, Italy, Portugal and Spain all at the top of the ranking.

    At the bottom, the north of the continent is represented by Finland, Denmark and Sweden.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/20/2021 – 02:45

  • British And US Troops Reportedly At Odds In Afghanistan As UK Engages Rescue Missions
    British And US Troops Reportedly At Odds In Afghanistan As UK Engages Rescue Missions

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    Reports have surfaced that British and American forces are unhappy with each other at Kabul airport, as UK Military commanders are overseeing rescue missions into the city itself, while US commanders are sitting tight, leaving US nationals to fend for themselves.

    Thousands of Americans trapped in the city were again advised by the US embassy that it cannot protect them if they attempt to get to the airport, and even if they make it, they might not be able to get on a plane out of there:

    The British government, however has sent in 900 elite para troopers to rescue some 4000 nationals in Kabul, and told the soldiers to expect face to face combat with the Taliban.

    Sources have indicated that the U.S. command is unhappy with the British forces going into the heart of Kabul, claiming that it is putting the withdrawal agreement at risk (isn’t a bit late for that?).

    The British troops are also said to be livid at the way America is treating Afghans who are desperate to flee the Taliban.

    Yet American troops are also said to be pissed off with their higher ups not letting them run rescue missions alongside the Brits.

    Former Congressional staffer turned reporter Matthew Russell detailed what is unfolding according to sources in Kabul:

    Others noted that some British troops have been tasked with observing US forces in case they suddenly decide to leave, because without the 6000 US troops in place, the British forces could easily be overwhelmed:

    Fresh video has also emerged showing the scene outside the airport, which looks like hell on earth:

    How are American nationals supposed to get to the airport through this?

    Laughably, the State Department has accused the Taliban of reneging on the deal to allow Americans to get to the airport.

    Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Shermansaid “We have seen reports that the Taliban, contrary to their public statements and their commitments to our government, are blocking Afghans who wish to leave the country from reaching the airport.”

    Ya think Wendy?

    “Our military partners are engaging directly with the Taliban to make clear that we expect them to allow all American citizens, all 3rd country nationals and all Afghans who wish to leave to do so safely and without harassment,” she added.

    Right, so while they are killing anyone they find who may have worked with the British or American governments, you’re asking the Taliban nicely to not block the way are you?

    The Daily Mail reports on the scenes at the airport, describing “stampeding crowds and Islamist fanatics using rifle butts and sticks to beat protesters.”

    Further horrific reports have emerged of women tossing their own babies into razor wire fences toward British soldiers in an attempt to get them out of the country.

    This chaos could have been avoided, but the Biden administration scrapped existing withdrawal plans and then seemingly failed to come up with any replacement contingencies but still went ahead with the withdrawal anyway:

    The Washington Free Beacon reports “The Biden State Department moved to dissolve the Trump-era crisis response program, according to an internal State Department memo and sources familiar with the matter.”

    The report adds “That memo, which was marked sensitive but unclassified and was signed by Deputy Secretary Brian McKeon, approved the “discontinuation of the establishment, and termination of, the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau (CCR),” a new State Department entity created during the Trump administration to coordinate emergency response services overseas.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/20/2021 – 02:00

  • The Afghanistan Exit Debacle: Incompetence, Distraction, Or Something More Sinister?
    The Afghanistan Exit Debacle: Incompetence, Distraction, Or Something More Sinister?

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    My first instinct has been to ignore the circus surrounding Biden’s apparent bungle of the troop exit from Afghanistan, primarily because I think it distracts from the much bigger danger of despotic covid mandates and vaccine passports that Biden and his handlers are trying to push forward right now on our home soil. That said, I have received numerous requests from readers to discuss the situation and I’ve found certain aspects of the pull-out rather suspicious.

    The basic assumption here is that Biden is senile and his handling of the exit is tainted by his stupidity, but maybe there is more to this than meets the eye…

    First, I think it’s important to dispel a propaganda narrative being circulated by the media that conservatives are somehow calling for troops to stay in Afghanistan by criticizing Biden’s exit strategy. This is typical leftist gaslighting. One can be in favor of a troop draw-down and still be critical of Biden’s handling of it. Frankly, the US should have been out of Afghanistan several years ago; I don’t think that it’s too much to ask that there be a concrete plan in place to mitigate damage to those people who relied on our presence to protect them from the Taliban.

    It was Barack Obama who first promised an exit from Afghanistan by 2014 while claiming that the “combat mission was over.” This of course never happened and the political left ignored Obama’s deception in favor of the progressive savior narrative.

    To be fair, the Trump Administration did the same exact thing, platforming the idea of a major draw-down or a full exit and then instituting troop surges instead, but at least conservatives were far more critical of his backpedaling. Trump finally committed to troop reductions in 2020, with most of the assets relocated AFTER the November election, leaving 2500 military personnel in Afghanistan along with 17,000 private contractors.

    The real shock has been the speed of Biden’s exit agenda after Trump had already removed the bulk of US troops. This rapid draw-down has included cutting almost all US troops and cutting private contractor numbers by at least 60%, and all of this has been undertaken in the span of a few months. This has allowed the Taliban to overrun the last secure provinces surrounding the capital of Kabul and then overrun Kabul itself. A panic has ensued among Afghan citizens with anti-Taliban sentiments, and it’s hitting a fever pitch with hundreds of thousands looking for any way to escape.

    It has been the common practice of multiple US administrations to pay lip service to public concerns over the endless war in Afghanistan, telling people an exit is imminent, then shrugging their shoulders when they are caught lying. It has become so formulaic that I think Americans have been conditioned to expect we would never actually leave the country; that the false promises would go on perpetually. Perhaps that’s why Biden’s rushed and haphazard removal of troops from the region over the span of mere months feels so bizarre.

    Biden apologists would make the argument that the gibbering commander-in-chief has given us exactly what we wanted, so we should be applauding him. However, the chaotic manner in which Biden is executing the troop draw-down is increasingly suspect.

    It feels more like a desperate retreat in the face of an overwhelming attack, rather than a controlled exit with a defensive plan in the face of a limited insurgency. Or, even more disturbing, it feels like Biden needs those troops and resources elsewhere and in a hurry – but where are the troops needed and why?

    An exit strategy should have taken at least another year to complete, with a secure zone surrounding Kabul and the provinces bordering Pakistan, along with a plan to evacuate civilians at risk of reprisal from Islamic fundamentalists. A longer term (and better) strategy would have been to divide a portion of provinces away from the harder to control regions of the country and form a new nation made up of people that do not want to live under Taliban rule (there are a lot of them). This would have been a more meaningful solution, but one that should have been pursued years ago. It’s far too late now.

    It needs to be understood that the US was NEVER going to “win” the war in Afghanistan. An orthodox military strategy is rarely going to succeed against a long term insurgency using asymmetric tactics. It does not matter how technologically advanced that military might be; it does not matter how many planes, tanks, and drones they might have. Eventually over time they WILL lose by pure attrition in the face of a guerrilla resistance.

    I also want to point out that it is not really the troop draw-down that opened the door to the recent Taliban offensive as much as the draw-down of the 17,000 private contractors in country. This was the major force that was keeping the Taliban at bay post election.

