Today’s News 20th October 2021

• The US Dominates The World's "Keyboard Kings" With $23 Million eSports Prize Money In 2020
  The US Dominates The World’s “Keyboard Kings” With $23 Million eSports Prize Money In 2020

  Last month, Thailand became the latest of a growing number of countries recognizing eSports as an official sport, joining the ranks of China, the United States, South Korea and others.

  

  When it comes to prize money won by its eSports athletes, the Asian country was almost able to crack the top 10 in 2020. The top spots were claimed by places known for its eSports proficiency as Statista’s chart indicates.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  The United States came out on top with its 4,854 players earning roughly $23 million in prize money.

  However, as Statista’s Flrian Zandt notes, even though the total might be impressive, China emerges the winner when you factor in the number of players and the corresponding per capita income by earning top spots in eSports competitions. On average, every U.S. player made about $4,700 with tournament wins, while the 846 Chinese players earning a total of $17.2 million managed to rack up a per capita figure of approximately $20,300. Coming in third is South Korea, the country with the longest running eSports history and home to the International Esports Federation since 2008, with a total sum of $9.5 million in prize money earned by 939 athletes.

  Overall, 25,193 players accumulated roughly $122 million in prize money in 2020. Even though this seems like a sizeable amount, the biggest revenue streams for the eSports segment lie elsewhere. For 2021, Newzoo estimates revenues of $641 million through sponsorships, $192.6 million through media rights licensing and $126.6 million through publisher fees alone.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 10/20/2021 – 02:45

• Things Are Getting Messy In Draghi's Italy
  Things Are Getting Messy In Draghi’s Italy

  Authored by Nick Corbishley via NakedCapitalism.com,

  Sixteen percent of the country’s officially employed workforce just lost their jobs (temporarily for the moment). And as one would expect, they’re not happy.  

  It is a strange experience watching the events currently unfolding in Italy from the relative calm and normality of Catalonia. As I reported in August, Spain’s Supreme Court ruled against the use of covid passports to restrict access to public spaces — specifically hospitality businesses (bars, restaurants and nightclubs). Since then the court has scaled back the ruling, allowing certain regions, including Galicia and Catalonia, to use the digital documents to restrict access to bars and nightclubs. But things are still moving quite slowly though I’m sure they’ll pick up speed soon. Italy, by contrast, has just introduced the strictest rules in Europe.

  

  “No Jab, No Job” Writ Large

  As of last Friday all residents of Italy need a covid passport, or Green Pass, to access not only public spaces but also public and private workplaces. The pass proves that they have either been vaccinated against Covid-19, have recovered from the disease in the past six months or have recently tested negative. And now they need it to make a living, to feed their families.

  The “no jab, no job” rule applies to workers of all kinds, including the self employed, domestic staff and even people working remotely. If you’d still rather not get vaccinated, you have the option of showing proof of a negative test every two days. That can cost anywhere between €15 and €50 each time — far beyond the means of most low-paid workers. If you still refuse to get vaccinated or present proof of negative tests, you face unpaid suspension as well as a fine of up to €1,500. Public sector workers have five days to present the green pass before being suspended. Private sector workers without a green pass face suspension from the first day.

  Here’s more from Politico (comment and emphasis in brackets my own):

  By law, all workers must be able to show a so-called Green Pass, proving they are vaccinated against COVID-19 or have tested negative in the past 48 hours. Roughly 81 percent of Italians over 12 are fully vaccinated.

  While polls suggest the majority of Italians are in favor of vaccine passes (just as the majority of people in all countries are in favour of vaccine passes, according to polls), there are still 3.8 million unvaccinated workers, many in strategic sectors and public services such as ports, trucking, health care and law enforcement, who will be unable to work.

  Massive Cull of Workers

  This is by any measure a massive cull of workers. Three point eight million is more than 5% of Italy’s entire population and over 16% of the country’s officially employed workforce (22.7 million). The total number of people currently unemployed in Italy is 2.3 million. In other words, if none of the unvaccinated workers were to cave in to the government’s demands — some will, of course, we just don’t know how many — the number of people without work in Italy would increase by well over 150% — in the space of just one week! And as the Politico article mentions, many of these workers are in strategic sectors and public services.

  This is all happening as Europe — and the world at large — faces the worst supply chain crisis in decades as well as acute energy and labor shortages. The move also risks giving a huge boost to Italy’s already quite large informal economy. Given as much, this is a huge, high-stakes bluff on the part of Draghi’s technocratic government, which was formed eighth months ago. If it pays off, the vast majority of Italy’s vaccine holdouts will fall into line and go back to work, and other governments across Europe will follow suit with similar mandates. If it doesn’t, Italy’s economy could be plunged into chaos.

  So far, data suggest that the government’s “no jab, no job” rule hasn’t exactly had the desired effect. When the rule was initially unveiled, on September 16, Italy’s Public Administration Minister Renato Brunetta said it would trigger such a “huge” boost vaccination take-up that its job would largely be done before it even came into effect. That hasn’t happened. As El Mundo reports, in the week through Oct.8 some 410,000 people received the first dose, according to official data, a 36% drop from the previous week and the lowest weekly count since early July. 

  Over the last few days the response of many of the affected workers has been to stage rolling strikes and protests across the country. Roads and ports have been blocked. This has coincided with hundreds of flight cancellations due to strikes by workers at the former flagship airline Alitalia, which flew its last flight on Thursday. There have also been violent demonstrations by far-right groups such as Casa Pound and Forza Nuova as well as a 24-hour general strike held last week by unions to protest the government’s labour and economic policies.

  Since Friday Italy’s largest port, Trieste, 40% of whose employees are unvaccinated, has been an important focal point of industrial action.

  “There are no blockades, whoever wants to work does,” said Stefano Puzzer, leader of the protest against the health pass in the port of Trieste, on Friday. Yet although the strike was reportedly entirely peaceful and workers who wanted to work were allowed to do so, riot  police yesterday used water cannons and tear gas to evict the longshoremen.

  One Little Flaw

  The ostensible logic behind the government’s latest mandate is that by “nudging” almost everyone who can get vaccinated to get vaccinated, it will help the country finally achieve herd immunity and thereby eliminate the virus. Also, work spaces will become much safer places because all workers will either have been fully vaccinated against covid-19, will have natural immunity or will have recently tested negative for the virus.

  There’s just one little flaw in the plan: the current crop of covid-19 vaccines are rather “leaky”, particularly with regard to the Delta variant.

  As such, people who are vaccinated are still liable to catch and transmit the virus and in some countries (such as the UK) the vaccinated account for more cases (in nominal terms) than the unvaccinated. In addition, what protection the vaccines do provide tends to wane rapidly. At the peak of Israel’s latest wave of infections, in August, half of the seriously ill hospitalized patients had been fully vaccinated at least five months prior, reported NPR. 

  Which begs the question: if a vaccinated person and an unvaccinated person have a similar capacity to carry, shed and transmit the virus, particularly in its Delta form and even more so after four of five months after vaccination, what difference does implementing a vaccination passport, certificate or ID actually make to the spread of the virus?

  Vaccine Passport: An End In and Of Itself?

  In sum, Italy just unleashed the most severe de facto vaccine mandate in Europe on the basis of a vaccine that doesn’t actually work very well and is still only authorised by the European Medical Agency for emergency use. To give an idea of just how extreme the Draghi government’s position now is, the only other country in the world to have introduced a mandatory Covid passport for all workers is Saudi Arabia, reports Thomas Fazi in a recent article:

  With these changes, we are effectively stripping citizens who haven’t broken any law whatsoever (in Italy, like elsewhere, Covid vaccines are not mandatory) of their basic constitutional rights — the right to work, to study, to move freely. That should give anyone reason to pause and reflect. This kind of discrimination is also in direct violation of EU Regulation 2021/953, which states that “[t]he issuance of [Covid] certificates… should not lead to discrimination on the basis of the possession of a specific category of certificate”, and that “[i]t is necessary to prevent direct or indirect discrimination against persons who are not vaccinated, for example because of medical reasons… or because they have not yet had the opportunity or chose not to be vaccinated”.

  This is also echoed by Resolution 2361 (2021) of the Council of Europe. In fact, the word “discrimination” doesn’t even begin to do justice to what we are witnessing in Italy. Representatives of the political, medical and media establishment have openly accused the unvaccinated of being “rats”, “subhumans” and “criminals”, who deserve to be “excluded from public life” and “from the national health service” and even to “die like flies”. Perhaps more worryingly, both prime minister Mario Draghi and the president Sergio Mattarella have accused the unvaccinated of “putting the lives of others at risk” (a claim based on the assumption that the vaccinated aren’t contagious).

  That claim has now been thoroughly disproved by myriad scientific studies, as Yves painstakingly documented in August. So why do governments continue to repeat it? Why aren’t they rethinking their strategy? Perhaps, as Fazi postulates, the green pass is not just a means to an end — mass vaccination — but also an end in and of itself:

  The Italian economic-political establishment has a long history of invoking, embellishing or even engineering crises — usually economic in nature — to justify technocratic governments and emergency measures, as well as the sidestepping of the normal channels of democracy. In this sense, it is not outlandish to posit that the country’s elites, under Draghi’s leadership, may view the current conjecture as a golden opportunity to complete the oligarchisation of the country they’ve been working at for the past decades (and in which Mario Draghi has played a central role).

  A crucial feature of this process has been the transition from a post-war regime based on the centrality of parliament to one dominated by executive, technocratic and supranational powers, in which the legislature performs a marginal role, thus insulating policymaking from democratic processes. As a result, there has been an increased resort to so-called “technical governments” run by “experts” supposedly untainted by political partisanship and unburdened by the complications of parliamentary politics — as well as the transfer of key policy tools from the national level, where a certain degree of democratic control can always potentially be exercised, to the supranational institutions of the EU, which are undemocratic by design.

  Now Draghi is even being heralded in some quarters as a possible new figurehead for Europe in the post-Merkel era. The financial and economic elite are no doubt salivating at the prospect.  

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 10/20/2021 – 02:00

• The CIA Has Stultified American Consciences
  The CIA Has Stultified American Consciences

  Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Mises Institute,

  One of the worst consequences of converting the federal government to a national security state has been the stultification or warping of the consciences of the American people. With unwavering allegiance to the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency, all too many Americans have sacrificed their sense of right and wrong at the altar of “national security,” the two-word term that has become the most important term in the political lexicon of the American people.

  

  The best example of this phenomenon is the CIA’s power of assassination. Most Americans have come to passively accept this power, with nary a thought as to the victims against whom it is carried out and under what what circumstances it is carried out.

  Consider recent revelations that the CIA was planning to assassinate Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, for disclosing dark-side secrets of the US deep state to to the world. 

  That’s why US officials have pursued him with a vengeance—not because he lied about the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s dark-side activities but rather because he disclosed the truth about them. 

  That’s why they were seeking to murder him—to silence him, to punish him, and to send a message to other potential disclosers of dark-side secrets of the national security establishment. 

  But anyone with a conscience that is operating would easily see that assassinating Assange would be just plain murder. And at the risk of belaboring the obvious, the murder of an innocent person is just plain evil. 

