Today’s News 20th September 2021

• Prince Andrew Dominates Meghan & Harry As Most Unpopular Royal
  Prince Andrew Dominates Meghan & Harry As Most Unpopular Royal

  An incredible amount of media focus was on Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, at the start of the year, culminating in a highly anticipated two-hour interview with Oprah Winfrey. As data from YouGov shows, the ensuing furore around the pair has led to a significant fall in popularity. When asked if they have a positive or negative opinion of 15 royals, Harry and Meghan came out with a net favourability of -13 percent each.

  However, as Statista’s Martin Armstrong shows in the infographic below, Prince Andrew is still firmly the least popular member of the royal family in the eyes of the public, though.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  The Queen’s son has been in the spotlight for a much more damaging reason.

  After his ‘car crash‘ interview broadcast last November in which he addressed his connection to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the royal is now facing a preliminary court hearing in New York today for a sexual assault lawsuit filed against him by Virginia Giuffre.

  According to the Associated Press,

  “Giuffre has alleged that the prince sexually abused her at least three times when she was 17 years old. Prince Andrew, who has yet to respond to the civil suit, has previously denied ever meeting Giuffre”.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/20/2021 – 02:45

• Kabul Should Not Forget: "Turkey Was A Major Part Of The NATO Mission In Afghanistan"
  Kabul Should Not Forget: “Turkey Was A Major Part Of The NATO Mission In Afghanistan”

  Authored by Lindsey Snell via TheCradle.co,

  Turkish President Erdogan intends to play a role in post-conflict Afghanistan. But are his ambitions ‘Neo-Ottoman’ and Islamist, in service of NATO, or wrapped around his 2023 electoral goals?

  

  Prior to the Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan last month, Ankara had sought to promote dialogue and cooperation with the insurgent group, in particular, to ensure Turkey maintains a role in the operation of the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. Turkish troops provided security at the Kabul airport during the NATO occupation of Afghanistan, and are currently in talks with Qatar and the Taliban over security and management operations.

  In a speech on 20 July, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted the Taliban would have an easier time communicating with Turkey than they had in dealing with the United States. “Turkey sees nothing wrong with [the Taliban’s] faith. I think that we can agree with them that we will discuss these issues better.”

  In a bizarre reference to the mission of his NATO allies in Afghanistan – of which Turkey was an active participant since 2001 – Erdogan continued to say:

  “These imperial powers entered Afghanistan. They have been there for more than 20 years. And we stood by our Afghan brothers in the face of all these imperial powers, and continued our struggle to protect the Kabul airport with them.”

  However, as Hişyar Özsoy, member of Parliament and Foreign Affairs spokesman for Turkey’s opposition HDP (Halkların Demokratik Partisi, Turkish for the Peoples’ Democratic Party) pointed out:

  “Turkey was a major part of the NATO mission in Afghanistan.”

  “But given that the West in general,” Özsoy continued to say, “and the US in particular, do not want to stay in places like Afghanistan, I think Turkey will try to occupy the position of type of a subcontractor to fill the political vacuum and security issues in such places.”

  Özsoy told The Cradle that President Erdogan’s top priority is to keep himself in power in Turkey:

  “As we get closer to the 2023 Presidential elections in Turkey, whatever Erdogan does abroad is related to what he is trying to do at home. He is trying to cut a deal with Western leaders and say to them, ‘Support me, and help me stay in power so that I can be useful to you.’ The US and European leaders are open to the idea. And since Turkey is a member of NATO, who could do this better? Erdogan wants to be the bridge between the Taliban and the West.”

  Özsoy believes the refugee issue is a major bargaining chip for Erdogan with the West.

  “We have millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey, of course, and now there will be more Afghan refugees, but it’s not just about Syria and Afghanistan. This is a time of constant displacement and dislocation. Millions of refugees are trying to head to Europe, and many of these people will have to pass through Turkey. Erdogan has mostly kept his promises to [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel in regard to the refugee situation and limiting the flow of refugees.”

  In an interview with Turkish state media channel A Haber on 16 August, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said, “Turkey is a great Islamic brother country. We want to have good relations with Turkey in the future, and we want cooperation, assistance, and many things in Afghanistan.”

  On 29 August, Erdogan said that in Afghanistan, Turkey could make an agreement similar to the 2019 agreement made with the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) in Libya, an interim body since dissolved. As part of that deal, Turkey agreed to provide military and security assistance, and deployed hundreds of their own troops to Misrata and Tripoli.

  Much more controversially, Turkey has sent thousands of militants from the Syrian National Army (SNA) – an umbrella organization of Turkish-backed opposition factions in Syria – to the north African state. SNA factions have consistently committed war crimes against the civilian population in the parts of Syria they currently control.

  In late 2017, after the SNA was formed, President Erdogan claimed the opposition militants would be helping Turkey to create a “safe zone” in Syria to combat both ISIS and the PKK, the militant arm of the Kurdish Workers’ Party, a group designated a terrorist organization by both Turkey and the United States.

  In January 2018, Turkey and their SNA proxies launched an aerial and ground attack on Afrin, a predominantly Kurdish city in northern Syria. The Turkish government named the Afrin offensive Operation Olive Branch, and said it was aimed at clearing the city of ISIS and the PKK.

  There was no proof to substantiate Turkey’s claims that any ISIS elements were in the Afrin area. An SNA Hamza Division militant interviewed by The Cradle about the Afrin operation in 2019 said he and many others felt deceived by Turkey’s claims.

  “We were told we would be fighting ISIS and the PKK,” he said. “But in reality, there was no ISIS, just the YPG [the US-backed, predominantly Kurdish forces in northern Syria].”

  Erdogan’s own comments after the start of the attack on Afrin, which called the Turkish government’s narrative of the invasion into question. “We are heading toward the Kızıl Elma,” Erdogan reportedly said in a speech days after the attack on Afrin began. Kızıl Elma (Turkish for ‘red apple’) symbolizes the Turkish nationalist belief that all Turkic people will be united under one flag and that Turkey will control the territories previously under the control of the Ottoman Empire.

  “Erdogan has neo-Ottoman ambitions,” Ahmet Yayla, Director of the Center for Homeland Security at DeSales University and former Turkish counterterrorism police chief told The Cradle.

  “It’s not just in Syria. If we look at Libya, at how Turkey is sending [SNA] militants to fight in support of the Tripoli government, that is very clear. The only way for Erdogan to stay in power is through expansion.”

  On 14 June, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that the US and Turkey were in direct talks regarding the future management of the Kabul airport to follow the NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan. Immediately following his remarks, rumors of an Afghanistan deployment began to swirl among the SNA factions in Syria. In addition to the thousands of SNA militants Turkey has sent to and maintained in Libya since 2019, Turkey also deployed around 2,000 SNA militants to Azerbaijan, just days before helping Azerbaijan launch its 2020 war on Nagorno-Karabakh.

  “There were some voice notes from SNA commanders being sent around,” the source in the SNA Hamza Division faction explained. “They said to send your name and a picture of your ID if you wanted to go to Afghanistan. We didn’t think it would happen, but we also didn’t think anyone would be sent to Azerbaijan. And two years ago, no one thought we would be going to Libya. So, anything seems possible. But we haven’t heard new information since the Taliban took over Afghanistan.”

  While it is unclear whether Turkey will incorporate Syrian mercenaries into their plan for Afghanistan, one of Turkey’s stipulations to the Taliban regarding the operation of the Kabul airport was the involvement of a private Turkish security firm. SADAT International Defense Consultancy, Inc., a private Turkish security firm headed by former Erdogan advisor Adnan Tanriverdi, has been linked to the deployment and management of SNA militants in both Azerbaijan and Libya.

  “I am sure the British, German, and American intelligence know exactly what is happening and how many Syrian mercenaries are being transferred from here to there,” MP Hişyar Özsoy said.

  “They also know about the atrocities committed by these groups supported by Turkey in Afrin, Syria and in other places. There are dirty politics here. The American and European leaders are unhappy with what Erdogan has done here, in Syria, and in Libya, but they are thinking, “somebody has to clean up this mess, but we don’t want to do it. Let Turkey do it.”

  There are strong rumors Turkey might use Afghanistan as a way to rid Idlib of the central Asian extremists in Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (the Syrian offshoot of Al Qaeda that boasts of having Uzbek and Uyghur fighters, among other nationalities) and other terrorist groups that create tension with the West. But there is no evidence of that yet.

  Either way, Erdogan’s goals in Afghanistan come bearing his extensive Islamist militant network, an overriding impulse to expand his influence well beyond Turkey’s borders, and NATO’s imperatives to keep Iran, China and Russia off kilter – much of this prompted by the Turkish president’s electoral ambitions.

  So far, it looks like the Taliban has not yet opened its doors to Ankara. But Turkey’s Qatari ally enjoys close access to the new Afghan regime, and Erdogan’s pathway to Afghanistan’s power brokers may yet be smoothed over by Doha.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/20/2021 – 02:00

• If Only We Could Find A Cure For Trump Derangement Syndrome
  If Only We Could Find A Cure For Trump Derangement Syndrome

  Authored by James Bowman, op-ed via The Epoch Times,

  The disease in its pandemic form is far from over. Our former hopes of its eradication and a return to normalcy in the new year now appear forlorn. We shall just have to live with it for the forseeable future, it seems.

  The president, it’s true, has told us that, although the virus “has been hitting this country hard, we have the tools to combat the virus, if we can come together as a country and use those tools.”

  But he was only talking about the coronavirus and not the much-less controllable but equally virulent virus causing Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) on a near-pandemic scale.

