Today’s News 20th December 2021

• Why The US Will Reject Russia's Proposed Peace-Settlement
  Why The US Will Reject Russia’s Proposed Peace-Settlement

  Authored by Eric Zuesse via TheDuran.com,

  On December 17th, Russia presented America with a proposed peace-settlement that would empower the U.N. to be not only nominally but in reality the one-and-only body that can create international laws. 

  The proposed treaty would obliterate America’s effort to replace the U.N. by America’s never-defined ‘rules-based international order’, which was first proposed by the neoliberal-neoconservative Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2008 and never ever defined by anyone because it implicitly would replace international laws (from the U.N.) by the edicts of the U.S. Government, which nobody (outside the U.S. regime’s vassal-nations such as Australia) will accept. So: Rudd’s ‘rules-based international order’ is really just an attempt to impose the U.S. empire to replace the U.N., and that won’t be able to be done without a Third World War in which the U.S. and its allies go to war against the rest of the world and win, which is impossible because there would be only losers: any WW III would end all life on this planet, or at least all human life, because of nuclear winter if for no other reason. (Yes, it’s possible for BOTH sides to lose a war.) It’s just an American-empire pipe-dream for individuals (such as Rudd, and Bush, and Obama, and Trump, and Biden, and all American ‘allies’ or vassal-nations) who insist that, as the neoconservative Obama told the U.S. military on 28 May 2014:

  The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come. … Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums. … It will be your generation’s task to respond to this new world.

  In short: all other nations are “dispensable,” and all rising and competing less-wealthy nations are enemies to whom “your generation’s task” is “to respond” (militarily) to that economic competition, from such ‘enemies’.

  

  That would be the spirit in which the proposed “rules-based international order” would be imposed upon the world. And, now, Russia is finally demanding that America stand down from America’s demand to replace the U.N. by its own international dictatorship (no Security Counsel; no General Assembly). Russia, finally, is telling America that ONLY the U.N. is, and will be, the source of international laws; America won’t.

  Russia is demanding that, just as the originator of the U.N., FDR, had been intending ever since 11 August 1941 (see pages 5&6), which was even before America entered WW II, and until his death on 12 April 1945, when he became replaced by the neoconservative (i.e., seeking an all-encompassing global U.S. empire) President Harry S. Truman, all empires need to be ended now and replaced by a U.N. that is, at last, fully empowered to make and to judge and to impose international laws so that all geostrategically important weaponry will be placed under the U.N.’s control, as FDR had intended. Russia is now (in effect) demanding that this finally be done. Russia is demanding that all empires, including America’s, must be REPLACED by a U.N. that will be re-formed in the image that FDR had been advocating, ever since 11 August 1941. That is what Russia is demanding now: the end of the “neoconservatism” that Truman had started on 25 July 1945, when Truman decided (based largely upon the advice of General Eisenhower, whom Truman practically worshipped) that either the Soviet Union would take over the world, or else America would, and when both he and Ike chose for America to take over the world, and then all subsequent U.S. Presidents have been following through with that neoconservative plan — the Truman-Eisenhower plan, for a world controlled by America’s billionaires (the people who now control the U.S. Government).

  So, since what followed after FDR has been Truman’s America, instead of FDR’s America, this America will say no to that.

  Russia also presented, on the same day, a proposed “AGREEMENT ON MEASURES TO ENSURE THE SECURITY OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION AND MEMBER STATES OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION”, which would start as being an “agreement,” but would be intended ultimately to produce a set of treaties between Russia and each of the NATO nations.

  The great teacher on international national-security law, Alexander Mercouris, headlined on December 18th, “Russia Demands US Strategic Retreat, Demands US Agree Draft Treaties Ending/Reversing NATO Expansion, Revive INF, ABM Treaties, Respect UN, End US Exceptionalism, Regime Change Wars”, and explained there in a one-hour video, in very clear terms, what Putin is proposing in each of these two documents, and what the significance of those proposals are, though those proposals will be the start of either serious negotiations for a fundamental change in the current world-system, or else WW III. This will be a major turning-point in history, either way.

  U.S.-and-allied arms-manufacturers will no doubt be terrified that their decades-long gravy trains are finally being seriously challenged, and the billionaires who are riding those trains will be doing everything they possibly can to continue the current direction of those trains, ever-closer toward WW III (and ever-bigger arms-sales).

  *  *  *

  Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/19/2021 – 23:30

• Americans Brace For Holiday "Tidal Wave" As Omicron Speeds Infections
  Americans Brace For Holiday “Tidal Wave” As Omicron Speeds Infections

  The world is two years in to the COVID pandemic, and yet for many, things are starting to seem like they’re moving in reverse. As European nations start with the latest round of lockdowns, the US is seeing new cases and hospitalizations climb at an alarming rate, as the omicron variant is reportedly showing the world that it’s even more virulent than scientists had anticipated.

  Across the US, over the last month alone, hospitalizations for COVID have jumped 45%, and confirmed cases have increased 40% to a weeklong average of 123K new US infections a day.

  

  Speaking on Friday, Pfizer’s CEO predicted the pandemic will last until 2024. He also said a weaker version of the mRNA vaccines being doled out to adults generated a weaker than expected response, which could delay the approval of shots for children younger than 5.

  As for American sports leagues, the NFL has rescheduled three weekend games after multiple teams were hard by outbreaks. The NHL added another game to its recent list of postponements, and many are beginning to doubt that the league will send the best players for the Winter Olympics in Beijing.

  Back in NYC, where viral videos of police being booed by patrons after storming restaurants to ensure everybody inside is in compliance with the city’s vaccination rules, the Radio City Rockettes have cancelled the rest of their holiday performances, while the Michael Jackson musical “MJ” on Broadway has cancelled performances through Dec. 27.

  Generally speaking, early studies have shown that omicron is much more agile and easily transmissible, even for those who have been “fully vaccinated” a definition that – as Dr. Anthony Fauci has hinted – might change.

  Preliminary data in South Africa suggests Omicron leads to milder illness than the Delta variant, which is still driving much of the current wave of infections. But a British study released on Friday found no difference in severity between the two variants

  But Dr. Fauci suggested that with the growing number of cases, there will also be a growing number of deaths.

  While lockdowns of workplaces and public venues haven’t been instituted – at least not yet – it’s clear fears about the new variant is already having an impact on public life. Many Americans are already delaying holiday plans. Many have been stunned by the speed at which omicron has developed.

  “Two weeks ago, everyone was boosted. Then the infections went up exponentially,” she said. “By January, who is going to feel safe? I just pulled the plug on it.”

  Eric Hrubant, the chief executive of CIRE Travel, said he hadn’t yet seen a wave of cancellations, as he did in August when the Delta variant swept the country. But worried clients have inundated the agency with calls about new COVID-19 protocols, such as mandatory travel quarantines.

  “People aren’t panicking,” he said. “People are making educated decisions.”

  Several US states have already reached alarming levels of cases and hospitalizations. The US states reporting the highest 7-day average of infections are New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Michigan. In some states, like Michigan and Ohio, hospitals are already being overwhelmed by the number of patients. Starting Monday, exhausted hospital workers in Ohio will be getting some help from the National Guard.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/19/2021 – 23:05

• Rise Of Gaddafi's Son Throws Libyan Elections Into Chaos, Alarms West
  Rise Of Gaddafi’s Son Throws Libyan Elections Into Chaos, Alarms West

  Via Southfront.org,

  The presidential and political elections scheduled for December 24th in Libya will not be held. It is certain now. Only official communication from the National High Electoral Commission is awaited. Libya risks a new power vacuum, because both Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibah and Head of State Mohamed Younis Ahmed al-Manfi would have fallen from their posts in coincidence with the elections. Their mandate was completed and linked to the electoral consultation.

  Saif Al Islam Gaddafi’s candidacy destroyed the already precarious balance between the factions competing for power in Libya. The country is divided into three major areas of influence. Tripolitania is substantially under the protection of the Turkish government, Cyrenaica – currently the only “quiet” region – is governed by the Libyan National Army led by General Haftar and is under Russian and Egyptian influence. And finally the Fezzan, the reservoir of much of Libyan wealth with 70 per cent of hydrocarbons. Precisely in the constituency of Sebha, the most important city of Fezzan, Saif Al Islam Gaddafi had presented his candidacy as president of the Libyan Republic.

  

  The pressures of the international community to celebrate the vote have stalled due to the friction between the various actors in Libyan politics. If the vote were truly free, Libya would undoubtedly choose Saif Al Islam as the new head of state. It is the result of all the pre-election polls carried out by the media and social media operators in recent weeks. Gaddafi’s name would have defeated every competitor: an epochal defeat for the United Nations and for the new leaders of Libya after 2011.

  There are clear signals from the political and military fields. Tripoli came under the control of armed militias again last week. Colonel Salah Badi’s Al Samoud Brigade showed the total inconsistency of the Dbeibah/AlMenfi duo. In a few hours, Colonel Badi’s vehicles brought the key points of power in Tripoli under control, from the presidential palace to the Ministry of Defense. At the same time, the Lybian National Army was besieging the city of Sebha. The objective of General Haftar’s troops was to put the 116th Brigade under their control. Mission accomplished. Haftar’s army now controls two of the three main Libyan regions.

  What appears to be the prelude to a civil war is actually a “risiko game” that serves to reposition the forces in the field and restore a stable balance. For Dbeibah and Al Menfi there is no hope of remaining at the helm of the country after the deadline of 24 December. The great laborer is Aquila Saleh, former head of state in Libya between 2014 and 2015. After leaving office in favor of Fayez Al Serraj (the president imposed on Libya by the international community), Saleh continued his work of political texture from Tobruk. Candidate in the elections on 24 December, the Libyan politician managed to find a solution that satisfies all the forces in the field. A “unitary” solution which consists in being all aligned against the return of a Gaddafi to power.

  Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of former Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi, will be permitted to run in Libya’s presidential election after being briefly disqualified for possible war crimes. https://t.co/WTbNNHQnz8

  — ABA International (@ABAInternatl) December 13, 2021

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

  Thus, eternal rivalries are destined to turn into convenient alliances in the near future. Saleh’s plan involves the creation of some guarantee figures. With the elderly leader originally from the city of Al Qubbah as president of the nation, the leadership of the government would be entrusted to the pro-Turkish Fathi Bashaga, former Minister of Internal Affairs of the Al Serraj government. The Saleh-Bashaga ticket is nothing new. The two presented themselves together at the final votes of the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum in Geneva (LPDF, an intra-Libyan series of meetings started in late 2020, aiming to quickly lead to Libyan elections and todemocractic legitimacy of Libyan institutions). The vote on January 18, 2021 saw Saleh and Bashaga (both backed by the US State Department) defeated by five votes by two virtually unknown politicians: current Prime Minister Dbeibah and President Al Manfi.

  The Libyan government will also have two vice presidents. One’s name is sure: Khaled Al Misri, one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya. Al Misri had announced for months that the Brotherhood would not participate in the elections.

