- When Capitals Move
When Capitals Move
Packing up a whole capital and moving it to a new location might seem like a daunting task, but, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, some countries have actually tackled the undertaking in the past and one more is planning a move for the future.
A recent change of capital was the move of the German government and administration from Western city Bonn to Berlin upon Reunification in 1991. The vote that made the city Germany’s capital once again was finalized on June 20 – exactly 30 years ago on Sunday.
Political restructuring has, however, not been the most common reason for capital moves in the past.
More cases exist where countries set out to create a neutral city, often a purpose-built capital, either as a vanity project, to bring development to an underserved region or to minimize conflict between cities vying for the position of capital. Prominent examples are the creation of the United State’s capital Washington D.C. in 1790 or Brazil’s capital Brasilia in the 1960s. Kazakhstan’s new capital Astana and Myanmar’s Naypyidaw are more recent manifestations of the phenomenon occurring in dictatorships, where little public oversight, a penchant for being flashy and a fear of attacks has created the right environment for capital moves. While fear of Russian expansionism is rumored to be one of the reasons the Kazakh capital was moved closer to the border (to deter an invasion), the reasoning of the notoriously secretive Burmese junta is not completely understood in international circles. The African continent has also seen two moves to purpose-built capitals – in Nigeria and Tanzania – while a third one in Cote D’Ivoire is considered incomplete by the U.N.
Another curious case of a capital move upon a change of political systems is the independence of Botswana in 1964. Previously, a city named Mafeking had served as the capital of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, which predated Botswana. Astonishingly, due to a back and forth of colonial powers, the city was located outside the old protectorate and new state, prompting the move to Garborone.
Likewise, only one change of capital has taken place around the world because of environmental issues, but that could soon change. In 1970, Belize’s new capital Belmopan was created after a hurricane majorly ravished then-capital Belize City. At least partially owed to environmental trouble, Indonesia has announced that it will move its capital from Jakarta to a new purpose-build location in the region of East Kalimantan on the island of Borneo by 2024.
You will find more infographics at Statista
The Indonesian leadership has cited the intent to help another region structurally the reason for the move, but observers also see burdens from pollution and overcrowding. Jakarta is also one of the fastest sinking cities on Earth due to its location below sea level and the excessive extraction of ground water.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 06/21/2021 – 02:45 - Have The Great Reset Technocrats Really Thought This Through?
Have The Great Reset Technocrats Really Thought This Through?
Authored by Joaquin Flores via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
The only thing left to destroy in a world populated by elites alone, are other elites. It would seem that the desire to dominate others does not simply come to an end on its own.
With the UN World Food Program announcing that some 270 million people worldwide now face starvation, the ongoing debate about the real aims of the technocracy is profound. The question is whether their aim tends more towards major population reduction, or more towards a new type of slavery.
It appears that philosophical and long-term practical questions remain a mystery. We will argue that evil, not simply the influence of the base upon the superstructure, is at the core of this endeavor. We have defined evil as inflicting the highest degree of pain upon the greatest number of resisting subjects. In short, we have defined evil as sadism, inflicting evil because it brings satisfaction to those inflicting it.
Because evil is fundamentally a destructive force, it cannot create anything: nothing in it is truly novel nor of use to humanity. Its pleasures are short-lived and spurious. It is unsustainable, self-defeating, ultimately leading to self-destruction.
We have adequately assessed from any number of sources that nefarious interests are behind this process, who seek to make the process also about the exercise of power, in addition to several other aims (remaining in power, exercising power in ways consistent with their occult beliefs about evil, etc.). We understand that they are ‘evil’ because they involve a type of ‘power-over’ (as opposed to power-with/consent) which derives this power from fear-mongering and terrorism upon the population. Terrorism here is defined as the operationalized use of fear, pain, and other injury towards socio-political aims.
Had their plans not been rooted in evil, they would have used soft-power tactics like manufacturing consent, to arrive at their ends.
The aim of the Great Reset is to transition the ruling plutocratic oligarchy into a technocratic one. The basis of plutocracy is finance, and the introduction of AI and automation eliminates the basis for finance as the foundation of an economy of scale. This is because automation and deflation move in tandem, making new technologies net losers. Therefore a new paradigm accounting for this post-financial ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, must be introduced.
Side-by-side comparison of auto-assembly line: 1920 vs. 2020 – ‘Humans need not apply’
But the ideology of the Great Reset is based within the old financialist paradigm, which is one of cost externalization. When human beings are no longer involved in the valorization process in the production of goods and services, then humanity itself is the cost that requires externalization – elimination.
But how it is that sadism became the occult religion of the ruling class, presents a “chicken-or-the-egg” type of question. That is, did the corporate ideology mutate into occult sadism, or did occult sadism find its expression through the corporate ideology? This question will no doubt form the basis of later inquiry.
We often defer to nefarious motivations or processes in terms of ‘greed’, or ‘self-interest’, ‘power obsession’ or the ‘crisis of capital accumulation’, ‘speculative bubbles’.
And these do not suffice in the final analysis, though they provide explanatory power. The problem arises in predictive power, because while we face a crisis of diminishing returns due to automation (as the increasing tendency towards net loss on new large capital investments), the real psychological needs that motivate the present plutocracy as a power-group are actually undermined in significant and sudden population reduction, or new post-coercive technologies that eliminate human agency. This may seem counter-intuitive, but in light of an understanding of the self-defeating nature of evil, we will explore this question.
When we map out the probabilities of three intersecting policy vectors, we can understand this question even better. Those policy vectors are a.) neuralink/AI/Neural Implants/magneto proteins and related transhumanism, b.) depopulation as part of stated Agenda 2030 goals, c.) automation/roboticization, 4IR, and IoT.
This will follow from our last piece on the subject, The Great Reset Morality: Euthanization of the Inessentials:
Neural Implants
The development and introduction of neural implants, magneto proteins, etc., can go in any number of directions. Some types of these promise to give elites ‘super-human’ cognitive abilities. However, another very practical application is to mandate that these are used on the general populace as to handicap them or control their thoughts in some way.
In that sense, neural implants can work like pharmaceuticals are used in psychiatry. In the creation of this sort of Huxleyesque ‘Brave New World’, we can easily see the continuation of a paradigm already existing today. This is one where it is common-place to find various predictable depressions, anxieties, and neuroticisms caused by contemporary social conditions, but treated psychiatrically instead of resolved socio-economically.
Neural implants can also perform a similar function, but go even further. Beyond emotions or basic effect on the re-uptake of certain hormones like serotonin, etc.; neural implants can direct thoughts or change whole cognitive processes. Beyond feelings, drives, and impulses, neural implants promise to produce actual thoughts in the minds of the subject.
LLNL engineer Vanessa Tolosa holds up a brain implant – credit: Extreme Tech Magazine, July 2014
In between these two is a hybrid form – nanotech and chemogenetics working with optogenetics. Because the delivery system to the brain can be through injection, nanolipids and other compounds can come in the form of shots. These can be delivered as part of a required ‘vaccination’ regimen (insofar as that term has been redefined), as nanotech features already in the Covid-19 shot.
Therefore, such can be included – whether disclosed to the public or not – in required vaccinations.
The development of these would seem, however, to be a technology that would support slavery, but does not rule out genocide. Certainly the ability to control the thoughts of a population would greatly mitigate risk in the view of the state apparatus, especially as it moves towards genocide.
Depopulation: Myths vs. Facts
Population control and population reduction have long been policy at various institutions and think tanks committed to global governance, from the UN to the World Economic Forum. It was a part of the UN’s Millennium goals, and since the dawn of the 21st century, has been part of UN Agenda 2030.
It is important to now introduce a framework for understanding the problem of population in light of economic development. The long standing view is that economic development leads to population stagnation, even decline. The idea here is that education and urbanization are processes which lead towards better knowledge of basic family planning, in tandem with improved access to abortion and birth control.
The underlying postulate is that people naturally do not want to be burdened with children, that children are an affront to freedom in the abstract. The formula is that as people are better educated and have more meaningful work and interesting lives, they know both how to prevent pregnancy and also no longer have ‘primitive’ inclinations towards large family building.
This mythology was built up around a notion that people are fundamentally self-interested in the narrowest sense, to the exclusion of other desires, needs, and impulses. They are presented as the norm such to furthermore create a broader culture which opposes procreation.
Instead, the real mechanism pushing population stagnation in the 1st world are increased pressures of work, and increased costs of living. Rather than ascribing population stagnation to improved conditions of life, these are more related to austere conditions imposed by late modernity. The costs of property, of rents, of food, and also because of the decline in quality of goods through increased planned obsolescence, has placed more economic pressure on individuals and couples. It has led to the requirement that both members of a household are working full-time. And even with this, home ownership in cosmopolitan centers is practically impossible for most. Austerity has also led to stagnation in life expectancy.
This truth is exposed in actual policy papers like “New strategies for slowing population growth” (1995). Here, the doublespeak is evident, with easily decipherable phrases within it; “…reduce unwanted pregnancies by expanding services that promote reproductive choice and better health, to reduce the demand for large families by creating favorable conditions for small families…”. What could possibly be meant by ‘create favorable conditions for small families’?
Economic development does not reduce population, but if we add austerity and demanding and inflexible work obligations, then we land on an answer. Economic prosperity, as it has for time immemorial, promises to greatly increase the population in the absence of a program of population reduction. Because an organic 4IR not brought in by the technocracy would decrease work obligations and increase quality of life markers, we would expect a population boom.
Consequently, projections that that population will top off at just under 10 billion by the 2060’s are as erroneous as they are linear. Without a technocracy working to actively reduce population, as they believe, an economy based on automation and AI would see a population explosion.
Conclusion
It is still likely that the would-be technocrats have indeed thought out the end-game, and that there are any number of possibilities that will allow them to harvest sadistic pleasure as an exercise of absolute power, in perpetuity. This might mean increasing fear of extermination far beyond actual population reduction. It could mean maintaining many aspects of agency for the controlled population, so that their pains are internalized in multivariate and complex fashions, that include confused feelings of self-blame, identifying with the abuser, resentment, regret, and also violations of will and dignity. Again, if will is not a factor, then all of these potential arenas of psychological pain are not present.
To frame the following, it is fundamental to understand that in a post-labor civilization, the status of humanity no longer exists upon a metric of utility. Either civilization exists to improve the human condition, or to increase human suffering. There are no trade-offs or costs. Society is either good or evil.
But evil is short lived and short-sighted, and this is why: Sudden population reduction is a fire-cracker, it explodes just once. The pleasure in the process of eradicating billions of people, and the fear, pain, and suffering this would cause, within the span of a few short years, only gets to be enjoyed once. It’s a sacrificial ritual upon the altar of Moloch that can only be performed one time.
Likewise with post-coercive technologies: Without agency, controlling people serves no purpose in terms of violating their own will or desire. Causing pain on a subject that does not resist because he has no will, gives the sadist much less pleasure than would pain on a subject against their will.
Moreover, the position of being elite is relative to a number of factors such as distribution of wealth, power, and/or privilege, and the sheer numbers in terms of population, that one possesses these advantages over.
If there are only elites remaining, then they would have merely introduced a new kind of egalitarian society on the foundation of superabundance and a miniscule human population. If living conditions of an existing humanity can be greatly reduced, then the relative privilege and luxury enjoyed by the elites grows in that proportion.