    And that brings us to current day, in which Afghans are piling onto the landing gear of planes leaving Air Force bases outside Kubul as the capital is overtaken by Taliban fighters in scenes reminiscent of the end of US involvement in the Vietnam War. Afghan mothers are throwing their babies over barbed wire to soldiers on the other side. Multiple governments have not even had time to evacuate their embassies as the Taliban moved in. Women are quickly dusting off their burkas after 20 years and people who ran for public office are left behind to be slaughtered, while untold numbers of US armaments have been left to fall into the hands of the Taliban. It just doesn’t make sense. And here is where we need to examine some theories as to why this was handled the way it was.

    I’m not buying the “Biden is incompetent” story because it is too simplistic and it doesn’t take the bigger picture into account. Biden is a muppet, a mascot, a front-man for the public to love or hate, and that’s all he is. Yes, he can barely read from a teleprompter, but it’s his puppeteers that make the big decisions, not Biden. They are evil people, but not incompetent.

    So we have to ask some important questions:

    Why now? And, who benefits? After decades of presidents lying to us about “mission accomplished” and impending troop exits, why is Biden suddenly committing to an exit strategy in the most hysterical way possible?

    Why did the Biden Admin choose September 11th as the end date for the troop exit? It’s certainly symbolic of further US failure and defeat, but is it also symbolic of a new phase in the establishment’s plans for the US as a whole? Is there another major event like 9/11 or larger on the way, and is the sudden exit from Afghanistan in preparation for that event?

    As I mentioned, there are scenes here that remind me of Vietnam, but I am also reminded of Benghazi – There is a rotten smell to this event, as if the goal is to deliberately spark an inferno to hide another motive in smoke.

    To be sure, the insanity in Afghanistan is quite a distraction away from the implementation of vaccine passports and other illegal mandates in the US, with an increasing number of corporations and city and state governments trying to enforce them. The DHS has just released a statement indicating that anyone who refuses to submit to restrictions and the experimental mRNA vaccines “might” be a potential terrorist. They are even entertaining the idea of interstate restrictions on travel for unvaccinated people, which is something I have been predicting for the past year and it is an action that’s on the top of my list of items that will trigger civil war.

    Everything those of us in the alternative media have warned about over the past 18 months in terms of medical tyranny is coming true. It’s not “conspiracy theory”, it’s conspiracy reality.

    The Biden Admin will certainly try to announce vaccine passport requirements at the federal level in the near future. Is the plan to bring US troops and maybe even private contractors home to the US to help enforce illegal directives through martial law? There is a high probability of a soft secession of red states and counties if the mandate farce continues. With US troops being majority conservative there is the hope that they will not comply and that they have no interest in fighting yet another insurgency made up of their own people. We will have to wait and see.

    Or, is there another war on the way that is designed to siphon off able-bodied Americans to fight in some other foreign hell hole when they would otherwise be fighting for freedom in the US? A build-up in the Pacific has been ongoing and the Chinese CCP is indeed one of the most horrific regimes in existence today, but we have to eliminate the communists and globalists within out own country first before we can worry about those ruling on the other side of the world.

    A regional conflict with China or any other country at this stage would completely undermine the already fragile US economy and the global supply chain, not to mention further devalue the US dollar and increase price inflation to a crippling degree. It’s something to consider.

    What has me most concerned, again, is the speed at which all of this is being implemented. In my latest articles I have outlined the fact that the government and the corporate establishment is bombarding the public with propaganda on the vaccine passports and covid restrictions at a level not seen since the height of the pandemic in January. It is as if they MUST get these measures in place by the end of this year or the beginning of the next. By extension, the exit from Afghanistan also seems like a scramble. Maybe this is because the resources being used there will be needed elsewhere by the end of this year?

    I can’t predict what the exact event will be, but it seems obvious that the establishment is making preparations for another crisis in the near term. The abrupt end of the occupation of Afghanistan is a warning sign of more pressing threats ahead.

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/19/2021 – 23:40

  • Have We Passed The Peak Of The Smartphone Era?
    Have We Passed The Peak Of The Smartphone Era?

    25 years ago, on August 15, 1996, Nokia released the Nokia 9000 Communicator.

    Able to send and receive email and access the web via its 9.6 kbit/s GSM modem, the Communicator was way ahead of its time. And while no one called it that at the time, it was in fact one of the first smartphones on the market.

    It would take roughly another decade and a stroke of genius from Steve Jobs to jumpstart the smartphone market, which really took off after the release of the first iPhone in 2007, which rang in the era of modern touchscreen smartphones.

    But, as Statista’s Felix Richter notes below, 14 years later, the smartphone boom has died down a bit, as market saturation and a lack of real innovation have led to declining sales for the past few years. And while the market did return to positive growth in Q4 2020 and carried that momentum through the first half of 2021, it remains doubtful if smartphone shipments will ever return to the level reached in 2016. Back then, Apple, Samsung and the like shipped 1,473 million devices, marking the industry’s peak so far. By 2020, shipments had dropped back to 1,292 million units, the lowest total since 2013.

    Infographic: Have We Passed the Peak of the Smartphone Era? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    While some experts think that “peak smartphone” is already behind us, market research group IDC remains hopeful for the industry to return to previous heights and even surpass them. In its latest industry forecast, the company expects a major boost from the 5G transition in 2021 and low single-digit growth rates through 2025, when global shipments are expected to pass 1,500 million units.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/19/2021 – 23:20

  • British Man In Singapore Given 6 Weeks In Prison For Not Wearing Face Mask, Psychiatric Assessment
    British Man In Singapore Given 6 Weeks In Prison For Not Wearing Face Mask, Psychiatric Assessment

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    A British man in Singapore was handed a 6 week jail sentence for not wearing a face mask while a judge also ordered the man to undergo a “psychiatric assessment” because he argued against the efficacy of face coverings in court.

    40-year-old Benjamin Glynn was arrested after footage of him not wearing a face mask on a train in May went viral online.

    “According to reports, Glynn delivered a rant in court – in which he described the proceedings as “preposterous” and “disgusting” – and said masks were not effective in preventing the spread of Covid,” reports the Guardian.

    This outburst prompted the judge to order the man to undergo a psychiatric assessment before the case could continue.

    Glynn was subsequently convicted for violating COVID rules, his behavior towards the police who arrested him and “causing a public nuisance.”

    Having already served two thirds of his sentence, Glynn was set free but then immediately deported.

    As we have previously highlighted, there is no evidence that face masks provide substantial protection against catching or spreading the virus.

    A peer reviewed study involving 6,000 participants in Denmark revealed that “there was no statistically significant difference between those who wore masks and those who did not when it came to being infected by Covid-19,” the Spectator reported.

    As we previously highlighted, Dr Colin Axon, a SAGE advisor for the UK government, dismissed face masks as “comfort blankets” that do virtually nothing, noting that the COVID-19 virus particle is up to 5,000 times smaller than the holes in the mask.

    “The small sizes are not easily understood but an imperfect analogy would be to imagine marbles fired at builders’ scaffolding, some might hit a pole and rebound, but obviously most will fly through,” Axon said.

    Even Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted that masks were pointless at the start of the pandemic, when he wrote that a typical store-bought face mask “is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/19/2021 – 23:00

  • Senator Blasts US "Rolling Humiliation" In Afghanistan, Urges Expanded Operation To Rescue Americans
    Senator Blasts US “Rolling Humiliation” In Afghanistan, Urges Expanded Operation To Rescue Americans

    Arguably the most hawkish member of the Senate, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, is urging the White House to ‘get serious’ about the ongoing crisis of trapped Americans in Kabul who are desperately attempting to make it to the airport. He’s urging for a bigger military operation centered at Hamid Karzai International Airport, scene of the past days of chaos which has resulted in multiple Afghan deaths.