  It remains to be clarified which role to assign to Libya’s third major key player: General Haftar. Saleh played a mediating role between the commander of the Lybian National Army and the former Minister of the Interior Bashaga. Haftar, or whoever for him, will have the task of coordinating the military defense system of the whole of Libya. Only a year and a half ago, Haftar’s militias and national government troops (supported by the Turkish contingent) clashed in Operation Volcan of Rage for the conquest of Tripoli. A long time has passed since then.

  Muammar Gaddafi was brutally executed in the street by US/NATO-backed “rebels” on Oct.20,2011 near Sirte.

  

  Gaddafi’s ghost, symbolically embodied in his eldest son, is frightening enough to force the two old rivals to forge a new alliance. The agreement also went through the scrutiny of the Turkish government, which gave the green light. Once in office, the Saleh-Bashaga government will have to set a new date for the elections. But it will be a long time. First, it is necessary to settle the accounts, once and for all, with the “old enemy” of all time: the ghost of Gaddafi.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/19/2021 – 22:40

• Russia Preparing To 'Fight' Over Space Tourism Supremacy
  Russia Preparing To ‘Fight’ Over Space Tourism Supremacy

  Russia is set to compete with billionaires, the United States and China in an ambitious bid to relaunch their fledgling space tourism industry, according to AFP.

  In its first tourist launch in 12 years, the Kremlin sent two adventurers to the International Space Station (ISS) – Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezwa and his assistant. Next, Russia is mulling plans to add a special module onto the ISS for visitors to be able to take spacewalks outside the station, and eventually, trips to the moon.

  

  “We will not give this niche to the Americans. We are ready to fight for it,” Russian space chief Dmitry Rogozin told reporters at a press conference related to the Maezawa launch.

  In the early 2000s, Russian space agency Roscosmos was sending wealthy tourists to space on a regular basis – which came to a screeching halt in 2011 after NASA retired its shuttle for astronauts and booked every available Roscosmos seat for the next decade.

  

  After Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched a successful trip to the ISS, however, NASA dropped Roscosmos, freeing up seats for tourists at a cost of $90 million per flight. The change left the cash-strapped Russian space agency in difficult shape, compounded by budget cuts and corruption scandals.

  In short, Russia had no choice but to start opening seats up to tourism – starting at an estimated $50 – $60 million per seat, which covers the cost of constructing the three-person Soyuz spacecraft in order to shuttle a crew of two, and a rich passenger to make the endeavor financially feasible.

  “The Russian space industry is reliant on consistent orders for these launches,” industry analyst Vitaly Yegorov told AFP.

  In addition to operating funds, Russian space tourism is about pride.

  “It’s national prestige. It gets young people interested in manned spaceflight. It’s the future, after all,” says Dmitry Loskutov, head of Glavkosmos — a subsidiary of Roscosmos responsible for commercial projects, including tourism.

  Russia, China and the US are the only three countries capable of manned flights, however competition from newcomers such as SpaceX, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson has put pressure on the Kremlin to beef up their program.

  According to Andrei Ionin of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics, sending people into ‘simple’ orbit for a few minutes like the above newcomers are doing is no comparison to actually boarding the ISS.

  “It’s like comparing the Ferrari and the Renault market,” he said – a point echoed by Loskutov, who said that the SpaceX and Bezos ‘Blue Origin’ trips were more a part of the “entertainment industry” than real space travel.

  According to Rogozin, the potential new ISS module would be a “separate tourist module,” which could allow for the possibility of new routes – such as following the path of the first human in space – Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/19/2021 – 22:15

• Former Harvard Chemistry Chair Admits To Taking Tens Of Thousands Of Dollars From China
  Former Harvard Chemistry Chair Admits To Taking Tens Of Thousands Of Dollars From China

  Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times,

  The former chair of Harvard University’s chemistry department accused of hiding Chinese ties had admitted to taking tens of thousands of dollars from China, a video presented to the federal court on Dec. 17 shows.

  

  The video, shot during federal investigators’ interrogation of nanoscientist Charles Lieber, was played for jurors during the Friday court hearing, the fourth day of the trial on Lieber’s alleged false statements about China funding.

  The 62-year-old Harvard professor had maintained that he didn’t take payments from a Chinese university except for compensation of his travel costs to China. But he shifted account quickly after Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents Robert Plumb and Kara Spice accosted him with copies of evidence, including a bilingual contract he signed with the Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) in 2011.

  “That’s pretty damning,” Lieber, dressed in a blue jacket, told the agents at the campus police station during a three-hour interrogation, which took place on the day of Lieber’s arrest nearly two years ago. “Now that you bring it up, yes, I do remember,” he said in the recording, local media reported.

  The five-year agreement described Lieber as a “strategic scientist” at the Chinese school that entitled him to $50,000 per month with approximately $158,000 in living expenses. It also alluded to his future involvement with China’s Thousand Talents Plan, a state-run program to solicit top scientific and specialized experts from around the world.

  Later in the interview, FBI agents showed Lieber an email he wrote, asking the Wuhan university to pay half of his salary in cash with the other half deposited into a Chinese bank account.

  “I can’t even believe I did this,” Lieber said in response, local media reported. “It’s my mistake and obviously I made a mistake.”

  

  Charles Lieber (L) and his defense lawyer Marc Mukasey exit the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse in Boston, Mass., on Dec. 17. (Learner Liu/The Epoch Times)

  Lieber said he likely made no more than six trips to China around 2012 and was paid between $10,000 and $20,000 each time, according to local media reports. He had spent the money—a total he estimated to be between $50,000 and $100,000—on groceries and living expenses, such as housekeeping.

  The payment was in $100 bills that Lieber brought back in his luggage, he said. He didn’t declare them at customs nor pay any taxes on the money.

  “If I brought it back, I didn’t declare it, and that’s illegal,” he told the FBI agents.

  In the recording, Lieber repeatedly said he couldn’t recall the precise amount of money, blaming the lapses on his “selective memory,” according to local reports.

  The Chinese bank account had a balance equivalent to $200,000 under Lieber’s name as of 2014, which the scientist said he never tapped into, in part because of his deteriorating health and a recent cancer diagnosis.

  ‘Very Dishonest’

  Since 2008, the Lieber Research Group at Harvard University that Lieber led has received more than $15 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Department of Defense.

  Lieber was a contractual participant of the Thousand Talents Plan between at least 2012 and 2017, a court document shows.

  While affiliation with the Chinese recruitment program isn’t itself illegal, it constitutes a foreign conflict of interest that researchers need to disclose for receiving federal grants.

  Lieber conceded that it “looks like I was very dishonest” when the Department of Defense questioned him about his involvement in the talent program in 2018.

  “I wasn’t completely transparent by any stretch of the imagination,” he told the agents in the recording.

  

  Harvard University professor Charles Lieber (L) leaves federal court with his lawyer Marc Mukasey, in Boston, Mass., on Dec. 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)

  Lieber said what had motivated him to get into the talent program was not money but a desire to get recognized. He was “younger and stupid” at the time, he said.

  “I’m not exactly competitive, but if I get other people to pursue an aspect based on the research I did, there is a trickle down,” Lieber said, according to local media reports. “Every scientist wants a Nobel Prize.”

  The Harvard professor later sought to distance himself from the Wuhan collaboration, including by canceling a trip to the school in June 2015.

  In a 2018 email to a research colleague two days after he was interviewed by the Department of Defense, Lieber expressed concerns about a Chinese web page listing him as directing the Wuhan research lab, saying, “I lost a lot of sleep worrying about all of these things last night and want to start taking steps to correct sooner than later.”

  “I will be careful about what I discuss with Harvard University, and none of this will be shared with government investigators at this time,” he wrote in the email, which was also presented in court on Friday.

  In the interrogation, though, he insisted that he didn’t do anything wrong—except that he “shouldn’t have had an agreement and accepted money.”

  “You’re right, it was wrong,” Lieber said when FBI agents asked why he decided to conceal the information from Harvard and U.S. authorities. “I was afraid of being arrested, like I am right now.”

  Lieber is facing six counts of federal charges, including lying to federal authorities, filing false income tax returns, and failing to report on his foreign bank and financial accounts. He has pleaded not guilty to all six.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/19/2021 – 21:50

• Stocks, Bond Yields Tumble After Manchin "No" On Build Back Better, Goldman Slashes GDP
  Stocks, Bond Yields Tumble After Manchin “No” On Build Back Better, Goldman Slashes GDP

  A decisive “no” from Senator Joe Manchin on President Biden’s Build Back Better (BBB) social engineering spendfest has sparked anger from The White House and economic outlook cuts from Wall Street.

  While BBB enactment had already looked like a close call, in light of Manchin’s comments Goldman has removed the assumption that BBB will become law from its forecast.

  In light of their changed fiscal assumptions, Goldman lowers their real GDP forecast for 2022: 2% in Q1 (vs. 3% prior), 3% in Q2 (vs. 3.5% prior), and 2.75% in Q3 (vs. 3% prior).

  The main points from Goldman’s report are as follows:

  1. Senator Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) released a statement this morning indicating that he would not support President Biden’s Build Back Better (BBB) legislation, saying that his “concerns have only increased as the pandemic surges on, inflation rises and geopolitical uncertainty increases around the world”. His statement also cites electric grid reliability and the increased reliance on foreign supply chains as concerns, in reference to the bill’s energy and climate provisions. In apparent reference to the bill’s social benefits, he says “my Democratic colleagues in Washington are determined to dramatically reshape our society in a way that leaves our country even more vulnerable to the threats we face.” He also makes multiple references to concerns about the public debt and potential fiscal implications of the legislation.

  2. BBB no longer looks like the base case. We recently put the probability of a modified version of the BBB legislation passing at slightly better than even but, in light of Manchin’s comments, the odds have clearly declined and we will remove the assumption from our forecast. With headline CPI reaching as high as 7% in the next few months in our forecast before it begins to fall, the inflation concerns that Sen. Manchin and others have already expressed are likely to persist, making passage more difficult. The omicron variant is also likely to shift political attention back to virus-related issues and away from long-term reforms. There is still a possibility that Congress passes a few smaller short-term fiscal provisions aimed at virus-related issues, and it also still looks likely that Congress will pass a version of the Senate’s competitiveness legislation, which included around $250bn in economic incentives related to research, manufacturing, semiconductors and supply chains.

  3. The most important question for the near-term outlook is the fate of the expanded child tax credit. Sen. Manchin has already proposed adding work requirements on the credit, which could be done by making it only partly refundable, as it had been until 2021. In theory, congressional Democrats could finance a permanent extension of a partly- or non-refundable child tax credit at the current higher level ($3000/$3600 per child, depending on age) with the revenue from the tax increases in the House-passed BBB; Manchin has not objected to those tax increases. However, it would likely take several weeks to negotiate a new compromise, and with the expanded child tax credit expiring Dec. 31, the urgency to extend it is likely to fade while any negotiations take place. It is also unclear whether progressive Democrats would accept legislation that drops most of their other priorities. While we still think there is some chance that Congress extends the expanded child tax credit retroactively in some form, the odds of this happening seem to be less than even at this point.