Absent some radical life-extending technology, it is conceivable that science and technology have already reached the zenith point at which privilege and luxury cannot be furthered. A reasonable solution would be to reduce living conditions for others so as to enhance their own relative privilege. The greater number of people who live in reduced conditions, the more privileged one’s position of privilege actually is.
Likewise, it would seem that maintaining some human population as ‘possessions’ would serve to augment ownership over human beings, perhaps the most valuable type of possession because they are aware that they are owned – but only if that humiliates them. For what other purpose is there for slavery, in a world without human labor?
Does it have any meaning, or is any satisfaction achieved, by governing over people without the possibility to have the will to either consent, or conversely, resent the ruler? Here we can understand it along these lines: the possibility for agency means that governing can happen with their support, or against their will.
But neural implant control over cognitive processes, eliminates the possibility for will, which would deprive technocrats of the pleasure of ruling with or against the will of the ruled.
Therefore, the destructive evil framework of those behind the Great Reset is revealed. The use of strategy, planning, and cunning to achieve their desired result is prevalent. But have they examined the foundation of their desires? Do they understand what their victory would deliver to them?
The only thing left to destroy in a world populated by elites alone, are other elites. It would seem that the desire to dominate others does not simply come to an end on its own.
For these reasons, it is likely that some elites have seen the problem in this end game. This would explain the inter-elite conflict which we have explored previously, and will return to in the near future.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 06/21/2021 – 02:00 - The FBI's Mafia-Style Justice: To Fight Crime, The FBI Sponsors 15 Crimes A Day
The FBI’s Mafia-Style Justice: To Fight Crime, The FBI Sponsors 15 Crimes A Day
Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
Almost every tyranny being perpetrated by the U.S. government against the citizenry – purportedly to keep us safe and the nation secure – has come about as a result of some threat manufactured in one way or another by our own government.
Think about it.
Cyberwarfare. Terrorism. Bio-chemical attacks. The nuclear arms race. Surveillance. The drug wars. Domestic extremism. The COVID-19 pandemic.
In almost every instance, the U.S. government (often spearheaded by the FBI) has in its typical Machiavellian fashion sown the seeds of terror domestically and internationally in order to expand its own totalitarian powers.
Who is the biggest black market buyer and stockpiler of cyberweapons (weaponized malware that can be used to hack into computer systems, spy on citizens, and destabilize vast computer networks)? The U.S. government.
Who is the largest weapons manufacturer and exporter in the world, such that they are literally arming the world? The U.S. government.
Which country has a history of secretly testing out dangerous weapons and technologies on its own citizens? The U.S. government.
Which country has conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace—citizens and noncitizens alike—making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals, injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins? The U.S. government.
What country has a pattern and practice of entrapment that involves targeting vulnerable individuals, feeding them with the propaganda, know-how and weapons intended to turn them into terrorists, and then arresting them as part of an elaborately orchestrated counterterrorism sting? The U.S. government.
Are you getting the picture yet?
The U.S. government isn’t protecting us from terrorism.
The U.S. government is creating the terror. It is, in fact, the source of the terror.
Consider that this very same government has taken every bit of technology sold to us as being in our best interests—GPS devices, surveillance, nonlethal weapons, etc.—and used it against us, to track, control and trap us.
So why is the government doing this? Money, power and total domination.
We’re not dealing with a government that exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness. Rather, these are the diabolical machinations of a make-works program carried out on an epic scale whose only purpose is to keep the powers-that-be permanently (and profitably) employed.
Case in point: the FBI.
The government’s henchmen have become the embodiment of how power, once acquired, can be so easily corrupted and abused. Indeed, far from being tough on crime, FBI agents are also among the nation’s most notorious lawbreakers.
Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans’ phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government, or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the nation’s secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss’ dirty work.
For example, this is the agency that used an undercover agent/informant to seek out and groom an impressionable young man, cultivating his friendship, gaining his sympathy, stoking his outrage over the injustices perpetrated by the U.S. government, then enlisting his help to blow up the Herald Square subway station. Despite the fact that Shahawar Matin Siraj ultimately refused to plant a bomb at the train station, he was arrested for conspiring to do so at the urging of his FBI informant and used to bolster the government’s track record in foiling terrorist plots. Of course, no mention was made of the part the government played in fabricating the plot, recruiting a would-be bomber, and setting him up to take the fall.
This is the government’s answer to precrime: first, foster activism by stoking feelings of outrage and injustice by way of secret agents and informants; second, recruit activists to carry out a plot (secretly concocted by the government) to challenge what they see as government corruption; and finally, arrest those activists for conspiring against the government before they can actually commit a crime.
It’s a diabolical plot with far-reaching consequences for every segment of the population, no matter what one’s political leanings.
As Rozina Ali writes for The New York Times Magazine, “The government’s approach to counterterrorism erodes constitutional protections for everyone, by blurring the lines between speech and action and by broadening the scope of who is classified as a threat.”
This is not an agency that appears to understand, let alone respect, the limits of the Constitution.
Just recently, it was revealed that the FBI has been secretly carrying out an entrapment scheme in which it used a front company, ANOM, to sell purportedly hack-proof phones to organized crime syndicates and then used those phones to spy on them as they planned illegal drug shipments, plotted robberies and put out contracts for killings using those boobytrapped phones.
All told, the FBI intercepted 27 million messages over the course of 18 months.
What this means is that the FBI was also illegally spying on individuals using those encrypted phones who may not have been involved in any criminal activity whatsoever.
Even reading a newspaper article is now enough to get you flagged for surveillance by the FBI. The agency served a subpoena on USA Today / Gannett to provide the internet addresses and mobile phone information for everyone who read a news story online on a particular day and time about the deadly shooting of FBI agents.
This is the danger of allowing the government to carry out widespread surveillance, sting and entrapment operations using dubious tactics that sidestep the rule of law: “we the people” become suspects and potential criminals, while government agents, empowered to fight crime using all means at their disposal, become indistinguishable from the corrupt forces they seek to vanquish.
To go after terrorists, they become terrorists. To go after drug smugglers, they become drug smugglers. To go after thieves, they become thieves.
For instance, when the FBI raided a California business that was suspected of letting drug dealers anonymously stash guns, drugs and cash in its private vaults, agents seized the contents of all the safety deposit boxes and filed forfeiture motions to keep the contents, which include millions of dollars’ worth of valuables owned by individuals not accused of any crime whatsoever.
It’s hard to say whether we’re dealing with a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves), a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens), or if we’ve gone straight to an idiocracy.
This certainly isn’t a constitutional democracy, however.
Some days, it feels like the FBI is running its own crime syndicate complete with mob rule and mafia-style justice.
In addition to creating certain crimes in order to then “solve” them, the FBI also gives certain informants permission to break the law, “including everything from buying and selling illegal drugs to bribing government officials and plotting robberies,” in exchange for their cooperation on other fronts.
USA Today estimates that agents have authorized criminals to engage in as many as 15 crimes a day (5600 crimes a year). Some of these informants are getting paid astronomical sums: one particularly unsavory fellow, later arrested for attempting to run over a police officer, was actually paid $85,000 for his help laying the trap for an entrapment scheme.
In a stunning development reported by The Washington Post, a probe into misconduct by an FBI agent resulted in the release of at least a dozen convicted drug dealers from prison.
In addition to procedural misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property, the FBI’s laundry list of crimes against the American people includes surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, intimidation tactics, and harassment.
For example, the Associated Press lodged a complaint with the Dept. of Justice after learning that FBI agents created a fake AP news story and emailed it, along with a clickable link, to a bomb threat suspect in order to implant tracking technology onto his computer and identify his location. Lambasting the agency, AP attorney Karen Kaiser railed, “The FBI may have intended this false story as a trap for only one person. However, the individual could easily have reposted this story to social networks, distributing to thousands of people, under our name, what was essentially a piece of government disinformation.”
Then again, to those familiar with COINTELPRO, an FBI program created to “disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and neutralize” groups and individuals the government considers politically objectionable, it should come as no surprise that the agency has mastered the art of government disinformation.
The FBI has been particularly criticized in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks for targeting vulnerable individuals and not only luring them into fake terror plots but actually equipping them with the organization, money, weapons and motivation to carry out the plots—entrapment—and then jailing them for their so-called terrorist plotting. This is what the FBI characterizes as “forward leaning—preventative—prosecutions.”
Another fallout from 9/11, National Security Letters, one of the many illicit powers authorized by the USA Patriot Act, allows the FBI to secretly demand that banks, phone companies, and other businesses provide them with customer information and not disclose the demands. An internal audit of the agency found that the FBI practice of issuing tens of thousands of NSLs every year for sensitive information such as phone and financial records, often in non-emergency cases, is riddled with widespread violations.
The FBI’s surveillance capabilities, on a par with the National Security Agency, boast a nasty collection of spy tools ranging from Stingray devices that can track the location of cell phones to Triggerfish devices which allow agents to eavesdrop on phone calls.
In one case, the FBI actually managed to remotely reprogram a “suspect’s” wireless internet card so that it would send “real-time cell-site location data to Verizon, which forwarded the data to the FBI.”
The FBI has also repeatedly sought to expand its invasive hacking powers to allow agents to hack into any computer, anywhere in the world.
Indeed, for years now, the U.S. government has been creating what one intelligence insider referred to as a cyber-army capable of offensive attacks. As Reuters reported back in 2013:
Even as the U.S. government confronts rival powers over widespread Internet espionage, it has become the biggest buyer in a burgeoning gray market where hackers and security firms sell tools for breaking into computers. The strategy is spurring concern in the technology industry and intelligence community that Washington is in effect encouraging hacking and failing to disclose to software companies and customers the vulnerabilities exploited by the purchased hacks. That’s because U.S. intelligence and military agencies aren’t buying the tools primarily to fend off attacks. Rather, they are using the tools to infiltrate computer networks overseas, leaving behind spy programs and cyber-weapons that can disrupt data or damage systems.
As part of this cyberweapons programs, government agencies such as the NSA have been stockpiling all kinds of nasty malware, viruses and hacking tools that can “steal financial account passwords, turn an iPhone into a listening device, or, in the case of Stuxnet, sabotage a nuclear facility.”
In fact, the NSA was responsible for the threat posed by the “WannaCry” or “Wanna Decryptor” malware worm which—as a result of hackers accessing the government’s arsenal—hijacked more than 57,000 computers and crippled health care, communications infrastructure, logistics, and government entities in more than 70 countries.
Mind you, the government was repeatedly warned about the dangers of using criminal tactics to wage its own cyberwars. It was warned about the consequences of blowback should its cyberweapons get into the wrong hands.
The government chose to ignore the warnings.
That’s exactly how the 9/11 attacks unfolded.
First, the government helped to create the menace that was al-Qaida and then, when bin Laden had left the nation reeling in shock (despite countless warnings that fell on tone-deaf ears), it demanded—and was given—immense new powers in the form of the USA Patriot Act in order to fight the very danger it had created.
This has become the shadow government’s modus operandi regardless of which party controls the White House: the government creates a menace—knowing full well the ramifications such a danger might pose to the public—then without ever owning up to the part it played in unleashing that particular menace on an unsuspecting populace, it demands additional powers in order to protect “we the people” from the threat.
Yet the powers-that-be don’t really want us to feel safe.
They want us cowering and afraid and willing to relinquish every last one of our freedoms in exchange for their phantom promises of security.