    “Time for Biden to authorize military to stop rolling humiliation, expand perimeter at Kabul airport, and rescue Americans trapped behind enemy lines,” Sen. Cotton told a Breitbart reporter. “Anything less amounts to abandonment of fellow Americans and shameful abdication of duty in moment of crisis.”

    Cotton previously served in an infantry unit in Iraq and Afghanistan, via The Atlantic.

    The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday there’s still a staggering number of trapped Americans inside Kabul: “The collapse of the Ghani government left as many as 15,000 Americans and permanent residents along with an unknown number of other Westerners and foreigners trapped behind Taliban lines.”

    Videos began emerging by mid-week of stuck Americans pushing their way through crowds outside barbed-wire fenced roadblocks set up at airport entrances, on the other side of which are US Marines and allied troops. 

    Yet there doesn’t appear to be much of a plan at all coming from the Biden White House or Pentagon leadership. During a Wednesday afternoon press conference Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made a stunning admission: “We don’t have the capability to go out and collect large numbers of people,” he said. This after being asked about the possibility of a US security force opening some kind of rescue and safety corridor outside the confines of the airport.

    Scene from the 2001 movie “Black Hawk Down” which attempted to present the real events of 1993 Somalia during the Battle of Mogadishu, where 18 American soldiers were killed, including two Delta Force operatives…

    “Black Hawk Down” (Sony)

    However, should the US troops venture outside the airport vicinity, it would very likely result in a firefight with the Taliban, which would inevitably lead to more American forces being called in. Things are already poised to get worse at any moment.

    Likely the Pentagon wants to avoid a “Black Hawk down” type further unraveling of the situation, which in such an unpredictable and volatile scenario would be very likely – and may still happen regardless – given US troops might stay guarding the airport for weeks as evacuation efforts continue, and as the situation remains fluid, with Taliban just on the other side of the airport walls. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/19/2021 – 22:40

  • Evergrande Rebuke Shows Xi's Credit Policy Intact
    Evergrande Rebuke Shows Xi’s Credit Policy Intact

    By Ye Xie, Bloomberg reporter and macro commentator

    China’s bailout of Huarong did little to shake the market’s conviction that President Xi Jinping is serious about addressing the moral hazard in the credit market.

    One day after Beijing engineered the recapitalization of Huarong, financial regulators pressured Evergrande, the world’s most leveraged real-estate developer, to resolve its debt problem. In a rare public rebuke, regulators demanded the struggling developer refrain from spreading untrue information. Evergrande’s bonds due in 2022 fell to a record 47 cents on the dollar, even before the news came out late Thursday.

    With nearly 2 trillion yuan ($308 billion) in liabilities at the end of 2020, Evergrande is bigger than Huarong, as Bloomberg Economics’ David Qu noted.So the fact that Beijing is determined to let Evergrande sort out its problem on its own shows that Huarong’s rescue is an exception rather than the rule.

    The differences in the two companies explain the contrast in Beijing’s approach. While Huarong is a central-government owned company in a sector (bad-debt disposal) that plays a vital role in the economy, Evergrande is a highly-leveraged private company in a sector that the government wants to restrain. Equally importantly, it seems Evergrande still has room to maneuver, including selling assets and introducing strategic investors.

    Despite Huarong’s rescue, investors have gotten the message. Sergey Dergachev, an emerging-market debt investor at Union Investment, said:

    One key theme within China credit space going forward will be that credit differentiation will matter. The era when all Chinese credits performed well and have been relatively low volatile sub asset class within broader EM corporate debt are almost over. You need to be aware of potential regulatory risks, to carefully assess the importance of the company to the government (central or regional SASAC), their sovereign support assumption, and credit quality assessment.

    Indeed, the dispersion of different Chinese credits has been wide and the contagion from Evergrande is rather contained, as Bloomberg’s Sebastian Boyd noted.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/19/2021 – 22:20

  • Australia's 'Effective' Unemployment Rate Surges As Frustrated Jobseekers Abandon Labor Market
    Australia’s ‘Effective’ Unemployment Rate Surges As Frustrated Jobseekers Abandon Labor Market

    With most of the country on lockdown, Australia’s labor market is reeling from its government’s attempts to achieve “ZeroCOVID”: with no end in sight (investment banks generally expect the lockdowns to lift next month, but views vary), it appears thousands of Aussies are giving up on looking for work, a phenomenon that has also been seen in the US.

    If the trend continues, Australia may be on its way to an employment crunch, particularly in low-paying public facing jobs in retail and food service, on par with what the US economy has been grappling with all summer.

    The latest round of Aussie unemployment data, released overnight, showed the unemployment rate dropped from 4.9% to 4.6%, but the decline was almost entirely driven by Aussie’s dropping out of the workforce. The country’s participation rate dropped by 0.2 percentage points to 66%, according to the labor market data, which was collected in early-to-mid July by Australia’s Bureau of Statistics.

    New South Wales, the country’s most populous state and home to Sydney, the locus of the current outbreak, saw its labor force reduced by about 64K people between the newly unemployed (-36K) and unemployed who have given up on their search for work (-27K). Hours worked in Sydney, which has been under lockdown for 2 months now, fell by 7%.

    One economist estimated that the “effective” unemployment rate is closer to 6%.

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    For those who aren’t so familiar with the innerworkings of economic data, a former RBA economist named Callam Pickering offered to explain how the “official” numbers are masking a massive surge in employment.

    Callam Pickering, a former Reserve Bank economist who now works with with jobs website Indeed, explained how the numbers work.

    “In order to be considered unemployed in Australia you need to be actively searching for work and also available to begin work,” he noted.

    “That is obviously difficult in Sydney right now, which means that many people who would love to work, and would normally be available to start, simply cannot due to lockdown.”

    “Those people aren’t being included as unemployed and that’s basically why the unemployment rate hasn’t jumped.”

    Sydney’s problems are expected to spread to nearby Victoria state, home to Australia’s second city, Melbourne, for next month’s data as service-industry workers grow increasingly uneasy about their financial situation, as well as the future.

    But Sydney’s problems will start showing up in next month’s data for Victoria too.

    As a sales and event planner for a Melbourne catering company, Gabe Dyson is worried about the long-term effects of being stood down for the sixth time.

    “The more lockdowns you’re going through, the less money, the less revenue coming in,” she said.

    “I could lose my job because of that.”

    The 28-year-old has been with her company for a little more than two years and is currently supported by the government’s disaster payment.

    The money helps her manage the basics but does not make up for the full-time hours she normally works.

    “It’s better than nothing but, yeah, it’s not the same as what I would normally be earning.”

    Equally, Ms Dyson does not see much point searching for other work while the city is in lockdown.

    “You wonder if you should be looking for a job but, at the same time, are there any jobs out there?”

    An economist from BIS expects a big rise in unemployment in next month’s data, especially in Sydney.

    Sarah Hunter, from BIS Oxford Economics, said the July figures were a portent of a big rise in unemployment to come in next month’s data, especially in Sydney.

    “In a sign of what’s to come in the August data, employment in NSW fell by 36,000, the underemployment rate spiked to 9.3 per cent and the participation rate also fell 1 percentage point to 64.9 per cent,” she observed.

    “The structure of the COVID disaster payments means that all of these trends will be even more pronounced in the August data; anyone claiming the payment who has not worked at all will be counted as unemployed (and likely not in the labour force, as they will not be actively looking for work), while workers who have had their hours cut will be classed as underemployed.”