  4. A failure to pass BBB has negative growth implications. We had already expected a negative fiscal impulse for 2022 as a result of the fading support from COVID-relief legislation enacted in 2020 and 2021, and without BBB enactment, this fiscal impulse will become somewhat more negative than we had expected. Specifically, the expiration of the child tax credit and the lack of the other new spending we had been expecting will reduce the fiscal impulse to growth by around 1pp in Q1, 0.5pp in Q2 and 0.25pp in Q3. With this change, our GDP forecast for 2022 now stands at 2% in Q1 (vs. 3% prior), 3% in Q2 (vs. 3.5% prior) and 2.75% in Q3 (vs. 3% prior).

  

  5. Most Fed officials likely expected the BBB Act or something like it to become law, and a failure to pass it would introduce some risk to our expectation that the FOMC will deliver the first rate hike in March.

  6. While the apparent demise of the BBB legislation has negative implications for near-term consumption, for financial markets there are also likely to be some offsetting positive effects. The odds of corporate tax increases have now declined, for example, which our equity strategists had estimated would reduce S&P profits by 3%. And while a failure of the BBB legislation would be a clear setback for the renewable energy sector, it would be a positive for biopharma which would no longer be tapped for more than $100bn in price reductions in the Medicare program.

  However, the bond and stock market have reacted (for now, apparently not seeing the ‘bad news is good news’ angle from Goldman) as one would expect, with futures lower (S&P futs are now underwater for December)…

  

  And 30Y Yields lower (also lower for the month)…

  

  The White House is furious.

  White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement on Sunday that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) went back on his word when he announced Sunday that he will not support President Joe Biden’s mammoth “Build Back Better” spending package, likely imperiling the measure.

  “Senator Manchin’s comments this morning on FOX are at odds with his discussions this week with the President, with White House staff, and with his own public utterances.”

  Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a self-described democratic socialist, alleged Manchin “does not have the guts to stand up to powerful special interests” by voting for the bill. Sanders did not elaborate on who those “powerful special interests” may be.

  The White House will continue to apply pressure on Manchin to see whether he will reverse his position, Psaki said.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/19/2021 – 21:25

• Morgan Stanley: Here Comes The China Upswing
  Morgan Stanley: Here Comes The China Upswing

  From Chetan Ahya, chief Asia economist at Morgan Stanley

  The China Upswing

  Over the years, China has experienced a number of mini-cycles. This year brought another iteration – the economy started the year on a strong footing but has entered a policy-induced downturn. The policy cycle has shifted from overtightening to easing, and our chief China economist Robin Xing estimates that GDP growth will accelerate to 5.5%Y in 2022. Investors we speak with are less confident in the recovery, but we think that this mini-cycle repeats a familiar pattern and policy-makers have already taken steps to reverse the downturn.

  Moreover, the recent statement after the Central Economic Working Conference confirms their resolve and increases our confidence on the recovery call.

  China’s mini economic cycles tend to follow policy cycles. Most downturns begin because of macro or regulatory tightening. Tighter policy starts out as counter- cyclical, typically when external demand is strong. But eventually it becomes pro-cyclical, sometimes because external demand conditions deteriorate (e.g., the onset of trade tensions in mid-2018). Once growth decelerates beyond the policy-makers’ comfort zone, their priorities shift to stabilizing growth and preventing an adverse spillover impact to the labor market. Their policy stance shifts accordingly – they first pause on tightening macro and regulatory policies, and then start to ease.

  In the current cycle, with the sharp pick-up in external demand, policy-makers stuck to their playbook and tightened macro policies to slow infrastructure and property spending. But policy tightening was unusually aggressive this time, with debt/GDP reduced by 10 percentage points in 2021. The property sector has seen the most prominent tightening.

  This tightening then became pro-cyclical. The Delta wave and China’s continued Covid-zero approach curtailed the recovery in consumption growth, keeping consumption below trend. Policy measures have extended beyond reducing excessive leverage, with regulatory tightening ranging across the internet, education and entertainment sectors, and a step-up in decarbonization efforts.

  The rapid succession of regulatory actions has taken markets by surprise, adding uncertainty, and they have lasted longer than expected, keeping market concerns on the boil.

  Now, with GDP growth decelerating to just 3.3%Y in 4Q21 (4.9% on a 2-year CAGR basis), policy-makers have hit pause on deleveraging and began to ease both monetary and fiscal policy a few weeks ago. RRR cuts were coupled with window guidance to banks to allocate credit to SMEs, renewables, mortgages and developer loans. Faster local government bond issuance will translate into stronger infrastructure spending, and property purchase restrictions have been lifted in a number of cities.

  This past week, top policy-makers convened at the Central Economic Working Conference (CEWC), an annual meeting that sets the agenda for the economy in the year ahead. Their statement acknowledged that “China’s economic development is facing three pressures: demand contraction, supply shock and weakening expectations”, suggesting to us that they will continue to take action to stem the downturn:

  • Policy-makers are prioritizing infrastructure investment in areas like pollution alleviation, carbon emission reduction, new energy sources, new technologies and new industrial clusters.

  • Regarding the property sector, the statement mentioned efforts to “support the commodity housing market to better satisfy homebuyers’ reasonable housing demand”. They will “enhance guidance on housing market expectations” and “promote a virtuous cycle” for the first time in the past decade. The January 2022 reset of mortgage loan quotas will help to lift home purchases.

  • As for decarbonization, a similar reset of the targets in the new year will alleviate near-term headwinds. Policy-makers have now indicated that they will first invest in alternative energy before curtailing fossil fuel-based energy sources.

  These easing measures will complement the sustained strength in exports and a pick-up in private capex, driving the recovery.

  

  The character of regulatory tightening is also changing at the margin. Policymakers are taking a more structured and institutionalized approach, and changes from here on will likely be more incremental. More broadly, the CEWC statement also made it clear that while policy-makers want to divide the economic pie more equally, the pie still needs to grow, which in our view will alleviate concerns about further actions that could weigh on private corporate sentiment.

  In terms of market implications, our China equity strategy team continues to prefer A-shares rather than offshore markets. Our China property and Asia credit strategy analysts are bullish on the China property sector as well as China HY property.

  The key risk to our call in the near term is the Omicron variant. The effectiveness of containment and tracing capabilities has improved over time such that each successive wave of Covid outbreaks has had a smaller impact on mobility and hence growth. However, Omicron’s greater transmissibility suggests to us that it will keep China’s Covid-zero policy in place for longer and could force China to impose more selective, surgical shutdowns than during the Delta wave.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/19/2021 – 20:55

• Chicago's Ex-City Attorney Brands Mayor Lori Lightfoot A 'Disaster' After $2.9 Million Settlement Over Botched Police Raid
  Chicago’s Ex-City Attorney Brands Mayor Lori Lightfoot A ‘Disaster’ After $2.9 Million Settlement Over Botched Police Raid

  The former head city attorney for Chicago slammed Mayor Lori Lightfoot in a new op-ed, branding her tenure a “disaster” after the City Council voted on Wednesday to pay $2.9 million to a woman who was handcuffed by police while naked during a botched 2019 raid on her home, according to Fox News.

  

  Mark Flessner, the former head city attorney, resigned after the Law Department attempted to conceal video of the raid on the wrong address.

  The vote to pay the woman, Anjanette Young, came two days after a council committee advised that the city accept the settlement after Young’s attorney agreed to the figure.

  Lightfoot used the settlement at the taxpayer’s expense to “jump-start her reelection campaign,” Mark Flessner, who resigned after the Law Department attempted to withhold video of the raid on the wrong address, wrote in a recent op-ed for the Chicago Tribune. 

  Flessner outlined how officers executed a search warrant at the wrong address and Young was forced to stand for six seconds uncovered and then another 10 minutes handcuffed and covered with a blanket while officers secured the home. Recognizing the embarrassment Young must have felt and that she should have been compensated, Flessner said the settlement should have been far less, around $50,000. -Fox News

  According to Flessner, Lightfoot “has made a deal with the national civil rights movement to raise money for her reelection … In exchange for national civil rights leaders donating millions of dollars to her campaign, she will do their bidding, like she did in the Young case. Chicago will be poorer for it.”

  “The mayor publicly criticizes those who work for her and provides little to no guidance. She belittles the City Council, the police and fire departments, and the teachers,” Flessner added. “She has no professional respect for any of the hardworking, dedicated public servants who make this city run day to day. That is why her tenure has been a disaster.” 

  In response, Lightfoot said at a Wednesday press conference that she asked for Flessner’s resignation because she had “utterly lost confidence in his ability to function as the corporation counsel” and had acted to stop a media outlet from publishing the footage without her go-ahead. “Fundamentally, what was clear, is he just didn’t see [Young],” Lightfoot said. “He didn’t value her experience in that moment, as we all saw in that video,” she said.

  

  According to Chicago Corporation Counsel Celia Meza, by settling with Young, the city avoided what could have been a much higher price tag had her lawsuit gone to trial – particularly in light of the fact that Young had repeatedly told officers they were at the wrong address, and because the Civilian Office of Police Accountability recommended that eight officers either be suspended or fired over the Feb. 2019 raid.

  “No amount of money could erase what Ms. Young has suffered. No amount of money could provide Ms. Young with what she truly wants — which is to never have been placed in this situation in the first place,” Young’s attorney said in a Wednesday statement.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/19/2021 – 20:20

• Why Is The Left Suddenly Worried About The End Of Democracy?
  Why Is The Left Suddenly Worried About The End Of Democracy?

  Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

  What is behind recent pessimistic appraisals of democracy’s future, from Hillary Clinton, Adam Schiff, Brian Williams and other elite intellectuals, media personalities, and politicians on the Left? Some are warning about its possible erosion in 2024. Others predict democracy’s downturn as early 2022, with scary scenarios of “autocracy” and Trump “coups.”

  

  To answer that question, understand first what is not behind these shrill forecasts.

  • They are not worried about 2 million foreign nationals crashing the border in a single year, without vaccinations during a pandemic. Yet it seems insurrectionary for a government simply to nullify its own immigration laws.

  • They are not worried that some 800,000 foreign nationals, some residing illegally, will now vote in New York City elections.

  • They are not worried that there are formal efforts underway to dismantle the U.S. Constitution by junking the 233-year-old Electoral College or the preeminence of the states in establishing ballot laws in national elections.

  • They are not worried that we are witnessing an unprecedented left-wing effort to scrap the 180-year-old filibuster, the 150-year-old nine-person Supreme Court, and the 60-year tradition of 50 states, for naked political advantage.

  • They are not worried that the Senate this year put on trial an impeached ex-president and private citizen, without the chief justice in attendance, without a special prosecutor or witnesses, and without a formal commission report of presidential high crimes and misdemeanors.