  Yet the reaction to all this from the mainstream press has been one great big collective yawn. No big deal. It’s just another state-sponsored assassination intended to protect “national security.” If US national security state officials have decided that Assange needs to be taken out, then that’s just the way it is. That’s why we have a CIA, after all. We have to defer to its judgment, even if it means sacrificing our consciences in the process. After all, that’s its job—to protect “national security.”

  By the way, there is virtually no doubt that if they could get away with assassinating Edward Snowden for disclosing the truth about NSA dark-side activity, they would murder him too. The probable reason they haven’t assassinated Snowden is because they haven’t figured out a way to get the assassins out of Russia.

  When the federal government was converted to a national security state after World War II, the American people made an implicit bargain with the devil. The bargain empowered the national security establishment to engage in dark-side activity, including assassination. But another part of the bargain was that officials would keep their dark-side activity secret from the American people so that people wouldn’t have to deal with their consciences over a governmental entity that was assassinating people. 

  Assange’s and Snowden’s great “crime” was in violating that pact. By bringing dark-side activity to the attention of the American people, they ran the risk that people’s consciences might start operating. 

  So far, there appears to be no risk of that happening. Consider, for example, the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. That was just plain murder. Iran and the United States are not at war with each other. Sure, we are told that Iran is a “rival,” an “enemy,” an “opponent,” or an “adversary,” but does that morally entitle US officials to murder Iranian officials? It does not, just as it doesn’t entitle Iranian officials to murder US officials. 

  Again, however, the reaction among the mainstream press to the assassination of Soleimani was one great, big collective yawn. Revealingly, there was also no moral outrage expressed among church ministers across America. If the Pentagon and the CIA deemed it necessary to assassinate Soleimani, that’s all we need to know. 

  To get America back on the right track, what we need is a moral awakening, one that entails the operation of conscience. If that day were to come, there is no doubt that the American people would cast the CIA into the dustbin of history, where all evil agencies belong.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 10/20/2021 – 00:05

• The World Is Transitioning To EVs, But Our Nation's Power Grid May Not Be Ready
  The World Is Transitioning To EVs, But Our Nation’s Power Grid May Not Be Ready

  While electric vehicles are undoubtedly the future, the question of whether or not our power grid is also ready for the “future” has started to surface. Especially in places like New York.

  Power outages and appeals from utilities for customers to cut back on usage have been commonplace – not just in California, but also in places like New York, Texas and Louisiana. 

  And while the nation stays focused on “the future” of vehicle travel, another bottleneck arises in power generation, a new Washington Post article points out. The grid is going to be “challenged” by the need to deliver power to the cars, the report notes.

  Gil Quiniones, head of a state agency called the New York Power Authority, said: “We got to talk about the grid. Otherwise we’ll be caught flat-footed.”

  

  One recent study predicts the country will need to invest $125 billion into the grid to handle the shift to electric vehicles. The current infrastructure bill would account for $5 billion in upgrades. That leaves an enormous gap.

  Cars, trucks and busses in New York will use 14 percent of New York’s total output by 2050, the report says. Its the same as “powering a new city of four million people”.

  Shuli Goodman, executive director of a Linux Foundation project called LF Energy, said: “The grid of the future isn’t going to be a grid at all. It will be more like the Internet.”

  

  Government officials are optimistic about wind and solar, but renewables like wind power are limited in how they can expand and unreliable in their power generation. Wind, for example, makes up just 3% of power generation in New York.

  “The rest of New York, the topography doesn’t really lend itself to wind. Up and down the East Coast, it’s more difficult to site wind farms,” said Jason Du Terroil, who works for a wind turbine operator.

  The Tug Hill Land Trust, a private nonprofit, even objected to some wind power being installed in parts of rural New York. A representative from the group said: “If you’re cutting down trees to put up windmills to fight climate change, it doesn’t make sense to me. It would be a lot easier to swallow if it was a community project, with community benefits.”

  

  But the grid must expand with New York’s 70/30 goal, one where 70% of power is carbon free by 2030, in mind. 

  And while solar has also been proposed as a solution, especially for cities, not everyone is confident that large corporations and crowded cities won’t overwhelm the grid.

  “What if Amazon and FedEx and UPS say, ‘We’re going to go electric’. Con Ed is going to be scrambling,” Gil Quiniones, head of the New York Power Authority, said.

  “You don’t want everybody charging when it’s 96 degrees at 2 p.m. That’ll crash the system.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/19/2021 – 23:45

• Bitcoin & The US Fiscal Reckoning
  Bitcoin & The US Fiscal Reckoning

  Authored by Avik Roy via NationalAffairs.com,

  Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin have few fans in Washington. At a July congressional hearing, Senator Elizabeth Warren warned that cryptocurrency “puts the [financial] system at the whims of some shadowy, faceless group of super-coders.” Treasury secretary Janet Yellen likewise asserted that the “reality” of cryptocurrencies is that they “have been used to launder the profits of online drug traffickers; they’ve been a tool to finance terrorism.”

  Thus far, Bitcoin’s supporters remain undeterred. (The term “Bitcoin” with a capital “B” is used here and throughout to refer to the system of cryptography and technology that produces the currency “bitcoin” with a lowercase “b” and verifies bitcoin transactions.) A survey of 3,000 adults in the fall of 2020 found that while only 4% of adults over age 55 own cryptocurrencies, slightly more than one-third of those aged 35-44 do, as do two-fifths of those aged 25-34. As of mid-2021, Coinbase — the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States — had 68 million verified users.

  To younger Americans, digital money is as intuitive as digital media and digital friendships. But Millennials with smartphones are not the only people interested in bitcoin; a growing number of investors are also flocking to the currency’s banner. Surveys indicate that as many as 21% of U.S. hedge funds now own bitcoin in some form. In 2020, after considering various asset classes like stocks, bonds, gold, and foreign currencies, celebrated hedge-fund manager Paul Tudor Jones asked, “[w]hat will be the winner in ten years’ time?” His answer: “My bet is it will be bitcoin.”

  What’s driving this increased interest in a form of currency invented in 2008? The answer comes from former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, who once noted, “the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press…that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation…the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to…inflation.” In other words, governments with fiat currencies — including the United States — have the power to expand the quantity of those currencies. If they choose to do so, they risk inflating the prices of necessities like food, gas, and housing.

  In recent months, consumers have experienced higher price inflation than they have seen in decades. A major reason for the increases is that central bankers around the world — including those at the Federal Reserve — sought to compensate for Covid-19 lockdowns with dramatic monetary inflation. As a result, nearly $4 trillion in newly printed dollars, euros, and yen found their way from central banks into the coffers of global financial institutions.

  Jerome Powell, the current Federal Reserve chairman, insists that 2021’s inflation trends are “transitory.” He may be right in the near term. But for the foreseeable future, inflation will be a profound and inescapable challenge for America due to a single factor: the rapidly expanding federal debt, increasingly financed by the Fed’s printing press.

  In time, policymakers will face a Solomonic choice: either protect Americans from inflation, or protect the government’s ability to engage in deficit spending. It will become impossible to do both. Over time, this compounding problem will escalate the importance of Bitcoin.

  

  THE FIAT-CURRENCY EXPERIMENT

  It’s becoming clear that Bitcoin is not merely a passing fad, but a significant innovation with potentially serious implications for the future of investment and global finance. To understand those implications, we must first examine the recent history of the primary instrument that bitcoin was invented to challenge: the American dollar.

  Toward the end of World War II, in an agreement hashed out by 44 Allied countries in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, the value of the U.S. dollar was formally fixed to 1/35th of the price of an ounce of gold. Other countries’ currencies, such as the British pound and the French franc, were in turn pegged to the dollar, making the dollar the world’s official reserve currency.

  Under the Bretton Woods system, foreign governments could retrieve gold bullion they had sent to the United States during the war by exchanging dollars for gold at the relevant fixed exchange rate. But enabling every major country to exchange dollars for American-held gold only worked so long as the U.S. government was fiscally and monetarily responsible. By the late 1960s, it was neither. Someone needed to pay the steep bills for Lyndon Johnson’s “guns and butter” policies — the Vietnam War and the Great Society, respectively — so the Federal Reserve began printing currency to meet those obligations. Johnson’s successor, Richard Nixon, also pressured the Fed to flood the economy with money as a form of economic stimulus. From 1961 to 1971, the Fed nearly doubled the circulating supply of dollars. “In the first six months of 1971,” noted the late Nobel laureate Robert Mundell, “monetary expansion was more rapid than in any comparable period in a quarter century.” That year, foreign central banks and governments held $64 billion worth of claims on the $10 billion of gold still held by the United States.

  It wasn’t long before the world took notice of the shortage. In a classic bank-run scenario, anxious European governments began racing to redeem dollars for American-held gold before the Fed ran out. In July 1971, Switzerland withdrew $50 million in bullion from U.S. vaults. In August, France sent a destroyer to escort $191 million of its gold back from the New York Federal Reserve. Britain put in a request for $3 billion shortly thereafter.

  Finally, that same month, Nixon secretly gathered a small group of trusted advisors at Camp David to devise a plan to avoid the imminent wipeout of U.S. gold vaults and the subsequent collapse of the international economy. There, they settled on a radical course of action. On the evening of August 15th, in a televised address to the nation, Nixon announced his intention to order a 90-day freeze on all prices and wages throughout the country, a 10% tariff on all imported goods, and a suspension — eventually, a permanent one — of the right of foreign governments to exchange their dollars for U.S. gold.

  Knowing that his unilateral abrogation of agreements involving dozens of countries would come as a shock to world leaders and the American people, Nixon labored to re-assure viewers that the change would not unsettle global markets. He promised viewers that “the effect of this action…will be to stabilize the dollar,” and that the “dollar will be worth just as much tomorrow as it is today.” The next day, the stock market rose — to everyone’s relief. The editors of the New York Times “unhesitatingly applaud[ed] the boldness” of Nixon’s move. Economic growth remained strong for months after the shift, and the following year Nixon was re-elected in a landslide, winning 49 states in the Electoral College and 61% of the popular vote.

  Nixon’s short-term success was a mirage, however. After the election, the president lifted the wage and price controls, and inflation returned with a vengeance. By December 1980, the dollar had lost more than half the purchasing power it had back in June 1971 on a consumer-price basis. In relation to gold, the price of the dollar collapsed — from 1/35th to 1/627th of a troy ounce. Though Jimmy Carter is often blamed for the Great Inflation of the late 1970s, “the truth,” as former National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow has argued, “is that the president who unleashed double-digit inflation was Richard Nixon.”

  In 1981, Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker raised the federal-funds rate — a key interest-rate benchmark — to 19%. A deep recession ensued, but inflation ceased, and the U.S. embarked on a multi-decade period of robust growth, low unemployment, and low consumer-price inflation. As a result, few are nostalgic for the days of Bretton Woods or the gold-standard era. The view of today’s economic establishment is that the present system works well, that gold standards are inherently unstable, and that advocates of gold’s return are eccentric cranks.

  Nevertheless, it’s important to remember that the post-Bretton Woods era — in which the supply of government currencies can be expanded or contracted by fiat — is only 50 years old. To those of us born after 1971, it might appear as if there is nothing abnormal about the way money works today. When viewed through the lens of human history, however, free-floating global exchange rates remain an unprecedented economic experiment — with one critical flaw.