As a result, it’s the American people who pay the price for the government’s insatiable greed and quest for power.
We’re the ones to suffer the blowback.
Blowback is a term originating from within the American Intelligence community, denoting the unintended consequences, unwanted side-effects, or suffered repercussions of a covert operation that fall back on those responsible for the aforementioned operations.
As historian Chalmers Johnson explains, “blowback is another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows.”
Unfortunately, “we the people” are the ones who keep reaping what the government sows.
We’re the ones who suffer every time, directly and indirectly, from the blowback.
Suffice it to say that when and if a true history of the FBI is ever written, it will not only track the rise of the American police state but it will also chart the decline of freedom in America: how a nation that once abided by the rule of law and held the government accountable for its actions has steadily devolved into a police state where justice is one-sided, a corporate elite runs the show, representative government is a mockery, police are extensions of the military, surveillance is rampant, privacy is extinct, and the law is little more than a tool for the government to browbeat the people into compliance.
This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.
We can persuade ourselves that life is still good, that America is still beautiful, and that “we the people” are still free. However, as science fiction writer Philip K. Dick warned, “Don’t believe what you see; it’s an enthralling—[and] destructive, evil snare. Under it is a totally different world, even placed differently along the linear axis.”
In other words, as I point out Battlefield America: The War on the American People, all is not as it seems.
The powers-that-be are not acting in our best interests.
“We the people” are not free.
The government is not our friend.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/20/2021 – 23:30 - Visualizing The Biggest Business Risks In 2021
Visualizing The Biggest Business Risks In 2021
We live in an increasingly volatile world, where change is the only constant.
Businesses, too, face rapidly changing environments and associated risks that they need to adapt to – or risk falling behind. As Visual Capitalist’s Iman Ghosh notes, these can range from supply chain issues due to shipping blockages, to disruptions from natural catastrophes.
As countries and companies continue to grapple with the effects of the pandemic, nearly 3,000 risk management experts were surveyed for the Allianz Risk Barometer, uncovering the top 10 business risks that leaders must watch out for in 2021.
The Top 10 Business Risks: The Pandemic Trio Emerges
Business Interruption tops the charts consistently as the biggest business risk. This risk has slotted into the #1 spot seven times in the last decade of the survey, showing it has been on the minds of business leaders well before the pandemic began.
However, that is not to say that the pandemic hasn’t made awareness of this risk more acute. In fact, 94% of surveyed companies reported a COVID-19 related supply chain disruption in 2020.
Pandemic Outbreak, naturally, has climbed 15 spots to become the second-most significant business risk. Even with vaccine roll-outs, the uncontrollable spread of the virus and new variants remain a concern.
The third most prominent business risk, Cyber Incidents, are also on the rise. Global cybercrime already causes a $1 trillion drag on the economy—a 50% jump from just two years ago. In addition, the pandemic-induced rush towards digitalization leaves businesses increasingly susceptible to cyber incidents.
Other Socio-Economic Business Risks
The top three risks mentioned above are considered the “pandemic trio”, owing to their inextricable and intertwined effects on the business world. However, these next few notable business risks are also not far behind.
Globally, GDP is expected to recover by +4.4% in 2021, compared to the -4.5% contraction from 2020. These Market Developments may also see a short-term 2 percentage point increase in GDP growth estimates in the event of rapid and successful vaccination campaigns.
In the long term, however, the world will need to contend with a record of $277 trillion worth of debt, which may potentially affect these economic growth projections. Rising insolvency rates also remain a key post-COVID concern.
Persisting traditional risks such as Fires and Explosions are especially damaging for manufacturing and industry. For example, the August 2020 Beirut explosion caused $15 billion in damages.
What’s more, Political Risks And Violence have escalated in number, scale, and duration worldwide in the form of civil unrest and protests. Such disruption is often underestimated, but insured losses can add up into the billions.
No Such Thing as a Risk-Free Life
The risks that businesses face depend on a multitude of factors, from political (in)stability and growing regulations to climate change and macroeconomic shifts.
Will a post-pandemic world accentuate these global business risks even further, or will something entirely new rear its head?
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/20/2021 – 23:00 - China Has Become A "Prison": Beijing Beefs Up Security Ahead Of Centennial Celebration
China Has Become A “Prison”: Beijing Beefs Up Security Ahead Of Centennial Celebration
Authored by Winnie Han and Jennifer Zeng via The Epoch Times,
Chinese authorities are ramping up security measures around the country, especially in the capital city of Beijing, ahead of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) centennial celebration on July 1.
One Chinese citizen said China has been turned into a “prison.”
The 100th anniversary of the founding of the CCP will be a grand occasion and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will deliver a speech, authorities announced on March 23.
Prior to the announcement, the CCP has implemented a series of strict controls in order to “maintain social stability,” which is the term used by the regime to justify its totalitarian rule in China.
On March 20, 18 departments, including the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the Central Propaganda Department, and the Central Committee of Political and Legal Affairs, jointly launched a three-and-a-half-month special campaign to suppress “illegal social organizations.” State-run media Xinhua reported that over 500 “illegal social organizations” were identified and placed under investigation.
On May 24, the Tiananmen District Management Committee announced that from May 25 to July 1, Tiananmen Square and the surrounding areas would be closed for “construction” for the grand celebration; from June 23 to July 1, Tiananmen Square would be closed.
On May 31, the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau announced that the automatic renewal extension of the Beijing Residence Permit and the Beijing Residence Registration Card would be discontinued from June 1.
The security bureau said that residents from other cities must apply for the extension of their residence permit (card). Otherwise, the permit would be suspended if it was overdue for one month and cancelled if it was overdue for six months. This move would make it more difficult for non-permanent Beijing residents to stay and live in the city.
On June 11, the Beijing Municipal Government issued a flying ban from June 13 to July 1. Nine districts, including Dongcheng, Xicheng, Chaoyang, Haidian, Fengtai, Shijingshan, Fangshan, Tongzhou and Daxing, would be designated as “restricted flying zones.” All flying objects, including doves and drones, are prohibited. In Beijing, doves are usually raised as pets and kept indoors.
Mr. Wang, a Shanghai resident, told The Epoch Times that China is like a “prison” with total surveillance of the public. “I saw several petitioners, and they were stopped before they reached Beijing.” Petitioners are citizens who have grievances that they wish to bring up to the central authorities.
He said, “Notices have been posted on the internet. Now [the CCP needs to] maintain stability. Don’t go to Beijing. Trains, planes, highways, and cell phones are all controlled. Layers of layers of security. Cameras are everywhere. Where can you go? It is useless to go anywhere, they will stop you halfway. Now (in Beijing) even pigeons are banned from flying, all flying objects are banned. It feels like an invisible net is in the air and on land, and nobody can escape.”
An anonymous source in China provided a video to The Epoch Times showing six security guards inside a moving bus in Beijing. The guards were wearing red armbands that contained a device, which monitored the movement of every passenger.
Suppressing Dissidents
Prior to the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4, authorities have been arresting dissidents or forcing them to leave the city since the end of May. The 1989 student-led pro-democracy protest movement is a sensitive topic in China and the CCP denies that it violently suppressed the protesters. Unnamed sources within the CCP said that at least 10,000 people were killed that day, according to declassified British cable and declassified U.S. documents.
Pro-democracy activists Zhang Yi, Zhu Tao, and Li Yong in Wuhan city were forced “to travel” to other places so that they wouldn’t be able to organize activities, or post comments on social media to commemorate the victims of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Dissidents including Zhang Wuzhou and Wang Aizhong in Guangzhou city, Chen Siming in Hunan Province, and Yang Shaozheng in Guizhou city were arrested around the anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre.
Wang Aizhong was very active on Twitter and often criticized the Chinese authorities. He was arrested on May 28. His wife Wang Henan posted a letter on Chinese social media on May 30, calling for his release.
Zhang Wuzhou was arrested after he put up a banner in public that read, “Don’t forget June 4.”
A screenshot of Zhang Wuzhou from Weiquanwang’s (Rights Defense Network’s) blog. (Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
Chen Siming was also arrested on June 5 for posting a photo of himself holding up a sign that read, “Commemorating the 31st Anniversary of June 4,” from last year.
A screenshot of Chen Siming from Weiquanwang’s (Rights Defense Network’s) blog. (Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
Beijing dissidents, including Cha Jianguo and Hu Jia, were taken out of the city by authorities before June 4.
U.S.-based China affairs commentator Tang Jingyuan told The Epoch Times that the Chinese regime is carrying out a high-profile centennial celebration because the CCP needs to use this opportunity to exaggerate its so-called “contributions” to China and the world, and to create a softer image for the international community.
Dr. Qin Jin, president of the Australian Democratic China Front, said that the CCP is already on a road that leads to destruction and it has to keep “making noise” in order to embolden itself.
He told The Epoch Times, “Now that the CCP’s international environment has worsened, it needs to put on a show in front of the Chinese people to achieve the political effect of deceiving them, even though it is already in dire straits.”
“It [the CCP] started a pandemic that spread around the world, temporarily alleviating the Trump administration’s countermeasures and strikes against it, but leaving the world devastated. Perhaps the world will learn from the pain and hold Beijing accountable. So, the CCP was just drinking poison to quench its thirst,” Qin stated.
Despite the regime’s efforts, Qin said that the so-called centennial celebration will not be well received by the world because more people are realizing the “evil” nature of the CCP.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/20/2021 – 22:30 - Rogue Hotspot Can "Permanently" Break iPhone WiFi Functionality
Rogue Hotspot Can “Permanently” Break iPhone WiFi Functionality
Security researcher Carl Schou discovered a bug in Apple’s iOS that can disable an iPhone’s ability to connect to hotspots after joining a WiFi with the SSID “%p%s%s%s%s%n.”
Schou tweeted, “after joining my personal WiFi with the SSID “%p%s%s%s%s%n”, my iPhone permanently disabled its WiFi functionality. Neither rebooting nor changing SSID fixes it :~).”
After joining my personal WiFi with the SSID “%p%s%s%s%s%n”, my iPhone permanently disabled it’s WiFi functionality. Neither rebooting nor changing SSID fixes it :~) pic.twitter.com/2eue90JFu3
— Carl Schou (@vm_call) June 18, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Schou told BleepingComputer that he conducted the test on an iPhone XS, running iOS version 14.4.2. BleepingComputer confirmed the test on an iPhone running iOS 14.6. They said the iPhone’s wireless functionality would break after connecting to %p%s%s%s%s%n.
What this looks like is a format string bug issue, which is unusual these days. After the iPhone connected to the strangely worded hotspot, the smartphone failed at connecting to other hotspots. Android devices connected to the hotspot but didn’t experience the same problem as iPhones.
Looks like My WiFi SSID found an iOS 0day. Photo credit to @wr3nchsr and @pieceofsummer pic.twitter.com/93gAnwabVz
— Carl Schou (@vm_call) June 19, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
A bug like this could be exploited by criminal actors who create unsecured WiFi hotspots called %p%s%s%s%s%n in a populated area and would wreak havoc on iPhone users trying to connect.
BleepingComputer says this is a “string formatting vulnerability.”
Other security researchers who saw Schou’s tweet and analyzed the crash report believe that an input parsing issue likely causes this bug.
When a string with “%” signs exists in WiFi hotspot names, iOS may be mistakenly interpreting the letters following “%” as string-format specifiers when they are not.