  

  That is something against which we appear to have no “tools” at all. Indeed, the president himself is an unrelieved sufferer from “long” TDS, as he showed in this same speech by enthusiastically participating in the “pandemic politics” he decried in others and implying that former President Donald Trump’s efforts against the coronavirus—including Operation Warp Speed, which developed the vaccines he was now mandating—had been unavailing until he came along.

  By thus politicizing his own anti-COVID efforts, did he somehow imagine he was going to persuade vaccine skeptics to trust themselves to his good faith in recommending them to get immunized?

  Of course, it’s no surprise to learn that this president’s case of TDS is a terminal one, but the disease struck again two days later in an unexpected place, Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

  There, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks on New York and Washington of Sept. 11, 2001, former President George W. Bush strongly implied that he had chosen to align himself with one of the worst of the hallucinations caused by TDS fever-delirium by suggesting an equivalence between the events of 20 years previously (death toll 2,977) and those of the Capitol riot of last Jan. 6 (death toll 1).

  If there’s anyone in the whole wide world with a better reason to resist the politicization of the 20th anniversary commemoration of 9/11 than former President George W. Bush, I don’t know who it is. That, surely, is the province of the Bush haters—sufferers from Bush Derangement Syndrome, which was to TDS what SARS-CoV-1 was to SARS-CoV-2—who suggest that his response to the attacks, if he didn’t himself conspire with the attackers, was politically motivated.

  But he just couldn’t help himself, could he? That’s long-TDS for you. Once that poison enters your mind, you can never get it out again. Or so it seems.

  The latest virus hot-spot to show up is in California, where a majority appear to have declined to recall a governor generally acknowledged even by some Democrats to be one of the worst in the country solely because—according to the pundits, anyway—his principal opponent had some nice things to say about the Bad Orange Man from Mar-a-Lago.

  Let us live a little longer, said the Californians, with the wildfires and the soaring crime rates and the invasions of the homeless and the oppressive anti-COVID measures wished on us by people who don’t observe them themselves. At least Gov. Gavin Newsom still hates Trump as much as we do.

  You might think that the delirium caused by such a cruel disease could grow no worse than this, but you would be wrong. The worst case must belong to those Democratic pundits who are euphoric over the Californian demonstration of mass insanity, because they think it has foreshadowed the salvation, presumably by an even wider spread of TDS, of the Democratic majorities in Congress.

  Perhaps the best-known symptom of TDS is that it utterly and permanently deprives you of your sense of shame.

  That is how it must have happened that the 9/11 anniversary commemoration at the Pentagon was led by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and General Mark Milley—two of the last people on earth whom the bereaved of 9/11 would be likely to want to see in such a place at such a time, after their return of Afghanistan to the terrorists.

  We didn’t even know at the time quite how bad or long-lasting was Gen. Milley’s case of TDS. That information only came out a few days later when Bob Woodward and Robert Costa reported on the general’s alleged collusion with his Chinese counterpart to inform him in advance of any plans for an American attack on China.

  

  I know, I know. Bob Woodward. Right? You should never trust a word he writes unless it’s confirmed by at least two independent witnesses. But we do have the general’s own witness in his testimony to Congress last June. As I wrote in these pages at the time, Gen. Milley showed that he was as totally on-board with the Democrats’ narrative of “insurrection” in the Capitol as he was with their effort to propaganidize our armed forces with critical race theory and to purge them of “extremists.”

  We knew then that he saw Trump-supporters as a security threat to the nation, so it should be not so much of a surprise as it would otherwise seem if we now learn that he was prepared to disregard the Constitution, his oath of office, his honor as a soldier and loyalty to his country and its civilian leadership, all in the belief that Trump was the real national security threat.

  Whether it was treasonable or not, as Trump himself has suggested it was, the general’s alleged act—assuming, as I say, that we can trust Woodward—was clearly that of a sick man. If there was a 25th Amendment for generals, there would be a clear case for his removal from his duties on grounds of mental incompetency—even if you ignore the Woodward allegations and concentrate on his already having signed on to the 9/11 = 1/6 equivalency and his monumental screw-up of the Afghanistan pullout.

  Arguably, this was itself partly a product of the TDS. For if all things Trump are bad and all things no-Trump are good, it’s still the case that a no-Trump thing that goes bad, like the Afghan debacle, can still be blamed on Trump, as President Joe Biden attempted to do. Some sufferers from the illness in California might even have believed him.

  If only there were an Operation Warp Speed to develop a vaccine against TDS! But no such luck. “Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d?” asks Macbeth of his wife’s doctor. Alas, no—no more today than 400 years ago. As the doctor says: “Therein the patient must minister to himself.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/20/2021 – 00:00

• Hong Kong Stocks Crash, Futures Slide As Markets Finally Freak Out About Evergrande Default Contagion
  Hong Kong Stocks Crash, Futures Slide As Markets Finally Freak Out About Evergrande Default Contagion

  Well, as we warned, the Evergrande contagion has finally arrived and with China closed for holiday traders are getting out while they can and where they can, and on Monday morning in Asia that means Hong Kong, where Evergrande – which is about to default – has crashed by another 13% this morning and is on track to close at its lowest market cap ever (to be expected ahead of a bankruptcy that will wipe out the equity)…

  

  … and with Evergrande property development peers such as New World Development & Sun Kung Kai Properties both down over 8%, and Sunac China and CK Asset plunging over 7%, the Hang Seng property index has crashed more than 6%, its biggest drop since 2020 to the lowest level since 2016…

  

  … and the broader Hang Seng index is down 3.5% in early trading, to the lowest level since November 2020.

  

  And with traders on edge about the rapidly spreading contagion (as we described earlier) even sectors supposedly immune to China’s property woes, such as the Hang Seng Tech Index are plunging, sliding as much as 2.7%.

  And speaking of Evergrande’s imminent default, we noted earlier that while the company is scheduled to pay $83.5 million of interest on Sept. 23 for its offshore March 2022 bond, and then has another $47.5 million interest payment due on Sept. 29 for March 2024, the day of reckoning may come as soon as Tuesday: that’s because Evergrande is scheduled to pay interest on bank loans Monday, with a one-day grace period. In other words, should it fail to arrange an extension, it could be in technical default as soon as Tuesday (for a much more detailed analysis of next steps please see “This Is How Contagion From Evergrande’s Default Will Spread To The Rest Of The World“.) Spoiler alert: a default is coming because Chinese authorities have already told major lenders not to expect repayment.

  

  Incidentally, as Bloomberg’s Mark Cranfield notes, Hong Kong stocks can’t blame low liquidity for the meltdown as “trading volumes on the Hang Seng and H shares indexes are running well above the 10-day average on Monday as both drop by ~4%.”

  There’s more: junk-rated Chinese dollar bonds slid by as much as 2 cents, according to credit traders, pushing their yield to just shy of 15%, the highest since 2011.

  Other sectors are also getting hammered, such as Ping An Insurance, China’s largest insurer by market value, which plunged 7.3% in Hong Kong.

  “Investors may be concerned about highly-geared names and don’t care about valuation nowadays,” said Philip Tse, head of Hong Kong & China Property Research at Bocom International Holdings Co Ltd. “There will be further downside” unless the government gives a clear signal on Evergrande or eases up on its clampdown on the real estate sector, Tse said.

  Meanwhile, pouring gasoline on the fire, Goldman’s China anlyst Hui Shan published a note (available for professional subs in the usual place) on Sunday in which it discussed the rising risks from the property market, writing that even without the Evergrande debacle “housing activity fell sharply in July and weakened further in August” largely in response to China’s structural reforms in the property sector (such as the “3 Red Lines”). At the same time, “concerns over Evergrande are rising and signs of financing difficulties spreading to other developers are emerging.”

  In the note, Goldman also estimates the potential impact of the coming property market crash on Chinese growth under different scenarios, which can be described as bad, worse, and terrible, with the bank expecting a GDP hit anywhere from just over 1% to as much as 4.0%. Needless to say, such an outcome would be devastating not only for China but for the world.

  

  Looking ahead, Goldman notes that while for now, its baseline remains that any potential default or restructuring of Evergrande would be carefully managed by the government with limited contagion effect in both financial and property markets “this would require a clear message from the government soon to shore up confidence and to stop the spillover effect, the absence of which we think poses notable downside risk to growth in Q4 and next year.”

  In short, as we explained previously, it all depends on Beijing whether the current selloff accelerates, or if we see a furious surge as Beijing directly or indirectly injects another cool trillion or 10.

  Meanwhile, as Bloomberg’s bloggers write echoing what we said yesterday while traders may have been hoping there would be some clarity on the road ahead for the company, given it has bond payments due this week, “the complexity of the case may be the reason for a lack of communication from the authorities. That compounds the uncertainty for investors, and with China on holiday, the momentum for lower Hong Kong stocks are picking up pace.”

  So while contagion is clearly hammering Hong Kong in lieu of the shuttered China, it is also spreading to Australia where the Aussie dollar is  mining stocks have slumped as iron ore prices continue to collapse, with the industry group falling 4%. Among the biggest movers, Champion Iron fell as much as 12.5% in early trade Monday, continuing a four-day losing streak while Fortescue Metals dipped as much as 7%, falling to the lowest price since July last year.

  Contagion has also moved beyond merely stocks, with US equity futures trading as low as 4380..

  

  … and is starting to impact both commodities, with Iron Ore tumbling more than 10% on fears a Chinese property crisis will lead to collapsed demand for steel, as well as FX, with the dismal mood lifting USD/HKD to the highest for September, and while USD/CNH is firmer, but for now, that is in line with broad dollar strength. Should EUR/CNH start trending higher, Bloomberg notes, “that would be a signal traders have become anxious about the health of the yuan amid the equities slump.”