  An intrinsic attribute of the post-Bretton Woods system is that it enables deficit spending. Under a gold standard or peg, countries are unable to run large budget deficits without draining their gold reserves. Nixon’s 1971 crisis is far from the only example; deficit spending during and after World War I, for instance, caused economic dislocation in numerous European countries — especially Germany — because governments needed to use their shrinking gold reserves to finance their war debts.

  These days, by contrast, it is relatively easy for the United States to run chronic deficits. Today’s federal debt of almost $29 trillion — up from $10 trillion in 2008 and $2.4 trillion in 1984 — is financed in part by U.S. Treasury bills, notes, and bonds, on which lenders to the United States collect a form of interest. Yields on Treasury bonds are denominated in dollars, but since dollars are no longer redeemable for gold, these bonds are backed solely by the “full faith and credit of the United States.”

  Interest rates on U.S. Treasury bonds have remained low, which many people take to mean that the creditworthiness of the United States remains healthy. Just as creditworthy consumers enjoy lower interest rates on their mortgages and credit cards, creditworthy countries typically enjoy lower rates on the bonds they issue. Consequently, the post-Great Recession era of low inflation and near-zero interest rates led many on the left to argue that the old rules no longer apply, and that concerns regarding deficits are obsolete. Supporters of this view point to the massive stimulus packages passed under presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden  that, in total, increased the federal deficit and debt by $4.6 trillion without affecting the government’s ability to borrow.

  The extreme version of the new “deficits don’t matter” narrative comes from the advocates of what has come to be called Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), who claim that because the United States controls its own currency, the federal government has infinite power to increase deficits and the debt without consequence. Though most mainstream economists dismiss MMT as unworkable and even dangerous, policymakers appear to be legislating with MMT’s assumptions in mind. A new generation of Democratic economic advisors has pushed President Biden to propose an additional $3.5 trillion in spending, on top of the $4.6 trillion spent on Covid-19 relief and the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. These Democrats, along with a new breed of populist Republicans, dismiss the concerns of older economists who fear that exploding deficits risk a return to the economy of the 1970s, complete with high inflation, high interest rates, and high unemployment.

  But there are several reasons to believe that America’s fiscal profligacy cannot go on forever. The most important reason is the unanimous judgment of history: In every country and in every era, runaway deficits and skyrocketing debt have ended in economic stagnation or ruin.

  Another reason has to do with the unusual confluence of events that has enabled the United States to finance its rising debts at such low interest rates over the past few decades — a confluence that Bitcoin may play a role in ending.

  DECLINING FAITH IN U.S. CREDIT

  To members of the financial community, U.S. Treasury bonds are considered “risk-free” assets. That is to say, while many investments entail risk — a company can go bankrupt, for example, thereby wiping out the value of its stock — Treasury bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. Since people believe the United States will not default on its obligations, lending money to the U.S. government — buying Treasury bonds that effectively pay the holder an interest rate — is considered a risk-free investment.

  The definition of Treasury bonds as “risk-free” is not merely by reputation, but also by regulation. Since 1988, the Switzerland-based Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has sponsored a series of accords among central bankers from financially significant countries. These accords were designed to create global standards for the capital held by banks such that they carry a sufficient proportion of low-risk and risk-free assets. The well-intentioned goal of these standards was to ensure that banks don’t fail when markets go down, as they did in 2008.

  The current version of the Basel Accords, known as “Basel III,” assigns zero risk to U.S. Treasury bonds. Under Basel III’s formula, then, every major bank in the world is effectively rewarded for holding these bonds instead of other assets. This artificially inflates demand for the bonds and enables the United States to borrow at lower rates than other countries.

  The United States also benefits from the heft of its economy as well as the size of its debt. Since America is the world’s most indebted country in absolute terms, the market for U.S. Treasury bonds is the largest and most liquid such market in the world. Liquid markets matter a great deal to major investors: A large financial institution or government with hundreds of billions (or more) of a given currency on its balance sheet cares about being able to buy and sell assets while minimizing the impact of such actions on the trading price. There are no alternative low-risk assets one can trade at the scale of Treasury bonds.

  The status of such bonds as risk-free assets — and in turn, America’s ability to borrow the money necessary to fund its ballooning expenditures — depends on investors’ confidence in America’s creditworthiness. Unfortunately, the Federal Reserve’s interference in the markets for Treasury bonds have obscured our ability to determine whether financial institutions view the U.S. fiscal situation with confidence.

  In the 1990s, Bill Clinton’s advisors prioritized reducing the deficit, largely out of a conern that Treasury-bond “vigilantes” — investors who protest a government’s expansionary fiscal or monetary policy by aggressively selling bonds, which drives up interest rates — would harm the economy. Their success in eliminating the primary deficit brought yields on the benchmark 10-year Treasury bond down from 8% to 4%.

  In Clinton’s heyday, the Federal Reserve was limited in its ability to influence the 10-year Treasury interest rate. Its monetary interventions primarily targeted the federal-funds rate — the interest rate that banks charge each other on overnight transactions. But in 2002, Ben Bernanke advocated that the Fed “begin announcing explicit ceilings for yields on longer-maturity Treasury debt.” This amounted to a schedule of interest-rate price controls.

  Since the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve has succeeded in wiping out bond vigilantes using a policy called “quantitative easing,” whereby the Fed manipulates the price of Treasury bonds by buying and selling them on the open market. As a result, Treasury-bond yields are determined not by the free market, but by the Fed.

  The combined effect of these forces — the regulatory impetus for banks to own Treasury bonds, the liquidity advantage Treasury bonds have in the eyes of large financial institutions, and the Federal Reserve’s manipulation of Treasury-bond market prices — means that interest rates on Treasury bonds no longer indicate the United States’ creditworthiness (or lack thereof). Meanwhile, indications that investors are growing increasingly concerned about the U.S. fiscal and monetary picture — and are in turn assigning more risk to “risk-free” Treasury bonds — are on the rise.

  One such indicator is the decline in the share of Treasury bonds owned by outside investors. Between 2010 and 2020, the share of U.S. Treasury securities owned by foreign entities fell from 47% to 32%, while the share owned by the Fed more than doubled, from 9% to 22%. Put simply, foreign investors have been reducing their purchases of U.S. government debt, thereby forcing the Fed to increase its own bond purchases to make up the difference and prop up prices.

  Until and unless Congress reduces the trajectory of the federal debt, U.S. monetary policy has entered a vicious cycle from which there is no obvious escape. The rising debt requires the Treasury Department to issue an ever-greater quantity of Treasury bonds, but market demand for these bonds cannot keep up with their increasing supply. In an effort to avoid a spike in interest rates, the Fed will need to print new U.S. dollars to soak up the excess supply of Treasury bonds. The resultant monetary inflation will cause increases in consumer prices.

  

  Those who praise the Fed’s dramatic expansion of the money supply argue that it has not affected consumer-price inflation. And at first glance, they appear to have a point. In January of 2008, the M2 money stock was roughly $7.5 trillion; by January 2020, M2 had more than doubled, to $15.4 trillion. As of July 2021, the total M2 sits at $20.5 trillion — nearly triple what it was just 13 years ago. Over that same period, U.S. GDP increased by only 50%. And yet, since 2000, the average rate of growth in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for All Urban Consumers — a widely used inflation benchmark — has remained low, at about 2.25%.

  How can this be?

  The answer lies in the relationship between monetary inflation and price inflation, which has diverged over time. In 2008, the Federal Reserve began paying interest to banks that park their money with the Fed, reducing banks’ incentive to lend that money out to the broader economy in ways that would drive price inflation. But the main reason for the divergence is that conventional measures like CPI do not accurately capture the way monetary inflation is affecting domestic prices.

  In a large, diverse country like the United States, different people and different industries experience price inflation in different ways. The fact that price inflation occurs earlier in certain sectors of the economy than in others was first described by the 18th-century Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. In his 1730 “Essay on the Nature of Commerce in General,” Cantillon noted that when governments increase the supply of money, those who receive the money first gain the most benefit from it — at the expense of those to whom it flows last. In the 20th century, Friedrich Hayek built on Cantillon’s thinking, observing that “the real harm [of monetary inflation] is due to the differential effect on different prices, which change successively in a very irregular order and to a very different degree, so that as a result the whole structure of relative prices becomes distorted and misguides production into wrong directions.”

  In today’s context, the direct beneficiaries of newly printed money are those who need it the least. New dollars are sent to banks, which in turn lend them to the most creditworthy entities: investment funds, corporations, and wealthy individuals. As a result, the most profound price impact of U.S. monetary inflation has been on the kinds of assets that financial institutions and wealthy people purchase — stocks, bonds, real estate, venture capital, and the like.

  This is why the price-to-earnings ratio of S&P 500 companies is at record highs, why risky start-ups with long-shot ideas are attracting $100 million venture rounds, and why the median home sales price has jumped 24% in a single year — the biggest one-year increase of the 21st century. Meanwhile, low- and middle-income earners are facing rising prices without attendant increases in their wages. If asset inflation persists while the costs of housing and health care continue to grow beyond the reach of ordinary people, the legitimacy of our market economy will be put on trial.

  THE RETURN OF SOUND MONEY

  Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, was acutely concerned with the increasing abundance of U.S. dollars and other fiat currencies in the early 2000s. In 2009 he wrote, “the root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.” Bitcoin was created in anticipation of the looming fiscal and monetary crisis in the United States and around the world.

  To understand how bitcoin functions alongside fiat currency, it’s helpful to examine the monetary philosophy of the Austrian School of economics, whose leading figures — especially Hayek and Ludwig von Mises — greatly influenced Nakamoto and the early developers of Bitcoin.

  The economists of the Austrian School were staunch advocates of what Mises called “the principle of sound money” — that is, of keeping the supply of money as constant and predictable as possible. In The Theory of Money and Credit, first published in 1912, Mises argued that sound money serves as “an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments” that belongs “in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights.” Just as bills of rights were a “reaction against arbitrary rule and the nonobservance of old customs by kings,” he wrote, “the postulate of sound money was first brought up as a response to the princely practice of debasing the coinage.”

  Mises believed that inflation was just as much a violation of someone’s property rights as arbitrarily taking away his land. After all, in both cases, the government acquires economic value at the expense of the citizen. Since monetary inflation creates a sugar high of short-term stimulus, politicians interested in re-election will always have an incentive to expand the money supply. But doing so comes at the expense of long-term declines in consumer purchasing power.

  For Mises, the best way to address such a threat is to avoid fiat currencies altogether. And in his estimation, the best sound-money alternative to fiat currency is gold. “The excellence of the gold standard,” Mises wrote, is “that it renders the determination of the monetary unit’s purchasing power independent of the policies of governments and political parties.” In other words, gold’s primary virtue is that its supply increases slowly and steadily, and cannot be manipulated by politicians.