  • They are not worried that the FBI, Justice Department, CIA, Hillary Clinton, and members of the Obama administration systematically sought to use U.S. government agencies to sabotage a presidential campaign, transition, and presidency, via the use of a foreign national and ex-spy Christopher Steele and his coterie of discredited Russian sources.

  • They are not worried that the Pentagon suddenly has lost the majority support of the American people. Top current and retired officers have flagrantly violated the chain-of-command, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and without data or evidence have announced a hunt in the ranks for anyone suspected of “white rage” or “white supremacy.”

  • They are not worried that in 2020, a record 64 percent of the electorate did not cast their ballots on Election Day.

  • Nor are they worried that the usual rejection rate in most states of non-Election Day ballots plunged—even as an unprecedented 101 million ballots were cast by mail or early voting.

  • And they are certainly not worried that partisan billionaires of Silicon Valley poured well over $400 million into selected precincts in swing states to “help” public agencies conduct the election.

  What then is behind this new left-wing hysteria about the supposed looming end of democracy?

  It is quite simple.

  The Left expects to lose power over the next two years – both because of the way it gained and used it, and because of its radical, top-down agendas that never had any public support.

  After gaining control of both houses of Congress and the presidency – with an obsequious media and the support of Wall Street, Silicon Valley, higher education, popular culture, entertainment, and professional sports—the Left has managed in just 11 months to alienate a majority of voters.

  The nation has been wracked by unprecedented crime and nonenforcement of the borders. Leftist district attorneys either won’t indict criminals; they let them out of jails or both.

  Illegal immigration and inflation are soaring. Deliberate cuts in gas and oil production helped spike fuel prices.

  All this bad news is on top of the Afghanistan disaster, worsening racial relations, and an enfeebled president.

  • Democrats are running 10 points behind the Republicans in generic polls, with the midterms less than a year away.

  • Joe Biden’s negatives run between 50 and 57 percent—in Donald Trump’s own former underwater territory.

  • Less than a third of the country wants Biden to run for reelection. In many head-to-head polls, Trump now defeats Biden.

  In other words, leftist elites are terrified that democracy will work too robustly.

  After the Russian collusion hoax, two impeachments, the Hunter Biden laptop stories, the staged melodramas of the Kavanaugh hearings, the Jussie Smollett con, the Covington kids smear, and the Rittenhouse trial race frenzy, the people are not just worn out by leftist hysterias, but they also weary of how the Left gains power and administers it.

  If Joe Biden were polling at 70 percent approval, and his policies at 60 percent, the current doomsayers would be reassuring us of the “health of the system.”

  They are fearful and angry not because democracy doesn’t work, but because it does despite their own media and political efforts to warp it.

  When a party is hijacked by radicals and uses almost any means necessary to gain and use power for agendas that few Americans support, then average voters express their disapproval.

  That reality apparently terrifies an elite.

  It then claims any system that allows the people to vote against the Left is not people power at all.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/19/2021 – 19:45

• Amazon Bowed To Beijing's Propaganda Arm To Keep Chinese Sales Secured, New Report Reveals
  Amazon Bowed To Beijing’s Propaganda Arm To Keep Chinese Sales Secured, New Report Reveals

  Similar to what we noted about Apple and its “pay to play” arrangement with the Chinese government at the beginning of the month, it looks as though Amazon is also in the midst of trading integrity for profit when it comes to Beijing.

  Amazon was “marketing a collection of President Xi Jinping’s speeches and writings on its Chinese website about two years ago, when Beijing delivered an edict,” according to a new report from Reuters. Beijing wanted Amazon to stop allowing customer ratings and reviews from China.

  The demand from the CCP came as a result of negative reviews of Xi’s book, the report says. “I think the issue was anything under five stars,” a source told Reuters. 

  Amazon complied with the demand, according to two sources, and on Amazon.cn, customers are unable to review or rate the book. The comments section for the book is also disabled.

  Adhering to the demands of the CCP is one piece of a “deeper, decade-long effort by the company to win favor in Beijing,” the report claimed.  

  

  Amazon said in an internal 2018 memo about doing business in China: “Ideological control and propaganda is the core of the toolkit for the communist party to achieve and maintain its success. We are not making judgement on whether it is right or wrong.”

  The report claims that “helping to further the ruling Communist Party’s global economic and political agenda” has been crucial to Amazon’s success in China.

  In fact, Amazon even partnered with Beijing’s propaganda apparatus to create a selling portal for U.S. customers called “China Books”. While it hasn’t generated significant revenue, the report says, “it was seen by Amazon as crucial to winning support in China”.

  The same 2018 Amazon briefing document called China Books “the key element to safeguard” to keep its licensing problem with China at bay. 

  Reuters reports that the books push favorable CCP lines on everything from Uyghur labor camps to Covid-19:

  One book extols life in Xinjiang, where United Nations experts have said China interned one million ethnic Uyghurs in a network of camps. The book – “Incredible Xinjiang: Stories of Passion and Heritage” – discusses an online comedy show situated in the region. The book quotes an actor who plays a Uyghur “country bumpkin” saying that ethnicity is “not a problem” there. That echoes the position of Beijing, which has denied mistreating minority groups.

  Some books portray China’s battle against the COVID-19 pandemic, which began in the Chinese city of Wuhan, in heroic terms. One is titled “Stories of Courage and Determination: Wuhan in Coronavirus Lockdown.” Another begins with commentary from Xi: “Our success to date has once again demonstrated the strengths of CPC (the Communist Party of China) leadership and Chinese socialism.”

  Recall, earlier this month we also shed light on a secret $275 billion deal Apple signed with the Chinese government. The deal emerged after a series of meetings between Cook and Chinese officials back in 2016, we wrote. 

  

  China is Apple’s second-biggest market after the US, and has long been targeted as a critical market for growth. Apple’s iPhones have seen growing popularity despite rising tensions with the US. This year, Apple became the second-biggest smartphone maker in China.

  The deal, which was forged over the span of years, represents a five-year plan, according to documents from inside Apple that were seen by The Information. Whether talks on another five-year plan are in the works isn’t yet clear.

  “The fact that Apple never disclosed this deal to the US will likely trigger an angry response from lawmakers, who are bound to question Apple’s loyalty to the US, along with whether it prioritized profits and growth over respecting human rights (so much for all that climate virtue signaling),” we wrote earlier this month. 

  Before the deal was struck, documents show, Apple executives were scrambling to salvage their relationship with Chinese officials, who had accused Apple of not contributing enough to the local economy. Amid the government crackdown and the bad publicity that accompanied it, iPhone sales plummeted, though they have since bounced back.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/19/2021 – 19:10

• TINA, BOGO & FOMO's Engines Are Stuttering
  TINA, BOGO & FOMO’s Engines Are Stuttering

  Authored by Peter Tchir via Academy Securities,

  The Last Thing I Wanted to Write about is Omicron         

  I really didn’t want to have to start another weekend T-Report thinking about COVID. I would much rather have pointed you towards the excellent Around the World – Geopolitical Surprises, published Friday. I’d much prefer to jump into today’s themes, but it is difficult to talk about markets, the economy, or inflation without at least attempting to address what is going on with COVID.

  What we “seem” to know so far:

  Omicron is highly transmissible. The spread seems rapid and it seems to be able to infect people who have been vaccinated, who have had boosters, or who have had other variants.

  • The symptoms seem relatively mild. That seems to be the case for those who have been vaccinated and those who have not been vaccinated. From what I can tell it is more severe for the unvaccinated, but even then, nowhere close to what we were seeing when COVID initially burst onto the scene.

  • We have likely gotten far better at dealing with COVID. Knowing those most at risk presumably helps them be more cautious when necessary. Treatment options now exist unlike back in early 2020. We should be able to manage this much better.

  • Have the politician’s gotten better at dealing with COVID? While I believe that the population at large actually has a decent understanding of the risks and is taking precautions as they see fit, the wildcard is what governments do with the latest variant. We are seeing countries in Europe revert to lockdowns. China, if it maintains its zero-tolerance policy, will see lockdowns as well. On Tuesday, President Biden is set to give a speech detailing our plans. As far as I can tell, lockdowns have become politically dangerous here. There seems to be (at least from everything I can tell) a large portion of the population that has done all the vaccinations and followed all the rules and doesn’t seem to believe that a lockdown is necessary given what we know about this variant.

  • What politicians do may be more dangerous than the Omicron variant for markets and the economy. Several people that I find to be very good have expressed this view, and I agree with it.

  I think on Tuesday, President Biden will be cautious but avoid anything too disruptive.

  COVID Modelling 

  On Twitter, there is an interesting thread about COVID modelling that is worth reading. @NateSilver538 weighed in on the discussion, which is what caught my eye, as he is an expert at modelling. The original thread started with @FraserNelson (Editor of the Spectator, which I don’t know much about, and would have ignored, if not for Nate weighing in). The other participant is @GrahamMedley, professor of infectious disease modelling and chair of the SPI-M, a sub-group of SAGE, which seems to be responsible for the modelling that the U.K. government relies on.

  What is interesting is that the modelling focuses on what could be considered “worst-case” scenarios, certainly those where the population does little to curtail the spread.

  I am not sure what side of the argument I come out on (my bias is certainly towards probability weighted scenario analysis), but I’m not sure what the right approach is on this topic. Having said that, I found this thread fascinating and intend to dig deeper as it gives a little insight into the “science” and how politicians use (or even drive) the “science.”

  

  

  

  I am not sure what to make of this subject, and maybe it is nothing, but it caught my eye enough that I figured that I’d point it out to you as I suspect it will be a topic that gets addressed going forward giving us more insight into models and policy response.

  TINA, BOGO & FOMO’s Engines Are Stuttering

  Now we can focus on a few things that will be in play in the coming weeks.

  Year-end is always a difficult time to think about market direction as people are out of the office, liquidity is thin, people have positions to defend or push in an environment that makes it easier to push. And, this year, we have the impact of Omicron, and how politicians choose to respond to that.

  This week’s piece follows up on a few recent pieces:

  • The Markets Love the FOMC – For Now.

  • The Training Wheels are Off.

  • To a lesser extent, Inflation, Like Greed, Is Good, which got a boost this past week with the Senate cracking down on slave labor in the Xinjiang Province of China. We are at the early stages of supply chain scrutiny, driven by ESG, and that will reshape the global economy.

  

  BOGO vs Quality

  Buy One, Get One free, or BOGO seems to be running rampant right now.

  If I check my emails, I think there are sales that started as Black Friday sales (on the Monday before Thanksgiving) that turned into Cyber Monday sales and are somehow “still” available today. It reminds me of the “going out of business” sales which would hit late night TV, where the seller seemed to be going out of business for years, despite creating an urgency on Saturday nights at 1 am.

  I think that there are a few important things to take away from this:

  • There was a time, not that long ago, that if you slapped a big enough sale price on something, people would buy it. Now, and this is more anecdotal, but no one wants to buy things in “that color” or with those design “features” at a discount if no one wanted to buy them at regular price. Whether there is less care about owning the label rather than something that looked good, I am seeing/hearing about the trend towards quality. That extends, to some degree, not just to the product but to the procurement of that product.