In C and C-style languages, string format specifiers have a special meaning and are processed by the language compiler as a variable name or a command rather than just text.
For example, the following printf command does not actually print the “%n” character but stores the number of characters (10) preceding %n into the variable “c.”
The “%n” is merely a format specifier and not an actual text string. As such, the output of the following line will simply be “geeks for geeks,” with no mention of “%n.”
The good news is there’s a fix that requires a reset of iOS network settings.
While this bug is not widely known yet, imagine if malicious actors set up fake hotspots across dense metro areas and caused a WiFi crisis among iPhone users… Apple should really look into this bug.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/20/2021 – 22:00 - 94% Of Americans Oppose Big Pharma's Control Over Global Vaccine Supply: Poll
94% Of Americans Oppose Big Pharma’s Control Over Global Vaccine Supply: Poll
Authored by Kenny Stancil via CommonDreams.org,
A new poll released Friday found that a whopping 94% of adults in the US do not want pharmaceutical corporations to control the global supply of Covid-19 vaccines, lending additional support to international demands for achieving universal access to inoculation through more knowledge sharing, technology transfer, and public production of doses.
That 94% figure includes respondents who expressed no preference, and it revealed a strong bipartisan consensus, with 96% of Biden voters and 92% of Trump voters in agreement. The online survey was conducted by YouGov between June 9-10 on behalf of the Medicine Equality Now! campaign, which seeks to dismantle the intellectual property (IP) barriers that cause millions of unnecessary deaths per year by undermining equal access to lifesaving medicines.
While pollsters found that the vast majority of Americans are unaware of the extent to which pharmaceutical giants exercise monopoly powers over vaccine manufacturing and underestimate how much money a few private companies have made from selling doses, they also discovered that 50% of the nation’s adults—including half of Trump voters—consider it unacceptable that Big Pharma has made substantial profits from vaccines developed using public funding.
“The majority of the U.S. public is not satisfied with the current system of vaccine access,” Gregg Gonsalves, associate professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health and global health activist, said in as statement. “As Americans, we know how pharmaceutical companies operate, prioritizing their profits ahead of saving lives.”
“More alarmingly,” Gonsalves noted, “many are simply not aware that the world’s recovery from this pandemic is controlled by a small number of pharmaceutical corporations—the exact system they’ve said they don’t want.”
Only 20% of the U.S. public thought that pharmaceutical companies wield the most control over global vaccine supply, the survey found.
Moreover, just over a quarter of respondents (26%) were aware that Big Pharma had brought in “very large” profits since the start of the vaccine rollout.
According to the poll:
- 66% believed the pharmaceutical companies had made a profit of some kind;
- 12% believed the profits were “fairly small”;
- 28% believed the profits were “fairly large”; and
- 26% believed the profits were “very large.”
Meanwhile, Corporate Watch estimated earlier this year that Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer, respectively, will make profits of $8 billion and $4 billion from Covid-19 vaccines this year alone, and The Intercept reported that executives are planning to hike prices on doses “in the near future.”
Via BizVibe According to the survey, a majority of U.S. adults want either the World Health Organization (WHO)—31%—or national governments—24%—to have the most control over global vaccine supply.
“Even in countries where the vaccine rollout is at an advanced stage, the public still has no desire for profit-seeking pharmaceutical companies to control the world’s supply of medicines,” Solange Baptiste, executive director of the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC), said in a statement.
Read the rest of the full report here.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/20/2021 – 21:30 - Ron Paul Recaps Biden-Putin Summit: Why Media & Politicos Get It All Wrong
Ron Paul Recaps Biden-Putin Summit: Why Media & Politicos Get It All Wrong
Most of the media and politicians of all stripes were apoplectic that President Biden sat down with his Russian counterpart without wrestling him to the ground or pounding him.
The reaction by US elites – from Trump to CNN – to the largely successful summit tells us everything that’s wrong with US foreign policy. We also highlight that Biden does say the stupidest thing ever at the summit. Watch the latest Liberty Report…
“It did not look confrontational, but that doesn’t mean everybody was pleased. I think I was reassured that things weren’t deteriorating and that there’s going to be an exchange of missiles or something like that,” Paul begins in his commentary.
“Most people were fairly well-behaved, but the frustration level [on the part of]… the military-industrial complex: ‘if you don’t have confrontation how are you gonna get these budgets passed?'”
“This was designed for confrontation,” former congressman Paul noted, but the media and defense contractor industry was no doubt disappointed at the noticeable lack of fireworks at the summit.
Instead, the two sides agreed to restore each’s ambassadors once again. “I would say that is progress – that’s talking to people,” Paul noted, to the deep frustration of the hawks on both sides of the aisle.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/20/2021 – 21:00 - 30Y Treasury Yield Tumbles Below 2.00%, Japanese Stocks Plunge
30Y Treasury Yield Tumbles Below 2.00%, Japanese Stocks Plunge
Short-dated Treasury yields are extending their rise from Friday’s bloodbath as the collapse of the long-end of the term structure accelerates in early Asia trading.
2Y is back above the Fed Funds rate…
Source: Bloomberg
and 30Y yields are back below 2.00%…
… for the first time since March…
Source: Bloomberg
10Y yields are at their lowest since early March…
Source: Bloomberg
And Japanese equity markets are none too happy with Powell’s policy error malarkey…
Source: Bloomberg
As Lance Roberts noted earlier, there have been ZERO times in history when the Fed started a rate hiking campaign that did not lead to a negative outcome. We suggest this time won’t be any different.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/20/2021 – 20:56 - "Just Blind Chance": The Rising Call For "Random Selection" For College Admissions
“Just Blind Chance”: The Rising Call For “Random Selection” For College Admissions
Random selection is not generally an approach that most people opt for in the selection of doctors or even restaurants or a movie. However, it appears to be the new model for some in higher education. Former Barnard College mathematics professor Cathy O’Neil has written a column calling for “random selection” of all college graduates to guarantee racial diversity. It is ever so simple:
“Never mind optional standardized tests. If you show interest, your name goes in a big hat.”
She is not the only one arguing for blind or random admissions.
Recently, University of California President Janet Napolitano announced that the entire system will no longer base admissions on standardized tests — joining a “test-blind” admissions movement nationally. Others have denounced standardized testing as vehicles for white supremacy. Education officials like Alison Collins, vice president of the San Francisco Board of Education, have declared meritocracy itself to be racist. There is a growing criticism that the problem with higher education is that it relies on merit rather than status as the driving criteria for admissions.
O’Neil and others are arguing not just for blind but actually random selection to achieve true diversity. O’Neil argues that it would also “take the pressure off students to conform to the prevailing definition of the ideal candidate” and allow them “to be kids again, smoking pot and getting laid in between reading Dostoyevsky and writing bad poetry.”
Others have called for purely random selection. In 2019, the liberal New America foundation argued that highly selective colleges and universities should admit students by lottery. Amy Laitinen, Claire McCann, and Rachel Fishman argued that not only should admissions be random but schools “would lose all eligibility not only to Title IV aid but also to federal research dollars.” They argued that this “This would do away with admissions preferences that overwhelmingly favor white and wealthy applicants, including for athletes and legacies.”
In her column, O’Neil admits that there is a “downside” like the fact that “applications to the most selective colleges would soar, causing acceptance rates to plunge and leaving the ‘strongest’ candidates with little chance of getting into their chosen schools.” However, she treats the downside of eliminating the value of actually doing well in high school and tests as just a question of privilege:
“The kids who struggled to get perfect grades, who spent their high school years getting really good at obscure yet in-demand sports, the legacies and the offspring of big donors, would lose their advantages.”
In an earlier column, I noted that the move by California to get rid of standardized tests occurred after California voters rejected an expensive campaign to reintroduce affirmative action in college admissions. The Supreme Court is also considering whether to take the case of Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. The Court this week asked the Biden Administration to take a position in the case involving allegations that Harvard has discriminated against Asian applicants. Litigants cite a study finding that Asian Americans needed SAT scores that were about 140 points higher than white students; the gap with admitted African American and Hispanic students is even greater.
The case could allow for clarity on the issue after years of conflicting 5-4 decisions that have ruled both for and against such race criteria admissions. There is a concern among universities that the Court could be moving toward a clear decision against the use of race as a criterion. Even the author of the 2003 majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger, Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, said she expected “that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” That was roughly 25 years ago.
“In the Harvard case, the scores are particularly important because the litigants allege that subjective factors were systemically used to disfavor them on issues such as likability and personality. While the lower courts ruled for Harvard, the trial judge did note that there may have been bias in favor of minority admissions and encouraged Harvard to deal with such “implicit bias” while monitoring ‘any significant race-related statistical disparities in the rating process.’ But what if there are no ‘statistical disparities’ because there are no objective statistics?”
O’Neil argues for blind and random selection precisely because it would prevent such court review.
“Colleges wouldn’t have to worry about fighting claims of racial discrimination in the Supreme Court because by construction the admissions process would be nondiscriminatory. No more “soft” criteria. No more biased tests. Just blind chance.”
Blind selection is the final default position for many schools. Universities have spent decades working around court decisions limiting the reliance on race as an admissions criterion. Many still refuse to disclose the full data on scores and grades for admitted students. If faced with a new decision further limiting (or entirely eliminating) race as a criterion, blind selection would effectively eliminate any basis for judicial review.
It would also destroy any value for the students to work to achieve greater achievement in math, science, and other subjects. O’Neil is right. They would be free to spend their time “smoking pot and getting laid in between reading Dostoyevsky and writing bad poetry.” The new model for admissions would range from Hunter Thompson to Hunter Biden.
The push for blind or random admissions is the ultimate sign of the decadence of society. What O’Neil is describing is a system designed for the intellectual dilettante. Of course, countries like China are moving to dominate the world economy with kids who are not focusing on good sex and bad poetry. Higher education has long been based on intellectual achievement and discovery. Admission to higher ranked schools has been a key motivating factor for millions of students, including the children of many first generation Americans. Their achievement has translated into national advancement in science and the economy. It has served to bring greater opportunities and growth for all Americans.
Now, recognition of such achievement is rejected by writers like O’Neil as “perpetuating the privileges of wealth” and preventing true racial diversity in our schools. So we will eliminate merit-based admissions entirely and reduce higher education to a lottery system based on pure luck.
And, when the world discovers that bad poetry holds the key to the new global economy, we will once again rise as a world power.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/20/2021 – 20:30 - Petitions To Keep Bezos From Returning To Earth Next Month Signed By Over 45,000 People
Petitions To Keep Bezos From Returning To Earth Next Month Signed By Over 45,000 People
Over 45,000 people have signed petitions calling to prevent Jeff Bezos from returning to earth next month, when the billionaire founder of Amazon.com is set to ride his phallic ‘New Shepard’ rocket into space along with his brother, Mark and an unidentified passenger who paid $28 million to join them.
“Billionaire’s should not exist…on earth, or in space, but should they decide the latter they should stay there,” reads one petition posted to change.org, which has received over 26,000 signatures as of this writing – many of whom let their feelings be known:
Another change.org petition with over 18,500 signatures reads: “Jeff Bezos is actually Lex Luthor, disguised as the supposed owner of a super successful online retail store. However, he’s actually an evil overlord hellbent on global domination.”