  Incidentally, it is hardly a secret that the bigger the market crash, the more likely Beijing is to do something to bail out the market and tens of millions of very angry Chinese investors who may soon show Nancy Pelosi what an insurrection really looks like. But should the silence out of Beijing persist, it’s only a matter of time before the “anxiety” hits levels not seen since Sept 2008 as an outcome most traders thought impossible becomes inevitable.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/19/2021 – 23:31

• In-Car Cameras Are Now Watching Every Little Thing You Do
  In-Car Cameras Are Now Watching Every Little Thing You Do

  Gone are the days where you could hop in your car and escape to somewhere for a little privacy.

  That’s because cameras that were put in cars to catch drivers falling asleep are now catching…well, everything.

  Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute have now developed a smart-car camera system that can “figure out exactly what a driver is doing,” according to a new Gizmodo report.

  And already the camera is being positioned as “potentially improving the safety of semi-autonomous driving features” and a feature that could help drivers in semi-autonomous vehicles pay attention to the road.

  

  The “appeal” of these points is what prompted the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation to come up with a camera that uses AI powered image recognition to construct a digital sketch of the driver – which then, in turn, provides enough details for the system to guess what the driver is doing. The system can determine things like when a driver is sipping a cup of coffee or looking at their phone.

  The vehicle can then make a determination if the driver is paying attention, prompting a semi-autonomous system to determine how distracted they could be. 

  Eventually, researchers want to expand the system to be able to recognize when a driver points to a certain direction in situations like automated parking. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/19/2021 – 23:30

• The US Desperately Needs To Rethink Its Middle East Strategy
  The US Desperately Needs To Rethink Its Middle East Strategy

  Authored by Paul Sullivan via OilPrice.com,

  Is the Middle East still important?

  

  This is a seemingly absurd question, yet some are asking this in Washington. The Middle East is the source of massive reserves in oil and gas. Much of the fuel to produce goods and trade from Asia and the EU comes from the Middle East. Much of the world economy relies on Middle East energy. The region has strategic chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz, The Suez Canal, and The Bab al Mandab. It is a source of some of the more significant threats in the world, such as from ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other groups. It contains some of the most important security connections in the world. Consider the neighbors of the Middle East and not just the Middle East. The Middle East is a crossroads for energy and security. It also could be one of the generators of change and improvement, if it is allowed and supported to do so.  

  However, as the U.S. becomes more focused on “The Great Powers Conflict” in Asia, especially with China, it is becoming clearer that the U.S. is losing the plot in the Middle East.

  Consider the slow to no reaction to the shipping of Iranian fuel with the help of Hezbollah and Syria to Lebanon.

  The U.S. could have done many different things to help the Lebanese with this without handing a massive public relations and political victory to its adversaries. But, in some ways, Washington’s sanctions have painted it into a corner on such issues. Consider how the U.S. took the anti-missile batteries from Saudi Arabia as the Houthis are still attacking Saudi Arabia with missiles. The Saudis made a deal with the Russians in response to this and other moves by the U.S. The U.S. handed leverage to the Russians. These are just two of many examples of how the plot is being lost. 

  Indeed, China is a threat in the Pacific to Taiwan and others. It is a threat to the freedom of navigation in the Western Pacific. It is an economic and technological threat to the US and has been for a very long time. It is a cyber threat to the US. It is developing leverage in many countries with its Belt and Road Initiative. It is now the largest trading partner with almost all Middle East countries. It is building significant diplomatic, economic, and even military leverage in the Middle East. China is moving into the region as the U.S. moves in other directions. By the way, it is getting more likely that China could have a piece of the nuclear power pie in Saudi Arabia. 

  Russia has also been creating greater leverage in the region. Its recent big defense deals with Saudi Arabia are just one example. The U.S. basically opened the door to them. Similar things happened when the U.S. cut back on defense aid to Egypt a few years back. The Egyptians were in Moscow in quick order to make defense and other deals. Russian advisors are back in Egypt. The Russians are building a huge nuclear power complex on the north coast of Egypt. There is no doubt that the Russians have far more clout and leverage in the region than before. Much of this is due to missteps by the U.S. or simply U.S. neglect of this vital region. 

  The U.S. should be in the running on nuclear power plant exports and other crucial leverage-giving exports in the region. We could export small modular rectors to the region. These have much lower proliferation and safety risks than older, larger plants. We could further develop the safety of this trade by applying 123 agreements as we did in the UAE. The UAE has the gold standard nuclear power agreement with the US even though the plants were built by a Korean company. 

  Why am I mentioning nuclear power plants? Because whoever exports a nuclear power plant to another country can develop 80 to 100 years of leverage and clout in that country. Nuclear power plant exports are dominated by Russia with China second. The U.S. is not even in the running. 

  We have seen above some examples of how the Russians and Chinese are building leverage and clout in the region. If the U.S. wants to turn more to the “Great Powers Conflict”? Then it should realize that the “Great Powers Conflict” is not just in Asia, but also in the Middle East (and Asia begins in the Sinai). The Middle East is a contested space. 

  One cannot win a backgammon and chess game by letting the other sides, one’s adversaries, make clever moves while we do not have good counter moves and we do not think many moves ahead. 

  The U.S. seems to be losing the plot of the 4D chess game in the Middle East. It is not too late to rethink strategies. The U.S. needs to be in the game for the long run and think in the long run. The U.S. needs to regain the plot in the region and how it connects with the big pictures in geopolitics, geo-economics, energy, security, and much more. It is not too late. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/19/2021 – 23:00

• Ford Doubles Production Capacity For Its F-150 Lightning As Reservations Blow Past 150,000
  Ford Doubles Production Capacity For Its F-150 Lightning As Reservations Blow Past 150,000

  While General Motors is in the midst of EV hell, dealing with a massive recall for its Chevy Bolt and shuttering production as a result of the ongoing semi shortage, Ford looks to be “full speed ahead” with plans for its electric F-150 Lightning.

  The company’s CEO, Jim Farley, said on Thursday that it had reached 150,000 reservations for the forthcoming electric pickup. As a result, the company has ramped up hiring and increasing capacity as it starts building prototypes.

  Joe White, global automotive industry editor for ThomsonReuters in Detroit, confirmed on Thursday that Ford would be expanding its F-150 Lightning capacity to 80,000 vehicles.

  Confirmed: Ford doubles F150 Lightning capacity to 80,000 vehicles. pic.twitter.com/aWqbnWSlAo

  — Joe White (@JBWEyesonroad) September 16, 2021

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  Ford plans on adding 450 jobs across 3 factories and also announced it would invest $250 million to bump up its production capacity, which was formerly 40,000 vehicles. 

  Ford Chair Bill Ford said on Thursday: “We knew the F-150 Lightning was special, but the interest from the public has surpassed our highest expectations and changed the conversation around electric vehicles. So we are doubling down, adding jobs and investment to increase production.”

  “The reservation number has been growing quite rapidly since we launched it. That’s why we’re increasing capacity and building them as fast as we can,” Farley added.

  And make no doubt about it, while other manufacturers falter, Ford’s factory appears to be up and humming.

  Just got a tour of @Ford’s new Rouge Electric Vehicle Center, where workers are building the 1st preproduction models of the F-150 Lightning pic.twitter.com/OZSpOKdBcB

  — Michael Martinez (@MikeMartinez_AN) September 16, 2021

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  Ford is planning on building about 15,000 of the model next year after its launch, and about 55,000 of the model in 2023, in a ramp up to its 2024 target. 

  Ford had already upped its production targets by 50% last November. This increase comes on top of that one.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/19/2021 – 22:30

• J6 'Chaos' Total Bust For Media As Cops, Journalists And FBI Appear To Outnumber Protesters
  J6 ‘Chaos’ Total Bust For Media As Cops, Journalists And FBI Appear To Outnumber Protesters

  Saturday’s “Justice for J6” rally appears to have been – in the words of Donald Trump, “a setup” – after police, journalists and FBI agents appear to have been the main attraction, while just a few hundred protests appeared to support those who were detained following the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.

  Pockets bulging with nothing in them

  The same digital watch (non apple)

  All black sunglasses

  Athletic builds

  Dude still wearing his dress socks

  Well groomed short faded haircuts

  Suspiciously watching someone record them in a group

  This is a piece of art https://t.co/PqRLuHlKHK

  — ELIJAH SCHAFFER (@ElijahSchaffer) September 18, 2021

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  Of the four arrests made, one of them – a man dressed in ‘Antifa’ clothing – was an undercover member of law enforcement who was detained and then led away by police.

  “Are you undercover?” the officers asked the masked man, who gave them a badge.

  I guess not anymore. pic.twitter.com/EBBx0e8Ucd

  — Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) September 18, 2021

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  Their presence did not go unmocked:

  

  DW saw this on FB and I 🤣 when she showed me… pic.twitter.com/xSLo0HL5fs

  — Ovr4Tee (Mark) (@Ovr4Tee) September 19, 2021

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  pic.twitter.com/Dcj23GzK1u

  — NevilleTheCat (@FearTheFloof) September 19, 2021

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  Two other individuals were arrested with extraditable warrants out of Texas, one of whom was accused of possession of a firearm, while the other had a probation violation according to Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times, who adds:

  Despite the low turnout at the rally, “Justice for J6” drew significant media coverage and social media engagement. While some media outlets on Sunday morning blared that the small crowd size was a sign that former President Donald Trump’s influence is waning, Trump last week suggested that people shouldn’t attend the event.

  “On Saturday, that’s a setup,” Trump told the Federalist, appearing to pre-empt the claims that his political influence is decreasing. “If people don’t show up they’ll say, ‘Oh, it’s a lack of spirit.’ And if people do show up they’ll be harassed.”

  Trump on Sept. 17 said that he believes individuals who are being detained or prosecuted for partaking in the Jan. 6 protest and breach are “being persecuted” by the federal government.