  It may appear as if gold was an arbitrary choice as the basis for currency, but gold has a combination of qualities that make it ideal for storing and exchanging value. First, it is verifiably unforgeable. Gold is very dense, which means that counterfeit gold is easy to identify — one simply has to weigh it. Second, gold is divisible. Unlike, say, cattle, gold can be delivered in fractional units both small and large, enabling precise pricing. Third, gold is durable. Unlike commodities that rot or evaporate over time, gold can be stored for centuries without degradation. Fourth, gold is fungible: An ounce of gold in Asia is worth the same as an ounce of gold in Europe.

  These four qualities are shared by most modern currencies. Gold’s fifth quality is more distinct, however, as well as more relevant to its role as an instrument of sound money: scarcity. While people have used beads, seashells, and other commodities as primitive forms of money, those items are fairly easy to acquire and introduce into circulation. While gold’s supply does gradually increase as more is extracted from the ground, the rate of extraction relative to the total above-ground supply is low: At current rates, it would take approximately 66 years to double the amount of gold in circulation. In comparison, the supply of U.S. dollars has more than doubled over just the last decade.

  When the Austrian-influenced designers of bitcoin set out to create a more reliable currency, they tried to replicate all of these qualities. Like gold, bitcoin is divisible, unforgeable, divisible, durable, and fungible. But bitcoin also improves upon gold as a form of sound money in several important ways.

  First, bitcoin is rarer than gold. Though gold’s supply increases slowly, it does increase. The global supply of bitcoin, by contrast, is fixed at 21 million and cannot be feasibly altered.

  Second, bitcoin is far more portable than gold. Transferring physical gold from one place to another is an onerous process, especially in large quantities. Bitcoin, on the other hand, can be transmitted in any quantity as quickly as an email.

  Third, bitcoin is more secure than gold. A single bitcoin address carried on a USB thumb drive could theoretically hold as much value as the U.S. Treasury holds in gold bars — without the need for costly militarized facilities like Fort Knox to keep it safe. In fact, if stored using best practices, the cost of securing bitcoin from hackers or assailants is far lower than the cost of securing gold.

  Fourth, bitcoin is a technology. This means that, as developers identify ways to augment its functionality without compromising its core attributes, they can gradually improve the currency over time.

  Fifth, and finally, bitcoin cannot be censored. This past year, the Chinese government shut down Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper not by censoring its content, but by ordering banks not to do business with the publication, thereby preventing Apple Daily from paying its suppliers or employees. Those who claim the same couldn’t happen here need only look to the Obama administration’s Operation Choke Point, a regulatory attempt to prevent banks from doing business with legitimate entities like gun manufacturers and payday lenders — firms the administration disfavored. In contrast, so long as the transmitting party has access to the internet, no entity can prevent a bitcoin transaction from taking place.

  This combination of fixed supply, portability, security, improvability, and censorship resistance epitomizes Nakamoto’s breakthrough. Hayek, in The Denationalisation of Money, foresaw just such a separation of money and state. “I believe we can do much better than gold ever made possible,” he wrote. “Governments cannot do better. Free enterprise…no doubt would.”

  While Hayek and Nakamoto hoped private currencies would directly compete with the U.S. dollar and other fiat currencies, bitcoin does not have to replace everyday cash transactions to transform global finance. Few people may pay for their morning coffee with bitcoin, but it is also rare for people to purchase coffee with Treasury bonds or gold bars. Bitcoin is competing not with cash, but with these latter two assets, to become the world’s premier long-term store of wealth.

  The primary problem bitcoin was invented to address — the devaluation of fiat currency through reckless spending and borrowing — is already upon us. If Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending plan passes Congress, the national debt will rise further. Someone will have to buy the Treasury bonds to enable that spending.

  Yet as discussed above, investors are souring on Treasurys. On June 30, 2021, the interest rate for the benchmark 10-year Treasury bond was 1.45%. Even at the Federal Reserve’s target inflation rate of 2%, under these conditions, Treasury-bond holders are guaranteed to lose money in inflation-adjusted terms. One critic of the Fed’s policies, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, compares the value of today’s Treasury bonds to a “melting ice cube.” Last May, Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates and a former bitcoin skeptic, said “[p]ersonally, I’d rather have bitcoin than a [Treasury] bond.” If hedge funds, banks, and foreign governments continue to decelerate their Treasury purchases, even by a relatively small percentage, the decrease in demand could send U.S. bond prices plummeting.

  If that happens, the Fed will be faced with the two unpalatable options described earlier: allowing interest rates to rise, or further inflating the money supply. The political pressure to choose the latter would likely be irresistible. But doing so would decrease inflation-adjusted returns on Treasury bonds, driving more investors away from Treasurys and into superior stores of value, such as bitcoin. In turn, decreased market interest in Treasurys would force the Fed to purchase more such bonds to suppress interest rates.

  AMERICA’S BITCOIN OPPORTUNITY

  From an American perspective, it would be ideal for U.S. Treasury bonds to remain the world’s preferred reserve asset for the foreseeable future. But the tens of trillions of dollars in debt that the United States has accumulated since 1971 — and the tens of trillions to come — has made that outcome unlikely.

  It is understandably difficult for most of us to imagine a monetary world aside from the one in which we’ve lived for generations. After all, the U.S. dollar has served as the world’s leading reserve currency since 1919, when Britain was forced off the gold standard. There are only a handful of people living who might recall what the world was like before then.

  Nevertheless, change is coming. Over the next 10 to 20 years, as bitcoin’s liquidity increases and the United States becomes less creditworthy, financial institutions and foreign governments alike may replace an increasing portion of their Treasury-bond holdings with bitcoin and other forms of sound money. With asset values reaching bubble proportions and no end to federal spending in sight, it’s critical for the United States to begin planning for this possibility now.

  Unfortunately, the instinct of some federal policymakers will be to do what countries like Argentina have done in similar circumstances: impose capital controls that restrict the ability of Americans to exchange dollars for bitcoin in an attempt to prevent the digital currency from competing with Treasurys. Yet just as Nixon’s 1971 closure of the gold window led to a rapid flight from the dollar, imposing restrictions on the exchange of bitcoin for dollars would confirm to the world that the United States no longer believes in the competitiveness of its currency, accelerating the flight from Treasury bonds and undermining America’s ability to borrow.

  A bitcoin crackdown would also be a massive strategic mistake, given that Americans are positioned to benefit enormously from bitcoin-related ventures and decentralized finance more generally. Around 50 million Americans own bitcoin today, and it’s likely that Americans and U.S. institutions own a plurality, if not the majority, of the bitcoin in circulation — a sum worth hundreds of billions of dollars. This is one area where China simply cannot compete with the United States, since Bitcoin’s open financial architecture is fundamentally incompatible with Beijing’s centralized, authoritarian model.

  In the absence of major entitlement reform, well-intentioned efforts to make Treasury bonds great again are likely doomed. Instead of restricting bitcoin in a desperate attempt to forestall the inevitable, federal policymakers would do well to embrace the role of bitcoin as a geopolitically neutral reserve asset; work to ensure that the United States continues to lead the world in accumulating bitcoin-based wealth, jobs, and innovations; and ensure that Americans can continue to use bitcoin to protect themselves against government-driven inflation.

  To begin such an initiative, federal regulators should make it easier to operate cryptocurrency-related ventures on American shores. As things stand, too many of these firms are based abroad and closed off to American investors simply because outdated U.S. regulatory agencies — the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Treasury Department, and others — have been unwilling to provide clarity as to the legal standing of digital assets. For example, the SEC has barred Coinbase from paying its customers’ interest on their holdings while refusing to specify which laws Coinbase has violated. Similarly, the agency has refused to approve Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) without specifying standards for a valid ETF application. Congress should implement SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce’s recommendations for a three-year regulatory grace period for decentralized digital tokens and assign to a new agency the role of regulating digital assets.

  Second, Congress should clarify poorly worded legislation tied to a recent bipartisan infrastructure bill that would drive many high-value crypto businesses, like bitcoin-mining operations, overseas.

  Third, the Treasury Department should consider replacing a fraction of its gold holdings — say, 10% — with bitcoin. This move would pose little risk to the department’s overall balance sheet, send a positive signal to the innovative blockchain sector, and enable the United States to benefit from bitcoin’s growth. If the value of bitcoin continues to appreciate strongly against gold and the U.S. dollar, such a move would help shore up the Treasury and decrease the need for monetary inflation.

  Finally, when it comes to digital versions of the U.S. dollar, policymakers should follow the advice of Friedrich Hayek, not Xi Jinping. In an effort to increase government control over its monetary system, China is preparing to unveil a blockchain-based digital yuan at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Jerome Powell and other Western central bankers have expressed envy for China’s initiative and fret about being left behind. But Americans should strongly oppose the development of a central-bank digital currency (CBDC). Such a currency could wipe out local banks by making traditional savings and checking accounts obsolete. What’s more, a CBDC-empowered Fed would accumulate a mountain of precise information about every consumer’s financial transactions. Not only would this represent a grave threat to Americans’ privacy and economic freedom, it would create a massive target for hackers and equip the government with the kind of censorship powers that would make Operation Choke Point look like child’s play.

  Congress should ensure that the Federal Reserve never has the authority to issue a virtual currency. Instead, it should instruct regulators to integrate private-sector, dollar-pegged “stablecoins” — like Tether and USD Coin — into the framework we use for money-market funds and other cash-like instruments that are ubiquitous in the financial sector.

  PLANNING FOR THE WORST

  In the best-case scenario, the rise of bitcoin will motivate the United States to mend its fiscal ways. Much as Congress lowered corporate-tax rates in 2017 to reduce the incentive for U.S. companies to relocate abroad, bitcoin-driven monetary competition could push American policymakers to tackle the unsustainable growth of federal spending. While we can hope for such a scenario, we must plan for a world in which Congress continues to neglect its essential duty as a steward of Americans’ wealth.

  The good news is that the American people are no longer destined to go down with the Fed’s sinking ship. In 1971, when Washington debased the value of the dollar, Americans had no real recourse. Today, through bitcoin, they do. Bitcoin enables ordinary Americans to protect their savings from the federal government’s mismanagement. It can improve the financial security of those most vulnerable to rising prices, such as hourly wage earners and retirees on fixed incomes. And it can increase the prosperity of younger Americans who will most acutely face the consequences of the country’s runaway debt.

  Bitcoin represents an enormous strategic opportunity for Americans and the United States as a whole. With the right legal infrastructure, the currency and its underlying technology can become the next great driver of American growth. While the 21st-century monetary order will look very different from that of the 20th, bitcoin can help America maintain its economic leadership for decades to come.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/19/2021 – 23:25

• More Than 180 San Francisco City Officials, Including Police And Sheriff Employees, Placed On Leave For Not Being Vaccinated
  More Than 180 San Francisco City Officials, Including Police And Sheriff Employees, Placed On Leave For Not Being Vaccinated

  Crime is getting so bad in San Francisco, we’ve noted that businesses like Walgreens are simply closing their stores and leaving the city. 

  Which is why it seems like a peculiar time to put more than 180 city officials, including some from the police and sheriff’s office, on leave for not getting vaccinated. 

  Placing these workers on leave leads to a process that could end in termination, Breitbart wrote about the decisions. 

  The same report notes that crimes YOY in the city are up, with homicide rising 12.8%, human trafficking up 20% and assault up 9.2%.