“Jeff has worked with the Epsteins and the Knights Templar, as well as the Free Masons to gain control over the whole world. He’s also in bed with the flat earth deniers; it’s the only way they’ll allow him to leave the atmosphere,” the petition continues.
Bezos just can’t seem to catch a break these days.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/20/2021 – 20:00 - Why Americans Overwhelmingly Reject Critical Race Theory
Why Americans Overwhelmingly Reject Critical Race Theory
Authored by Mark Glennon via Wirepoints.org,
Stories across Illinois and most of America now report furious parents standing up against what’s bundled under the term “Critical Race Theory,” or CRT, widely taught in K-12 schools.
Those who know what CRT is don’t like it. A new Economist/YouGov poll found opposition beating support by 58% to 38%. And opponents feel strongly. Those with “very unfavorable” views of CRT outnumber those with “very favorable” views” by 53% to 25%. Opposition is even more intense when specific tenets of CRT are polled.
What is CRT? Why the intense opposition? Does only the “right wing” oppose its teachings, as Gov. JB Pritzker claimed on Wednesday?
Call it “antiracism,” “culturally responsive teaching,” “equity” or “wokeness” if you want; dissecting the differences would be quibbling.
Here are the specific teachings they have mostly in common that are generating the rage:
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Individuals are forever defined by race, not character. CRT expressly rejects notions of color blindness and the melting pot.
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America is systemically racist and all whites are racists or at least implicitly biased.
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The Constitution and the American system of government were designed to perpetuate slavery and oppression.
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Equality of opportunity means nothing; only equality of results matters.
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Individuals are either oppressors or victims; there’s nothing in between.
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America’s true history is told by “The 1619 Project,” which holds that America’s real birth date was 1619 when the first slaves arrived, and that it is “out of slavery – and the anti‐black racism it required” – that “nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional” grew.
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Capitalism is evil. “In order to truly be antiracist, you also have to truly be anticapitalist,” says Ibram X. Kendi, a leading CRT proponent.
That’s probably enough to insult the core values and common sense of most Americans, but three overarching themes in CRT add to the fury.
First it’s taught as incontrovertible truth.
“This is not teaching about critical race theory; it is teaching in critical race theory,” an important distinction Andrew Sullivan describes in a superb, new article.
“And this is why — crucially — it will suppress any other way of seeing the world — because any other way, by definition, is merely perpetuating oppression,” Sullivan wrote. “As Kendi constantly reminds us, it is either/or. An antiracist cannot exist with a liberalism that perpetuates racism. And it’s always the liberalism that has to go.”
CRT champion Ibram X. Kendi
Second, it is Marxist in its roots and a broad assault on most everything about classical liberalism.
“Critical race theorists attack the very foundations of the liberal legal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law,” says a detailed look at CRT’s origins.
Third, there’s little hope for rational debate with CRT supporters.
Their standard claim is that opposition means refusal to recognize racism and the history of slavery. There would be no controversy if that were true, and the polls demolish claims like Pritzker’s that only the “right wing” is opposed, or “ultra-conservatives” as NBC and many others have claimed.
The Illinois State Board of Education was particularly deceitful in defending its “culturally responsive” teaching standards. “The standards do not impact teachers licensure or evaluation,” it wrote, yet that’s precisely the object of its new rule. And its standards aren’t about curriculum, ISBE falsely claimed.
The national press, as you’d expect, suppresses opinion opposed to CRT. Take a look at the ever-growing compendium of black scholars and activists who hold different views, compiled at FreeBlackThought.com. They are dead to the world as most of the MSM sees things.
* * *
Illinois is where the first skirmish occurred in a school in what is now a national battle. Four years ago, a rather small group of parents objected to the narrow, radical curriculum of New Trier High School’s “Seminar Day” on race – “Racial Indoctrination Day,” as the Wall Street Journal called it. That was before terms like “woke” became a thing and before Critical Race Theory became the commonly used label, but the issues were largely the same as today: Dissenting parents objected to what they saw as authoritarianism in the school’s exclusion of alternate viewpoints.
The parents lost. New Trier refused to include those alternate viewpoints.
They lost, in part, because many angry parents were afraid to speak up. They feared retribution from those who labeled all critics as racists.
But national coverage of that story and more alarming ones ensued. Having seen the reality of what CRT means to classrooms, its critics are now the majority.
Gone is any excuse for silence. CRT is in our schools due only to a loud and aggressive minority concentrated in today’s political, educational and media establishments. It will be driven into the obscurity it deserves if the majority continues to speak up.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/20/2021 – 19:30 -
- Powell Just Launched $2 Trillion In "Heat-Seeking Missiles": Zoltan Explains How The Fed Started The Next Repo Crisis
Powell Just Launched $2 Trillion In “Heat-Seeking Missiles”: Zoltan Explains How The Fed Started The Next Repo Crisis
Last week, amid the fire and brimstone surrounding the market’s shocked response to the Fed’s unexpected hawkish pivot, we noted that there were two tangible, if less noted changes: the Fed adjusted the two key “administered” rates, raising both the IOER and RRP rates by 5 basis points (as correctly predicted by Bank of America, JPMorgan, Wrightson, Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo while Citi, Oxford Economics, Jefferies, Credit Suisse, Standard Chartered, BMO were wrong in predicting no rate change), in an effort to push the Effective Fed Funds rate higher and away from its imminent rendezvous with 0%.
What does this mean? As Curvature Securities repo guru, Scott Skyrm wrote last week, “clearly the Fed intends to move overnight rates above zero and drain the RRP facility of cash.” Unfortunately, the end result would be precisely the opposite of what the Fed had wanted to achieve.
But what does this really mean for overnight rates and RRP volume? As Skyrm further noted, the increase in the IOER should pull the daily fed funds rate 5 basis points higher and, in turn, put upward pressure on Repo GC. Combined with the 5 basis point increase in RRP, GC should move a solid 5 basis points higher, which it has.
The problem, as Skyrm warned, is that the Fed’s technical adjustment would do nothing to ease the RRP volume:
When market Repo rates were at 0% and the RRP rate was at zero, ~$500 billion went into the RRP. Well, if both market Repo rates and the RRP rate are 5 basis points higher, there’s no reason to pull cash out of the RRP. For example, if GC rates moved to .05% and the RRP rate stayed at zero, investor preferences to invest at a higher rate would remove cash from the RRP.
Bottom line: with both market rates and RRP at .05%, there’s really no economic incentive for cash investors to move cash to the Repo market. Or, as we summarized, “the Fed’s rate change may have zero impact on the Fed’s reverse repo facility, or the record half a trillion in cash parked there.”
In retrospect, boy was that an understatement, because just one day later the already record usage of the Fed’s Reverse Repo facility spiked by a record 50%, exploding to a staggering $756 billion (it closed Friday at $747 billion) as the GSEs.
Needless to say, flooding the Fed’s RRP facility and sterilizing reserves is hardly what the Fed had intended, and as Credit Suisse’s own repo guru (and former NY Fed staffer) Zoltan Pozsar wrote in his post-mortem, “the re-priced RRP facility will become a problem for the banking system fast: the banking system is going from being asset constrained (deposits flooding in, but nowhere to lend them but to the Fed), to being liability constrained (deposits slipping away and nowhere to replace them but in the money market).”
What he means by that is that whereas previously the RRP rate of 0.00% did not reward allocation of inert, excess reserves but merely provided a place to park them, now that the Fed is providing a generous yield pick up compared to rates offered by trillions in Bills, we are about to see a sea-change in the overnight, money-market, as trillions in capital reallocate away from traditional investments and into the the Fed’s RRP.
In other words, as Pozsar puts it, “the RRP facility started to sterilize reserves… with more to come.” And just as Deutsche Bank explained why the Fed’s signaling was an r* policy error, to Pozsar, the Fed also made a policy error – only this time with its technical rates – by steriling reserves because “it’s one thing to raise the rate on the RRP facility when an increase was not strictly speaking necessary, and it’s another to raise it “unduly” high – as one money fund manager put it, “yesterday we could not even get a basis points a year; to get endless paper at five basis points from the most trusted counterparty is a dream come true.”
He’s right: while 0bps may have been viewed by many as too low, it was hardly catastrophic for now (Credit Suisse was one of those predicting no administered rate hike), 5bps is too generous, according to Pozsar who warns that the new reverse repo rate will upset the state of “singularity” and “like heat-seeking missiles, money market investors move hundreds of billions, making sharp, 90º turns hunting for even a basis point of yield at the zero bound – at 5 bps, money funds have an incentive to trade out of all their Treasury bills and park cash at the RRP facility.”
Indeed, as shown below, bills yield less than 5 bps out to 6 months, and money funds have over $2 trillion of bills. They got an the incentive to sell, while others have the incentive to buy: institutions whose deposits have been “tolerated” by banks until now earning zero interest have an incentive to harvest the 0-5 bps range the bill curve has to offer. Putting your cash at a basis point in bills is better than deposits at zero. So the sterilization of reserves begins, and so the o/n RRP facility turns from a largely passive tool that provided an interest rate floor to the deposits that large banks have been pushing away, into an active tool that “sucks” the deposits away that banks decided to retain.
To help readers visualize what is going on, the Credit Suisse strategist suggest the following “extreme” thought experiment: most of the “Covid-19” deposits currently with banks go into the bill market where rates are better. Money funds sell bills to institutional investors that currently keep their cash at banks, and money funds swap bills for o/n RRPs. Said (somewhat) simply, while previously the Fed provided banks with a convenient place to park reserves, it now will actively drain reserves to the point where we may end up with another 2019-style repo crisis, as most financial institutions suddenly find themsleves with too few intraday reserves, forcing them to use the Fed’s other funding facilities (such as FX swap lines) to remain consistently solvent.
This process is not overnight. It will take a few weeks to observe the fallout from the Fed’s reserve sterilization.
And here is why the problem is similar to the repo crisis of 2019: soon we will find that while cash-rich banks can handle the outflows, some bond-heavy banks cannot. As a result, Zoltan predicts that next “we will notice that some banks (those who can not handle outflows) are borrowing advances from FHLBs, and cash-rich banks stop lending in the FX swap market as the RRP facility pulled reserves away from them and the Fed has to re-start the FX swap lines to offset.”
Bottom line: whereas previously we saw Libor-OIS collapse, this key funding spread will have to widen from here, unless the Fed lowers the o/n RRP rate again back to where it was before.
Or, as Zoltan summarizes, “It’s either quantities or prices” – indeed, in 2019 the Fed chose prices over quantities, which backfired, and led to the repo crisis which ended the Fed’s hiking cycle and started “NOT QE.” While the Fed redeemed itself in February, when it expanded the usage of the RRP without making it liability-constrained as it chose quantities over prices – which worked well – last Wednesday, the Fed turned “unlimited” quantities into “money for free” and started to sterilize reserves.
Bottom line: “we are witnessing the dealer of last resort (DoLR) learning the art of dealing, making unforced errors – if the Fed sterilizes with an overpriced o/n RRP facility, it has to be ready to add liquidity via the swap lines…”
Translation: by paying trillions in reserves 5bps, the Fed just planted the seeds of the next liquidity crisis.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/20/2021 – 18:47 - Homelessness Is Becoming A Crisis Of Epic Proportions In The US
Homelessness Is Becoming A Crisis Of Epic Proportions In The US
Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,
Can you imagine what it would be like to not have a home? For many Americans, this is not something that they need to imagine because it is a daily reality. Nobody knows for sure how many homeless individuals there are in this country, but recent estimates range from “fewer than 600,000 to more than 1.5 million people”, and everyone agrees that the number has been growing. Even as the wealthy engage in wild bidding wars over the most desirable properties, more impoverished Americans are being forced into the streets with each passing day. There has always been homelessness in America, but here in 2021 it is rapidly becoming a crisis of epic proportions.