  “In addition to everything else, it has proven conclusively that we are a two-tiered system of justice,” Trump wrote in a statement. “In the end, however, JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL!”

  Over the past few months, concerns have been raised for several dozen individuals who were arrested and then detained in a federal jail in Washington D.C. over their role in the Jan. 6 incident.

  And as American Thinker‘s Andrea Widburg compares those arrested last year during the George Floyd riots with arrested J6 protesters – some of whom are still rotting in jail awaiting trial:

  What happened Saturday had barely any sound or fury and it truly signified nothing. At least, it signified nothing insofar as it was meant to gather non-leftists to protest the fact that, almost ten months after January 6, Americans are being held under miserable circumstances without the benefit of a “speedy and public trial,” and without being “informed of the nature and cause of the accusation” against each of them. The Sixth Amendment means nothing in D.C. and the rally didn’t change that.

  The rally’s meaninglessness highlights problems flowing from the draconian consequences the government meted out to the January 6 protestors: They’re having a chilling effect on conservatives exercising their First Amendment rights to peaceable assembly. Last year, during riots in honor of George Floyd, an ex-felon hopped up on drugs who violently resisted arrest, people destroyed public and private property, looted stores, and attacked police officers. Those who were arrested were often released immediately on their own recognizances and, just as often, saw their charges dropped.

  The January 6 protests are different. We know the Capitol Police invited many people into the building and those people simply wandered through peacefully and then left again. They caused minimal damage to the building, although they did scare our congresspeople, a group that should always be remembered for its cowardice and histrionics. There was only one unnatural death (as opposed to deaths from heart attacks or a drug overdose) when Michael Byrd, a Capitol police officer, murdered Ashli Babbitt.

  Nevertheless, January 6 was followed by a nationwide FBI dragnet, humiliating and overwhelming (and sometimes mistaken) arrests, hidden evidence, outrageous charges (which then get reduced to things such as “parading” if defendants go through Maoist “re-education”) and, as noted, months in prison without charges or trial. At least one prisoner was severely beaten. There’s also reason to believe that many of the people attending the rally on January 6 were provocateurs, whether from the FBI or Antifa, intentionally trying to destroy conservatives. This is truly the politics of personal destruction.

  This grotesque overreaction is having a chilling effect on conservatives. Unlike many leftists who are professional protesters, conservatives have jobs, families, and mortgages, all of which can be destroyed if they’re swept into a dragnet for daring to exercise their First Amendment rights to petition their government and engage in peaceful protest. And so, they fall silent in the face of government injustice. The risks are just too great for them.

  The Biden era represents the crushing of American constitutional rights, whether to travel freely, run their businesses, show their faces, educate their children, live in a country secure from foreign invasion, or peacefully protest and petition their government.

  *  *  *

  Will there be any media accountability for the baseless hysteria they spread over this lame event, egged on by the Department of Homeland Security, both eager to keep fear levels as high as possible for motives of ratings, power and profit?

  I know: 🤣. https://t.co/sshu3BhwFF

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 19, 2021

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  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/19/2021 – 22:01

• Pennsylvania Rations Alcohol Due To Crippled Supply-Chain
  Pennsylvania Rations Alcohol Due To Crippled Supply-Chain

  Authored by Beth Brelje via The Epoch Times,

  A shortage of certain alcohol brands is leaving some drinkers in low spirits; the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) announced this week it would begin rationing a list of popular liquor labels.

  

  Due to sustained supply chain disruptions and product shortages, purchase limits of two bottles, per customer, per day were applied to certain items beginning Friday, Sept. 17, and will remain in effect for the foreseeable future.

  The two-bottle limit applies to all consumers and liquor license holders such as bars and restaurants, and includes 43 well-known labels including Hennessy Cognac, Don Julio 1942 Tequila, Jack Daniel’s Whiskey, Moët & Chandon Impérial Champagne, and Buffalo Trace Kentucky Straight Bourbon.

  The rationing was not a surprise to Shawn McCall, general manager at Room 33 Speakeasy in Erie, Pa. The speakeasy has had trouble getting some brands for the last three or four months.

  “I haven’t been able to get Bulleit Bourbon for a month. Jack Daniel’s was out for a while but it’s back in now,” McCall told The Epoch Times in a phone interview. “People know there is a shortage, so bar owners are overstocking. That is why they put a limit on it.”

  In Pennsylvania, wine and spirits are sold at state-operated stores where both consumers and liquor license holders shop. The state stores buy directly from producers so they have a first look at supply.

  “We are aware of product shortages in other states,” PLCB Press Secretary Shawn Kelly told The Epoch Times in an email.

  “While the current supply challenges are not unique to Pennsylvania and are impacting markets across the U.S., the PLCB has experienced product shortfalls before, and we regularly impose bottle limits on products for which we know demand will exceed supply in order to distribute the product as fairly as possible. These bottle limits are preventative measures to fairly distribute product and minimize out-of-stock situations, which will vary by location.”

  Chuck Moran, executive director of the Pennsylvania Licensed Beverage & Tavern Association, says the rationing adds to a growing list of challenges for small businesses.

  “Before the pandemic I believe there were problems making kegs, having to do with steel tariffs,” Moran told The Epoch Times in a phone interview.

  “We’ve dealt with shortages before. But now it seems to be one thing after another. We went through this with chicken wings, ketchup packets, plastic cups, and there is still a recovery effort going on from COVID. Businesses were having a hard time finding employees. The combination is really hampering recovery for small business.”

  Moran hopes that when Pennsylvania’s legislators return to session Monday, they have a plan to help small businesses.

  Glass Shortage and More

  There are several reasons for the shortage. All producers who spoke with The Epoch Times pointed to increased consumer demand as one reason.

  “Many of our brands, including Buffalo Trace Bourbon, have been on allocation for a few years due to demand outstripping supply of aged whiskey,” Amy Preske, spokeswoman for the Kentucky-based Sazerac Company told The Epoch Times in an email. “On average, the whiskeys we sell today were made seven to eight years ago (2013/14) and we underestimated today’s consumer demand.”

  Buffalo Trace Distillery is in the midst of a $1.2 billion expansion, including more barrel warehouses, construction of an additional still, additional fermenters, and expanding its dry house operation. But it will still be a few years before bourbon supply catches up with demand. This shortage is related to any glass shortage or worker shortage in the supply chain, Preske said.

  

  Barrels of bourbon are seen inside of a closed storage building as they age at the Bardstown Bourbon Company in Bardstown, Kentucky on April 11, 2019. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images)

  But Svend Jansen at Jack Daniel’s Distillers headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, says those issues did impact its operation.

  “We are managing through the impact of global supply chain disruptions, including glass supply and challenging cost headwinds. With the rebound and recovery of our markets and channels, coupled with strong consumer demand for our brands, we are currently managing through glass supply constraints,” Svend told The Epoch Times in an email. “We have deployed a number of risk mitigation strategies and are working actively with our suppliers and distributor partners to optimize our supply chain to meet the consumer demand. While we expect these disruptions to persist throughout the fiscal year, we believe that the impact will become less significant in the second half of the year.”

  A global glass shortage is affecting large and small companies. Adam Flatt, co-owner of Franklin Hill Vineyards in Bangor Pa., and Social Still, makers of Sasquatch Vanilla Maple Bourbon in Bethlehem Pa., says the cost of bottles has gone up and it’s tough to buy them at any price.

  “Two years ago, I paid $1.47 for a glass bottle, now I pay $2.50 a bottle,” Flatt told The Epoch Times in a phone interview.

  “The supply chain is broken for sure for us small guys, and now suppliers are not warehousing as much as they used to.”

  In January, he ordered 6,000 bottles for October. The supplier has changed the delivery to no sooner than January, but his orders have been pushed back so many times he is not confident about getting bottles by then. Flatt has changed bottle designs, suppliers and still struggles to get bottles. And there is more.

  “There are labor shortages. For a while, nothing could be shipped to you. The bottle company was on quarantine and people were not allowed to work. Now demand is back, even better than before,” Flatt said.

  “But everything seems more challenging. Like pricing, a dollar more a bottle. Sometimes you think, ‘I’ll pay a little more to fix a problem,’ but money can’t fix some of these problems.”

  Every part of the supply chain has problems, says Pat Shorb, president at  Holla Spirits, a York, Pa. vodka producer.

  “If we were to order today, we would have issues getting bottles, caps, labels—many are experiencing problems with their glues, we can get them but they are delayed—it’s all down the board. It’s parts for equipment. It’s drivers, general freight at the ports, delays getting products out of warehouses and into stores,” Shorb told The Epoch Times in a phone interview.

  “There’s not a person in the industry who is not feeling the constraints of the supply chain.”

  Shorb says he has a supplier who needs 50 workers in his warehouse and can’t find the workers, even with a $3,000 sign-on bonus. It means products sit in the warehouse longer and the company makes adjustments.

  “We’re forecasting better, working more in advance and in higher quantities, and hoping that the supply chain issue shakes itself out,” Shorb said, adding that Pennsylvania’s ration of major brands is an opportunity for consumers to embrace new brands.

  “A majority of major spirit brands are foreign-owned. It’s a great opportunity for consumers to support your local or regional producers, to experiment. There are phenomenal local products of superior quality and consumers should try them.”

  Products Rationed in Pennsylvania

  Bars and consumers may buy no more than two bottles of any items on this list.