    As New Zealand joins its neighbor with what Kiwis fear will become another interminable series of unnecessary lockdowns, it looks like antipodean central banks will see their hopes to normalize monetary policy in the near-term (as we recently reported, the RBNZ has abandoned plans to become the first G-10 central bank to hike rates) fade.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/19/2021 – 22:00

  • Taliban "Carrying Out Door-To-Door Manhunt": Intel Group
    Taliban “Carrying Out Door-To-Door Manhunt”: Intel Group

    By Li Hai of Epoch Times

    The Taliban terrorist group is carrying out a highly organized door-to-door manhunt for people on their wanted list, according to the head of a nonprofit providing intelligence to the United Nations.

    “They have lists of individuals and even within the very first hours of moving into Kabul they began a search of former government employees—especially in intelligence services and the special forces units,” Christian Nellemann, head of the Norwegian Centre for Global Analyses, told the BBC Thursday.

    The RHIPTO Norwegian Centre for Global Analyses is a nonprofit that undertakes analytical, assessment, training, and other forms of support for the U.N. Nellemann said the Taliban have a “more advanced intelligence system” when moving into all major Afghan cities, including the capital of Kabul. That not only could lead to mass executions, but also a mass reveal of the intelligence networks that the West has provided Afghanistan.

    “So this could undermine severely a number of our Western intelligence services,” Nellemann added.

    In a statement released Thursday, the G7 Foreign Ministers meeting also said it’s “deeply concerned by reports of violent reprisals in parts of Afghanistan.”

    Taliban terrorists patrol in a neighborhood in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 18, 2021. (Rahmat Gul)

    The alleged move is contrary to recent statements of the Taliban. The group announced “complete amnesty” to Afghans on Tuesday.

    “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan with full dignity and honesty has announced a complete amnesty for all Afghanistan, especially those who were with the opposition or supported the occupiers for years and recently,” Enamullah Samangani, a member of the Taliban’s cultural commission, stated on Afghan state television.

    Later that day at the Taliban’s first official press conference, spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid reassured the safety of Afghans—including those who worked with the United States and allied forces.

    “We will pardon all those who became masters against jihad, and this special pardon is because we do not want war again, and to let war be repeated and the elements of the war remain,” Mujahid said.

    “We are assuring the safety of all those who have worked with the United States and allied forces, whether as interpreters or any other field that they worked with them,” Mujahid added.

    In Thursday’s press briefing, State Department spokesman Ned Price acknowledged he had seen a similar report.

    “We know that at least one NGO—I’ve seen a report that at least one NGO has put together with this. I’m just not in a position to confirm those details,” Price said. “Every time we see a detail like this, we take it extraordinarily seriously and we do everything we can to follow up on it.”

    Most Afghan fighters would likely not be able to get special immigrant visas, but “there are other pathways to safety,” Price added, without providing details.

    About 2,000 people were flown out of the U.S.-held airport in Afghanistan over the past 24 hours, U.S. military officials told reporters on Thursday in Washington.

    Among them, there are nearly 300 Americans. Most of the non-American passengers are Afghans who have been granted special immigrant visas and are en route to military bases in the United States, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/19/2021 – 21:40

  • MSNBC Breaks Cringe-O-Meter, Reads Biggie Smalls Rap Verse During Vax-Push Segment
    MSNBC Breaks Cringe-O-Meter, Reads Biggie Smalls Rap Verse During Vax-Push Segment

    In what we can only imagine was a tone-deaf attempt to reach the vaccine-hesitant black community, some genius at MSNBC free-associated a Notorious B.I.G. rap verse featuring the word “ICU” with covid patients ending up in intensive-care units.

    “Covid’s dangerous,” begins host Ari Melber.

    “It’s lethal. It’s a bit like the beef Notorious B.I.G. used to rap about when he said ‘beef is when your moms ain’t safe up in the streets. Beef is when I see you, guaranteed to be in I.C.U.“

    Still with us?

    “When Covid sees you, you can end up in ICU. Maybe not at the same rate as Biggie’s beef, but that’s the point about risk. You don’t wanna test these streets and risk ending up in the ICU.”

    According to Statista, less than 1% of Covid patients under the age of 40 were admitted to the ICU between January 22 and May 30, 2020 – increasing to 1.5% for those aged 40 – 49, 2.5% for 50-59, 4.1% for 60-69, and peaking at 5.6% for those between the ages of 70 and 79.

    Statistic: Percentage of people with COVID-19 who were admitted to the ICU in the United States from January 22 to May 30, 2020, by age* | Statista

    The responses to MSNBC’s cringe-fest were on point.

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/19/2021 – 21:20

  • State Department Mum On Why It Killed Pompeo's Crisis Evacuation Unit
    State Department Mum On Why It Killed Pompeo’s Crisis Evacuation Unit

    Authored by Mark Tapscott via The Epoch Times,

    Officials at the U.S. State Department declined on Aug. 19 to say why Secretary of State Antony Blinken “paused” a special evacuation unit formed by his predecessor, even as the firestorm of reaction to the bungled Afghanistan withdrawal intensified.

    In June, Blinken signed off on the department’s fiscal year 2022 budget justification request submitted to Congress that included a notation that, while $50.8 million was sought for the Crisis and Contingency Response (CCR) program, “the department has paused implementation pending a policy review.”

    When asked by The Epoch Times: “Why was [CCR] paused, is that still State’s intent, and is [CCR] being utilized now in the Kabul evacs,” the department spokesman declined to respond.

    Instead, the spokesman repeated a statement previously provided to media inquiries, saying:

    “It is important to note that not only would the proposed [CCR] not have introduced any new capabilities to the department, it was never formally established. Some administrative steps were taken before its establishment was paused, but the day-to-day operations of the team have not changed.

    “Every requirement the department delivered on last year, and, since the proposed establishment of the bureau, can be delivered on today in the same manner if appropriate to do so.”

    But interviews on Aug. 19 with former senior State Department officials indicate the CCR program had been up and functioning effectively for months when Blinken and his team took over operations following his Jan. 26 Senate confirmation.

    A former official pointed to the State Department’s evacuation of U.S. citizens from Wuhan, China, at the outset of the pandemic caused by the CCP virus, which is also known as the novel coronavirus.

    “This was the group of brave Americans that rescued more than 800 people from Wuhan in February 2020, when we knew little about the virulence of the virus and danger of that mission,” the former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Epoch Times.

    “These committed civil servants are heroes, and the American citizens and Afghans who helped in the anti-terrorism fight could use their expertise right now.”

    Then-State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus described the Wuhan evacuation as “a joint effort by the Department of State, the CDC, HHS, the Department of Defense, and state and local authorities to bring home Americans in need. In total, we evacuated over 800 passengers from Wuhan.”

    Throughout the pandemic, the State Department evacuated an estimated 100,000 U.S. citizens from locations around the world, the official said.

    Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley described the present evacuation effort from Kabul as “likely the second-largest” such operation by the United States since more than 20,000 Americans were rescued during a destructive volcanic eruption in the Philippines in 1991.

    The CCR was specifically authorized by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sept. 21, 2020, to be developed from the department’s existing OpMed program.

    Congress was notified Oct. 13, 2020, about the new organization, and the official reorganization plan was approved Nov. 16, 2020. The official “standup” of CCR was ordered on Dec. 23, 2020.