Ironically, the state with the worst problem is also the wealthiest state in the nation. At least 160,000 homeless people currently live in California, although many believe that official figure is way too low. The number of homeless in the state had been rising for years, and then the pandemic came along…
Tent-lined streets with belongings scattered everywhere. Infected wounds with bugs living inside. A man who hasn’t showered in over a decade. An 80-year-old woman who can’t feed herself. People who ride the metro rail lines because the trains are a safer place to sleep.
California’s homeless problem has been out of control for decades. Then came COVID-19.
In many California cities, tent cities have seemingly popped up everywhere these days. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the number of tent encampments in San Francisco alone has grown by 70 percent during the pandemic…
Tent encampments are typical sights under freeways and in areas such as skid row – a pocket of downtown Los Angeles known for its vast homeless population – but the pandemic, shutdowns and quarantines caused them to spread across the city. Encampments popped up in parking lots, neighborhood parks and outside schools, not only in Los Angeles but other parts of the state.
In San Francisco alone, tent encampments grew by 70% and became more visible across the city, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
San Francisco is one of the wealthiest cities in the entire world.
If this is happening now, how bad will things get when the U.S. economy really starts to fall apart?
The homelessness crisis continues to grow rapidly on the east coast as well. In New York City, many have become concerned about the “growing presence” of the homeless in Times Square…
An influx of homeless people into Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood after an emergency move by New York City to ease crowding in shelters has been a fact of pandemic life for the neighborhood since last spring.
Many of the newcomers, living in nearby hotel rooms contracted by the city, have been largely inconspicuous. But others with mental health and drug problems have become a growing presence in Hell’s Kitchen and adjacent Times Square.
Now that the pandemic is fading, many New Yorkers are quite eager to have the homeless removed from Times Square because the tourists are starting to return.
Needless to say, seeing hordes of homeless people laying in the streets is not good for business, and the increase in homelessness has also helped to fuel a dramatic rise in violent crime in the Times Square area…
The police precinct that includes Times Square and many of the hotels has seen a 183 percent spike in felony assaults and 173 percent spike in robberies so far this year compared to 2020, according to NYPD data.
As you can probably imagine, homelessness has been growing in the middle of the country too.
In Dallas, a large homeless camp was recently removed by authorities after local residents loudly complained…
The city of Dallas has removed a homeless camp after nearby residents complained it was putting their health and safety in jeopardy.
While some who called the camp home say they have no place to go, neighbors are grateful the city is finally responding. The sprawling homeless encampment was covered by a canopy of trees and located behind houses along Tres Logos Lane in northeast Dallas.
Nobody wants a homeless camp in their neighborhood, but where are those homeless people supposed to go?
They have to sleep somewhere.
But for now, residents of that particular neighborhood are just thrilled that those homeless people are no longer their problem. In fact, one local resident told the press that she is so happy that they are gone that she has “chills”…
“I am so excited, I am so happy, I have chills,” said resident Maria Sanchez. “It’s not just the homelessness that we’re talking about, its other individuals that are, you know, doing other illicit activities sketchy activities.”
So what happens if Maria Sanchez loses her current job and starts getting behind on her rent or mortgage payments?
Ultimately, the vast majority of Americans are just a few months away from being homeless themselves.
In fact, now that a nationwide eviction moratorium is ending, we are being told that millions more Americans could soon be forced out into the streets…
MILLIONS of renters face eviction as a nationwide ban is set to end in two weeks.
It comes as 5.7million Americans – nearly 14% of all renters nationwide – had fallen behind on their rent in April.
The study by the National Equity Atlas revealed that tenants owed nearly $20 billion in rent, with low-income people among those worst affected.
So as bad as things are now, they could soon get a whole lot worse.
Can you imagine what that would look like?
Sleeping on the streets is extremely dangerous, and vast numbers of homeless people end up dying. According to USA Today, more than 1,300 homeless people died in Los Angeles County alone in 2020…
The crisis in California has left a trail of death.
Some come from drug overdoses, violence or untreated illnesses that compound over time. Others come from suicide. These people die under freeways, along sidewalks and in alleys, hospitals and vehicles. More than 1,300 died last year in Los Angeles County alone. An additional 1,200 died the year before that.
During the pandemic, the federal government has borrowed and spent trillions and trillions of dollars, and the Federal Reserve has pumped trillions and trillions of dollars into the financial system, and yet the suffering of those at the bottom of the economic food chain has gotten much, much worse.
Something is very wrong with that picture.
No matter what our leaders do, the homelessness crisis in this country just seems to keep escalating. Vast numbers of our fellow citizens will be sleeping on the streets tonight, and many more will soon be joining them.
* * *
Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/20/2021 – 18:30 - 10 Recent Examples Of Biden Blowing Up At Reporters: "The Rage Is Back"
10 Recent Examples Of Biden Blowing Up At Reporters: “The Rage Is Back”
Joe Biden wants reporters to stick to asking him about more simple matters like ice cream flavors. His last Wednesday “What the Hell?!” blow-up in Geneva in response to a pointed series of questions from CNN’s Kaitlan Collins was but the latest in a recent history of his snapping at the press, which often involves him singling out and going after journalists personally. “What in the hell, what do you do all the time?” he shouted back at Collins while defiantly pointing his finger. He ended by telling the correspondent she’s in the “wrong business”.
Fox News noted this weekend following his attempted apology over the incident that “While Biden often praises journalists as highly intelligent – he did so again this week – he is known for lashing out at questioners on topics he doesn’t like, notably his scandal-ridden son Hunter Biden.”
AFP via Getty Images Previously on the campaign trail last year he had a series of contentious and combative interactions with random citizens attending his campaign rallies and press events, the infamous “lying dog-faced pony soldier” moment being foremost among them.
It was during the campaign last year especially that he was seen multiple times berating supporters when the questions and conversation didn’t go his way (recall too his “you’re a damn liar” moment wherein he bizarrely challenged a heavy-set man to push-ups: “look fat, here’s the deal…”).
While the above mentioned exchanges are perhaps more well known, Fox News over the weekend took a trip down recent memory lane, putting together clips which feature Biden specifically telling reporters off, awkward moments wherein the president often gets personal and proceeds to directly belittle them… here’s 10 such instances.
* * *
1) “Right up your alley, those are the questions you always ask…” he shot back in response to a question about the NY Post revelations on Hunter.
I asked Joe Biden: What is your response to the NYPost story about your son, sir?
He called it a “smear campaign” and then went after me. “I know you’d ask it. I have no response, it’s another smear campaign, right up your alley, those are the questions you always ask.” pic.twitter.com/Eo6VD4TqxD
— Bo Erickson CBS (@BoKnowsNews) October 17, 2020
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2) A reporter offended Biden for merely doing journalism:
“Why are you the only guy that always shouts out questions?”
Asked Biden if he will encourage teacher unions to cooperate to get kids back in school because the COVID task force said it is safe to be in the classroom. He didn’t answer.
“Why are you the only guy that always shouts out questions?” he said. pic.twitter.com/x2DsG5Fmgo
— Bo Erickson CBS (@BoKnowsNews) November 20, 2020
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3) Biden gets visibly angry anytime he’s asked Ukraine questions in general, particularly related to his scandal-laden son Hunter…
WATCH: Joe Biden explodes when a reporter asks a very simple question:
“How was your role as Vice President in charge of policy in Ukraine and your son’s job in Ukraine, how is that not a conflict of interest?”
Biden: “I’m not going to respond to that!”
What is he hiding? pic.twitter.com/jbycKLARhE
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 4, 2019
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4) And who can forget the famous “you ain’t black” remarks issued to popular African American radio host Charlamagne…
“You’ve got more questions?” Biden replied. “Well I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
5) Biden is known to give a terse “C’mon man…” to express his rising anger and frustration when challenged by reporters…
Biden, asked if 100 million vaccines within 100 days is too low of a goal, snaps: “When I announced it you all said it wasn’t possible. Gimme a break. C’mon man.” pic.twitter.com/O7n7jBOjvn
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 21, 2021
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6) Some angry sarcasm in this one directed at a FOX correspondent:
“But only you would ask that. You’re a good man, good man. Classy.”
Doocy: Mr. Vice President I’m wondering if you have a comment on this report & court filing out of AR that your son Hunter just made you a Grandfather again.
Biden: No that’s a private matter I have no comment. But only you would ask that. You’re a good man, good man. Classy. pic.twitter.com/FwV2sJNuHK
— Pat Ward (@WardDPatrick) November 22, 2019
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7) It’s not just Trump that gets into back-and-forth exchanges over crowd size and political rallies and events…
8) Biden’s rage is back (or was it ever gone? maybe just in between bouts of sleepiness…), as was on clear display during the tail-end press conference at the Geneva summit with Putin last week.
If only he had simply kept walking off-stage, but his temper got him first…
“Biden was so filled with rage, he even had that nasty, bony finger out, pointing it, while demeaning her…” – Sophie O’Hara
https://t.co/VnzjDoQ6y4— Wayne Dupree Media, LLC (@WayneDupreeShow) June 17, 2021
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9) While the initial “What the Hell!” incident with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins went viral, what’s lesser known is that he again took a nasty swipe at the press pool during his attempted “apology” as be boarded Air Force One later that day…
But then he added another zinger at a reporter who essentially repeated Collins’ question…
10) It was a mere one month ago that Biden “jokingly” threatened to run over a journalist with a car who dared asked a question he was uncomfortable answering…
REPORTER: Mr. President can I ask you a quick question on Israel before you drive away since it’s so important?
BIDEN: No you can’t… not unless you get in front of the car as I step on it… I’m only teasing. pic.twitter.com/zRrXBjk7YQ
— BG (@TheBGates) May 18, 2021
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As many have pointed out, the President of the United States wants the press to stick to banal questions about what ice cream flavors he likes. And too often the compliant mainstream networks are only too happy to play along:
“Mr. President, what did you order?” was the first question shouted by a reporter as Biden licked a cone at Honey Hut Ice Cream in Cleveland, Ohio.
“Chocolate chocolate chip,” the commander in chief replied, to oohs and aahs from the fawning press pack.
Here’s a 3-minute MSNBC segment on Joe Biden eating ice cream pic.twitter.com/4bk5PK8CBo
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 28, 2021
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/20/2021 – 18:00 - Why Net-Zero Is A Suicide Mission For Canada
Why Net-Zero Is A Suicide Mission For Canada
Authored by Fergus Hodgson, op-ed via The Epoch Times,
Canada’s plan for net-zero “greenhouse-gas emissions” by 2050 will come home to roost. Grandstanding has consequences, and in Bill C-12 we are witnessing the legislation to give it teeth. The demonized energy sector appears impotent to resist this attack and is outwardly embracing the idea, presumably to placate regulators and the woke mob.
Grandiose promises, for which the bills come over in decades, are a natural product of election-minded politicians. Their strategy is to garner positive press while leaving someone else to deal with the difficult task of making the promises happen, including paying for them. This is how, for example, unfunded liabilities became prevalent in Canadian governments at all levels (pdf).