  Mawuli Tugbenyoh, spokesperson for the Department of Human Resources, said: “Across the country and the world, thousands of people continue to die from COVID-19. Sadly, this includes employees of the city and county of San Francisco. To protect the health and safety of members of the public as well as employees, the city issued its vaccination policy,”

  Apparently, people dying from homicide and committing felonious acts in such great numbers that entire businesses are moving out of the city is just fine though. 

  

  The San Francisco Chronicle reported:

  As of Thursday afternoon, 76 sworn police officers — or 3.5 percent of all officers — remained unvaccinated. A additional 32 non-sworn employees also have not received shots. Those numbers dropped from early Wednesday evening, when Police Chief Bill Scott said 118 officers and 31 non-sworn employees remained unvaccinated, on trend with a decline in recent weeks.

  The Police Department has 2,832 employees, including 2,113 officers. Most, but not all, needed to get vaccinated by Oct. 13. The Sheriff’s Department reported a 3.8 percent unvaccinated rate, with 39 out of 1,014 staff not fully vaccinated. In the Fire Department, 35 employees — or 2 percent of 1,738 — have not gotten shots.

  The Chronicle report continues:

  “Employees can apply for medical or religious exemptions. The city has so far received approximately 800 exemption requests from city workers, which it is reviewing ‘as quickly as possible with priority given to employees who have earlier deadlines for vaccination.’”

  Tracy McCray, vice president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, concluded:

  “It’s a time when we really can’t afford to lose anyone. It’s just really harsh, it’s my way or the highway.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/19/2021 – 23:05

• "We Just Don't Know" How To Defend Against Possible Chinese Hypersonic Missile: US Ambassador
  “We Just Don’t Know” How To Defend Against Possible Chinese Hypersonic Missile: US Ambassador

  Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times,

  A new investigative report by the Financial Times asserted that China launched a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile, which circled the earth in a low orbit before cruising toward and narrowly missing a test target. The Chinese regime has officially denied the report’s findings, saying that the object in question was a spaceship.

  U.S. disarmament ambassador Robert Wood said that Washington is concerned about China’s possible deployment of hypersonic weaponry, and said the United States hadn’t developed a means of countering it.

  “Hypersonic technology is something that we have been concerned about, the potential military applications of it and we have held back from pursuing, we had held back from pursuing military applications for this technology,” Wood said at a press meeting in Geneva on Oct. 18.

  “But we have seen China and Russia pursuing very actively the use, the militarization of this technology, so we are just having to respond in kind … We just don’t know how we can defend against that technology. Neither does China, neither does Russia.”

  

  A Weapon Without Rebuttal

  The Financial Times report, which cited five people familiar with the matter, and China’s subsequent rebuttal created a furor in parts of the U.S. intelligence community, which appeared unprepared for the news that China was so far into its efforts to develop hypersonic capabilities. Others were less surprised, however.

  “Hypersonic weapons research and development has been underway in China for decades,” said Rick Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.

  “In 2019, the People’s Liberation Army revealed the first medium-range HGV [hypersonic glide vehicle] weapon, its DF-17 HGV-armed missile system.”

  “Thus, reports that China has combined a HGV strike system with a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) must be taken very seriously.”

  HGVs are highly maneuverable vehicles that skip or “glide” their way to a target after being brought to low orbit by a rocket booster. FOBS is a system first theorized in the Soviet Union, in which a missile enters low orbit before striking its target, rather than arcing out of orbit before coming back to the surface.

  The combination of the two technologies is important because, unlike a traditional intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that exits the atmosphere and reenters using a predictable arc, the HSV/FOBS design allows for a payload to strike out with near-unlimited range from any direction once it is in orbit, effectively negating traditional early warning systems.

  According to Fisher, this raises a red flag, as the United States currently lacks the capability to defend against an attack that uses such technology.

  “On ICBMs, HGV weapons are capable of very sharp and rapid maneuvering that can help defeat missile defenses, assuming we have anti-HGV missile interceptors, which currently is not the case,” Fisher said.

  “When HGVs arm new Chinese FOBS systems, which was just tested, you combine a strike system designed to avoid U.S. ground-based detection with a strike warhead that is very difficult to shoot down.”

  “There are indications that China intends to arm its ICBMs with multiple HGV warheads, which increases their range and also their ability to defeat any U.S. defenses.”

  Russia finished development of its own HGV, dubbed “Avangard,” back in 2019. That weapon is capable of flying at Mach 20, roughly 15,000 miles per hour. North Korea similarly test-fired its own hypersonic weapon in September. The United States has also been investing heavily in developing hypersonic capabilities over the past several years.

  Given such a threat-rich environment, it’s difficult to determine how genuine the surprise of the intelligence community was, as Fisher said that those in the know might not be making it known.

  “It is hard to determine ‘surprise’ in the intelligence community because compartmentalization is its way of life,” Fisher said.

  “Those who might talk to journalists are not necessarily those who would have been briefed on these PLA developments.”

  Regardless, the alleged capability is something to be contended with, as the combination of HGV and FOBS would mean that China has, or is close to having, a weapon capable of evading U.S. defenses and striking the homeland.

  Spaceship or Missile?

  Adding to the confusion surrounding the report was Beijing’s firm denial that such a weapon existed at all.

  Zhao Lijian, spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told a media briefing that the Financial Times report was inaccurate, and said the object was a spaceship designed to explore the possibility of utilizing reusable technology to reduce the costs of China’s space missions.

  The Chinese regime intentionally makes it difficult for the international community to assess its weapons tests, however, and such could be the case here. That’s because the Chinese Communist Party and its military branch, the People’s Liberation Army, utilize a so-called dual-use policy that ensures commercial and scientific projects also provide a military benefit.

  The contention of whether China tested a hypersonic missile or a spaceship provides a prime example of this policy in action, as China’s space and missile programs both use rockets from the “Long March” family to reach orbit. Thus, any test to improve China’s space program also improves its missile program, and vice versa.

  Fisher noted that some experts have argued that all of China’s space launch vehicles should be counted as strategic strike systems, as China’s space program and all of its launch sites are owned and managed by the Chinese military.

  He also noted that public counts of China’s ICBMs don’t currently count them as such.

  “It is reasonable to ask: Has the PLA really had many hundred ‘ICBMs’ for a long time?” Fisher said.

  US Policy of Restraint ‘Failed’

  Fisher said China’s alleged test of a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile was an attempt to leapfrog U.S. capabilities and effectively subvert the efficacy of the United States’ next generation of missile defense technologies.

  “Combining HGVs and FOBS is one way that China is preemptively responding to any U.S. decision to increase missile defense of the U.S. homeland,” Fisher said.

  “They are seeking to defeat U.S. missiles defenses that have not yet been developed or deployed.”

  This is ostensibly the reason for Washington’s concern. As stated by Wood, there’s simply no extant counter to a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile system that could strike anywhere on earth.

  To mitigate such a threat, Fisher said the United States ought to pursue space-based defense systems that could detect and destroy HGVs during the “boost phase,” before they reached orbit and became unpredictable to traditional tracking systems.

  Before that happens, however, Fisher said the United States would need to reckon with the failure of its long-standing policy of not building adequate missile defenses as a means of encouraging non-proliferation.

  “For decades, and this is still U.S. policy, we did not build missile defenses to stop Chinese and Russian nuclear warheads from vaporizing Americans,” Fisher said. “[We did this] so that we would not give them an excuse to start a nuclear arms race.”

  “American restraint on this count has failed.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/19/2021 – 22:45

• Emerging World Hands Dems A "$750 Billion Bill" For Climate Change Ahead Of Glasgow Summit
  Emerging World Hands Dems A “$750 Billion Bill” For Climate Change Ahead Of Glasgow Summit

  While the EU’s leading unelected bureaucrats continue to play footsie with the Kremlin while energy prices soar and EU member states reckon with the prospect of a very cold winter, the Wall Street Journal has just taken the time to remind us why the far-left Democrats’ progressive “Green New Deal” climate rhetoric is all but destined to fail. And they did it with a portrayal of John Kerry’s uncomfortable silence after being confronted with the price tag for the Democrats’ green energy aspirations not at home, but abroad.

  

  According to WSJ, the made-for-camera moment happened at a global climate summit in July, when there were no cameras around, when Kerry was handed what the paper described as “a bill” for aiding the developing world in its shift away from fossil fuels – enough to achieve the “green energy” to protect them, and the world, from Global Warming.

  The figure: $750 billion. The number was “met with silence [Kerry] according to Zaheer Fakir, an adviser to Creecy [South African Environment Minister Barbara Creecy]” and Kerry wasn’t the only western official in the room wearing a long face.

  Of course, that’s not even anywhere close to the real number. As we and Bank of America’s analysts have already explained, there’s a $150 trillion backing the global climate crusade via its most effective capitalist soldiers: the ESG-focused companies and investors who are raising trillions of dollars to “fix” this problem.

  Yet, the most sober-minded analysts still believe that the cost of actually coming anywhere close to meeting the West’s commitments will spark levels of inflation that many American consumers (if you asked them) probably wouldn’t be too comfortable. 

  Even by the most optimistic projections for development and the advent of green technologies, there’s still no way of pulling this off without causing a great monetary disturbance. Some might call it “runaway inflation”…

  

  …but don’t worry, whatever BofA calls it, it has a “cheat sheet” ready for its clients.

  

  Ultimately, this is BofA’s admission taken from everything we have shared above.

  Q: What is the economic impact of net zero?

  A: The inflation impact of elevated net zero funding will not be insignificant but the impact looks manageable at 1% to 3% per annum depending on central bank monetization rates, particularly if government spending is targeted and contributes to accelerate the rate of global GDP growth. The IEA also has a productive outlook for their net zero scenario, where the change in the annual growth rate of GDP accelerates by somewhere between 0.3% and 0.5% on a sustained basis over the next 10 years as a result of a shift to a green economy.

  But the sad reality is that the emerging world (ie China) isn’t willing (or, in fact, even able) to meet the west’s demands. They’re not going down with their use of fossil fuels, they’re actually going in the opposite direction – up – as they industrialize while “billions rise out of poverty” according to WSJ (nevermind what happens in the US while this process takes place).

  At this point, it’s important to remember that it’s not so much a coalition of nations that the west needs to “convince” – it’s really just China. The US, Europe and a few other wealthy nations “committed” to providing $100 billion a year from 2020 through 2025. So far, they have fallen short every year (though that number spent annually is going up, not down).

  Most western officials involved are saying that the west must focus first on the goals it met at the last great climate summit in Paris more than 5 years ago before it starts talking about new promises and projections after 2025.

  “There isn’t enough official development funds in the system to close the gap of climate finance,” said Gustavo Alberto Fonseca, director of programs at the U.N.’s Global Environment Facility, which funds climate infrastructure in the developing world. “There has to be a market-based solution.”

  If we know that already, then why are we having another one of these big global pow wows again, right now, while the entire world is convalescing from COVID?

  If the “price tag” for climate change is such an impediment, then why don’t the powers that be focus on more productive uses of their time – like minting the $1 trillion coin (which, given the rhetoric from the Fed and Treasury, seems to be exactly what the Dems are thinking of resorting to in the US).