  • 1792 Chocolate Bourbon Ball Cream Liqueur 34 Proof 750 ML

  • Baker’s Straight Bourbon Small Batch 107 Proof 750 ML

  • Blanton’s Single Barrel Straight Bourbon 750 ML

  • Blood Oath Bourbon Trilogy 3 Pack Second Edition 99 Proof  2.25 L

  • Bond and Lillard Straight Bourbon 100 Proof 375 ML

  • Buffalo Trace Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey 90 Proof 1 L

  • Buffalo Trace Straight Bourbon 90 Proof  750 ML

  • Buffalo Trace Straight Bourbon 90 Proof 1.75 L

  • Colonel E H Taylor Jr Straight Bourbon Small Batch Bottle in Bond 100 Proof 750 ML

  • Dom Pérignon Champagne Brut 750 ML

  • Don Julio 1942 Tequila Añejo 80 Proof  750 ML

  • Don Julio Tequila Blanco 80 Proof 750 ML

  • Eagle Rare Single Barrel Straight Bourbon 10 Year Old  750 ML

  • Elijah Craig Single Barrel Straight Bourbon 18 Year Old 90 Proof 750 ML

  • Hennessy Cognac VS 80 Proof 750 ML

  • Hennessy Cognac VS 80 Proof  1 L

  • Hennessy Cognac VS 80 Proof 200 ML

  • Hennessy Cognac VS 80 Proof 375 ML

  • Hennessy Cognac VS 80 Proof 50 ML

  • Hennessy Cognac VS 80 Proof 1.75 L

  • Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 Black Label Tennessee Whiskey 80 Proof 1.75 L

  • Moët & Chandon Ice Impérial Champagne 750 ML

  • Moët & Chandon Ice Impérial Champagne Rose 750 ML

  • Moët & Chandon Impérial Champagne Brut 375 ML

  • Moët & Chandon Impérial Champagne Brut 750 ML

  • Moët & Chandon Impérial Champagne Brut 1.5 L

  • Moët & Chandon Impérial Champagne Brut 187 ML

  • Moët & Chandon Impérial Champagne Rosé 750 ML

  • Moët & Chandon Impérial Champagne Rosé 187 ML

  • Moët & Chandon Nectar Impérial Champagne  750 ML

  • Moët & Chandon Nectar Imperial Champagne Rosé  750 ML

  • Moët & Chandon Nectar Impérial Champagne Rosé 375 ML

  • Moët & Chandon Nectar Impérial Champagne Rosé 187 ML

  • Patrón Tequila Silver 80 Proof 750 ML

  • Russell’s Reserve 13 Year Old Straight Bourbon Barrel Proof 114 Proof 750 ML

  • Sazerac Straight Rye Whiskey 90 Proof 750 ML

  • Veuve Clicquot Champagne Rose 750 ML

  • Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label Champagne Brut 1.5 L

  • Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label Champagne Brut 750 ML

  • Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label Champagne Brut 750 ML

  • Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label Champagne Brut 375 ML

  • WB Saffell Straight Bourbon 107 Proof 375 ML

  • Weller Special Reserve Straight Bourbon 90 Proof 750 ML

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/19/2021 – 22:00

• Central Bank Of Afghanistan Says Over $12 Million Cash Seized From Homes Of Former Officials
  Central Bank Of Afghanistan Says Over $12 Million Cash Seized From Homes Of Former Officials

  Representatives of the Taliban have continued to publicized funds which they say were unlawfully appropriated by corrupt former national government officials, among them ex-President Ashraf Ghani and officials close to him.

  The Central Bank of Afghanistan this week announced the Taliban seized more over $12 million in cash and gold from the homes of ex-government officials, which comes on the heels of last weekend a raid by Taliban militants on the home of the man who servied as Ghani’s vice president, Amrullah Saleh. A video from the search of the residence purported to show that the former longtime Afghan politician had about $6 million in cash and at least 15 gold bars stashed in his home.

  

  There’s long been reports and confirmation out of the Pentagon and US officials who’ve admitted to flying entire crates and bricks of cash into the country over the past couple decades of war. It’s believed that the abundance of foreign and military-supplied aid that poured into the war-torn country to the tune of trillions often went to line the pockets of corrupt officials, amid complaints that nothing ever really got done in terms of intended infrastructure projects for the public.

  This past week’s Central Bank of Afghanistan statement revealed the following:

  “A certain amount of cash found at the residence of Mr. Amrullah Saleh, the first Vice-President of the previous government and a number of previous high ranking government officials was submitted to Da Afghanistan Bank by the authorities of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”

  The bank said further in the accusatory announcement: “The total of the aforementioned cash amounts to USD twelve million three hundred sixty-eight thousand two hundred forty-six (12368246) and a number of gold bricks most of which were found at Amrullah Saleh’s residence”.

  Likely the Taliban will continue to release evidence of uncovering piles of cash, jewelry, and gold at former Afghan officials’ residence, in order to underscore the self-serving nature of the prior corrupt US propped-up government. This all appears intended to humiliate the country’s past government which had been propped up by the US and NATO.

  Cash and gold amounting to over $12 million have been taken in raids by the Taliban on former members of the Afghan government, as #Afghanistan experiences a severe cash shortfall | via Deutsche Wellehttps://t.co/77jJXr8flf

  — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) September 16, 2021

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  The Taliban has meanwhile vowed that it will serve the people in a transparent manner, and according to the principles of Islam, which has lately included the establishment of a ‘morality police’.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/19/2021 – 21:30

• BlackRock And Citi Get On Board The Climate Nazi Train
  BlackRock And Citi Get On Board The Climate Nazi Train

  Authored by Chris MacIntosh via InternationalMan.com,

  There are some things that bring joy to my soul. My pleasures are simple ones. Peanut butter on toast (the food of gods), witnessing Macron getting a slap, and this…

  

  The awesome thing here is that what is taking place is that our competition on bidding for coal assets has disappeared in a cloud of woke smoke.

  This will quickly become geopolitical, and the question is this: can BlackRock, Citi, Prudential, HSBC, and their other woke mates decide the fate of nations?

  They are already affecting the fate of nations. Witness Canada and all of Western Europe.

  I found a live shot of their respective energy policies:

  

  But will they do the same to China? Will they do the same to Russia?

  The answer to that will only be fully revealed in the due course of time, but we don’t really need any crystal balls here as we just watch actions, not words.

  “China put 38.4 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power capacity into operation in 2020, according to new international research, more than three times the amount built elsewhere around the world and potentially undermining its short-term climate goals.”

  Nearly all of the 60 new coal plants planned across Eurasia, South America and Africa — 70 gigawatts of coal power in all — are financed almost exclusively by Chinese banks”

  

  We see all of this on the ground, and while it is taking place, formerly reputable media outlets such as the FT, Reuters, and Bloomberg tell us that: “China’s belt and road initiative creates a problem for China with respect to their climate goals.”

  Really?

  There is no conflict or problem. Let me explain. Here is what is transpiring. They will keep paying lip service to the woke ideology while capturing the bulk of the energy market, and by the time we all wake up, they’ll control the world’s energy and logistics chains. And once they’ve done that, they’ll be able to control the reserve currency and once they’ve done that… well, they will be the dominant power. Game over. At this rate they’ll get there in a frighteningly rapid period of time. No more than a couple of decades.

  Every week I find myself saying to myself “I just can’t believe this sheit I am reading.” It is the same old story. The West see themselves as above the East and that the West (North America and Europe) can dictate to the rest of the world what they must do.

  From the BlackRock article:

  “BlackRock Inc. and other major financial institutions are working on plans to accelerate the closure of coal-fired power plants in Asia in a bid to phase out the use of the worst man-made contributors to climate change.

  “The world cannot possibly hit the Paris climate targets unless we accelerate the retirement and replacement of existing coal-fired electricity,” Don Kanak, chairman of Prudential’s insurance growth markets division, said in a statement. “This is especially in Asia where existing coal fleets are big and young and will otherwise operate for decades.””

  So shut down coal fired power stations, and pray tell, what are you going to replace them with? How will this affect their standards of living?

  Let’s put some numbers behind this to understand probabilities. China has a massive industrial sector. So massive it currently consumes 4x more primary energy than its transport sector and more primary energy than all of the US and European industrial sectors COMBINED. So, it’s big.

  Will the CCP willingly negatively impact this sector whereby it threatens China’s growing lead in the global economy and, hence increasing global political influence? I’ll let you be the decider.

  In contrast to the US, China uses 10x more coal than natural gas. In 2020, China built over 3x as much new coal capacity as all other countries combined, equal to one large coal plant PER WEEK. In fact, in 2020 alone China’s fleet of coal fired power plants was expanded by a net 29.8 GW.

  Think that’s a lot? In 2020 they commissioned 73.5 GW of new coal plant proposals, which is over 5x that of the rest of the entire world combined.

  *  *  *

  The 2020s will likely to be an increasingly volatile decade. More governments are putting their money printing on overdrive. Negative interests are becoming the rule instead of the exception to it. One thing is for sure, there will be a great deal of change taking place in the years ahead. That’s precisely why legendary speculator Doug Casey and his team released an urgent new report titled Doug Casey’s Top 7 Predictions.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/19/2021 – 21:00

• TikTok Restricts Screen Time To Just 40 Minutes Per Day For Chinese Youths
  TikTok Restricts Screen Time To Just 40 Minutes Per Day For Chinese Youths

  Another day, another Chinese crackdown targeting permissible online screen time for young Chinese users. This time, ByteDance, the maker of short-video mobile juggernaut TikTok, said that it would restrict access to Douyin, the Chinese version of the app, to 40 minutes a day for users under 14 years old.

  According to the WSJ, Douyin’s “youth mode,” which follows the imposition of new limits on younger Chinese users’ access to online videogames, will restrict under-14s to using the app between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. The app will be inaccessible to all users in that age group outside of those hours.