    Pompeo viewed the CCR as needed to upgrade the department’s ability to prevent a repeat of the Benghazi tragedy in Libya in 2012, when Islamic terrorists stormed a U.S. facility there, killing three security personnel and Ambassador Christopher Stevens before U.S. forces arrived on the scene.

    As was often the case with new initiatives during President Donald Trump’s tenure in the White House, the creation of CCR prompted opposition from among the department’s career ranks.

    Diplopundit reported in October 2020 that many career employees “are said to be up in arms about the rapid formation of this new bureau—which happened in a span of just four months—with apparently no input from the field.”

    Regarding the present confused situation in Afghanistan, another former senior official told The Epoch Times that “the French are doing armed runs into Kabul to get their people,” and that “they and the Brits will do that until they get everyone they want out and then they will pack up and go without telling us.”

    As The Epoch Times has reported, Biden told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that U.S. officials estimate there are between 10,000 and 15,000 Americans in Afghanistan, and the “estimate we’re giving” is 50,000 to 65,000 Afghan allies, including family members.

    “Americans should understand that we’re going to try to get it done before Aug. 31,” Biden said in the interview, his first one since the Taliban took over the country. The president said the U.S. military will attempt to evacuate all Americans out of the South Asian country by that date.

    Earlier this week, a spokesman for the Taliban warned in a Sky News interview that U.S. forces need to withdraw from the country by Sept. 11, which is the date of the terrorist attacks that toppled the Twin Towers in New York 20 years ago.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/19/2021 – 21:00

  • What Rental Hyperinflation Looks Like: "Soaring Prices. Competition. Desperation"
    What Rental Hyperinflation Looks Like: “Soaring Prices. Competition. Desperation”

    Having previously covered the record surge in rents (here and here) which represents a dramatic reversal from last year’s rental plunge, overnight Bloomberg did an in-depth look into the rental market, and its findings – which won’t come as a surprise to anyone – can be summarized as follows: “soaring prices, competition, desperation” as the bubble facing homebuyers is rapidly spilling over into the rental market.

    Unlike previous years where the rental frenzy was focused on some of the largest cities, this time landlords from Tampa, Florida, to Memphis, Tennessee, and Riverside, California, are jacking up rents at record speeds. And similar to home sales, for each listing, multiple people are apply, forcing some renters to check into hotels while they hunt after losing out too many times.

    The following quote from Tampa realtor Shannon Dopkins summarizes the prevailing market frenzy: “Any desirable rental is going within hours, just like the desirable sales. One woman passed on a place that was beat up with water damage. Somebody else decided to rent it.”

    After a sharp slowdown last year when many young people rode out lockdowns with family, the rental market is now seeing record demand (although that too may reverse again if there is a new round of lockdowns), there has been a just as aggressive reversal in the market, as the number of occupied rental-apartment units jumped by about half a million in the second quarter, the biggest annual increase in data going back to 1993, according to RealPage.

    Occupancy last month also hit a new high of 96.9%, which helped rents on newly signed leases to surge 17% in July when compared to what the prior tenant paid, reaching the highest level on record. One look at the chart below and most renters will be praying that the Fed is right that inflation is “transitory.”

    A key reason for this record, price indiscriminate scramble for rentals is that the for-sale market is even crazier. Since people need to live somewhere, amid soaring prices and even more aggressive bidding wars in the for-sale market, would-be home buyers who end up getting the short stick are being forced back into rentals.

    Adding to the concurrent demand, young Americans are also looking for their first apartment are competing with others who delayed plans because of Covid-19. Meanwhile, an army of remote workers and their high paychecks, are moving to lower-cost areas. And small single-family home and condo landlords, tempted by high prices, are cashing out, leaving their tenants desperate for another place.

    “The entire housing market is on fire, across the board from homeownership to rental, from high-end to low-end, from coast to coast,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics. “It’s a basic need but it’s increasingly out of reach.”

    Unfortunately for would be renters it gets even worse, as compounding the demand-driven price surge is a sharp drop in available supply thanks to eviction bans: whereas normally 6% of tenants are forced to vacate each year, the current eviction moratorium has meant that there is that much less supply, the result logically being even higher prices.

    And then there is Wall Street, which  is quietly gobbling up any available rental properties with the sole intent of pushing prices even higher (see “Blackstone Bets $6 Billion on Buying and Renting Homes“)

    It all adds up to what Mark Zandi, said is the worst shortage of affordable housing since at least the post-World War II period.

    To be sure, smelling a revenue bonanza, developers are adding new supply, but it will take months if not years before the new rental properties hit the market. In the meantime, the squeeze will have economic consequences because workers can’t easily move for jobs and will have less to spend on things other than housing.

    Soaring rental costs also of course a contributor to the Federal Reserve’s inflation expectations. However, as even Bloomberg now admits, they “may not yet be accurately reflected in some measures.” Owners’ equivalent rent of residences, which makes up almost a quarter of the consumer price index, rose just 2.4% in July from a year earlier according tot he Fed.

    That figure “lags the reality” because it’s based on a survey of homeowner expectations about what their home would rent for, Zandi said. A figure derived from real-world prices, such as the one compiled from Apartment List, indicates that rents are actually rising at least twice as fast as what the government is representing, and are currently soaring at a roughly record 5% annualized pace in July.

    But of course, the government and especially the Fed would be the last to admit the hyperinflation in the rental market: doing so would have forced the Fed to end its QE long, long ago.

    And yes, we don’t use the term “hyperinflation” lightly: while the rental surge is hitting those who sign new rents the hardest, even people renewing leases are getting sticker shock. Take Carmen Santiago, a dental assistant, who was paying $1,479 a month for a two-bedroom apartment in Tampa, gave notice to her landlord in March after the rent jumped by $300.

    The mother of two profiled by Bloomberg, then racked up more than $1,000 on non-refundable application fees that she handed to about 10 landlords, sometimes getting in line without even seeing the properties first. A couple days before her lease expired in June, Santiago took a last-ditch drive. She visited five apartment complexes, all filled. The sixth, a vast complex with 22 buildings, had one unit available.

    The two-bedroom cost more than $1,900 a month, including a mandatory cable bill — more than Santiago would have paid if she renewed her old lease. But in the end she paid, even though she could hardly afford it before it was gone.

    “I didn’t know how hard it was to find something,” Santiago said. “Looking back, maybe I should have stayed.”

    And as long as people continue to willingly pay the exorbitant rates that landlords demand, the pricing insanity will remain.

    Yet nowhere is the pricing surge greater than in the Sun Belt cities that have seen an influx of arrivals from the pandemic amid an exodus from progressive liberal bastions as New York and San Francisco. The Phoenix area had the country’s biggest increases in rents for single-family houses in June, with an almost 17% surge from a year earlier, according to data released this week from Corelogic. It was followed by Las Vegas, with a 12.9% gain; Tucson, Arizona, at 12.5%; and Miami, up 12.4%.

    As noted above, the surge in small cities marks a reversal from the pre-pandemic norm of tight housing in denser, pricier cities — places such as New York, Boston and San Francisco, which saw office workers flee during lockdowns. Those areas still have an overhang of inventory of high-end apartments aimed at white-collar professionals.

    Still, demand is picking up, and since renters now crowding the market have higher salaries, in part, because many of them, in normal times, would be buying homes instead, landlords can hike prices generously.

    But whereas smaller cities may represent a bargain to a New Yorker used to paying $3,000 for a 500 square foot shoebox, migration away from the pricey locations is especially painful for locals, whose housing costs are being driven up disproportionately, especially those in more affordable cities and in far-flung suburbs. The average income for new lease signers in July hit a record of $69,252, according to RealPage, which captured data for professionally managed buildings. Year-to-date, their incomes shot up 7.5%.