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/19/2021 – 22:25

• San Francisco Shuts Down In-N-Out Burger For Refusing To Be "Vaccination Police For Government"
  San Francisco Shuts Down In-N-Out Burger For Refusing To Be “Vaccination Police For Government”

  Authored by Jefferey Jaxen and Patrick Layton via TheHighwire,com,

  In-N-Out Burger’s Chief Legal and Business Officer, Arnie Wensinger, is set to release a statement after the San Francisco Department of Health closed one of the Top California Burger Restaurant’s locations. 

  

  “Today, the San Francisco Department of Health closed our restaurant…” he wrote.

  According to Wensingers statement, In-N-Out Burger employees were allegedly “not preventing the entry of customers who were not carrying proper vaccination documentation.”

  Beyond the famous California institution’s location “properly and clearly” posting signage to communicate local vaccination requirements, the SFDH has attempted to require In-N-Out Burger employees to act as health police and enforcement personnel for the city.

  He explains, “After closing our restaurant, local regulators informed us that our restaurant Associates must actively intervene by demanding proof of vaccination and photo identification from every customer…barring entry for any Customers without proper documentation.”   

  Wensigner opened up further in the statement saying they are committed to the highest level of customer service & making all feel welcome. 

  “We refuse to become the vaccination police for any government. It is unreasonable, invasive, and unsafe to force our restaurant associates to segregate customers,” wrote Wensigner. 

  In late August, San Francisco became one of the first major U.S. cities to require proof of full COVID-19 vaccination to enter indoor restaurants, bars, gyms, theaters, and other entertainment venues. 

  New York City’s policy went into effect on August 17, and the city began to enforce the requirements as of September 13. Inspectors for New York City have reportedly given numerous violations of $1,000 for failing to check vaccination cards.

  Some fast-food chains shut their seating areas altogether, sacrificing sales and bottom lines to appease city health rules.

  Federal and State Vaccine Mandates have fueled a great divide in the U.S., pitting businesses, unions, legislators, and neighbors against one another based on their firmly held beliefs on the issue.

  Further fueling the division are inconsistent actions from public officials like CA Governor Gavin Newsom. It was recently reported that Newsom, who is publicly driving Lockdowns and Vaccine mandates, does not vaccinate his own daughter. In addition to that, CA Assemblyman Kevin Kiley tweeted that the embattled Governor is fighting to remove the vaccine mandate for a union that reportedly gave over $1 million to his campaign.

  

  For In-n-Out Burger, they are not alone as employees, employers, unions, public employees, and even Governors across the nation are signaling their distaste for a mandate Arnie Wensinger describes as a “government dictate that forces a private company to discriminate against customers who choose to patronize their business.”

  The statement concludes with a declaration that leaves no doubt about where the famous Burger Institution stands.

  “This clear governmental overreach and is intrusive, improper, and offensive.”

  Full Statement:

  

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/19/2021 – 22:05

• The One Chart Restaurateurs Should Worry About
  The One Chart Restaurateurs Should Worry About

  US restaurant bookings have stalled in the last four and half months despite two-thirds of the country fully vaxxed and the economy roaring back, fueled by unprecedented amounts of fiscal and monetary stimulus. 

  High-frequency data, provided by OpenTable, shows US restaurant bookings have yet to make a new high since June.  Bookings have made a remarkable recovery from the COVID low in the spring of 2020 through the mid-point of this year but have languished in the back half and remain slightly below pre-COVID levels. Restaurateurs should keep note of the chart below: 

  

  It’s understandable that fears of COVID variants this summer might have played a role in stalling restaurant bookings, but since Sept. 13, the 7-day moving average of new COVID cases has plunged. Still, bookings have yet to surge but instead seem to be moving lower. 

  

  Even with 64% of the country fully vaxxed, bookings have stalled and could move lower, suggesting that consumer sentiment could be the problem. 

  Last week, the UMich sentiment survey showed that preliminary consumer sentiment data for October slipped as more Americans grew more concerned about current conditions and economic outlook.

  

  One major problem is consumer inflation expectations for the next year surged to their highest since 2008 (as longer-term inflation expectations dipped). Higher inflation could be impacting family budgets and means restaurant spending is being slashed. 

  

  If consumers have learned anything from the pandemic shutdowns, they can cook at home and save a bunch of money rather than eating out. This trend could become more permanent and dampen the restaurant industry’s recovery through winter as inflation bites. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/19/2021 – 21:45

• Is Aspirin The New Horse Dewormer?
  Is Aspirin The New Horse Dewormer?

  Authored by Brian C. Joondeph, MD (emphasis ours),

  Aspirin is one of those drugs that has been around forever. It is commonly used as a pain reliever, anti-inflammatory, and blood thinner. Surprisingly it may also have benefits in treating COVID.

  

  A paper in Anesthesia and Analgesia published last spring titled, “Aspirin use is associated with decreased mechanical ventilation, intensive care unit admission, and in-hospital mortality in hospitalized patients with coronavirus disease 2019.”

  This was a retrospective, observational study of adult patients admitted to multiple hospitals in the U.S. between March and July 2020, in the early days of COVID. The primary outcome addressed by the researchers from George Washington University was the need for mechanical ventilation, which then, and still now, carries an extremely high chance of never leaving the ICU alive.

  This was not a gold standard randomized prospective clinical trial. That would not be feasible in this situation since study patients were already hospitalized and critically ill. Remember in the early days, one needed to be extremely ill before even being admitted to the hospital rather than being sent home until sick enough to return and go straight to the ICU.

  But the results were impressive. As reported last week by the Jerusalem Post,

  The team investigated more than 400 COVID patients from hospitals across the United States who take aspirin unrelated to their COVID disease, and found that the treatment reduced the risk of several parameters by almost half: reaching mechanical ventilation by 44%, ICU admissions by 43%, and overall in-hospital mortality by 47%.

  Why would aspirin be helpful for COVID, a respiratory disease? What if COVID is more than simply a lung disease or pneumonia? COVID is actually thought to be a microvascular disease causing blood clots, as described in the medical journal Circulation,

  Although most patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) present with a mild upper respiratory tract infection and then recover, some infected patients develop pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, multi-organ failure, and death. Clues to the pathogenesis of severe COVID-19 may lie in the systemic inflammation and thrombosis observed in infected patients. We propose that severe COVID-19 is a microvascular disease in which coronavirus infection activates endothelial cells, triggering exocytosis, a rapid vascular response that drives microvascular inflammation and thrombosis.

  Note the thrombosis aspect, blood clots forming in the lungs and elsewhere in the body. Aspirin, as a blood thinner, reduces the risk of blood clots, explaining its potential benefit for COVID.

  

  For the same reason, the American Heart Association recommends,

  If you have had a heart attack or stroke, your doctor may want you to take a daily low dose of aspirin to help prevent another. Aspirin is part of a well-established treatment plan for patients with a history of heart attack or stroke.

  Add the appropriate caveat, which I would echo, “You should not take daily low-dose aspirin on your own without talking to your doctor. The risks and benefits vary for each person.”

  How did aspirin get its start? Over 3,500 years ago, willow bark, known as “nature’s aspirin,” was used as a painkiller and antipyretic by ancient Egyptians and Greeks, and in a chemical synthesis by a Bayer chemist in 1897.

  Aside from pain relief, it was found to have anti-platelet and anti-cancer effects. It’s also on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines, along with another familiar drug, ivermectin. The Harvard-based physicians’ health study in the 1980s found that low-dose aspirin reduced the risk of heart attack by 44 percent.

  A recently published Israeli study found, “Aspirin use is associated with better outcomes among COVID-19 positive patients.” This included a lower likelihood of infection, disease duration, and hospital survival. In other words, aspirin works as both a preventative and as a treatment.

  Aspirin is another potential therapeutic, along with hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, which is inexpensive, readily available, and relatively safe, and could save countless lives when used appropriately for COVID. An editorial in Anesthesia and Analgesia described aspirin for COVID as, “An old, low-cost therapy with a strong rationale.” And right on cue, it’s time for aspirin-bashing to commence.

  At the same time as these papers showing potential benefits of aspirin for COVID hit the news, the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, on Oct. 12, posted draft recommendations saying that, “Once people turn 60 years old, they should not consider starting to take aspirin because the risk of bleeding cancels out the benefits of preventing heart disease.” What curious timing.

  Certainly, aspirin has potential side effects including an increased risk of bleeding. All medications have side effects and one can even die from drinking too much water. It always comes down to medical decision-making, balancing risks and benefits, in consultation with one’s healthcare provider.

  The media wasted no time in using the suddenly released and new aspirin recommendations at the same time as news reports on aspirin benefits for COVID hit the news.

  NBC reported, “Most adults shouldn’t take daily aspirin to prevent heart attack, panel says.” The New York Times echoed, “Daily low-dose aspirin no longer recommended by doctors, if you’re healthy.” Healthline went further, “Doctors warn daily aspirin use can be dangerous.” Driving or walking across the street can be dangerous too.

  Sound familiar? How many adults have been taking low-dose aspirin daily for many years, based on the decades-old Harvard study? I have as I have a family history of cardiovascular disease and my internist and I agree that the benefits outweigh the risks, despite the new recommendations.

  Similarly how many patients have been taking hydroxychloroquine for years or decades for arthritis or lupus, without dying from the drug as Fox News crank Neil Cavuto warned last year? How many take ivermectin to prevent parasitic infections? Now we can add aspirin to the list of once safe and effective medications — that’s now on par with cyanide or strychnine.

  It seems the medical establishment and the media want to squash any potential COVID therapeutic, especially the inexpensive ones, instead pushing vaccines and extremely pricey medicines like Merck’s new $712 COVID drug.

  The media described ivermectin as horse dewormer or animal paste, seemingly unaware that it is an FDA-approved medication for human use and was once honored with a Nobel Prize. Watch Joe Rogan put CNN’s medical mouthpiece, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, in a virtual chokehold until he tapped out and admitted to CNN’s irresponsible reporting and lying about ivermectin.

  Aspirin also has non-medical uses including as a stain remover, garden enhancer, and dandruff remedy. I would love to hear President Trump mention the potential benefits of aspirin for COVID and see the news headlines of Trump recommending people ingest detergent, fertilizer, or shampoo to treat COVID.

  Welcome to simple aspirin, the media’s new horse dewormer.

  Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a physician and writer. On Twitter and FreeAtlantis as @retdoc.

  To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/19/2021 – 21:25

• China's Magnesium Shortage Could Spell More Trouble For Global Car Industry 
  China’s Magnesium Shortage Could Spell More Trouble For Global Car Industry 

  While a shortage of semiconductors has plagued the global auto automotive industry this year, the market is now turning its focus to magnesium, a hardening agent of aluminum. Such a shortage could paralyze the aluminum billet production used to make engine blocks, gearboxes, frames, body panels, and rims, among other critical items for automobiles in Europe and the Americas. 

   “A magnesium shortage could trigger a shortage of aluminum, which in turn could also hit car production.

  “We stress at this point that such a scenario is not yet included in our estimates. The issue has just emerged and no carmaker has yet warned about it,” BofA Securities analyst told clients in a note. 