  While Douyin had introduced some of the features beginning in 2018 on an optional basis, the latest rollout will apply to all users registered with their real names and as being under 14 years old, Douyin said Saturday.  It said that the mandatory measures were designed to protect younger users from harmful content, which however prompts a question: if the online content served by the platform is “harmful”, which would it exist in the first place. In that vein, the up-to 40 minutes a day of Douyin for younger users will henceforth serve up “edifying content such as science experiments, museum exhibitions and history lessons, the company said.”

  In other words, its popularity is about to crater.

  To aid enforcement, Douyin urged parents to register their children with their real names and ages.

  The new restrictions have come as the Chinese government seeks to rein in the country’s biggest internet companies, accusing them of violating antitrust, data-security and labor rules. The ruling Communist Party has also increasingly cast itself as the “guardian of morality” for the younger generation, cracking down on after-school tutoring (thus creating a black market for tutors which makes it even less accessible to anyone but the wealthiest) and emphasizing the need to clamp down on what it calls an obsession with unhealthy celebrity culture (thus further escalating the unhealthy obsession with celebrities).

  In June, Beijing revised its Minor Protection Law, requiring digital-content providers to implement time-management tools, restrict certain features and limit purchases for users under the age of 18. Last month, China issued strict new measures aimed at curbing what authorities described as youth videogame addiction by limiting play time to three hours a week for most of the year.

  According to the WSJ, Douyin’s primary domestic rival, Kuaishou Technology’s namesake app – backed by Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings – began offering a similar, if optional, “youth mode” feature in 2019, supplying preselected age-appropriate content and limiting daily app use to a maximum of 40 minutes between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

  Tencent’s WeChat, China’s ubiquitous do-everything messaging chat service, also offers an optional “youth mode,” which prevents users from accessing some games as well as the app’s payment function.

  TikTok, Douyin’s international counterpart, published last month a number of measures aimed at addressing privacy and security concerns around young users—for instance setting accounts of users under 16 years of age to private by default and allowing parents to guide their children’s usage with a pairing function.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/19/2021 – 20:30

• What Is Congress Doing To Retirement Accounts?
  What Is Congress Doing To Retirement Accounts?

  Via SovereignMan.com,

  What happened:

  In the proposed infrastructure bill, as well as the proposed tax increases to fund it, Congress is messing with retirement accounts.

  

  Here are some of the worst proposals currently on the table.

  IRA accounts will not be allowed to invest in anything based on account holder’s status.

  That applies to investments that require “accredited investor” status, certain financial credentials, or a minimum net worth, such as many private investments (i.e not publicly listed companies). You have two years to get out of current investments that violate this rule.

  The IRA will also be prevented from investing in anything in which the owner has 10% or larger ownership, or is an officer.

  This is terrible for Self-Directed IRAs — more on these below. Fortunately, it does not currently apply to 401(k)s.

  Restrictions on Roth funding and conversions

  The Roth structure allows after-tax contributions to retirement plans which then grow tax free. Since you paid taxes up front, you do not owe taxes on distributions, even if the value has grown substantially from good investments.

  Congress is proposing to prohibit any after-tax contributions to Roth structures in workplace plans, and ban converting after-tax money paid into a regular plan into a Roth plan (this tactic can currently help avoid Roth contribution limits).

  It would also ban ALL Roth conversions for workplace plans for singles who make over $400,000 per year, and couples who make more than $450,000 — but this would not go into effect until after December 31, 2031.

  Converting to Roth triggers a taxable event, meaning you pay the taxes on the account now and not on distributions. This can be preferable if you think your investments will grow enough that you would owe more taxes later on distributions than you would owe currently if the account value was taxed today.

  Contribution Limits and Minimum Required Disbursements

  According to the House Ways and Means summary, “the legislation prohibits further contributions to a Roth or traditional IRA for a taxable year if the total value of an individual’s IRA and defined contribution retirement accounts generally exceed $10 million as of the end of the prior taxable year.”

  This applies “to single taxpayers (or taxpayers married filing separately) with taxable income over $400,000, married taxpayers filing jointly with taxable income over $450,000, and heads of households with taxable income over $425,000 (all indexed for inflation).”

  Under those circumstances, the owner of the account would be forced to take a 50% distribution of the combined value of all applicable plans over $10 million (i.e. if the accounts have $11 million total, the minimum required distribution is $500,000).

  It becomes even more restrictive if the accounts exceed $20 million in value.

  What this means:

  This all translates into less choice and flexibility for individuals planning their retirements.

  But it does not eliminate the benefits of the two main self-directed retirement structures that can benefit the self-employed, and people with side income.

  What you can do about it:

  For a long time we have presented self-directed retirement accounts as a good way to plan for retirement.

  A Self-Directed IRA owns one, and exactly one, asset: a limited liability company (LLC) that you manage. That’s why they are called “Self-Directed”. And through that LLC, you can invest your retirement savings in a wide array of assets — precious metals, real estate, cryptocurrency, private businesses*, and much more, in the US, or overseas.

  It’s a fairly straightforward setup: you establish an account with the custodian, then establish an LLC in a zero-tax state (like Wyoming or Florida) where the IRA is the owner (member) of the LLC, but YOU are the manager.

  You’ll also want to open a bank account for the LLC. Afterward, the custodian transfers your retirement funds to the LLC, putting you in the driver’s seat for determining how the funds are invested.

  The contribution limits for the Self-Directed IRAs themselves are not that high, however — only $6,000 (under age 50) or $7,000 (50 and older), so the earlier you start contributing to it, the better.

  *If this legislation passes in its current form, the main change to the Self-Directed IRA is that you will no longer be allowed to invest in private companies which require an investor to be accredited, hold certain credentials, or have a minimum net worth.

  That is really unfortunate, but it does not entirely negate the benefits of this retirement structure.

  Plus, this restriction does NOT currency apply to Solo 401(k)s.

  Solo 401(k) is an option to consider if you’re self-employed, or if you generate “side hustle” income.

  With a Solo 401(k), you wear BOTH the employer and the employee hats, so you contribute in both roles. A Solo 401(k) allows for contribution levels ranging from $58,000 to $64,500 per year in 2021, depending on your age — offering incredible flexibility, and the ability to significantly lower your personal income tax burden.

  Just like a Self-Directed IRA, a Solo 401(k) gives you a much wider array of investment options — real estate, precious metals, private businesses, etc. — that can help maximize your return.

  Of course, none of this is definite yet. This is how the legislation currently looks, but there is no guarantee that it will pass in its current form. This is a heads-up about what changes could soon be coming for your retirement accounts.

  Keep in mind that we are not tax or investment professionals, and this is not tax or investment advice. You should always consult with a trusted professional, familiar with your particular situation.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/19/2021 – 20:00

• The Fed Has Liquidated Its Entire Corporate Bond Portfolio
  The Fed Has Liquidated Its Entire Corporate Bond Portfolio

  Last March capital markets as we once knew them ceased to exist: that’s when the Powell Fed crossed a Rubicon even Ben Bernanke dared not breach and announced that it would start buying single-name corporate bonds and ETFs under its Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility (SMCCF) with both IG and HY names eligible for purchases in the process effectively nationalizing the corporate bond market.

  Purchases under this facility, which were meant to reassure and stabilize the corporate bond market continued until December, at which point – with stocks at new all time highs – the Fed announced the cessation of its corporate bond purchases and entered the beginning stages of fully winding down the Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility (SMCCF).

  At the time, some market participants worried this might translate into a reduction in liquidity, but with purchases amounting to less than $500 million per week since July 2020 …

  

  … and an overall portfolio holding of just $14 billion, it was unlikely that any material deterioration in market microstructure would take place.

  

  And after all, the Fed’s purchases were merely symbolic: the Fed never wanted to become as BOJ-like whale in the corporate bond market, but merely to signal to the world that it would not allow bonds to drop further and would, if required, buy more. Of course, it was not required as the mere guaranteed backstop by the Fed was sufficient to the get dip buyers out in force.

  And sure enough, fast forward to the first week of September, when the Federal Reserve has now been able to sell-off the entirety of its corporate bond portfolio with no effect on the market’s microstructure; curiously this also comes at a time when the latest TIC report showed that in Julye foreign investors were net sellers of corporate bonds for the first time this year.

  

  Yet while the SMCCF has now been closed, we continue to think its legacy will live on as a part of the Fed’s policy toolkit with investors forever expecting its reactivation when another macro shock occurs and sends large gyrations throughout corporate credit markets. Or rather “markets” because a world where corporate bonds have no downside is just as centrally-planned as anything China could come up with, and while stonks continue to ramp up for now, there will come a time when everything will crash again and the Fed will once again remind us just how fake price discovery is in a world where the only thing that matters is the Fed’s balance sheet as Citi’s Matt King put it so elquqently in his latest report:

  Some of the most interesting research of recent months concerns the “price inelasticity” of markets. Interesting, that is, to academic economists and monetary policymakers. For anyone who’s actually tried trading in markets over the past decade, the idea that prices might be determined more by flows and liquidity and certain large, price-insensitive buyers than by a rational discounting of fundamentals sounds less like a revolutionary insight and more like a statement of the blindingly obvious

  As one investor put it to us recently, central bankers seem to be the only market participants left who fail to appreciate the stranglehold their policies have over asset prices: everyone else gave up looking at fundamental value in favour of obsessing over the minutiae of central bank balance sheet line items a long time ago.