    “It’s always been hard to find a home if you have limited income,” said Jay Parsons, deputy chief economist for RealPage. “What’s crazy now is you can have a relatively high income and still have a hard time.”

    That’s because the for sale market is an even bigger bubble. Nicolle Crim, vice president of Watson Property Management’s Central Florida division, told Bloomberg she wished she had more to offer. But the for-sale market is so strong that owners are selling for big profits. As a result, Watson now manages about 4,000 single-family home rentals for individual owners, down by a third since the pandemic began, she said. Even relatively sleepy areas such as Springfield, Illinois, three hours from Chicago, are experiencing shortages. Landlord Seth Morrison said his only apartment listing attracted a couple dozen calls before he took it down.

    Finally, if one looks at just rental price increases as an indication of metro prestige, then the number one most desired city in the US is Boise, Idaho where according to Apartment List the rental increase since March 2020 is 39% and rising.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/19/2021 – 20:45

  • 64-Year-Old Heart Patient Removed From Transplant List For Refusing COVID Vaccine
    64-Year-Old Heart Patient Removed From Transplant List For Refusing COVID Vaccine

    The University of Washington Medical Center has taken a 64-year-old man off its transplant waitlist because he refuses to take the Covid-19 vaccination, according to KTTH.

    UW Medicine removed 64-year-old Frank Sam Allen patient from the transplant waiting list. This is a photo from Allen’s previous surgery in 2014.(Photo: Frank Sam Allen)

    The man, Sam Allen of Monroe, was told in June that his heart transplant surgery was on the line over his refusal to take the jab after waiting in line for more than two and a half years. If he changes his mind, however, he could be added back to the waitlist for satisfying their “compliance concerns.”

    The list of medical conditions Allen says he’s facing is long: mitral valve regurgitation, tricuspid valve regurgitation, aortic valve regurgitation, aneurism of thoracic aorta, and dilated cardiomyopathy.

    He says three leaky heart valves impact the blood pumping into his lungs. Allen says it makes it difficult to breathe, which played a role in why he wouldn’t wear a mask. He previously underwent open-heart surgery, and he says his heart was damaged in the process. -KTTH

    According to Allen, a doctor called him after a disagreement over mask use.

    “The cardiologist called me and we had a discussion, and he informed me that, ‘well, you’re going to have to get a vaccination to get a transplant.’ And I said, ‘well that’s news to me. And nobody’s ever told me that before.’ And he says, ‘yeah, that’s our policy,” Allen told the the Jason Rantz show, adding that he later told the doctor he would not take the vaccine.

    A few days later, he says he received a letter dated June 7, 2021 informing him that he’d been pulled from the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) waiting list for a heart.

    Allen sent a letter to UW Medicine in response to his denial, writing “I understand that my choices have repercussions but I did not change the policy. I am most put off, not by your decision to remove me from the list, thereby removing any opportunity to live out my life at a near-normal level, but by the lack of scientific logic that dictates your ‘policy,'”

    He noted the side effects associated with the vaccine.

    “As a person who has spent much time and money at UWMC as a heart failure patient, I am being told I cannot get care for my condition unless I take an injection that has shown to cause cardiac problems,” Allen wrote. “It seems that a wise choice would be to not make a panic move and run to get injected with the experimental gene therapy until more is known.”

    In response, UW responded that “As your provider noted, they are happy to re-evaluate should you change your mind.”

    Meanwhile, another vaccine-hesitant patient, Derek Kovic, told Rantz that he was informed that he’d also need the vaccine before he could receive a necessary liver transplant.

    When reached for comment, hospital spokeswoman Susan Gregg said that they had just “recommend that all solid-organ transplant candidates be vaccinated against COVID-19.”

    After she was pressed on the issue, Gregg changed her tune, writing “Our physicians make a determination regarding vaccine recommendations and requirements, including COVID-19 vaccination, based on the risk factors of the individual patient and degree of immunosuppression they will experience.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/19/2021 – 20:40

  • Coinbase CEO Confirms $500 Million Crypto Added To Balance Sheet, Will Reinvest Profits
    Coinbase CEO Confirms $500 Million Crypto Added To Balance Sheet, Will Reinvest Profits

    Back in January 2021, we detailed Morgan Stanley’s aggressive expansion of its Microstrategy holdings (whose strategy has shifted towards crypto when it became the first publicly-traded company to convert a substantial portion of its cash holdings to bitcoin), noting that it may be the catalyst that unlocks Bitcoin’s door to rapidly crossing the psychological $100,000 level next.

    Whereas share buyback announcements pump stock prices higher (whether they are buying them or not) as other front-run the C-suite, Crypto-purchases (on to corporate balance sheets) will create a more aggressive function by keeping cryptos elevated with shorts increasingly uncertain when the next huge buying wave will lift the price of Bitcoin or Ethereum vertically (like today)…

    And today we see another entity more aggressively entering the crypto-purchasing wave.

    As Decrypt.co’s Jeff Benson reports, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announced via Twitter today that the publicly traded cryptocurrency exchange received board approval to add $500 million of cryptocurrency assets to its balance sheet. Not just that, but it’ll be placing 10% of all future profits into cryptocurrency.

    In February, as it prepared to go public via direct listing, Coinbase published an S-1 filing showing it held somewhere in the range of $365 million in crypto. Of that, $230 million was in Bitcoin, $53 million in Ethereum, $49 million in stablecoins, and $34 million in other crypto assets.

    Though it was good enough to rank Coinbase fourth among all companies for Bitcoin holdings, two of the three firms ahead of it – cloud software firm MicroStrategy and electric automaker Tesla – bought their first BTC within the last year; Coinbase has been around since 2012.

    Some thought a crypto-native company should have accrued more over that span, although accounting rules and treasury management principles may have made that imprudent.

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

    But back-to-back record quarterly profits, first of up to $800 million in Q1 and then $1.6 billion in Q2, have convinced Coinbase’s board it has room to diversify its holdings.

    The exchange, which makes most of its money from transaction fees, benefited from high trading volumes over the last quarter despite a crash in crypto prices, as Bitcoin slid from its perch above $60,000 all the way down to $30,000.

    According to Armstrong, the company would like to gradually “operate more of our business in crypto.” For now, he shared, “it is still a mix.”

    *  *  *

    Coinbase’s CFO, Alesia Hass, issued a more detailed statement via the company’s blog:

    We believe in the cryptoeconomy, a future where economic transactions — buying, selling, spending, earning — will be based on crypto assets. Our products strive to make that vision a reality by making crypto trusted and easy to use for customers around the world.

    Today, the majority of Coinbase corporate financial transactions, such as how we pay our vendors, employees, or invest corporate cash, remain heavily weighted in fiat. We’re in a strong position to lead by example and double down on how we can enable crypto adoption and utility, starting with how we operate our business.

    Towards that goal, we are announcing a change in our investment policy. We have committed to invest $500M of our cash and cash equivalents. Going forward, we will also allocate 10% of quarterly net income into a diverse portfolio of crypto assets. This means we will become the first publicly traded company to hold Ethereum, Proof of Stake assets, DeFi tokens, and many other crypto assets supported for trading on our platform, in addition to Bitcoin, on our balance sheet.