  The source of the shortage is China’s monopoly on global magnesium production. Production curbs of energy-intensive smelters have reduced the industrial metal’s output, resulting in dwindling stockpiles in Europe and North America. 

  Barclays analyst Amos Fletcher told clients in a note that “there are no substitutes for magnesium in aluminum sheet and billet production.” He warned if “magnesium supply stops,” the entire auto industry will grind to a halt. 

  

  The latest warning of magnesium shortages materializing was last week’s warning from S&P Global Platts who obtained a letter from Matalco Inc. President Tom Horter warning customers, “in the last few weeks, magnesium availability has dried up, and we have not been able to purchase our required magnesium units for all of 2022.” 

  Matalco is North America’s largest producer of aluminum billet. Horter’s warning continued: 

  “The purpose of this note is to provide this advanced warning that, if the scarcity continues, and especially if it becomes worse, Matalco may need to curtail production in 2022, resulting in allocations to our customers.” 

  For a stunning wake-up call to just how concentrated the complex global supply chain is, 85% of the world’s magnesium production comes from China. Much of it comes from one town in Shaanxi province, Yulin, where the government has curbed output at 70% of all magnesium smelters this year due to energy conservation ahead of the Northern Hemisphere winter. 

  European industry groups have sounded the alarm. WV Metalle, Germany’s non-ferrous metal trade association, warned:

  “It is expected that the current magnesium reserves in Germany and throughout Europe will be exhausted in a few weeks at the end of November 2021 at the latest,” the group said. “In the event of a supply bottleneck of this magnitude, there is a risk of massive production losses.”

  European Aluminium, whose members include Norsk Hydro, Rio Tinto, and Alcoa, said, “the current magnesium supply shortage is a clear example of the risk the EU is taking by making its domestic economy dependent on Chinese imports. The EU’s industrial metals strategy must be strengthened.” 

  Aluminum futures on the London Metal Exchange have broken out to a new high as concerns of magnesium supply mount. 

  

  The critical question is if Beijing will allow magnesium smelters to restart operations by the end of the year or early next year to replenish supplies. If that’s not the case, expect the automotive industry to be dealing with a twin crisis of not just a lack of semiconductors but also crucial aluminum.  

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/19/2021 – 21:05

• It Takes A Lot Of Education To Keep Us This Stupid
  It Takes A Lot Of Education To Keep Us This Stupid

  Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

  The oligarchic empire is working harder and harder to bolt down our minds in service of its agendas…

  

  Silicon Valley is working more and more openly in conjunction with the US government, and its algorithms elevate empire-authorized narratives while hiding unapproved ones with increasing brazenness.

  The mass media have become so blatantly propagandistic that US intelligence operatives are now openly employed by news outlets they used to have to infiltrate covertly.

  NATO and military institutions are studying and testing new forms of mass-scale psychological manipulation to advance the still developing science of propaganda.

  A transparently fake “whistleblower” is being promoted by the US political/media class to manufacture support for more internet censorship and shore up monopolistic control for institutions like Facebook who are willing to enforce it.

  Wikipedia is an imperial narrative control operation.

  They’ve imprisoned a journalist for exposing US war crimes after the CIA plotted to kidnap and assassinate him.

  I do reporting on some really disconcerting topics, but the research I did for this is some of the most terrifying I’ve done in my years as a journalist:

  NATO is developing “cognitive warfare,” waging a “battle for your brain,” to “make everyone a weapon”https://t.co/z40x6k96OW

  — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) October 11, 2021

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

  The powerful work so hard at such endeavors because they understand something that most ordinary people do not: whoever controls the dominant narratives about the world controls the world itself.

  Power is controlling what happens; absolute power is controlling what people think about what happens.

  If you can control how people think about what’s going on in their world, if you can control their shared how-it-is stories about what’s happening and what’s true, then you can advance any agenda you want to. You’ll be able to prevent them from rising up against you as you steal their wealth, exploit their labor, destroy their ecosystem and send their children off to war. You can keep them voting for political institutions you own and control. You can keep them from interfering in your ability to wage wars around the world and sanction entire populations into starvation to advance your geostrategic goals.

  This status quo of exploitation, ecocide, oppression and war benefits our rulers immensely, bringing them more wealth and power than the kings of old could ever dream of. And like the kings of old they are not going to relinquish power of their own accord, which means the only thing that will bring an end to this world-destroying status quo is the people rising up and using the power of their numbers to end it.

  Yet they don’t rise up. They don’t because they are successfully propagandized into accepting this status quo, or at least into believing it’s the only way things can be right now. Imperial narrative control is therefore the source of all our biggest problems.

  And they’re only getting more and more aggressive about it. More and more forceful, less and less sly and subtle in their campaign to control the thoughts that are in our heads.

  Many of those who have this realization see it as cause for despair. I personally see it as cause for hope.

  

  They work so hard to manufacture our consent for the status quo because they absolutely require that consent; history shows us that rulers do not fare well after a critical mass of the population has turned against them. And they’re working harder and harder to manufacture that consent, even as extremely influential people begin questioning whether we’re being deliberately deceived about everything.

  They used to look like someone using a bucket to bail out water from a leaky boat. Now they look like someone treading water, barely managing to get their mouth and nose high enough to take gasps of air.

  They’re working harder and harder because they need to.

  The fact that the propagandists have to work so hard to keep our society this insane means the natural gravitational pull is toward sanity. They have to educate us into crazier and crazier ways of thinking from the moment we go to school until we die, because otherwise we’ll collectively awaken and shake off their shackles.

  It takes a lot of educating to keep us this stupid.

  You think you’re struggling? You should see the people trying to manufacture consent for a status quo that is both plainly insane and self-evidently unsustainable. They’re the ones doing all the heavy lifting in this struggle. They’re the ones fighting gravity.

  Hope is not a popular position to take in a world that is being abused, exploited and being driven mad by manipulative sociopaths. Which is understandable.

  But I just can’t help it. I look at how hard they are struggling to keep the light from bursting in and driving out the darkness, and I can’t help but think, “Those poor bastards can’t keep that up much longer.”

  *  *  *

  My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.

  Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/19/2021 – 20:45

• Pakistan Navy Intercepts Indian Submarine In Maritime Border Breach, Blasts "Deplorable" Aggression 
  Pakistan Navy Intercepts Indian Submarine In Maritime Border Breach, Blasts “Deplorable” Aggression 

  Pakistan’s Navy announced on Tuesday that days ago it detected an Indian Navy submarine preparing to breach its territorial waters, for which it responded and “blocked” the vessel. 

  This as a strict ceasefire has been in place along all border regions since early this year following recent tensions, particularly in disputed Kashmir, where in 2019 an Indian jet was shot down and the ejected pilot briefly held by Pakistan’s military. The Pakistani military statement indicated the incident happened on October 16, and it even released video which it says confirms the incident. 

  #Pakistan Navy has once again detected and blocked an Indian submarine on 16 Oct 21 from entering Pakistan’s water territories.

  Its the 3rd incident, an 🇮🇳Submarine has been prematurely detected and tracked by PN Long Range Maritime Patrol Aircraft. #ISPR statement said.. pic.twitter.com/QW4avbMmeb

  — Sumaira Khan (@sumrkhan1) October 19, 2021

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  The navy statement indicated that a Pakistan long-range maritime patrol aircraft had “detected and blocked” the vessel “from entering Pakistani waters”.

  Further a Pakistani Armed Forces media statement hailed the navy’s “unremitting vigilance and professional competence,” saying further that “During the prevailing security milieu, a strict monitoring watch has been kept by Pakistan Navy to safeguard maritime frontiers”, according to an ISPR statement.

  It further blasted Indian aggression and “machinations” along the border: 

  “The recent incident reflects the deplorable Indian machinations vis-à-vis commitment and resolve of Pakistan Navy to defend maritime frontiers of the motherland.”

  It’s being widely described as the third submarine intercept incident in five years between the nuclear armed powers. India did not immediately respond to the allegations. 

  

  “The previous two submarine interceptions occurred in late 2016 and early 2019,” UPI writes. “Officials said the sub was found about 176 miles south of Karachi, just inside the boundary of Pakistan’s Exclusive Economic Zone.”

  If the Pakistan Navy’s location information is accurate, “The position would be just inside the boundary of Pakistan’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), an area of coastal water and seabed that countries have exclusive economic rights over, under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,” according to Al Jazeera.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/19/2021 – 20:25

• TikTok Threatens To Censor "Let's Go Brandon" Song For "Harassment And Bullying"
  TikTok Threatens To Censor “Let’s Go Brandon” Song For “Harassment And Bullying”

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  A popular new song containing the viral anti-Biden ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ meme faces potential removal by TikTok for “harassment and bullying.”

  

  Yes, really.

  After the track by rapper Loza Alexander soared up the Apple Music Hip Hop and Rap chart over the weekend, it also began to go viral on TikTok, receiving over 500,000 likes.

  That’s when the thought police stepped in.

  “Tik Tok has threatened to remove my #letsgobrandon viral video that is approaching the number one spot on iTunes top us hip hop records! Tik Tok is claiming that I’m bullying? But how???” asked Alexander.

  ATTENTION news reporters!
  Tik Tok has threatened to remove my #letsgobrandon viral video that is approaching the number one spot on iTunes top us hip hop records! Tik Tok is claiming that I’m bullying? But how??? @TikTokSupport#lozaalexander #loza #letsgobrandonthemesong pic.twitter.com/ilAdaPHC6S

  — Loza Alexander (@ImLozaAlexander) October 14, 2021

  The message from TikTok says that the song is being investigated for the “content violation” of containing “harassment and bullying.”

  Apparently, the new social media benchmark for “bullying” is making fun of the president.

  In enforcing such a rule, TikTok is merely mirroring its Communist Chinese censorship system, which also blocks content that lambastes or ridicules President Xi Jinping.

  Hear ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ via the video below.

  * * *
  ZH: Meanwhile, Alexander has uploaded several videos of the #letsgobrandonchallenge where people dance, or just look hot, to his viral song.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/19/2021 – 20:05

• As US Becomes World's Largest Bitcoin Miner, Riot Blockchain Unveils 200 Megawatt Immersion-Cooled Mining Operation
  As US Becomes World’s Largest Bitcoin Miner, Riot Blockchain Unveils 200 Megawatt Immersion-Cooled Mining Operation

  Not that long ago, China was the dominant power in global bitcoin mining, a position that presented the cryptoworld with a profound threat: if Beijing wanted it could simply take control over a majority of global mining rigs and launch a “51% attack“, in the process nuking the blockchain and effectively destroying the world’s greatest monetary experiment overnight.

  However, in the span of just a few short months, back in May, China’s State Council – which was focused on marketing its disastrous digital yuan and hoped to eliminate all competition – expelled its domestic bitcoin mining industry citing environmental and financial concerns, under the pretext that bitcoin miners were using up too much dirty electricity (a rather hypocritical take for a country that has emerged as the world’s largest polluter) in a move that many have said will be remembered as the “single greatest geopolitical mistake of the 21st century” (it would subsequently proceed to ban all bitcoin activity in yet another catastrophic mistake by the country’s oligarchs). And with China voluntarily cedeing its sole veto control over bitcoin, we predicted that the outcome would be an extremely bullish one for the crypto sector especially since the ESG criticism against bitcoin would gradually fade away;  indeed, with bitcoin now trading just shy of all time highs, we were right.