  • I believe that we will continue to see this trend towards “quality”, where people will pay more for the product they want, which will include factors such as country of origin, sustainability, and other potentially “intangible” factors that affect the perceived quality of a good or service. Capturing this shift will allow companies to drive sales and earnings.

  • This phenomenon also seems to be hitting the stock market. Even as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq hover near all-time highs, there are a large number of stocks that are 50% below their peaks. Everywhere I turn, I see articles about the lack of breadth. How unusual it is for indices to be up 23% (S&P 500) year to date, with so many laggards. I highlight this, because as a contrarian, I naturally gravitate to these types of stocks. These, in theory, are stocks that could be ripe for huge bounces, possibly even short squeezes, and I’m finally inclined to get on that bandwagon. But (and this remains a big but) quality matters and half off sales now don’t attract buyers in stocks or goods. Maybe it is too early for some of these, despite the discounts?

  Fundamentals vs Technicals

  This little rant follows directly from the BOGO comments.

  The number of interviews I’ve watched or listened to recently where the pundit or stockpicker mentions that the recent 10%, or 25%, or even 50% pullback had nothing to do with fundamentals and has everything to do with technicals has reached a peak. It is driving me nuts! (I am sure that some of my comments on media drive people nuts as well, but that is a topic for another day).

  I am completely willing to accept that the drops are not associated with fundamentals per se. I am biased, so I do think broad shifts in the economy impact future fundamentals, but my main issue is that no one seems to believe that any of the 50% rises, or doublings, or even triplings, had anything to do with technicals and things out of their control.

  I can completely agree that a stock dropping 50% in a couple of months had more to do with positioning and other factors (which is why I love exploring those other factors). But I also believe that stocks that doubled or even quadrupled in a quarter or two likely weren’t being completely driven by fundamentals and other factors (like performance chasing, thin floats, etc.) impacted the upside.

  Not sure why this one bothers me so much, but I suspect that until there is more acceptance that these factors work both ways, there will be people holding positions that could be in for more downside.

  TINA vs There Is An Alternative

  Not sure what a good antonym for TINA would be and TIAA is already taken, but maybe someone will come up with a good one (or send me a good antonym if it already exists).

  While the Fed hasn’t hiked and interest rates across the globe remain low, Central Banks are gradually pumping less money into the economy. The “threat of hikes” is real.

  While today, I can’t say that there is an alternative, we are headed down a path to where there will be alternatives which should offer opportunities and add to some existing risks.

  FOMO’s Engines are Stuttering

  While FOMO’s engines may not stall, that is increasingly a big risk.

  I’ve had a lot of interesting discussions about FOMO in the past week or two.

  There is the obvious driver of FOMO, which is higher prices. Higher prices create the atmosphere where the fear of missing out becomes prevalent. But let’s spend less time on that obvious one and spend a bit of time on things that aren’t discussed quite as much and could be the death knell for some of the biggest FOMO trades (with a focus on crypto).

  • For many assets the “average” investor is already likely to be under water on their investments.

    • Early buyers are still way up because they bought cheap. Investors who came late to the party have born the brunt of the pullback. For many assets, the in-flows accelerate as prices rise, so that when they fall, the “average” investor is now staring at losses.

  • There is a correlation between “weak” hands and losses.

    • Almost by definition, FOMO means that an investor eventually succumbs to their fear of missing out and buys the asset. So, when we get the pullbacks, the people with losses are the ones who were least interested in being involved in the first place. The early adopters told the story, the 2nd wave believed it, and spread it to the 3rd wave, etc. The latest wave of buyers is far less likely to be successful in generating a next wave (what forces someone in once the music may have stopped).

  • Complexity aids FOMO, but also encourages doubt.

    • The more complex something is, the easier it is to overcome fear, because maybe people do know a lot more than you. After all, Bitcoin is always pictured as a cute gold coin, so it must be a coin or currency of some sort? Sorry, for being a bit too sarcastic with that one, but I did start 2021 bullish crypto. It is very difficult to convince someone to buy a generic $1 bill for $5. It is much easier to find a buyer for something that is truly difficult to comprehend. As that doubt sets in, and starts infiltrating the conversations, you have a real risk of “rolling” back the waves. Each successive wave was more reluctant than the prior wave and their performance has been disappointing.

    • The sheer number of coins, NFTs, tokens, etc. were always a bit of a head scratcher when things were going up, but raises some concerns as things are going down. I’ve read some great papers about coins that will do well in the metaverse for example, but during FOMO, this competition added to the opportunity set and now it may make many wonder why there are so many and if they are all useful.

    • El Salvador, Bitcoin Bonds, and Bitcoin City. This may work in the end, but if I was good at GIFS, I’d have a good “how it started” and “how it is going” GIF. This could have been inspirational (and it may yet be), but it may also further detract from the “use” case, which is the way I’m leaning at the moment.

  • Volatility is a requirement of FOMO.

    • This may sound a bit weird, but volatility is required to create FOMO. If something can jump 10% in a day, then you better buy it today because it might be too expensive tomorrow. In a world where I’ve seen the term “non-permanent losses” used to describe what pullbacks do to your holdings, you need that hope of a huge swing. In stocks, TQQQ, a triple leveraged Nasdaq 100 play, is all the rage, and in London, a 5x version was launched (along with 3x versions of various ARK funds).

    • If prices merely stabilize, FOMO will decrease. Gambling is the most fun when you get instant gratification. Heck, maybe even instant results, as gamblers keep coming back. If the market is heavily skewed by “gamblers”, let’s call them people who are heavily leveraged, enjoy the weekly option trading game, etc., then a decrease in volatility (especially for the weekly options players) immediately impacts their participation.

    • While a bit of a non-sequitur, I have been thinking a lot about David Tepper’s interview on CNBC from September 2010. It is quite famous as he used a colloquialism to describe his positioning which turned out to be spot on. What most people forget, is at the end of that interview, he is asked by Kernen if he has any questions. While it seems to have been edited out of the clips I can find, I will do my best to paraphrase what happened next. Tepper asked Kernen about what drives their business (the business of financial media). Kernen swept his arm, broadly indicating the set and said that even with the fancy new studio and all the new graphics, whether markets went up or whether they went down, none of it mattered, because what mattered was volatility. Why do people tune in en masse? Because there is volatility and I think that fits the narrative that FOMO and volatility go hand in hand.

  Do Diamond Hand, HODLers Ever Run Out of Money?

  Buy the dip.

  Buy the dip.

  How much money do people have if they never sell? The diamond hands/HODLer seems to apply more to crypto than to stocks, though I think you could easily argue that it has filtered into the meme stocks and maybe some specific areas (think back to BOGO).

  There have been record inflows into stocks this year. How much more money is available? How much leverage is being employed? That really scares me as leverage is the biggest step towards forced selling.

  Bottom Line

  On the equity side of things, I’m leaning heavily towards:

  • Companies and cash flows that are relatively easy to understand

  • Valuations that are compelling on “traditional” metrics (probably a convoluted way of saying value).

  • Dividend payers

  • The plumbing. Anything that makes the economy work. Logistics. Companies that benefit from building factories and infrastructure domestically. Real estate probably falls into this category.

  • Mexico, then Latin America, and Canada. As supply chains shift, the “repatriation” will be to those that we are closer to, both in terms of proximity and in terms of political ideology.

  • Cyclicals.

  On the fixed income side of things:

  • I’d like to bet on slightly higher long-end yields and steeper curves, but the Fed seems to be intent on saying things that the market is interpreting as policy mistakes.

  • Credit is fine. When you look at what I like in equities, that encompasses the vast majority of the credit market, especially high yield, from a sector standpoint. Own credit, including high yield and leveraged loans.

  • Delve into structured products. While TINA might be fading in equities, I think it will still exist in credit and will be where to pick up incremental yield and is worth the risk. Digging into structured products will be key.

  While reaction to Omicron will drive the direction at the start of the week, I think quality will overwhelm FOMO in the coming weeks.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/19/2021 – 18:35

• Erdogan Reiterates Commitment To 'Islamic' Rate-Cut Plan, Threatens Turkish Business Lobby Over Dissent
  Erdogan Reiterates Commitment To ‘Islamic’ Rate-Cut Plan, Threatens Turkish Business Lobby Over Dissent

  Having seen his nation’s currency continue its collapse (losing half its value in the last three months), despite shutting down stock trading last week and proposing huge fines for any form of “hoarding”, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addressed the nation in a public statement, invoking religion as behind his decision to buck economic orthodoxy and cut rates into hyperinflation.

  

  Referring to Islamic proscriptions on usury as a basis for his new policy push, Erdogan clarified ‘his’ policy: “What is it? We are lowering interest rates. Don’t expect anything else from me.“

  “As a Muslim, I’ll continue to do what is required by nas,” Erdogan said, using an Arabic word used in Turkish to refer to Islamic teachings.

  More fundamentally speaking, as Bloomberg notes, the president believes Turkey can free itself from reliance on foreign capital flows by abandoning policies that prioritized higher interest rates and strong inflows. At the heart of his ideas is a belief that lower interest rates will also curb consumer price growth – the exact opposite of the consensus view among the world’s central bankers.

  The response to Erdogan’s latest statement is more of the same – selling the lira…

  

  The leader blamed the collapse of the currency on an “economic siege”, reiterating that he wouldn’t back down from his plan (to drive his nation into hyperinflation?).

  “Of course, we know the impact from price increases on people’s daily lives. We are of course aware of the instability caused by the lira’s fluctuations and its impact on prices,” Erdogan said.

  “But we will put up resistance against these. I announce from here: there is no backing down.”

  As we recently noted, at the height of the last big wave of Turkey’s ongoing crisis, in August 2018, the European Central Bank issued a warning about the potential impact the plummeting lira could have on Euro Area banks heavily exposed to Turkey’s economy via large amounts in loans — much of them in euros — through banks they acquired in Turkey. The central bank was worried that Turkish borrowers might not be hedged against the lira’s weakness and would begin to default on foreign currency loans, which accounted for 40% of the Turkish banking sector’s assets.

  In the end, the contagion risks were largely contained. Many Turkish banks ended up agreeing to restructure the debts of their corporate clients, particularly the large ones. At the same time, the Erdogan government used state-owned lenders to bail out millions of cash-strapped consumers by restructuring their consumer loans, many of them foreign denominated, and credit card debt.  

  But concerns are once again on the rise about European banks’ exposure to Turkey.

  

  As one might expect, it’s not just banks that are fearful, Erdogan’s recent actions sparked anger among Turkish business owners, with several associations calling for measures to stabilize the lira’s exchange rate. Scandalously, in such an increasingly totalitarian state, key business group Tusiad urged the government to abandon the current policy stance, citing recent market turmoil as proof that the experimental model is bound to fail.

  

  But speaking truth to power in Istanbul is not welcomed and Erdogan threatened those critical of him directly that “they won’t be able to challenge the government.”