  While we are currently on autopilot, we expect to be reminded quite soon just how critical the Fed’s liquidity injections are for a binary world where the alternatives are simple: either the Fed prints hundreds of billions every quarter bringing the fiat system ever closer to its death, or we crash.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/19/2021 – 19:30

• Former Lehman Trader On "China's Lehman Moment"
  Former Lehman Trader On “China’s Lehman Moment”

  By Larry McDonald, former trader at Lehman Brothers, author of “A Colossal Failure of Common Sense” and publisher of the Bear Traps Report

  

  My name is Larry McDonald, that is the UK cover above. In the years before the failure of Lehman Brothers, I ran a successful distressed credit business at what was the 4th largest investment bank in the U.S. – becoming one of the most consistently profitable traders in the fixed income division. In late 2008, early 2009 – with Patrick Robinson, we penned “A Colossal Failure of Common Sense” – the Lehman Brothers inside story. At least once a month, I tell my wife while wearing a hopeful smile —“if we sell a million books — we´ll break even on our Lehman stock.” On September 15, 2008 – it all came crashing down in the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. Known as, “the week that changed the world,” a very painful experience indeed. I was down on the mat looking up at the referee as he delivered the count. It was one of those fateful moments most of us face. Staring into the abyss, drenched in blood-curdling uncertainty, there are times in life when we must get up. Even when it looks like all is lost in a valley of no hope.  Ultimately, the lucky ones learn there are valuable lessons in re-invention. The last 13 years have been a breath of fresh air. 

  Life’s Lessons

  One of the important lessons in our book comes down to how to use leading credit risk indicators? In the 2007-2010 period, the global credit risk epicenter was obviously inside the US. In the 2011-2013 period, Europe´s banks were the focus during the Grexit panic. In recent years, Asia has become far more interesting, a new epicenter has been formed.

  

  As far back as the spring of 2007, U.S. banks began to underperform financial institutions in Asia. By now, everyone knows most of the subprime mortgage credit risk was inside the USA with domestic banks more exposed than other banks around the world. Notice above, Goldman Sachs (purple above) 5 year CDS (the cost of default protection on the bank), began to meaningfully divergence from Standard Chartered. Standard Chartered PLC is an international banking group operating principally in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The company has far more credit risk exposure to China – Asia than U.S. banks. It is clear above, more than 12 months prior to Lehman´s failure, banks in the USA were dramatically underperforming from a credit risk perspective. In other words, in 2007 – the cost of purchasing credit default protection on Goldman Sachs was far more expensive than the bank’s Asian peers. Indeed, elephants leave footprints – when large hedge funds see credit risk – they start placing bets months if NOT years before a credit event. The credit market sniffed out Lehman´s demise months BEFORE equity investors got the joke.

  Now, let us think of Asia in the summer of 2015. The Fed was attempting “liftoff” – their first rate hike since 2004. Finally, in December of 2015, the Fed hiked rates 25bps for the first time in eleven years. In the process, as the central bank prepared the world for the now-infamous rate hike. In just six months the dollar ripped from 80 (July 2014) to 100 (March 2015). Emerging markets were in flames, the Fed had triggered a global dollar crisis. More than $1T left China (the country´s fx reserves were on the run). The world was in a real currency devaluation panic, with Asia wearing the epicenter title this time around.

  Credit Risk, the Asia Epicenter 2015-2021

  

  During 2015, the China currency devaluation crisis picked up steam in September and came to risk climax in Q3. But months before, the cost of default protection on Asia´s Standard Chartered began to sharply diverge from Goldman Sachs in the U.S. Once again, credit risk was screaming “there is a problem” in May 2015, by September the S&P 500 lost 16%. In 2007, Goldman’s credit risk was so telling. Then, eight years later – banks in Asia would wear the credit risk epicenter title. Fast forward to 2021, Evergrande headlines are all the media rage, especially with the Lehman, the lucky 13th anniversary this week.

  But, what are credit markets telling us this time? As you can see above – far right. Credit risk is calm on Asia banks with exposure to China, no difference to speak of. Central bank liquidity is so abundant, there is NO way Lehman would have failed today. Free markets no more. Adam Smith has one (invisible) hand tied behind his back. We have unintended consequences as far as the eye can see with Uncle Sam’s fingerprints on every street corner.

  The Trillion Dollar a Day Gravy Train

  The flood of cash in U.S. interest-rate markets pushed the amount of money that investors are parking at a major central bank facility to yet another all-time high – every day a new high indeed. In recent weeks, every day more than Eighty participants have been lining up for nearly $1.2 trillion at the Federal Reserve’s overnight reverse repurchase agreement facility. Large counterparties like money-market funds can place cash with the central bank. This easy money gravy train is hiding the next Lehman Brothers, all embraced in deception. In terms of bond yields, let’s look around the planet. In the U.S., close to 90% of the junk bond market is trading below CPI inflation of 5.3% (highest since the early 90s).

  

  Over the last 50 years, the highest this number ever reached was 7%. China’s high yield credit market is just 8-10% away from its March 2020 lows in bond prices – highs in yields. All of which begs the question – How can the U.S.-centric JNK Junk Bond ETF yield 4.4% while China´s junk bonds are offering 10-12% cash flows?! Always with an important lens – our friend, Jens Nordvig reminds us – “foreign involvement is small in China. It is true that the high-yield bond market has a sizable USD component (mostly foreign). But relative to the US, where subprime exposure was sold around the world, it is a much more local (controllable) system.” It has been clear for months, there is Evergrande credit contagion – it’s just inside China at the moment (as for how Evergrande contagion could spread to the rest of the world, read “This Is How Contagion From Evergrande’s Default Will Spread To The Rest Of The World“).

  

  An Unsustainable Reach for Yield Comes with a Price – It is NOT FREE

  Each year that goes by while central banks force investors to reach for yield – any paltry plus return on capital will do these days – complacency builds over time to an extreme – dangerous level.  Mark my words – there were dozens of Bernie Madoffs, Al Dunlaps, and Jeff Skillings sipping mint juleps in the Hamptons and the beaches of the south of France this summer. Central bankers are these guys’ best friends, that is the reality no one wants to admit. As long as central banks do NOT allow the cleansing process of the business cycle to function over longer and longer periods of time – credit risk will continue to build under the surface. Each month, week, and year we allow this charade to move forth – the corners capital flows into are deeper and deeper soaked with moral hazard toxicity. Today´s players on the field make “Dick Fuld” – former Lehman CEO –  look like a choir boy walking out of Sunday mass. The coming event will dwarf what was – “A Colossal Failure of Common Sense.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/19/2021 – 19:00

• CARFAX Warns 200,000 Vehicles Damaged By Hurricane Ida May Flood Market
  CARFAX Warns 200,000 Vehicles Damaged By Hurricane Ida May Flood Market

  A CARFAX spokesperson warned this week that a couple of hundred thousand used cars from the Tri-state area and Gulf Coast states are about to hit the market, and there’s a risk many of them are flood-damaged from Hurricane Ida. 

  “Our data suggest that unsuspecting buyers everywhere are at risk of winding up with a previously flooded car,” said Chris Basso, CARFAX spokesperson.

  

  “The real danger is that these cars may look fine and run well for a while, but sooner rather than later major problems are likely to occur. Flooded cars literally rot from the inside out and the damage is often difficult for untrained eyes to detect,” Basso said. 

  CARFAX data estimates as many as 212,000 flood-damaged cars from New York City, New Jersey, and Louisiana are likely to be hitting the market. Some of these could be sold by con men and mispresented. 

  “Con men look for opportunities to clean up flooded cars and move them to areas where flooding is less prominent and where consumers are less likely to look for flood damage on the car they’re buying,” said Basso.

  The timing of flood-damaged cars hitting the market comes as the Manheim U.S. Used Vehicle Value Index, a measure of wholesale used cars, increased 3.6% in the first 15 days of September compared with the same period last month, again back near all-time highs. Used car prices are likely to remain elevated this fall due to snarled supply chains and a shortage of materials (such as semiconductors) for new car production, which pushed dealer inventories to all-time lows…

  More and more people are purchasing cars on the secondary market instead of new ones because of limited inventory, making them susceptible to owning a lemon. 

  CARFAX told potential buyers of used cars to check the seven signs of a flooded car:

  1. A musty odor in the interior, which sellers sometimes try to cover with a strong air-freshener
  2. Loose, stained, or mismatched upholstery and carpeting
  3. Damp carpets
  4. Rust around doors, under the dashboard, on the pedals, or inside the hood and trunk latches
  5. Dried mud or silt in the glove compartment or under the seats
  6. Brittle wires under the dashboard
  7. Fog or moisture beads in the interior lights, exterior lights, or instrument panel

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/19/2021 – 18:30

• Hedge Fund CIO: The 60:40 Portfolio Is Forever Broken, What Happens Now
  Hedge Fund CIO: The 60:40 Portfolio Is Forever Broken, What Happens Now

  By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

  Inference

  Allocators can no longer depend on bonds to offset the equity risk in their portfolios, said the CIO to his team, stating the obvious. We can debate whether the Fed will normalize interest rates in the coming decade – and I sincerely doubt they can – but we know for sure that they will not be able to do that in coming few years without causing a simultaneous stock and bond market collapse. We should be confident that the Fed won’t do that. So we can lean on that assumption in our portfolio construction. But let’s think about where else this may lead us.

  In previous cycles, when equities were at records, bonds offered reasonable returns relative to today, said the CIO, still discussing markets with his team. For allocators who wanted to play it real safe, they could buy short-dated bonds and at least break even after accounting for inflation. But now, hiding at the short end guarantees deeply negative real returns. Some investors are willing to lose money for short periods to mitigate bigger risks elsewhere in their portfolios. But almost none are prepared to lose money in a trade that appears structural. And the starting point is a portfolio overallocated to bonds and cash.

  We see increasing interest in diversifying solutions from the world’s largest allocators, continued the CIO. It’s far more demand for such strategies than we’ve ever seen. The common driver is these investors recognize the 60:40 portfolio no longer works. Owning bonds at deeply negative real rates guarantees a loss. And in a crisis, bonds no longer provide material positive convexity. But investors still need to take substantial equity risk to generate their required returns. So they are looking for unique ways to replace their bonds – and there are few.