Just as Millennials and Generation Z will have to pick up the tab for Ponzi schemes such as the Canada Pension Plan, so too will they have to pay for pie-in-the-sky environmentalism. The price will come in the form of fewer jobs available and higher energy prices, which in turn raise the prices of almost everything in the economy.
To rub salt into the wound, Canadians can expect an array of taxes that will manipulate their behavior and pay for subsidies to inflate so-called green energies beyond what’s warranted by their value to consumers. In December 2020, for example, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced CA$3 billion ($2.4 billion) for a Net Zero Accelerator Fund “to rapidly expedite decarbonization projects with large emitters, scale-up clean technology, and accelerate Canada’s industrial transformation across all sectors.”
What It Would Take
Achieving net-zero by 2050, akin to the Green New Deal in the United States, would require a colossal energy transition and use reduction. In addition, it would require sophisticated efforts to capture greenhouse gases on site and/or pull them from the air and inject them underground. The latter is a form of offset, one of the few ways to offset emissions that’s quantifiable and not easily gamed.
Defining and measuring offsets tends to be difficult because we don’t know people’s actions in the absence of payments. Did they change their behavior in a long-term fashion, or did they simply collect rewards? According to Mark Jaccard, a Simon Fraser University professor and the author of “The Citizen’s Guide to Climate Success,” the definition of offsets is slippery. Jaccard is an advocate for direct citizen action and policies toward emissions reductions. However, he asserts that if we were to only fund “a true offset”—such as direct-air capture—that would raise the cost from $8 to about $200 per ton of carbon dioxide.
“When a given jurisdiction is trying to reduce emissions,” he counsels, “don’t allow offsets to be more than a small percentage of the policy tools that you use to reduce your emissions.”
Jaccard and institutional purveyors of net-zero by 2050, such as the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the World Economic Forum (WEF), don’t shy away from admitting the gravity of the change necessary. The IEA’s 2020 report, “Achieving Net-Zero Emissions by 2050,” said it “would require a far-reaching set of actions going above and beyond the already ambitious measures in the [Sustainable Development Scenario]. A large number of unparalleled changes across all parts of the energy sector would need to be realized simultaneously, at a time when the world is trying to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.”
That last element is crucial. The Canadian economy, like many others, is in shambles. On the back of overzealous COVID-19 lockdowns, border restrictions, and misdirected welfare programs, the nation faces a fiscal crisis. In fact, monetary expansion to fund the deficit binge has pushed inflation beyond the Bank of Canada’s stipulated range of 1 to 3 percent.
The road to recovery will require difficult decisions and austerity. Meanwhile, the IEA says, “Total CO2 emissions … need to fall by around 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030.” The WEF adds, “Huge declines in the use of coal, oil, and gas will be essential.” The WEF is a fitting ally for the plan, since net-zero dovetails with the Great Reset. One of the IEA’s net-zero recommendations for 2021 is “No new oil and gas fields approved for development; no new coal mines or mine extensions.”
Why the Stampede Continues
If one reads the Canadian government’s promotional materials related to net-zero, you can be forgiven for believing the idea is a win-win and no-brainer. Apparently, 120 countries have committed to the plan—not that any are likely to achieve it—and “The transition to a cleaner, prosperous economy needs to be both an immediate priority and a sustained effort over the years and decades ahead.”
The problem with this lofty language is that it refuses to recognize the tradeoffs at play. That’s why Robert Murphy, a Fraser Institute senior fellow, describes the net-zero plan as “largely symbolic” and “more fairy tale than science.” In an op-ed for the Calgary Sun, Murphy notes “312,000 to 450,000 oil and gas workers are at risk of displacement.” That’s between half and three-quarters of those working in the field, and the pain would be felt most severely in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador.
Not only do proponents have a blindspot for the costs, which include burdens on taxpayers and consumers, they also struggle to define and confirm the benefits. The level to which such a fundamental overhaul of the Canadian economy would lessen global warming is minimal. Even if Canada generates relatively high emissions per capita—largely on account of its energy needs, geography, and climate—that still is only 1.6 percent of the world’s total (pdf).
Instead of touting the benefits of reduced emissions, which in Canada’s case would be trivial, proponents resort to fearmongering, and it works. This is the chief theme of “Apocalypse Never” by Michael Shellenberger, a longtime environmentalist. Subtitled “Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All,” the book picks apart with ease many doomsayer narratives. That includes U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s notorious claim “the world is going to end in 12 years” in the absence of policies to resolve global warming. Shellenberger explains that knee-jerk reactions and ill-fated policies pose much more risk to those in poverty than global warming does.
Not only are proponents hyping fears, they’re putting Canada on a path to being a sucker: a country that pays a tremendous price for reduced emissions while other countries posture. Deepak Gupta of India’s National Solar Energy Federation writes that the story of international global-warming initiatives has “been one of almost complete and continuous failure,” since developed countries have not honored their commitments. “Their negotiating tactic has been simple. Promise reduction of their own emissions which will not be implemented as they are non-enforceable.”
In some ways, Canadians would be better off if Gupta were right in their case. Unfortunately, the bills are already arriving in the form of carbon taxes and subsidies for favored firms, right when Canadians can ill-afford to pay for them. These are just the tip of the iceberg of what’s to come if officials are dead set on the net-zero target.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/20/2021 – 17:30 - Powell Just Made A Huge Error: What The Market's Shocking Response Means For The Fed's Endgame
Powell Just Made A Huge Error: What The Market’s Shocking Response Means For The Fed’s Endgame
Back in December 2015, just days before the Fed hiked rates for the first time since the global financial crisis, in its first tightening campaign since June 2004, we said that Yellen was about to engage in a great policy error, one which like the Ghost of 1937, would end in disaster…
… and sure enough it did, when after 9 rate hikes, Powell realized that a rate of 2.50% is unsustainable for the US economy which first cracked during the summer of 2019 repo crisis when the Fed cut rates three times, only to cut rates to zero from 1.75% in a matter of days after covid conveniently emerged on the global scene and led to an overnight shutdown of the US economy and “forced” the Fed to nationalize the bond market as well as inject trillions of liquidity into the market.
But what is it that prompted us to predict – correctly – that any rate hike campaign is doomed to fail (similar to the Fed’s ill-conceived plan to hike rates in 1937, which brought the already reeling country to its knees and only World War 2 saved the day, giving FDR a green light to unleash a fiscal stimulus tsunami the likes of which we hadn’t seen until the covid response)?
Simple: as we explained back in Dec 2015, the equilibrium growth rate in the US, or r* (or r-star), was far far lower than where most economists thought it was. In fact, as the sensitivity table below which we first constructed in 2015 showed, the equilibrium US growth rate was right around 0%.
As we explained then making the case for a far lower r-star, “if nominal growth is 3 percent and the debt GDP ratio is 300 percent, the implied equilibrium nominal rates is around 1 percent. This is because at 1% rates, 100% of GDP growth is necessary to service interest costs.”
In this case, real growth would slow in response to rate hikes because productivity would stay weak at full employment and companies would be profit/price constrained around paying higher wages. Moreover, nominal growth would then slow even more than real growth does because inflation would fall to 1 percent or below.
As we concluded then, “this is the important policy error scenario because even a very shallow path of rate hikes might drive the real Funds rate well above the short-term equilibrium real rate, further depressing demand. It is then plausible that the economy would be driven into recession, and the Fed would quickly be forced to abort the hiking cycle. As an aside, such a policy error could reinforce itself by causing structural damage that puts additional downward pressure on the equilibrium real rate. In this case the yield curve would flatten meaningfully, at least until the Fed actually reversed course by cutting rates.”
As the chart at the top shows, this is precisely what happened, only instead of World War II – which is what short-circuited the Ghost of 1937 rate hike policy error, it was the covid crisis that gave the Fed and the US government a green light to unleash an unlimited monetary and fiscal stimulus, delaying the inevitable recession and kicking the can a few years.
* * *
Why is all of this relevant? Because according to some of the smartest people on Wall Street, the market’s reaction to last week’s unexpected Fed announcement suggests that r* now is even lower – which makes intuitive sense in light of the surge in debt and decline in growth excluding government stimulus – and that the next tightening cycle, which may start as soon as next year according to Bullard – will be the shallowest one yet as the US economy can hardly afford tighter financial conditions.
In a note written late last week, and certainly after the market’s remarkable reversal following the hawkish Fed, DB’s chief FX strategist George Saravelos wrote that the day after the Fed meeting “was extraordinary by any measure: the biggest daily rally in the dollar index since the March global shutdown, a big drop in long-end US yields to the lowest since February, the biggest drop in some commodity prices since March of last year but a new record high in the NASDAQ all happening at the same time.”
How to square it all up?
According to Saravelos, the Fed made a big policy error as evidenced by the flattening in the yield curve…
… which according to the DB FX strategist “boils down to a very pessimistic market view on r*” or in other words, the same argument we made 6 years ago when we predicted that the Fed’s hiking cycle would end in disaster.
First, the easy part. The big dollar rally is entirely with the conventional wisdom that what matters for the greenback is front-end real rates. Fed tightening expectations have repriced sharply higher over 2023 and support more near-term dollar strength (chart 1). There should be no surprise that the dollar has rallied strongly even if 10-year yields have not made new highs.
Second, the commodity part. As the DB strategist notes, the role the Fed has played in inflating commodity prices should not be underestimated and is perhaps seen best in the very high correlation between the dollar and base metal prices at the moment:
Our fixed income colleagues have shown there is an extremely powerful link between the Fed balance sheet, commodity prices and inflation expectations: the taper of 2013 marked the peak in inflation expectations back then too.
On a similar note, economists have shown that even survey-based measures of inflation expectations such as Michigan exhibit a high correlation to commodity prices. All of this reinforces the point that the Fed can be far more powerful in influencing inflation expectations via
the dollar and commodities than is commonly assumed.Finally, and most importantly, we get to the bond and r* part.
As the chart below shows, the market has undergone a remarkable twist flattening over the last 48 hours which according to Saravelos is extremely unusual given that the Fed has not even started hiking rates yet. And in a repeat of the aborted hiking cycle of 2015-2019, while market pricing for hikes in 2023 and 2024 has gone up, yields beyond that have gone down as the market is saying that the best the Fed can do is less than 2-years of rate hikes.
This has also coincided with a notable drop in inflation expectations – indeed Fed has shown a hawkish pivot even before market breakevens have reached their pre-2014 normal range.
What all of the above is telling us, according to Saravelos, is that unlike 2015 when we were the only ones warning about how low real r* is, the market now is taking an extremely pessimistic view on real neutral rates, or r*.
Said otherwise, if the Fed decides to go early – as first Powell hinted and then Bullard doubled down on Friday sending stocks plunging – the market is saying that it won’t be able to go very far before inflation and growth hit a speed limit, pushing yield expectations after the initial hike lower.
This very pessimistic view on r*, first laid out here in 2015, is also in line with market behavior beyond the bond market. First, as DB’s Saravelos notes, it is aligned with the very high dollar responsiveness we have seen to even small shifts in Fed stance: huge pent-up demand for yield from investors across the planet forces a stronger dollar and a bigger disinflationary impact quicker than assumed.
In other words, a low global r* (remember the rest of the world still has massive current account surpluses, or excess savings) pushes US r* even lower.