    Our crypto asset investment allocation will be driven by our aggregate custodial crypto balances — meaning our customers will drive our investment strategy. Our investments will be continually deployed over a multi-year window using a dollar cost averaging strategy. We are long term investors and will only divest under select circumstances, such as an asset delisting from our platform. All trades will be executed via our over the counter desk or away from our exchange to avoid any conflict of interest with our customers.

    We may increase our allocation over time as the cryptoeconomy matures. We believe that in the future, more and more companies will hold crypto assets on their balance sheet. We hope by incorporating more crypto assets into our own corporate financial practices, we can take another step towards building a more open cryptoeconomy.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/19/2021 – 20:23

  • "Aren't You Tired Of Being Wrong?" – Economist Slams Bloomberg Reporter In Testy Exchange
    “Aren’t You Tired Of Being Wrong?” – Economist Slams Bloomberg Reporter In Testy Exchange

    Neil Dutta and his work at Renaissance Macro are widely disseminated in the financial press, and his frequent appearances on business TV are usually informative but staid.

    However, sparks flew – albeit briefly – during a TV interview with Bloomberg reporter Lisa Abramowicz on Thursday.

    The dustup ended amicably enough, with Dutta swiftly apologizing, and Abramowicz explaining that she was simply playing devil’s advocate. 

    Let’s take a step back to offer some context: Dutta’s bullish view on the American economy and markets has proven largely correct over the past year. And with markets in the red Thursday, Dutta explained that the timeline of the Fed’s tapering plans is more of a distraction for investors.

    As Abramowicz started into a challenge to Dutta’s point, he groaned.

    “Lisa aren’t you tired of being wrong for the last 12 months?” Dutta pointedly joked.

    She replied:

    “I’m being skeptical I’m not making a market call.”

    “Well thank God,” Dutta interjected.

    “Wow, you came out with gloves on.”

    The tension quickly dissipated as Dutta elaborated on his view.

    “It’s not so much about the inflation in my view it’s about what the Fed is going to do about it. I concede that point – we have had a bit of ‘stagflation lite’…even the Fed staff took down their growth outlook and revised up their inflation outlook. But I think that’s going to be temporary. You have seen things like used car prices come down. If anything, in the July data, the supply chain issues are becoming less prevalent,” Dutta said.

    Afterward, Abramowicz asked:

    “Neil can I ask you a question. Why does it make you upset to hear people come up with bearish counterpoints…?”

    He offered a reasonable sounding explanation:

    “Because my job is to take an economics call and turn it into a markets call so they can make money…at the end of the day, it’s not what GDP is, but how you can use that to make a market call.”

    As the segment wound down, another Bloomberg host chimed in:

    “You two should have your own show,” prompting Abramowicz to once again assert that she wasn’t making a ‘market call’, and that “it’s important to have skepticism because that is our job as journalists.”

    Watch the clip below:

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    Meanwhile, Dutta laid out his view in more detail in a BI editorial published Thursday: The Fed, Dutta believes, is “willing to tolerate a bit more inflation than it has been letting on” and that despite all the talk of tapering, “I would be on the lookout for a dovish policy shift from the Fed next year.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/19/2021 – 20:00

  • California Congestion Nears New High, East Coast Gridlock Worsens
    California Congestion Nears New High, East Coast Gridlock Worsens

    By Greg Miller of FreightWaves

    It’s only mid-August – the early days of peak shipping season – but the record for container ships anchored off California is already on the verge of being broken. Port congestion is simultaneously building along the East Coast, with anchorage numbers off Georgia well into the double digits and, for the first time this year, a growing queue offshore of the Port of New York and New Jersey.

    Southern California congestion soars

    California congestion previously peaked in the first quarter. On Feb. 1, the Marine Exchange of Southern California reported an all-time-high 40 container ships at anchor in San Pedro Bay, awaiting berths in Los Angeles or Long Beach. The highest number of container ships in the entire port complex, including those at anchor and at berth — 67 — was set on Jan. 28.

    On Friday, there were 125 ships of all types (including tankers and cruise ships) either at berth or anchor in Los Angeles/Long Beach. That’s a new record. The Q1 high was 113. On Saturday, there were 68 ships of all types at anchor, yet another record. There were 66 container ships either at berth or waiting offshore, just one short of the all-time high. And there were 37 container ships waiting offshore, three short of the February peak.

    All regular and emergency anchorages were full, forcing the overflow to drift in designated areas. As of Sunday, five container ships were drifting off Santa Catalina Island.

    Container ships at anchor, drifting and at berth in Los Angeles and Long Beach on Monday (Map: MarineTraffic)

    After surging in the first quarter, congestion was capped by vessel supply. The more ships stuck at anchor, the fewer available to pick up export cargo in Asia, forcing carriers to “blank” (cancel) sailings. That dynamic eventually curbed the number of ships at anchor on the West Coast, and simultaneously, U.S. import capacity.

    New trans-Pacific services have been added since the first quarter, meaning the anchorage numbers are likely to go higher in the current cycle before hitting their ceiling.

    In addition to new liner services, shipping consultant Jon Monroe noted that “extra loaders” (ships sailing one-off voyages not in a regular service) and charter vessels “may make matters worse.” Monroe warned: “Be prepared. Picking up containers in Southern California will hit a new level of difficulty.”

    A key variable for the weeks ahead involves the COVID-induced terminal closure in Ningbo, China. As of Monday, the affected terminal had been closed for six days. When COVID curtailed throughput in Yantian, China, in June, it gave Los Angeles/Long Beach a brief reprieve from inbound volume, reducing congestion temporarily, then subsequently increasing congestion as delayed Yantian cargo belatedly arrived.

    Ship positioning data from MarineTraffic showed nearly 40 container ships at anchor off Ningbo on Monday. According to S&P Global Platts, “Port issues in China threaten to limit carrying capacity in peak season.”

    Container ships at anchor Monday with a stated destination of Ningbo (Map: MarineTraffic)

    Anchorages also filling off East Coast

    On the East Coast, congestion has largely centered on the port of Savannah, Georgia, this year, driven at various times by high volume, weather closures of the Savannah River, and dredging. As of Monday, MarineTraffic ship-positioning data showed 17 ships at anchor off Tybee Island, awaiting berths in Savannah.

    Container ships at anchor Monday off Tybee Island, Georgia, destined for Savannah (Map: MarineTraffic)

    According to Hapag-Lloyd, “Ships are delayed four to five days awaiting berth assignment. Berth congestion is not going to get better in the foreseeable future, with a minimum of 10 ships at anchor.” Hapag-Lloyd said that import loads are not moving out of the Savannah terminal fast enough, due to a shortage of chassis, trucks and warehouse space.

    Meanwhile, ship-positioning data showed nine ships stuck waiting offshore of terminals in New York and New Jersey on Monday.

    Container ships at anchor Monday off East Coast awaiting berths in New York or New Jersey (Map: MarineTraffic)

    Maersk reported that at terminals in Newark, New Jersey, “Several vessels have been delayed this week due to congestion.” It noted, “Chassis continued to be a limiting factor [and a] large volume of import cargo has been discharged, which will most likely exacerbate the chassis issue.”

    According to Hapag-Lloyd, arrival delays in New York and New Jersey “are currently running upwards of two to three days. High utilization is expected to last at least for the next two weeks, with delays causing a cascade of inbound vessels looking for open berths.