  “You are working to put in power a government that you can exploit. This nation will not allow you to do that,” he added.

   

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/19/2021 – 18:00

• Why Don't People "Trust The Science?" Because Scientists Are Often Caught Lying
  Why Don’t People “Trust The Science?” Because Scientists Are Often Caught Lying

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

  There has been an unfortunate shift in Western educational practices in the past few decades away from what we used to call “critical thinking.” In fact, critical thinking was once a fundamental staple of US colleges and now it seems as though the concept doesn’t exist anymore; at least not in the way it used to. Instead, another brand of learning has arisen which promotes “right thinking”; a form of indoctrination which encourages and rewards a particular response from students that falls in line with ideology and not necessarily in line with reality.

  

  It’s not that schools directly enforce a collectivist or corporatist ideology (sometimes they do), it’s more that they filter out alternative viewpoints as well as facts and evidence they do not like until all that is left is a single path and a single conclusion to any given problem. They teach students how to NOT think by presenting thought experiments and then controlling the acceptable outcomes.

  For example, a common and manipulative thought experiment used in schools is to ask students to write an “analysis” on why people do not trust science or scientists these days. The trick is that the question is always presented with a built-in conclusion – That scientists should be trusted, and some people are refusing to listen, so let’s figure out why these people are so stupid.

  I have seen this experiment numerous times, always presented in the same way. Not once have I ever seen a college professor or public school teacher ask students: “Should scientists today be trusted?”

  Not once.

  This is NOT analysis, this is controlled hypothesis. If you already have a conclusion in mind before you enter into a thought experiment, then you will naturally try to adjust the outcome of the experiment to fit your preconceived notions. Schools today present this foolishness as a form of thinking game when it is actually propaganda. Students are being taught to think inside the box, not outside the box. This is not science, it is anti-science.

  Educational programming like this is now a mainstay while actual science has taken a backseat. Millions of kids are exiting public schools and universities with no understanding of actual scientific method or science in general. Ask them what the equations for Density or Acceleration are, and they’ll have no clue what your are talking about. Ask them about issues surrounding vaccination or “climate change”, and they will regurgitate a litany of pre-programmed responses as to why the science cannot be questioned in any way.

  In the alternative media we often refer to this as being “trapped in the Matrix,” and it’s hard to think of a better analogy. People have been rewarded for so long for accepting the mainstream narrative and blindly dismissing any other information that when they are presented with reality they either laugh at it arrogantly or recoil in horror. The Matrix is so much more comfortable and safe, and look at all the good grades you get when you say the right things and avoid the hard questions and agree with the teacher.

  Given the sad state of science in the West these days surrounding the response to covid as well as the insane and unscientific push for forced vaccinations, I thought it would be interesting to try out this thought exercise, but from an angle that is never allowed in today’s schools:

  Why don’t people trust the science and scientists anymore?

  This is simple: Because many scientists have been caught lying and misrepresenting their data to fit the conclusions they want rather than the facts at hand. Science is often politicized to serve an agenda. This is not conspiracy theory, this is provable fact.

  That’s not to say that all science is to be mistrusted.

  The point is, no science should be blindly accepted without independent examination of ALL the available facts. This is the whole point of science, after all.

  Yes, there are idiotic conspiracy theories out there when it comes to scientific analysis, but there are a number of scams in the world of science as well.

  The usual false claim is that the average person is ignorant and that they don’t have the capacity to understand scientific data. I do find it interesting that this is the general message of the trust-science thought experiment. It fits right in line with the mainstream and government narrative that THEIR scientists, the scientists they pay for and that corporations pay for, are implicitly correct and should not be questioned. They are the high priests of the modern era, delving into great magics that we dirty peasants cannot possibly grasp. It is not for us to question “the science”, it our job to simply embrace it like a religion and bow down in reverence.

  Most people have the capacity to sift through scientific data as long as it’s transparent. When the facts are obscured or spun or omitted this causes confusion, and of course only the establishment scientists can untangle the mess because they are the ones that created it. Let’s look at a couple of examples directly related to human health…

  GMO Crops And The Corporate Money Train

  The propaganda surrounding Genetically Modified Organisms is relentless and pervasive, with the overall thrust being that they are perfectly safe and that anyone who says otherwise is a tinfoil hat crackpot. And certainly, there a hundreds if not thousands of studies which readily confirm this conclusion. So, case closed, right?

  Not quite. Here is where critical thinking is so useful and where reality escapes the indoctrinated – Who paid for these studies, and do they have a vested interest in censoring negative data on GMOs?

  Well, in the vast majority of cases GMO studies are funded by two sources – GMO industry giants like Monsanto, Dupont and Syngenta, or, government agencies like the FDA and EPA. Very few studies are truly independent, and this is the problem. Both the government and corporations like Monsanto have a vested interest in preventing any critical studies from being released on GMO’s.

  Monsanto has been caught on numerous occasions hiding the dangerous health effects of its products, from Agent Orange to the RGBH growth hormone used in dairy cows. They have been caught compiling illegal dossiers on their critics. The industry has been caught multiple times paying off academics and scientists to produce studies on GMOs with a positive spin and even to attack other scientists that are involved in experiments that are critical of GMOs. Research shows that at least half of all GMO studies are funded by the GMO industry, while the majority of the other half are funded by governments.

  There has also long been a revolving door between GMO industry insiders and the FDA and EPA; officials often work for Monsanto and then get jobs with the government, then go back to Monsanto again. The back scratching is so egregious that the government even created special legal protections for GMO companies like Monsanto under what is now known as the Monsanto Protection Act (Section 735 of Agricultural Appropriations Bill HR 993) under the Obama Administration in 2013. This essentially makes GMO companies immune to litigation over GMOs, and the same protections have been renewed in different bills ever since.

  Beyond the revolving door, the government has approved many GMO products with little to no critical data to confirm their safety. Not only that, but in most cases the government has sovereign immunity from litigation, even if they’ve been negligent. Meaning, if any of these products is proven to cause long term health damage the government cannot be sued for approving them unless there are special circumstances.

  If they could be held liable, you would be damn sure the FDA would be running every conceivable test imaginable to confirm GMOs are definitively safe without any bias attached, but this is not the case. Instead, the government actively propagandizes for GMO companies and uses hired hatchet men to derail any public criticism.

  I, for one, would love to know for sure if GMOs are harmful to the human body in the long term, and there is certainly science to suggest that this might be the case. There have been many situations in which specific GMO foods were removed from the market in foreign countries because of potentially harmful side effects. Endogenous toxins of plants with modified metabolites are a concern, along with “plant incorporated protectants” (plants designed to produce toxins which act as pesticides).

  There is data that tells us to be wary, but nothing conclusive. Why? Because billions of dollars are being invested by corporations into research designed to “debunk” any notion of side effects. If the same amount of funding was put into independent studies with no bias, then we might hear a different story about the risks of GMOs. All the money is in dismissing the risks of GMOs; there’s almost no money in studying them honestly.

  The science appears to be rigged to a particular outcome or narrative, and that is lying. Science is supposed to remain as objective as possible, but how can it be objective when it is being paid for by people with an agenda? The temptation to sell out is extreme.

  Covid Vaccines And The Death Of Science

  I bring up the example of GMO’s because I think it is representative of how science can be controlled to produce only one message while excluding all other analysis. We don’t really know for sure how dangerous GMOs are because the majority of data is dictated by the people that profit from them and by their friends in government. The lack of knowing is upheld as proof of safety – But this is not scientific. Science and medicine would demand that we err on the side of caution until we know for sure.

  The same dynamic exists in the world of covid vaccines. Big Pharma has a vested interest in ensuring NO negative information is released about the mRNA vaccines because there is a perpetual river of money to be made as long as the vax remains approved for emergency use by the FDA. It may be important to note that the FDA has said it will take at least 55 YEARS to release all the data it has on the Pfizer covid vaccines, which suggests again that there is a beneficial collusion between the government and corporate behemoths.

  In the meantime, anyone that questions the efficacy or safety of the vax is immediately set upon by attack dogs in the media, most of them paid with advertising dollars from Big Pharma. These attacks are not limited to the alternative media; the establishment has also gone after any scientist or doctor with questions about vaccine safety.

  There are clear and openly admitted ideological agendas surrounding covid science which have nothing to do with public health safety and everything to do with political control. When you have the head of the World Economic Forum applauding the covid pandemic as a perfect “opportunity” to push forward global socialist centralization and erase the last vestiges of free markets and individual liberty, any rational person would have to question if the covid science is also being rigged to support special interests.

  Luckily, the covid issue is so massive that it is impossible for them to control every study. Instead, the establishment ignores the studies and data they don’t like.

  The virus is being hyped as a threat to the majority of the public and as a rationale for 100% vaccination rates, by force if needed. Yet, the median Infection Fatality Rate of covid is only 0.27%. This means that on average 99.7% of the population at any given time has nothing to fear from the virus. This is confirmed by dozens of independent medical studies, but when was the last time you heard that number discussed by mainstream government scientists like Anthony Fauci?

  I’ve never heard them talk about it. But how is it scientific to ignore data just because it doesn’t fit your political aims? Again, deliberate omission of data is a form of lying.

  What about the multiple studies indicating that natural immunity is far superior in protection to the mRNA vaccines? What about the fact that the countries with the highest vaccination rates also have the highest rates of infections and their hospitalizations have actually increased? What about the fact that the states and countries with the harshest lockdown and mask mandates also have the highest infection rates? What about the fact that the average vaccine is tested for 10-15 years before being approved for human use, while the covid mRNA vaccines were put into production within months? That is to say, there is NO long term data to prove the safety of the covid vax.

  These are easily observable scientific facts, but we never hear about them from corporate scientists or government scientists like Fauci. Instead, Fauci argues that criticism of his policies is an attack on him, and attacking him is the same as “attacking science.” In other words, Fauci believes HE IS the science.

  And doesn’t that just illustrate how far science has fallen in the new millennium. Real scientists like Kary Mullis, the inventor of the PCR test, call Fauci a fraud, but they are ignored while Fauci is worshiped. I can’t even get into climate change “science” here, I would have to write an entire separate article about the fallacies perpetrated by global warming academics (did you know that global temperatures have only increased by 1 degree Celsius in the past century? Yep, just 1 degree according to the NOAA’s own data, yet, institutions like the NOAA continue to claim the end of the world is nigh because of global warming).

  The stringent bottleneck on science today reminds me of the Catholic church under Pope Innocent III when church authorities forbade common people from owning or reading a bible in their own language. These laws remained in effect well into the 13th and 14th centuries. Instead, the peasants were to go to church and have the texts read to them by specific clergy. Often the bible readings were done in Latin (bibles were only allowed to be written in Latin) which most people did not speak, and interpreted however the church wished.