  “If we list every firm in the world that offers diversifying strategies and estimate their combined capacity to deliver the convexity that bonds offered in the past, what would we conclude?” the CIO asked rhetorically. The answer is that there is a small fraction of what is needed to do the job. So what does that tell us about what may happen? A decent number of passive investors will stick with the 60:40 even if its broken. Proactive investors will replace their bonds with more unique diversifiers.

  But there’s another possibility.

  Some investors may conclude they are unwilling to suffer deeply negative real returns. They will sell their bonds. Instead of buying unique diversifiers, they may instead go all-in and reinvest the proceeds from their bond sales into equities (public, private, venture). This inflow will push stock prices higher. Investors that pursue this strategy will initially outperform their peers, which will in turn pressure their competitors to pursue it lest they be left behind. Such a process holds the potential to be highly reflexive. Prone to wild moves. Unprecedented boom, perhaps. Bust.  

  What’s the chance such a process will unfold? asked the CIO. In a world with unprecedented bond supply, negative interest rates, high inflation, and the reluctance of central bankers to normalize monetary policy, I would assign a probability of at least 25%. Possibly higher. Perhaps the process is already underway. If it takes hold, it will first appear as a stable paradigm. Over time it would grow increasingly fragile. The Fed would fear financial instability but would be extremely reluctant to intervene. Eventually, it would be forced to.

  Anecdote:

  “There are numerous ways to look at current circumstances in an area of change,” said the Chairman. “When analyzing an area, it’s helpful to consider at least a few, and explore how we develop our various opinions,” he continued. “What we often discover is that our perspectives are path dependent. How we got here, dominates how we view the future.” We were discussing blockchain technology, its power to transform finance.

  “As a thought experiment, picture a world where applications for blockchain technology were developed at one of our largest banks. They were patented, licensed, and then utilized by the banking system to increase the efficiency of settlement, reporting, operations, value transfer, custody, financial stability, anti-money laundering, crime enforcement, etc.” I nodded. “The industry raced to apply the new technology fully, tokenizing all assets so they could move through the system, comparatively free of friction.” Global financial assets are an estimated $223trln (including non-financial wealth an estimated $418trln).

  “Picture that the advance to this tokenized world stripped out market inefficiencies, waste, middlemen, rent seekers in the largest, most liquid financial markets. This created industry disruption, winners, losers, with most of the benefits ultimately accruing to society. And the innovators who brought that world to life were widely celebrated,” said the Chairman.

  “That would have been the “incumbent markets first” path. And imagine on that path, all sorts of innovation beyond our core markets inevitably popped up. Private sector creativity was unleashed, and cryptocurrency was one of many novel creations in that world.” I agreed this was easy to visualize. “But that world doesn’t exist. The real journey didn’t end with a novel cryptocurrency, it started with one, and this no doubt shaped opinion in ways that led to a much wider, more emotional spectrum of views, including zealous, often blinkered, pursuit of change as well as stiff, often blunt, public and private sector resistance to so much of what blockchain has to offer,” he said.

  “It appears many opinions on this issue were formed not on the merits of the technology, but rather, they were swayed by the path. In my experience the path matters a great deal in the short term but not over decades, those kinds of polar opposite opinions on the future fall away or are moderated by tangible successes and failures,” said the Chairman.

  “History tells us that those who best adapt to change have a sense of where various paths converge over time. The more and more quickly incumbent markets adopt blockchain technology the more quickly that convergence.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/19/2021 – 18:00

• Fed Chair Powell Owned At Least $1.5 Million In Municipal Bonds Like The Ones The Fed Bailed Out In 2020
  Fed Chair Powell Owned At Least $1.5 Million In Municipal Bonds Like The Ones The Fed Bailed Out In 2020

  In a revelation that should really surprise no one who has been paying attention for the last couple decades, it was reported late last week that Chairman Jerome Powell owned the same type of municipal bonds that the Fed stepped in to buy during the Covid crash in markets around March 2020. It was part of a series of disclosures that raised questions about Fed officials owning securities that directly benefitted from the Fed’s intervention in markets.

  For example, the revelation follows our reporting just days ago that the Fed’s Robert Kaplan had made multiple million dollar stock trades in 2020. 

  While none of the transactions appears to violate the Fed’s code of conduct, CNBC reported, municipal bonds are an asset class that are far more niche that stocks or ETFs. Officials “should be careful to avoid any dealings or other conduct that might convey even an appearance of conflict between their personal interests, the interests of the system, and the public interest,” the Fed’s code of conduct says.

  That really clears things up. 

  CNBC reported that “Powell held between $1.25 million and $2.5 million of municipal bonds in family trusts” which made up “just a small portion” of his total assets. These bonds were held last year when the Fed stepped into make more than $5 billion in muni purchases..

  It was additionally disclosed this week that Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren held between $151,000 and $800,000 in REITs that owned mortgage backed securities and that he made as many as 37 trades in the 4 REITS while the Fed was buying nearly $700 billion in mortgage backed securities. 

  

  CNBC also reported that Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin held $1.35 million to $3 million in individual corporate bonds purchased before 2020, including bonds of companies like Pepsi and Home Depot.

  Powell had no say over the central bank’s individual municipal bond purchases, a spokesperson told CNBC. Why would he? Just because he’s the Chairman doesn’t mean he has any say – right?

  Rosengren’s spokesperson made a similarly un-reassuring statement, saying that Rosengren “made sure his personal saving and investment transactions complied with what was permissible under Fed ethics rules.”

  Well; we feel put at ease.

  Dennis Kelleher, CEO of a nonprofit called Better Markets, concluded: “To think that such trading is acceptable because it is supposedly allowed by Fed’s current policies only highlights that the Fed’s policies are woefully deficient.”

  In their defense, Fed officials noted they didn’t trade during its “blackout period”, when Fed officials aren’t allowed to comment on monetary policy or trade.

  “The whole year should be considered a blackout period,” Kelleher retorted.

  Among the outraged responses to the realization of Robert Kaplan’s conflicts of interest last week was that of Sven Henrich who observed that “the Fed guys are personally actively trading the markets they influence more than anything else.”

  “Go figure,” he said. “When are we officially declaring a Banana Republic?”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/19/2021 – 17:30

• Justice Thomas Defends The High Court, Warns Against "Destroying Our Institutions"
  Justice Thomas Defends The High Court, Warns Against “Destroying Our Institutions”

  Authored by Li Hai via The Epoch Times,

  In a rare public appearance, Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas defended the high court, warned against efforts “destroying our institutions,” and criticized the media for depicting the justices as politicians.

  

  Thomas gave a speech Thursday at the University of Notre Dame, the alma mater of the newest Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

  “They think that we make policy,” Thomas responded to a question about misconceptions to the court, criticizing the media.

  “I think the media makes it sound as though you are just always going right to your personal preference. So if they think you are antiabortion or something personally, they think that’s the way you always will come out. They think you’re for this or for that. They think you become like a politician.

  “That’s a problem. You’re going to jeopardize any faith in the legal institutions,” Thomas added.

  “The media and the interest groups further that.”

  The high court has been criticized by the mainstream media and abortion rights supporters since its recent 5–4 vote to let a Texas banning-abortion law stand temporarily. The court majority emphasized that their decision didn’t include a conclusion about the constitutionality of the Texas law. Abortion rights supporters deem the decision as evidence that the right to abortion, which was established in 1973 Roe v. Wade, could be threatened.

  In a 1992 decision, Thomas was one of four justices who would have overturned Roe v. Wade that extended abortion rights across the country.

  Thomas said it’s wrong to determine a judge based on the outcome of the decision.

  “If you go back and you look at some of the New York Times articles in the 30s and 40s on Supreme Court cases, the few that I’ve read are excellent. Because they summarize the case, they talk about the arguments, they summarize the whole length, and then there may be a short paragraph on the implications,” Thomas said.

  “Now put that side by side with what you would get today. I think that’s problematic, and that sort of encourages these preconceptions about the court. That’s all just personal preferences.”

  Last week, Barrett also defended the Supreme Court, saying, “this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks.”

  “It’s not my job to decide cases based on the outcome I want,” the newest justice said.

  Thomas said that some judges “venture into political, legislative or executive branch lanes, and resolving things that are better left to those branches,” which contributes to the criticism and pressure the judicial system faces.

  “I think that’s problematic,” Thomas said.

  “When, for example, President [Franklin] Roosevelt threatened to pack the court, there was enough sense of what the court meant and what separation of powers meant to criticize him,” Thomas said. “Today, you see almost no criticism or very little when you have those kinds of conversations. So I think part of it’s the judges’ own doing by venturing in areas we should not have entered into.”

  Last week, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer also warned against remaking the Supreme Court, including expanding the institution with justices, suggesting Republicans would do the same.

  Serving the high court for 30 years, Thomas admitted that the court is flawed.

  “It is flawed. It’s very flawed, like every human institution. … But I will defend it because knowing all the disagreements, it works,” Thomas said. “It may work sort of like a car with three wheels, but it still works.”

  “I think we should be careful destroying our institutions because they don’t give us what we want when we want it,” Thomas said.

  Asked how to solve a case conflicting with his Catholic faith, Thomas said that wouldn’t be a problem.

  “I have lived up to my oath,” Thomas said. “There are some things that conflict very strongly with my personal opinion, my policy preferences, and those were very, very hard, particularly early on.”

  “I mean, you do your job, and you go cry alone,” Thomas said. The audience responded with laughter and applauds.

  Next month, the Supreme Court is going to hear a case about Mississippi’s ban on most abortions. That’s the first time the court returns to the courtroom since the pandemic, the Washington Post reported.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/19/2021 – 17:00

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