    “Labor availability, yard turn times and productivity are still being affected by summer vacations” as well as “weather issues within the last week including temperatures of 95-100 degrees” and “COVID cases among port workers,” said Hapag-Lloyd.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/19/2021 – 19:40

  • NYC Small Businesses Sue Mayor Over "Unduly Burdensome" Vaccination Requirement
    NYC Small Businesses Sue Mayor Over “Unduly Burdensome” Vaccination Requirement

    As NYC’s first-in-the-US requirement that patrons prove their vaccination status to gain entry to everything from restaurant dining rooms to gyms takes effect, a handful of small business owners in the city are pushing back.

    A group of small businesses on Staten Island, including Pasticceria Rocco, DeLuca’s Italian Restaurant and Staten Island Judo Jujitsu, are suing Mayor Bill de Blasio insisting that the city’s requirement for small businesses to check patron’s vaccination status is “unduly burdensome” for small businesses.

    In the suit, which is Independent Restaurant Owners et al v. Bill de Blasio, the plaintiffs allege that COVID restrictions have “severely and irreparably damaged” their businesses and others throughout the city, which have been “struggling to bounce back” since Governor Andrew Cuomo lifted all limits in mid-June.

    According to the suit, which was filed Tuesday in state court in Staten Island, the plaintiffs are seeking a court order blocking de Blasio’s new vaccination requirement, which went into effect Monday and applies to indoor restaurants, gyms and entertainment venues across NYC – the first city in the US to require ‘vaccination passes’ for entering pretty much any business that’s not a grocery store.

    The businesses called the requirement “irrational” and questioned the efficacy of vaccines, saying it was “an uncontested fact that unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals can both contract Covid-19 and the so-called ‘Delta’ variant, further illustrating the arbitrariness of this executive order.”

    The businesses called the requirement irrational and questioned the efficacy of vaccines. Of course, it’s “an uncontested fact that unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals can both contract COVID and the so-called ‘Delta’ variant,” something they said further illustrates “the arbitrariness of this executive order.”

    Mayor de Blasio didn’t address the lawsuit during a briefing with reporters on Wednesday, but said he believes NYC is in “a solid legal position” to adopt the mandates.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/19/2021 – 19:20

  • They Knew: Leaked State Department Memo Warned Of Afghanistan Collapse
    They Knew: Leaked State Department Memo Warned Of Afghanistan Collapse

    Around two dozen State Department officials at the US embassy in Kabul warned of a potential collapse following the Aug. 31 troop withdrawal deadline, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing a ‘person familiar with the cable.’

    Using a special ‘dissent channel’ within the State Department, the cable – sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and another top State Department official – warned of ‘rapid territorial gains by the Taliban and the subsequent collapse of Afghan security forces,’ and offered suggestions on how to speed up evacuation and mitigate the obvious crisis slated to ensue, two people told the WSJ.

    In total, 23 US Embassy staffers – all Americans, signed the July 13 cable, which was given a rush status ‘given the circumstances on the ground in Kabul.’ In addition to Blinken, it was sent to the Director of Policy Planning, Salman Ahmad.

    Blinken received the cable and reviewed it shortly afterwards according to the report.

    The cable, dated July 13, also called for the State Department to use tougher language in describing the atrocities being committed by the Taliban, one of the people said.

    The classified cable represents the clearest evidence yet that the administration had been warned by its own officials on the ground that the Taliban’s advance was imminent and Afghanistan’s military may be unable to stop it. -WSJ

    According to the report, some 18,000 Afghans and their families who had applied for special US Immigrant Visas remained in Kabul in areas under Taliban control, while efforts to reach the airport have become increasingly difficult. 

    US intelligence officials have sparred with the White House over who was warning of what, and when. And as the Journal notes, the existence of this confidential State Department memo warning of impending doom adds a crucial piece to our knowledge of how this all went down.

    Why Blinken and Biden didn’t take immediate action despite receiving a ‘dissent channel’ emergency communication from their staff on the ground in Kabul is unknown, however Blinken is apparently so bad that John McCain called him “dangerous to America” in a 2014 Senate speech, adding that he was “one of the worst selections of a very bad lot” as Obama’s nominee for Secretary of State.

    In July, Biden confidently said the collapse of the Afghan government and a Taliban takeover was “highly unlikely,” suggesting that the country’s US-trained National Security Force could handle the threat.

    Gen. Mark Milley, the ‘woke’ chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, said that the rapid fall of Kabul was unanticipated – saying on Wednesday “There was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days.”

    The signatories of the dissent channel cable urged the State Department to begin registering and collecting personal data in advance for all Afghans who qualify for Special Immigrant Visas, aimed at those who worked as translators or interpreters; locally employed embassy staff; and for those eligible for other U.S. refugee programs while there was still six weeks left before the withdrawal deadline.

    It also urged the administration to begin evacuation flights no later than Aug. 1, the people said.

    On July 14, a day after the cable was sent to the State Department, the White House announced Operation Allies Refuge to support the relocation of interested and eligible Afghan nationals and their immediate families who supported the U.S. government for the special immigrant visas. Evacuations didn’t kick into high gear until last week and have been complicated by the Taliban takeover of Kabul on Sunday. -WSJ

    After the Taliban swept in and took Kabul over the weekend, the US evacuated its embassy staff from Kabul – some of whom were relocated to a makeshift location at the Hamid Karzai International Airport surrounded by US troops.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/19/2021 – 19:00

  • Landmark Study Proves COVID Vaccines Much Less Effective Than Advertised
    Landmark Study Proves COVID Vaccines Much Less Effective Than Advertised

    The largest study yet to examine the efficacy of COVID vaccines in the wild has just been published by the University of Oxford and UK Office for National Statistics, and unsurprisingly it found that the efficacy rates for the Pfizer and Moderna are significantly lower than the 90%+ rates first advertised from the initial controlled trials.

    According to the study, a preprint of which was published on Thursday, while the Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca jabs still offer “good” protection against new infections, their efficacy has been reduced compared with Alpha. While having two doses of either vaccine still provides “at least the same level of protection as having had COVID-19”, those who were vaccinated after already being infected demonstrated even higher levels of protection than those who either weren’t infected and only received the jabs, or were infected, but didn’t receive the jabs.

    “We’re seeing here the real-world data of how two vaccines are performing, rather than clinical trial data, and the data sets all show how the delta variant has blunted the effectiveness of both the Pfizer and AstraZeneca jabs,” said Simon Clarke, an associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading.

    Despite all this, even after receiving two doses of a jab, those infected with delta showed much higher peak levels of the virus than those infected with alpha, or some other variant.

    The study also highlighted differences between between vaccines: for example, the Moderna jab had “similar or greater effectiveness” against the delta variant as a single dose of the other vaccines. And while the Pfizer and Moderna jabs showed greater initial efficacy against infection than the AstraZeneca jab, this protection premium erodes after only 4-5 months.

    Source: Bloomberg

    The data also showed that delta increases transmissibility more than other COVID varients, even among the vaccinated, which backs up a recent assessment made by the American CDC.

    The results raise more doubt about the possibility of ever achieving herd immunity via vaccination, said Sarah Walker, a professor of medical statistics and epidemiology at Oxford, who helped lead the study. That’s not exactly a surprise.

    Finally, one important piece of the puzzle that’s still missing is the data relating to hospitalizations and severe cases of COVID, according to Penny Ward, a visiting professor in pharmaceutical medicine at King’s College London, who wasn’t involved with the study, and spoke to Bloomberg about its results. It’s possible the findings could support “cross-vaccination” with different types of jabs, which could offer more comprehensive protection, she said.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/19/2021 – 18:22

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