  It was only the invention of the printing press in the 1400s that changed the power dynamic and allowed bibles to be widely distributed and information to spread without church oversight. Much like the creation of the internet allows the public to access mountains of scientific data and methodologies at their fingertips. The free flow of information is an anathema according to the establishment; they argue that only they have the right to process information for public consumption.

  Cultism requires excessive control of data and the complete restriction of outside interpretations. As information becomes openly available the public is then able to learn the whole truth, not just approved establishment narratives.

  Science is quickly becoming a political religion rather than a bastion of critical thought. Conflicting data is ignored as “non-science” or even censored as “dangerous.” Government and corporate paid studies are treated as sacrosanct. Is it any wonder that so many people now distrust the science? Any reasonable person would have questions and suspicions. Those who do not have been indoctrinated into a cult they don’t even know they are a part of.

  *  *  *

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  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/19/2021 – 17:25

• Senator Elizabeth Warren Tests Positive For COVID-19
  Senator Elizabeth Warren Tests Positive For COVID-19

  Everyone’s favorite soke-the-rich socialist-ic senator has joined the list of breakthrough cases from the miracle COVD vaccines.

  

  The 72-year-old – who is vaccinated and boosted (#SoBrave) just tested positive for COVID-19:

  “I regularly test for COVID & while I tested negative earlier this week, today I tested positive with a breakthrough case. Thankfully, I am only experiencing mild symptoms & am grateful for the protection provided against serious illness that comes from being vaccinated & boosted,” the Massachusetts Democrat tweeted.

  Furthermore she added that:

  “As cases increase across the country, I urge everyone who has not already done so to get the vaccine and the booster as soon as possible – together, we can save lives.”

  Is this still a pandemic of the unvaccinated?

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/19/2021 – 16:55

• Navarro: Biden, Democrats, & China Are To Blame For America's Stagflation Mess
  Navarro: Biden, Democrats, & China Are To Blame For America’s Stagflation Mess

  Authored by Peter Navarro, op-ed via FoxNews.com,

  When President Joe Biden canceled the Keystone Pipeline and ended the leasing of Federal lands for oil and gas exploration, he not only ensured an energy price shock.  He would spike food prices.  To understand why is to understand the stagflationary morass America now finds itself in.

  

  Amidst slowing economic growth, America’s working classes and small businesses are indeed under attack from a virulent inflation. 

  Milk is up 4.5% annually, beef 13.9%, used car and truck prices have broken the 30% barrier while gas prices are up nearly 60%. While gross pay has increased by 4.8%, real wages are down by nearly 2%.

  This pandemic-driven and politician-made disaster is a situation eerily similar to a 1970s stagflation spawned by over-stimulative Keynesian policies and related demand-pull inflation along with cost-push inflation energy and food price shocks. 

  Demand-pull inflation happens when “too much money chases too few goods.” A profligate White House and Democrat Congress have appropriated trillions upon trillions of poorly targeted expenditures while the Federal Reserve has accommodated this profligacy by running a massive printing press. 

  After lying to us that the resulting inflation would be “transitory,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell finally fessed up when he announced an acceleration of the tapering of the Fed’s accommodation – effectively ending Powell’s ultra-easy money policies. Note to Jay: This action will NOT end the budding wage-price spiral.

  America’s far bigger problem is the cost-push inflationary pressures arising primarily from food and energy price shocks but also from broken global supply chains and the export of Made in China inflation. And the Fed has nary a tool in its shed to fight any of this.

  Consider what happens when energy and gasoline prices rise.  Businesses cut output.  Consumers have less purchasing power for holiday shopping. 

  In the aggregate, the result is slower growth – that’s the stag part of the stagflation equation. If the Fed engages in contractionary monetary policy as a “cure,” this merely exacerbates the stag part of the problem.  America’s current energy price shock is indeed a politician-made disaster. Canceling the Keystone Pipeline, ending petroleum exploration on federal lands, and more broadly signaling to petroleum producers that additional investment will be penalized by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and her Green New Deal cadres has led inevitably to cost-push inflation in the oil patch. 

  The dark joke going around football tailgate parties is that caviar is now on the menu because it’s less expensive than hotdogs cooked with propane.

  Ominously, energy price shocks also beget food price shocks. Petroleum is THE most important production input for fertilizer. It also takes a lot of now expensive fuel to transport products from farm to market and table.

  As in the 1970s, today’s food price shocks are also weather-related. With over half of the lower 48 states in drought, it’s not just lower yields driving up prices. Farmers are switching away from water-intensive crops like vegetables and melons. In a Marie Antoinette White House, perhaps the slogan will be “let them eat cheap almonds.”

  Communist China has also significantly increased its purchases of farm products, further pushing up prices for American consumers.  For example, corn exports to China are up five-fold, from four million metric tons in 2020 to 20 million metric tons this year.

  At the same time, Communist China’s producers are now not only exporting their products to the US, and driving our trade deficit, and stealing American jobs. With inflation rising faster in China than the U.S., these economic predators are exporting China’s inflation as well.

  As a coup de grâce, global supply chains are in shambles as a result of the pandemic. The poster child here is a global computer chip shortage which has crippled US auto production.

  Fewer new cars has rippled into the used car market, which is on fire,.  A robust used car market, in turn, has delayed the scrapping of used cars; and at least partly as a result, we see soaring prices for scrap metal – up 10.7% – as well as for downstream products like hot-rolled steel and strip.

  The pandemic from communist China has even dramatically changed critical buying patterns of the American people. A new “my home is my castle” ethos of Americans fed up with economic lockdowns and forced to spend more time in their residences has driven up home prices by nearly 20% year-over-year.

  Defeating this stagflationary beast will require a broad-based strategy involving the end of profligate fiscal and monetary policies, onshoring our factories and supply chains, and a sane energy policy that leverages America’s abundant resources.  Both the White House and Fed must also come to grips with the fact that simply quelling demand-pull inflation won’t stop a wage-price spiral driven largely by cost-push pressures.

  Finally, it may be time to revisit both our trade and diplomatic relations with Communist China. It should be clear that most of America’s runaway inflation has originated from a pandemic almost certainly unleashed from the Wuhan Institute of Virology – likely with the help of Tony Fauci’s American taxpayer funding of dangerous gain-of-function experiments conducted by the Chinese military.

  It is unlikely we can ever fully come to grips with this pandemic and its economic fallout until Communist China comes clean about how the virus was genetically engineered – we still don’t have the original genome of that virus, a critical piece of the broader pandemic puzzle. Until China and Fauci come clean, it is going to be a rocky stagflationary road.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/19/2021 – 16:15

• Pfizer Pushes Third Vaccine Dose For Kids 5 And Under
  Pfizer Pushes Third Vaccine Dose For Kids 5 And Under

  As Pfizer and Moderna fight to get their COVID jabs approved for children under the age of 5, Pfizer revealed on Friday that it’s changing its approach by testing three vaccine doses in babies and preschoolers after discovering that two doses simply doesn’t provide enough protection.

  According to the AP, Pfizer announced the change after a preliminary analysis found 2- to 4-year-olds didn’t have as strong an immune response as expected to the very low-dose shots the company is testing in the youngest children.

  All of this seems funny to us off the bat because it was our understanding that youngsters had natural immunity to the virus barring some immunodeficiency issue.

  

  Pfizer said  it had expected data on how well the vaccines were working in children under 5 by year’s end. Now, nobody knows how long that might take as the company tries out different strategy. But one thing’s for sure: Pfizer is about to be selling a lot more vaccines.

  A kid-sized version of Pfizer’s vaccine is already available for 5- to 11-year-olds, one that’s a third of the dose given to adults and anybody else aged 12 and older.

  For children younger than 5, Pfizer is testing an even smaller dose, just 3 micrograms or a tenth of the adult dose. Here’s the quandry: The very low-dose shots appeared to work just fine in youngsters under age 2, who produced similar antibody levels. But the immune response in 2- to 4-year-olds was lower, according to Pfizer vaccine research chief Kathrin Jansen.

  Oddly, rather than trying a higher-dose shot for the preschoolers, Pfizer decided to expand the study to evaluate three of the very low-dose shots in all the study participants – from 6 months up to age 5. This third shot will be given at least two months after the youngsters’ second dose.

  And the head researcher said if the additional pediatric testing is successful, “we would have a consistent three-dose vaccine approach for all ages.”

  We imagine Pfizer, Moderna and the rest of then would love that – selling 50% more doses to whoever’s willing to buy them.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/19/2021 – 15:40

• Rickards: The Great Supply Chain Collapse
  Rickards: The Great Supply Chain Collapse

  Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

  What’s at the root of the supply chain breakdown? That’s a critical question but the answer is almost irrelevant. The supply chain is a complex dynamic system of immense scale. It is of a complexity comparable to the climate as a system.

  

  This means that exact cause and effect cannot be computed because the processing power needed exceeds the combined processing power of every computer in the world.

  Most people have some notion of how supply chains work, but few understand how extensive, complex and vulnerable they are. If you go to the store to buy a loaf of bread, you know that the bread did not mystically appear on the shelf.

  It was delivered by a local bakery, put on the shelf by a clerk, you carried it home and served it with dinner. That’s a succinct description of a supply chain – from baker to store to home.

  Yet that description barely scratches the surface. What about the truck driver who delivered the bread from the bakery to the store? Where did the bakery get the flour, yeast and water needed to make the bread? What about the ovens used to bake the bread? When the bread was baked, it was put in clear or paper wrappers of some sort. Where did those come from?

  Even that expanded description of a supply chain is just getting started in terms of a complete chain. The flour used for baking came from wheat. That wheat was grown on a farm and harvested with heavy equipment. The farmer hires labor, uses water and fertilizer and sends his wheat out for processing and packaging before it gets to the bakery.

  The manufacturer who built the oven has his own supply chain of steel, tempered glass, semiconductors, electrical circuits and other inputs needed to build the ovens. The ovens are either hand crafted (engineered-to-order) or mass produced (made-to-stock) in a factory that may use either assembly lines or manufacturing cells to get the job done.

  The factory requires inputs of electricity, natural gas, heating and ventilation systems, and skilled labor to turn out the ovens.

  The store that sells the bread is on the receiving end of numerous supply chains. It also requires electricity, natural gas, heating and ventilation systems and skilled labor to keep the doors open and keep merchandise in stock. The store has loading docks, back rooms for inventory, forklifts and conveyor belts to move its merchandise from truck to shelf.

  Every link in these supply chains requires transportation. The farmer relies on trucks or rail for deliveries of seeds, fertilizers, equipment and other inputs. The oven manufacturer also relies on trucks or rail for deliveries of its inputs, including oven components. The bakery and the store rely mainly on trucks for deliveries of their inputs and the finished loaves of bread. The consumer relies on her automobile to get to the store and return home.

  These transportation modes have their own supply chains involving truck drivers, train engineers, good roads, good railroads, rail spurs and energy supplies to keep moving and keep deliveries on time.

  This entire network (farms, factories, bakeries, stores, trucks, railroads and consumers) relies on energy supplies to keep working. The energy can come from nuclear reactors, coal-fired or natural gas-fired power plants or renewable sources fed to a grid of high-tension wires, substations, transformers and local connections to reach the individual user.