Second, a low r* is consistent with continued equity resilience, especially in growth stocks heavily reliant on a low medium-term discount rate. That the equity moves in the past two days were led by huge relative rotation from the Russell to the NASDAQ should not be a surprise. This, as Deutsche Bank ominously warns, is 2010-19 secular stagnation pricing, version 2.
Bottom line: while a day’s price action (or even two) does not a trend make, the market is sending some peculiar signals that need to be monitored. Meanwhile, Saravelis has been emphasizing in recent weeks that the transition away from the v-shaped part of the recovery to the new post-COVID steady state will start raising all sorts of uncomfortable questions, including the structural damage COVID has left on private-sector saving rates as well as the new level of equilibrium real rates. One can only imagine the sorry state of the economy when the fiscal stimulus is gone and turns from a tailwind to a headwind. Historical evidence has shown a huge negative impact of pandemics on r* for example. For a big dollar up cycle, the Fed needs to be able to get very far. The market is not so sure, although for now the paradoxical divergence between the surging dollar and tumbling yields has yet to be addressed by the market.
A bigger question is will the US even be able to sustain positive GDP growth absent trillions in new stimulus each and every year? And even more ominous: what happens to inflation if the Fed is forced to cut rates well before the inflationary burst is extinguished? These are among uncomfortable questions markets will have to answer in the coming months.
Perhaps the biggest question facing the Fed now is whether it is about to do another huge “ghost of 1937” error. As a reminder, the Fed believed the US economy had turned the corner in 1937 and started to raise rates – and was wrong, bringing the economy to its knees again. Only the massive fiscal reflation sparked via World War 2 saved the day.
The problem is that this time we already had the covid “war” which pushed both the US debt and deficit to wartime levels, so what else left absent all out war with China? How else can the US government justify tens of trillions more in stimulus at a time when the market is already discounting the US economy hitting a brick wall in 2024 when the next rate hike cycle comes to an end. And how will Powell’s replacement (the Fed chair will certainly take the first opportunity to get the hell out of Dodge) combat inflation when some time in 2024 the economy enters recession even as prices continue to rise?
Because while Saravelos is right that the market freaked out as a result of a “very pessimistic” take on r*, a far more appropriate question is whether we are on the precipice of non-transitory runaway inflation as the Fed’s hands will soon be tied and its attempt to stem soaring prices will push the US into economic depression?
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/20/2021 – 17:15 - Cars On US Highways Hit Record Age, May Unleash Repair Boom
Cars On US Highways Hit Record Age, May Unleash Repair Boom
More and more Americans are driving older cars. A new report found the average age of a vehicle on US highways hit a record high of 12.1 years in January. What this may suggest is a repair and maintenance boom is ahead.
Bloomberg, citing new data from analytics firm IHS Markit, said the age of cars and light trucks increased by .20 years from 11.9 years in January 2020 to January 2021.
Source: Bloomberg “There doesn’t seem to be a loser here. New vehicles win. The aftermarket wins,” said Todd Campau, IHS Markit’s associate director of aftermarket solutions. “The older the vehicles are, the more opportunity there is that they are reaching the end of life, which feeds new vehicle buying.”
A global semiconductor shortage could be the reason why people are keeping their cars and trucks longer as the availability of new supply dries up, forcing used car prices to jump in May. Used car prices are now up 16.6% year-to-date (ytd) and according to the Mannheim Used Car Index, which is up 26% YTD and 48% Y/Y, it’s set to keep rising.
Whatever the reason, maybe because the typical term length for auto loans is 63 months, with some loans even out 72 to 84 months, people are holding on to their vehicles for a record length.
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, vehicle owners took out longer loans and leases to offset rising new-car costs, prompting them to hold on to the vehicles longer, Campau said. Record sales before the pandemic also led to a wave of cars that have fallen out of warranty. – Bloomberg
Campau said these vehicles are in the “sweet spot” for repairs and overhauls because of wear and tear.
“There’s money to be made across the board, but I would probably say the aftermarket stands to gain the most from the used vehicle fleet,” he said.
And unfortunately, while nominal wage growth – a critical component to keeping inflation sticky – continues to rise, when indexed for inflation, real average hourly earnings are the lowest they have been this century!
So as the cost of everything goes up, even vehicle repairs, this is more bad news for the average American driving an older car that will eventually need repairs – unless they buy the part themselves and learn how to install it via a YouTube video.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/20/2021 – 17:00 - Manufacturing (New Normal) "Reality"
Manufacturing (New Normal) “Reality”
Authored by CJ Hopkins via ConsentFactory.org,
The ultimate goal of every totalitarian system is to establish complete control over society and every individual within it in order to achieve ideological uniformity and eliminate any and all deviation from it. This goal can never be achieved, of course, but it is the raison d’être of all totalitarian systems, regardless of what forms they take and ideologies they espouse. You can dress totalitarianism up in Hugo Boss-designed Nazi uniforms, Mao suits, or medical-looking face masks, its core desire remains the same: to remake the world in its paranoid image … to replace reality with its own “reality.”
We are right in the middle of this process currently, which is why everything feels so batshit crazy. The global capitalist ruling classes are implementing a new official ideology, in other words, a new “reality.” That’s what an official ideology is. It’s more than just a set of beliefs. Anyone can have any beliefs they want. Your personal beliefs do not constitute “reality.” In order to make your beliefs “reality,” you need to have the power to impose them on society. You need the power of the police, the military, the media, scientific “experts,” academia, the culture industry, the entire ideology-manufacturing machine.
There is nothing subtle about this process. Decommissioning one “reality” and replacing it with another is a brutal business. Societies grow accustomed to their “realities.” We do not surrender them willingly or easily. Normally, what’s required to get us to do so is a crisis, a war, a state of emergency, or … you know, a deadly global pandemic.
During the changeover from the old “reality” to the new “reality,” the society is torn apart. The old “reality” is being disassembled and the new one has not yet taken its place. It feels like madness, and, in a way, it is. For a time, the society is split in two, as the two “realities” battle it out for dominance. “Reality” being what it is (i.e., monolithic), this is a fight to the death. In the end, only one “reality” can prevail.
This is the crucial period for the totalitarian movement. It needs to negate the old “reality” in order to implement the new one, and it cannot do that with reason and facts, so it has to do it with fear and brute force. It needs to terrorize the majority of society into a state of mindless mass hysteria that can be turned against those resisting the new “reality.” It is not a matter of persuading or convincing people to accept the new “reality.” It’s more like how you drive a herd of cattle. You scare them enough to get them moving, then you steer them wherever you want them to go. The cattle do not know or understand where they are going. They are simply reacting to a physical stimulus. Facts and reason have nothing to do with it.
And this is what has been so incredibly frustrating for those of us opposing the roll-out of the “New Normal,” whether debunking the official Covid-19 narrative, or “Russiagate,” or the “Storming of the US Capitol,” or any other element of the new official ideology. (And, yes, it is all one ideology, not “communism,” or “fascism,” or any other nostalgia, but the ideology of the system that actually rules us, supranational global capitalism. We’re living in the first truly global-hegemonic ideological system in human history. We have been for the last 30 years. If you are touchy about the term “global capitalism,” go ahead and call it “globalism,” or “crony capitalism,” or “corporatism,” or whatever other name you need to. Whatever you call it, it became the unrivaled globally-hegemonic ideological system when the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s. Yes, there are pockets of internal resistance, but it has no external adversaries, so its progression toward a more openly totalitarian structure is logical and entirely predictable.)
Anyway, what has been so incredibly frustrating is that many of us have been operating under the illusion that we are engaged in a rational argument over facts (e.g., the facts of Russiagate, Literal-Hitlergate, 9/11, Saddam’s WMDs, Douma, the January 6 “insurrection,” the official Covid narrative, etc.)
This is not at all what is happening. Facts mean absolutely nothing to the adherents of totalitarian systems.
You can show the New Normals the facts all you like. You can show them the fake photos of people dead in the streets in China in March of 2020. You can show them the fake projected death rates. You can explain how the fake PCR tests work, how healthy people were deemed medical “cases.” You can show them all the studies on the ineffectiveness of masks. You can explain the fake “hospitalization” and “death” figures, send them articles about the unused “emergency hospitals,” the unremarkable age-and-population-adjusted death rates, cite the survival rates for people under 70, the dangers and pointlessness of “vaccinating” children. None of this will make the slightest difference.
Or, if you’ve bought the Covid-19 narrative, but haven’t completely abandoned your critical faculties, you can do what Glenn Greenwald has been doing recently. You can demonstrate how the corporate media have intentionally lied, again and again, to whip up mass hysteria over “domestic terrorism.”
You can show people videos of the “violent domestic terrorists” calmly walking into the Capitol Building in single file, like a high-school tour group, having been let in by members of Capitol Security. You can debunk the infamous “fire-extinguisher murder” of Brian Sicknik that never really happened. You can point out that the belief that a few hundred unarmed people running around in the Capitol qualifies as an “insurrection,” or an “attempted coup,” or “domestic terrorism,” is delusional to the point of being literally insane. This will also not make the slightest difference.
I could go on, and I’m sure I will as the “New Normal” ideology becomes our new “reality” over the course of the next several years. My point, at the moment, is … this isn’t an argument. The global-capitalist ruling classes, government leaders, the corporate media, and the New Normal masses they have instrumentalized are not debating with us. They know the facts. They know the facts contradict their narratives. They do not care. They do not have to. Because this isn’t about facts. It’s about power.
I’m not saying that facts don’t matter. Of course they matter. They matter to us. I’m saying, let’s recognize what this is. It isn’t a debate or a search for the truth. The New Normals are disassembling one “reality” and replacing it with a new “reality.” (Yes, I know that reality exists in some fundamental ontological sense, but that isn’t the “reality” I’m talking about here, so please do not send me angry emails railing against Foucault and postmodernism.)
The pressure to conform to the new “reality” is already intense and it’s going to get worse as vaccination passes, public mask-wearing, periodic lockdowns, etc., become normalized. Those who don’t conform will be systematically demonized, socially and/or professionally ostracized, segregated, and otherwise punished. Our opinions will be censored. We will be “canceled,” deplatformed, demonitized, and otherwise silenced. Our views will be labeled “potentially harmful.”
We will be accused of spreading “misinformation,” of being “far-right extremists,” “racists,” “anti-Semites,” “conspiracy theorists,” “anti-vaxxers,” “anti-global-capitalist violent domestic terrorists,” or just garden variety “sexual harassers,” or whatever they believe will damage us the most.
This will happen in both the public and personal spheres. Not just governments, the media, and corporations, but your colleagues, friends, and family will do this. Strangers in shops and restaurants will do this. Most of them will not do it consciously. They will do it because your non-conformity represents an existential threat to them … a negation of their new “reality” and a reminder of the reality they surrendered in order to remain a “normal” person and avoid the punishments described above.
This is nothing new, of course. It is how “reality” is manufactured, not only in totalitarian systems, but in every organized social system. Those in power instrumentalize the masses to enforce conformity with their official ideology. Totalitarianism is just its most extreme and most dangerously paranoid and fanatical form.
So, sure, keep posting and sharing the facts, assuming you can get them past the censors, but let’s not kid ourselves about what we’re up against.
We’re not going to wake the New Normals up with facts. If we could, we would have done so already. This is not a civilized debate about facts. This is a fight. Act accordingly.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 06/20/2021 – 16:30
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