  But… but… this is great news.

  Means no more dirty coal bitcoin mining in Xinjiang.

  How will the ESG cult bash bitcoin now?

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 21, 2021

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  The winner? The United States, which was just a minor player in recent years and has since blossomed into the world’s largest bitcoin mining hub.

  

  In just two months, the US overtook China as the world’s biggest source of bitcoin mining after Beijing banned crypto mining this year, new data have revealed. As shown above, China’s share of the global hashrate — the computational power required to create bitcoin — fell from 44 per cent to zero between May and July. The country accounted for three-quarters of the global hashrate in 2019.

  The US share of the global hashrate increased from 17 per cent in April to 35 per in August, while Kazakhstan rose 10 percentage points to 18 per cent in the same period.

  Michel Rauchs, digital assets lead at the closely watched Cambridge tracker, noted that “the effect of the Chinese crackdown is an increased geographic distribution of hashrate across the world”, adding that it could be seen as “a positive development for network security and the decentralized principles of bitcoin”.

  Meanwhile, miners outside China enjoyed a digital coin minting spree in the months following the ban, as Chinese competitors hurried to relocate their operations.

  But nobody has benefited more than the US: “The China shutdown has been great for the industry and US miners,” said Fred Thiel, chief executive of Marathon Digital Holdings, a Las Vegas-based crypto mining company. “Overnight, fewer players were going after the same finite number of coins.”

  More importantly, in a radical departure from China’s coal-fueled mining free for all, the US is rapidly becoming a truly “environmentally-conscious” global mining hub, as demonstrated by today’s news from Riot Blockchain which announced their new 200 megawatt (MW) industrial-scale immersion-cooled bitcoin mining operation at its Whinstone facility in Rockdale, Texas which was acquired by the company earlier this year. This operation features two buildings that will host roughly 46,000 S19 series Antminer ASICs — all immersion-cooled.

  “After months of research and development, utilizing partnerships across industries, Riot is proud to be a pioneer in the use of cutting-edge immersion-cooling technology at an unprecedented scale,” said Jason Les, CEO of Riot.

  Riot is proud to pioneer the world’s first industrial-scale, immersion-cooled, #Bitcoin mining operation.$Riot #ImmersionCooling #BitcoinMining pic.twitter.com/3YBDQyspMD

  — Riot Blockchain Inc. (@RiotBlockchain) October 19, 2021

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  According to the company, Immersion-Cooling is the process of submerging miner ASICs in a specialized fluid that circulates, allowing the miners integrated circuits to operate at lower temperatures. if it sounds vaguely similar to how one cools a nuclear power plant, it’s because it’s not too far off. This technique also increases the hash rate of the miners, as they no longer need fans for cooling, resulting in the machines using less energy. In fact, the machines themselves become sources of energy (and heat), which with the world facing a global energy crisis is a feature that both China and Europe would be delighted to have.

  The company is expecting a 25% increase in hash rate from the miners being submerged, according to industry data and the company’s own preliminary immersion-cooling test results, but they could see a potential increase of ASIC performance by as much as 50%.

  The initial deployment of these immersion-cooled ASICs is expected to begin in Q4, 2021. Riot will hardly be alone and as more bitcoin miners relocate out of the desolate communist wasteland that seems to only specialize in genetically engineering viruses these days, Texas will see tremendous monetary and socio-economic benefits as it becomes the global hub for clean bitcoin mining, much to the humiliation of Beijing which literally kicked out the digital golden goose.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/19/2021 – 19:45

• Police Suggest Possible Charges For Those Who Filmed Rape On Train
  Police Suggest Possible Charges For Those Who Filmed Rape On Train

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  The recent rape of a woman on a train in Pennsylvania has shocked and disgusted the nation, particularly after passengers did nothing to help the woman as she was allegedly attacked by Fiston Ngoy, 35. Now police are reportedly considering criminal charges against passengers who filmed the rape and did not call the police.

  The woman was reportedly harassed by Ngoy for a long period before he raped her in front of the other passengers.

  

  The question is the basis for such criminal charges. There is first the failure to call police. Then there is the filming of the attack. While passengers could claim that they were recording the crime, police say that the passengers did not call them or share the videos.

  Generally there is no duty to rescue or to call police under the common law. Some states have moved to penalize those who do not call police. For example, Washington state allows for the charging of a misdemeanor.The law covers violent crimes, sexual assault, and assault of a child. The law requires that individuals “shall as soon as reasonably possible notify the prosecuting attorney, law enforcement, medical assistance, or other public officials.”  The law further states “The duty to notify a person or agency under this section is met if a person notifies or attempts to provide such notice by telephone or any other means as soon as reasonably possible.”

  I am unaware of such a law in Pennsylvania, but these laws are rarely enforced.

  Conversely, New York charged a woman for calling police in a racially charged incident in Central Park. The charge was later dismissed.

  We have seen criminal charges for videotaping crime scenes in other countries.  We also discussed a torts case involving a delay in calling police, but that case involved people who were deemed partially responsible for a death.

  In 2009, the New York courts ruled that Metro workers were not legally required to assist a woman being raped at a station.

  In torts, there is no duty to rescue rule.  That was the holding in the famous ruling in Yania v. Bigan, 397 Pa. 316, 155 A.2d 343 (1959), where a man watched another man drown without taking any efforts to assist him. Even though Bigan dared Yania to jump into the hole full of water, the court found that this made no difference. Since these taunts were “directed to an adult in full possession of all his mental faculties [it] constitutes actionable negligence is not only without precedent but completely without merit.” On the rule itself, the Court wrote:

  Lastly, it is urged that Bigan failed to take the necessary steps to rescue Yania from the water. The mere fact that Bigan saw Yania in a position of peril in the water imposed upon him no legal, although a moral, obligation or duty to go to his rescue unless Bigan was legally responsible, in whole or in part, for placing Yania in the perilous position: Restatement, Torts, § 314. Cf: Restatement, Torts, § 322. The language of this Court in Brown v. French, 104 Pa. 604, 607, 608, is apt: “If it appeared that the deceased, by his own carelessness, contributed in any degree to the accident which caused the loss of his life, the defendants ought not to have been held to answer for the consequences resulting from that accident. … He voluntarily placed himself in the way of danger, and his death was the result of his own act. … That his undertaking was an exceedingly reckless and dangerous one, the event proves, but there was no one to blame for it but himself…The complaint does not aver any facts which impose upon Bigan legal responsibility for placing Yania in the dangerous position in the water and, absent such legal responsibility, the law imposes on Bigan no duty of rescue.

  Europeans have always criticized our rule and many countries have long recognized a duty to rescue – though usually that obligation ends with any physical risk.

  New York was the scene of perhaps the most infamous example of citizens failing to act to protect a victim. Kitty Genovese (right) was stabbed to death near her home in Queens on March 13, 1964. She was stabbed twice in the back by Winston Moseley and screamed, “Oh my God, he stabbed me! Help me!” While someone yelled, “let that girl alone” and Moseley ran, no one called the police. Genovese crawled away, but Moseley returned ten minutes later and searched for her. Over the course of half an hour, he raped her and then murdered her. Somewhere between 12 and 38 people are estimated as having heard the assault. When witness Karl Ross finally called the police, they arrived within minutes.

  I am unaware of a criminal provision that would allow a charge for the other passengers in Pennsylvania. Indeed, I know of no law requiring an intervention in a violent crime scene anywhere in the country. Perhaps some of our Pennsylvania lawyers could help out.  Requiring people to take such a risk is unlikely to be upheld in court. The failure to call 911, as discussed above, is a crime in a few states but only treated as a misdemeanor in those rare cases of prosecution.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/19/2021 – 19:25

• IHS Market Warns Of "Armageddon" For US Propane Market 
  IHS Market Warns Of “Armageddon” For US Propane Market 

  The expanding energy crisis is causing propane to rocket higher (read: here) as supplies dwindle to below seasonal levels as research firm IHS Markit Ltd. warns of “armageddon” during the Northern Hemisphere winter. 

  

  IHS analyst Edgar Ang told attendees during a virtual presentation on Tuesday that US propane inventories are at a record low and will be extremely tight as cold weather is ahead. Mean temperatures in the Lower US 48 are expected to dip into the 60-55F range through the end of this month. 

  

  Heating degree days are set to soar by month end, suggesting the heating season has already begun. 

  

  Ang said 1Q22 prices are already above later-dated supplies that “it may indicate players are preparing for propane-market armageddon.” He warned some areas of the country might be prone to shortages this winter. 

  Propane prices, which are used for heating resident and commercial building structures and also used for industrial production of plastics, have jumped to the highest in a decade due to increasing overseas demand and tight production. The surge comes as a global energy crunch threatens to derail the global economy. 

  

  In a separate report, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects households that use propane and heating oil this year will spend much more than last. This could strip out some of their spendings in other areas of the economy, such as eating out.

  Soaring energy prices, plus food, shelter, and other costs, will continue to pressure the Biden administration to solve persistent inflation that eats away at real wages. 

  Making matters worse IHS expects a cooler winter that could boost energy demand and continue to place a bid under propane prices, analyst Veeral Mehta said.

  It’s only now that the Biden administration wishes there was global warming. 

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/19/2021 – 19:05

• Iran, Venezuela To Sign 20-Year Economic Cooperation Deal While Facing US Sanctions
  Iran, Venezuela To Sign 20-Year Economic Cooperation Deal While Facing US Sanctions

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  Iran and Venezuela have announced a plan to sign a 20-year economic cooperation deal as the two countries continue to strengthen their trade relationship in the face of US pressure.

  Venezuelan Foreign Minister Felix Plasencia met with his Iranian officials in Tehran on Monday. After meeting with Plasencia, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said the deal will be signed when Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro visits Tehran in the “next few months.”

  

  The Iranian Foreign Ministry said the two diplomats “decided to hold a joint economic commission of the two countries in the near future and to compile and finalize a comprehensive plan for the 20-year economic cooperation between the two countries.”

  Both Iran and Venezuela are under crippling economic sanctions, so the two countries are natural trading partners. This growing relationship has angered Washington. During the Trump administration, the US outright stole shipments of Iranian gasoline that were bound for Venezuela.

  Despite the US pressure, Caracas and Tehran continue to trade. On Friday, an Iranian ship discharged about 2 million barrels of condensate in Venezuela, a compound used to refine oil. In exchange, Venezuela gave Iran about 2 million barrels of crude.

  In Tehran on Monday, Plasencia also met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. The Iranian leader said strengthening ties with countries like Venezuela will be a priority of his.

  #Iran FM had a joint presser with #Venezuela FM in Tehran, saying both countries will sign a 20-year cooperation agreement during upcoming visit by Venezuela President Maduro to Tehran in the coming months. Joint commission of Iran & Venezuela will be held before the end the year pic.twitter.com/eSbvXBa8SL

  — Abas Aslani (@AbasAslani) October 18, 2021

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

  “In this government, we are determined to overcome the problems caused by the enemies and continue the path of development of our country,” he said.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 10/19/2021 – 18:45

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