  Everything described above sits somewhere in a complex supply chain needed to produce one loaf of bread. Now take everything else in the grocery store (fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, fish, canned goods, coffee, condiments and so on) and imagine the supply chains needed for each one of those products.

  Then take all the other stores in the shopping center (home goods, clothing, pharmacy, hardware, restaurants, sporting goods) and imagine all the goods and services available from those vendors and the supply chains behind each and every one of those.

  In case you think I have exaggerated the components and steps in making a loaf of bread in the above example, I didn’t. The example above is a grossly simplified description of the actual supply chain.

  A full description of the needed supply chain would reach back further (where do the seeds for the wheat come from?) and branch off in tangential directions (where do the bread wrappers originate?).

  A full description of the loaf of bread supply chain with choice of vendor analysis, quality-control tests and bulk purchase discounts among other decision tree branches could easily stretch to several hundred pages.

  Now consider all of the supply chain links and possible bottlenecks described above are purely domestic. But very few supply chains are actually that local. CEOs, logistics engineers, consultants and politicians have spent the past 30 years making supply chains global.

  You’ve heard discussion of globalization since the early 1990s. What one may not have realized is that the process that was being globalized was the supply chain.

  You know your iPhone comes from China. Did you know that the specialized glass used in the iPhone comes from South Korea? Did you know the semiconductors in the iPhone come from Taiwan? That the intellectual property and design of the iPhone are from California?

  The iPhone includes flash storage from Japan, gyroscopes from Germany, audio amplifiers, battery chargers, display port multiplexers, batteries, cameras and hundreds of other advanced parts.

  In total, Apple works with suppliers in 43 countries on six continents to source the materials and parts that go into an iPhone. That’s a quick overview of the iPhone supply chain. Of course, every supplier in that supply chain has its own supply chain of sources and processes. Again, supply chains are immensely complex.

  Once the global perspective is added, we have to expand our transportation options from trucks and trains to include ships and planes. That means ports and airports are additional links in the chain.

  Those facilities have their own links and inputs including cranes, containers, port authorities, air traffic controllers, pilots, captains and the vessels themselves. And to our list of trucks, trains, ships and planes we can add pipelines that transport liquids such as petroleum, gasoline and natural gas.

  You get the idea. Supply chains may be hidden but they are everywhere. They are interconnected, densely networked and unimaginably complex.

  The touchstone of these efforts was the idea of just-in-time inventory (JIT). If you’re installing seats on an automobile assembly line, it is ideal if those seats arrive at the plant the same morning as the installation. That minimizes storage and inventory costs. The same is true for every part installed on the assembly line. The logistics behind this are daunting but can be managed with state-of-the-art software.

  All these efforts are fine as far as they go. The cost savings are real. The supply chains are efficient. The capacity of this system to keep a lid on costs is demonstrable.

  The supply chain revolution since the early 1990s has been about cost reduction, which gets passed to consumers in the form of lower prices. That practically explains the entire phenomenon.

  There’s only one problem. The system is extremely fragile. When things break down, everything gets worse at the same time. One missed delivery can result in an entire assembly line shutting down. One delayed vessel can result in empty shelves. One power outage can result in a transportation breakdown.

  In a nutshell, that’s what has happened to the global supply chain. There’s a lack of redundancy. The system is not robust to shocks. The shocks have occurred nevertheless (pandemic, trade wars, China-U.S. decoupling, bank collateral shortages and more) and the system has broken down.

  The failures have cascaded. Delays in receiving commodity inputs in China have resulted in manufacturing delays for exports. Energy shortages in China have resulted in further disruption of steel production, mining, transportation and other basic industries.

  Port delays in Los Angeles have resulted in component and finished goods delayed in the U.S. Semiconductor shortages have halted production of electronics, appliances, automobiles and other consumer durables that rely on automated applications. You’ve seen how complex the system is.

  The bottom line is if supply chains are breaking down, the economy is breaking down. If the economy breaks down, the breakdown of social order is not far behind.

  And the costs of social disorder are far higher than any possible savings from supposedly efficient supply chains.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/19/2021 – 15:05

• Texts Show Amazon Threatened To Fire Driver If Packages Not Delivered During Deadly Tornado
  Texts Show Amazon Threatened To Fire Driver If Packages Not Delivered During Deadly Tornado

  Authored by Kenny Stancil via Common Dreams,

  More damning information about the deadly workplace disaster at an Amazon building in Illinois emerged on Friday when a delivery driver shared records of a conversation she had with her boss, which revealed that the e-commerce giant threatened to fire her if she didn’t keep delivering packages even as tornado sirens blared.

  “Radio’s been going off,” the driver told her supervisor—less than an hour and a half before a twister hit one of Amazon’s warehouses in Edwardsville—in a text message obtained by Bloomberg News. “Keep delivering,” her boss replied. “We can’t just call people back for a warning unless Amazon tells us to.”

  

  Amazon was already in hot water for forcing employees to attend their shifts that deadly Friday despite the impending storm and refusing to let them leave before catastrophe struck. Six workers were crushed to death when a warehouse that is being investigated for possible building code violations collapsed—exemplifying the company’s long track record of prioritizing profits over occupational safety, critics say.

  New evidence that Amazon also pressured delivery drivers to work through a tornado instead of immediately helping them obtain safe shelter has only increased the amount of contempt that many people have for one of the world’s most powerful corporations.

  “More details emerge about lives put in danger by Amazon’s dehumanization of workers and its gigantic, chaotic bureaucracy,” tweeted Athena Coalition, a nonprofit group made up of more than 50 organizations that are “building democratic power to stand up to Amazon’s abuse of our communities.”

  The exchange shows that roughly 30 minutes after the driver informed her boss about the radio warnings, she said that “tornado alarms are going off over here.”

  “Just keep delivering for now,” her supervisor responded again. “We have to wait for word from Amazon if we need to bring people back, the decision is ultimately up to them. I will let you know if the situation changes at all. I’m talking with them now about it.”

  “Shelter in place for now,” the boss instructed the driver minutes later. “Give it about 15-20 minutes and then continue as normal. I will let everyone know if that changes”…

  At this point, the driver indicated that she wanted to return to the warehouse for her own safety. “Having alarms going off next to me and nothing but locked building[s] around me isn’t sheltering in place,” she said. “That’s waiting to turn this van into my casket.”

  Amazon: Some of “our Amazon family passed away as a result of the storm” ☹️

  Also Amazon: “If you decide to return with your packages, it will be viewed as you refusing your route, which will ultimately end with you not having a job come tomorrow morning” https://t.co/FOCMlEtqKF pic.twitter.com/rKLmYP2NQe

  — Brian Kahn (@blkahn) December 17, 2021

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

  The driver pointed out that her delivery shift ended in just an hour. “And if you look at the radar the worst of the storm is gonna be right on top of me in 30 minutes,” she added.

  To which the boss replied: “If you decide to come back, that choice is yours. But I can tell you it won’t be viewed as for your own safety. The safest practice is to stay exactly where you are. If you decide to return with your packages it will be viewed as you refusing your route, which will ultimately end with you not having a job come tomorrow morning. The sirens are just a warning.”

  “I’m literally stuck in this damn van without a safe place to go with a tornado on the ground!” the driver said.

  Bloomberg, which reviewed text messages from contract drivers and interviewed current and former workers, reported that Amazon employees “said they received instructions on what do in fires or tornadoes, but never did the kind of drills that could help avoid confusion in an emergency. Training for new hires entails merely pointing out emergency exits and assembly points, they said.”

  Previously The Daily Poster reported that prior to the tornado disaster—which also killed eight workers at a candle factory in Mayfield, Kentucky—corporate lobbyists, including groups linked to Amazon, obstructed a bill designed to protect the jobs of employees who leave an unsafe workplace.

  “In the months before workers were reportedly barred from abandoning their job site or threatened with termination if they fled this weekend’s deadly tornadoes, corporate lobbying groups were fighting legislation to prohibit retribution against employees who seek to leave work out of fear for their safety,” the news outlet reported. “Amazon—which owns a warehouse where several workers were killed—and its staffing firm have links to corporate lobbying groups that have been opposing the legislation, which remains stalled.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/19/2021 – 14:30

• NFL, In Major Shift, To Test Vaccinated Players Less Frequently
  NFL, In Major Shift, To Test Vaccinated Players Less Frequently

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  The NFL loosened its COVID-19 protocols over the weekend as the league was forced to postpone several games due to a rise in cases, according to memos that were distributed to teams on Saturday.

  

  The NFL and NFL Player’s Association (NFLPA) said the league would partake in a “more targeted testing plan” for COVID-19, the illness caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

  “The NFL and NFLPA have been engaged with our medical advisors to address the emergence of the new Omicron variant and how to stop the spread to ensure we keep everyone safe and complete the remainder of the season responsibly,” said the NFL and NFLPA a joint statement.

  “The intensive protocols implemented last week and the rescheduling of three games were designed to stop the transmission of the virus and play this week’s games safely,” according to the statement. “After this weekend’s games, we have agreed to put into place a new set of protocols, which will include a more targeted testing plan, more flexibility for players to attend meetings virtually and also a high-risk player opt-out for the remainder of the season.”

  Under the league’s original COVID-19 rules, vaccinated personnel and players had to be tested for the virus every week. The new rule announced this weekend eliminates the requirement, which allows players and staff to be screened for COVID-19 symptoms and be tested less frequently.

  Vaccinated players who show symptoms of the CCP virus will be isolated and tested immediately. Those who don’t show symptoms will be subject to the NFL’s “targeted testing,” according to the memo.

  For unvaccinated players, there is no change in the NFL’s protocol. It means they will still have to be tested for COVID-19 every day.

  “In many respects, Omicron appears to be a very different illness from the one that we first confronted in the spring of 2020,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in the memo.

  The move appears to be designed to keep players from being sidelined while not experiencing any COVID-19 symptoms. Last week, the league announced that three games were postponed relating to COVID-19 outbreaks among players and staff in the Los Angeles Rams, Cleveland Browns, and Washington Football Team.

  “We can’t apply 2020 solutions to the 2021 problems that we’re having,” NFL Chief Medical Officer Dr. Allen Sills said several days ago.

  “We’re often at the tip of the spear in seeing some of these changes before they show up in other elements of society because we do have so many tools at our disposal.”

  According to the memos, the NFL and NFLPA came to an agreement that allowed players to opt out of the rest of the season. Players with a higher risk based on medical factors have until Monday, Dec. 20 to make a decision on not playing, which means they wouldn’t be paid for the rest of the season.

  Some team owners, including Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, appeared to support the latest directive.

  “I think we will get to a point, probably this week, that we’ll test only if symptomatic, that’s if you’ve been vaccinated,” Jones told 105.3 The Fan over the weekend. “That’s a good thing. Test when you’re symptomatic and that’s it.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 12/19/2021 – 13:55

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